DCist’s highly subjective and hardly comprehensive guide to the most interesting movies playing around town in the coming week.
So we’re aware that none of you were planning on seeing any movies this week, as you’re saving your money for at least a half-dozen viewings of The Dark Knight next weekend. Or was that just me? OK, the fact is that with two comic book movies already gone by this summer (one excellent, one decidedly less so), and with Batman tickets going so fast that theaters are adding 3 a.m. and 6 a.m. screenings, many may just not have time in their schedules for yet another movie from the spandex and superpower set.
Which would be a shame. While the first installment in the Hellboy series was only a modest success, probably just barely grossing enough to greenlight the sequel, the film was a fanboy’s delight, perfectly capturing the dark and deadpan wit of the comics about a demon-spawned paranormal investigator with a stone fist and filed-down horns. It also didn’t hurt that Ron Perlman was pretty much born to play the role. For round two, it appears director Guillermo del Toro has pulled out a hefty bag of monster tricks, and has let his gothic nightmares run wild. If the freakish visions in the trailers look vaguely familiar, it’s mostly because the director has built a visual style that is now distinctively his own, combining modest amounts of CGI with impressive old school make-up and monster effects that give his dark and colorful creations a frighteningly realistic sheen. That, combined with a surprisingly lyrical storytelling style for someone so SFX-obsessed, should make for a flick that hopefully appeals to more than just the fanboy brigade.
View the trailer.
Opens tomorrow at theaters all over the area.
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Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains
You’ll forgive us repeating ourselves, since we already mentioned this film in the context of the AFI’s ’80s retrospective in last week’s column, but we really can’t stress how disappointed you should be in yourself if you miss this. Sure, it’ll finally be out on home video for the first time ever in the fall, but all that means is that this is one of the last opportunities to see a well-worn print of the film in a theater before just anyone can see a good quality copy of it whenever they please. You really can’t overestimate the social capital something like that might have a few years down the road over an ice-cold PBR at the Black Cat, so best make plans to see one of the two not-quite-midnight showings now. This film, about a teenage girl-punk band, is a whole lot of scrappy low-budget fun, a cultural touchstone for the riot grrl movement, and a surprisingly biting satire of the music industry’s and the media’s fogeyish attitudes about punk rock in the early ’80s.
No trailer, but here’s a clip of one of the musical performances from the film.
Friday and Saturday night at 11:15 p.m. at the AFI.
