The Best:
THE SPECIALS (2000)
Okay, I’ll admit, this one might be cheating since there’s never really been a Specials comic book...but there’s no question Craig Mazin’s criminally underseen comedy is, indeed, a comic book classic. The film (starring national treasure Thomas Haden Church as The Strobe, Judy Greer as best-Goth-girlfriend-ever Deadly Girl and Rob Lowe’s finest hour and a half as The Weevil) hit theaters for about five minutes in L.A. before sinking into undeserved obscurity, and I only saw it because The New Times and the L.A. Weekly raved about it. They were both right for once, and so now I'm spreading the love in case you ever spot this in a video store (or trust me enough to add it to your Netflix queue). The premise is similar to Mystery Men (if, as one IMDb commenter quipped, Mystery Men had been directed by Eric Rohmer) -- i.e., an ensemble comedy about a team of low-rent superheroes -- but The Specials is less a genre parody than a look at the group dynamics of co-workers who only HAPPEN to be superheroes (although for most of the movie, they could just as easily be doctors, musicians or real estate salesmen). Kitchen-sink indie filmmaking at its best, the movie features sharp, funny dialogue, about 90 seconds of special effects and a terrible coming attractions trailer that makes it look like a “wacky” Hollywood yuk-fest instead of the endearingly goofy gem that it really is...which is why I included the (admittedly censored) scene above instead.
SIN CITY (2005)
All green screens and no sets make Robert Rodriguez’s Sin City a deliriously hyper-stylized cinematic interpretation of Frank Miller's celebrated graphic novel series. Generating virtually every non-human element of his film noir with a computer, Rodriguez creates an adaptation nearly identical, in visual terms, to its source material. Fidelity, however, only gets one so far. And what makes the sumptuously black-and-white Sin City truly thrum with grungy, brutal life is not only its all-star cast’s fittingly outrageous, archetypes-on-mescaline performances (notably those by Rosario Dawson and Benicio Del Toro) and Rodriguez’s expert reproduction of Miller’s hand-drawn comic panels, but the director’s approximation of the brisk movement implied by those illustrations. Rodriguez brings Miller’s images to life with dynamic verve, a feat almost as thrilling as the performance of Mickey Rourke as battle-scarred tough guy Marv, a granite bulldozer whom the actor – even under pounds of facial prosthetics – embodies with a burning-red heart and soul.
BLADE 2 (2002)
After several stuttering attempts to follow DC in leasing its characters to the big screen, Marvel Comics had its first real success with the 1998 Blade, a horror-action hybrid based on one of the lesser supporting characters from its back pages: Blade, the African-American vampire hunter who himself possesses the advantages of vampirism (super strength, extended lifespan) and none of the disadvantages (can withstand sunlight, is not Eurotrashy), was born in the pages of Tomb of Dracula during the blaxploitation movie era. (Artist Gene Colan based his look partly on that of Jim Brown.) The first Blade movie, directed by Stephen Norrington (The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen) and written by David S. Goyer, was unapologetic cheeseball fun, with a choice selection of bits from the comic and energetic, unhinged performances by Wesley Snipes in the title role and Stephen Dorff at his man-you-love-to-hate best as the villainous Deacon Frost. The sequel, though, is real gourmet trash, with the sensationally gifted director Guillermo del Toro brought in to take Goyer's nonsense about warring vampire tribes, give it a high polish, and set it all to a thumping hip-hop-meets-electronica score. The result is one of the most improbably gorgeous mindless thrill rides of the last several years, though the franchise keepers erred badly in permitting Goyer to not only write but direct the subsequent Blade Trinity, which plowed into a wall with all hands lost.
HELLBOY (2004)
Coming off Blade 2, Guillermo del Toro turned down the chance to get himself an annuity by taking over the Harry Potter franchise in favor of hatching a movie around writer-artist Mike Mignola's unlikely hero -- a gargoyle-shaped paranormal investigator with a back story related to World War II who operates in an environment that calls up memories of H. P. Lovecraft's squishy horror fantasies. Del Toro captures the look and feel of Hellboy's world to a degree that marks the film as clearly a labor of love, and Ron Perlman, who plays the title character, reaches through the layers of makeup to give the enterprise some soul. He's more skittishly adolescent than the gruff loner of the comics, which pays off major comic dividends in the scenes involving the poor red bastard's crush on a moody firestarter played by Selma Blair: she'd make King Kong look down and shuffle his feet awkwardly.
CONAN THE BARBARIAN (1982)
Though often dismissed as merely an early, cheesy vehicle for then-fledgling actor Arnold Schwarzenegger, John Milius’ swords-and-sandals saga Conan the Barbarian is pure mythic pulp, its epic action and fantasy proving faithful to the spirit of Robert E. Howard’s violent legends. Milius’ macho persona forcefully informs this testosterone-laced Conan tale, in which an orphaned child becomes a slave, then becomes a warrior, and then finally a king, a path paved with equal measures of bloodshed, sly humor and pseudo-profound pronouncements about honor and glory. Still something of an amateurish actor, the muscle-bound Schwarzenegger is nonetheless an ideal Conan, and despite the proceedings’ one-dimensionality, the director’s majestic widescreen compositions lend the film a striking classicism. It’s the opening centerpiece, however, that’s truly unforgettable, in which Milius’ camera lingers, for what seems like an eternity, on the cold, motionless face of Thulsa Doom (James Earl Jones) just before the evil warlord beheads Conan’s mother in front of the lad’s eyes.
Click Here For Part One, Two, Four, Five & Six
Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Nick Schager, Phil Nugent