roidessinges

Amazingly effective for a movie based on a comic book. There's an amazing depth to the characterization of Hellboy, no doubt in large part due to the superb talents of Ron Perlman in the lead role, and having John Hurt to play his adoptive father didn't hurt either. The story resonates on many levels, the love angle works brilliantly - the very passably mainstream girl he's in love with has her own issues to deal with.

AND the makeup and special effects are awesome, it really makes me wish I'd gone to see it on a big screen. I've been a huge stop motion fan since I was a kid, and the creature animation thoroughly ROCKS.

As with most prison movies, the setting is merely a vehicle for telling the story. Prison ain't like that; talking to a couple cons and ex-cons, or even, god forbid, doing a little research from printed material, would really go a long way.

That said, if this movie wasn't so poorly acted and mis-cast, this might have been more watchable, because the plot is interesting enough, exploring male roles and male sexuality. The problem is in the acting - it's dreadful. And the mis-casting of the antagonist - it is impossible to suspend disbelief enough believe he's a big bad sexual predator who could possibly over-power the protagonist, who is bulkier, more "butch", and more physically imposing.

I suspect the main culprit for these flaws is simply the era. I'm sure in 1971 it was impossible to find more qualified actors who would touch this kind of subject matter with a ten foot pole, for fear of torpedoing their careers. Times have certainly changed since then.

A better prison fable about male sexuality and male relationships is the HBO series OZ.

We've come a long way, baby.

An extremely quirky film that you won't mind watching with the kids. Not full of sappy platitudes, this strange little tale of a pig that wants to be a sheep dog is extremely effective in it's message without hitting you in the head with it. No doubt because it wasn't made in Hollywood... we Americans have never been good at telling children's stories without being condescending and heavy-handed with the moral message.

The story takes place in some fairy tale amalgam of all the rural cultures of the English-speaking world - Sometimes it seems like England, other times Kansas, Australia, New Zealand, it's really never anywhere particular. The acting is superb, the animatronics are unrecognizable as such, and James Cromwell is superb as the taciturn farmer willing to give the little pig a chance.