Brian Gleeson – Podcasting Them Softly

Why we couldn’t have just gotten a third Hellboy movie with Guillermo Del Toro and Ron Perlman at the wheel is beyond me, instead of this grossly miscalculated, eye melting mish-mash of bad CGI and disorganized storytelling. It’s sad too because it could have even been decent, they got an accomplished filmmaker I really love and a handful of super awesome cult icon actors to cast the material appropriately, but somewhere along the line of creative process, Neil Marshall’s Hellboy just shits the bed and comes out largely a piss poor effort. I love David Harbour too, he’s a terrifically charismatic and versatile artist but he just doesn’t fit the bill here, his Hellboy comes across as whiny, dour and all the wisecracking fells inorganic and forced. Plus let’s face it, there just wasn’t any hope for any other actor than Perlman to properly sell the character, plain and simple, he was born for it. Harbour’s Hellboy is stuck in a murky plot line about an ancient evil sorceress called the Blood Queen (Milla Jovovich) who has been resurrected by a human/wild boar hybrid to wreak havoc on humanity in some vaguely malicious ritual that involves knockoff Del Toro creatures stomping around London ripping people in half, cue the tiresome CGI. It’s loud, messy, the gore is off putting and there’s just too much noise and commotion to properly discern story or character. Does it do anything effectively? Yes, credit where credit is due, there’s a wonderfully eerie sequence where the pace mercifully calms down a bit as Hellboy visits a terrifying monster called the Baba Yaga, it’s essentially an expository interlude but it’s handled incredibly well, full of tangible atmosphere and genuine terror. Some of the cast fare pretty well, Ian McShane is always awesome and adds a brittle, corrosive edge to Trevor Broom where John Hurt was more subdued. The lovely Sasha Lane is quite effective as a member of the paranormal defence team who is a medium and can summon dead spirits in a genie-like mass of ectoplasmic slime, but Daniel Dae Kim comes across painfully lifeless as a guy who can only be described as the offspring of a werewolf and a cheetah. Most of the supporting cast are just drowned out in a flurry of noise including Sophie Okonedo as a ghost lady, Brian Gleeson as Merlin (yes, that Merlin) and a brief, bizarre appearance from Thomas Haden Church as some dude whose name is Lobster (can you tell I haven’t read the comics?). The film just doesn’t work, aside from a few exceptions that come too little, too late. Everywhere the Del Toro films were tactile, colourful, atmospheric and well written this one is obnoxious, needlessly gory, rushed and unwieldy. You’re better off just revisiting those and pretending this one doesn’t exist.

-Nate Hill

After a sort of slow opening act, Steven Soderbergh’s Logan Lucky becomes a sweet, funny, raucous, touching and unexpected film, the most enjoyable thing he’s made after a series of dead serious dramas. Kind of like Ocean’s Eleven for the Monster Truck crowd, this is popcorn fare with brains, but it’s not afraid to get loopy and mess around in the sandbox either in terms of comedy and characterization, especially that of Daniel Craig’s Joe Bang, the world’s most aloof safecracker. Joe’s help is needed when brothers Jimmy (Channing Tatum) and Clyde (Adam Driver) Logan take it upon themselves to stage a heist during NASCAR mania when times of financial woe befall them. Jimmy is laid back and affable, Clyde is old school idiosyncratic to the point of hysterics and their dynamic is something hilarious. Throw in Joe with a Bang and the thing takes off, once the gears of the plot start grinding, mind you. Like I said, the opening dilly dallys a tad. Despite being a screwball comedy of sorts, this never goes too far off the rails into, say, Cannonball Run territory and never feels *too* light or inconsequential. Soderbergh is an alchemist in complete control of every element and this thing unfolds deliberately, intricately and always playfully. Surrounding them is a delightfully eclectic supporting cast including Seth McFarlane, Riley Keogh, Katie Holmes, Jack Quaid, Brian Gleeson, Katherine Waterson, Macon Blair, Sebastian Stan and Dwight Yoakam as a breezy Prison Warden. The heist is a blast, full of screw ups, diversions and delirious suspense as these ill prepared, lovably hapless goofs try to do right by their families and each other. Craig must be broken out of jail where he’s “in-car-cer-ated” for the duration of the job and then stealthily returned once the mission is accomplished, and Jimmy has to be done with it all in time for a beauty pageant that his daughter (Farrah Mackenzie, wonderful) is appearing in. It’s fairly random but it just somehow works, from left field character choices to specifically nutty set pieces to third act twists that come out of nowhere. Just when you think you can relax, a federal agent (Hilary Swank in full shark mode) shows up to stir the pot again. The film ends on a narrative cliffhanger and with perhaps one of the best and most enticing zoom-out shots I’ve ever seen that had me both wishing for a sequel and wanting the magic to remain bottled just there at that perfect penultimate moment. Great film.

-Nate Hill