Late Summer Movies - YOU Magazine, The News International

Entertainment

Late summer movies

Compiled by
Waqas Hasan Sharif

DATED: [26TH-AUGUST-2008]

Guillermo Del Toro's Hellboy II has certainly the right ingredients to be a successful and totally satisfying summer release: it's an entertaining, visually stunning romp busy with fantastic ideas and well-rounded characters that more than compensate for the flimsy comic book storyline.

Hellboy's background is explored during the opening reel and the movie picks up from there. This movie is a ton of fun, yet it also makes significant artistic strides over the original. Everything about Hellboy II looks better: the set design, the make-up, the special effects and, of course, the creatures. Set in an underground world, Hellboy and crew fight the mechanical army amid giant cogs and wheels they have to avoid getting crushed in. Despite the lightweight, comic book plot, Del Toro's script is well-written and gives his characters much deserved emotional gravitas which is explored in several smaller subplots. Relationships, fatherhood, alienation -among other themes - are tackled to a satisfying degree without the film losing its playful and idiosyncratic appeal.

Hellboy II is a film entirely of this time that speaks in timeless images of Catholic grotesquerie and pre-Christian iconography, alive in the fire of invention and flights of fancy.

The film will be shown @ Cineplex cinema soon.

Directed by The Full Monty's Peter Cattaneo, The Rocker unspools the teased-hair tale of one Robert ''Fish'' Fishman (Wilson), who 20 years earlier was unceremoniously booted from a metal band shortly before they became platinum-selling monsters of rock. Since then, he's brooded, plotted revenge, and honed his high-hat chops. So when his high-school-age nephew's emo band, A.D.D., is looking for a new drummer, they give Fish a second shot at rock immortality. Needless to say, bittersweet life lessons are learned along the way. The Rocker isn't really about rock 'n' roll. It's more about middle-aged wish fulfilment. Many scenes in the film are very funny, such as one involving Demitri Martin as a committed music video director.

In a way, The Rocker seems like a vehicle for musical wunderkind Teddy Geiger, who is apparently big with the kids. Peter brings a light touch to the material but The Rocker is clearly indebted to the blueprint laid out by Almost Famous.

Directed by Andrew Fleming, Hamlet 2 mines the rich comedy in failure. The film employs an act structure with interesting titles and a theatrically inflated voiceover to narrate the story of Dana Marschz (Steve Coogan), a failed actor-turned-high-school drama teacher in Tucson, Arizona, who is fighting to save his department and his pride.

The film is a 'no holds barred' comedy that isn't afraid to be naughty. The actual play itself shows Hamlet traveling in a time machine meeting famous characters like Einstein and even Jesus, played by Dana himself. The songs are really funny. The movie has a great opening too, starting with fake commercials that Dana starred in before he was a teacher.

Andrew Fleming's direction is pretty bland and straight forward. Not bad, just ordinary. The script is all right, but the performances are what make this better than your average comedy. This is Steve Coogan's movie. He is 90% of why this movie works.