Film Review: The World’s End (2013)

Release Date: July 10th, 2013 (London premiere)
Directed by: Edgar Wright
Written by: Simon Pegg, Edgar Wright
Music by: Steven Price
Cast: Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Paddy Considine, Martin Freeman, Eddie Marsan, Rosamund Pike, Pierce Brosnan, Bill Nighy (voice), David Bradley, Darren Boyd, Michael Smiley, Sophie Evans, Rose Reynolds, Peter Serafinowicz (uncredited), Rafe Spall, Mark Heap, Nicholas Burns, Edgar Wright (voice, uncredited)

Relativity Media, Focus Features, Universal Pictures, 109 Minutes

Review:

“Hey it is our basic human right to be fuck ups. This civilization was founded on fuck ups and you know what? That makes me proud!” – Gary King

When I first saw this movie, I was fairly disappointed by it and I remember many others being as well. However, I think my initial assessment of it was faulty, as its actually not a bad film and after having nearly eight years to digest it and reflect on it, I thought that maybe I needed to give it another go, knowing what I was getting into this time.

So seeing it now was actually kind of refreshing. I had forgotten a great deal of the film and its story. Sure, I remembered the gist of it, as well as the ending but I hadn’t retained all of the context and nuance. And now that I’ve re-experienced it, I think that I just wasn’t in the right headspace or hadn’t experienced enough of life to find things in it that resonated so deeply in the way they do now.

The thing is, the power trio of Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost are all about 5-10 years older than me. Well, seeing this somewhere within 5-10 years after its release, makes me roughly the same age that they were when they made it. Why’s that important? I’ll explain.

The main thing is that the film deals with guys approaching the midway point of life and thus, right at the age that the midlife crisis stage can begin in many males. Now that I’ve also reached this point, I can relate to how one character in particular is obsessed with the greatest night of his life, which came in his youth, and how his future then was a clean slate for him to do anything but now, years later, life hasn’t panned out as greatly as he had anticipated or hoped. I think everyone has these thoughts around 40 or so but some people can take it to the extreme.

Additionally, this same character, you find out late into the film, recently tried to commit suicide and was dealing with massive depression caused by the immense weight of his own disappointment in himself. Depression at that level is something I have dealt with for my entire life and I’ve had friends who were even worse off and have taken their lives. Two of them hit me really hard in the last few years. But having now lived through that in my own life makes the emotional parts of this film much more real and gut punching. Luckily, I’ve mostly overcome my issues in the last few years.

While I can sympathize with Simon Pegg’s Gary and understand his issue first hand, I feel like I more closely relate to Nick Frost’s Andy, as the guy who realizes the pain his best friend has been in and feels immense guilt for not being there for him. I think that’s something that all good people feel when they’ve lost a friend or a loved one to suicide.

Now mixed in with all that emotional stuff that I didn’t appreciate as deeply as I do now, we have the larger group of friends, who also have to try and work out their issues with each other. And then on top of that, we have a pub crawl marathon in a small quaint town that has seen its citizens replaced by manufactured shells controlled by a high-tech alien species who have been secretly invading and assimilating the planet for quite awhile.

So there’s a lot in this movie to take in but it’s really well-balanced between the real human drama and the really awesome sci-fi action plot. And frankly, the plot is pretty cool, as are the special effects and the solid soundtrack that may be Edgar Wright’s best in how he used it throughout the film to set the tone and to properly generate the right level of nostalgia.

Additionally, the acting in this is the best out of the three films in the Three Flavours Cornetto Trilogy. By this, the third film, these guys are just so perfect together and the surrounding cast is full of many people who have worked with these guys multiple times that they all just feel like an onscreen family. To put it simply, everyone has great chemistry but the bond between Pegg and Frost has never been stronger than it is here. I’d also say that this is Nick Frost’s greatest performance, as he actually was the more serious character for the first time and with that, had to help uplift his broken friend and become the real hero of the story.

Still, this is my least favorite film in the trilogy. But that’s like saying oral is your least favorite type of sex. In the end, it’s still really fucking good.

Rating: 8.25/10
Pairs well with: other Edgar Wright comedies, as well as his television show Spaced.

Film Review: Hostiles (2017)

Release Date: September 2nd, 2017 (Telluride Film Festival)
Directed by: Scott Cooper
Written by: Scott Cooper, Donald E. Stewart
Music by: Max Richter
Cast: Christian Bale, Rosamund Pike, Wes Studi, Adam Beach, Jesse Plemons, Rory Cochrane, Ben Foster, Timothée Chalamet, Jonathan Majors, Q’orianka Kilcher, Paul Anderson, Stephen Lang, Scott Wilson

Waypoint Entertainment, Le Grisbi Productions, Bloom Media, Entertainment Studios Motion Pictures, 133 Minutes

Review:

“I’ve killed everything that’s walked or crawled. If you do it enough, you get used to it.” – Captain Joseph J. Blocker

Hostiles came into the theater with a lot of praise from top critics. Entertainment Weekly referred to it as “…the best western since Unforgiven.” That’s a pretty bold statement but when looking at traditional westerns from 1992 up until now, it’s a statement that’s not too far off. It’s a superb picture, through and through.

I haven’t been a huge fan of director Scott Cooper’s work. I didn’t care too much for Black Mass and I thought Out of the Furnace was pretty mediocre; I’ve yet to see Crazy Heart, even though I’ve been meaning to. I think Cooper certainly has a good eye and he’s great at building suspense but I thought Black Mass suffered from a narrative standpoint, as it seemed to rely on people already knowing its story, while Out of the Furnace was initially engaging put tapered off pretty quickly. With Hostiles, I was pulled in from the opening scene, fully engaged throughout and thought the narrative was really strong, well paced and subliminally sweet underneath all the violence and racial tensions. I feel like Hostiles was a body of work that benefited from the director learning from his past hiccups and thus, really coming into his own in a new way.

The film was so amazing and visually enchanting that it’s the first film I’ve been to in years, where the theater was full and everyone actually stayed off of their phones and shut the hell up for the duration of the picture, which must have been hard for them, as this was over two and a half hours with all those friggin’ trailers.

The story sees a war hero have to transport an old Indian chief from New Mexico to Montana, where he is to be buried on his sacred land. The hero, played by Christian Bale, wants nothing to do with the mission and even tries to bait the Indian once they get far enough away from his fort in New Mexico.

As the story progresses, we meet a woman whose entire family was slaughtered by Indians. The journey is long and arduous and the party encounters many enemies, some Indians and some white men. By the end, we see personal biases fade and a family dynamic develop between this small group of people who started the journey with hatred for one another.

The film had a perfect cast. I’ve been a fan of Wes Studi and Adam Beach for a long time. I’ve actually loved Beach as far back as 1998’s Smoke Signals, a fantastic Native American coming of age picture that everyone should experience at some point.

Additionally, Bale was stellar, as was Rosamund Pike. I liked seeing Jesse Plemons play a nice character and it was cool seeing Timothée Chalamet in this, as he’s a young actor who is quickly becoming one of the best talents working today. Rory Cochrane was a pleasant surprise in this, as I’ve followed him since his teen pictures Dazed and Confused and Empire Records in the ’90s. There are also small but pivotal roles played by Ben Foster, Stephen Lang and Scott Wilson, who was pretty much the antithesis of his most famous character, Hershel from The Walking Dead.

The cinematography was handled by Masanobu Takayanagi, who also did The Grey, which I loved but most people didn’t. He has a real talent for capturing incredibly majestic landscapes. Here, he had some vast and beautiful country at his disposal and made the most of it.

Max Richter provided the score and did a fine job with the film’s music. He most recently worked on Miss Sloane and Arrival before this.

I would say that Hostiles is as good as the critical hype. I love westerns and it’s rare that I get to see a really great one come down the pipeline.

Rating: 8.75/10
Pairs well with: Scott Cooper’s other films.

Film Review: Die Another Day (2002)

Release Date: November 20th, 2002 (UK)
Directed by: Lee Tamahori
Written by: Neal Purvis, Robert Wade
Based on: the James Bond novels by Ian Fleming
Music by: David Arnold
Cast: Pierce Brosnan, Halle Berry, Toby Stephens, Rosamund Pike, John Cleese, Judi Dench, Samantha Bond

Eon Productions, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 133 Minutes

Review:

“I have been known to keep my tip up.” – James Bond

Die Another Day is the film I consider to be the worst James Bond picture of all-time. While I felt like it played better than I remembered, having revisited it for the first time since its release a decade and a half ago, it still takes the cake, as far as bad Bond movies go.

While Pierce Brosnan was a damn good Bond, his movies are borderline abysmal, minus Goldeneye, his debut.

The Brosnan films came out in a time when motion pictures were getting more serious and less campy. Unfortunately, these play almost like parodies of the very playful and sometimes hokey films of the Roger Moore era. It also didn’t help that the Austin Powers franchise came along and sort of dumped these movies on their head. All of this is why the character of Bond went away for four years after this film and came back revamped and more serious with the start of the Daniel Craig era.

Like every other movie from the Brosnan era, this was a marketing machine, made to sell a bunch of shit that was featured in the picture. Unfortunately, regardless of how much money you have in your bank account, you can’t buy an invisible Aston Martin. And the fact that that is a thing in this movie, should tell you how ridiculous this flick is, even for James Bond standards. This is the movie that really jumped the shark with its use of gadgetry.

The film is also mired by the inclusion of Halle Berry as the character Jinx, which was done in an effort to create a spin-off franchise for her. That franchise never saw the light of day because she truly sucked in this film and despite trying to sell her as a female bad ass, for the most part, she was just another Bond damsel in distress. Ultimately, she was unconvincing regardless of how cool and tough they tried to make her seem. I don’t necessarily blame Berry for this though, as the character was poorly written and the director seemed to be dialing it in.

The stunts were a mixed bad of good and god awful. The CGI effects were friggin’ atrocious, even for the time. Just look at the scene where Bond is kite surfing a giant wave and try not to cringe.

Also, the film’s plot is just a bit of a rehash of Goldeneye. It’s story doesn’t justify its existence and the pens behind this tale really should have given us something better than another killer satellite story.

There are a few small positives, however.

The first is the opening sequence in North Korea. It was really well done and felt like a classic Bond sequence. Of course, everything goes completely downhill after the credits.

Also, I really liked Rosamund Pike as Miranda Frost. I thought she was a better than decent Bond girl and much more interesting than Berry’s Jinx.

Lastly, the film features Pierce Brosnan, the man who is usually the biggest highlight of any film that he is in.

The last big gripe however is in regards to the villain. He’s a North Korean general’s bratty kid who gets plastic surgery to look like a smarmy elitist white dude. The whole thing is just stupid. Although, the henchman with the diamond face was cool and had a classic Bond villain vibe to him.

Die Another Day is a film that shelved the franchise and caused it to be rebooted and reinvented. It is awful in just about every way. There are literally two dozen Bond movies that are better than this pile of crap.

So does it deserved to be ran through the Cinespiria Shitometer? Of course it does! And the results speak for themselves! What we have here is a “Type 7 Stool: Watery, no solid pieces. Entirely Liquid.”

Rating: 3.5/10