Based on the comic of the same name, which is even referenced in the film, 2004’s Hellboy stars Ron Perlman as the titular hero brought to Earth as a child by Nazis in World War II but raised in the United States by Professor Trevor Bruttenholm (John Hurt) and the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense to “bump back” against what goes bump in the night.
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Throwback Tuesday take us back to the only Blade movie worth a damn, and, not uncoincidentally, the only one of the trilogy directed by Guillermo del Toro. It’s also the only one that finds a way to make vampires, in this case “Reapers,” legitimately creepy. Blade II isn’t a great film by any means, but it is unquestionably the high-water mark of the franchise.
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Disney’s live-action version of Pinocchio from earlier this year felt redundant and unnecessary. A shadow of the original animated film based on the classic story, the new version failed to capture much magic at all. Released only two months later, Guillermo del Toro‘s stop-motion version of Pinocchio breathes new life into the story you already know setting the Italian tale during the 20th Century when a grieving father’s wooden recreation of his son is brought to life.
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While Asher doesn’t offer much in the way of surprise or suspense, there’s something magnetic about Ron Perlman as the career fixer whose age has finally started to catch up to him. Perlman captures Asher’s weary professionalism that is only ever disrupted by the chance meeting of a ballet teacher (Famke Janssen) whose life he literally falls into.
The script from first-time feature screenwriter Jay Zaretsky is pretty standard fare about an aging hitman whose life is about to get complicated by a new love and a past come back to haunt him. Perlman and Janssen help elevate the subject manner while director Michael Caton-Jones and cinematographer Denis Crossan combine to provide the film a visual style that highlights its stars and the world where Asher lives.
Filling out the story, the script throws in subplots involving Jacqueline Bisset the ballet teacher’s mother suffering from Alzheimer’s and troubles involving Richard Dreyfuss and Peter Facinelli as a honored boss and celebrity protege. Neither story offers easy answers, but, when force comes to bear, Asher will deal with all obstacles as best he can.
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While I admit for a 9 year-old boy the tongue-in-cheek space adventure about a motley crew of smugglers stealing the universe’s most valuable resource (water) was a hell of a lot of fun, it’s equally hard to ignore as an adult that The Ice Pirates is a mess of a movie. The PG-rated movie offered funny castration jokes, space herpes, odd robots and aliens, and a time-displaced climactic battle. It also offered bad writing, cheesy special effects, and nearly as many groans as laughs.
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