Devil’s DVD Disappointment: Conan the Barbarian

Surprisingly entertaining in the face of one-dimensional characters and a plot stuffed full of clichés, I enjoyed this new interpretation of Robert E. Howard’s sword-wielding warrior, though I was left rather unsatisfied by the whole experience.

The first twenty minutes or so, showcasing Conan’s “he was born on the battlefield” bloody entry into the violent world of Hyboria, and his life as a young Cimmerian, feature the closest thing the film comes to actual character development.

Drive

“If I drive for you, you give me a time and a place. I give you a five-minute window, anything happens in that five minutes and I’m yours no matter what.”

Every now and then, I am genuinely surprised by a movie. I try to avoid trailers as much as possible now because they tend to show all of the good scenes of a movie. I don’t really read movie reviews too much either for the same reasons. I don’t mind spoilers, but movie reviewers and critics love to give specifics for everything. Which inevitably ends up spoiling something. I might see a movie because of its director or star, but lately I’ve been seeing a lot of stuff at random. Drive is a movie that I knew almost nothing about before seeing it other than the fact that it starred the guy from The Notebook (Ryan Gosling) and looked like a throwback to the car chase movies I had seen as a kid (Bullit, The French Connection). Drive turns out to be the best surprise for me at the movies this year.

Conan The Barbarian 3D

Surprisingly entertaining in the face of one-dimensional characters and a plot stuffed full of clichés, I enjoyed this new interpretation of Robert E. Howard’s sword-wielding warrior, though I was left rather unsatisfied by the whole experience.

The first twenty minutes or so, showcasing Conan’s “he was born on the battlefield” bloody entry into the violent world of Hyboria, and his life as a young Cimmerian, feature the closest thing the film comes to actual character development.

Actor Spotlight: Quest for Fire

First you get the rocks, then you get the fire, then you get the women.  In the search for fire, we get some proto-man battles, as well as proto-man/proto-woman couplings, which, in both cases, are pretty disturbing.

Actor Spotlight: Hellboy

“Look Sammy, I’m not a very good shot……but the Samaritan here uses really big bullets.”

Back in 2000 when X-Men came out, comic book movies pretty much were very poor received at the box office.  X-Men started a new trend that continued with success for other comic franchises such as Spider-Man and 2004′s Hellboy. While the other two were well-known characters, Hellboy was not a household name and studios were obviously concerned of what kind of draw that the movie would receive.

From the mind of Mike Mignola, Guillermo del Toro brings what he calls “his dream project” to life with a little help from Ron Perlman.

Conjured by evil but raise by good, Hellboy follows a demon that spends his days fighting evil to preserve what’s good in the world.

Actor Spotlight: Cronos

Ron Perlman was in something of a career slump by 1993. His hit TV series Beauty and the Beast having been cancelled a few years before (and, by most accounts, the show was already in decline before that), Perlman was reduced to playing supporting roles in largely forgettable and/or made-for-cable productions.

Actor Spotlight: Season Of The Witch

This month’s Actor Spotlight is on the great Ron Perlman. Ron Perlman has had a very long career in both movies and tv. He’s also done a ton of voice over work for video games and cartoons. You may not recognize the face or the name sometimes, but I am pretty sure you’ve seen something Perlman’s been in.  From the old Beauty And The Beast tv show from the early 90′s to a memorable co-starring turn in Blade 2, the man has done it all. Heck, he’s even the voice of the narrator of the Fallout games. The man just doesn’t stop.