Avengers: Endgame

Tonight I went and saw the much anticipated “Avengers: Endgame,” which came out six days ago. All I can say they must have saved the best for the end.

Richard Roeper said in his review, “I’m not prepared to instantly label “Avengers: Endgame” as the best of the 23 Marvel Universe movies to date, but it’s a serious contender for the crown and it’s the undisputed champion when it comes to emotional punch.”

If you don’t feel watery-eyed in certain parts during this screen-filling, eye-popping, time-hopping, pulse-raising, amazingly filmed superhero movie for everyone, you should get yourself checked because you may not be human.

Roeper mentioned, “So much hype has swirled for so long in advance of this sure-to-crack-$2-billion-worldwide insta-hit, you might have been wondering if even the combined powers of Captain Marvel, Iron Man, Black Widow, the Hulk, Captain America et al., would be strong enough to hold up under such an avalanche of expectations.”

You don’t have to be concerned because as the popular movie saying goes: They got this.

Thanks to a funny, well-paced, smart, capably submitted screenplay by Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely. Great direction from Anthony Russo and Joe Russo, who have done the universally deed of bouncing countless story lines and an all-star cast shining with over a dozen famous superhero characters, and the commonly solar performances from a cast filled with Oscar winners, Oscar nominees and magnetic stars on the rise, “Avengers: Endgame” actually flies through its three-hour running time with no boring moments or a slip in plot development.

Go to the bathroom before the movie starts. You’re not going to want to miss a moment.

“Avengers: Endgame” starts with the first of many small, friendly, human family moments, with one of the Avengers and his family in the prologue just before (“Avengers: Infinity War” spoiler alert!) Thanos, reprised by Josh Brolin, snapped his fingers and made half of the entire universe’s population (including many of our favorite superheroes) disappear in breezing brown dust.

From there we go to the main group of remaining Avengers, including Steve Rogers/Captain America (Chris Evans), Bruce Banner/Hulk (Mark Ruffalo), James Rhodes/War Machine (Don Cheadle) and Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson), who don’t look and sound anything like strong fighters as they mourn over their losses and think if they still have a reason in this new and broken society.

Eventually we see Tony Stark/Iron Man (Robert Downey, Jr.), Scott Lang/Ant-Man (Paul Rudd), Clint Barton/Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner), Carol Danvers/Captain Marvel (Brie Larson), and Thor (Chris Hemsworth), each of them have traveled a unique journey – one finding an amount of peace in a post-superhero life, another completely sad but wanting to get himself back together, another wanting nothing more than vengeance, and another who has let himself drown and wastes his days drinking beer and playing video games. (Roeper said, “I’ll leave it to you to discover the particulars, which include some heart-touching moments AND some of the biggest laughs ever produced in any superhero movie in any universe.”)

Roeper said, “It’s Paul Rudd’s Ant-Man, he of the super-duper shrinking abilities and the experiences with all that “quantum realm” scientific jazz, who comes up with a seemingly impossible proposition: Why don’t they expand on Ant-Man’s experience and take it to the next level?” He says they should travel back in time to before Thanos collected all six Infinity Stones and placed them inside his Infinity Gaunlet, stop him from gathering the Stones, and that way he’ll never get the chance to snap his fingers and instantly kill half the populations of so many planets in the multi-verse!

“You mean…a time machine?” asks a fellow Avenger.

Well, no, says Ant-Man. It would be more like, well, you know, it would be…

All right: It’ll be a time machine.

Roeper noted, “This leads to a bounty of jokes about “Back to the Future” and other time-traveling movies — and then “Endgame” actually BECOMES a “Back to the Future” type adventure, that is, if Marty McFly could actually McFly and he was joined on his time-hopping missions by all sorts of superheroes on multiple planets.”

Working in teams of two, the Avengers travel to Asgard and Morag and New York City of the recent past and New Jersey about half a century ago, along with other stops. This ends up with some serious encounters with past selves – Captain American fights 2012 Captain America, Nebula, reprised by Karen Gillan, meets up with 2014 Nebula, that type of encounters – and also gives so many chances for various characters to revisit famous ones who exist only in the past.

These superheroes never seem more human than when a son gets to talk to his father (John Slattery) at a time before the son was born, or a man sees the woman (Hayley Atwell) he never had the chance to be with, or a son is reunited with his mother (Rene Russo) on the day she will die.

At those parts, “Avengers: Endgame” is as emotionally moving as any Marvel movie has ever been. However, keep the Kleenex next to you, because even more powerful dramatic moments are going to happen. Roeper said, “Amidst all the soaring and the blasting and the inevitable gigantic climactic battle, this is a genuinely moving drama involving certain characters we’ve come to know and love through the years.”

Some of the Avengers are given a large amount of screen time. Others have a line or two at the most. Yet somehow, everyone leaves a strong impact. In a movie filled with amazing performances, the standouts are Scarlett Johansson, whose Black Widow has changed in so many ways since we first saw her. Roeper said, “Chris Hemsworth, providing a surprising amount of comedic relief as a very different version of Thor, and most of all Robert Downey Jr., whose Tony Stark has always been the most fascinating, complex, multi-layered, charismatic “civilian” persona of any superhero universe I’ve ever visited.”

The Motion Picture Academy never sees great acting if it comes incognito with a costume or a cape. That doesn’t mean Downey isn’t deserving of an Oscar. It’s great acting in a great film.

You have to go to the theaters to see this movie, it’s an absolute must. If you were left anxious with what was going to happen after “Infinity War,” this movie will leave you satisfied and happy. This is like “Return of the King,” especially in the climactic finale battle sequence. Hands down, this is another one of my favorite comic book movies and has got to be the best movie of the year thus far. This may surprise everyone, but there will be no mid-credit or post-credit sequence for the first time in the MCU. I guess because this is the definitive cap of this phase and also with this one being three hours long.

Thank you for joining in on tonight’s review, stay tuned next month to see what I have in store for everyone.

The World's End

You might not think a slapstick comedy about middle-aged bar hoppers racing with advanced alien invaders to have intelligence, heart and wisdom, but that’s “The World’s End,” a 2013 rare film that’s as much as you see.

Directed by Edgar Wright from a script by him and his regular protagonist, Simon Pegg, the film is nicely personal, despite the chasing and hunting and decapitation and exploding and the amount of blue blood going all over the place. The special effects are special, but they always tell the story and characters. Matt Zoller Seitz said in his review, “And even when Wright is paying homage to his filmmaking heroes (John Carpenter especially) or staging some of the most cleverly choreographed fights this side of an early '90s Jackie Chan film, you never get the sense that it's bored with itself when the characters are sitting around talking about their shared history over a pint.” Actually, they often talk about their shared stories while they’re attacking the aliens – and have a drink. Sometimes they have a drink during the fight. This is the type of movie you get.

Pegg’s character, Gary King, wants everyone to call him The King and thinks he is a prince among men, but he’s the type of person you get aggravated with easily. His friends have grown tired of him a long ago. They tell themselves they’ve matured. Seitz said, “Gary thinks they've sold out and become tediously conventional.” To the film’s credit, not one of these points-of-view is told completely wrong.

Oliver, played by Martin Freeman, is a whiny misery of a real estate agent with a Bluetooth always stuck on his ear. Steven (Paddy Considine), an architect who was once Gary’s enemy for the love of Oliver’s sister Sam (Rosamund Pike), is recently divorced and sleeping with a young fitness instructor. He brags about that last time to everyone who’ll listen, which is how you know he’s horrible about until he dies. Peter, played by Eddie Marsan, who was badly bullied in his youth, was always the go after nerd of the old group. Now he sells cars for his dad. Andrew, played by Nick Frost, is a lawyer who refuses to speak to (or of) Gary. Gary says it’s because he still owes Andrew six hundred pounds from long ago, but audiences will think that the real reason for the argument goes deeper. In fact it’s a bummer.

The first part of the movie is Gary “getting the old band back together,” as he says, to re-enact their great pub hopping mission from 1990, when they decided to go to all twelve bars in their old hometown of Newton Haven. Seitz says, “The quiet little town is home to bars with mythologically and otherwise suggestively loaded names: The Two-Headed Dog, The Famous Cock, The Trusty Servant, The World's End.” That the friends didn’t complete their mission has always annoyed Gary. He’s crazy about closing this chapter in his long-unfinished story.

Seitz says, “Running beneath the lively banter and knockabout slapstick is a sense of melancholy, at times despair, over lost youth and missed opportunities.” Gary is an alcoholic and drug user and chronic contort, the type of person who attracts other friends into tagging along which usually ends with humiliation or disaster. He’s first seen in a rehab facility, but looking at his appearance and behavior he hasn’t been there long. Seitz describes, “Pegg looks like he just crawled out of bed—a bed at the bottom of a mine shaft, most likely—and even his most jocular pronouncements have an undertone of manic desperation.” “Why should getting older affect something as important as friendship?” he demands, a question tough with unlooked guesses.

Seitz said, “If "The World's End" were only a picture about childhood buddies on a bittersweet pub crawl, it might have still been some sort of minor classic, so sharply observed is every shot, cut, music cue, line and close-up. When the film takes a right turn into science fiction conspiracy thriller territory—invoking "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" as well as such Carpenter films as "The Fog" and "Prince of Darkness"—you might worry that it's about to succumb to Gary's biggest fear, and trade spiky if heedless individuality for a tiresome grab at commercial formula. (This is the third Wright film in which a dull community proves a hotbed of slowly-creeping and highly secretive horror.) No worries: the sci-fi elements—which were hinted at in trailers, but which I'll write around in this review and maybe revisit later in a spoiler-warning-bedecked blog post—are audaciously funny and inventively designed, and they're always tied to the film's concerns. Nothing, no matter how extravagant or surreal, is superfluous.”

Fears of adjustment and instruction and the loss of youthful desire are never far from the movie’s thoughts. Neither is the all around thought and reasonable feeling that, while we should try to be better, kinder, more mature people, we still are who we are, and if we cannot stand one another’s flaws and treat each other respectfully, there’s no hope for mankind. Seitz said, “The film has great fun painting modern life itself as a prolonged and largely invisible conspiracy to rob people and their world of all personality. Every old pub the boys revisit has been Starbucked, as they put it, and later we get the sense that the very same digitally connected world that lets you read this review on a tiny handheld computer-phone is a means of social control as well. Odd as it might sound, the unexpectedly laid back climax echoes "A Clockwork Orange."” It shows a feeling that, while a completely safe and calm and perfect world might be possible, it’s not wanted, and might really be a large sin than anything that any person could do.

Wright is a smart director of fast-paced exposition, stylish but damaging action scenes, and graphically large comedic overload. Seitz said, “As in "Shaun of the Dead," "Hot Fuzz" and "Scott Pilgrim vs. The World," even functional closeups of beer being poured or ignition keys being turned are shot as if they were events on par with the Big Bang or the release of a new Kanye West album. Wright is a pop artist who's not inclined to relax; at times his movies play as if he'd decided to turn the first five minutes of "Trainspotting" into a career. There are times when I wished the "The World's End" had the confidence to linger more on the characters' conversations and nonverbal interactions. The group's chemistry evokes the best sad-sack male bonding tales of Barry Levinson ("Diner," "Tin Men"), and the performances are all superb, particularly Frost, who steals the film with an explosive physicality that's John Goodmanesque.”

However, at a time where mainstream movies not only have rhythm but look like they have forgotten how to movie, this one’s speed is inspiring. Its judgment is almost positive, and it has a feeling of fun that’s rare. Seitz said, “Like most genre films, "The World's End" is working things through in an extremely broad way and having a grand time doing it, and its self-deprecating wit inoculates it against self-importance. The movie wears its themes on its sleeve and pins its symbols to its puffed-out rooster's chest, swaggers about with a proud grin jabbing thumbs at itself, then walks into an open manhole.” This is just simply magnificent.

I know people might be wondering why this is referred to as “The Cornetto Trilogy.” That’s because in every movie, a Cornetto ice cream makes an appearance. See, in the USA, we do not get Cornetto, but it’s apparently a popular brand over in England. Also, being inspired by Krzysztof Kieslowski’s Three Color film trilogy, the Cornetto colors symbolize an element of the film. “Shaun of the Dead” is red for zombies, “Hot Fuzz” is blue for police, and “The World’s End” is green for aliens.

Now, I know that there might be people who do not agree with me on this, but I think that “The World’s End” is the funniest of the trilogy. People might disagree and say that “Hot Fuzz” is the funniest, but I found myself laughing at “The World’s End” more. This also makes another one of my favorite comedies. If you saw the other two movies in “The Cornetto Trilogy,” don’t skip this one over. Give it a watch because you will also love the fast-paced comedy that keeps this trilogy rolling.

Thank you everyone for joining in on “Edgar Wright Month.” I know that people probably wanted me to review “Baby Driver,” but I never saw that one. However, I did hear some really good things about it, and I might check it out one day. When I do, everyone will know because I will give it the right treatment.

Look out next month to see what I will review next.

Hellboy

Well, I went today and saw the latest “Hellboy” adaptation. However, before I talk about how I feel on that, I should probably talk about the ones that came before it, even though this is another origin movie. Let’s start off with the 2004 adaptation of “Hellboy.”

This is one of those rare movies that’s not only based on a comic book, but also feels like a comic book. It’s filled with energy, and you can feel the passion and joy when they made it. Obviously it’s made of wildly special effects, weird makeup and a ridiculous story line, but it follows through everything lightly. Unlike some CGI movies that drag from one point to another, this one skips cheerfully through the action.

With Ron Perlman, they have found actor who is not just playing a superhero, but enjoying it. Obviously he, knowingly, had to go through hours in makeup every day; he smokes his cigar, wags his tail and fights his villains with something approaching delight. You can see an actor in the process of making a difficult character really work.

The movie, based on comics by Mike Mignola and directed by the great Mexican horror man Guillermo del Toro, starts with a scene that has Nazis, those most strong of comic book villains. In a hopeless time late in World War II, they open a portal to the dark side and bring forth the Seven Gods of Chaos – almost do, before they are caught by U.S. soldiers and Professor Bruttenholm, played by John Hurt, who is President Roosevelt’s personal psychic adviser. Nothing gets past the portal except a little red baby with horns and a tail. He is vicious towards the professor, who calms him with a Baby Ruth bar, comforts him in his arms and raises him to become human’s main call against the demons of Satan’s home.

Meanwhile, the psychic practitioner Grigori Rasputin, played by Karel Roden, who is working for the Nazis, is pulled into the portal and disappears. Yes, he’s the same Rasputin.

We skip to the present day. The professor, now in his 80s, is told he will die soon. Two of his old enemies are strangely still the same age, however: a Nazi named Ilsa (Bridget Hodson) and a strange person named Korenen (Ladislav Beran), who is addicted to surgical fixes on his body. In an icy area in Mondavia, they hold celebrations to bring Rasputin back from the other side, and they’re ready to start.

Now we’re at a secret FBI headquarters where Hellboy lives with the professor and an aquatic being named Abe Sapien, played by Doug Jones – a fishman who got his name because he was born the day Abraham Lincoln was assassinated. The professor is teaching a young FBI agent Clay, played by Corey Johnson, when the Nazis attack a museum and free a creation imprisoned inside an ancient statue. Roger Ebert described this creature in his review as “a writhing, repellent, oozing mass of tentacles and teeth, reproduces by dividing and will soon conquer the Earth unless Hellboy can come to the rescue.”

Obviously he does that in action scenes that seem on the storyboard coming directly from pages of a comic book. Ebert said, “Hellboy gets banged up a lot but is somehow able to pick himself up off the mat and repair himself with a little self-applied chiropractic; a crunch of his spine, a pop of his shoulders and he's back in action.”

Ebert continued, “Abe the fishboy, who wears a breathing apparatus out of the water, is more of a dreamer than a fighter, with a personality that makes him a distant relative of Jar-Jar Binks.”

Hellboy has a lonely life. Ebert said, “When you are 7 feet tall and bright red with a tail, you don't exactly fit in, even though HB tries to make himself look more normal by sawing his horns down to stumps, which he sands every morning. He is in love with another paranormal, Liz Sherman (Selma Blair), a pyrokineticist who feels guilty because she starts fires when she gets excited.” There is a great scene where Hellboy kisses her and she enters flames, and we see they are made for one another because, as we know, Hellboy is fireproof.

The FBI, which is once in a while blamed for not sharing its information with other agencies, keeps Hellboy as its own deep secret. That funny actor Jeffrey Tambor plays the FBI chief, an administrator who is just not made to fight the demons of Satan’s home. He has some funny set-up scenes, and of course the movie is best when it’s making every character and before it leads up to its apocalyptic battles.

Hellboy fights the monsters in subway tunnels and subterranean caverns, as Liz, Clay and Abe the fishman go with him. Ebert said, “I know, of course, that one must accept the action in a movie like this on faith, but there was one transition I was utterly unable to follow. Liz has saved them all from the monsters by filling a cave with fire, which shrivels them and their eggs into crispy s'mores, and then -- well, the movie cuts directly to another cave in which they are held captive by the evil Nazis, and Hellboy is immobilized in gigantic custom-made stocks that has an extra-large hole for his oversized left hand.” How did that happen?

Ebert said, “Never mind. Doesn't matter. Despite his sheltered upbringing, Hellboy has somehow obtained the tough-talking personality of a Brooklyn stevedore, but he has a tender side, not only for Liz but for cats and kittens. He has one scene with the FBI director that reminded me of the moment when Frankenstein enjoys a cigar with the blind man.” He always lights his stogies with a lighter, and Tambor explains that cigars must always be lit with a wooden match. That’s good to know when Liz isn’t around.

Next came the 2008 sequel, “Hellboy II: The Golden Army.” Imagine the fires of Satan’s home mixed with the alien in Mos Eisley on Tatooine, and you have a feeling of Guillermo del Toro’s sequel. This is in every way equal to the first movie, maybe a little nosier; it’s another work of his passion for strange fantasy and deadly machines. The sequel avoids the details of Hellboy’s origin story, but adds a story told to him as a child by his adoptive father, where we see an ancient fight between humans and everything else: trolls, monsters, goblins, the Tooth Fairy, everything.

There was a piece. The humans got the cities, and the trolls got the forests. But humans have cheated on their end of the deal by building parking lots and shopping malls, and now Prince Nuada, played by Luke Goss, disobeys his father the king and hopes to start the fight again. This would involve awakening the Golden Army: 70 times 70 sleeping emotionless fighters. Standing against this decision is his twin sister, Princess Nuala, played by Anna Walton.

Ebert said, “And so on. I had best not get bogged down in plot description, except to add that Hellboy (Ron Perlman) and his sidekicks fight for the human side.” His colleagues include Abe Sapien, somewhat of a fight-man, the fire-generating Liz Sherman, a Teutonic advisor named Johann Kraus, voiced by the creator of "Family Guy," "American Dad" and "The Cleveland Show," (who also provides the voice of Peter Griffin, Brian Griffin, Stewie Griffin, Glenn Quagmire, Tom Tucker, Carter Pewterschmidt, Dr. Hartman, Jasper, Seamus Levine, Ida Davis, Stan Smith and Roger) Seth MacFarlane, and obviously Princess Nuala. Tom Manning (Tambor) from the secret center for telepathic insight joins them, but isn’t a lot of help, except for adding unimportance and dismissive sideways.

Ebert said, “Now that we have most of the characters onstage, let me describe the sights, which are almost all created by CGI, of course, but how else?” There’s a climactic fight between Hellboy and the Prince, with the Golden Army standing inactive, in what looks like the engine room of Satan’s home. Giant joining gears go up against each other for no real purpose, expect to ruin Hellboy or anything else that falls into them. Lucky they aren’t completely adjusted.

Ebert said, “There are also titanic battles in the streets of Manhattan involving gigantic octo-creatures and so on, but you know what? Although they're well done, titanic battles in the streets of Manhattan are becoming commonplace in the movies these days. What fascinates me is what the octo-creature transformed itself into, which was unexpected and really lovely. You'll see.”

Ebert continued, “The towering creatures fascinated me less, however, than some smaller ones. For example, swarms of tens of thousands of calcium-eaters, who devour humans both skin and bone and are the source of the Tooth Fairy legend. They pour out of the walls of an auction house and attack the heroes, and in my personal opinion, Hellboy is wasting his time trying to shoot them one at a time.”

Ebert goes on, “I also admire the creativity that went into the Troll Market (it has a secret entry under the Brooklyn Bridge). Here I think del Toro actually was inspired by the Tatooine saloon in "Star Wars," and brings together creatures of fantastical shapes and sizes, buying and selling goods of comparable shapes and sizes.” It would be worth buying the DVD just to look at it a frame at a time, finding out what secrets he may have hidden in there. The movies only rarely give us a fully new kind of place to look at. This will become a classic.

When you look at it, there are other hints of the “Star Wars” influence in “Hellboy II.” Princess Nuala doesn’t have Princess Leia’s type of hair (just ordinary long blond tresses), but she’s not a long way off from her. Also, Abe Sapien looks, moves and somewhat sounds a lot like C3PO that you’d think the robot became a fish-like being. Ebert said, “I also noticed hints of John Williams' "Star Wars" score in the score by Danny Elfman, especially during the final battle.” Not a aggressive job, you see. More of a suggestion of mood.

What else? Ebert said, “Two love stories, which I'll leave for you to find out about. And the duet performance of a song that is rather unexpected, to say the least.” Also once again we have a great performance by Ron Perlman as Hellboy. Yes, he’s CGI for the most part, but his face and voice and movements occupy the screen, and make him one of the great superheroes. Del Toro, who before “Hellboy II” did “Pan’s Labyrinth” and the great “Blade II,” had followed up this with “Doctor Strange” and “The Hobbit.” He has so much inventive imagination, and understands how legends work, why they fascinate us and that they sometimes stand for something, like love.

Now we come to the 2019 remake of “Hellboy,” which came out four days ago. You will never realize how much you need Guillermo del Toro to make more movies until you see this reboot.

Christy Lemire said in her review, “Long gone are the master filmmaker’s stylistic signatures: his meticulous eye for detail in the biggest monster and tiniest fairy, his deft tonal balance of the weird and the whimsical, and—above all else—an obvious affection for his creatures, both good and evil. Instead, under the watch of director Neil Marshall, we get empty bombast and a million bloody ways to rip a body to pieces, too few of which are inventive.”

Marshall takes over for del Toro, who directed the original movie and its sequel, films that were the perfect pairing of director and actor with Ron Perlman as the wisecracking, half-demon superhero. Even though it would be tough for anyone to follow in that great area, Marshall – who mostly has horror films and television credits to him, including “Game of Thrones” – allowed his look on the character to go completely out of control.

However, that’s part of the point. The script from Andrew Cosby, based on Mike Mignola’s Dark Horse comic series, is defiantly anachronistic and self-aware. It’s also filled with many flashbacks and digressions introducing more characters and subplots than anyone could really keep up with. Lemire said, “And this “Hellboy” really wallows in every last drop of its R-rating whereas the previous films were PG-13, upping the graphic violence, profanity, and overall gnarliness. It’s the further Deadpool-ization of an already irreverent and inappropriate character, and—for a little while—it’s admittedly kind of a kick.”

However, just because a movie is silly and know its silly, that doesn’t really make its silliness work. “Hellboy” stops being fun when it stops being funny – when it suddenly turns into a more harshly bloody, violent mood. Eventually, the film comes to an extreme point, pathetic madness. Even that might have been fine, however, if the action scenes where done and staged in a more exciting way. Lemire said, “Instead, we get crude, computer-generated brutality, choppily edited to the tune of overplayed rock anthems like Alice Cooper’s “Welcome to My Nightmare” and Mötley Crüe’s “Kickstart My Heart.””

Lemire continued, “At the center of it all, the endlessly intriguing and appealing David Harbour can only do so much. He more than ably steps into Perlman’s giant boots to play the hulking and hard-drinking Hellboy. It’s good to see the “Stranger Things” star continue to get leading roles after a lifetime of strong supporting character work. Harbour has just the right look, the grizzled attitude, the way with a snappy one-liner.” He even gets the chance to look at Hellboy’s soft side that is underneath his tough, red façade as the character sees the truth of who he really is. (Because like stated before, this “Hellboy” is an origin story. Every comic book hero gets one, and usually more than that.) Lemire said, “But increasingly, he’s called upon to contribute little more than sheer brute strength. He’s also stuck with far too many groaners, including one truly terrible pun toward the end that had me saying: “Oh no, no no no,” out loud to the screen.”

Where to start with the story? How about centuries ago, with King Arthur (yes, that King Arthur) killing the evil blood queen Nimue, played by Milla Jovovich, cutting her body and placing the parts in boxes to be scattered through the area. (This is just in the first few minutes.) Fast forward to present day, with Hellboy, as a member of the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense, eventually having to fight Nimue as she gets put back together and gets her powers to cause destruction on humans. That is a really truncated explanation of the story. A lot more happens in this film, but there’s no need to over think this.

Hellboy would look like a really tough person on himself to battle this ancient villain. However, he gets help from Sasha Lane of “American Honey,” doing a decent British accent as a young psychic, Daniel Dae Kim as a British military officer with a secret, Sophie Okonedo as a noble prophet, and Ian McShane as Professor Broom, or as Hellboy calls him, Dad. He also has to fight members of a centuries-old best civilization, a giant, talking pig man, played by Stephen Graham, and real giants, and, of course, Nazis, because there has to be Nazis. Lemire said, “Individually, Harbour might have a humorous moment or two with his co-stars, but decreasingly so as the movie staggers toward its messy, cacophonous end.”

This doesn’t seem to end. After a really long two-hour runtime, “Hellboy” thinks that it will hopefully be able to start its own franchise, but it might be stuck in development instead.

I’m not going to say that this remake is one of the worst I have seen, but definitely one that I was disappointed in. It has been a while since I have been disappointed in a comic book adaptation. It just felt like a mindless action flick that is stealing elements from other movies and combining a lot of story lines. However, there are some funny parts and Harbour does do a decent job, but I still think this is one that you can wait until it comes out on Blu-Ray/DVD to rent it.

Alright, thank you for joining in on this long review, stay tuned this Friday for the finale of “Edgar Wright Month.”

Scott Pilgrim vs the World

Unleashed imagination is something that wasn’t really seen a lot in movies during 2010’s play-it-safe summer. I know we saw that in “Inception,” but then what? Looking at “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World,” an amazing refining of Bryan Lee O’Malley’s six-volume graphic novel. Peter Travers said in his review, “Many graybeard critics don’t understand what any sentient being past the age of reason could find of interest in Scott’s plight to win the love of dream girl Ramona Flowers by defeating her seven evil exes in mortal combat.” Even with the amazing Michael Cera bringing Scott to bright human life, the fact is that comic-book movies are Elementary. The haters laugh at the posing of calling a comic book a graphic novel, same thing as saying porn is adult entertainment.

Travers said, “Why should Scott Pilgrim vs. the World break the jinx? Start with director Edgar Wright, who co-wrote the bracing script with Michael Bacall.” The mastery of Edgar Wright is clear to anyone who’s watch the British filmmaker spook the zombie movie in “Shaun of the Dead” and bring every cop cliché in the book in “Hot Fuzz” What true movie lover hasn’t added those films to their DVD collection?

Making Wright in charge on “Scott Pilgrim” is perfect casting. The job needs Scott’s position as in charge of his own life, and his career as a bass guitarist for the garage band Sex Bob-Omb (Beck gave his fabulous songs for the group, which includes Alison Pill, Mark Webber and Johnny Simmons), combine music, comics, manga, anime and video games into a flawless method for storytelling. Travers said, “Wright also intuitively understands that age sets no limits on living inside your head. Look at Don Quixote. We’ve all been there. Plus, fantasy is liberating.” Once Scott wins a fight, his enemy disintegrates into coins. With the help of the talented cinematographer Bill Pope (The Matrix, Spider-Man 2), Wright creates a great realms that is literally a win.

Travers said, “Still, the pyrotechnics would be nothing but shameless showing off if Wright wasn’t equally adept at building characters.” When we first meet Scott, he is a Toronto resident in his twenties with one bad relationship with him – Envy Adams, played by Brie Larson, did something worse than break up with Scott, she became a rock star and really took his life to a toll. Scott has a new crush with the jealous Knives Chau, played by Ellen Wong. Problem is Knives is only 17 means Scott is in deep with his sister, Stacey (Anna Kendrick), and his gay roommate, Wallace Wells (Macaulay Culkin’s younger brother, Kieran Culkin). However, it’s only when Ramona Flowers, played by Mary Elizabeth Winstead, comes in that Scott knows true passion. Ramona changes boyfriends more often than hair colors, but Scott will win her over, even if it means he’ll die.

The seven exes go from her junior-high crush (Satya Bhabha) to the leader of a gang (Jason Schwartzman, who is downright hilarious) with time for a movie action actor (Chris Evans), a strong vegan (Brandon Routh), twins (Keita and Shota Saito) and even a girl (Mae Whitman). Travers said, “It’s a character pileup, but Wright wrangles the killer cast with the skill of a world-class ringmaster. Scott Pilgrim is a breathless rush of a movie that jumps off the screen, spins your head around and then stealthily works its way into your heart.” No need to think a lot about hugging and learning and everything. Just enjoy these non-messy last moments when two people finally get everything together on who they are to make a genuine, love connection. This is really a change.

You should definitely see this movie because it’s like watching a fighting video game happen on the movie screen. Completely different from watching someone play the fighting video game online or streaming them. This is another great comedy and you should not miss the chance to see this because you will have a great time watching this. I would probably say this is another one my favorite comedies, but I have to think about that.

Alright everyone, next week we’ll be ending off the Cornetto Trilogy. I promise everyone, that trilogy ended off with a bang. You’ll have to know what I mean next week when I finish off “Edgar Wright Month.”

Hot Fuzz

Our next film in “Edgar Wright Month” is the funnier film in the “Cornetto Trilogy,” “Hot Fuzz,” released in 2007. Martin Chilton started his review out by saying, “Hot Fuzz reunited Simon Pegg and director Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead) in a comedy film that could be loosely described as The Sweeney meets the Vicar of Dibley.”

Simon Pegg plays prudish policeman Nicholas Angel, who is promoted to sergeant and sent from London to the dreary Gloucestershire town of Sandford because his work habits was showing up the rest of the Met police.

The plot is not supposed to make a lot of sense. Chilton said, “A spate of grisly murders in Sandford is shrugged off with the observation that "accidents happen".”

The village elders, who hide some dark secrets, are played by some veteran British comic actors, including Billie Whitelaw, Paul Freeman, Edward Woodward and Anne Reid. However, the best of them are Jim Broadbent as the police inspector and Timothy Dalton, who plays an evil supermarket manager.

The enjoyment is in the recurring jokes about the village (including a missing swan) and there is a smart comic shooting in the local Somerfield supermarket, with jars of pasta sauce used for bloody effect.

There’s also a great part when Angel and his hilarious drunk partner Danny Butterman, played by Nick Frost, stay in one evening to watch action movies, including “Bad Boys II.” “The best way to describe this movie is The Midsomer Murders as if directed by Tony Scott,” said Pegg.

Chilton ended his review by saying, “Hot Fuzz could easily have been trimmed by 20 minutes but it's a funny and affectionate tribute to British uncool and a homage to the best of the Hollywood action genre – and wonderfully deadpan with it.”

This is a great movie and another amazing comedy, one of my absolute favorites. If you loved “Shaun of the Dead,” then you will definitely like this one more because of how hilarious of a cop comedy it is. One of the things people say that “Hot Fuzz” actually got right is the amount of paperwork that cops have to go through on a daily basis, something that every cop movie neglects to show. Well, we have this movie to thank us for showing that. All of the great one-liners come back later in the movie to pay off some great insults in the final action scenes. Do not miss you chance to watch this movie because you will be missing out on one of the funniest movies ever made.

Now I know I said at the beginning of this review that this is the second in the “Cornetto Trilogy,” but I will not be looking at the last installment next week. Instead, I will be looking at another Edgar Wright movie that I think is still really funny. Don’t worry, I will get to the last in the trilogy, but I am reviewing all the movies that I have seen in order of release date, as I feel that is the right way to do it. Just stay tuned next week to find out which film I’m talking about for “Edgar Wright Month.” I think everyone might have a good guess at which film I will be reviewing.

Shazam!

Guess what everyone? I just came back from seeing the latest installment in the DC Extended Universe, “Shazam!,” which came out four days ago. Is it as good as the other solo superhero movies that DC has been coming out with? Let’s find out:

I know it’s a comic book origin story, in the same vain as one comic book origin story that came out four weekends ago and with another comic book origin story coming out next week. However, “Shazam!” is fun and funny, with a very talented actor who really knows how to act like a teenager in a genre that doesn’t look like it will be tiresome anytime soon.

After a small beginning where The Wizard Shazam (Djimon Hounsou) tries, and fails, to find someone (Ethan Pugiotto) to pass on his magical powers, we meet Billy Batson (Asher Angel). He’s a strong, experienced kid, one who’s trying to find his birth mother after being in foster families for so long. Picked up by the cops, Billy is sent to live with another foster family, this one with Victor (Cooper Andrews) and Rosa (Marta Milans). Billy rooms with Freddy, played by Jack Dylan Grazer, fast-talking with a bad leg, and crazy over superheroes: He has a model of a Batarang, a genuine hit stopped by Superman’s chest, and a pack of questions about which superpower you’d want if you were a superhero.

After Billy stands up to some bullies and saving Freddy that look like one of those old school teen comedies, The Wizard Shazam meets with Billy to test his loyalty – and, as you have seen in the trailers and commercials, Billy succeeds, becoming the white-caped, red-suited hero, Shazam, played by Zachary Levi. By saying the name “Shazam,” Billy changes from being a kid to the superhero, a bolt of lightning which changes him. That quick change really helps out when he fights with Thaddeus Sivana, played by Mark Strong, a villain that has the power of the literal symptoms of the Seven Deadly Sins.

Sonny Bunch admitted in his review, “The most interesting character in the film, to my mind, is not Billy nor Shazam nor Sivana, but Freddy.” Because of him and how much he knows about what it would be like to be a part of the superheroes. It’s Freddy who makes him take a series of tests to see what, exactly, Shazam’s powers are. It’s Freddy who is inspired by the capes and the masks to try and make something more of himself. And it’s Freddy who gets infuriated in Billy which makes the disobedient boy to reconsider the gift he’s been given.

Bunch said, “I've noted before that the Zack Snyder-overseen DC films were, at heart, an examination of the ways in which the world would change if gods were proven to be real. Freddy is a ground-eye view of this idea, a child whose world was shaped in horrible and wonderful ways. Shazam! is connected to the broader DCEU in minor concrete ways—the aforementioned Batarang and crushed bullet; toys in department stores celebrating the vigilantes* in their midst—but the ideas that animate the film are very much in line with the ideas that animated previous entries in the series. This thematic unity is more pleasing than any cameos or post-credits stingers could be.”

Bunch continued, “Levi is fantastic as Captain Marvel (though I don’t believe he's ever referred to as such in the film, instead having jokey names like Captain Sparklefingers foisted upon him; one wonders if another universe's interloper threw up a legal roadblock). It's about time we had a movie in which a marvelous captain was portrayed by someone able to express an emotional range beyond smug self-satisfaction.” Mark Strong’s villain is decent, as far as they go. It still feels strange that no one really figures out what to do with Strong in the role of the villain, seeing how good he is in films like “Kingsman,” “Zero Dark Thirty,” and “RocknRolla.” There’s something about his intensity that just doesn’t work in these big, superhero roles.

This is another great entry in the DCEU. It’s funny, doesn’t really have a lot of action, but the action scenes they have are really good, has some great family-oriented themes, and is in the same vein as “Big,” “Freaky Friday,” “Jack” and any other films where a kid is in an adult body. I like that the DCEU has been doing solo superhero movies, and this might be almost, if not as good as “Wonder Woman.” This easily makes another one of my favorite comic book adaptations. You should definitely go to the theaters to see this one because you will have a great time seeing this.

Spoiler Alert: In the mid-credits scene, Sivana is in jail and is recruited to a villain job with Mister Mind. In the post-credits scene, Freddy sees whether Shazam can talk to fish, referencing Aquaman, only for Shazam to think the power is stupid.

Thank you for joining in on tonight’s review, I’ll see you Friday for the continuation in “Edgar Wright Month.”

Shaun of the Dead

Guys, you’re in for a great month. The reason why I said that is because this month will be dedicated to the Edgar Wright movies that I have seen which he directed and wrote in. With that said, let’s take a look at one of the funniest comedies ever and the first in the “Cornetto Trilogy,” “Shaun of the Dead.”

The movie is a 2004 British comedy about oblivious loafers who basically revolve around the local pub. For them, the zombies are not a threat to them as they are for us, but an intrusion with their happy hour. When it becomes clear that London is filled with zombies, best friends Shaun (Simon Pegg) and Ed (Nick Frost) take a small group of survivors to the obvious monopoly: the Winchester, their local.

The paradox is that Shaun’s girlfriend Liz, played by Kate Ashfield, has been giving challenges, asking Shaun to decide between her and the pub. She lives with Di (Lucy Davis) and David (Dylan Moran), who thinks that in a decision Shaun would chose the pub over his girlfriend. When Shaun insists them to barrier themselves inside the Winchester, David is not encouraging: “Do you think his master plan is going to amount to anything more than sitting and eating peanuts in the dark?” This is not really fair, since Shaun does have a weapon: He uses his cricket bat to knock zombies on the head. Roger Ebert said in his review, “A cricket bat is to British movies as a baseball bat is to American movies: The weapon of choice for clueless heroes going downstairs to investigate a noise that was inevitably made by somebody packing a lot more than a bat.”

Ebert described, “Liz, Shaun and Ed the best friend have a relationship not unlike the characters played by Jennifer Aniston, John C. Reilly and Tim Blake Nelson in "The Good Girl" (2002).” Liz is smart and determined and wants to move forward in life, but Shaun is happy with his entry-level job in retail and his free time spent with Ed, watching TV and drinking beer – at the pub, mainly, or at home in a dash. When Liz complains that Ed is always around, Shaun says “he doesn’t have too many friends,” which is a common argument for not becoming one.

Ebert said, “"Shaun of the Dead," written by Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright and directed by Wright, is a send-up of zombie movies, but in an unexpected way: Instead of focusing on the Undead and trying to get the laughs there, it treats the living characters as sitcom regulars whose conflicts and arguments keep getting interrupted by annoying flesh-eaters. In the first two or three scenes, as he crawls out of bed and plods down the street wrapped in the misery of his hangover, Shaun doesn't even notice the zombies.” Sure, they’re on the TV news, but who watches the news? For Shaun and Ed, the news is just there to comfort them that the set will be functioning when the football game begins.

The supporting characters include Shaun’s stepfather Phil (Bill Nighy) and mother Barbara (Penelope Wilton). Ebert described, “Nighy is that elongated character actor who looks as if he may have invaded Rhys Ifans' gene pool. He has a quality that generates instinctive sympathy, as in "Love Actually" (2002), where he played the broken-down rock star still hoping patiently in middle age for a comeback.” Here there’s something appealing about his response when he is bitten by a zombie. Once bitten, you have got to go. However, listen to Phil comfort them, “I ran it under the tap.”

“Shaun of the Dead” has its enjoyments, which are gentle but real. Ebert said, “I like the way the slacker characters maintain their slothful gormlessness in the face of urgent danger, and I like the way the British bourgeois values of Shaun's mum and dad assert themselves even in the face of catastrophe. There is also that stubborn British courage in times of trouble. "We never closed," bragged the big neon sign outside the Windmill strip club in Soho, which stayed open every night during the Blitz.” In this movie, the Winchester pub displays the same spirit.

Good thing the movie is about more than zombies. Ebert said, “I am by now more or less exhausted by the cinematic possibilities of killing them. I've seen thousands of zombies die, and they're awfully easy to kill, unless you get a critical mass that piles on all at once. George Romeo, who invented the modern genre with "The Night of the Living Dead" and "Dawn of the Dead," (1979) was essentially devising video game targets before there were video games: They pop up, one after another, and you shoot them, or bang them on the head with a cricket bat.” It’s much better to sit in the dark eating peanuts.

Don’t read this review, go out and see the movie for yourself. You will have an uproarious time laughing from beginning to end. Definitely see this, especially if you’re one of the zombie fans out there. It's one of the best comedies ever made and one of my absolute favorites.

Look out next week when we continue “Edgar Wright Month.”

The Lion Guard: The Rise of Scar

Today I watched “The Lion Guard: The Rise of Scar,” which came out in 2017, on “On Demand” since I read that this was another short hour long movie, so I decided to talk about it today.

“The Lion King” is known as one of Disney’s greatest films, the fourth major hit in a five-year run that mixed top-notch animation technology with one of the best soundtracks. The film is about a young cub Simba who is exiled from Pride Rock through the work of his evil uncle Scar. After making some new friends, Simba returns to fight for his family’s name and his own recovery. After a few direct-to-video sequels, Disney Junior started “The Lion Guard” in 2016, a spinoff about Simba’s son Kion, voiced by Max Charles. The show is a hit with the Disney Junior main audience with enough nostalgic references for parents who grew up with the original. Kion and his Lion Guard are going up against their dangerous challenge when evil forces in the Pride Lands plan to bring back Scar. Dr. Zaius said in his review, “The elongated near hour long episode is part of a DVD set, The Lion Guard – The Rise of Scar, available now.”

Dr. Zaius continued, “The DVD begins with the feature-length episode The Rise of Scar, as well as four other episode from the series: “The Trouble With Galagos,” “Janja’s New Crew,” “Baboons!,” and “Lions of the Outlands.”” “The Rise of Scar” is directed by series regular Howy Parkins and written by series creator Ford Riley. The Guard led by Kion includes its usual pack, Bunga and honey badger (Joshua Rush), Beshte the Hippo (Dusan Brown), Fuli the cheetah (Diamond White) and Ono the egret (Atticus Shaffer). The usual problem they deal with is with the evil hyenas. However, the hyenas have a new friend, Ushari the snake, voiced by Christain Slater (the man who looks like Jack Nicholson’s son). He overhears that there is a certain way that can be done with a volcano that can bring Scar back and help them finally win against the Lion Guard.

The cast includes famous celebrities from Slater, to Rob Lowe and Gabrielle Union as Simba and Nala, to Khary Payton from “The Walking Dead” as Rafiki, Landry Bender as Rafiki’s apprentice Makini and Mandrill, Gary Anthony Williams briefly as Mufasa and Golden Globe nominee David Oyelowo as Scar. Anyone who has kids, they probably love the show, and they will undeniably love this DVD. “The Rise of Scar” has plenty form parents to enjoy as well. Dr. Zaius noted, “Ushari reminded me of classic Disney villain Kaa (The Jungle Book), and so many characters and references are made to the original film that you can’t help get drawn in.”

As I have stated before with the other Lion King animated releases, this one is running strong and is good for kids who are into “The Lion Guard.” I haven’t seen the show, but it looks like it is going strong and is a huge hit, so I would definitely say to see this one because it is a huge nostalgic throwback and everyone will love it. Either see it On Demand or rent it or buy it.

Thank you for joining in on today’s review, look out this Friday to see what I will review this month.