What I Watched In April

I will always wish that Guillermo del Toro and Ron Perlman had gotten a shot at completing a trilogy Of Hellboy films. The fact that they only got two in a series will go down as one of the great crimes of fantasy and comic book cinema so, I was a little reluctant to give this new film a chance. I'm not necessarily against a new vision of a solid property being attempted but I was concerned about this one. Indeed stories of a troubled production certainly made me worried that this film was not going to be very good. And I would be lying if I said that it wasn't obvious that there were production woes when you see this picture. Everything seems to flow pretty well until the third act and then there are a lot of things that are left dangling with some pieces that are oddly fit into place. In fact, some of it feels a bit more rushed than it probably should have been with some details getting left to the side.

But the strange thing is that I actually pretty much enjoyed this version of Hellboy. It's never going to supplant the two Del Toro pictures in my heart but even with all my reservations walking into the theater I found myself really enjoying this slightly harsher, much more R-rated version of the Hellboy Mythos. I especially like the fact that they managed to incorporate one of my favorite stories from the initial run of Hellboy - The Wild Hunt - into this film. Also, I'm very happy with the way the film revisits Hellboy's origin so that we get Lobster Johnson thrown into the mix. Having that character pop up onscreen for the first time is an absolute joy. So this isn't an out of the park homerun but I have to admit this film found a way to be a solid triple. To shame that it's a big box office failure because I actually wouldn't mind seeing a sequel to it or maybe even two. Seems that no matter what happens Hellboy is a bit of a doomed franchise.

I went to see THE CURSE OF LA LLORONA (2019) without realizing that it was connected to the larger CONJURING universe. I've seen a few of the CONJURING films and for the most part have enjoyed them, so knowing this was part of that larger world wouldn't have kept me from going. The good news is that if you're curious about this movie you don't really need to know anything about the other movies in this very loose series to understand it. Just go in knowing that it takes place in the 1970's and that this time period has absolutely nothing to do with anything that happens within the body of the film. That's actually one of the stranger things about this movie for me is that it's time setting really serves very little function within the story itself. In fact, this pleasantly short and to the point little horror movie is sadly only fitfully interesting. Luckily, it never really gets boring either. It's not a good film and it's not a bad film but it has enough points of interest for a genre fan to recommend it to other genre fans. The script doesn't do anything very interesting with the legendary curse of the Crying Woman that the story plays with and its treatment of the curse is rather shallow, but the movie is entertaining enough if your baseline is don't bore me and don't keep me in the damn theater seat too long.

I can compliment the film for something other than its brevity - the cinematography is phenomenal. The best thing, in my opinion, about this film actually is its excellent cinematography followed by its really sharp sound design. This is a beautiful looking, well-lit, shadowy, creepy film that is coupled with a very textured audio mix to make this one of the better-looking and sounding horror films of the past few years. The movie only has one really good standout performance and that's the central role of the working mom played by Linda Cardellini, an actress I'm beginning to wish had more time on screen in cinemas. She's very good but sadly the script gives only her anything interesting to do occasionally. All the other characters might have had a better chance at some quality acting time but either their abilities aren't there or the script isn't interested. So not a bad little movie; not a particularly good little movie, but it's okay.

THE LIST 

THE BEAST AND THE MAGIC SWORD  (1983) - 7 (rewatch) 

TERROR IS A MAN (1959) - 8 (rewatch) 

JESSE JAMES VS THE DALTONS (1954) - 5 

JIGOKU (a.k.a. HELL) (1961) - 8 (surreal Japanese horror) 

GREASE 2 (1982) - 4 

MASTERSON OF KANSAS (1954) - 7

THE TORTURE CHAMBER OF DR. SADISM (1967) - 6 (rewatch on Blu) 

CURSE OF THE VAMPIRES (1966) - 5 (slowly paced Pilipino horror tale)

THE CRIME DOCTOR (1943) - 7 (rewatch)  

HELLBOY (2019) - 7 

THE UNDYING MONSTER (1942) - 6 (rewatch on Blu) 

THE THING (1951) - 9 (rewatch on Blu) 

THE CURSE OF LA LLORONA (2019) - 5 

THE BASTARD (1968) - 7 (fascinating Euro-Crime) 

BLACK DRAGONS (1942) - 4 (rewatch)(interesting but terrible Poverty Row Lugosi film) 

AVENGERS: ENDGAME (2019) - 8 

KING RICHARD AND THE CRUSADERS (1954) - 8 

DOCTOR BLOOD'S COFFIN (1961) - 6 (rewatch on Blu)