Clash of the Titans. Oh yes.

"Release the kraken!"

Awesome, hope you have seen it too. Although it wouldn't be fair to judge and epic film on just a fantastic onscreen moment, the whole thing is actually really funny and pointless for 106 painful yet delightful minutes.

Honestly, I wasn't expecting anything original, but apart from the lack of script, the obvious mix between pirates + mummy + starwars + transformers + lordoftherings + godknowswhatelse simply blew me away, too obvious not to notice. But wait. The ending WAS original. Andromeda and Perseus don't end up together. They just can't, since they don't bloody know each other. They've been busy doing... like... other stuff. What a load of... whatever this film tries to be.

Of course he's not singing opera. He is... releasing the kraken!

Now that I think about it, if you had NOT seen the film and think it can somehow be spoiled (ha!), you really shouldn't have read the above comments.

Incidentally, the original 1981 trailer IS awesome too, especially the motion graphics. Enjoy it here.

"Clash. Of the Titans"

The Spirit

The film that wasn't such.


If you think you can make a film with:

• A comic-book artist whose graphic style may be something of a legend in his world but has no idea whatsoever about how to direct a film.

• A couple of rough guidelines scribbled on paper, too weak to even be called story plot.

• Dialogue lines that, for the most part, try to be clever but come off as ridiculous, absurd and embarrassing to everyone involved in the film and their families. Including yourself for watching it.

• A female cast dressed up as prostitutes and whose only requirement is too look sexually attractive so that the promotional posters work. Never mind their professional reputation (it's just Scarlett Johansson, Eva Mendes, Paz Vega ... who even knows them anyway?). And don't worry about the actual film, they'll just be given any line we can come up with in the set, nobody will notice.

• Yet another silly, empty character played by Samuel L. Jackson, who seems to be more resolved than ever to flush what is left of his believability down the toilet.

Well, if you do think you can make a film with all this, then you are wrong. They just tried in The Spirit and failed miserably. Whatever this by-product is, it can't even be considered a film.

I personally think that, as his tribute to his admired Will Eisner (the creator of the original character, who is probably turning in his grave since opening day), instead of creating this pointless sequence of events, Frank Miller should have been as humble as to politely say "no, thank you, get an actual director" to the offer. And same with the actors. I can't believe that they actually read the script and didn't just kill their respective agents for getting it in the first place.

Not even the visual aspect can be praised here. Yes, it replicates Miller's style faithfully, but we already saw that in Sin City (oh, no, parts 2 and 3 are coming!) and there was no need of repeating it if there was nothing else to add in any other sense. At no point is there any sign of efforts for making something that the audience might like.

All things considered, The Spirit may be the worst comic-book-based film ever. Apart from an insult to moviegoers.

The day the earth stood still

Still remaking. Willy-nilly too.

Keanu Reeeves (Matrix), still unable to move his neck after the strains of The Matrix, and an underused Jennifer Connelly (Hulk) get the leading roles in yet another unnecessary remake of an old sci-fi classic, just as it happened before with War of the worlds or Planet of the apes. Jaden Smith (The Pursuit of Happiness), Will Smith's son, is consistently annoying through the whole film and completes the protagonist triplet.

The moralistic message of the film is awkwardly obvious and hardly original, and the plot's surprises seldom surprise. Additionally, the poor choice of James Hong as supporting actor (after playing a blind old Chinese master in the comedy Balls of fury quite recently) doesn't help consider this a serious science-fiction proposal. Maybe the film would had worked if the producers had decided to make a comedy out of it?

Enjoyable visual effects, however, in this slow-paced version that adds nothing of value to the original story but will probably make a considerable figure in the bow office.

Hellboy 2: The golden army

Yep. I'll do it this way because I can.

Once more that beautiful word, “respect”, comes to mind. Respect to an author like Hellboy-creator Mike Mignola, who has earned the reverence of his peers and the interest of readers all over the world with his solid and original characters, and his very personal, apparently simple and yet so complex style and enjoyable stories. But also, respect to the audience, us. We don't go to the cinema to watch a bad film, we subconsciously expect the best and, if rightfully feel disappointed when we don't get it, we may even feel betrayed when we are lured to a film with false hopes and lies.

In the comic-book, Hellboy -despite his appearance- is quite a human character. His believability and sense of humour contrasts with the very essence of his stories, in which he often sees himself involved with mystery, darkness and monstrous creatures, while remaining someone we can identify with.

Director Guillermo del Toro and his producers take all this and, quite lightly, turns it all into a mixture of forms and colours where you can hardly identify which character is which. After the success of Pan's labyrinth, he, apparently backed up by Mignola himself, seems to think that the key to a good film is to pack it with his typical creatures, and so he creates an unrealistic (but not fantastic) and more often than not even ridiculous world populated by dozens of ugly monsters, supposedly ON creativity's sake. Characters' arcs are clumsy and vague, as are their personalities (so to say). Over and over again, we are forced to see visual and make-up effects which are so careless most of the time that one would think that not even the crew liked the film, not even during the making.

In other circumstances, this Hellboy 2 would only be a poor film. Being an adaptation, however, it denotes either a complete lack of interest or too lax a criteria when working with someone else's character. This is an offense to good, solid stories (like the original Hellboy's), and to the audience.

Let's be professional. If adapting, let's do serious research before embarking ourselves in this fascinating although dangerous journey of transformation. OR let's create our own characters and then, if we so wish, let's destroy (or rape!) them. But in this case, don't expect the audience to come back for Hellboy 3.

The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian

The poorest fantasy world even summoned.

Unfortunately, not all the fantasy stories that make it to the big screen are of as good quality as The Lord of the Rings' latest film adaptation. There already are 5 Harry Potter films (plus 3 more on the making). The Narnia series is, too, a good example of how far we can go (Disney, in this case) in our effort for trying to reproduce the key elements of a hit of this kind. Although the result may be financially rewarding, randomly placed bows, magic spells and sword fights don't make a good fantasy film. More importantly, this sort of production may make audiences lose faith in next ones, as they would end up not expecting much of them.

Visual effects in this second “Narnia” deserve special mention. There is quite an impressive sequence in a bridge towards the end of the film. Other than that, it is not often that what may be a combination of lack of imagination, poor criteria and/or scarce interest results in such a huge amount of pointless soulless ugly creatures (right, the pointless and soulless side of it has to do with scripting and acting, but all together makes a terrible combination!). Not even films like Robots (with its too many meaningless machine-like characters) leaves you with such a bad taste in our mouth. It is hard to believe that there is still something in the fantasy line that we can't do convincingly with 3D computer graphics. Or maybe there is, but it sure has to be something more complex and creative than anything we can see in this film.

According to the director himself, the film is meant to make us reflect upon the transition to adulthood, the sacrifices that you have to make and those things that you have to leave behind. But since very often actors just stand there, in front of the camera, hoping the melodramatic musical background will do all the work and the script only collaborates with a few scenes that require the film to stop completely while torrents of explanations are given... well.. it doesn't quite work. Other than that, nothing more to say about a script that doesn't say much itself anyway.

Luckily, despite upsetting experiences like this, Disney doesn't seem to be totally dead. There seems to be life after its divorce from Pixar, and the trailer of Blast (first 3D film on their own) looks quite good and serves as evidence of an encouraging future. There are Let's hope they'll follow this path instead of going through the gate to Narnia again..

The Happening

Whatever you do, don't insult the audience.

It is hard to imagine a film worse than The Happening.

The seemingly endless series of scenes itself seems to get lost in nonsenses. The script is over-dramatic and incoherent. The acting, painfully executed through some of the most senseless lines of the film history, is just terrible. Both main actors, Mark Wahlberg and Zooey Deschanel give very poor performances, sadly matching the quality of the story. We can almost feel the pain as we watch in astonishment, denying what our eyes see, and force ourselves to smile before a few scattered jokes. This is a film that doesn't move forward. Nearly every scene of the film is either unnecessary, or badly built, or both. Ridiculous moments and easy scare shots degrade the genre and insult the public over and over.

Before watching this film, after seeing the promising trailer, one would want to go out of his way to compliment M. Night Shyamalan, director of The Sixth Sense and would even be inclined to forgive his momentary slip-up with the lamentable The Village. But the truth is that, in The happening, the script is as weak as the directing work. And the actors' delivery is just one of many tokens of it.

Out of respect to filmmakers who love what they do and make films for intelligent audiences, films like this should, quite simply, not be made.