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Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales (2017)
Movie Watch
Johnny Depp returns to the big screen as the iconic, swashbuckling anti-hero Jack Sparrow in the...
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Michael Korda recommended The Fallen Idol (1949) in Movies (curated)
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Sarah (7798 KP) rated Hellboy (2019) in Movies
Dec 31, 2019
I’ll start with the good bits, which won’t take long as David Harbour and Ian McShane are pretty much the only decent things about this film. Ian McShane seems to be playing his usual charismatic, crazy old man character (very reminiscent of Mr Wednesday) and I’m not complaining, as this is exactly what I love about him and he’s a rather good less nice version of Professor Broom. And David Harbour is a good Hellboy and gets the very few laughs there is in this, although I think he’s very let down and not able to shine properly because of the dodgy script and just general terribleness of this film. There’s also a decent rock soundtrack accompanying the fight scenes and a fairly fun amount of gore.
And now the bad. There’s far too much cgi in this and it isn’t always good, and they should’ve toned this down a lot. The plot and progression of the entire story is just bizarre, it was just downright ridiculous. They seem to have decided to try and fit in a strange assortment of folk tales and historic legends, like the Pendle Hill witches and King Arthur, and this is alongside the already crazy (but just about believable) origin of Hellboy himself and the Nazis. Even the bad guys in this are cheesy and not particularly threatening - Milla Jovovich with a horrendous English accent and a pig creature with a Scouse accent?! I know Stephen Graham is from Liverpool but that accent on that particular character was possible the most bizarre and frustrating thing I’ve ever seen. And also despite the main lead up being slightly different, the end result to Hellboy personally is exactly the same as the original. Why not try and come up with something completely different to avoid yet more negative comparisons to the original?
This is one film that should never have seen the light of day.
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Norman Bethune in Spain: Commitment, Crisis & Conspiracy
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Born to fanatical religious zealots, deeply wounded by an unloving mother and a weak father whom he...
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Despite the growing interest in making paddles and canoes, it is difficult to find reliable...
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'Glen Arnold makes complex investment concepts understandable. He explains what the masters of the...
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Book Matters: The Changing Nature of Literacy
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Scholars have been puzzling over the "future of the book" since Marshall McLuhan's famous maxim "the...
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Geordie Armstrong: On the Wing
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George 'Geordie' Armstrong served Arsenal for 27 years as both a player and a coach, before being...
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Midwinter Mysteries
Linda Stratmann, Cora Harrison, David Field, Graham Brack, Marilyn Todd, J. C. Briggs, Keith Moray, Seàn Gibbons, Gaynor Torrance and Kim Fleet
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Eleven authors. Eleven stories. One festive collection! Perfect for fans of crime fiction, short...
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Delta Lady: A Memoir
Rita Coolidge and Michael Walker
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The two-time Grammy Award-winning singer and songwriter bares her heart and soul in this intimate...