Did you ever wonder who the artist was that painted all those classic movie posters? You see his work and it's immediately apparent that it's the same artist. He has created some of the most recognizable imagery in the history of film: Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Back to the Future, Harry Potter, The Goonies, E.T., Shawshank Redemption, and hundreds more. His name is Drew Struzan, and his paintings have probably been seen by more eyes than any other artist in history.
He's so good, he even makes bad movies look great.
I always knew his work, but never knew anything about the man himself. Until I ran across a nice little documentary about him on the DVD for the underrated horror filmThe Mist. I went ahead and uploaded the film to YouTube for prosperity purpose. Here is: Drew Struzan: An Appreciation of an Artist - Featuring appearances by filmmakers Frank Darabont and Guilermo Del Toro
For more information about the man, or if you've got an extra $50 to $100K laying around, you can purchase his original artwork at: DrewStruzan.com - Or check out his biography on: Wikipedia
It's incredible how far technology has come, I'm old enough to remember a time before VHS, when you had to watch whatever the few channels were playing. For this film, I laid in bed with my laptop and played it online via Netflix. Now there are sites like Hulu.com, where you can watch hundreds of movies and TV shows for free, instantly. The overwhelming amount of choices can drive me nuts sometimes, that's why I still prefer to watch movies "the old fashion way" on DVD on my TV. But knowing those choices are there, make me happy. This has absolutely nothing to do with The Orphanage, it was the first time I'd watched an entire film online, I wanted to see the film badly, my queue said "very long wait", they had it available online, so there I was. On to the review...
Over the last decade I've really started to appreciate foreign horror films, I think many countries filmmakers have a better grasp on how to actually scare you, than most American filmmakers. Japanese films in particular get to me. I remember the first time I saw Ringu aka The Ring, when that girl crawled out of the TV, my body nearly crawled out of my skin. The Spanish also seem to have a good idea of how to scare people, so when Guillermo del Toro presents, a highly praised ghost film, I'm there. Rare is the film that can actually scare me these days, and for some twisted reason I relish those movies. It brings me back to the sleepless nights of my youth, imagining all kinds of horrific things crawling through the dark to get me. It's a safe way to experience a taste of death.
The Orphanage, has some wonderfully creepy moments. For the average viewer, I think it'll work wonders. It gave me a couple of chills, but I was hoping for more. In all honesty, I wouldn't necessarily call this a horror film. It certainly has the right elements, and in a lesser filmmaker's hands that's all it would be, but the film is so beautifully crafted, that it comes across as more of a tragedy-drama.
Laura, played perfectly by actress Belén Rueda, is a young mother, who has ambitions to open a home for children with special needs. Along with her husband, they buy a large house near the sea, where she once lived as an orphan. On the day they open the house to the children and their families, her young son Simón goes missing. Before this happens, Simón had been talking too what his parents considered his imaginary friends.
After Simón disappears, the imaginary friends start to prove themselves real. They begin to reach out to Laura, asking her for help, and trying to show her the way back to her son. There's one particularly creepy kid, who wears a bag over his head, painted up to look like a face. He gets most of the chills in the film. But ultimately the ghost kids aren't that scary to Laura, her pain of losing Simón is far worse than anything they can dish out, and eventually she begins to understand what they're telling her.
The moment Laura stops being scared, it loses a lot of effect for the audience, if the characters aren't scared, then why should we be? That's not a detriment to the film. The Orphanage still has a few moments of terror, but it's Laura's soul-crushing pain that drives the film. There's a mystery surrounding the orphanage and what happened to the orphans, that she believes will lead her to her son, she doesn't care what poltergeists stand in her way.
It's an incredibly powerful film, beautifully crafted in every way; great performances, wonderful photography, and perfectly directed. Director Juan Antonio Bayona, proves to be an incredible talent. No matter the genre, I can't wait to see what he does next. - Grade: A
I saw this film in the theater back in 2004 and enjoyed it, but didn’t love it. Some of it was to ridiculous, the ending in particular, and it never seemed to fully gel to make a fully compelling film. I never thought much about it after that, though every once and a while I kept thinking I should revisit it, since it was now from the “visionary mind” of Guillermo del Toro, who was relatively unknown then. That urge caught up to me when I saw the trailer for Hellboy 2: Golden Army; I decided to watch the directors cut of the film, hoping that it might be a more rounded film.
And after watching it a second time, I feel like it was. I’m not sure if it was the added footage, which I honestly didn’t notice, it’s been too long, with too many movies in between for me to remember every scene; or if I was more open to the idea of a devilish-looking child from another dimension becoming the world’s savior. Either way, I bought into Hellboy more this time around. While it’s still nowhere near a perfect piece of comic book lore, the ending is still pretty ridiculous; I enjoyed it’s dark humor and fantastical trappings enough to mentally connect it with Pan's Labyrinth, via del Toro, which I do hold up as a nearly perfect film.
Ron Perlman is perfectly cast as Hellboy, he’s got a great sarcastic sense of humor, mixed with a slight bit of melancholy brought on by his being an outcast, but also an urge to perform his duty as a dispatcher of other-worldly things, because he’s the only one with the strength to face them. While his outside looks monster-ish, inside he’s human, thanks to his upbringing by Professor Bruttenholm, who found him at the site of a Nazi experiment with alternate dimensions. When the Nazi, who lead the experiment and was ultimately sucked into the void, returns to earth with the intention of recreating the world in his twisted image, it’s up to Hellboy and his team of misfits to save it.
Joining him are Abe Sapien, some kind of aqua-man, who doesn’t offer up much in the way of strength, but makes up for it in eternal-fishy genius; and Liz Sherman, played a bit too dour by Selma Blair, who has the power of flame. She’s also the love of Hellboy’s life, as the only girl to ever look at him without disgust. There’s a great scene where Hellboy escapes the lab, after being put in detention, to chase Liz into the world on a date with their new FBI keeper. Hellboy and the others chase down doggy-demons and undead-Nazi’s through a variety of subterranean locations, before Hellboy singly battles a colossus-demonic-cephalopod.
The thing that I liked most about Hellboy is his sarcastic sense of humor that he retains while everything is falling to pieces around him; he’s sort of Hell’s version of Han Solo, with the complaints disguised as quick wit, under the face of danger. The stony-red make-up that they’ve wrapped Ron Perlman in, grows on you through the course of the film, from absurd to a fully grown character by the end. Some of the computer effects are laughably bad, but for the most part, del Toro has created another wonderfully weird movie world. I’m now much more anxious to see the sequel, hopefully they retain the good parts, lose some of the bad, now that they have the slightly awkward origin story out of the way; and not make the mistake of going overboard on the bad guys, like so many comic book films unfortunately do; remain focused on Hellboy, he is the lovable star of the show.
This was my second favorite film of 2006. (After Children of Men.) I was watching it for the second time, and it remained an incredible film. Everything from top to bottom is just about perfect.
The cast is amazing, Ivana Baquero stands out as Ofelia, she brings us into this magical world and makes us believe in it. Sergi López is devastating as Captain Vidal, a horrible, but fully truthful villain. The make-up and effects are top-notch, not for one second did they take me out of the film. Guilermo del Toro has created a masterpiece for the ages; he is simply one of the top filmmakers working today.
I was completely entranced from the moment Ofelia and her pregnant mother enter the forest to stay with her new stepfather. This magical world that she's possible the princess of, takes her out of the horrible world that surrounds her. Are her adventures real or simply an imaginative escape? It's left up to the audience to decide.
I like that del Toro jumps back and forth from serious films like this one to the comic book films Hellboy and Blade II. It shows that he wants to have fun, but also likes to make some serious art. If you haven't seen it, I'd also highly recommend The Devil's Backbone, it's along the same lines. A young boy trapped in an orphanage during the Spanish Civil War, discovers a mystery that involves the ghost of a fellow orphan, it's dramatic, but retains that horror genre edge.
As a filmmaker, amateur critic and all around film buff I watch a lot of movies; about one a day on average. I enjoy all kinds of films, from the latest Hollywood trash, to obscure foreign cinema, to low-budget horror flicks, I watch them all. In 2001 I started keeping track of every single film, writing a little comment on how I felt about the film at that moment in time. I've now turned it into a blog, writing full reviews, including trailers and/or film clips for each.
at 4:06 PM Posted by Ross Williams
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