My top movies this year: Wall-E, and Hellboy 2.
They share a common thread and that's imagination. Wall-E has it in the portrayal of robots, their function, the roles they play in the future, and the projected future it takes place in. Hellboy it lies in the characters, the atmosphere created by the movie and the scenes in it.
(Spoiler-free, but specific comments about the movies ahead)
Hellboy 2 has possibly the scariest villain/monster I have ever seen. I don't normally find most movie monsters scary, especially in sci-fi/comic book/fantasy action movies. But dang, the "fairies" which are in the opening present day scenes really were scary! While they weren't exactly the main antagonist of the movies (who I also thought was great, but not as scary, more bad-ass), they added a lot to the tale with the origins hinting at fairy tales.
Hmm. More comments I could make, but I don't analyze well. So I'll leave it at that. I loved both movies, and realized why it was after seeing Hellboy 2 - the imagination of the creators lead to a world and characters in the movie that I couldn't help but be curious about. Learning more of the motivations, the setting, and the story is always fun in that context. Two of my favorite movies of all time share this same quality, those being Princess Bride and Stardust.
1 comment:
I just saw Wall-E tonight. Very clever, though I like other movies from this year better. Pixar did top themselves in expressiveness feats (which is quite impressive given their track record!) by doing that almost completely without dialogue. Because of how it was used in this movie, I actually am now glad that I recently saw a performance of Hello Dolly (even though I didn't like that musical very much).
Hellboy II< doesn't come out here until the end of August, so I'll let you know what I think about it then. Have you had a chance to see Pan's Labyrinth yet? That's also by Guillermo Del Torro, and it's fantastic.
I'll take a look at the sing-along later. I have a baseball game on right now. Hopefully I'll get a chance to get to it tomorrow before I leave on the bus to the airport. (I have some grant proposal stuff and then a friend's goodbye party, and then I need to head to the coach station.)
(Hmmm... I have a whole bunch of movies and musicals I plan to review in a giant blog entry. I'll write that eventually.)
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