Scott Pilgrim vs. The World Review

By Ryan Hamelin

Movie Grade: A+

From the moment the 8-bit rendered Universal Studios logo blasts onto the screen, you know you’ve come to the right place. No longer are you in the world of your movie theater. Whether you know it or not, you’ve just entered the head of one Edgar Wright, director of such instant classics as Hot Fuzz and Shaun of the Dead. The result is a vibrant and redefining experience, setting the bar for graphic novel adaptation visual fidelity at an all time high. Not since Sin City has a film come so close to replicating the feel and the imagery of a moving comic, and the addition of countless video game homages will tickle the fancy of even the least educated geek. This is really a film for everyone, and no matter what you think you’re in for when you enter that theater, this one is sure to surprise you.

The first surprise is probably the one that will shock you the most. Michael Cera isn’t just good here… he’s really good. Though plenty of pundits have accused Cera of skating by on the same basic character outline he’s had since Superbad, he does a lot to demonstrate his range here. Sure he still hits all the quirky and awkward beats you expect him to, but he also brings genuine heart to a part that could’ve been played much more low key. He sets the tone for the rest of the cast, and they feed off of his hyper-stylized, incredibly quick delivery. The film works because of him, not in spite of him, and I think many people will take that as a shock.

The second surprise is Mary Elizabeth Winstead, who builds on her breakthrough performance as Bruce Willis’s daughter in Live Free or Die Hard with an impressive leading lady turn. She is everything you’d want her to be: gorgeous, mysterious, unpredictable, and heartbreaking. Romantic leads in films like this survive based upon their own chemistry and their fidelity to the universe they inhabit. Ramona’s constantly changing hair-color aside, Winstead owns this part, and I for one am happy that the reshot ending, which aligns with the latest published issue of the comic, gives her a bigger payoff. Having had the opportunity to see an early test screening of the film, and the complete version, I am committed to keeping any other changes to the film under wraps from here on out. Mostly this is out of respect for the achievement of the finished product, and because knowing the changes going in could negatively effect that first triumphant experience.

The structure of the film makes for a unique viewing experience. It’s usually taboo to create an antagonist that your characters have to overcome, which, to be defeated, requires your leads to go through a numbered series of steps. Popular opinion says that the audience will simply spend the film counting the obstacles that have yet to be overcome, accelerating the feeling of boredom while also drawing the viewer out of the realm of the film. Somehow, despite the very definite number of evil exes which Scott will have to encounter throughout the story, I never once found myself counting. The pacing is so tightly wound as to render downtime almost nonexistent, and what little there is has been filled to the brim with character moments and side-plots that are each more entertaining than the last. You have to be able to breathe in between the fits of laughter and the whoops of victory after each ridiculous battle, and you’d be hard pressed to find a film which was better balanced or more consistent in its enjoyment.

Scott Pilgrim is a sugarcoated yet timelessly fulfilling pop culture dish best served with a healthy bag of popcorn and an open mind. It pushes the boundaries of what an audience can absorb both auditorily and visually, and you will still be reeling for several minutes after the fact. Anchored with a wonderful story and endearing characters, the flashing lights do not detract, but rather enhance the experience to almost superhuman levels. If you don’t find something here to your liking, there’s really no help for you, and if you’re willing to take the challenge being offered, you won’t be disappointed.

Easy-A Review

By Ryan Hamelin

Movie Grade: B

Watching Easy-A is an exercise in tolerance and sustained suspension of disbelief, not because anything happens that you can’t see coming, but more because the way it plays out stretches a lot of the norms we accept when electing to watch a romantic comedy. In brief, the script is on a different level than what most will anticipate for the genre, yet the film itself doesn’t really live up to the words on the page.

With a movie like the upcoming Edgar Wright masterpiece Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, you have an extremely stylized universe that allows the characters to say and do things in a heightened and inevitably more interesting manner than they could in real life. The reason such interactions work in that film, is because the movie is visually distinctive and vibrant enough to create a world where the dialogue and the characters all seem to belong. The quirkiness isn’t out of place, and the lighting fast retorts are met with laughter instead of wonderment. With Easy-A, everybody is running on a premium grade of gasoline, and it would work really well, if only the world could mimic the energy level of the words. Characters say things that are funny, charming, and often endearing… they just always seem a little less than genuine. It’s a type of writing that has a lot of character, and hits more than it misses, but could be unsatisfying for many people.

Despite all of this, Emma Stone proves once again that she deserves quality starring vehicles of her own. After her breakout role in Superbad and her solid leading lady turn in Zombieland, it’s clear the girl has the chops for comedy, and looks awfully good doing it. Here, she’s joined by an impressively diverse supporting cast, who each, due to the tenor of the script, have plenty of chances to demonstrate their various comedic strengths. Stanley Tucci, in particular, steals almost every scene he’s in, and delivers some of the movie’s most hilarious diatribes. Thomas Hayden Church also acquits himself very well, and it becomes very easy to root for the people we want to see come through the story unscathed.

If you haven’t seen any of the advertising campaign, the basic gist is that a teenage girl, after having read “The Scarlett Letter”, becomes a perceived class slut and responds by willingly sewing a red A onto her clothing. She doesn’t actually sleep with people, you see, just pretends to so that they are able to get over various stereotypes and bullying due to their sexuality, or their general attractiveness to women. The unjustified attention, and the way it affects the world around her, makes up most of the primary narrative and thematic structure. The rather unorthodox approach will undoubtedly leave the viewer feeling refreshed, and the originality makes it worth seeing just to break the cycle of paint-by-the-numbers teenage romantic comedies. However, as was discussed earlier, the tone may in fact be the movie’s biggest weakness when it comes to connecting with its target audience, and I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of people simply don’t wind of “getting” it. Sad as it is, there might not be a market for progressive storytelling in this day and age.

Should you let a little R-rated teenage angst scare you? Not at all. In fact, coming from a male perspective, this falls into the decent-to-great date movie category, in that you won’t be bleeding from the ears or trying to gouge your eyes out with any available sharp object. Discussions about lies and their consequences may even follow you out of the theater, and that’s a lot better than most of the movies I’ve seen so far this summer. Sure this one doesn’t come out until September 17^th, but I’m sure you’ll be able to wait a little while.

Centurion Review

By Ryan Hamelin

Movie Grade: B

Welcome to Britain in 117AD. The great Roman empire is nearing the end of its conquest of the known world, and has come up to a roadblock in the form of the Picts. Using guerrilla tactics, they have been able to halt the Roman advance almost entirely, and as the winter months wear on, word comes down from the Roman high command for a full frontal assault, courtesy of the renowned 9^th Legion, to wipe the Pict scourge from the land and kill their leader, Gorlacon. Thrown into the mix is a young man named Quintus (Fassbender) who was saved by the Legion and intends to aide in their move into Pict territory as a de-facto protagonist.

This is the setting of Neil Marshall’s Centurion, and if it reminds you of some of the great period piece epics of old, that is by design. Coming off of the fan-boy embraced but critically flogged Doomsday, the director, most notably of the horror film The Descent, embarks on new territory here, treating the audience to a vast ancient wilderness and the journeys that the characters face within it. When the legion in ambushed in the forest, only a small group remains, and it wouldn’t be a far stretch to imagine the film as a cross between Gladiator and Behind Enemy Lines. You’ve seen chase films before, but when was the last time it was Roman soldiers getting chased by anything? Therein lies much of the originality, and energy of the film, and as Olga Kurylenko hunts down the remaining soldiers across the land, we are given a bit of a moviemaking history lesson, with every variation of an edge-of-your-seat tension moment making an appearance. It’s a tightly edited film, despite its setting, and comes in at just over an hour and a half. Because of this, it never overstays its welcome, but also skimps out on a lot of the character development you’d hope to get.

That’s not to say the script is bad by any means. In fact, it flows better than most, and even though you have the sneaky suspicion that important moments lie on the cutting room floor, there’s more than enough sustenance to get by. The real problem is with the narration. It’s one of those head hanging things that had to have grown from a good intention somewhere down the line, and has ballooned into a nightmare scenario here. Opening and closing voice over in a feature film can work fine. Even that is often hard to get right, as voice over dialogue walks a fine line between feeling cheesy and irrelevant. Here the narration continues throughout the film, often acting as repetition for the thoughts and emotions which the main character is already clearly displaying. Perhaps the studio didn’t think Michael Fassbender’s acting could support the whole film, I’m not really sure. All I know is that the air is let out of the room every time the voice begins to speak again, and it gets very, very close to ruining the experience.

What you do get is a fun road movie complete with all the blood and gore you could ever want. Seriously, the red stuff is flying fast and furiously here, enough so to even cause this desensitized reviewer to flinch on several occasions. The realism and the gritty nature of the movie work on its behalf rather beautifully at times, and its nice to see this kind of wholehearted passion on display in a Hollywood landscape which has grown steadily more corporate and sterile in recent years. I applaud the effort, and wish that studios would be willing to take more chances like this. Sure the movie isn’t the second coming of swords and sandals epics, but that doesn’t stop it form being a wholly satisfying one, and like I mentioned before, these days that’s saying a lot. I’ve heard rumor that they’re going to make the film available ahead of its theatrical release on Xbox 360 and PS3. If that’s true, then console owners, this is one pay-per-view purchase which is definitely worth renting with some friends.

Iron Man 2 Review

By Ryan Hamelin

Movie Grade: B

Alright, deep breath. You’ve probably heard the early buzz about the sequel to the commercial and critical smash hit Iron Man as it’s been out in worldwide release for over a week now. Most of it hasn’t been all that great. People have labeled it a “disappointment”, and unworthy to follow in the steps of its predecessor. Granted, a movie that made over $580 million worldwide is the kind of project that deserves a terrific sequel, and we’ve been spoiled with no fewer than 3 of the best movie sequels of all time, all of which have come from the superhero subgenre. Between X2, Spiderman 2, and The Dark Knight, you have to be truly special to stand out from the pack, and Iron Man 2 was never really about that.

This is a film which is a classically trained sequel, a movie that continues with the same themes, tones, and general plot progression of the first film for an additional two hours. It gives you precisely what it thinks you want, and delivers sporadically on upping the ante from the trial run two years ago. But at the end of the day, is it memorable enough to make an impact in a Hollywood system where sequels and comic books have become an ever-expanding cash cow?

In search of an answer to this question, we have to look at the overall picture. In a year’s time, we will have a summer movie slate that includes Captain America: The First Avenger and Thor. While The Incredible Hulk was a modest success, it will come down to those two films to decide the legacy of Marvel Studios. Iron Man is a tried and true formula, and has done the bulk of the groundwork for the extended Marvel film universe. Soon, however, Robert Downey Jr. will no longer be enough. In the summer of 2012, Joss Whedon will bring us The Avengers, possibly the largest and most anticipated film franchise crossover of all time. In preparation for a movie with that kind of gigantic hype, a lot of the standalone elements of traditional superhero sequels had to fall by the wayside. Is Iron Man 2 an extended trailer for The Avengers? No. But that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t make use of a lot of outside help to keep its narrative flowing.

Now don’t get me wrong, I love Samuel L. Jackson as much as the next guy. But with this film being set chronologically before The Incredible Hulk, it just doesn’t seem right that the impetus for the 2^nd and 3^rd acts are delivered by an outside organization. S.H.I.E.L.D. will get their own movie to grow in the future, and I don’t see why they had to be such a key player so early on. I will make a concession here on account of Scarlett Johansson being exceptionally attractive in this film. Like, oh my god. Though she’s never actually referred to as “Black Widow”, her character is surprisingly one of the sequel’s improvements from an ensemble standpoint. She complicates a lot of different things that were pretty black and white before, and that, in turn, creates opportunities for interesting storytelling.

Robert Downey Jr. is clearly “the man” and this is yet another example of him holding up an entire film purely on his own charisma. No one denies that this is the role for him, and that it’s been written almost to perfection. The crackling energy of the dialogue carries over well, and his interactions with other people make for some of the strongest moments. He’s one of the only superheroes who you enjoy watching more when he’s out of his suit, than when he’s in it, and it’s interesting to see the filmmakers play with that dynamic.

In reading other reviews online, you’re going to see many people reference the first film as some sort of towering achievement. Luckily I managed to watch the first film again before the screening of the sequel, and I’ve got to tell you, it’s not really as good as everyone seems to think it is. The entire climax of the movie makes very little narrative sense, and gaping plot holes all but swallow the dramatic conclusion. You didn’t care, however, because you were having so much fun watching it, and though you may have been aware that the finale was sort of weak, you went with it anyway. Here there aren’t any gaping plot hole issues, it’s just that the ending feels almost empty of emotion.

“Anti-climactic” would be my term to describe the sequel, not “disappointing”, because I feel like there’s an awful lot of set up for what could have been a really incredible last couple of scenes. Instead we have yet another not-quite-satisfying ending to an Iron Man movie which leaves me thankful that another director took the reigns for The Avengers. If any movie needs a satisfying ending, it’s that one, and I hope that the lack of energy to wrap things up here is simply the calm before the storm. Otherwise, it’s signaling a beginning to a fun yet utterly disposable set of franchises which will continue to rake in the box office while not managing to rise above what came before. Iron Man 2 ends as solid superhero flick, and an adequate sequel, but not a revelation. Depending on what you were expecting, it’s either playing it safe, or doing exactly what you wanted.

The Losers Review

By Ryan Hamelin

Movie Grade: C+

It just doesn’t quite work… Let me rewind a bit. I enjoy action movies. I enjoy comic book movies. I very much enjoy the combinations between the two, and have even been known to appreciate those prior attempts which have frustrated and angered others. Let’s face it, I’m the target demo for movies with one-liners and stuff blowing up. So when your entire movie hinges on the two above concepts, and I still can’t decide whether it was worth my time, you have serious problems.

For starters, the production team is phenomenal. You’ve got a script by James Vanderbilt and Peter Berg, based on a recent hit comic series. You’ve got Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Zoe Saldana, and Chris Evans among your supporting players. You’ve got a pretty expansive budget, and the full weight of Warnerbros. post-Clash of the Titans marketing. Sure the release date has been juggled more times than I can remember, but that’s just a sign of how good the film is depending on the competition, right? Right? Hmm. Maybe somebody up the line realized that it just wasn’t going to be the next Dark Knight and tried to slide it in under the radar before Iron Man 2 blows everyone away to start off the summer. All I know, is as polished a film as The Losers is, your satisfaction isn’t going to be based as much on the movie as on your own personal biases coming in.

The movie is extremely straightforward. In some ways that’s a good thing. It goes direct to the point, doesn’t dilly-dally in territory where it clearly is out of its depth, and doesn’t try to paint the world with anything other than an overly stylized popcorn brush. Problem is, when everything is this clear cut, it’s hard for an audience to find stuff to care about. The bad guy is bad. The good guys are good. Innocent people die. The plot structure revolves around different variations on revenge. Scenes just sort of happen, not because they’re particularly motivated, but because it seemed like the place in the story where a scene like that one should occur. You watch it all unfold on the shallowest of levels, though that allows you to appreciate the visual style more. The comic book flourishes are a nice touch, but they’re starting to feel almost cliché, and where Kick-Ass was fresh, The Losers is decidedly bland. I like cell shaded title sequences as much as the next guy, they just didn’t earn the connection to the source material this time around.

The funniest part of the film is the way it grows on you. The first 20 minutes feel like they should have been preceded by an introductory act, as all of the jokes make reference to character traits the audience isn’t familiar enough with to get. By the middle they start finding their mark, and the script reveals a much more sophisticated level of witty repartee than had been previously believed. By the end, it’s actually really funny, and most of that has to do with Chris Evans. I don’t know how much humor they’re going to be able to work into Captain America but if you imagine a more energetic and enthusiastic version of his work as Johnny Storm in The Fantastic Four, you understand some of what you’re getting here. His humor is hard to imagine working with anybody else playing the part, and I’m interested to know how much of it was created on set. In any event, he’s clearly a highlight of the film, and almost reason enough to shell out the matinee ticket price.

At 98 minutes, it’s a quick trip into the world of The Losers this time out. The film does what all comic book movies seem to do these days and leaves itself open for a sequel. Had it developed a more satisfying conclusion and bulked up to a 2-hour runtime, it might have made a great standalone film. As it stands now, it’s fast, light, and overall not very satisfying. I’d equate the experience to a Krispy Kreme donut. It won’t fill you up, but by its very design leaves you wanting more. Will the vast majority of American men pay to see Zoe Saldana’s ass for an hour under any circumstances? Probably. So in that case, I’d say go nuts. But as a piece of cinema… this isn’t something you’ll be talking about with your friends. With any luck, this’ll be the weakest of the 3 superspy team movies coming out this summer season.

Kick-Ass Review

By Ryan Hamelin

Movie Grade: A

Every generation has a collection of films which seek to define them. For reference to past trends, clothing styles, slang terminology, and cultural values, all one has to do is drift past the isles of DVD’s in your local electronics store. The movies that manage to transcend their release dates become classics, while those which wholeheartedly embrace the cultural zeitgeist become cultural icons. Such cult successes seem to have grown fewer and farther between in recent years, as the overwhelming amount of material prevents the usual defining standards of cultural milestones to be applied to a single property.

In order for a film to completely tap into the modern sensibility, a world where a person’s identity is defined by the number of contacts in their cell phone, and a young adult generation raised with their lives played out through social networking websites, a movie has to do something special and different which breaks through the walls of censorship that are blindly maintained by the old guard establishment.

What so many people over a certain age fail to realize, is that this isn’t even close to the world they grew up in. Their attempts to rein in an exponentially growing landscape of global communication and information have been reduced to a self-comforting delusion. Kids are growing older far faster than ever before, and by the time we’ve reached our college years, we’ve already been exposed to a greater wealth of media content than our grandparents were in their entire lives. Calling us the “video game” generation, and slapping labels like ADD onto our heightened awareness and increased need for multitasking is avoiding addressing the fundamental difference between the NOW and the THEN. If nothing else, this could be the movie that finally opens their eyes.

Kick-Ass is based on a comic developed by Mark Millar, the man behind Wanted. In conjunction with the creation of the comic, director Matthew Vaughn (Stardust) was hard to work on the feature script. By the time the film began shooting, only the first few issues of the comic had been released. Now that the film is almost upon us, the comic has completed its run, and awaits the results of one of the most complex dual format conceptual distributions in movie history. That’s not to say the comic and the film are entirely in lockstep. According to the press release, Vaughn was excited to take some liberties with the then-unwritten ending, as well as demonstrate some stylistic changes to the character development. The point is that reading Kick-Ass and seeing the film will be inevitably different experiences. Having not read the comic myself, I can’t comment on the nature of the changes and their validity to the original story. All I can address is the experience I had watching the film, and what an experience it was.

On a surface level, what you will receive from Kick-Ass is an incredibly entertaining and enjoyable superhero story. It’s not a world we’ve ever been privy to before. These superheroes get their inspiration from YouTube videos and other recent film adaptations. They don’t have powers, they don’t even have mind bogglingly sophisticated training in advanced martial arts, and they don’t have billions in funds to construct bat-caves under their mansions. They get their costume components off of Amazon, and walk the streets at night because riding a bike would look too ridiculous. In short, they’re us. Which leads me to the major conservative attacks against the film. The faint of heart may want to stop reading, as I’m about to describe the qualities which make the film realistic, but which also, per our societal standards, earned the movie an R-rating.

If your problem with a normal person trying to stop crime single-handedly while wearing a wetsuit outside of a dimly lit gas-station is that when he gets his ass kicked, he bleeds… you’ve seriously got to wake the hell up. The only reason a film which is said to contain “strong and brutal violence throughout” shows you what happens to the characters when they try to take a stand in the real world, is that if they’re actually getting brutally beat up… well… that’s what’ll be happening on screen. Humans bleed, it’s pretty well documented… like evolution.

If you think people swearing every couple of sentences qualifies as “pervasive language,” then you’re due for a walk down a corridor in any high school in this country for a reality check. That’s how real teenagers talk, and you wonder why all of the Judd Apatow films land R-ratings, even when teenagers are the main characters. They’re not being vulgar, they’re being realistic. Again, stop trying to delude yourselves.

Approximately half of the bile leveled at the film involves the young female cast-member using a word which is apparently so horrifying that it has the power to shred bonnets everywhere with a single utterance. I get that she’s playing a 10 year old, and I also get why I shouldn’t type the word into this review, but assigning the end of the world to a four letter word beginning with “c” only proves how completely out of touch you are. Shock and awe is the name of the game here, and as long as you have an open mind, you’ll realize the true value of what you’re witnessing.

The film itself goes to great lengths to ground the ludicrous nature of its story. Part of that has to do with an inconsistent tone, something I tend to latch onto aggressively as a negative in most of my reviews. Here, it not only ends up being incredibly satisfying, but makes the whole narrative resonate as a series of days in the life of the main character. You never wake up in the same mindset as you went to sleep, and the same is true of the development here. Each sequence is consistent upon itself, but the film doesn’t believe it owes an audience any more than that, and truth be told, it doesn’t. Layer onto that a plot structure which bucks almost every conceivable convention (right up to the very end where you feel it all click into place for the home stretch) and you have a wholly original and energized viewing experience unlike any other… a superhero movie with truly modern sensibilities.

Beyond the incredible visuals, the film easily outperforms the competition on an audio level. By mixing the dialogue levels really low, theaters will be forced to maintain a certain median which will cause the gunshots and other thunderous sound cues to hit with the impact of a freight train. This is a loud movie, and the auditory assault is perfectly in tune with the action happening on screen. The soundtrack, largely comprised of previously written music, is as iconic a blend of styles as the film is, and I for one haven’t managed to stop listening to it since I saw the film. Vaughn has assembled the ultimate cultural touchstone in sound and image of the past decade, and if this is any indication, a possible sequel will easily claim the number one slot on my most anticipated list.

I have a feeling that this will be an incredibly divisive film. Those who will “get” it, mainly 14-24 year olds, will have an uphill battle explaining to their elders why the values demonstrated in the movie aren’t some sub-human writers bringing an end to society as we know it. The age range flares out in either direction for those who will enjoy the film, even if it won’t resonate quite so fully with them. It’s not a timeless picture, it’s a perfectly timed one, and to call it an instant cult classic, while inherently debatable, is also an entirely valid claim. Should it prove a success, it will not only be a triumph for a new perspective on acceptable screenwriting in Hollywood, but also a complex commentary on the nature of the actual values system our nation’s youth operates under, as opposed to the pussyfooted idiocy which pervades the halls of media power. I hope it sends the industry rocking back on its heels from a well needed sucker punch, but what should happen and what will happen are often painfully far removed from one another. One thing’s for certain. If you choose to go see Kick-Ass this weekend, it will be a screening that you won’t soon forget.