Review: Hellboy: The Crooked Man

As a comic, Hellboy has been running for 30-odd years now under the guidance of his creator, Mike Mignola. Things have changed a lot for the demon fated to destroy the world, and his adventures have grown creepier and closer to folklore than they were back when he was punching out Nazis and giant monsters.

The year is 1959 (well before any of the previous Hellboy films) and the chain smoking, tough talking good guy demon (Jack Kesy ) and a couple of government sidekicks are taking a demonically possessed funnelweb spider back to the lab via train. Thinks go wrong, not all the sidekicks survive, and it's left to Hellboy and rookie agent Bobbie Jo Song (Adeline Rudolph) to track down the giant spider through the Appalachian mountains. That's not all they find.

Supposedly a big part of the reason why Guillermo del Toro (director of the first two Hellboy films) didn't get to make his idea of a third was because Mignola wanted to take the character back to his roots; that's definitely one way to look at Hellboy: The Crooked Man (which is specifically based on a three-issue run of the comic).

While Hellboy himself remains the same character here, this is a pretty big pivot to small scale horror for the big screen version, in ways that those looking for pulp action might find off-putting. There's no evil end-of-the-world cult or giant monsters or Nazi hold-outs to punch here: ok, there are a few zombies at one point. But this is much more about a creeping sense of dread, of people stumbling into a place that's gone rotten with bad magic.

A lot of the small moments are memorably creepy. There's a witch who leaves her skin behind to roam the woods as a raccoon; another witch rides a horse that turns out to be someone's enslaved father. The main evil haunting the mountain is called The Crooked Man, a walking hanged corpse who sells souls to the Devil for a cent apiece in an attempt to rebuild his long gone fortune.

The main plot is straightforward: Hellboy and Song team up with newly returned local Tom Ferrell (Jefferson White) to purge the area of evil, which involves battling the local population (now basically all witches) and defeating The Crooked Man. But for long stretches, it's the kind of story where unsettling things just happen. 

There's asides explaining how to make witchballs and summon up a demon, hints of portals and Lovecraftian monsters, a number of dream sequences featuring Hellboy's mother, a grim joke or two, and at least one character dies for (again, memorably creepy) reasons that are never quite explained... which is kind of the point. They've stumbled into a place where bad things just happen, and a certain dream-like quality is to be expected.

Still, there are also points where this doesn't quite work, rough edges that feel more the result of an uneven script (co-written by Mignola himself) and low budget than firm intentions. Director Brian Taylor (the Crank films, the second, more demented Ghost Rider movie) does a decent job of balancing the unsettling mood with some high energy weirdness (there's the occasional Evil Dead vibe to proceedings), but the whole thing never fully comes together like it should.

If this film manages to chart a new direction for Hellboy, smaller in scope but bigger in strangeness, that wouldn't be such a bad thing. As the film handling the pivot, this struggles to straddle two worlds; it's those memorable moments that stand out, like pennies scattered on an old floor.

- Anthony Morris

Review: Subservience

If you're the kind of person who watches a lot of direct-to-streaming movies, you'll have noticed that Megan Fox is slowly becoming a name you can trust when it comes to halfway decent trash viewing. Not everything she's in is gold standard, but if she can make a decent film out of a story about a sexy nanny who sleeps with the boss then tries to replace the wife - only here the nanny is a robot - then she's doing something right.

Nick (Michele Morrone) is a construction foreman who must be making a decent living, because when his wife Maggie (Madeline Zima) has a pre-sexy times heart attack he's quickly off down to the robot department store to purchase a helper. Fortunately for him, his younger daughter takes a liking to Alice (Fox) and not one of the many non-hot models that are no doubt flying off the showroom floor.

Horror movies about AI tend to fall into two categories. The first is "oh no, our house is possessed", where an AI assistant or app or doll uses the power of AI to do a bunch of evil murdery stuff - basically, the AI is non human. The second is "oh no, our maid / butler / sexbot is possessed", where a human is playing the murdery AI. And so it goes with Subservience.

Those films are usually less interesting because it's basically just an evil person and we know the kinds of things they can do, but Subservience pulls out a few tricks to keep the interest levels up. Alice isn't intrinsically evil, for one: Nick's poor programming leaves her fixated on him (bad move when there are other family members) and enables her to fully commit to her forbidden love. Also, Nick? Bit of a dick.

Not only does he have sex with Alice, he then does the whole "it was a mistake, we can never do that again" thing, turning this for maybe fifteen minutes or so into the robot version of Fatal Attraction. Also, unlike most movies of this stripe, having home robots is not a brand new thing. As the movie goes on we see more and more how they're reshaping the world.

For one, "construction worker" isn't really a viable career when your boss can just rent some super strong robots. Suddenly Nick's loyalties are torn between his workmates on the chopping block and bringing in a steady income (again, he's kind of a dick). 

Somewhat surprisingly, this is not one of the many, many recent films where having to pay medical bills forces our lead into a morally dubious corner. This is surprising because for the first 20 minutes or so you'd be forgiven for thinking Maggie (who is nowhere to be seen) was dead, and then when Nick (the dick) does finally visit her we discover she's in dire need of a transplant. Presumably hospital costs are down because yes, robots are doing all the heavy lifting there too. 

While the focus remains on Alice's descent into murderous evil, all these background details gradually build up, creating a wider sense of unease. If robots are all around us doing all the work - as you'd expect they would - and they can turn nasty like Alice, then everyone is in a lot of trouble.

So while this does deliver the usual "I'm doing this insane murdery thing for your own good" thrills, there's just enough going on around the edges - plus decent performances from Fox and Zima - to keep it from feeling like it's just going through the motions. 

In the end it's still more of the same, and how much you get out of this will depend a lot on a): your interest in sexy robots and b): your interest in evil robots. But within those parameters, this does manage a few memorable moments: is letting robots take care of humans ever going to be a good idea?

- Anthony Morris

Review: My Old Ass

Stories where younger and older versions of someone meet are usually focused on the older person. They're the ones with wisdom (and stock tips) to impart; young folks are usually too busy living for today to want to leap into the future and meet their older selves. My Old Ass says "too bad, here's your older self, deal with it"; thankfully the rest of the movie is not someone yelling "you're not my real future self" and slamming their bedroom door.

Elliot (Maisy Stella) is all set for college and looking forward to the bright future (and college girls) that awaits. But first there's a painful summer to be spent on the family farm being annoyed by pretty much everything that isn't hanging out with her friends. Then one night after taking a lot of mushrooms with her buddies, the usual group hang now includes a 39 year old (Aubrey Plaza) who announces "I'm you dude".

Turns out she hasn't been sent back in time to save her younger self from a killer robot, but instead to hand out some basic wisdom: appreciate her family, and stay away from a boy named Chad. It's not a long visit, but she does leave behind a contact in Elliot's phone: My Old Ass.

No surprise then that when Chad (Percy Hynes White) does show up, there's an instant connection. Which is a bit confusing for Elliot, who's only been into women before now. Also, her older self is not one for giving out any big details about the future (aside from the fact she clearly has some regrets), so exactly why he's to be avoided is a mystery. Which is kind of the point.

This is a tightly packed (at barely 90 minutes) coming-of-age story that's not afraid to keep the stakes low. Having her older self lurking around - and seemingly still figuring stuff out - makes it clear that growing up is an ongoing condition. Whatever choices she makes, right or wrong, there's going to be a lot more choices after that.

The performances are a delight, with newcomer Stella and Plaza sharing an energy that makes their connection totally convincing. Writer / director Megan Park really nails the "last summer before everything changed" vibe of waiting to ditch small town life and head off to higher education (though the farm and local lake look gorgeous), and Stella is totally convincing as a bubbly teen having fun living a low-stakes life.

My Old Ass is pretty slight, but the film's lightweight nature is the point. Time does go by fast, and small decisions can linger. Appreciating what you have? That might not be a bad thing.

- Anthony Morris

Review: Uglies

Is Uglies a real movie? At barely 90 minutes (before credits), it scrapes in time-wise; director McG used to make real movies, but that was a while ago. It's available on Netflix, which features things that are definitely movies, and also a lot of things that are definitely not movies. Let's put it another way then: is Uglies a serious movie worthy of serious consideration, or just an excuse for some cool hoverboard action?

The central premise of Uglies is that a few hundred years into the future, a series of disasters have driven humanity's survivors to embrace the idea that the only way to avoid conflict is to make everyone roughly as hot as the best-looking person on some sexy sex-based reality show. If this seems stupid to you, don't worry: there's an actual in-movie reason why humanity has (mostly) fallen for this, which largely boils down to "we only have to convince people this silly idea works until they're 16".

Tally Youngblood (Joey King) has bought into the system 100%. The only drawback as far as she can see is that her platonic bestie Peris (Chase Stokes) gets to have an extreme makeover and go live in the party city across the river a few months before her. But when he doesn't get in touch after his touch-up like he promised, she sneaks over to see how the other half live - and realises that maybe partying all night is the kind of thing only vapid airheads are totally into.

Fortunately her new bestie Shay (Brianne Tju) lets her know about the outdoor rebels led by David (Keith Powers), and while Tally isn't really up for the camping lifestyle she does enjoy learning about the exciting world of hoverboards. There is a lot of hoverboard action in this film, which is a big plus, especially as "hoverboard" pretty much equals "skateboard" here. Skateboarding is not a crime, unless you use it to smash the state.

After a few twists and turns Tally finds herself denied her makeover, but only because she has a secret mission: she's the only one who can track down David and infiltrate his organisation before they can unleash their "weapon" which will destroy party central and make everyone's eyeliner run. Will she be unable to resist the allure of his message, which is basically "touch grass"? Will party central turn out to have a dark secret? Will part of the big action climax be a direct steal from one of the most iconic moments in The Matrix?

Anyone who has ever watched a single movie in their lives can spot the problem here. In a Young Adult novel you can get away with having a lead who's meant to be tough to look at: in a YA movie, no. Everyone pre-makeover here is still very easy on the eyes, which you can either go along with or complain about - luckily enough, both responses work as far as the message of the movie is concerned.

Otherwise the great ideological divide here is between vapid high-tech partying and getting back to nature and doing something real, which is as good a conflict as any for a YA movie. The bad guys are bad but have just enough justification behind their actions to be plausible, the good guys are romanticised but are clearly on the right side of history, and the whole thing only has to work as a metaphor for a bunch of teenage life choices anyway.

What this is really about is Netflix (and by extension, Hollywood in general) wanting to see if audiences are ready for the return of the good old days when Harry Potter led to The Hunger Games and YA ruled both the page and the screen. The trouble with this kind of trial balloon is that it's for a genre that really needs some serious money spent on it to make it work: Uglies does pretty well with its special effects for what it is, but it's just not on the same scale as the YA classics of yore.

So is Uglies a real movie? Well, it's not a serious one; neither is it an epic tale of overwrought emotional angst like the best YA films. But King makes for a solid heroine who sells her character's journey even when the film is fast-forwarding through it, everyone else looks good even when they shouldn't, and it makes up for its lack of an emotional rollercoaster by having Tully hoverboard down a real one. 

Plus, this pushes the ending just far enough past the (very effective) conclusion of the first novel to make sure we don't need a sequel that we know will never come. Tidying up loose ends: Hollywood should do more of it.

- Anthony Morris

Review: Speak No Evil

There's a certain kind of story that really pulls you in but can't really sustain a full-length movie all on its own. Comedies have this problem all the time; it's a very high bar to come up with something that's hilarious from start to finish, so they're always slipping in a bit of regular drama to drag things over the line. There's not a lot of laughs in Speak No Evil, but there is a lot of awkward, unsettling family interactions - and when the story moves on from them it's hard not to feel a little let down.

Ben Dalton (Scoot McNairy), wife Louise (Mackenzie Davis) and their daughter Agnes (Alix West Lefler) are holidaying in Italy when they run into semi-retired doctor Paddy (James McAvoy) and his family, Ciara (Aisling Franciosi) and speechless youngster Ant (Dan Hough). Paddy is a force of nature, fun and welcoming; Ben is cautious, careful, and something of a wet blanket. But eventually he's worn down and forced to enjoy the company of their new found friends. When they part, they promise to catch up again back in the UK.

Everyone in the Dalton family (even their daughter, who's getting a little too old to be so emotionally attached to her stuffed rabbit) knows that seeing Paddy and the rest is probably not a great idea. But being stuck in London, where Ben's failing attempts to find a job add to Louise's growing annoyance with his passive ways, isn't helping them either. Maybe a trip out into the countryside to stay at Paddy's isolated farm for a few days is just what they need?

No it isn't.

The best part of the film is the lengthy middle stretch where it's screamingly obvious that something isn't quite right on Paddy's farm (their parenting methods, for one, leave a lot to be desired), but the Daltons can't quite put their finger on what. As a host Paddy is so forceful and seemingly reasonable - even when he's being nosy or using the importance of truth-telling to stir things up - that it's hard to say no to him, especially if you don't want to look insensitive or ungrateful. And that's the last thing the Daltons want, even when it feels like every conversation ends up in an awkward, uncomfortable place.

With so much of this reliant on vibes, good casting is essential. McNairy is spot on as a man with a wet noodle for a spine, a sad sack whose commitment to meaning well and wanting to do the right thing has been enough to get him through life (until now). Davis is strong as a character who should be trusting her instinct but being halfway out the door relationship-wise has worn her down, while Franciosi remains consistently convincing as someone who has to sell at least two contradictory stories.

Based on a 2022 Danish film, this ditches the grim inevitability of euro-horror for a more predictable fight-and-flight third act. It's not a fatal flaw, but delivering the familiar thrills does let a lot of the tension out of the room. Once all the cards are on the table it's pretty easy to see how things will play out, even if exactly when and how characters will meet their grisly end is up in the air (and then flat on the concrete).

It's McAvoy who carries this through, putting out enough energy to power a small town as in the space of a minute or two Paddy goes from your best mate to that guy who's always trying to test your limits to someone just having a laugh. He's a memorable villain in a film that can barely hold him, an always entertaining dinner party guest you'd be happy to have over - just so long as you were able to get him out the door before things turned sour.

- Anthony Morris

Review: It Ends With Us

Lily Bloom (Blake Lively) is home for her father's funeral, only she doesn't seem all that sad. Is she eager to get back to opening her Boston flower store? Or is there a dark secret that will hang over her okay her dad used to beat up her mother. Forget about that for now: she's just had a meet-cute, almost kiss with handsome neurosurgeon Ryle Kincaid (Justin Baldoni, who also directs) and - actually, forget about that too, it's time to renovate the store with the help of random passer-by turned shop assistant Allysa (Jenny Slate). Fingers crossed they get around to these dangling plot threads soon.

Fortunately it turns out that Allysa is Ryle's sister - what are the odds? - and while Ryle doesn't do relationships, Lily doesn't do casual, so obviously they'll never get together oh hang on. Meanwhile, there's all these flashbacks to when Young Lily (Isabela Ferrer) befriended a (literally) smelly homeless yet extremely hot guy named Atlas Corrigan (Alex Neustaedter), who seems like a decent candidate for the love of her life. 

So where is he now? And what exactly is this film about, beyond a bunch of good-looking people who are amazingly rich but still wear onesies to the local bar to get free beer? The answer will surprise you - unless you remember Lily's abusive father, in which case you'll have spent the entire movie waiting for Ryle to follow up on the aggressive chair kick he delivered during his first five seconds of screen time.

Based on the best-seller by Colleen Hoover, this kind of story is built around a balancing act. Our lead needs to be smart and on the ball. She's the audience surrogate, so she has to be someone we'd like to be (or be friends with), which means no silly mistakes. But the entire story is built around her making a bad decision. Just to make things more difficult, Ryle's fatal flaw has to be present right from the start: if he suddenly out-of-nowhere turned bad, then why couldn't he just as suddenly turn good?

That means that much of the drama in this film comes not from the actual situations, but in seeing how the story is going to thread the needle. He needs to be decent enough to be worthy of her love, but bad enough to make the plot work; she needs to be someone we can admire, but also someone who would fall for an (somewhat) obviously flawed man.

It Ends With Us manages to pull it off, but it's a close thing. Once he goes bad, everyone - no exceptions - understands that a line's been crossed; once Lily calls out his behaviour for what it is, there's no half-baked justifications or explanations. Which leaves that behaviour weirdly rootless, an aberration (that nevertheless cannot be excused) that stands alone. He's not a controlling violent freak, he just acts like one on those rare occasions when he gets jealous.

The big loser in all this is modern-day Atlas (Brandon Sklenar), who when he finally does show up just gets to glower and be aggressively supportive at a time when everyone involved realises romance of any kind is off the table. It doesn't help that Sklenar and his younger self don't look all that much alike (Ferrer, on the other hand, is spot-on as young Lily), which tends to defuse any real connection between their current day counterparts.

Wanting to tackle serious issues yet still keep that rom-com / female empowerment vibe strong, often this kind of film has so many contradictions it tears itself apart. There's plenty of stress fractures here (can Allysa manage to be a good friend and a loyal sister?), but there's decent chemistry between Lively and Baldoni and that makes up for a lot. She fell for him because he's hot and rich; what more do we need to know?

Well, maybe a bit more, which is where Lively steps up. This is her film and she carries it well, selling the few comedy moments as strongly as the drama. Despite the wobbly mix of the lightweight (the film makes a joke of it, but still: did this flower-obsessed woman really need to be named Lily Bloom?) and the extremely serious, Lively keeps Lily's feet firmly on the ground. You may not leave wanting to know what happens next, but this ending feels earned.

- Anthony Morris

Review: Deadpool & Wolverine

The most outrageous moments in Deadpool & Wolverine come when we're expected to believe Wade Wilson, AKA Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds) is a character with serious thoughts and heartfelt emotions. Fortunately those moments are few and far between, because they don't make any sense. Deadpool is a gleefully amoral pansexual shit-talker for whom nothing is off-limits (unless you're looking for a joke about why TJ Miller was dumped from the series); why should we care about his feelings when he doesn't give a crap about anyone else's?

Instead, this makes a massive withdrawal from the bank of goodwill that the previous films made (meager) deposits into, by briefly re-introducing pretty much the entire supporting casts from those last two films (sorry, no sign of Zazie Beetz' Domino) and then telling us "these are the people whose lives are at stake" from a universe-shattering plot while never showing them again. 

To make matters worse, this comes after a scene where Wilson tries to join the Avengers (hey look, it's a John Favreau cameo) because after two movies worth of making jokes about everything, he's decided he wants his life to mean something. Yeah, right. Spoiler: he does not get the gig, his life falls apart, he retires from being Deadpool, and then-

Well, before all that there's a joyously violent opening sequence in which Deadpool, having dug up the corpse of Logan, AKA Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) - who died in Logan, which was meant to be Jackman's swan song playing the character, and which fans were reassured was a death this film would respect - uses various parts of the corpse to kill dozens of disposable goons in increasingly gory fashion. Now this is what we came to see.

It probably wouldn't have been possible to make a film that was 100% smutty jokes, brutal (if clearly CGI) violence, deep cut in-jokes (there are a lot of as-seen-in-the-comics versions of Wolverine here) and fan service, but this particular creative team should have tried a little bit harder because that's the best stuff here. The plot is a garbled mess that's also a send-off of some of the Fox versions of Marvel characters (oh look, more cameos) while making Deadpool firmly part of the MCU even has it once again reminds audiences that having a multiverse means nothing really matters.

The story is basically kicked off by having the MCU, in the form of Time Variance Authority flunky Mr Paradox (Matthew Macfadyen), recruit Deadpool while tossing the rest of his universe in the trash. Needing a new Wolverine to keep his universe alive, Deadpool eventually finds a version that won't murder him on sight, just in time for the pair of them to be dumped in "The Void", a garbage dump dimension where the TVA puts surplus characters and hey, even more cameos. They also find chief villain and Professor X's secret sister Cassandra Nova (Emma Corrin), who is surprisingly good as a bad guy and probably deserves to turn up again in a film that has actual stakes.

What tiny emotional core all this has comes from the buddy act between Deadpool (annoying) and Wolverine (annoyed), which is basically the same dynamic as Deadpool and (mentioned but not seen) Cable in the last film, only here Wolverine gets his name in the title. It's a fun double act that would have been even better in a film that just focused on them; then again, now that they're both in the MCU - and as we're told multiple times, Marvel won't let anyone retire forever - nothing's ever off the table.

While it makes a kind of sense to have Deadpool push the whole multiverse thing to the point of absurdity and beyond, that doesn't really make this hang together as much of a movie. Whatever its flaws as a story, it's still an entertaining experience; the rapid-fire gags often hit the target (especially the ones about the actors and production), the action is solid if rarely memorable, and the cameos are... well, they're there for the fans, but they're a decent mix of the obvious and the in-joke. You could make a decent sketch show out of all this stuff: Deadpool Kills the Marvel Universe.

- Anthony Morris