Journey 2: The Mysterious Island

Sliding By
Adventure Franchise Barely Passes Muster
By Cole Smithey

Though hampered by some uninspired efforts in the joke department from newbie cousin screenwriters Brian and Mark Gunn, "Journey 2: The Mysterious Island" is a passable PG-rated family adventure movie. Added to the film’s flat sense of humor is the misguided replacement of franchise-starter Brendan Fraser (“Journey to the Center of the Earth”--2008). Dwayne Johnson suffers the indignation of performing step-dad duties to Josh Hutcherson’s returning daredevil character Sean Anderson. The actor formerly known as The Rock nearly redeems himself during a stirring ukulele rendition of "What a Wonderful World." The musical interlude unexpectedly brings the scattershot adventure momentarily into focus with some assistance from an indispensible but ultimately squandered Michael Caine.

Childhood literary classics that include Jonathan Swift’s “Gulliver’s Travels” and Jules Verne’s “The Mysterious Island” inform the story in a sidelong fashion. In the burbs of Dayton, Ohio Sean receives a coded message from his long-lost grandfather Alexander (Caine). Sean’s stepdad Hank is an ex-Navy man with a knack for code breaking. The missive sends Sean off on a chaperoned adventure to reunite with gramps. A sputtering chartered helicopter, flown by Luis Guzman and his character’s comely daughter Kailani (Vanessa Hudgens), enables a suspense-free hurricane ride that spits our plucky explorers out on the shores of an island that could just be the lost city of Atlantis.

Dwayne Johnson is an actor who tries so hard to be likable that it hurts. Given his obsequious nature, it’s easy to understand why the filmmakers chose him to replace Brendan Fraser, whose famously nerdy need to please comes across as a central aspect to his Canadian heritage. But where Fraser has a frenetic internal rhythm of free-spinning animation about his physicality, Johnson is plodding and methodical to a fault. His muscle-bound comportment overpowers the relative diminutive actors around him. There’s no jiving chemistry between Johnson’s fatherly Hank and Josh Hutcherson’s Sean. Caught between playing up a subplot of budding romance with Kailani, and following Michael Caine’s lead as the kind of person Sean aspires to be, Hutcherson gets hung out to dry in every scene he shares with Hank.

An example of the film’s lukewarm wit occurs when Hank gives Sean a demonstration of something he calls the “pec-pop.” Johnson flexes his pectoral muscles so they tense back and forth in a flip-flopping fashion. This odd display of masculine muscle manipulation is intended to impress members of the opposite sex. Needless to say Sean doesn’t possess such physical attributes to execute the maneuver in the first place. Hank demands that Sean throw berries at his bouncing pecs for the apparently singular reason of supplying the audience with an overworked sample of eye-blinking 3D effects. The ridiculous sequence begs the question, “What were the filmmakers thinking? The whole thing is just to weird to be funny.

Director Brad Peyton (“Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore”) struggles to make the most of superficially impressive creatures that populate the mysterious island that grandpa Alexander calls home. Miniature elephants, gargantuan bees, and slithering giant centipedes supply innocuous eye-candy that never reaches beyond its CGI limitations to anything substantial. A giant electric eel boots the possibilities for spectacle during the story’s underwater climax. A few window-breaking 3D effects spice up the amusement in a visually entertaining but narratively trivial movie. It might not be the bee’s knees for adult audiences, but “Journey 2: The Mysterious Island” meets the unsophisticated demands of its pre-teen target audience.

Rated PG. 94 mins. (B-) (Three Stars - out of five / no halves)

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

Treading Water
Not Even Michael Apted Can Save Narnia
By Cole Smithey

For the third Narnia franchise installment, veteran director Michael Apted takes over helming duties performed by Andrew Adamson on the first two films. Sadly Apted, the filmmaker famous for the hugely influential "7Up" documentary series, is confined by a script that is a mere sketch of C.S. Lewis's original novel. The result is a disposable children's adventure story that wears its well-worn primary narrative device like an afterthought. Instead of collecting five rings--ala the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy, or seven horcruxes ala "Harry Potter," the characters here must track down seven ancient swords belonging to the lost (read deceased) Lords of Narnia in order to save a world of fantasy from some vaguely named threat. The opposing forces of evil may or may not affect the actual World War II reality from which our trio of young British protagonists temporarily escape. There isn't enough meat on the bones here to send potential readers in search of the novel that this disappointing movie is based. 

Youngest siblings of the Penvensie family, Edmund (Skandar Keynes) and Lucy (Georgie Henley), are joined by their thin-skinned cousin Eustace (played for laughs by Will Poulter). Poulter ("Son of Rambow") surprisingly steals the movie out from under its sporadically impressive special effects with his arching eyebrows and a grating voice that miraculously makes him the film's most endearing character. Eustace is selfish and has no interest in adventure. As such he has more to gain, if considerably less to lose, than his well-connected cousins.

Underage Edmund desperately wants to enlist in the British military. Lucy wants to be adored, like her older sister, for her natural beauty. Inside their not-so-safe European home the trio are swept off to the fantastic dimension of Narnia by a painting of a ship at sea. Thousands of gallons of ocean water fill up their bedroom and transport Edmund, Lucy, and Will to Prince Caspian's sailing ship the Dawn Treader. Ben Barnes reprises his role as the good-natured Prince who chaperones the visitors to his kingdom. Edmund and Lucy have the status of King and Queen of Narnia, but you wouldn't know it.

Onboard the ship we're reacquainted with Reepicheep, a chatty rat who thinks he's a mouse, and the minotaur whose presence is barely felt. Potentially dramatic events, like the trio being taken prisoner by slave-traders, come and pass like so much unnecessary narrative sea foam. Sensitive audiences concerned with the material's religious underpinnings have little to be concerned about. Although there is some soft-peddled Christian mysticism that comes at the end of the third act, "Dawn Treader" is primarily concerned with spectacle set pieces involving a truly gigantic eel-like sea monster and a fire-breathing dragon who has been transformed from his human form by way of a curse.

Vanity, ego, greed, and cowardice are the pernicious enemies that threaten to overpower our young adventurers. These internal forces rear their ugly heads just long enough for audiences to give them a passing thought before the themes are smoothed over with pomp and circumstance.

"The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader" is blandly enjoyable but never fun or gratifying. By the time the mighty lion Aslan (voiced by Liam Neeson) makes his obligatory appearance to expedite safe passage for the children back to their families, the best that can be said is that the special effects were good. It's a mantra film audiences seem doomed to repeat on a more frequent basis as Hollywood delves deeper into making films that are all surface and no substance. This is one time where you almost wish they'd pushed the religious allegories. At least then there might have been something to mull over.

 Rated PG. 112 mins. (C) (Two Stars - out of five/no halves)

 

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1

Split Ends
Harry Potter Franchise Lurches Toward its Final Curtain
By Cole Smithey

A flawed decision to split the final installment of the Harry Potter books into two films results in a formless narrative that overstays its welcome. For as detailed as director David Yates attempts to be with slick visual effects that periodically invigorate the movie, the over-emphasized spectacle merely illustrates the film's lacking storyline. We understand that Harry is in grave danger but don't get any sense of his ability or inclination to rescue the human and underground magic worlds from sinister forces if he survives to defeat the evil Lord Voldemort. Reigning over the darkest of times Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes) and his Death Eaters rally forces with Rufus Scrimgeour's (Bill Nighy) Ministry of Magic to track down and kill Harry Potter. A Nazi-era social climate of fascistic dictatorship rules with public announcements informing Europe's citizenry, "You have nothing to fear if you have nothing to hide." Harry's latest birthday coincides with his teaming up with old pals Ron (Rupert Grint) and Hermione (Emma Watson) to find and destroy a number of magic talismans called Horcruxes that contain pieces of Voldemort's ink-black soul, thereby killing him once and for all.

Without its familiar academic campus setting of Hogwarts to anchor its physical parameters, the movie meanders in and out of disconnected but visually impressive set pieces--as when Harry discovers and dramatically extracts the fabled sword of Gryffindor from its icy grave.

For much of the time Harry, Ron, and Hermione camp out in a patch of rural woods waiting for something to happen. The trio of protagonists are too passive to earn much respect beyond what they've accrued over the previous six films. They come across as clueless about how to accomplish their mission with any sense of urgency. They're like unsupervised kids in desperate need of a chaperone. Even as allegedly experienced young wizards, none of them exhibit much confidence when employing magic to escape their many pursuers, although Hermione does save the day on more than one occasion.

The idle sleepover subplot is not without its charms. The World War I-styled tent our trio uses for shelter mimics Hermione's magic bag that can invisibly carry a vast amount of stuff. Although the tent looks downright tiny from the outside, the area inside is open and spacious. Harry and Hermione share the film's most charming scene when they do an impromptu dance together to Nick Cave's "O Children." It's a lighthearted moment that allows the characters to share a momentary dream of romance that is far more tangible than the story's vague idea about Harry restoring social order by killing Voldemort before Voldemort kills him.

Prominently missing are the fruits of the previous films' coming-of-age bits that marked Harry, Ron, and Hermione as creatures of amorous desire. Any flashes of fireworks between Hermione and Ron are muted behind their grumpy exchanges. Instead we get stylistic overtures to horror--a former Hogwart's teacher becomes a meal for an especially large and hungry snake at a Ministry of Magic meeting. Later, Ron incurs a grotesque injury that might challenge young viewers. The overall dark look of the film inhabits a moody atmosphere of uncompromising death and decay.

At nearly two-and-a-half hours you get the sense that screenwriter Steve Kloves is dragging out the action with filler that should have been left on the cutting room floor. If the filmmakers' intention was to stay true to J.K. Rowlings's novel by including a wealth of narrative details and visual filigree then they have at least scratched the surface. However, what they haven't done is present a cohesive story with knowable and reliable characters. A stream of cameo appearances from the series' cannon of familiar faces, such as Brendan Gleeson's Mad-Eye Moody, Bonny Wright's Ginny Weasley, and even a poignant appearance from the miniature elf Dobby, fail to bridge a cold impasse created by a script that repeatedly stalls out. Harry can't even keep track of his magic wand and powerful sword. In such a climatic franchise movie, its would-be heroic characters should be in control as confident practitioners of the magic they've studied for so long. Instead, our geeky trio are still playing catch up. There isn't much room for character development here because David Yeats's Harry Potter machine tries too hard to be all things to all people. You get the feeling that a terrible mistake has been made.

Rated PG-13. 150 mins. (C) (Two Stars - out of five/no halves)

Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightening Thief

Trading Down
Mythology Inflected Romp Has Nothing on Harryhausen
By Cole Smithey

Aside from some non-PG-rated emphasis on an abusive home life and a lot of underwhelming CGI, "Percy Jackson" is a well-paced kids' action picture that flirts with Greek mythology to create its otherworldly spectacle. Rising child star Logan Lerman plays Percy, a Manhattan teenager living with his mom Sally (Catherine Keener) and her less-than-desirable boyfriend Gabe (Joe Pantoliano). During a school trip to the Metropolitan Museum of Art Percy discovers that he is the demi-god son of Poseidon (Kevin McKidd). It seems that the Lord of the Seas had a fling with Percy's mortal mother. Someone has made off with the lightening rod that Zeus uses to control the heavens. Needless to say, the King of Olympus is plenty steamed about it. Believing Percy to be the thief, Zeus dictates that the bolt must be returned before the approaching solstice if an apocalyptic war with Hades (Steve Coogan) is to be avoided. Percy's wheelchair-bound teacher Chiron (Pierce Brosnan) accompanies him to a camp for demi-gods where Percy hones his fighting skills. With fellow demi-gods Annabeth (Alexandra Daddario), daughter of Athena, and his half-goat protector Grover (Brandon T. Jackson) Percy sets off to rescue his kidnapped mother from Hades and return Zeus's purloined lightening rod. Uma Thurman makes the most of her limited screen time as a sunglass-wearing Medusa who takes off the shades when visitors are around. The gorgon with snakes for hair performs her famous trick--turning anyone who gazes upon her to stone before Percy and his heavenly-blessed pals make their way to Hades' hellish hole.

Director Chris Columbus and his crew take a literal approach to spectacle that denies the magnificent use of weirdness and scale that famed stop-action animator Ray Harryhausen brought to such myth-inspired classics as "Jason and the Argonauts" (1963) and "Clash of the Titans" (1981). To think that child audiences in 1963 had a far more earth-shattering theater experience than today's young viewers will have with "Percy Jackson" speaks to the effect that "Harry Potter" films have had on reconfiguring what is expected of this kind of picture. It doesn't help that Chris Columbus directed "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" (2001) and "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets" (2002) because it affords him the liberty of repurposing ideas and techniques he learned on those films, rather than thinking anew about how a modern movie with mythological characters should look and feel. It's an outsized magical framework where action scenes should progress to maximize their dramatic potential, and then go even farther to dwarf humanity's tiny imprint on the cosmos. If you've got Neptune in your movie, then there had better be a scene of an inky, cold, vast ocean surface being broken by Poseidon's trident before giving way to the colossal king of the seas. The same goes for the multi-headed Hydra whose snakelike necks should blossom with hundreds of new heads, rather than two, when one is severed by Percy's sword during a fierce battle.

The Hollywood rumor mill has been abuzz with news that the "Spider-Man" franchise is about to be rebooted with Logan Lerman pushing out Tobey Maguire as the web-weaving crime-fighter. The consumerist logic of throwing out the old to usher in an inferior replacement is a knee-jerk way of thinking that is every bit as destructive when it's applied to movies. "Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightening Thief" is a fair movie, but it's no "Jason and the Argonauts."

(20th Century Fox) Rated PG. 120 mins. (B-) (Three Stars)

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

Hearts and Arrows
Potter Franchise Hits its Stride
By Cole Smithey

Teen desire and romance hits Hogwarts like a contagious virus in the sixth Harry Potter film, and goes a long way to providing lightheaded contrast to the skullduggery being perpetrated by Severus Snape (Alan Rickman), Draco Malfoy (Tom Felton), and three supernatural Death Eaters that swirl around the story like exterminating angels of the apocalypse. For their part, the actors have all aged well into their familiar roles, with Daniel Radcliffe showing evermore confidence in playing the "Chosen One" with a reserve of humor and restrained emotion. It's yet to be seen what kind of monster-in-a-box the Potter films will make of Radcliffe as an actor but it seems certain, based on his Broadway performance in "Eqquis," that more surprises are in store.  

David Yates returns after directing "The Order of the Phoenix" with a determinedly Gothic vision--the opening sequence in modern day London is something right out of a horror movie--that allows emotional and visual color to emanate from JK Rowling's famous collection of lively protagonists and enemies. Jim Broadbent adds particular energy as Professor Horace Slughorn, who the wise Dumbledore convinces to return to teaching magic potions at Hogwarts to fulfill an ulterior motive of informing Harry about defeating his rival extraordinaire Voldemort, whose presence is felt but won't be seen until the series' next installment. Slughorn's repressed memories of a former student named Tom Riddle--later to become Lord Voldemort--provide essential insight into the nature of the beast that Harry must eventually face. The ever-perfect Michael Gambon is a delight as Dumbledore, whose objective of undermining the evil Lord Voldemort with Harry's prodigious help sets the film's tempo and provides the film with its two suspenseful, and lusciously filmed, climax sequences. 

Love is in the air and Hermione's amorous preoccupation with Ron (Rupert Grint) gets lift during a couple of well executed Quidditch sequences that lend harmless exhilaration to some of the film's otherwise darker set pieces. Subtle touches of shy attraction come through in Hermione's habit of leaving a bit of toothpaste or food on her mouth that she hopes Ron will sensually remove, although her clueless crush doesn't yet get the hint. Even more unfortunate for Hermione is the flirtatious presence of one Lavender Brown (Jessie Cave), whose relentless desire to "snog" (kiss) Ron ties up his lips for much of the story.

"Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" is the most balanced Harry Potter film to come along, perhaps because the right combination of screenwriter (Steve Kloves - writer on "Sorcerer's Stone," "Chamber of Secrets," "Prisoner of Azkaban, and "Goblet of Fire") and director has been firmly established, along with an appropriate team of special effects wizards and talented production crew. Of course it's the actors that make the magic happen and every one, from Alan Rickman and Robbie Coltrane to Emma Watson and Bonnie Wright, cast a memorable spell.

The filmmakers have chosen to split the next film "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" into two movies that will enable the studio and audiences to savor the finale of Harry Potter with a kind of appreciation befitting a lasting love affair. The franchise still has a ways to go. 

(Warner Brothers) Rated PG. 153 mins. (B+) (Four Stars)

Watchmen

And Now For Something Completely Different
The Good, the Bad, and the Nude
By Cole Smithey

Dave Gibbons' hardboiled superhero graphic novel is brought to stunning visual life by director Zach Snyder in a convoluted adult fantasy that provides an off-key political tone to its alternate reality of 1985 America where Richard Nixon is still President and the Doomsday Clock forever sits at five minutes to the hour of imminent apocalypse thanks to a Soviet nuclear threat. Put out of work by Nixon's decree outlawing masked avengers, unless they work for the government, a group of former superheroes known as the Watchmen variously reconnect after the violent murder of their macho former member the Comedian AKA Edward Blake (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) whose demise implies a similar fate for the rest of the group. Rorschach (devilishly played by Jackie Earle Haley), in his ever-morphing inkblot mask and raspy voice, narrates the complex mystery that plays out with richly designed flashbacks that reveal the personal histories of the likes of Laurie Jupiter (Malin Akerman) and her atomically transmogrified yet anatomically correct love interest Dr. Manhattan (Billy Crudup). Outrageous sexual elements and extreme violence give "Watchmen" its well-deserved hard R rating. Opposed to its child-friendly poster, this is not your run-of-the-mill action/adventure movie for the kids. At over two and a half hours, "Watchman" is a full-frontal adult sci-fi satire that's as enjoyable as it is thematically confounding. There's something here to make every member of the audience squirm.

Heroism is an occupation for freelance reprobates in the cynical deconstructionist world that writer Alan Moore ("V for Vendetta") concocted for the Watchmen. The cigar-chomping, Hustler-reading rapist, the Comedian leaves behind him a trail of pain, death, and  disaster--from Viet Nam to America's protest-filled streets that he uses as an excuse to blast away at dissenters in jubilant fits of vengeance. But revenge for what? For his own self-loathing? Blake's rape of Laurie Jupiter's Betty Page-inspired hero mother Sally, turns a crucial plot key later in the movie. If Edward Blake's Comedian, a government sponsored nihilistic wack job, is a representation of the "good guys," then who's on the other side and where are they? The ominous quote "Who watches the Watchmen?" hovers over the movie. There's an inherent dynamic tension that comes from Moore's iconography of dysfunctional identities, even if their philosophical ideas typically come across as ambiguous or, at their worst, just plain wrongheaded. As is the case for "smartest man in the world" Ozymandias AKA Adrian Veidt (Matthew Goode) whose preoccupation with Genghis Khan fuels his plan for world domination. Veidt is an effeminate polar opposite of the testosterone oozing Edward Blake.

The film's opening assassination sequence is a disorienting spree of ultra violence that's a close cousin to the stylized brutality of "A Clockwork Orange." Edward Blake watches Nixon on an old television in his high-rise apartment when his attacker bursts through the door and we get a wall-smashing fist fight from the Gene Hackman era of ass-kicking. On his black costume, Blake wears a smiley face yellow button that was a symbol of the drug happy '60s, and donates to it a lovely red blood drop that captures the film's ketchup-on-mustard visual appeal.

Director Zach Snyder ("300") has a field day emphasizing explicit aspects of the colorful characters' sexualities to tweak the emotional underpinnings of their actions. It's in this soft-core realm that the movie smashes into walls of physical and psychological disturbance that offer the audience graphic sexual consolation for a barrage of blood spurting and splattering that goes on. Billy Crudup's scientist Jon Osterman AKA Dr. Manhattan is the only genuine superhero of the group by way of a 1959 science lab accident that found him trapped in an Intrinsic Field Subtractor. Osterman's atoms were separated and have left him in a quantum universe devoid of time. Snyder parades the blue-skinned Dr. Manhattan's sculpted physique and semi-erect penis through the second half of the film as a definite phallic talisman of male domination overseeing humanity. Snyder's illustrative decision is a departure from Dave Gibbons' graphic novel renderings that gave the character a more understated nude profile. The government sent Dr. Manhattan to Viet Nam to end the war, and his ability to change his size to a King Kong-scaled giant won the hearts and minds of the Viet Cong. These are the kind of pushy ideas and propaganda images that Snyder wants the audience to stew over indefinitely after seeing the movie. 

Pop songs like Dylan's "The Times They Are A-Changin'," Nat King Cole's "Unforgettable," and Leonard Cohen's ubiquitous "Hallelujah" provide familiar if ironic musical counterpoint. There's a self awareness here of the rippling effect that the filmmakers clearly intend "Watchmen" to have on its modern cult audience. "Watchmen" is campy fun. It's not hard to imagine audiences yelling retorts to the screen in the same way "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" set off its a social phenomenon of audience interaction. There's plenty here to draw viewers back for repeat screenings to dissect every shiny piece of eye-candy, gore, and skintight appeal. The dialogue is snappy and raw. It's a movie that has a lot more in common with midnight movies than it does with Batman or Spider-Man. For its salivating fans and audiences itching for something completely different from the Hollywood superhero model, there's much ferocity to sample here. Taste the fury Babyface.
(Warner Brothers) Rated R. 160 mins. (B) (Four Stars)

Fight Club

Fincher Does Palahniuk
Blood, Sweat, and Emotional Bankruptcy Follow    
By Cole Smithey

Misogynist, anti-capitalist, and class-conscious, novelist Chuck Palahniuk’s “Fight Club” takes a "Trainspotting" brand of glee in dismissing lifestyle mores and materialist limitations of American social existence. It plays like a boys-only video game where male audience members are players encouraged to kick over the machine that ate their quarters at the end of the game. For all of the controversy surrounding the movie for fear that young males will begin setting up fight clubs of their own all around the world, the theory is countered directly in the movie as Ed Norton’s nameless character comes to view his dimwitted, class-conscious Fight Club cohorts as complete morons — who, in Lou Reed's words, follow the first thing that comes along that allows them the right to be. Indeed the Fight Club cult that Norton sets up under the tutelage of his brutal disenfranchised alter ego/evil-twin, Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt), digresses into a flesh-chewing tombstone that gets dumped on the floor like so much brain matter.

From David Fincher's hyper sci-fi-inflected credit sequence, underscored by searing punk music, to its "Blade Runner"/"Mean Streets" ending, the filmmaker pulls out every stop in his arsenal of cinematic tricks to deliver walloping visual blows. Fincher’s approach is aggressive, and packed to the surface with such a high sperm count that you can almost see the microscopic swimmers bursting to get free. There’s never a gesture, vocal quality, intention, or motivation from any character (even from Helena Bonham Carter's character) that isn’t full-bore masculine. And if that means that a pound of fury is coming along for the ride, so be it.

In the story, if you’re a consumer you’re a pussy. You're pressed to see through the culture of housewife behavior where free time is spent imagining and buying things to complete your identity. A greater social repercussion from "Fight Club" would be a trend where American males just ceased spending money and began hoarding every dime as if they were collecting names on a petition against our snotty soul-crushing corporate government and post-media-feminist existence. But however heavily "Fight Club" relies on extraneous voice-over narration from Norton's character, the grist of the story lies in his need to follow something. Even as it becomes glaringly clear over the course of the movie that he's pulling his own strings, rather than acting on the suggestions of Pitt’s rock-star-perfect persona, it’s the human inclination to be lead that troubles us. Chuck Palahniuk seems to be saying that males have such a strong urge to follow another person’s lead that it’s only through pain that a man can fully realize his own responsibility to himself and to the world around him. It’s a coming-of-age stratagem that fits perfectly within Fincher’s previous films and taps into films like "Taxi Driver," "The Graduate," and "A Clockwork Orange."

Like the insomniac Travis Bickle in "Taxi Driver," Ed Norton gravitates to his true nature by exploring society in a heightened state of sleep-deprived accessibility. That Norton’s job as a car company recall analyst demands that he fly into different time zones in cities where he can buy all the same stuff, magnifies his disassociation to other people. Just when he’s finally is able to quell his insomnia by crying at support groups for people with terminal ailments, he becomes stalked by a woman named Marla (Bonham Carter). Marla shows up at every meeting he goes to, and her very presence mocks his ability to find refuge in fringe social enclaves. Jammed, embarrassed, and exasperated, Norton’s character makes a self-enabling breakthrough. By becoming free of all of his worldly possessions, and donning the badges of physical abuse, he attains a sainthood status that he can’t help but abuse by encouraging males around him to join his cult of social terrorists. The performances, direction, and themes are thickly woven in scratchy narrative wool, and David Fincher never lets you forget what the social loom looks like. "Fight Club" is Fincher's cinematic Hail-Mary pass that the audience desperately wants to catch.

Rated R. 139 mins. (A) (Five Stars)

Hellboy II: The Golden Army

Del Toro’s Hollywood Order
Gifted Director Holds Back the Dream
By Cole Smithey

Guillermo del Toro’s Hellboy sequel is a simultaneously exhilarating and underwhelming experience due to the idleness of its characters and nebulous sub-plot elements that contrast blankly against del Toro’s trademark of baroquely drawn details. Hopelessly macho lug Hellboy (exquisitely played by the one and only Ron Perlman) lives a clandestine existence with his newly-pregnant pyrokinetic squeeze Liz (played by Selma Blair) in the guarded confines of New Jersey’s Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense. Dark Prince Nuada (played by Luke Goss) escalates from a saber rattling practice routine to go on a violent rampage to obtain the missing part to a crown that will awaken an army of indestructible clockwork soldiers and enable him to rule the world. Hellboy and his fighting team, that includes a creature-from-the-black-lagoon-styled pal Abe Sapien and a not-so-welcome German gas-bag named Johann, do battle with Nuada’s weird creatures when they aren’t concerned with more mundane chores of romance and pregnancy issues. The super-hero battles aren’t choreographed and edited with enough pizzazz to meet heightened audience expectations raised with every new addition to the comic book movie genre. Nonetheless, this is a visually delightful movie packed with enough eccentric character elements that keep it entertaining.

Del Toro co-wrote the screenplay with Hellboy originator/comic artist Mike Mignola, and yet their union produces a lighter atmosphere than suits the famously dark-toned source material. There’s never any question as to the style of del Toro’s vision providing the substantive meat for the narrative, as with all of his films, but the story here veers irreparably off-track when Abe Sapien and Hellboy join in a duet of Barry Manilow’s "I Can't Smile Without You." The moment comes after a love-struck Sapien pines for Prince Nuada’s alter-opposite twin, Princess Nuada (Anna Walton). It’s the kind of ironic, sappy faux sentimentality that bends too far left toward an ostensibly celibate fanboy audience at which the movie is already predisposed to entertain.

Part of the problem stems from the film that del Toro made between the Hellboy movies. An R-rated adult fantasy tale, "Pan’s Labyrinth" presented a sophisticated allegory that modulated between fantasy elements of diabolical creatures in an atmosphere of war that constantly threatened its young female protagonist. It introduced the world to a different type of fantasy film, one that could sustain dark symbolism with a sense of historic significance to emphasize a troubled social condition. Mike Mignola’s Hellboy is a demon delivered to the Earth by Nazi occultists before he was co-opted by the U.S. Government to do their bidding. His Thing-like right hand is a giant club, and he has a devil’s tail that only accents his leathery skin’s red color. Objectively, it seems like an ideal character and milieu for del Toro to dig into with a story that might resonate with the same brand of anti-establishment logic he used for "Pan’s Labyrinth." But that is not the case. Instead of advancing a superhero genre for adults, "Hellboy II" is a coming-of-age comic melodrama with touches of spectacle battles that err on the side of Robin Hood sword fights rather than 21^st century fighting techniques.

There is no question that Guillermo del Toro wouldn’t have done a better job directing the recent "Hulk" movie, but this is a visionary director capable of much more than we see on the screen here. It could be that del Toro is a selfish auteur hoarding his best work for his own films, rather than this kind of Hollywood gig, but it doesn’t suit his talents to create kid’s movies. Somewhere inside, Guillermo del Toro is a raging genius bursting at the seams to make his own "Blue Velvet" or "Exorcist." His true nature is not suited to making PG-13 movies. Give us the dark, demented and perverse animal biting to get out of his directorial cage. That’s the real Guillermo del Toro.

Rated PG-13. 110 mins. (B) (Three Stars)