Hellboy

Entertaining enough (I managed to stay awake through it this time) but nothing outstanding. Some nice visual touches (the pastiches of classic Fantastic Four covers pressed all the right geek buttons) but I think this is my least favourite of Del Torro's films. Blade 2 is a better comic book film. And the other are just plain better.

IMDB

Million Dolar Baby

Really really didn't deserve to win Oscars. A really mediocre film, the first half is competent sports movie then tat ends and there's a whole other film that thinks it's dealing with difficult moral questions but is about as black and white as it gets. In fact throughout the film eschews any subtleties or shades of grey. That's not to say it's terrible, Clint Eastwood is clearly a solid director, solid and unadventurous a kind of meat and two veg safe pair of hands that the studios love c.f. Ron Howard. And Hilary Swank earns her money, but the whole affair is so tiresomely worthy in a very Hollywood way.

I've noticed recently I've been saying Hollywood as if that's a bad thing, Hollywood is obviously where the vast majority of my favourite films get made, or at least get funded and it annoys me when people look down on American films as somehow inherently inferior to e.g. French cinema (esp. as French cinema is so often so bad). So youknow, just saying when I say Hollywood it's not a total diss in fact it's normally that Hollywood films can be more average than other films. Probably because there's so many of them so they kind of define the average. Anyway, enough.

IMDB