movies what i done seen recently

I've been on a Guillermo Del Toro kick, so I rewatched Blade II and Hellboy. Blade was just about as good as I'd remembered, with plenty of very comic-book styled action and gorgeous visuals, from the ruined Eastern European industrial and rave settings to the indulgently slick artifact-like technology of the vampire strike team. I was surprised to see how much of Blade II GDT brought with him to his TV series, The Strain. It was also surprising to see Red Dwarf's "Cat" and Defiance's Datak Tarr in the vampire strike team, and Norman Reedus on Blade's support team. I had forgotten or perhaps never noticed how much CG is used during some of the fight scenes -- not the exploding bodies, of course, but the leaping about and vampire-kung-fu scenes have some particularly elegant-for-its-time transitions to-and-from live action actors. This turned out to be true for Hellboy as well.

Everly was a 99¢ special, so I took a chance on it. In general, I don't think Salma Hayek is often hired for her acting skills as much as her figure. She wasn't bad in this, which surprised me. On the other hand, the script was just frustratingly bad. It felt like someone wanted to write a more comic book version of Kill Bill, but include a nearly single stage, theatrical set in which to show it. Plus add a little grit and maybe some torture porn. I can't stand the latter. Just so much stuff didn't make internally consistent sense. I'm fine with suspension of belief to just about any degree, but I can't stand when the Reality Gauge needle is shoved around like a bullied victim in a school yard.

Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation was great popcorn fun, and that's about it. M:I 3 and Ghost Protocol are both movies which made an impression. I could tell you about all kinds of scenes in this one, but the overall plot was less satisfying and coherent than JJ's previous outings.