nickjones-96546

Man, the original Hellboy comics were great! The first couple of movies were great, too!

Then there's this crap. Overly-long, trying to do too much and fit modern sensibilities into a movie that should've been more clever, more pulp-noir-y, more interesting in general. Hellboy is whiny and emotional where he should be world-weary and lackadaisical (also, he appears to be much shorter than any other depiction for some inexplicable reason). Multiple stories from the comics are jammed together in a way that doesn't remotely work. There's a subplot where Hellboy sympathizes with demons that goes nowhere. Boring. Boring. So boring.

One Hellboy story doesn't require two full hours to adapt, good lord. This is inferior in every way to the source material and prior films, but I guess that the endless parade of remakes and sequels must go on, for whatever reason.

I realize that this might be a controversial statement, given that one film (2004) won a Best Picture Academy Award and the other film (1996) is a sex pervert movie that won an Adult Video News Award, but I feel the need to take a stand. Despite the niche appeal of Crash (1996) to sex perverts, Crash (2004) is the far superior film.

Crash (2004) deals with a variety of contemporary social issues, while Crash (1996) deals with a weird, niche sexual fetish. Crash (2004) manages to be unsettling in a realistic and grounded manner, whereas Crash (1996) seems to be shooting for a deliberately provocative and offensive tone. An average viewer is going to come away with more to think about from the former than the latter.

The raw style of Crash (2004) is more visceral and involving then the cold, detached style of Crash (1996). It's easy to dismiss Cronenberg's film as sensationalistic softcore pornography, whereas Crash (2004) very obviously and deliberately is attempting to strike at deeper issues of the American experience. One can't fault Crash (1996) for doing exactly what it set out to do, but one does wonder if it's as valuable as the goal of the message that Crash (2004) was attempting to send.

...

It's not even that sexy.

There. I said it. Just have two sexy people having sex without car crashes being involved and this film is immensely improved.

Fight me.

City of God is a movie that bombards the viewers with its relentless and gruesome portrayal of the violence and chaos in the slums of Rio de Janeiro, yet fails to deliver a compelling or meaningful story. The film is a mess of disjointed scenes that jump back and forth in time between different characters, making it impossible to care about anyone. There is no single clear plot or a central protagonist, instead throwing a bunch of episodes that show how the favela degenerates into a bloody battleground ruled by drug gangs at the viewer. The film ignores the root causes and social context of the violence and poverty in the favela, indulging instead in the sensational and graphic aspects of the gang wars. There seems to be no hope or redemption for the characters or the community, rather a cycle of violence and crime that seems a permanent feature of the slum. The movie seems to take joy in depicting violence - including multiple graphic murders of children - as if it was a PG-13 Hollywood crime caper, despite the otherwise serious, tragic, and grotesque subject matter. I'm sure this was intended as a "message" movie, but the filmmakers seemed to be exploiting and glorifying the violence without condemning it, especially given the slick and stylish editing. City of God is a film that is more obsessed with style than substance, more eager to shock than enlighten, and more nihilistic than realistic.