Double Feature Redux

I'm still putting pictures together from our trip, so that post will have to wait. We did go to the drive-in last night to get start getting caught up on what we'd missed, so let's start there.

Heckboy II: The Golden Army. Yes, we call him Heckboy around Sera. No need getting her vocabulary to that level just yet. The term comes from the special features of the Atlantis DVD, in which the producers pay homage to the art and style of Mike Mignola, creator of Hellboy. They jokingly say they have to call him "Heckboy" because they are working in a Disney studio. Anyway, Hellboy II was pretty good. They pick up where the last one left off, with Hellboy and Liz Sherman together as a couple, and Abe Sapien hanging around the old BPRD headquarters waiting to bump back against those things that go bump in the night.

With the peace between the paranormal and humanity threatened, Hellboy and his amazing friends have to choose sides and prevent the Golden Army from being used to wipe out humankind. Unfortunately, there was only one real surprise in the movie, and it's given away fairly early. I won't spoil it for you, but it really wasn't important to the plot, and it won't become important unless there are more Hellboy movies. I hope there will be. I just thought this one was fairly standard as far as comic book adventure movies go. Maybe there are just too many to make a fair assessment.

Wanted

Okay, this one was just weak. Poor account manager/schlub Wesley Gibson finds out that he can shoot the wings off of a fly and joins an assassin's club to get revenge on the man who killed his father. Yawn. He learns how to shoot bullets so that they can bend around things like a curveball. Uh, okay. It's not mind over matter, but just the way they twist the gun as it goes off, like the snap of the wrist providing enough spin across the seams of a baseball? I think a bullet has a bit more spin than you can overcome with the flick of the wrist, but whatever. An hour and half later you wind up with the "everything you have been told is a lie" cliche and you have Wanted in a nutshell. This one was just plain bad. I liked the comic, hated the movie.