I saw Hellboy: The Golden Army a few weeks ago and The Dark Knight on Friday.

These are good days to be a geek. I don’t know that I’ve got it in me to write full reviews of either, but they were both chock full of awesome.

Hellboy II was indeed better than the first one. They took out the unneccesary human handler character and replaced him with Johann Krauss, a man made of ectoplasm. Johann was indeed in the original comic and solidified (heh) the tension between the normal humans and the weirdo freekazoids that BPRD uses to defend humanity from other weirdo freakazoids. I really enjoyed the way they portrayed the elves and GdT’s vision for all of the creatures was gorgeous, haunting, and makes me drool for what he’ll do to The Hobbit.

TDK was everything I hoped it would be. It wasn’t perfect by any means, but it nailed the Joker, Two Face, and hit every note it needed to hit. Batman needs to be a dark character. I mean he’s essentially a very controlled psycho. The idea that Batman’s presence is basically causing an escalation in the weirdness of the bad guys, Gordon’s closing lines from the first movie coming true, is beautiful and makes perfect sense. They didn’t bother showing the Joker’s origins, cause let’s face it, that’s a movie in and of itself. Sadly one we’ll never see now, not with Ledger in it and I don’t know of any actors off the top of my head that could top that performance. We got Two Face’s origin, but that was so seemless and we had a villain the whole time, so it worked. This is how I’ve always said multiple villains should work in a superhero movie. It’s just like Bond. Have the hero catch a small timer in the opening. You’ve got your main villain who’s the brains behind the whole thing. And if you have to add a third, make him a really cool henchman that plays a significant part.

There’s fodder here for spiritual content I suppose, if one digs deep enough, but frankly I don’t have it in me today and it may be too much of a stretch anyway.

Movies I’m interested in seeing:

Clone Wars

Tropic Thunder (Restricted Trailer)

Death Race

Igor

Miracle at St. Anna

City of Ember

W.

Quantam of Solace

Australia

Bolt (Shut up.)

Transporter 3

The Day the Earth Stood Still

Defiance (Today’s the first I’ve heard of it.)