|
What's
new
9/6/10
New
Reviews of
Piranha
3D ***1/2
Winter's
Bone ***1/2
9/4/10
New
Reviews of
The
American ***1/2
The
Expendables ****
8/23/10
New
Reviews of
Eat
Pray Love **1/2
The
Kids are All Right **1/2
Scott
Pilgrim vs. the World ****
8/16/10
New
Reviews of
Cats
& Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore *
City
Island ***
8/4/10
New
Reviews of
Despicable
Me ***
Please
Give ***1/2
Predators
**
7/25/10
New
Review of
Salt
***
7/18/10
New
Reviews of
Inception
****
The
Sorcerer's Apprentice ***
Toy
Story 3 ****
7/4/10
New
Reviews of
Knight
and Day ***
The
Last Airbender *
6/19/10
New
Reviews of
The
A-Team ****
Jonah
Hex ***
The
Karate Kid **
6/9/10
New
Review of
Splice
***1/2
6/6/10
Added
Raiders
of the Lost Ark to Revivals
5/30/10
New
Reviews of
Kick-Ass
***
MacGruber
***
Prince
of Persia: The Sands of Time ***1/2
5/16/10
New
Review of
A
Nightmare on Elm Street ***
5/15/10
New
Review of
Robin
Hood *1/2
|
Cream
of the Crop
The Best
Movie Currently in Wide Release

|
Scott
Pilgrim vs. the World
"On the pages
of this website, I have waged war against the tropes of the romantic comedy
genre, which tells the same story again and again, seemingly less romantically
or humorously with an escalating amorality with each passing year.
And so I am pleased to see, for the second consecutive August, a film arrive
to serve the romcom its eviction notice by attacking the dynamics of love
with explosive levels of imagination. Unlike last year's (500)
Days of Summer, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World DOES believe in
love. What it doesn't believe in is anything that's ever been done
in a previous film. Substituting video game action for mistaken identities
and scheming magazine editors, it finds wisdom and genius in a whirlpool
of invention that will baffle as many moviegoers as it enchants.
Count me in the later group: not only was I delighted by Edger Wright's
nutty adventure, I found myself profoundly moved...the whole idea of the
movie (based on a comic book series created by Bryan Lee O'Malley) is so
crazy I'm amazed anyone had the audacity to mount it. Scott Pilgrim
and his friends seem to literally, without comment by anyone, live in a
video game and their lives are played by video game rules. Not only
does everyone in the Pilgrimverse have access to amazing superpowers at
the drop of a hat (though they only use them while fighting), but words
describing their circumstances and awarding points for them appear in the
air when needed, as do bars measuring the progress of things both important
and banal. Characters grab Power-Ups out of the air, extra lives
are awarded, and each defeated villain explodes into a pile of coins (upon
beating Matthew, Scott bemoans that he hadn't even turned into enough money
for bus fare). Each time Scott battles an Ex, they stand in opposition
on either side of the screen while the word “VS” hovers between them.
The fight between Scott and the Katayanagi Brothers takes the form of a
Battle of the Bands between them and Sex Bob-Omb, with both bands playing
at opposite ends of a concert hall while monsters representing their music
fight it out over the heads of the screaming crowd. This movie is
nuts, and I loved it...Michael Cera is one of those guys who's a star first
and an actor second, and the trick as his director is getting the depth
necessary to take best advantage of his iconic dorkiness. I've never
seen him better than he is here: not only is Cera great in the action
sequences, but he reveals steely courage I'd have never thought he had
in him. Winstead, always a personal favorite, is amazing here.
I can only imagine how daunted an actress must be by a script that asks
her to be so hot snow melts under her feet, but she pulls off so many contradictions
with consummate skill: seeming every bit that hot but still genuinely
attracted to a Regular Guy, deeply messed up but also super-cool.
And the one action scene she gets to show off in (battling steel whip-swinging
Roxy with a giant Thor-style hammer) is terrific... Scott Pilgrim vs.
the World tells its story in a format you'd associate with a hollow
stylistic exercise, but instead uses all that crazy showmanship to get
to the heart of matters that have eluded the most straitlaced dramas.
Over time, I'd expect Edger Wright's film to attract a cult made up of
equal parts brokenhearted exes, action aficionados, video game cultists,
rock music fans and anybody who just likes the sound of the words The Clash
at Demonhead. If you see yourself in any of these groups, give Scott
Pilgrim a try: there's nothing better than discovering a bold,
creative movie that seems to have been made just for you." |
|
The
View From the Balcony:
Lamar's
Blog
4/9/10
3D
or Not 3D? That is the Question
It's
been a long, long time since the movies received a true technological upgrade.
Surround sound was a pretty big deal, and before that you have to go back
to widescreen in the 50's and before that color in the 30's. Some
have compared the avent of Digital 3D over these last few years to that
of sound in the late 20's, but color the best comparison. Once anyone
had sound (both mono and surround) it was clear everyone needed it.
And right or wrong, as soon as anyone's movie screen wasn't shaped like
your TV at home, nobody was going to set themselves up to come out on the
wrong end of that comparrison. But it took almost 50 years for black
and white to lose its grip on the imagination of filmmakers (and it still
hasn't totally happened. Think anybody's gonna go silent or mono
as a stylistic statement anytime soon?). As late as 1967, they were
still giving an Oscar for B&W cinematography. And as great as
3D can be under the right circumstances, it is gonna take a LONG time before
it's so ingrained in the public's cinematic consciousness that people demand
it even for their romantic comedies and costume dramas.
For
one thing, the technology isn't quite there yet. Not everyone can
see the 3D effect (perversely, the better your vision, the better you see
through those glasses), and its quality varies depending upon where you
sit in the theater. Plus, filmmakers are still trying to develop
a language that allows them to actually communicate information to us through
3D. Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland
is a great fantasy adventure movie, but it doesn't really gain anything
from being in 3D. On the other hand, it's hard to imagine David Ellis'
The
Final Destination without it. Destination is an Old School "throw
crap at people" scarefest, but most people have been hesitant to really
embrace "stuff comin' at ya!" in the digital era. Which leaves you
with the way a well-composed 3D shot can seem to be taking place inside
a life-sized diorama laid out before your eyes (Coraline,
perhaps the most consistantly amazing 3D movie to look at, shows stop-motion
animation to be tailor-made for the process) and the absolutely beautiful
way digital 3D records reflective surfaces like water and windows.
There have been other successes: James Cameron made the skin of aliens
and the vegetation of a strange world more believable than they'd otherwise
be in Avatar, the Pixar crew who retrofitted
the
Toy Story movies did amazing things with
the look of plastic, and Ellis was able to capture something about the
texture of human skin that's eluded other live action directors.
Read
more
Blog
Archive
|