Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio (2022) Review

Time: 117 Minutes
Age Rating: Violence, cruelty & content that may disturb
Cast:
Ewan McGregor as Sebastian J. Cricket
David Bradley as Master Geppetto
Gregory Mann as Pinocchio
Burn Gorman as the Priest
Ron Perlman as the Podestà
John Turturro as the Dottore
Finn Wolfhard as Candlewick
Tim Blake Nelson as the Black Rabbits
Christoph Waltz as Count Volpe
Tilda Swinton as The Wood Sprite and Death
Director: Guillermo del Toro, Mark Gustafson

A father’s wish magically brings a wooden boy to life in Italy, giving him a chance to care for the child. However, the two of them have to struggle to find a place for themselves as Italy becomes embroiled in fascism.

For a bizarre reason, there were 3 Pinocchio movies released in 2022. One was called Pinocchio: A True Story which quickly became a laughing stock after the first trailer was released, and then there’s the live action remake from Robert Zemeckis which wasn’t received that favourably either. However, there was a third Pinocchio adaptation helmed by Guillermo del Toro, which was a stop motion animated film. While I didn’t watch the first two Pinocchio adaptations, I’m pretty confident that this is the best of those films from this year.

This movie tells its captivating story well, there is so much love and passion on display here. There is a good tonal balance between being sweet and uplifting as well as being darker and emotional. The core of the store is childlike, and has the sense of wonder that’s in del Toro’s other movies. However, the story is surprisingly complex, heavy and unafraid to get dark, which you can quickly pick up on when you learn that the story is set in fascist Italy under the rule of Mussolini. This is another movie Del Toro movie which has his signature exploration of socio-political themes including grief, religion, war and morality, and they are well handled.

There is a large voice cast assembled for Pinocchio, and the voice acting really is strong. Gregory Mann excellently embodies the character of Pinocchio excellently. However the standout for me was David Bradley, who brought so much pain and emotion to Gepetto. Other standouts include Ewan McGregor, Christoph Waltz, Cate Blanchett and Tilda Swinton, while the rest of the cast including Ron Perlman, Finn Wolfhard, Tim Blake Nelson, Burn Gorman and John Turturro also deliver in their roles.

Guillermo del Toro and Mark Gustafson directed this, and their work is truly fantastic. The stop motion animation is gorgeous and stellar, everything looks like a work of art, and the movements are flawless. The creature and character designs are great, and the set pieces, backgrounds and production design are wonderful with so much detail. The score by Alexandre Desplat is good and fits the movie well. The songs and the singing sequences are decent and fit well into the movie, but honestly aren’t that memorable.

Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio is a mature, charming, magical and wonderfully crafted film, with stellar voice performances, and fantastically stunning stop motion animation. Even if you are familiar with the classic Pinocchio story, I highly recommend checking this one out. Strong contender for the best animated film of this year.

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Nightmare Alley (2021) Review

Time: 150 Minutes
Age Rating: Graphic violence, cruelty, offensive language & content that may disturb
Cast:
Bradley Cooper as Stanton “Stan” Carlisle
Cate Blanchett as Lilith Ritter
Rooney Mara as Mary Elizabeth “Molly” Cahill
Toni Collette as Zeena Krumbein
Willem Dafoe as Clement “Clem” Hoately
Richard Jenkins as Ezra Grindle
Ron Perlman as Bruno
David Strathairn as Peter “Pete” Krumbein
Mary Steenburgen as Felicia Kimball
Director: Guillermo del Toro

In 1940s New York, down-on-his-luck Stanton Carlisle endears himself to a clairvoyant and her mentalist husband at a traveling carnival. Using newly acquired knowledge, Carlisle crafts a golden ticket to success by swindling the elite and wealthy. Hoping for a big score, he soon hatches a scheme to con a dangerous tycoon with help from a mysterious psychiatrist who might be his most formidable opponent yet.

Nightmare Alley was one of my most anticipated movies of 2021. It is Guillermo del Toro’s latest film, one which is comparatively less horror based compared to the rest of his filmography, and is instead more of a noir. Add on top of that a fantastic cast including Bradley Cooper, Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara, and you have a movie with a lot of potential. It seemed to have been receiving mixed reviews and hadn’t been doing well at the box office, which is a real shame because I actually thought this movie was great.

I didn’t watch the original Nightmare Alley film, nor did I read the book it was based on, I went into this having only seen the trailers. Nightmare Alley is by far Guillermo del Toro’s most grounded film with no fantasy elements whatsoever. “Man is the real monster” seems to be the recurring theme in most of del Toro’s films and that certainly is the case with Alley now that there are no monsters of the fantastical variety to be seen here. With that said, it is a strong contender for del Toro’s darkest movie yet. It is very much a grim and slow burn noir mystery. The premise isn’t completely new, its another “hustler gets in over his head” kind of story, but I was really interested. I found the seedy and sinister story compelling and engaging, and I really liked the psychological aspect to it. The characters were well written and quite interesting, so I was invested throughout. It also has a very memorable and haunting ending, and one of the best scenes from the past year. Darkness aside, the other things that might turn off some people are the pacing and length. The plot is more drawn out than you would think given the premise. For example, if you’ve seen the trailers then you know that Cate Blanchett’s psychiatrist character plays a notable part in the plot, and she does. However, she appears for the first time about over an hour into the movie, so that should give you an idea how slowly the story moves. I don’t have a problem with it being a slow burn, even if there are some pacing issues, especially in the first half. The pacing does help to immerse the audience into the dark atmosphere that it’s building. The first act is definitely slower as it mostly takes place in a carnival setting, however when you’re watching it for the first, time you don’t really know where it is going. However, there is a reason why the movie lingers on these particular scenes earlier on. I think a rewatch would help you notice a lot more and understand why it focused on certain things, especially as there’s a lot of foreshadowing.

There is an excellent cast in this movie, and everyone makes strong impressions in their parts. Bradley Cooper plays the lead character of Stanton Carlisle and he’s great. He does a very good job at embodying all the shady qualities necessary for his carnie character. This is definitely one of Cooper’s best performances, and his final scene could actually make it his best. There is a strong supporting cast, Rooney Mara, Willem Dafoe (wonderfully scene chewing as always), Toni Collette, Richard Jenkins, Ron Perlman, David Strathairn, Holt McCallany, all of them are great in their parts, not a weak link even if some characters get more chances to shine than others. If there’s a standout among them however, it would be Cate Blanchett as a psychiatrist in a femme fatale sort of role. She does a great job, has an incredible screen presence, and almost steals the entire movie. Her scenes with Cooper are some of the highlights from the movie. I actually wished that we got more scenes with her.

Guillermo Del Toro directs and as usual he does a great job, with a lot of visual imagination on display. Even if you’re not into the story, you’ll surely like the visuals. There is some striking cinematography from Dan Lausten, with great use of colour, lighting and shadows, with some incredibly memorable imagery. The production design is magnificent, and the costume design is on point. The sound design works excellently, and the score from Nathan Johnson is one of the best from the past year. All of these come together to create a fantastic gothic atmosphere and look.

Nightmare Alley will probably end up like Guillermo del Toro’s own Crimson Peak, a very different movie from his filmography which has mixed reactions upon release, but will receive a lot more appreciation over time. As it is, I thought that Nightmare Alley is possibly one of his best movies. The cast of performances are excellent, the story is slower paced but engaging and wonderfully twisted, and its all crafted and directed well. If you can, I highly recommend you seek out Nightmare Alley, it is definitely one of my favourite films from 2021.

Don’t Look Up (2021) Review

Time: 138 Minutes
Age Rating: Sex scenes, offensive language, nudity & drug use
Cast:
Leonardo DiCaprio as Dr. Randall Mindy
Jennifer Lawrence as Kate Dibiasky
Rob Morgan as Dr. Teddy Oglethorpe
Cate Blanchett as Brie Evantee
Meryl Streep as Janie Orlean
Jonah Hill as Jason Orlean
Mark Rylance as Peter Isherwell
Tyler Perry as Jack Bremmer
Ron Perlman as Colonel Benedict Drask
Ariana Grande as Riley Bina
Scott Mescudi as DJ Chello
Himesh Patel as Phillip Kaj
Melanie Lynskey as June Mindy
Director: Adam McKay

Two low-level astronomers must go on a giant media tour to warn mankind of an approaching comet that will destroy planet Earth.

I remember Don’t Look Up at one point being one of my most anticipated films of 2021. It has a massive cast including Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Lawrence, Jonah Hill, Meryl Streep, Timothee Chalamet and more. I also liked Adam McKay’s more recent dramatic work with The Big Short and Vice, and I was interested in him doing a full on satire with his latest film. However as it approached its release date, I had my doubts. The trailers weren’t the best and the reactions coming out of it weren’t exactly confidence inspiring. Still I gave it a chance and overall I’m prepared to say that I like it, though I completely understand why some people dislike it.

I do like the premise of the movie, with the lead characters trying to warn the world about a coming disaster while the world doesn’t listen, definitely works for a satire. It is a comedy, and while I wouldn’t say it failed, most of the humour didn’t work. There are funny jokes throughout but not as many as you’d hope for. I was generally entertained throughout, even if it was never that great in the first two acts, just a mildly funny comedy with very mixed satire (more on that later). The movie is around 2 hours and 20 minutes long, and it really didn’t need to be that long. I wouldn’t say that I was bored during the movie, but it all felt very drawn out and not a lot happens or is said to really justify that length, and the comedy and satire isn’t good enough to fully sustain things all the way through. I feel like on rewatch I’d find it harder to get through. Strangely enough, it gets into much more dramatic territory in the third act, and its surprisingly quite effective, and its far better than what came earlier. Looking back at the rest of the movie, it actually works much better as a terrifying and depressing end of the world downer (with darkly comedic elements) than a smart political and social satire. Another issue is that the tone is all over the place. McKay’s last two movies jumped between drama and comedy as well, but it feels messier in Don’t Look Up. Until the third act, it just can’t seem to decide whether it’s trying to be an apocalyptic drama and a mostly straight-faced satire, or a full on spoof. I think it needed to either be more straight faced about it or lean much further into absurdity.

While I enjoy the movie, the actual satire is one of the weaker elements unfortunately. One of the biggest criticisms I’ve seen of Don’t Look Up is that its very obvious and not subtle at all, much like McKay’s last two movies. And I’ll always stay true to my belief that its not inherently bad if a film is more obvious than subtle. Sometimes it is refreshing for a movie to be more direct about things. The problem is that a lot of the satire just feels a bit too obvious, in the sense that its too easy. For example, many of the characters are caricatures meant to represent types or groups of people, but they feel very overdone and a little lazy, the upbeat news anchors, the president and politicians who doesn’t know what they’re doing, dumb celebrities, etc., and McKay doesn’t do anything with them beyond the obvious. There’s nothing particularly daring or insightful said in this film, and the caricatures and not-subtle messaging makes the film hard to be engaging. I will say that some of the ways that people respond in the movie is like how people would respond in real life. However for every one of those moments, there’s moments where the satirising of aspects of today’s society isn’t quite right. An example is when Jennifer Lawrence’s character becomes a meme of sorts, but the memes that are very displayed are outdated top-text and bottom-text meme formats from the 2000s. It doesn’t break the movie or anything but moments like these go towards the film not fully succeeding at being a satire of today. While I wouldn’t say that the movie talks down to people and is condescending (although I can see why people would see it that way), there is a general sense of self-importance, and the feeling that they are more insightful and smarter than they really are. Part of that is the fact that the comet in the film is intended as a metaphor for climate change, and the movie is apparently meant to urge people to take it seriously. If we look at the movie from this perspective, Don’t Look Up really only spreads awareness that climate change exists and does and says nothing beyond that, at most its only preaching to the choir. Also when you really think about it, the comet doesn’t really make for a particularly good metaphor for climate change, especially in the context of the film (without spoiling anything). I wouldn’t normally look this deep into a movie like this, but McKay and his co-writer really seem to believe that they are saying something important about climate change, so I thought it was worth mentioning.

One of Don’t Look Up’s biggest selling points is its absurdly large cast, which is no doubt why so many people wanted to check it out in the first place. While I wouldn’t say that any of these actors are even close to giving career best performances in this movie, most of them are pretty good in their parts. Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence play astronomers who discover the comet heading for Earth and try to warn people about it. This is the third of DiCaprio’s more comedic performances after The Wolf of Wall Street and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, he has shown himself to be surprisingly great at comedy. He’s also really good here at portraying his stressed and panic stricken character, and he especially has a great and notable rage sequence in the second half of the movie. Lawrence is also great and entertaining, she’s especially good in the scenes of comedy. DiCaprio, Lawrence and Rob Morgan (who is also great) are the best performances in the movie because they were the only performances and characters that actually felt somewhat grounded and felt like actual characters, in contrast to every other actor. When Meryl Streep showed up as the president, at first I thought she was phoning her performance, but I actually think she’s pretty good. I soon came to realise that most major actors in the cast play an over the top and obvious caricature, and so they all feel underutilised to a degree. With that said I think most of them actually work in their parts. The highlights for me were Jonah Hill, Timothee Chalamet, and Cate Blanchett, Ron Perlman is also a scene stealer in his 5 minutes. So while it is disappointing that this stacked cast weren’t really utilised to their fullest potential, at least most of them gave decent performances. Notice that I said ‘most’ instead of ‘all’, the sole exception is Mark Rylance, I have no idea what he was doing in this movie. Rylance plays a tech billionaire, and I definitely get the point of his character. He’s a riff on Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos and every other rich tech CEO right now, and it makes sense for that kind of character to be in this movie. However, his performance is so weird and strange from his line deliveries and the way he decides to play the role, and not in a good way. I think the best way I can describe it as he’s trying to play Joe Biden playing Elon Musk. I know that everyone is an over-the-top caricature in this movie, but Rylance is on a completely different wavelength from the others that he feels completely out of place.

Adam McKay’s directing style in this movie won’t work for everyone. Most notable is the editing, which is very fast, messy, and often cuts to a lot of brief clips and images, similar to what McKay did with The Big Short and Vice. If you hated the editing in Vice, you’ll probably hate the editing in Don’t Look Up too. I will admit that I liked the editing in McKay’s unofficial political trilogy, but while I mostly liked the editing in Don’t Look Up, some of it got on my nerves a little bit at points. However, I will say that it actually does work very well in some moments in the third act and worked to give some parts some emotional punch to them. Editing aside, a lot of the other technical elements are strong. Linus Sandgren’s cinematography is great, for the most part its not really a movie that needs to be particularly well shot, but he does make the most of it when he can. Nicholas Britell is reliably great as the composer, and his score is one of the strongest parts of the film. Its definitely not on the level as his some of his other work like Succession or Vice, but its still great. The budget is absolutely insane at $75 million, and watching the movie, most of the film really didn’t need to have that large of a budget. With that said, the scenes involving large visual effects from comets to rockets were quite good.

Don’t Look Up is already proving to be incredibly divisive amongst people. If you really aren’t a fan of McKay’s style from his past two movies, I think that you’ll find his latest film to be a struggle. I can completely understand why some people are really disliking the movie. I don’t think it really succeeds, particularly as a satire, and even from a comedy standpoint it could’ve been better. Still, it has its moments (both comedic and dramatic), some of the technical elements are strong, and most of the performances from the cast are decent. I recommend checking it out at the very least.

Pacific Rim (2013) Review

Time: 132 Minutes
Age Rating: Violence
Cast:
Charlie Hunnam as Raleigh Becket
Idris Elba as Marshal Stacker Pentecost
Rinko Kikuchi as Mako Mori
Charlie Day as Dr. Newton ‘Newt’ Geiszler
Ron Perlman as Hannibal Chau
Robert Kazinsky as Chuck Hansen
Max Martini as Hercules “Herc” Hansen
Clifton Collins Jr. as Tendo Choi
Burn Gorman as Dr. Hermann Gottlieb
Director: Guillermo del Toro

The government assumes the Jaegers, robotic war machines battling the Kaijus, to be ineffective. However, Stacker Pentecost’s (Idris Elba) team believes that only the Jaegers can save the world from destruction.

It had been a while since I watched Pacific Rim, I remembered liking it when I watched it previously. Having re-watched many of del Toro’s movies more recently however, I decided to revisit it. It is quite a different movie from Del Toro, a large scale blockbuster, even larger than the Hellboy movies. Pacific Rim isn’t great, but it is far better than it had any right to be, with it being quite entertaining and well made generally.

The story itself is pretty predictable and by the numbers for this genre, and a lot of the characters are typical and I wasn’t really invested with them. I will say that to the movie’s credit, there was character development and depth and at least they made an effort with them (although not enough to make the characters great). Also while the story isn’t anything special, the story is not overly complicated and is straight forward enough, while also having subplots which fit into the rest of the story quite well. When watching Pacific Rim, live-action anime was what really came to mind, and from what I can tell they really pulled it off. It really is a solid harmony between sci-fi and monster movies. The movie is undoubtedly silly, but it fully embraces its silliness. The movie is self aware, and some of the dialogue is cheesy yet awesome at times (Idris Elba’s “We are cancelling the apocalypse” comes to mind). Del Toro knew exactly what movie he was making and that really works to its benefit. At the same time, it doesn’t feel like a cash-grab or lazy blockbuster, it’s clear that a lot of love and effort was put into making this movie.

The cast I’d say are probably decent at best but most of the problems goes to the characters, for the most part there isn’t quite enough material for the actors to be great. Charles Hunnam is a decent actor and he’s okay in the leading role here, albeit quite bland. However his character doesn’t have much to him, the only thing I remembered about him is that he was played by Charlie Hunnam and his brother dies early in the movie. The two performances that stood out the most in the movie for me were Rinko Kikuchi and Idris Elba. Charlie Day and Burn Gorman play over the top eccentric scientists, and Ron Perlman is also entertaining in his few scenes. The rest of the cast I don’t really remember, they don’t really leave much of an impression.

Guillermo del Toro is the reason why Pacific Rim was as good as it was, it would’ve been a lot weaker without his direction. It is visually stunning, with some beautiful cinematography, great use of colour, as well as detailed production design. The spectacular visual effects have held up quite well even over 7 years later, with the CGI being near perfect. The action sequences are among the parts that stand out the most, and those scenes are really great. The action is very large and does well at showing off the scale and designs of the two opposing forces. It would’ve been so easy for these moments to look like a mess, but with Pacific Rim, you can really get a good look at everything that’s happening on screen. The battles during the night-time are particularly look great. There’s a battle that takes place at night time around halfway through and that’s where it really where the movie took a step up for me. The monsters were greatly designed and detailed (as you can expect from del Toro).

Pacific Rim is definitely a silly action movie, however it is nonetheless an entertaining blockbuster that knows what it is. Even with the dumb moments and less than stellar characters, it’s directed quite well and generally keeps you watching for the visuals alone. It’s definitely in the lower section of Guillermo del Toro’s filmography but his work here is still impressive. I think it’s worth a watch at the very least, if you haven’t seen it already.

Hellboy 2: The Golden Army (2008) Review

Time: 120 Minutes
Age Rating: Fantasy Violence
Cast:
Ron Perlman as Hellboy
Selma Blair as Liz Sherman
Doug Jones as Abe Sapien
John Alexander and James Dodd as Johann Krauss
Seth MacFarlane as Johann Krauss (voice)
Luke Goss as Prince Nuada Silverlance
Anna Walton as Princess Nuala
Jeffrey Tambor as Tom Manning
John Hurt as Trevor Bruttenholm
Director: Guillermo del Toro

The evil Prince Nuada (Luke Goss) is hell-bent on bringing the Golden Army to life, which will help him to conquer the world. Hellboy (Ron Perlman) and his team join forces to defeat the callous ruler.

The first Hellboy movie released back in 2004 was quite good, it was a unique and weirder comic book movie for the time, was really entertaining, and worked really well, largely working because of Guillermo del Toro’s direction and of course Ron Perlman as the titular character. It’s hard to imagine it but Hellboy 2 manages to be on another level over the first movie. It improves in just about every level from the characters, the story, the direction, everything.

Hellboy 2: The Golden Army much like the first movie is another large scale epic world ending story, however you really notice some stark differences. First of all, whereas the first movie was supernatural and gothic, The Golden Army leans into being more fantasy. Additionally, as much as I liked the first Hellboy, there were parts of it that felt like del Toro was a little constrained, despite some of the unique aspects that he added. An example is the human character of Myers (played by Ruper Evans), who was positioned as the main character, central protagonist, and audience surrogate for the movie. He really did feel like a studio-mandated addition rather than anything anyone in the film cared about, and pretty much everyone agrees that film could’ve done without him. It seems that del Toro is one of those people who agreed, since Myers written out of the sequel, with a couple of lines explaining about how he was moved to Antarctica. With this moment, you can really tell that del Toro is having a lot more freedom with this movie, and was really making a pure del Toro movie rather than a movie that’s just mostly del Toro. The first Hellboy felt quite dense and expositional with its story, even if I enjoyed watching it. The sequel however has a far more free moving story that feels attached to the compelling plot and is well structured, but manages to effortlessly add themes as well as intimate and character moments in between it all that. The movie has a thematical and emotional core and you actually feel for the human sides of these characters. Hellboy 2 also has way more personality and charm than its predecessor. It takes itself a lot more seriously than the first Hellboy, but also has its fair share of jokes and humour, especially with sharp and witty dialogue. Hellboy 1 had humour but it’s more noticeable here and in a good way, it’s actually partly key to the film’s success. It’s often times character-based humour and makes them more endearing, rather than just going for an easy laugh. With an astounding balance of tone and an engaging story, Hellboy 2 just gets it all right.

The cast and characters are all great. Ron Perlman is once again perfect as Hellboy, his work in the first film was already solid but he really makes the character his own in The Golden Army. His character is more interesting, whereas he could’ve disappeared under all the prosthetics and makeup, his performance here feels even more honest and confident. The rest of the cast and characters are where you notice the greatest improvements however. With the supporting characters, the first movie didn’t give them much room to grow (and was also saddled with an incredibly generic and forgettable audience surrogate). They changed that here and allowed their characters to be explored a little more. Selma Blair as Liz Sherman was decent in the first movie but felt rather underdeveloped, and it felt like they didn’t really know what to do with her character. Here she’s a lot more well realised and was great. One of the best characters in the first Hellboy was Doug Jones as Abe Sapien, unfortunately he’s not in that movie much and didn’t have that much involvement with the story, not beyond the first half anyways. Here, he’s one of the main characters, that was definitely welcome, and the script really gave Doug Jones a lot to do. Interestingly in the first movie, Jones only performed the physical part, while David Hyde Pierce provided the voice. In Hellboy 2 though, Jones gets to play vocal duties as well and gives such a great performance, among his best work. Jones also played a couple of other characters that had prosthetics, and as to be expected, he plays those roles very well too. The new additions of actors and characters were good too. The character Johann Krauss was a surprisingly solid and unique addition to the cast. He’s an interesting character, whose values and overall personality directly challenge and differ with Hellboy’s, leading to a lot of conflict between the two. Krauss overall is also quite a unique character for both the Hellboy movies and other comic book movies, I particularly like the moments when the film takes advantage of his powers. Seth MacFarlane voiced Krauss and I think this is actually his best work to date. Despite playing him with a hammy German accent, he plays the role surprisingly straight faced (or rather straight voiced) and was more reserved than you’d expect from him. One of the weakest parts of the first Hellboy was the villains, specifically the lead villain Rasputin. This time in Hellboy 2, Luke Goss plays the villain, and he’s a much more interesting villain this time around, he was actually somewhat memorable and fitted the story quite well.

Guillermo del Toro directed Hellboy 2, and you really notice a step up 4 years between the two movies. He was key to the success of the first movie, without him, audiences would not have gotten such an original and iconic on this character. Don’t forget that del Toro got more freedom and a higher budget this time round, and he thankfully took great advantage of this. The film boasts some gorgeous cinematography and production designs. The Golden Army is definitely a more fantastical story instead of a fantastical one, and the aesthetic really benefits from that too. There’s also some amazing digital and practical effects, that mostly hold up quite well today. The designs of characters, monsters and creatures are also fantastic. Right after making Pan’s Labyrinth, Del Toro went all in with the creative designs of creatures and monsters. From the design of the elves to the Golden Army themselves, to even some of the slightly altered designs of Hellboy and Abe, they look incredible. There’s particularly a segment that takes place in a Troll Market, which mixes digital and practical effects and feels like a showcase of all the amazing effects that it had to offer. The action is fast paced, well filmed and very entertaining. The score by Danny Elfman was quite good as well, and fits the rest movie well.

Hellboy 2: The Golden Army is an incredibly entertaining and well-made comic book movie, taking what made the first Hellboy so good and improving on both its strong and weaker points. It has an entertaining fantastical story, a greater grasp of the characters, as well as Guillermo Del Toro’s direction with noticeably more freedom. They all come together to form one of del Toro’s strongest works. One of the biggest cinematic disappointments is that del Toro never got to make Hellboy 3, he clearly had such a great handle on the characters and would’ve been wonderful to have seen that happen.

Hellboy (2004) Review

Time: 122 Minutes
Age Rating: contains medium level violence
Cast:
Ron Perlman as Hellboy
John Hurt as Trevor Bruttenholm
Selma Blair as Liz Sherman
Rupert Evans as John “Johnny” Myers
Karel Roden as Grigori Rasputin
Jeffrey Tambor as Tom Manning
Doug Jones as Abe Sapien
Director: Guillermo del Toro

Towards the end of WWII, the Nazis resort to black magic and conjure a demonic-looking being called Hellboy (Ron Perlman). But the Allies capture him and he grows up to fight against evil rather than for it.

I’ve been meaning to go back and watch the Hellboy movies from Guillermo del Toro again, especially after the more recent and underwhelming reboot. I remembered liking them quite a bit, and as it turns out they actually hold up quite well today. Despite some of its script faults, 2004’s Hellboy is a very fun fantasy comic book movie.

Hellboy opens quite well and for the most works consistently well across its 2 hour runtime. It’s very entertaining, and creative, and the source material is perfect for del Toro to take on. The script is witty with some good lines and humour, the story is well paced, and it has a lot of fantasy and even noir aspects to it. It’s also heartfelt and genuine and establishes itself as a unique and larger than life comic book movie with a great atmosphere. Also keep in mind that this is back in 2004, so you can imagine how much of an impact and hit it would’ve been back then. Hellboy also does well as establishing its universe, though I feel like they could’ve done that without a human stand in character. It’s not all great though. The story isn’t really anything special, it’s a typical fantasy world ending plot that’s a bit predictable. It really doesn’t reach its fullest potential. Not all the characters are greatly handled. Hellboy of course is fantastic, but the human characters are particularly thinly developed and are quite bland, more on that later. Also maybe a slight nitpick, but it did feel like it ended a little abruptly, like there needed to be an extra scene right before it ended, but that’s a small gripe.

The cast do a good job in their parts, even though some of them were restricted by the writing of their respective characters. Of course the big standout is Ron Perlman as Hellboy and he absolutely owns this role. His performance is larger than life, funny, likable, and well realised, and you can tell that Perlman is enjoying every second of it. It’s just hard seeing anyone else in the role. Selma Blair’s performance is good too, though her character does suffer from some confusion with the writing and characterisation, and not enough time spent with her. The love story between her character and Hellboy does actually work quite well though, and the actors share convincing chemistry. Doug Jones (along with the voice of David Hyde Pierce) plays Abe Sapien, an amphibious humanoid (and unsurprisingly plays him with a lot of makeup and visual effects). His character is the most memorable in the movie after Hellboy by far, and he really stands out in the scenes. Unfortunately his character doesn’t show up much in the movie, at least compared to the sequel. As I said earlier, the human characters were rather unremarkable. The biggest example is Rupert Evans as Myers, the lead human character. This character was bland, uninteresting, and very much felt like he was only there to be the audience’s insight into this world. However it’s easy to connect with Hellboy that we didn’t need that. It’s no surprise that when it came to the sequel, there was no stand in human character like that. John Hurt is in here as Hellboy’s father figure. The character himself doesn’t have a lot to him, but John Hurt as you’d expect does a lot with very little and elevates it. The villain side of the characters was rather forgettable. Karel Roden is okay as Rasputin (the main villain) but the character never really felt much of a threat, some of the side villains and monsters posed much more of a threat and were memorable than him. There’s a henchman who’s a Nazi and has a gas mask with blades, and he had far more presence as a threat than Rasputin.

Guillermo del Toro directs this, and he was a great pick to helm a live action adaptation of the Hellboy comics. He directed this with such style and there was such attention to details, nothing here felt lazy. There are some solid cinematography and production design, with HP Lovecraft meets steampunk aesthetics. There are some excellent visual and practical effects here, and the best part is how del Toro blend the two. The creatures were particularly well handled, as if the movie was a full on creature feature. There are parts that don’t look so great, but considering that it was made back in 2004, it has held up quite well. The action scenes are riveting too, and are very entertaining to watch. The makeup is great, particularly with Hellboy and Abe Sapien. The score from Marco Beltrami was quite good, and added a lot to the movie.

Hellboy is an entertaining and creative fantasy action movie, greatly directed by Guillermo del Toro, and features a perfect performance from Ron Perlman as Hellboy. I wouldn’t rank it as one of the best comic book movies, but it’s pretty good when looking at most of the comic books released in the 2000s, in fact it was ahead of its time. If you haven’t watched Hellboy yet, I strongly recommend doing so.

Blade 2 (2002) Review

Time: 117 minutes
Age Rating:
Cast:
Wesley Snipes as Eric Brooks/Blade
Kris Kristofferson as Abraham Whistler
Ron Perlman as Dieter Reinhardt
Leonor Varela as Nyssa Damaskinos
Norman Reedus as Scud
Thomas Kretschmann as Eli Damaskino
Luke Goss as Jared Nomak
Director: Guillermo del Toro

A rare mutation gives birth to a new vampire community called the Reapers, who attack both humans and vampires. Blade (Wesley Snipes), along with an elite vampire force, is asked to wipe out the Reaper’s population.

The first Blade turned out to be quite a success, and nowadays would be considered an underrated comic book movie. There were definitely some noticeable issues, but it seemed like it would be hard to top that with a sequel. Well Blade 2 did that with Guillermo del Toro, which takes the first movie and improves on it in many ways.

Blade 2 definitely benefits from the fact that it doesn’t need to establish much of its universe like the first one did, even though that movie did handle the worldbuilding pretty well. The plot and overall movie is very fast paced, not leaving us with a moment to feel bored. Strangely enough one of the opening scenes started with a recap of the first movie by Wesley Snipes as Blade. It did take me a while to get used to the style, especially in Blade’s first action scene. After that point though, I got used to it. Now the movie is definitely less about the characters, and there’s nothing about Blade’s backstory here. Not that it’s bad but it definitely has a different focus compared to the first movie. It’s a much darker movie too, the first Blade had a dark atmosphere but it was quite cheesy at the same time. There are for sure some entertaining moments and some notable one liners but it’s definitely a different tone. A big part of that is the emphasis on horror, stronger than in the first movie, while remaining very much an action movie. The plot is a lot more focussed, there aren’t many subplots going on, and it’s very straightforward. I wouldn’t say the plot is great or anything, but it’s good enough for this movie.

Wesley Snipes is as usual fantastic as Blade, he’s great at playing him both with the character with the charisma, the fight scenes and in delivering the lines perfectly. It’s hard seeing anyone else play the character. Kris Kristofferson is back as Whistler after he was assumed dead in the last movie. In the first Blade, Whistler got to do a couple things but here he manages to do a lot more, and he’s great. The supporting cast are good too, with the likes of Ron Perlman, Norman Reedus, and Leonor Varela. The villain played by Luke Goss was certainly more scary and threatening than Deacon Frost from the first Blade, but as the character and performance was less memorable. Still, he was different enough as a character to make him a decent antagonist for Blade to go up against.

The key reason this movie works so well is director Guillermo del Toro. He added a lot of his own style into the movie, and it really makes it stand apart to the first movie. One of the things that you notice early on is that the lighting and colour really stands out, it’s a stunning movie to watch. The action scenes are also filmed differently, the editing is a lot more fast paced, and I think that’s what took me a while to get used to. After that first action scene though, I really liked them. The CGI is great sometimes, and pretty fake at other times, even looking a bit dated. The CGI especially stands out as being awkward when it’s meant to be representing people fighting. There’s particularly one action scene in front of lights which has moments where Wesley Snipes gets replaced with an animated version of Wesley Snipes, and he just looks really fake and cartoonish. Though this doesn’t take away from the action too much. As I said earlier, Blade 2 leans into the horror aspect a lot more than the first movie. In the first Blade it had some horror aspects, mainly to do with the vampire stuff. Here the vampires are a lot scarier, especially with the additions of the reapers. The monster designs are creative and very well detailed, and pretty much what you can expect from a del Toro movie.

Blade 2 is a really entertaining and faced paced action and horror movie, which really works greatly with the addition of Guillermo del Toro as director. The 2 Blade movies are roughly on the same level, stronger in some aspects, weaker in others. All in all, I slighter prefer the second movie, but I highly recommend checking out both movies if you haven’t already.

Cronos (1993) Review

Time: 92 Minutes
Cast:
Federico Luppi as Jesús Gris
Ron Perlman as Angel de la Guardia
Claudio Brook as Dieter de la Guardia
Margarita Isabel as Mercedes Gris
Tamara Shanath as Aurora Gris
Director: Guillermo del Toro

Antique dealer Jesus Gris (Federico Luppi) stumbles across Cronos, a 400-year-old scarab that, when it latches onto him, grants him youth and eternal life — but also a thirst for blood. As Jesus enjoys his newfound vitality, he’s unaware that a dying old man, Dieter de la Guardia (Claudio Brook), has sent his nephew, Angel (Ron Perlman), to find the scarab and bring it back to him. But Jesus will not give immortality up easily, even risking the life of his orphan granddaughter (Tamara Shanath).

I’m only aware and watched Cronos because it was directed by Guillermo Del Toro, and I wanted to check out all of his movies. This is actually his first film of his directing career, and for a debut movie, it was quite good. It does have its issues and lacks the same touch that most of Del Toro’s later films has, but there’s a lot of good parts here at the same time.

Cronos is definitely an interesting take on a vampire story. It is slowly paced and can be a bit sluggish at times, even though the movie is an hour and a half long. The film lacks some depth and doesn’t go all the way with its ideas (at least not as much as I’d like at least), but I was reasonably interested throughout. Some plotting and dialogue isn’t exactly the best, it’s a bit rough around the edges and wasn’t quite polished. However those are to be expected from a first movie. The plot is simplistic but it at least manages to avoid overcomplicating everything. In terms of other issues, it’s a small thing, but while most of the movie is in Spanish, there are some conversations where one person is speaking in English and the other in Spanish. Those moments are pretty distracting and takes you out of the experience, it probably should’ve just been fully in Spanish (again though it’s only a minor distraction). The writing was solid enough overall.

Federico Luppi gives a fantastic performance as main character Jesus Gris, an older man who finds himself with this particular device which helps him cheat death. He’s great and really portrays the character and everything he goes through really well, he really was a standout in this movie. Tamara Shanath also gives a solid performance as Jesus’s granddaughter, the relationship between the two feels genuine, and she really gets chances to shine towards the end of the movie. Ron Perlman is also in this and acts very well. He can be over the top and hammy at points (and his character’s motivations were a bit all over the place by the end), but I thought he was enjoyable to watch. The rest of the acting can be a bit mixed.

Guillermo Del Toro directed this movie very well, especially considering that this was his first movie. It is lower budget at around $2 million, but he seemed to have put it to good use. It’s quite a good looking movie, it’s well shot, the use of colour was great, and I really liked the moments where Del Toro played with some gothic elements. You can really tell even just from this one movie that he’s a director who really has an eye for detail. The sets are full of detail and were well made, the makeup and practical effects are effectively creepy and well designed, the gore effects were greatly gruesome too. There’s quite an eerie atmosphere throughout too, which was helped by the score by Javier Alvarez, which was quite effective.

Cronos isn’t one of Guillermo Del Toro’s strongest movies, but it is still solid. It doesn’t quite reach its potential despite its interesting take on the familiar vampire tale, and it is rough around the edges for sure. With that said, many of the flaws of the movie can be looked over considering that it was his first movie. On the whole it is directed very well, the acting from Luppi, Shanath and Perlman is great and it was interesting enough to watch. Definitely worth checking out.

Pottersville (2017) Review

Time: 84 Minutes
Age Rating:
Cast:
Michael Shannon as Maynard Greiger
Judy Greer as Parker
Ron Perlman as Sheriff Jack
Thomas Lennon as Brock Masterson
Christina Hendricks as Connie Greiger
Ian McShane as Bart
Director: Seth Henrikson

Maynard (Michael Shannon) is a beloved local businessman who is mistaken for the legendary Bigfoot during an inebriated romp through town in a makeshift gorilla costume. The sightings set off an international Bigfoot media spectacle and a windfall of tourism dollars for a simple American town hit by hard times.

I saw Pottersville out of morbid curiosity when it came onto a Netflix. It seemed to be a movie that would never ever exist, like a Saturday Night Live skit or one of those fake trailers at the beginning of Tropic Thunder with a cast including Michael Shannon and Ron Perlman in a movie about Bigfoot which happens to be a light hearted comedic film set around Christmas time. Everything from the posters to the trailer seemed completely fake, but it turns out it is real, someone really made this movie. Having seen it, I have to say that it really caught me off guard by how much I had fun with it. Not that it’s a good movie, it’s far from that. But it was such a weird movie to watch and had such bizarre moments that I couldn’t help but enjoy the randomness.

All the plot synopsises may say that Pottersville is about Michael Shannon getting drunk, dressing up like a sasquatch and the town the next morning believes that Bigfoot is a thing. But what they don’t tell you is that in this movie, Michael Shannon gets drunk and dresses up because he found out that his wife played by Christina Hendricks is having an affair with Ron Perlman and they are both furries. And they are in a club of furries in the town. So that’s pretty much the plot. I found myself finding unintentional funny moments more hilarious than the intentionally funny moments. However, to be honest, I’m wondering whether the ‘unintentionally funny’ moments was actually meant to be funny. When you see Ron Perlman say how he’s a furry and how he’s proud of it, it makes you wonder how self aware the people working on the movie were. It’s not like a studio movie, and at times it feels like there was some actual passion put into it, so I honestly can’t tell. Whatever the case, it is rather entertaining. I won’t go into too much of the random moments for your benefit if you choose to watch it. Plotwise this movie isn’t very interesting, outside of some random aspects it’s a fairly generic ‘Christmas movie’ (even though this movie doesn’t really have much to do with Christmas). There are parts, especially in the middle of the movie, where it isn’t very entertaining and it feels like a basic generic family movie, so it’s not consistently entertaining. But looking back on the overall film, I just have this really positive feeling towards it.

This movie has an weirdly big cast, with big names like Michael Shannon, Judy Greer, Ian McShane, Ron Perlman and Christina Hendricks all part of it. As you can probably tell, they don’t do their finest work here, though they aren’t really that bad and are trying to a degree and at the same time they know what movie they are in. Out of all of the main cast I’d say that Christina Hendricks really doesn’t get to do much here, she’s more wasted than the others (not that she’s missing out on much). The standout here is Michael Shannon, because despite him being known for playing crazed, insane, and villainous characters, here he plays a good guy, and it’s weird, adorable or hilarious (or all three). Shannon doesn’t appear to be phoning it in and is trying to an extent. His involvement with the movie just made it more enjoyable.

At times the direction by Seth Henrikson is okay, at other times it is incredibly basic and straight to DVD. There’s nothing to really say about it, the direction is incredibly average but the majority of it isn’t particularly terrible by any means.

I wouldn’t call Pottersville a good movie but I’m questioning myself when I’m calling it a bad movie. I can’t say that I didn’t enjoy the movie, because I did. It’s such a bizarre movie, made more bizarre by the bizarre plot, the bizarre choices and the bizarre amount of talent involved. It’s not completely unintentionally hilarious, it’s not quite the 2010’s equivalent of The Room, because some elements are okay (or generic) enough instead of being a complete disaster. But I still had a fun time when I watched it ironically. If you are morbidly curious in it, give it a watch when you can, but it might be a good idea to know what you’re in for beforehand.

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (2016) Review

Time: 132 minutes
Age Rating: Violence
Cast:
Eddie Redmayne as Newt Scamander
Katherine Waterston as Porpentina “Tina” Goldstein
Dan Fogler as Jacob Kowalski
Alison Sudol as Queenie Goldstein
Colin Farrell as Percival Graves
Carmen Ejogo as Seraphina Picquery
Ezra Miller as Credence Barebone
Samantha Morton as Mary Lou Barebone
Ron Perlman as Gnarlack
Jon Voight as Henry Shaw Sr.
Director: David Yates

The year is 1926, and Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne) has just completed a global excursion to find and document an extraordinary array of magical creatures. Arriving in New York for a brief stopover, he might have come and gone without incident, were it not for a No-Maj (American for Muggle) named Jacob, a misplaced magical case, and the escape of some of Newt’s fantastic beasts, which could spell trouble for both the wizarding and No-Maj worlds.

Fantastic Beasts was one of my most anticipated movies of 2016. I love the Harry Potter books and movies, so naturally I was interested in seeing what these new films would hold. Despite this, I wasn’t really sure what to expect from this prequel, it’s exploring a new side to the Wizarding World, with new characters and I didn’t know what direction it would go in. However, after seeing it, I can say that I absolutely love Fantastic Beasts. It had me interested in the plot from start to finish, the world is interesting, the acting was great, the effects were fantastic and it fits perfectly into the Harry Potter universe.

There have been many cases where great writers fail at writing a good screenplay (The Counsellor). That’s not the case with JK Rowling, who writes the script to Fantastic Beasts, the script is fantastic. I was invested in this movie from start to finish. One of the best parts of this movie is how, even though it’s establishing the world and setting up for future movies, it stands on its own. The tone was handled really well, it is light at times, but it would also get quite dark in others, overall it was well balanced. I will say that I was more invested in the story involving Ezra Miller’s and Colin Farrell’s characters more than the main plot with Newt Scamander trying to find his creatures, but it may just be a personal preference thing.

The cast is very talented and the film makes use of each actor quite well. Eddie Redmayne is really good as Newt Scamander, his quirkiness really worked in this role. Katherine Waterson and Alison Sudol were also great in the movie. Out of the main four stars however, Dan Fogler stood out most to me, he was fantastic in this movie. It would be so easy for this character to feel like a drag and annoying as he really is the exposition character, he’s the character that the other characters speak to in order to inform the audience what’s going on. However, he was just so likable and fun to watch. He and two other actors stole the show, one of these other actors is Ezra Miller, without spoiling anything about his role I have to say that he is absolutely excellent in this movie. The other showstealer is Colin Farrell, again no spoilers, but he was so great in this movie, I do wish that he was in the movie more but he really made an impression in the scenes he had.

David Yates has directed some of my favourite films of the Harry Potter series and returned to direct this movie, and he didn’t disappoint. The special effects are naturally great. The magical creatures themselves are so creative and done very well. The action scenes as to be expected are also done fantastically. The setting is very interesting and unique and the excellent production design reflected that. The soundtrack by James Newton Howard was also fantastic, and was well suited for the movie.

Fantastic Beasts is truly a great movie. Its talented cast was great, the world was so excellently portrayed by JK Rowling, and the direction was truly great. There’s not a whole lot of problems that I have with the movie. I do have some concerns about the sequels, as I’m not exactly sure how this storyline will be able to fit Newt Scamander into the story (without spoiling anything) but I’m sure it’ll be done well. JK Rowling knows what she’s doing, so I’m sure the next films will be great. Definitely check out this movie when you can.