Christmas is a time of peace and harmony, where we remember baby Jesus, born into a manger. There were shepherds, wise men, sweet hay and swaddling clothes. But we often forget how dark the Christmas story actually is. First of all you’ve got poor Joseph, convinced that his fiance has been knocked up by another man. Then she gives birth in a barn, which would not be sweet or pleasant in any way. If that weren’t bad enough, the wise men tip Herod off to the fact that a new king has been born, and he goes and kills all the first born sons in Judea, forcing the Holy Family into exile. Real smooth, wise men, did you miss the star that told you to keep your mouths shut?
There are plenty of movies about Christmas, a few about the nativity and plenty more about Santa. But there aren’t any that capture the despair and desperation of the original tale. Placed within the larger narrative of the Christian gospel, the nativity is about a god being subjected to the vulnerability of an infancy, in order to enter a cruel world whose purpose it is to kill him. Sure, it all works out in the end, but it’s still a pretty dark story.
This lack of grit in Christmas movies became clear to me two years ago. Around Christmas, 2006, both The Nativity Story and Children of Men were released. I saw them both within a few days of one another. I was struck by how boring The Nativity Story was, especially compared to Cuarón’s post-apocalyptic masterpiece. When I think of a baby bringing peace on Earth, I can think of no better image than Clive Owen stumbling out of a shattered building with a screaming infant, its cries literally silencing tanks.
In that spirit, here are five gritty movies where everything rides on the tiny shoulders of a baby.
Hellboy II: The Golden Army has no bad scenes and about five great ones, the best of them as memorable as anything in sci-fi & fantasy cinema. It’s a far out fairy tale, more fun (and more weird) than the first Hellboy, but it lacks the satisfying coherence of a great start-to-finish story like Pan’s Labyrinth or the original Star Wars.
The tone of Hellboy II is set as the film opens with our hero’s adoptive father reading a fairy tale to him. Say goodbye to demons, say hello to elves, trolls and fairies. In this way Hellboy II feels more like Pan’s Labyrinth than the first Hellboy.
There’s a Troll Market scene, which is a long, cool drink of distilled joy. As Hellboy and friends explore the market nestled beneath the Brooklyn Bridge (where else would trolls hang out?) every monster, every activity, every backdrop is eye-popping. It’s reminiscent of the Mos Eisley cantina scene in Star Wars (”I don’t like you either!” and Ben Kenobi cuts off a guy’s arm), but the Troll Market is even better than Lucas’ Mos Eisley. Hellboy’s essentially Han Solo and Chewbacca in one guy, as dangerous as he is funny. …Read more
Guillermo del Toro’s Hellboy II: The Golden Army hits theaters this Friday. Del Toro is a rare filmmaker who, despite his unique vision, often works on projects based on material from an outside source (Pan’s Labyrinth being a notable exception). Assuming all the legal issues get ironed out, he’ll next direct a two part film adaptation of Tolkien’s The Hobbit, the most prestigious property to date to get the del Toro treatment. Here are seven either failed or unjustly obscure movies ripe for being remade by Hellboy’s father.
1. Spawn - Todd McFarlane’s comic about a Hell-trotting anti-hero indebted to the Devil opened my young eyes to genuinely dark storytelling. While the 90s were a simpler time in terms of comic to movie adaptations, I was already dreaming about a big screen adaptation after reading the first issue. Unfortunately, my dream came true in 1997, when Mark A.Z. Dippé’s god-awful Spawn slumped into theaters.
Who needs Will Ferrell’s impersonation when the real James Lipton is willing to do stuff like this. It’s short, it’s sweet and it’s helping me maintain my excitement for Hellboy II: The Golden Army. And I wasn’t even a fan of the first movie. In fact, I can’t remember a darn thing about Hellboy except for the Nazi-heavy prologue, which gave me the first impression of Indiana Jonesknockoff (the subsequent plot made me think Indy meets Men in Black). Fortunately, the follow-up looks more like Pan’s Labyrinth, which was at least directed by Hellboy helmer Guillermo Del Toro.
To get me back up to speed before Hellboy II drops next Friday, I’ve rented the DVD of the original. And I’ve also watched this animated prologue, which gives us background info regarding the Golden Army. Personally, I’d be OK with the whole film being in this style. I just have lots of love for minimal animation. I definitely need to check out Broken Saints, the web series directed by this prologue’s animator, Brooke Burgess.
Hellboy II: The Golden Army opens nationwide July 11.
Guillermo Del Toro’s previous film, the Spanish fantasy Pan’s Labyrinth, scored three Oscars (half of those it was nominated for), received honors from 15 separate critics groups and featured on at least 91 end-of-year top ten lists (or 94, if you count this year’s lists, too). But it didn’t quite make as much money as Del Toro’s movie before it. Actually, that movie, Hellboy, also ended up some top ten lists, but really it was just another well-made comic book movie. And by well-made, I mean that it looked great (shot by Pan’s Oscar-winning cinematographer, Guillermo Navarro) and was directed efficiently. I certainly don’t mean that the writing was all that remarkable. In fact, with all its generic ancient paranormal stuff, Hellboy’s plot was terribly derivative (I can do without the non-Indian Jones-based Nazi baddies for awhile, thanks) and even got confused in my memory with Bulletproof Monk, which was probably my least favorite film of 2003.
So, you can imagine I’m not all that excited about Hellboy II: The Golden Army. Yet thanks to this trailer, I’m a little more interested than I had been. Never mind the lack of Nazi bad guys, this trailer really wants to capitalize on the fact that it was directed by the guy who gave us Pan’s Labyrinth. First, we see a little insect-like creature that evokes the fairy/mosquito thing from Labyrinth. Then there’s a shot of Doug Jones (who also returns as Abe Sapien) as the Angel of Death, an eye-less character evoking Jones’ Labyrinth characters, Fauno and Pale Man, and a scene set in some Autumnally leafy place that closely resembles Labyrinth’s labyrinth. Yet the trailer also plays on this capitalization by addressing the fact that this world is not part of someone’s imagination (as in the case of Labyrinth’s Ofelia). Will Universal be able to combine the audiences of the comic book movies and foreign language films with this strategy? Well, Hellboy II isn’t going to be winning any Oscars, and it’s probably not going to gross more than the first Hellboy. But at least Del Toro (who has acknowledged the parallels between Labyrinth and Hellboy II) seems to be trying to respect his fans and appeal to the whole spectrum in which they exist. That isn’t something all filmmakers who fluctuate between highbrow and lowbrow fare are able to do successfully.
Last night’s Oscars threw me for some loops, especially the winners for Best Foreign Language Film (The Lives of Others beating out Pan’s Labyrinth?) and Best Cinematography (Pan’s Labyrinth over Children of Men?). Alan Arkin’s Best Supporting Actor win was just a mildly pleasant surprise, especially since I was the only one in a family pool of 11 to pick him. Melissa Etheridge winning in the Best Original Song category with her piece for An Inconvenient Truth, beating out three nominations from Dreamgirls, was pretty clearly a political move (not necessarily a partisan move, but political, nonetheless). But does anyone really care about the Best Original Song category?
As I was scanning other blogs and sites this morning, I found a few post-Oscar pieces especially worth looking at. Pajiba writes in today’s post that although they’re not interested in big awards shows…
Mostly, we just provide this post so that our readers have a space to bellyache, though it’s hard to get too worked up about anything in last night’s show. In fact, the biggest complaint we have was that the 79th Oscar telecast offered so little to kvetch about.
Pajiba’s post and some of its comments (there are lots and they’re kind of fun to sift through) also brought up some suggestions on how to make the Oscars program shorter. Not surprisingly, everyone has an opinion.
GreenCine Daily also has a day after post worth checking out. And HairyLime on Spout wrote a “Post Oscar breakdown” that was followed by a couple interesting comments. Let us know what you liked, hated, and were bored or surprised by on Oscar night.
So it turns out that Alfonso Cuaron, director of Children of Men, is kind of resenting the sudden attention and praise being lavished on Mexican films (his as well as Guillermo Del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth and Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritus’ Babel). In a post Cuaron wrote this week, he said this:
…What I resent, however, is the notion that the Oscars are somehow bestowing legitimacy on Mexican cinema. We don’t need this legitimacy.
I can get my head around that kind of resentment. I can also understand why Cuaron doesn’t want to define or represent “Mexican cinema.” As he points out in his post, the three films getting all the attention are set in a variety of places other than Mexico–from London to Spain to California and Morocco. I think he just wants to be known as a great filmmaker–one who isn’t put in a box.
But at the same time, attention and praise are still attention and praise, even if they’re long overdue or not in the most appealing package. The amount of interest being stirred up around Mexican directors and films right now is to be expected, considering the box office numbers and Oscar nominations (16 between the three titles) these three films have generated. According to indieWIRE’s BOT, Pan’s Labyrinth surpassed Like Water for Chocolate as the highest grossing Spanish language film in the US ($21.7 million as of yesterday). All kinds of people watching a subtitled movie in multiplex theaters. I love it (even if it is a ridiculous thing to love).
It’s true. American audiences blinded by Hollywood blockbusters can be a bit clueless. They might even need to be hit over the head before they sit up and take notice. But personally, I’m just glad they’re taking notice. I’m glad more films from more places are being seen by more people.
We’ve had a bit of trouble getting this episode to go through the iTunes feed, so we hope this re-post will fix the problem. The original post, with episode description and embedded player, is here.
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Hellboy II: The Golden Army has no bad scenes and about five great ones, the best of them as memorable as anything in sci-fi & fantasy cinema. It’s a far out fairy tale, more fun (and more weird) than the first Hellboy, but it lacks the satisfying coherence of a great start-to-finish story like Pan’s Labyrinth or the original Star Wars.
