Film Review: Hot Fuzz (2007)

Also known as: Raging Fuzz, Blue Fury (working titles), Bubblin’ Fuzz, Dead Right, Feelin’ Fuzzier (fake working titles)
Release Date: February 13th, 2007 (London premiere)
Directed by: Edgar Wright
Written by: Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg
Music by: David Arnold
Cast: Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Jim Broadbent, Paddy Considine, Timothy Dalton, Bill Nighy, Edward Woodward, Bill Bailey, Olivia Colman, Julia Deakin, Kevin Eldon, Martin Freeman, Paul Freeman, Rafe Spall, Stephen Merchant, Steve Coogan (uncredited), Peter Jackson (uncredited), Cate Blanchett (uncredited), Edgar Wright (uncredited), Garth Jennings (uncredited)

Working Title Films, StudioCanal, Universal Pictures, 121 Minutes

Review:

“I may not be a man of God, Reverend, but I know right and I know wrong and I have the good grace to know which is which.” – Nicholas Angel, “Oh, fuck off, grasshopper. [Reverend Shooter pulls out a pair of derringers from his cassock]” – Reverend Philip Shooter

The moment this movie finished in the theater, I had a massive smile on my face and it stuck with me for days. Once it was gone, I went back to the theater to go see this picture again.

This is still my favorite Edgar Wright movie and revisiting it now just solidified that. For what it is, it is pretty close to perfect.

It features Simon Pegg and Nick Frost at their absolute best, as a duo. After two seasons of the television show Spaced and 2004’s cult classic Shaun of the Dead, these two guys had evolved into a perfect pair, where each half compliments the other and together they make a much better whole.

That being said, if there was ever a film from Edgar Wright’s Three Flavours Cornetto Trilogy that deserved a sequel, it’s this one. I doubt it will get a sequel but it perfectly represents the buddy cop genre and those films are perfect for sequelization. Just look at Lethal Weapon, Bad Boys, Rush Hour, etc.

Anyway, this is just great from top-to-bottom. It has a stacked cast featuring several of my favorite British people, it has a solid, surprising story, superb action sequences and the sort of buddy cop camaraderie that you and your primary school homies used to try and emulate while playing cops on the playground.

Despite all the other great things Pegg and Frost have done, this feels like the roles they were born to play. And honestly, I almost feel the same way about Timothy Dalton in this, as he’s so damn good that he’s perfect.

Hot Fuzz is just a hilarious, balls out action flick. Once you get to the action packed finale, things escalate in ways you’d never expect and at the same time, this never jumps the shark. It just has the perfect balance of comedy, action and ridiculousness.

Not only is this my favorite of Wright’s films, it is also one of my favorite movies of its decade.

Rating: 9.25/10
Pairs well with: other Edgar Wright comedies, as well as his television show Spaced.

Film Review: Movie 43 (2013)

Also known as: Truth or Dare (working title)
Release Date: January 1st, 2013 (Russia)
Directed by: Steven Brill, Peter Farrelly, Will Graham, Steve Carr, Griffin Dunne, James Duffy, Jonathan van Tulleken, Elizabeth Banks, Patrik Forsberg, Brett Ratner, Rusty Cundieff, James Gunn, Bob Odenkirk, Steve Baker, Damon Escott
Written by: Steve Baker, Ricky Blitt, Will Carlough, Tobias Carlson, Jacob Fleisher, Patrik Forsberg, Will Graham, James Gunn, Claes Kjellstrom, Jack Kukoda, Bob Odenkirk, Bill O’Malley, Matthew Alec Portenoy, Greg Pritikin, Rocky Russo, Olle Sarri, Elizabeth Wright Shapiro, Jeremy Sosenko, Jonathan van Tulleken, Jonas Wittenmark
Music by: Christophe Beck, David J. Hodge, Leo Birenberg, Tyler Bates, Miles Moon, William Goodrum
Cast: Elizabeth Banks, Kristen Bell, Halle Berry, Leslie Bibb, Kate Bosworth, Gerard Butler, Josh Duhamel, Anna Faris, Richard Gere, Terrence Howard, Hugh Jackman, Johnny Knoxville, Justin Long, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Chloë Grace Moretz, Liev Schreiber, Emma Stone, Jason Sudekis, Uma Thurman, Naomi Watts, Kate Winslet, Dennis Quaid, Greg Kinnear, Common, Charlie Saxton, Will Sasso, Seth MacFarlane, Mark L. Young, Fisher Stevens, Beth Littleford, Julie Ann Emery, Chris Pratt, J.B. Smoove, Kieran Culkin, Bobby Cannavale, Patrick Warburton, Seann William Scott, Stephen Merchant, Snooki, Emily Alyn Lind, Julianne Moore (scene cut), Tony Shalhoub (scene cut), Bob Odenkirk (scene cut), Anton Yelchin (scene cut)

Relativity Media, Virgin Produced, GreeneStreet Films, 94 Minutes

Review:

“Excuse me, I’m gonna go do some Batman-ing.” – Fake Batman

I never wanted to see this movie and that was before I heard how bad it was when it came out. Also, the few people who seemed to like it were people that have historically had terrible recommendations in not just movies but just about everything in life.

Recently, I was told to watch it and I kind of just said fuck it because part of me was curious and wanted to know if this was as bad as I had heard it was.

It’s worse.

In fact, I can confidently say that this is the biggest waste of talent I have ever seen in a motion picture.

It’s so bad that it’s beyond atrocious. So much so, that I find it not just baffling that this film attracted so many big stars but I find it really unnerving.

Who greenlit this fucking thing? And how many terrible agents are there in Hollywood? Fire all of them!

Anyway, I had to start asking myself some questions while trying to work this film’s existence out in my brain:

1. Is everyone in Hollywood actually insane?
2. Do the Hollywood elite want all of us to commit seppuku?
3. Do the Hollywood elite think that sucking their own assholes is a good use of time?
4. Did this movie somehow leak over from a parallel dimension where Earth actually is Hell?
5. Did all of these “artists” commit some unspeakable crime and this was secretly some sort of punishment for said crime?
6. Did all of these people lose a bet?
7. Was this movie actually the result of a writing contest for mental patients?
8. Is this what people mean by “anti-humor”?
9. Did the person who put up the money have some sort of Brewster’s Millions deal where they had to throw away money to get their full inheritance?
10. Was this produced to debut on an earlier, failed attempt at CBS trying a streaming service?

I mean, those are all legitimate questions. In fact, I’d say that they’re more legitimate than this film.

This is the worst movie I’ve seen that was made for more than thirty dollars.

The film was full of crude jokes, none of which landed, and it offered up a bunch of gross out moments that just come across as Hollywood trying so hard to be edgy when in reality, they haven’t had their fucking balls in a long time.

Honestly, seeing how “politically correct” and “apologetic” the Hollywood elite have become since SJWs emerged and Cancel Culture took hold, this film feels like them desperately trying to get all the edgy shit out of their system before they all started their “I’m sorry, I’ll strive to do better” world tour.

Additionally, none of these gross out moments are all that effective if you’ve been a fan of ’70s and ’80s horror. Go watch Society and try again. Better yet, you shouldn’t have tried at all.

I think that film critic Robbie Collin said it best in his review of the movie:

“I was immediately overcome with a sudden rush of emotion: not amusement, anger or even mild irritation, but a profound and faintly tragic sense of pity.”

Speaking of reviews, let’s look at what all the big sites think. IMDb gives it a 4.3/10, Rotten Tomatoes gives it 5 percent from critics with 24 percent from the audience, Metacritic gives it an 18 percent and Richard Roeper referred to it as “the Citizen Kane of awful.”

In closing, I’ll simply state:

Rating: 0/10
Pairs well with: bad cavities and genital warts.

TV Review: Critters: A New Binge (2019)

Original Run: March 21st, 2019 – current
Created by: Al Kaplan, Jon Kaplan, Jordan Rubin
Directed by: Jordan Rubin
Written by: Al Kaplan, Jon Kaplan, Jordan Rubin
Based on: Critters by Stephen Herek, Domonic Muir, Don Keith Opper
Music by: Al Kaplan, Jon Kaplan
Cast: Joey Morgan, Stephi Chin-Salvo, Bzhaun Rhoden, Kirsten Robek, Christian Sloan, Gilbert Gottfried, Stephen Merchant (voice)

Abominable Pictures, Blue Ribbon Content, Shudder, 8 Episodes (so far), 8-11 Minutes (per episode)

Review:

I owned all of the Critters movies on VHS. Even though the third and fourth installments to the series were pretty terrible, the films have always amused me. So obviously, I was pretty excited to check this out, even though I didn’t know of its existence until about a month ago.

Sadly, this also isn’t great. It’s not too terrible but it misses the mark quite a bit and I don’t think that Critters has a mark that should be that hard to hit. Just have carnivorous aliens tear through human meat, toss in a bit of humor and let it roll.

The real problem is that this was so low budget that it felt like a fan film and if I’m being honest, I’ve seen fan films do much more with even less money. Also, the Crites looked too big and the animatronics weren’t as good as the films made 20-30 years ago.

Also, why was this a TV show and not just a movie? I was excited, thinking that we’d get 10-13 half hour episodes but what we got were 8 episodes that clock in between 8 to 11 minutes with 2 of those minutes being credits at the end. If you add up the running time of this show, it has less minutes than any of the four previous films. Even though I already subscribe to Shudder, I felt cheated.

This show is batshit crazy and while I like that the Crites get to say more thanks to the magic of subtitles, the humor is absurdist to the point of being almost unsalvageable. Some of the gags were a bit funny but a lot of it came off as cringe. The big plot twist involving the fat kid’s insatiable appetite was so far out of left field that it pulled me out of the show, made me audibly moan and then I just felt like I had to power through the last few episodes just to wrap it up and move on.

I was surprised to see Gilbert Gottfried in this and he was probably the most enjoyable thing in the series but they kill him off rather quickly and if Gilbert Gottfried is your secret weapon, you need to go back to Bass Pro and buy a better one.

I don’t hate this but I didn’t really enjoy it and about halfway through, it felt like a chore to finish, despite how short it was.

Will I watch a second season? I don’t know. Ask me in a year if one actually gets made.

Rating: 4.5/10
Pairs well with: the Critters movies, as well as anything featuring Gremlins, Ghoulies or Munchies.