Here

Do you want to go there for Here? 

I admit that joke is pretty clunky. But this film, which Robert Zemeckis and Eric Roth adapted from Richard McGuire's comic strip, and eventual graphic novel, is easy to describe. Let me prove it Here.

So, the gimmick Here is that we see time go by at a fixed vantage point. We see time progress - or regress - within pop-up comic book panels which are soon joined by the rest of the scene. At one point, we see a character in one panel fade-in to join a conversation already in progress. It's surprisingly good how these disconnected events blend together, especially when we see beyond the living room where most of the movie is set. 

What do we have Here? During the movie, we see the dinosaurs go extinct and the Ice Age, a Native American couple living their lives, and the estate of Benjamin Franklin's son, William (Daniel Betts). The main house is first owned by John & Pauline Harter (Gwilym Lee & Michelle Dockery), and then by Leo Beekman (David Fynn), the inventor of the La-Z Boy chair. For most of the movie, it is owned by two generations of the Young family, beginning with WWII vet Al (Paul Bettany) and his wife, Rose (Kelly Reilly). 

Their son, Richard (Tom Hanks), stays Here when his high-school sweetheart, Margaret (Robin Wright), gets pregnant. He's forced to give up his artistic dreams and follow Al as an insurance salesman. He promises Margaret a new house, even drawing up sketches and blueprints, but his financial worries squash those promises. This eventually drives them apart. Eventually.

Besides the pop-up panels, the film looks pretty good, overall. Hanks and Wright are aged throughout the film by a surprisingly convincing digital makeup job. It ought to be distracting, especially since the high-school aged Richard and Margaret don't look like high-schoolers. But it took me a short bit to see them as people, rather than visual effects. The same treatment might have been done to Bettany and Reilly, but that hasn't been publicized as much as the leads' digital makeup. The actual makeup used to age the stars past their actual ages is also well done. All the living room's arrangements, as visualized by production designer Ashley Lamont, are also appealing. 

Who do we have Here? Leo and his wife, Stella (Ophelia Lovibond), are quite fun to watch. By contrast, Al was initially hard to like due to his irritability; he even gets annoyed at his granddaughter at one point. It's still kind of funny when he can't comprehend how to work a camera beyond its plug. Thankfully, he mellows out with age and is quite sympathetic when he is eventually widowed. It's quite easy to sympathize with Richard and Margaret's troubles as they gradually grow apart. Before them, the Harters have their own issues, thanks to John's flyboy attitude, but his death - by the flu - is still tragic. 

I'll devote this paragraph to a few other names. The Native American couple (Joel Oulette & Dannie McCallum) live their lives without subtitles, but it's still easy to get invested in them. After the Youngs comes the Harris family - Devon, Helen and their son Justin (Nicholas Pinnock, Nikki Amuka-Bird & Cache Vanderpuye). They're pretty good people, but their housekeeper, Raquel (Anya Marco Harris), is barely there before she dies off-screen. Ted & Virginia (Tony Way & Jemima Rooper) get less screentime before he has a fatal heart attack in the living room. At least he dies laughing at a very funny morbid joke. Richard's siblings, meanwhile, are completely lost in the shuffle. 

It's a movie that will make you think about the course of your own life. As such, it can get emotionally overwhelming as you see all the stuff that happens Here. It's hard to keep it together when Alan Silvestri's melodramatic score accentuates the deaths, medical & marriage crises, births, and more. It's especially strong in the ending, where cinematographer Don Burgess finally lets the camera move. I'll leave it to you to see the circumstances of that ending for yourself. I won't blame you if you seek something lighter immediately after you watch it. I wonder if the graphic novel is any less overwhelming. 

Hellboy: The Crooked Man

Let's begin the month with Hellboy: The Crooked Man, the latest movie starring Mike Mignola's signature superhero. I fully intended to get this review out on Halloween, when it was thematically appropriate to do so. But a circuit breaker tripped at an unfortunate time, and by the time it was fixed, there wasn't time to do much else. Let's get to it now.

It's 1959. This time, Hellboy (now played by Jack Kesy) and his latest partner with the B.P.R.D., Bobbie Jo Song (Adeline Rudolph), are escorting a dangerous demonic spider by railway. When they reach the Appalachians, something wakes up the sedated spider, and in the ensuing struggle, our heroes are literally derailed. Surprisingly, the locals are welcoming to the literal hell spawn in their midst. Maybe it's because they have bigger supernatural problems to deal with.

Those problems mostly come from The Crooked Man (Martin Bassindale), an undead war profiteer from the Revolutionary War who now collects souls for the Devil. Tom Ferrell (Jefferson White), a local boy, was nearly led to The Crooked Man by the bad witch Effie Kolb (Leah McNamara), but he escaped. Our heroes meet him when he returns home to deal face his sins. What begins as a diversion ends personally for Hellboy when The Crooked Man taunts him with visions of his mother, another witch. 

Mignola, along with Christopher Golden and director Brian Taylor, adapted a three-issue story arc into the screenplay. It wastes little time as we immediately get the title card as soon as we get the movie proper. It then spends a lot of time building up atmosphere in the Appalachian woods, which were actually filmed in Bulgaria. Fortunately, cinematographer Ivan Vatsov shows us some fantastic scenery in those woods. It's not as excessively gruesome as the last Hellboy, but unlike that film, its gruesomeness rarely loses its luster. Its only real problem is that a few set pieces near the end are hard to follow, both in terms of their storyline and their editing.

Let's get to the villains. The Crooked Man, in his last moments, taunts Hellboy as a demon trying to be a man. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black! His demonic appearance, visualized with excellent makeup work, magnifies the malice in his every word. His hateful demeanor is further exemplified with a few creepy flashbacks. It's utterly cathartic when Hellboy finally blasts him in the end. Effie, meanwhile, is similarly over-the-top as she relishes her own evil. Her final fate, however, may seem a bit confusing at first.

This Hellboy is noticeably more subdued than his big lug forerunners. Nevertheless, his brand of sarcastic humor is still entertaining, while his self-loathing makes him pretty sympathetic. It's quite refreshing to see him tolerated by the Appalachians, while previous films kept him hidden from view. Bobbie Jo, a new character created for the film, spends the film learning magic, which makes for a mostly good character arc. Tom is fine, though he gets his best moment when he helps Hellboy defeat The Crooked Man. Cora Fisher (Hannah Margetson), another witch whom Tom once dated, is pretty decent, but she gets taken out early. The best supporting hero is Rev. Watts (Joseph Marcell), a blind preacher with some funny one-liners. It's quite compelling to see him resist The Crooked Man's temptation.

Overall, the other technicals are decent. The sound effects are perfectly disturbing, especially when they accentuate The Crooked Man's signature head-tilting. The demonic snake that kills Cora, as well as her death scene in general, are especially disturbing. The train crash and demonic spider are visualized with blatantly obvious CGI. The nightmare dimension where Hellboy meets his mother, Sarah (Carola Columbo), is visualized much better. The Crooked Man has a particularly creative death, but I won't spoil it here. What I will spoil is the opening, which hilariously juxtaposes an oldie with the spider's escape. The soundtrack is further complemented by Sven Faulconer's moody score.

It sometimes feels longer than 99-minutes, but it is certainly better than the last film. If you're looking for a spooktacular home matinee, then Hellboy: The Crooked Man is there and affordable. This isn't elaborate as the earlier films, not surprising since this cost $20 million, but it's got some creative scares for you. You can also find something else, too, but few films have a character this iconic. I think that this version of Hellboy stands just fine with his predecessors. See it soon if you want to disagree with me. It's time to get on with this month.