Iro's One Movie a Day Thread

I think you'd like it. Just having a Washington/Hackman combo goes a long way.

#708 - Kingdom of Heaven
Ridley Scott, 2005



During the 12th century, a French blacksmith is encouraged to join the Crusaders in fighting to maintain their domination of Jerusalem.

I like how the brothers Scott embody two separate sides of the same filmmaking coin. Though the pair had their dalliances with different genres, Tony leant towards making straightforward action thrillers while Ridley had a tendency towards sweeping historical epics. Though the ambitious nature of the latter would seem to overshadow the basic accessibility of the former, it's not like Ridley's general output is automatically indicative of any inherently great quality. Kingdom of Heaven sees him turn his perfectionist eye to the time of the Crusades, building a story off a widowed blacksmith (Orlando Bloom) as an old crusader (Liam Neeson) claiming to be his father arrives with the intention of recruiting him to fight in the Holy Land. Though Bloom initially refuses, he eventually relents and so begins a journey that takes him from plague-ridden France to war-torn Israel. Having been fascinated by the Crusades when I first learned about them many years ago, I'm surprised that I didn't get around to watching this sooner. Unfortunately, it turns out that I probably could have afforded to put this film off for even longer.

Ridley Scott's tendency to sacrifice a strong story for technical proficiency in his films is once again on display with this film. Knowing that there is a longer but apparently more cohesive Director's Cut out there is liable to affect one's judgment of the original theatrical release, but even without that knowledge Kingdom of Heaven still feels fundamentally weightless underneath its sprawling locations and elaborate set design. The choppy development of the narrative truly sets in once Bloom arrives in Jerusalem and, though the film assembles a number of competent performers to carry it, they aren't enough to save the film's plot from becoming a numbing bore for the most part. Bloom himself is too much of a blank slate who gets a vague crisis-of-faith arc that is enough to get him started on his quest to the Holy Land but that only goes so far as he gets wrapped up in a love triangle involving a princess (Eva Green) and her husband (Marton Csokas). There are a number of battles both great and small that once again see Scott invoking the same mix of alternating editing speeds and shots of considerable scope, but the resulting application just feels empty if only because the story itself is such a dirge. Still, I do kind of want to see how this film's Director's Cut supposedly changes the film for the better, but based on what I've seen in the theatrical version of the film I'm not sure that it can really do much more except possibly inflate an already-bloated (albeit technically decent) period piece.

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Iro's Top 100 Movies v3.0

#709 - Empire of the Sun
Steven Spielberg, 1987



During World War II, a young English boy gets caught up in the middle of the Japanese invasion of China.

Following on from Spielberg's first foray into making Serious Films with 1985's The Color Purple, Empire of the Sun can also be perceived as another step on the man's cinematic journey from light entertainments to prestigious dramas. Based on the autobiographical novel by J.G. Ballard, it tells the tale of a young English boy (Christian Bale) whose life of wealth and privilege is disrupted by the Japanese military invading Shanghai in the lead-up to their involvement in World War II. Bale does his best to survive on his own but eventually circumstances drive him to surrender to Japanese custody and be incarcerated in a prison camp. While an admittedly basic plot, it is enough to sustain a rather lengthy wartime drama that frames the horrors of war through a relatively accessible story of a boy trying to make it through alive and hopefully be reunited with his parents. Thanks to my anachronic progress through Spielberg's filmography, the tale of a young boy being separated from his family and doing whatever he can if it means reconnecting with them did seem a bit familiar since it later served as a similar plot for A.I. Artificial Intelligence. While that particular story was rooted in tragic fatalism underneath its sci-fi fairytale surface, Empire of the Sun is like many a prison film in that it holds out a glimmer of hope underneath its incredibly arduous circumstances.

Spielberg's capacity for creating scenes of wartime carnage and horror is relatively neutered by the film's status as a relatively accessible story about a young boy, but one can still appreciate the scale whether it's in the streets that are crowded with panicked citizens or the post-invasion aftermath where opulent mansions are silent save for the once-overworked servants ransacking them. The bulk of the film is a prisoner-of-war kind of deal as Bale teams up with an amoral American conman (John Malkovich), who proves the kind of difficult father figure that has appeared in many a Spielberg film. Though Bale has naturally made quite the name for himself as an adult, even as a child he brings his signature intensity to a challenging role that could have easily gotten grating but works well in his precocious hands. It is definitely one of those films where other actors drift in and out of the story as necessary, with Malkovich providing the most constant adult presence as a snarky Fagin-like figure whose interest in Bale's well-being is primarily rooted in relying on him to help him with his shamelessly opportunistic scams. Though it's definitely a little on the long side, it does develop quite the emotional core even though it may not break any seriously new ground either in general or for Spielberg himself.

#710 - Glory
Edward Zwick, 1989



During the American Civil War, the Union makes the controversial decision to form an entire regiment of African-American soldiers.

It's almost too easy to get bored by your typical Hollywood period drama as they get bogged down in stolid formalism that is only halfway-appreciable because of the superficially astounding technical aspects. As a result, films that actually overcome their somewhat alienating focus on delivering grandstanding mixtures of technique, intelligence, and emotion end up becoming fewer and further between as one's perceptions become sharper. Glory seemed like it was going to be another one of those films that'd prove decent but ultimately hollow. It certainly has a premise that's at once audacious yet also a rather "safe" bet; namely, being based on the true story of an all-black platoon of soldiers serving in the American Civil War. The line between a film being progressive and being patronising is a blurry one, especially when one takes into consideration how the film has to give us a white protagonist in the form of a colonel (Matthew Broderick) who takes charge of the regiment, though this is arguably justified by the film being based on the real-life colonel's letters. Of course, though he is set up as the main viewpoint character, he doesn't exactly become the hero despite his odd moment of allyship where he will take a stand against his subtly racist white comrades.

Instead, what makes Glory great is the ways in which it develops a strong core of black characters in order to examine conflicting perspectives of the Civil War even from within the Union, which is often shown to be the lesser of two evils compared to the barbaric bigotry of the Confederacy. There are three such characters that all embody a sort of power trio in their varying attitudes towards the prospect of serving the North. Denzel Washington proves the obvious stand-out in the role that earned him his first Oscar as the belligerent former slave whose all-encompassing resentment of the white man makes him an antagonistic yet compelling force within the film as he challenges the Union's apparent white-saviour narrative and frequently tries to provoke the other black soldiers into seeing things his way. While such a role could have been a flat caricature designed to prop up such a narrative, Washington is a capable performer who provides enough nuance and skill to make even a character arc as familiar as this one work. At the other end of the spectrum is Andre Braugher as a bespectacled free man and friend of Broderick's whose status as an upper-class intellectual puts him at odds with soldiers like Washington. In the middle is Morgan Freeman as an older soldier who attempts to serve as the admittedly terse voice of reason, functioning as an intermediary between the white superior officers and the black soldiers.

On a technical level, Glory definitely proves a stunning piece of work. Of special note is the Oscar-winning cinematography, which applies an old-school haze to everything from stuffy socialising to free-for-all battles. There's a lot of the usual orange-and-blue balancing (and every time I see a shot where those are the primary colours, I do wonder if it's actually a good shot in its own right or if it's just making simple use of complementary colours) but there's more to it than that. When the film does opt to show a battle unfolding, it ironically does so without any obvious examples of actual glory. A shoot-out between two squadrons of soldiers plays out with seemingly unrealistic fatalism in showing the squadrons taking turns to shoot at each other, but that just says a lot about how fundamentally ridiculous the nature of war is even without the racial element. Even the nominally triumphant and emotional James Horner score works because it's just so incongruous with what's occurring on screen. While it's easy to grow numb to all the different historical dramas that I end up watching because they all kind of bleed together a bit in their themes and aesthetics, Glory deserves attention because it broke me out of that rut and provided the kind of film that is fundamentally not too different from your average historical drama yet manages to rise above thanks to the talent on display both behind and in front of the camera.

#711 - Joe Kidd
John Sturges, 1972



A bounty hunter turned criminal is bailed out of jail by a wealthy land baron in order to help out with the hunt for a Mexican revolutionary.

In the same year that Clint Eastwood directed his first Western with the dark morality tale of High Plains Drifter, he also appeared in the far more accessible Joe Kidd. Eastwood plays a fairly typical Eastwood kind of character, here the eponymous outlaw who starts off the film in a small-town jail. After a Mexican revolutionary (John Saxon, who seems somewhat miscast) appears in town to cause havoc at the same time as Eastwood's trial, a land baron (Robert Duvall) and his cronies arrive in town looking to pursue Saxon. To this end, Duvall bails out Eastwood on the basis of his renowned skill as a bounty hunter and tracker, which ostensibly make him a useful ally when it comes to finding Saxon. As is to be expected during an Eastwood film of this era, the man naturally takes umbrage to being ordered around (especially by such presumptuous individuals as Duvall and his men) and instead works to fight against them however he can.

While Joe Kidd does offer some decent revisionist subtext in making it so that the white men represented by Duvall are ultimately more villainous than the Mexicans they pursue, that's hardly enough to sustain such a film. It's peppered with the odd moment of Eastwood being a violent yet honourable bastard who relies on his guile and wits to work around the limitations placed on him by his supposed comrades. However, that odd moment isn't enough to stop this film from feeling like a very straightforward affair that plods along for far too much of its already lean running time. It doesn't lack for talent with Eastwood and Duvall in the leading roles, but they seem a little wasted on a film that seems more than willing to trade on Eastwood's grizzled charisma in lieu of solid storytelling or action. While Joe Kidd isn't necessarily without merit, it's still a far cry from not only classic but also from a simple good time at the movies. There's very little catharsis or cleverness to be found in its somewhat twisted tale of retribution, and while that's not enough to truly break a film it does make liking it a rather difficult proposition.

#712 - Shrek the Third
Chris Miller, 2007



An ogre looking to avoid the responsibility of becoming king goes on a quest to find a separate heir to the throne.

Oh, the things I'll watch when it's already after 10 p.m. and I decide to fill out my movie-a-day stipulation by picking something that I can have running in the background. That's about the kind of attention that Shrek the Third deserves - assuming it deserves any at all. After having married a princess and earned her initially disapproving parents' blessing, the eponymous ogre (Mike Myers) soon finds himself in line for the throne after the ailing king (John Cleese) passes away. Not willing to deal with the responsibility of becoming king, Shrek decides to look for the only other possible heir to the throne, who is in fact a gawky teenager named Arthur (Justin Timberlake). Meanwhile, the vain Prince Charming (Rupert Everett) from the previous film seeks to reclaim his former glory by uniting a rogues' gallery of classic fairytale villains in hopes of launching his own rebellion and taking the kingdom for himself.

I'll keep this short, but if you're reading this and seriously entertaining thoughts of watching Shrek the Third then you're already more than likely to be familiar with the sort of superficially subversive gross-out antics displayed by the grumpy green giant and his companions in the previous two Shrek films. If you have somehow missed those other two, then there's really very little point in watching this one. Even if you've enjoyed the last two (and, to be fair, I have to an extent, though I'd be hard-pressed to say I seriously like them) this one yields very little in the way of worthwhile returns even by the established standards. You may get the odd chuckle out of its shamelessly immature humour on display but more often than not the simplistic parody on display just doesn't manage to amuse on any level - that, and the animation is pretty average.

I liked the third Shrek film a hell of a lot more than the second. I really liked the first one quite a bit, but I think its charm will have worn thin were I to watch it today.

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5-time MoFo Award winner.

Whaaaat? How? In my opinion the second is a great extension of the universe created in the first, and though more hectic and crazy than the first, I think it works wonderfully...

But no matter what, I can't for the life of me see how you can enjoy Shrek The Third more? It's easily the worst Shrek film or most definitely second worst.

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/watching movies for mark f/
MovieMeditation's Cinema Reviews // Film Diary 2015 // Letterboxd Profile // MovieMeditation's Top 50 Horror

I hated the second Shrek film. I barely made it through and was very pleased when it ended. I know they're all fairly tale based movies, but the second one is the most like a fairy tale itself and I hate fairy tales.

For the record, my current ratings for Shrek and Shrek 2 are and respectively. Despite that, I still have a feeling that I'm going to end up watching Shrek Forever After.

#713 - Machete Kills
Robert Rodriguez, 2013



A legendary Mexican federale is called upon to stop a madman from launching a missile at Washington, D.C.

Robert Rodriguez has built a career on making films that function as uncomplicated bursts of pure entertainment, drawing on a wide variety of influences and genres while also introducing a distinctive Mexican atmosphere to the proceedings. However, in recent years the charm associated with his particular brand of lurid style-over-substance DIY films has definitely worn off quite a bit and now I just think his best films are merely alright instead of great and even then they are outnumbered by his many bad films. Though there are many examples of what makes Rodriguez films difficult to like despite his obvious passion for film-making, I think the problem with his films can best be summarised by looking at Machete. The concept originated as a fake trailer in Grindhouse, Rodriguez's 2007 collaboration with Quentin Tarantino that was designed to pay homage to old-school cult cinemas. The trailer, which starred perpetual that-guy and Rodriguez regular Danny Trejo as the eponymous mercenary, generated enough interest for Rodriguez to actually create a full-length version of the film. That was fun enough but I don't look back on it with any serious fondness. Even so, when a sequel rolled around I figured that I'd give it a shot anyway.

A major problem with doing these kind of inherently absurd action films is that, when it's time to do a sequel, it's all too easy to just throw whatever you can think of at the wall and see what sticks. While the original Machete had a relatively grounded plot involving corrupt politicians and the plight of illegal aliens, in Machete Kills things get a little too out of hand. It starts off harmlessly enough with Machete being called in by the American president (Charlie Sheen, here credited under his birth name Carlos Estevez) to stop an insane Mexican cartel kingpin (Demián Bichir) from launching a missile at Washington D.C. However, Bichir reveals that the missile's launch is wired to his heart and so, if he dies, then the missile launches. In addition, he sets off a 24-hour countdown on the missile launch anyway, thus forcing Machete to keep him alive while also fending off many murderous enemies on both sides of the law. This is a simple enough plot that's arguably an improvement on the basic revenge narrative of the original film, but it's also cancelled out by the struggle to fill out the plot with, well, anything. It throws in whatever it can to stay interesting, which mainly extends to introducing a number of bizarrely improbable sci-fi elements that are initially tolerable but honestly do smack of desperation.

The bulk of Rodriguez's filmography has often involved a wide collection of performers delighting in being offered the chance to do left-field performances that allow them to viciously chew the scenery and/or perform family-friendly pantomime. To this end, Rodriguez assembles a cast of largely-recognisable faces who would all promise to utilise their considerable ability for comical gain, but most of them don't deliver. Trejo once again plays a gravel-voiced warrior who hides any and all emotional duress behind a stony demeanour, which has made him great for playing villainous bit parts but is stretched a little thin when he is made into a leading man. The rest of the cast doesn't fare much better; Sheen's presence is a one-note joke that doesn't work, especially when there's one scene that capitalises on his worn-out "winning" catchphrase for its punchline. Many of the characters tend to be like this, whether it's Sofia Vergara playing a gleefully homicidal variation on her tempestuous Modern Family character or the many different performers who play a master of disguise known simply as "El Camaleón" (regardless of how implausible the face-changing ends up being). That's without acknowledging dull performances from people like Amber Heard as Machete's beauty-queen government contact or Michelle Rodriguez once again doing her standard tough-gal schtick. The only two performers who really make it work are Bichir (whose turn as a Jekyll-and-Hyde type of character allows him to ruthlessly devour scenery whole while also earning a small degree of sympathy) and Mel Gibson as a clairvoyant scientist turned doomsday cultist (yes, you read that right) who definitely channels his well-publicised lunacy into an appropriate conduit.

The most significant portent of what kind of film Machete Kills is comes when the film starts with a Grindhouse-style fake trailer for a third Machete film, Machete Kills Again...In Space. While it initially serves as an amusing little throwback to the series' origins as a fake trailer, it does ultimately serve as a sign of just how little this film has to offer when it spends its opening minutes trying to sell a third Machete film when the second film hasn't shown you anything to prove that it even deserves its own sequel. While Rodriguez already has a reputation for producing high-octane action and stylish effects on a limited budget, here that reputation gets seriously besmirched by some weak efforts in both departments. Even call-backs to the previous film and other Rodriguez productions (such as From Dusk 'Til Dawn's crotch-gun) do little to adequately compensate for what a dry film this ends up being. Even when you take into account the film's aspirations towards recreating old-school exploitation cinema for a new generation, this barely justifies how weak the final product ends up being. It's enough to bring to mind the execrable Crank: High Voltage, another action sequel that attempted to seriously escalate the intensity seen in its predecessor but which ultimately ended up being an offensively aimless mess of a film. While Machete Kills isn't quite as bad as that, it does tread similar ground and as such it can't seriously be considered a good film even by its fairly unambitious standards. At one point in the film, Trejo's gruff protagonist growls "Machete happens!", which is supposed to sound badass but instead serves as all the summary that this film needs.

#714 - Midnight Movies: From the Margin to the Mainstream
Stuart Samuels, 2005



A documentary chronicling the inception of the "midnight movie" phenomenon that examines some of the most famous examples of midnight movies.

Midnight Movies: From the Margin to the Mainstream is an admittedly odd choice for a documentary to re-watch because, to be honest, it's an extremely lightweight one. This wouldn't seem obvious considering its focus on the most well-known films of the short-lived "midnight movie" era, which generally traded on their shockingly bizarre content to build cult reputations that have subsisted to this very day. Though the film is ostensibly about the midnight-movie phenomenon in general, it examines said phenomenon by using the bulk of its focus on six of the best examples of such a phenomenon, which appear in mostly-chronological order of release. Midnight Movies begins by covering the original midnight movie, Alejandro Jodorowsky's 1970 acid Western El Topo, then covers a series of other films that all became underground sensations for one reason or another; George Romero's seminal 1968 zombie horror Night of the Living Dead, John Waters' 1972 filth-fest Pink Flamingos, Perry Henzell's 1973 reggae exploitation flick The Harder They Come, Jim Sharman's 1975 schlock-opera The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and David Lynch's 1977 cinematic nightmare Eraserhead.

Structurally, the film is pretty by-the-numbers as it progresses through a largely linear timeline (presumably putting El Topo ahead of Night of the Living Dead because of the former's greater influence on the concept of the midnight movie). The film consists mainly of various talking heads discussing the films and the atmospheres surrounding and influencing them, which prominently includes the film's creators (though Sharman is reduced to stock-footage interviews in favour of interviewing actual Rocky Horror creator Richard O'Brien). It's easy enough to follow and paced well enough despite its obviously episodic construction, though there's not a whole lot of depth to whatever points the various interviewees are making. I've managed to see all six of the featured films and my opinions of them vary quite wildly between beloved classic and boring nonsense, so of course having foreknowledge of these films may definitely affect your ability to care about what's going on. I'd say my least favourite of these films was The Harder They Come, which leads to its segment being pretty easy to overlook. Regardless of your knowledge or lack thereof concerning these films, Midnight Movies is an extremely brief and straightforward documentary that'll definitely depend on your prior knowledge to define its relative worth. I had no problems watching it a second time, but I'm hard-pressed to appreciate it as either an in-depth examination of a short-lived and erratic cinematic movement or even a shallow celebration of said movement. Arguably worth watching once, but beyond that...not really.

#715 - Bad News Bears
Richard Linklater, 2005



A burnt-out alcoholic is made to coach a Little League baseball team full of misfits and delinquents.

I have not seen the original Bad News Bears with Walter Matthau, so most of my motivation for watching this was on the basis of it being directed by one of my favourite filmmakers, Richard Linklater. I certainly don't begrudge Linklater for doing paycheck movies from time to time, and School of Rock proved that he might be able to wring some half-decent material out of an otherwise off-putting proposition. Bad News Bears is very much similar to School of Rock in how it focuses on a grown-up ne'er-do-well reluctantly teaching a bunch of kids how to do something - in this case, it's Billy Bob Thornton's alcoholic misanthrope being roped into coaching a Little League team by his lawyer (Marcia Gay Harden) because her underachieving son happens to be on the team. While Thornton and the kids have a mutual lack of respect for one another, they gradually pull themselves together and start to become a force to be reckoned with out on the diamond even as many interpersonal conflicts threaten to boil over and ruin everything.

To be fair, Bad News Bears isn't quite as intolerable as the concept of a family-friendly remake might prove. For starters, it's certainly not that family-friendly as it features a team full of foul-mouthed kids not only fighting with one another but also talking back to their equally belligerent coach, who has no problem letting slip plenty of signs of his own debauchery. There are also signs that Thornton's perpetually-wasted screw-up has a heart underneath his acerbic exterior, especially when he tries to recruit his bratty erstwhile stepdaughter because of her preternatural skills with pitching. Throw in love-to-hate villains such as Greg Kinnear as the clean-cut yet horribly demanding and nepotistic coach of a rival team and you've almost got enough material to carry a film. However, the fun doesn't last long considering the fact that the film is focused on, y'know, baseball and that the amusement generated by raucous banter only lasts so long even in the hands of a dialogue-emphasising director like Linklater. As a result, Bad News Bears is ultimately a pretty unremarkable film that has just enough quality to stop being a contemptible mess but not enough to make it completely watchable. I'm not sure if Linklater has directed anything worse than this, but it wouldn't surprise me if this ended up being his greatest misstep as a director (paycheck be damned).

The 1976 version of The Bad News Bears is much better than the 2005 version, so you might want to give the original a try.

#716 - Frantic
Roman Polanski, 1988



An American doctor and his wife go on a business trip to Paris, but when she gets kidnapped he becomes embroiled in a dangerous conspiracy.

Masters don't become masters without reason, so it would seem a little disingenuous of me to automatically dismiss any film because its director owed perhaps a little too much to the standards of a filmmaker with an unquestionable critical reputation. That being said, Roman Polanski's Frantic owes more than a little debt to the works of Alfred Hitchcock. The plot certainly seems like vintage Hitch as it follows an American doctor (Harrison Ford) arriving in Paris with his wife (Betty Buckley) as part of a business trip. After they check into their hotel room and find that Buckley's got the wrong suitcase, she suddenly goes missing without explanation. Ford's understandably...frantic search for her soon leads him into Paris's seedy underbelly as he gets caught up in a struggle involving a highly-prized MacGuffin and a number of villainous, untrustworthy players who will stop at nothing to get their hands on what's in that suitcase. When the police naturally don't prove effective enough to help him, he takes things into his own hands and is forced to co-operate with a self-centred young woman (Emmanuelle Seigner) who is part of the conspiracy and proves a difficult ally in Ford's search for his wife.

The problem with Frantic is that it just doesn't do too much of note despite the apparent pedigree of its director and star. Granted, there's a certain grittiness to the film as it sends its cocksure protagonist way out of his depth and does go some way to challenge Ford's reputation as a capable hero while giving him some range (the scene late in the film where he makes a phone call to his unassuming kids is a stand-out). The film also tries to provide a good foil for him in the form of Seigner's low-level crook who follows a recognisable arc as she goes from a selfish desire to be paid for her smuggling to genuinely wanting to help Ford out. Unfortunately, the plot is too thin and familiar to truly sustain a film of this length and, while there's a certain interest in seeing how things turn out, the whole thing plods an awful lot for what is supposed to be a high-tension thriller. In trying to update all the classic Hitchcock motifs - the wrong man, the MacGuffin, the unlikely yet heavily charged alliance between a male and female lead, etc. - Polanski seems to unintentionally expose their hollow nature without offering much in the way of modern innovation. Instead, the only difference that the '80s setting really makes to this film is through Ennio Morricone's uncharacteristically bland and dated-sounding background score.

"Frantic" was alright movie. Biggest criticism- it's too slow.

#717 - The Cars That Ate Paris
Peter Weir, 1974



After surviving a car crash, a man is stranded in a small Australian town where the citizens have a dangerous scheme involving traveling motorists.

Before going on to direct not only two of the greatest Australian films ever made but also a number of highly-acclaimed Hollywood dramas, Peter Weir made one very weird little film called The Cars That Ate Paris. On the surface, it has all the hallmarks of an exploitation film; it focuses on the eponymous Australian town where the eccentric population deliberately causes car crashes and salvages what they can from the wrecks. The film begins with a pair of brothers being involved in such a crash, but only one of them survives. After he recovers, he is encouraged to stay in town by the locals (especially the mayor, who houses him while he adjusts to the situation) and cannot bring himself to leave due to his own traumatic history when it comes to driving cars. The town itself has its own problem as a gang of young car nuts get into a series of escalating conflicts with the peaceful (albeit still ruthlessly homicidal) citizenry.

While this film does have a seemingly typical exploitation premise comparable to Herschell Gordon Lewis's Two Thousand Maniacs! in its tale of insidious small-town folks ritualistically murdering outsiders, in the hands of Weir it becomes something else. It's definitely not focused on the cheap thrills provided by its potentially violent concept (though it does have its fair few scenes of blood and nastiness, especially during its destructively anarchic climax), instead taking the sort of slow-burning meditative route that has characterised just about every Weir film I've seen. One can easily see this as a warm-up for Picnic at Hanging Rock, which also took a normally sensationalised subject and created a film that was more haunting than shocking. Of course, this does mean that The Cars That Ate Paris sometimes feels a bit too slow and restrained for its own good as it follows one survivor's attempts to either escape from or acclimatise to the town's weirdness. It does indulge its simple exploitation-like premise from time to time, but not enough to make it feel like much more than a rough draft for Weir's more amazing films.

I've never been interested in The Cars That Ate Paris, but it sounds like I should give it a look.

I've only seen Frantic twice, I think, but I've enjoyed it both times. though possibly more for Emmanuelle Seigner than anything else, but I remember liking the feel of it. It's a bit odd, but I do seem to prefer people 'doing' Hitchcock a lot more than when Hitchcock does it.

I really like Midnight Movies: From the Margin to the Mainstream. It's the kind of documentary I watch for fun.

I've not seen Machete Kills, but I didn't care for Machete so I can't see this being one for me. As with the first, I might catch it on tv sometime, watch it, and think, "yeah, I needn't have bothered."

#718 - The World's End
Edgar Wright, 2013



A group of friends reunite to recreate the best night of their lives but soon discover that their old hometown has changed.

Ever since I first saw Shaun of the Dead over a decade ago, Edgar Wright has easily become one of my favourite directors. The 2004 zombie parody stood out to young me for many reasons - the taut construction of both written and visual humour, a cast full of excellent comic talents, inventive effects, technical panache, and a great soundtrack. I naturally kept an eye out for everything else he did, especially his collaborations with Simon Pegg. Short-lived geek sitcom Spaced was great, as was their 2007 sophomore feature Hot Fuzz, which sought to affectionately lampoon the action genre in the same way that Shaun had taken on horror. After that, Pegg and Wright struck out in different directions, with the former mainly getting a lot of comic relief roles in hit franchises while the latter created another rapid-fire genre comedy with the Spaced-like geek fantasy of 2010's Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. 2013 saw the duo reunite to complete their so-called "Cornetto trilogy", which had begun with Shaun and continued with Fuzz. By this point, Wright and Pegg's capacity for cleverly constructed gags and reference-heavy humour was threatening to wear a little thin and one could easily worry about diminishing returns as they sought to deliver a third film seemingly out of obligation.

The World's End begins with a grainy montage introducing us to a cocky Goth named Gary King (Simon Pegg) as he retells the story of the best night of his life; on the last day of school in 1990, Gary and his closest friends embark on a legendary pub crawl known as "the Golden Mile", which involves visiting all twelve pubs in their small hometown of Newton Haven and drinking a pint of beer in every single one. Though they don't complete the crawl, Gary still considers it the best night of his life. Fast-forward about twenty years and Gary, now pushing forty and in rehab, gets the bright idea to throw on his high-school duds, reunite his old friends, and finish the Golden Mile once and for all. However, this is complicated by the fact that his friends have all moved on with their lives and have no real interest in reuniting with Gary for the crawl - especially his former best friend Andy (Nick Frost), who has nothing but resentment towards Gary due to an unspecified past incident. The other three - neurotic family man Peter (Eddie Marsan), sharp-tongued romantic Steven (Paddy Considine), and tech-savvy straight-man Oliver (Martin Freeman) - don't exactly hate Gary, but they all have their own baggage that doesn't make them relish the idea of spending time around him. After barging into their places of work one by one and convincing them to join up, Gary drives them all out to Newton Haven and they get started on the crawl, but it doesn't take long before they find out that the town is hiding one very dark secret...

Before continuing on with addressing the quality of the rest of the cast, I think I need to single out a paragraph for Pegg and Frost alone. With the previous two films featuring Pegg as the straight man and Frost as the goofy man-child, the decision to have them swap roles had the potential to fail but it pays off magnificently. Pegg's turn as the manic and self-obsessed burn-out who constantly cracks bad jokes and needles his old friends is liable to alienate audiences right off the bat, but it soon becomes clear how much his cheerfully manipulative behaviour masks a broken man secretly trying to cope with his many flaws, which only becomes clearer and clearer as the film progresses and leads to some genuinely affecting work from the man as the film races towards its climax. Frost, on the other hand, has to deal with the challenge of playing a character that's far removed from the happy-go-lucky fools he played in the other Cornetto films. Fortunately, he's not only able to provide a gloriously contemptuous and sarcastic foil to Pegg's antics but also manages to pull off some serious heavy-lifting in the role, managing to cover a wide array of emotions as he must once again deal with his erstwhile best friend getting him into trouble.

In keeping with its more focused approach to characterisation, The World's End assembles a cast that more than matches up to the bevy of British character actors featured in Hot Fuzz. The rest of the so-called Five Musketeers involve actors who have all made names for themselves as serious actors - like Frost, they all function as straight men towards Pegg but all in very different ways. Freeman may get the least development of them all as the Bluetooth-wearing businessman who constantly censors himself and is embarrassed by some of his friends' fixation on his sister Sam (Rosamund Pike), but he delivers his usual comedic frustration with competence. Marsan also does well as the wealthy but extremely timid man whose monologue about his abusive childhood definitely stands out as a dark moment in a film that's surprisingly full of them and also makes him an interesting counterpart to Pegg. The normally intense Considine still impresses as he channels a lot of dry humour into every scene that Steven is in, whether it's shrugging off Pegg's nonsense or opening up about his unrequited feelings for Sam. Despite Sam coming across as a token female character who exists mainly to serve as a point of conflict between several of the male leads, Pike definitely has enough talent to make the role into something more.

While Shaun of the Dead quite frequently foreshadowed the inevitable appearance of the shuffling ghouls and Hot Fuzz gradually eased into a murder mystery plot, for the first half-hour or so The World's End gives you virtually no hint that it's going to turn into a film about an alien invasion. It instead builds up the six leads not just on their own but also in relation to one another as they meet up and head on the crawl. One could easily see this being a straightforward dramedy that could play out quite well without any science-fiction elements whatsoever, which can be interpreted as either a point in the film's favour or one against it. I personally think it's a credit to the film that it's not only able to organically develop a handful of well-defined protagonists during its first act, but it keeps building on such solid foundations in ways that pay off in manners great and small, especially during the film's emotionally charged third act. The themes regarding nostalgia, immaturity, and individualism also feed into the admittedly familiar design of the aliens, whose easily-destroyed bodies not only resemble action figures but whose collective hive-mind also stands out as the epitome of the supposedly adult conformity that self-proclaimed free man Gary rails against.

Wright's frenetic style of filming has only escalated with each subsequent film he's directed and The World's End seems to mark an apotheosis of his particular style. The claustrophobic zombie horror of Shaun of the Dead, the blockbuster-like carnage of Hot Fuzz, and the colourful comic-book violence of Scott Pilgrim vs. the World all bleed into this film's action sequences, which definitely stand out as some of the best work Wright has ever filmed. Veteran action cinematographer Bill Pope is definitely an unsung talent here - he has worked on all sorts of memorably high-energy productions ranging from The Matrix to Army of Darkness and that energy definitely translates into the action scenes that weave in everything from long takes to relatively slick CGI effects. Despite the speed with which such scenes are shot and cut, they never become disorienting and are very well-choreographed. The fast-paced hand-to-hand fights still keep up the comedy thanks to the gory booze-fuelled slapstick that suggests influences ranging from Jackie Chan to Sam Raimi, which is still kept grounded thanks to the aliens' blue blood making the splatter seem enjoyably cartoonish rather than graphically overdone. Such scenes may be few and far between, but this is definitely a case where quality wins out over quantity.

The depth of the characterisation and execution of the action are all very well and good, but since The World's End is primarily intended to be a comedy, one can question whether or not it delivers. The intricately-woven mix of clever dialogue and well-staged sight gags made Shaun of the Dead into a sleeper hit and Hot Fuzz managed to offer its own variations on certain jokes while providing an even greater scope to its characters and humour. To this end, The World's End does occasionally seem to be better at amusing than eliciting laughter. The character-based interplay definitely has a bittersweet tinge to it thanks to Pegg being deliberately unfunny and the bulk of the humour coming from his friends barely tolerating his desperate attempts to entertain. Be that as it may, there are still plenty of funny moments scattered throughout the film that invoke both verbal and physical humour to strong effect (often involving something as simple as Frost trying to walk through a door or the group trying to figure out what name they should give to their newfound enemies). In keeping with Wright and Pegg's tendency to fill the film with all sorts of clever bits of foreshadowing in terms of both visual detail and dialogue choices, the film also proves quite re-watchable; this marked my seventh viewing of the film and I still get consistent amusement with a good few chuckles out of it.

The general consensus seems to be that The World's End is actually the weakest part of the Cornetto trilogy, but I do wonder if that's because it has to try to match the high expectations set by not only Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz but also by the fact that it's supposed to be an epic conclusion. While I was initially inclined to agree with such an assessment, over time it's grown on me and I might even give it the edge over Hot Fuzz (and I do love Hot Fuzz). The World's End proves a very satisfying conclusion to a trilogy that has been connected not just by doing quintessentially British genre parodies but also by seeing the various characters and conflicts escalate as the protagonists must work towards growing up and bettering themselves one way or the other. This may mean that the film's ending is of debatable quality and logic (regardless of it having one of the most awesome final images of the 21st century), but that doesn't stop the rest of the film feeling extremely solid. It works as a straightforward genre pastiche that just so happens to be funny and also has a great collection of people working on both sides of the camera. It's fun but also has emotional resonance to it, plus the action scenes show Wright at the top of his game. That's without mentioning the mix of Steven Price's appropriately dramatic score and a selection of mostly-retro tunes that reflect Wright's capacity for great marriages of sound and vision - look no further than the film's sublime usage of the intro of the Sisters of Mercy's "This Corrosion".

Great review of The World's End, Iro!

I'm not only sad but also kind of mad that this entry gets so much hate. I think it was a great extension of the "Cornetto universe" and a fun new angle that still plays things in vein of the first two.

I do think people's mind were clouded because of the two previous films. I think they forget to just watch this as a random film, therefore missing a lot of details and elements because of constantly comparing the film with the previous ones and always having them in mind throughout... Anyways, for me this is an awesome conclusion to the Cornetto trilogy and a great film in its own Wright (lol, gotta use that if I ever review it myself)

Again, a well-written and thorough review.