February 5, 2009: Hellboy 2: The Golden Army
I knew that there was a previous Hellboy movie, and didn’t know that there was a sequel, but I watched this because of the Oscar nomination for Makeup. It turns out to be some kind of tongue-in-cheek superhero/mutant story, and actually pretty funny, with Ron Perlman in the lead.
Of course I have no idea what happened in the first film, and I figure it doesn’t really matter. I would give a plot summary for this sequel, but I really have no idea what was going on. I quite liked the characters, but not the story so much, and couldn’t really invest myself in it. For the second half of the movie, I was only paying about 70% attention, and I have to keep reminding myself that that is OK even though I write reviews, because there’s an almost 0% chance I would have seen this if not for the nomination.
The makeup was OK. It was very heavy, which I guess is considered to be a good thing. But apparently the makeup in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button was better. Supporting performances by Jeffrey Tambor and John Hurt add to the proceedings. It’s also good to get some more perspective on the work of director Guillermo Del Toro, who brought us the strange and borderline-disturbing Pan’s Labyrinth a couple of years ago. Overall, I thought the movie was enjoyable but I definitely wouldn’t seek it out. If I were more of a comic book fan, it might have hit me differently.
Makeup good, characters good, story confusing.
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