Last movie watched...

[pictsy]

During a four day weekend of cuddles in bed I saw three films:

A Fantastic Fear of Everything.  Somewhat quirky Simon Pegg movie that unfairly got mixed reviews, perhaps for not being Shaun of the Dead or some such silly nonsense.  I enjoyed this film the first time I saw it and I enjoyed it the second time as well.

Symbol.  An almost surreal Japanese film about a man in stuck in an empty white room and an ageing Mexican wrestler preparing for a dangerous fight.  This was great and at one point I laughed so hard I nearly wet myself.

The Raid.  Actually really enjoyed it.  The choreography was phenomenal.  I was worried I'd just be comparing it to Dredd all the time, but I completely forget about Dredd pretty quickly.  The two films are very different kettles of fish.  My bed companion thought that one of the fight scenes would replace the fight in Oldboy as my favourite cinematic fight and as good as it was it didn't.  Good film though.

[radiator]

I'd also say, though I thought the science fiction element of World's End was clever and well-realised, to me the genre trappings felt far less appropriate in the context of a slightly depressing film about midlife crisis and addiction than in the knockabout, 20-something slacker vibe of Spaced and Shaun, to the point where I was kind of enjoying WE more before the aliens turned up, when it was just being a bittersweet dramedy about a few friends reuniting.

[Theblazeuk]

I think Paul deserves to be ranked alongside the Cornetto Trilogy, Attack the Block is really it's own thing. Even if it does share a writer and Nick Frost with Hot Fuzz, as mentioned it has a tightness to proceedings that sets it apart.

I think I may be annoying my coworkers but I had to put this on and turn the headphones up to 11...

I was kind of enjoying WE more before the aliens turned up, when it was just being a bittersweet dramedy about a few friends reuniting

Mostly of the same feeling as much as I liked seeing Pierce Brosnan get his head knocked off.

[Keef Monkey]

Think you might have nailed why Hot Fuzz wasn't quite as satisfying for me and I can see where you're coming from with TWE. The sci-fi elements certainly weren't what resonated with me and pulled me in, it was the whole lost youth angle. That sort of melancholic longing to have those great nights of your youth again really struck a chord I guess, I thought it was really well done.

Saying that though, I thought the sci-fi elements were a great foil for that, and that sense when you go back to your home town and everything's the same but different and a bit alien was a really smart fit for the body snatchers vibe. I particularly liked the homogenization of the pubs, and a lot of the energy and some of the biggest laughs in the latter/sci-fi half of the film (for me) came from the fact that they were trying to deal with it while being increasingly inebriated. It just made for such a ridiculous situation, and I liked that all the little squabbles and dramas you would have in a straight drama comedy were still going on, but while hammered and fighting off aliens.

It worked for me, and I think the collision of the two genres was great, although still not as perfect as Shaun. You're totally right that Shaun's strength is that it works in both worlds, but I think if you took out the mid-life dramedy from TWE the sci-fi film that's left over wouldn't necessarily be any cop. One element is there to play off and strengthen the other I guess, rather than them both being as strong as each other maybe?

I dunno, hard to put my finger on it! One thing I do know is I don't remember being particularly emotionally invested in Hot Fuzz, whereas the other 2 films spoke to me a bit more and had moments where the drama side of it hit me pretty hard and successfully. I definitely have a big place in my heart for all 3 of them (and thanks to Tesco selling a nifty trilogy boxset I'll be revisiting them all soon)!

[radiator]

Curiously it's Hot Fuzz that I rewatch the most often, but that's largely due to Shaun being omnipresent/unavoidable for the few years it came out - everyone I knew was obsessed with it and I got a little burned out on it. I still think it's the best of the three as a film, but as with something like Pulp Fiction it needs to rest for a few years before I could properly sit down and watch it again.

I think Paul deserves to be ranked alongside the Cornetto Trilogy, Attack the Block is really it's own thing. Even if it does share a writer and Nick Frost with Hot Fuzz, as mentioned it has a tightness to proceedings that sets it apart.

I think I may be annoying my coworkers but I had to put this on and turn the headphones up to 11...

I was kind of enjoying WE more before the aliens turned up, when it was just being a bittersweet dramedy about a few friends reuniting

Mostly of the same feeling as much as I liked seeing Pierce Brosnan get his head knocked off.

I see what you're getting at, I think people were expecting Attack the Block to be more of an outrageous comedy, but it's really more of a genre piece along the lines of The Warriors or Assault on Precinct 13 with a few funny lines of dialogue. The comedy feels more natural than in the Cornetto trilogy and it's more about how the characters react to the situation, which is taken relatively seriously. They don't go for the 'big' laughs.

I didn't care for Paul or Scott Pilgrim. Both felt very undercooked narratively and neither really worked as comedy or genre piece imo. Both two stars from me, and though I have little desire to rewatch either I'd say SP is probably the better film overall thanks to some great visuals.

Curious to see Cuban Fury - seems like it could be quite a sweet little movie. Hope it's better than Run Fatboy Run at least...

[Theblazeuk]

Scott Pilgrim was so much fun, much preferred it to the book. Everything was a bit vapid to begin with and Scott was slightly less of a prick in the film due to time constraints.

Paul was the American version of the Cornetto flavour; appropriately this would be called the Good Humor Cone. Funny but far more conventional.

[Ghost MacRoth]

R.I.P.D.

Not awful, but nothing special.  Couldn't help but think I was watching 'Men In Black' with corpses rather than aliens.  The producers/director seem aware of this similarity, and do nowt to counter it to my mind.  Enjoyable nonsense, but not something I'd keep on the film shelf.

[CrazyFoxMachine]

Pirates in an Adventure With Scientists

With much thanks to Mabs for netting it for milady we watched it - me for the first time - it was anachro-tastic and I loved the gleeful fannying-about with historical fact (of course in real life Darwin was PART of that grim "endangered species dining club" :S). The painting of Victoria as the villain is fantastically mad and the soundtrack (Tenpole Tudor and Flight of the Concords :O) is brilliant. The central cast of characters is strong but there's a lingering sense that some things hadn't been properly resolved - making you wonder where the books go and whether or not Aardman will go back to it (although with the huge gorgeous sets and long production time I could see why they wouldn't). Having just recently seen Were-Rabbit it's astonishing how much the animation has progressed as well - the sets were consistently extraordinary and I could happily live in those models forever. Also Hugh Grant sounded NOTHING LIKE HUGH GRANT here - very odd I'm normally quite good at spotting voices.

Overall - a grand and enjoyable romp that looks utterly breathtaking.

[CrazyFoxMachine]

Seven Psychopaths

Absurdly engaging and deeply funny with a fantastic cast - although not nearly as clever as it thinks it is. A lot of the many threads are left wafting in the breeze and afterwards instead of numbed with awe you are left slightly irritated that such a self-aware film would dare end so boringly. There are many strong moments throughout though and despite the marmite reactions I feel I lean towards the positive.

[Ghost MacRoth]

The Colony

Meh.  Nice concept (if a tad stolen from fallout, with the simple addition of winter), but relatively poor execution throughout.  Very inconsistent, nice shots and sequences followed by awful ones.  Like for example,[spoiler] everything is under 20 feet of snow, except a copter wreck they find, and a bridge, with no friggin' snow on it at all.  Hell I know weather is unpredictable,[/spoiler] but this just jars, as it's sloppy filmmaking. As is the over made up female lead.  Ok, we have no soil and shit, but she can still source make up?  Overall a very average film, with really shit action sequences.

[I, Cosh]

I'm halfheartedly trying to see as many of this year's best picture nominees as I can stomach and Nebraska takes the tally to three. It starts slow and not terribly promisingly . The pace doesn't change much but the film improves markedly as it hits the road and opens into an engaging exploration of communication between generations, especially in families. There's good stuff about the lives – past and present – of the elderly, some good laughs and one scene sure to strike a chord with anyone who has ever met more than one member of my father's family at the same time.

Bruce Dern and Stacey Keach have been getting a lot of press, for good reason, but it's June Squibb as Dern's wife who gets the best lines and steals every scene she's in. Ultimately, it's let down a bit by an unnecessarily schmaltzy ending to hammer home the point about reconciliation, but you can't have everything.

[ThryllSeekyr]

Wind Chill will be on the cable television I'm watching in another 3 hours and 50 minutes. It's always been a eerily scary movie any-time I had watched it previously. Even when I know what's about to happen.

[deadman1971]

Riddick
It was good, i was put off at first because of the trailer, look terrible due to the cgi. But sat and watched it with my friend and really enjoyed it, just as good as the other 2, best bit, Katie Sackoff smacking the crap put of a guy, o and her boobies lol

[Frank]

I'm halfheartedly trying to see as many of this year's best picture nominees as I can stomach

I've enjoyed almost everything else Alexander Payne's done, so Nebraska's a stick-on. I'm trying to see some of the films on the Oscar shortlist too, since there are a few that actually seem like the kind of things I'd be interested in anyway, for a change. See my next post.

[Frank]

This afternoon's entertainment was The Wolf of Wall Street, which was a laugh riot from start to finish. It's basically The Hangover - the comedy coming from watching a bunch of unlikable people getting off their faces, and there's even a weird fat one with curly hair - except it's actually funny. The set pieces keep getting more ludicrous and even funnier as the film builds towards its denouement, with the only false note being what appears to be an attempt to demonstrate the emotional toll of [spoiler]the end of Belfort's marriage[/spoiler], and the dreaded moment in any film where the characters learn something about themselves and grow as a result.

Happily, that turns out only to be a demonstration of the characters' solipsism and their inability to understand why what they've done is problematic. If the film had a message - and thankfully, it doesn't - it would be that as long as the money keeps rolling in nobody really cares that it's covered in shit. Every single review I've read says the running time is a problem, but I only felt it drag during the scene mentioned above, where it's impossible to care about the characters screaming at each other when they're amoral pricks who are only interested in themselves.

The film does probably the best job I've seen of portraying laughably stupid and self serving characters with absolutely no insight into why their behaviour is unacceptable since the above mentioned Alexander Payne's Election. Every time you worry it's going to start earnestly explaining the dull mechanics of financial fraud or patronising you by focusing on the human wreckage Belfort leaves in his wake, it cannily cuts that short, explaining that - like the characters - you wouldn't care when there's the promise of so much dazzling excess just round the corner.

The closest the film gets to illustrating why all this might not be a great thing is through the visual metaphor of the dwarf tossing sequence - where the characters literally abuse little people (geddit?) to hit their targets. Crucially, that abuse takes place with the willing consent of the little people, who're only interested in money themselves, and the whole thing takes place within the specifications of a closely worded contract. The hilarious board meeting where Jonah Hill's character explains that they shouldn't consider the little people as humans, and concentrate on the act in isolation, communicates something to which other films would have devoted a dry, 20 minute, Oscar-baiting speech.