Purely Joyful Movie!

One of the best movies of the year! Incredible from the beginning to the end.

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

Blistering performances.

I find it very odd the way that this sequel wasted so much potential. They'd rounded up some of the beloved actors from the original Hard Core Logo, they had stunning, trippy scenes of lomography and super 8 film, they had all the uniquely Canadian scenery back again, the creepy "Eaglehoff Mansion" - and yet this sequel was a flop, going direct-to-video and hardly even making a splash in the Canadian cinematic industry. I personally think that its biggest flaw was introducing punk singer turned actress "Care Failure" (Caroline Kawa) as one of the leads.Why they did this I have absolutely no idea. She's a very overdramatic actress who is dull to watch, with lipstick smeared all around her mouth and a voice that can't even be heard in the film, aside from a lot of mumbling that might as well be gibberish. Supposedly possessed by the "spirit of Joe Dick" from the former film, Care spends most of her time swaying back-and-forth like she's stoned, screeching like a maniac and flipping the bird to the camera. While the rest of Care's Die Mannequin band does okay as actors, they're very minor and get little time on-screen compared to care. Oh, and did I mention that filmmaker Bruce MacDonald in the film has an obsession with her that borders on pedophilia and that involves drawing nude cartoons of her in his notebook? What the hell? Julian Richings is excellent as always as washed-up punk rocker Bucky Haight, but his character gets very little development in the sequel, and whereas he just seemed depressed and standoffish in the first Hard Core Logo, in the sequel he's downright pretentious, eccentric and mean-spirited for no apparent reason.Another flaw with Hard Core Logo 2 is that it often introduces bizarre elements without any explanation, expecting the audience to just interpret these things; for example, the intro features the narration of a man speaking in an Asian language, no subtitles involved, and this is never explained until the very end which makes for a lot of confusion. Whereas the first film was daring, funny and dark, its sequel is watered down and very pretentious, great if you're a hipster, I guess.All in all this is definitely worth seeing if you're a hardcore fan, but otherwise I'd just leave it alone. A lot of effort was obviously put into it but its pretentiousness as well as Care Failure in the spotlight only dragged it down from what it could have been.

I've never seen Hard Core Logo, and I rented this film from the itunes store due its good reviews and intriguing preview. I actually thought this film was phenomenal, but I should preface that with the fact that I thought it was a documentary! As in, it was all true/based on real facts. Now one could argue that perceiving the events to be real totally skewed my judgement of the film, but I would respond with 1. how incredible does the acting and directing have to be for me to actually be convinced that it was REAL LIFE, and 2. why does the fact that it is fictional make it inherently less interesting? Anyway, the directing was absolutely gorgeous, I greatly enjoyed the mixture of rock music/the supernatural/documentary filmmaking, and I think it was a truly gripping story. Not sure why many people on here seem to find it so lacklustre, but my advice would be, please watch it and judge for yourself! I think it was an amazingly well-crafted film and would definitely recommend it to anyone.

Being a huge Hard Core Logo fan, I eagerly anticipated this sequel as the start of Bruce McDonald's long-teased resurgence of the Hard Core Logo Universe. When I saw that HCL2 was to play at TIFF '11, I hastily bought my ticket and hoped to once again experience that real feeling that was the original film. What I got instead was one of those films that bears little resemblance to the original, with only one or two minor characters from the original (think of the American Pie direct-to-video sequels featuring Jim's Dad) in a dull, 'thinks-it's- better-than-it-is' package. Where HCL was a film about a the band of the same name, HCL2 is basically a mostly-fictional tale of Bruce McDonald's life since the original film. In this film Care Failure of Die Mannequin is the rock star, supposedly possessed by the spirit of Joe Dick, who should have been relegated to a cameo at the most. She just sits around smoking, mumbling, and trying to stay awake. She is lifeless and uninteresting. The same can be said for the entire film. The original had energy, passion, emotion. HCL2 is just a mess of scenes lacking any intrigue or drama. There is simply nothing engaging about the film. No plot, no musical set pieces, no one with any real acting skills. There are laughs in the film, though few and far between, and they, along with Julian Richings return as Bucky Haight, are the saving graces of HCL2. I would go as far as to say this film is a disgrace to the name Hard Core Logo. It seems Bruce was desperate to just make that sequel he had been itching for and didn't care if he had a quality script. HCL2 is weak and a waste of time.