Hellboy II: The Golden Army

Great mid-2000's entry to the comic book urban fantasy genre. Watched it as a palate cleanser after the goshawful 2007 Ghost Rider. It has everything Rider has, except it's actually good. 

The premise - continuing from the first film - is that the half-demon protector of humanity nicknamed Hellboy gets a chance to expose himself to the human world, but at the same time the disgruntled elf prince Nuada tries to destroy humanity by activating the titular army. It's a tight little urban fantasy film; people have guns, everyone's kind of snappy in a 21st century way, but they're fighting monsters from classic mythology and the occasional steampunk robot. This is directed by Guillermo Del Toro, who made Pacific Rim and The Shape of Water, so it's full of fantastic, retro-future aesthetics and awesome-looking costumes. Apparently studios tried to mess up the story and he lost funding for refusing to bend with it, so he made these awesome costumes despite budget cuts. 

The plot is pretty straightforward, as described, but the presentation is fun, and while the character dynamics can feel a little stale by this point - boring romantic banter and a villain who hates humanity 'cause consumerism!!1! - it's a much better product than it was at risk of being. The villain is especially compelling, being essentially evil Legolas, with all the unrealistically cool fighting skill you'd expect of him. I'd confidently say that the final duel between him and Hellboy is perhaps the best one-on-one fight in a comic book movie ever, with the highway fight in Winter Soldier being a very close second. 

But yeah, it's pretty fun. It's about two hours flat, it's PG-13 for some swearing and action, and it's basically a good time. If you're a fan of this genre, you'll like this film. If you're not, it'll still be all right. 

Ghost Rider (2007)

Just a frikkin' mess, man. I mostly watched this 'cause we wanted to do a Nicolas Cage night. This movie is a freakin' masterpiece of mid-2000's emo punk film production dysfunction. With the 2005 Constantine and 2004's Hellboy, you can form an unofficial trilogy of the same. Although Hellboy is an order of magnitude better than those other two. 

Comic book Ghost Rider is the story of a cocky, handsome young stunt biker who sells his soul to the devil to save the life of a loved one. From then on, he's cursed to become a Satanic biker at night pushed to punish the souls of the wicked. He's got chains, fire, a stare that burns you up with your sins, super-strength, and an awesome bike. Young, virile, extreme, combative, terrifying. 

The film version is a 43-year old Nicolas Cage (who unfortunately looks it) with a pronounced Southern accent spending twenty minutes total as the skullfaced wonder and the rest of the time as the protagonist of a most poorly scripted romantic comedy. 

The scripting is just terrible. It's like all the worst parts of the Raimi Spider-Man films. The casting is bad; Nicolas Cage was too old for the character and might have been too old in his thirties. The aesthetic is just cringy; gothic and dark without understanding the emotional core of that look. And the plot is just awful; Johnny Blaze is a pawn in a game between super-devils but doesn't understand anything, so it's just him reacting to weirdos until he limps his way to a finale.

The film's almost inexplicable choice to infuse a Western into this story (probably an attempt to "mainstreamify" the stories for a general audience) just ends up making it feel confused. The appeal of the occult-lite, spikes-and-skulls, deal-with-the-devil genre isn't in the building of a community, which is what a Western is always about. The appeal is in the pull between dark and light. The protagonist is always touched by evil, usually the devil, but they're still always trying to do good. Can they escape that touch definitively? Watch to find out! That's not what Ghost Rider is at all, and that's why it's bad.

It's just a frikkin' mess. Incoherent, badly paced, with the wrong choices for everything; an example of a company making a film more than an artist and failing as a result. But it does provide some prime Nicolas Cage faces, so there's that. 

Tag yourself

Parasite (2019)

Directed by: Bong Joon Ho, the South Korean equivalent of Steven Soderbergh; he makes films about different socio-economic brackets and their respective challenges, but will occasionally do something fun and light-hearted. He's very well-regarded.

Starring: The Korean equivalents of Al Pacino, Ansel Elgort, and any type of actor in between. This is prestige cinema

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Parasite was mostly really sad. It reminded me of the wealthy friends I've visited, but only the ones whose parents were never around. It really earns the Best Picture Oscar it won last year, but it's so downbeat it's hard to get excited about it. 

That said, it's pretty baller. The first hour is non-stop thrills and the second half is non-stop suspense that has you shaking in your seat. The performances are great, the film is great to look at, and the intricacy of the plot is just mind-blowing. This feels like it was adapted from a book, but it wasn't - the creators were just able to think up an insane number of details to include that enriched the story. 

This thread from a fan (Insights On Parasite As a Korean) is worth reading afterwards too; the film is apparently a good snapshot of contemporary South Korean issues, and from there a snapshot of international issues. On a personal level, it reminds me of my own experience growing up overseas; there's education and prosperity, but the socio-economic ideals we have in America don't exist, so you have no reason to think a wealthy person will give a fig about you. As someone who's had periods with little money, and been in a position to see others with little money in the international community, it feels almost uncomfortably authentic, which I suppose is the whole point of it.

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It's on Hulu. Decent use of two hours. It's got a fair bit of swearing (in Korean) and there's a sex scene about an hour and 28 minutes in that you can skip forward two minutes to dodge. It's also a little bit violent. But overall it's a lot more restrained than a Bong Joon-Ho flick usually is, and got a lot going for it. You're likely to see something you recognize. Recommend to adults, and kids who want to be scared and confused