Transsiberian, Wanted, Hellboy II: The Golden Army, Southland Tales, & District 9

Transsiberian is by Brad Anderson, director of Happy Accidents and Next Stop Wonderland, two interesting if flawed romantic comedies. This one is decidedly not a romantic comedy, but a story of two missionaries who get more than they bargained for when they meet two youngsters on the Transsiberian Railroad. Ben Kingsley does a fine job in the role of a cop who meets up with the couple. And Emily Mortimer and Woody Harrelson are also quite good, and Thomas Kretschmann just needs to be the first choice for creepy Eastern Europeans. He plays them so well. I wasn't particularly thrilled with the torture scene. Too realistic for me.

Wanted is a film that makes me pissed. Short of its utter ridiculousness, I can accept it existing, but only for Morgan Freeman cursing. James McAvoy should keep his normal accent, not be an American. Thomas Kretschmann is utterly wasted, not being an Eastern European badass. Screw you film.

Hellboy II: The Golden Army is also kinda frustrating, but less so. Hellboy was a fun film, far better than it should have been, as Guillermo del Toro is capable of raising up bad material to a good film. Unfortunately for this film, I just didn't care all that much about it. I know the first one made money, but I don't think this sequel was really needed. I hope that the ending suggests that they're not going to make a third. Otherwise

Southland Tales is a terrible film that makes me retroactively judge Donnie Darko much more harshly. Either Richard Kelly is completely messing with everyone or he is completely full of himself and thinks he's infallible. But he's very fallible. The Rock actually isn't too bad in it, but everyone else is either completely wasted or just horribly miscast. Basically, there's nothing at all to recommend it to anyone. Lots of good actors in it, but no one doing anything remotely worthwhile. So, Richard Kelly, you have horribly failed. The satire falls flat, and I think I am bothered much more by movies that set up an alternate "present" that are completely unrealistic.

District 9, on the other hand, is also set in the "present", but sets up an alternate timeline that makes sense. If aliens had arrived in Johannesburg, it is realistic that we might have a Blackwater-esque group that basically controls the aliens. And the film is quite a bit of fun, full of exploding bodies that Peter Jackson clearly loved. I can see him watching this film and saying, "This is the kind of movie I wish I had made." Since he gave Blomkamp $30 million to make the film, it's great that they're of similar interests. I liked the subtext about apartheid and human bodies rebelling and learning through being exposed to new technologies, along with the mostly anti-military and anti-mercenary aspects of it. My biggest problem, and something that really bothered me once I noticed it happening more and more, was that the film was set up to be a semi-documentary with footage from a camera crew filming but eventually drops that almost entirely, slowly but surely, really bothered me. First person camerawork generally doesn't work, because my first reaction to crazy stuff would not be to keep filming. This is a serious problem in other films, but here it just bothered me because of the original setup of the camera crew.