When the closing credits rolled for The Dark Knight, I was left in stunned silence. In what is easily the best film of the year so far (and possibly one of the best in the last thirty years), director Christopher Nolan has delivered his shining star; a masterpiece that has set a new standard in crime dramas.

Oh, it’s a comic book adaptation? How I seem to forget that simple little thing. To be honest, it’s easy to forget that this complex, juicy, layered dissertation of the human condition is based on a nearly seventy-year-old hand-drawn character that first began in the half-toned pages of Detective Comics way back in November of 1939.

The Dark Knight, unlike Superman or Spider-Man 2 (which themselves were the best of their own genre), has completely emerged from not only from its paneled source material, but has soared into skyline of cinematic brilliance.

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The world that Hellboy II: The Golden Army (hereafter Hellboy 2) presents is one that is filled with images of the fantastic, the bizarre, and the mysterious. In this world, it’s the humans that are the outsiders, while the trolls, demons, and even the Angel of Death collaborate deliver a tale that’s part parable, part adventure, and part love story.

Hellboy and Hellboy 2 joins the long line of great films that were inspired by comic books, and is one of the few comic books that I never read during my collecting days. Perhaps this is a good thing, as the film is uncluttered by previous expectations of certain villains and characterizations that must be met. In my mind, Guillermo Del Toro, who wrote and directed this film, is free to tell whatever kind of story he can imagine.

While it’s not the masterpiece of Pan’s Labyrinth, Hellboy 2 is a deliberate fairy tale mixed in with a brilliant observation of the nature of man – as told though the eyes of monsters. No matter how strange the images on the image might be, the film is a probe of pinpoint accuracy of just what makes the hearts of men tick.

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In a summer where superheroes clearly have staked their territory, Hancock makes the biggest mess of all of them. The weird thing about this mess is that it’s what the film intended. Part superhero movie, part whacked-out theology, and part jerk-gets-redeemed story, Hancock has so many irons in the fire that the audience just doesn’t know what the hell is going on.

Director Peter Berg turns in a celluloid train wreck that’s filled with the overuse of the gutter version of “anus” to such an extent that it becomes a one-joke film. Okay, we get it. John Hancock (Will Smith) is a jerk. He’s the king of potholes, dodging airplanes, and sloshing around with a big bottle of booze. He’s homeless, and hates the world around him. Now, I don’t know if he’s a jerk because of these things, or that being a jerk led him to being homeless, but frankly, I wasn’t really compelled to care.

I don’t know what it is about today’s filmmakers that feel the necessity to drive in the obvious (that Hancock is a jerk) to the point where even a headache would be a relief. The fact that the first time we hear the word is from a small child is supposed to be funny, but again, it’s stating the obvious.

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Wanted, the new action film from Universal Pictures, is a crowd-pleasing action film that’s sure to keep the adrenaline pumped in audiences everywhere. Before I continue with this review, perhaps I should confess my own secret love for underdog-turned-badass movies since there’s that twelve-year-old in me that will never grow up.

Films like Wanted appeal to just that kid-on-the-cusp-of-adulthood mentality that most adult men share, driving all of us to wonder just what we’ve done with our lives. Since most of us who shell out our eight bucks to see this kind of movie aren’t interested in anything but violence, guts, sex, and profanity, director Timur Bekmambetov (with his first American film) delivers all of these elements within the first five minutes of the narrative.

That’s not to say it’s a bad movie, really. Bekmambetov’s style is clearly an attempt to capture the equally-adult comic book in film, a task which is largely successful. Having never read the comic (I know, they’re supposed to be called “graphic novels,” but frankly, I don’t care. They’re comics.), I was able to look at the film as its own entity. Since the vast majority of the film’s audience is equally ignorant of its source material, that’s probably a good thing. Read more »

Part E.T., part Short Circuit, the new Pixar film WALL-E evokes the fondest memories from both of those 1980’s too-cute-to-forget films. Both charming and intelligent, movie-goers will welcome this delectable blend of technology and emotion, and will be drawn into a story that is as heartwarming as it is educational.

WALL-E carries on the mantle of perfection that Pixar has established with Monsters, Inc. and Ratatouille, and actually manages to take the animation to new heights. Director Andrew Stanton, who masterfully told the ultimate (fish-)Father’s Day story with Finding Nemo, has hit his stride with this simple story of a garbage robot who ultimately saves the world. Read more »