Palfrey's life

I've just been to see this film, and I will talk about it in a second, but first I'd like to mention something important about my whole film-going experience tonight - I was able to do all the "interact with cinema staff" things in Dutch! Yay me! Ok, it's things like "Een kaartje voor Van Helsing, alstubleeft" and the ordering of a Sprite in the interval (which almost confused the staff with my pronounciation, but no dropping into English :-), so it's not exactly rocket science, but it's a very good start. That, and I was able to pick holes in the subtitles (things like "there's no-one else here" being translated into "alleen wij" ("we're alone")), which is pretty cool.

K, everything else cut, 'cause I might spoil a few bits (but it's not that good a film). As my brother might say "it's a popcorn film". It had pretty much everything a good film of that type might need - vast explosions, wonderful SFX budget, overuse of hyper/neo-gothic architecture, steampunk/mystical mixups (hand-cranked gatling guns....), really bad accents, campy acting, silly weaponry, etc. I'm still waiting for a postmodern Dr Frankenstein (sort of like this, but more "Oh darn. Torch-wielding villagers. Really puts a crimp in your day"), but the monster going "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death" and being pretty smart is a nice touch.

However, the whole thing left me something missing. Thought about it on the way back, and concluded that I didn't really give a crap about the characters (ok, I liked the friar, despite his awful running (well more stumbling) joke). A good example here is "Armageddon". I love that film. The first time I saw it, there's one scene that almost made me cry. It almost still does. Because I gave a crap about the characters. They were fun, and engaging (heck, I love Steve Buscemi's quote of "Why do I do this? Three reasons: The pay is good, the scenery changes, and they let me use explosives."), and so they had me. Contrast "Deep Impact". Didn't care about the characters, so I didn't like the film. Wipe out the whole human race? Fine by me if they're like the people in this film....

The exposition stuff with fragments of Gabriel's past was nice, but I'm betting "left hand of god" is about the same level of 1-dimensional character as "hero with missing memories and supernatural abilties fights evil", and they never really explored it anyways.