Hellboy II

Well, I guess this summer the comic book movies are kicking things up a notch.

Guillermo del Toro takes all that has gone before in his movies and tweaks them to 11 for "Hellboy II" (officially: Hellboy II: The Golden Army).

This is the first superhero film where, more than once, I had no idea what was around the corner. It was an interesting experience to be surprised by a movie at my age.

I once had a conversation with a sports nut who didn't like movies; he always fell asleep. I am missing the sports gene entirely, so I thought given our positions at the far ends of the bell curve, we might have some insights for each other. I don't know if he took away anything from me, but what he told me finally helped make the allure of sports understandable. He said (and I paraphrase), "Movies bore me because I always know what's going to happen. In sports, you never know what's going to happen, so there's real suspense." Well heck, I thought, he's right.

I still don't like sports. Even though you don't know that someone is going to get a goal, I am still underwhelmed when someone does.

Btw, what I told him is that, yes, 90% of the time, you can guess how it will end, but you often don't know how the journey will unfold prior to that point.

That's Hellboy II in spades. I thought it was a great flick and my second favorite of the summer season thus far.

This whole summer has been packed with pretty good movies, I've noticed. I have the biggest backlog of "must see on DVD" I've had in a while.

I'm also resurrecting my "Star Wars effect" theory. It's simple: every summer there's a Star Wars movie released, it's a banner year for good movies. I officially pronounced it dead here, but have reconsidered in hindsight as the movies that year have proven to have legs. This year we have Star Wars: The Clone Wars, which I'm not sure I'll see in the theatre, but maybe we have it to thank for the plethora of pictures with panache.