Man Up – ★ ★ ★ ★ DVD Review

Simon Pegg?  Check.  Lake Bell?  Check.  This should be a good one.  Basically that’s how I decided to watch this one, because you know I’m not a big fan of the “rom-com” genre.  I really enjoyed Lake Bell in In A World and even in Million Dollar Arm, plus I’m a big fan of Simon Pegg so there was very little risk to this pick.

34 year old Nancy (Lake Bell) is still single and geting tired of it all.  Frustrated and feeling completely defeated by a string of setups and blind dates arranged by her friends, she even gets dating advice from a young woman she meets on the train who preaches the lessons of a self-help book, which at the journey’s end, she leaves for Nancy who had fallen asleep on the ride.  Jack (Simon Pegg) is a 40 year old divorcee who is all set for his blind date with 24 year old Jessica (Ophelia Lovibond) who he’s set to meet under the clock in the train station, where both of them will be carrying their copy of a certain self-help book….  Nancy of course is the one carrying the book who ends up meeting Jack.  She decides to “put herself out there” (as both the book and Jessica said) and she rolls with the situation, becoming “Jessica” for the night, and has a really good time.

Of course since this is all pretty much built on deception, you know the good times won’t last all date long.  While out for bowling, Nancy/Jessica runs into Sean (Rory Kinnear), a former classmate who’s always had a crush on her, and who now threatens to ruin her blind date by telling Jack who she really is.  Of course, Jack does find out, and reacts as you would expect, but after walking out on Nancy, he has to find her again, because she’s got the bag with his unsigned divorce papers.  Teaming up to put his soon-to-be ex-wife in her place, Nancy and Jack bitterly have a few laughs before saying their goodbyes to each other.  It turns out though that Jack is just as lonely as Nancy, and has been trying to dull that pain by taking lots of blind dates with lots of younger women.  After some contemplation and finally meeting with the real Jessica, he realizes that he was having a really good time with Nancy, that her maturity and experiences in life were something he was really missing in his own, and that void couldn’t be filled by the flings he’d been having.  But now that he’s realized he’s fallen love, how can he find Nancy again?  The only one who knows where she lives is sabotaging Sean from the bowling alley!

Man Up to me was a a lot more “comedy” than “romantic” comedy.  There were some extremely funny bits that I think can only be relayed through the charms of British humour.  Wit, satire and emotion cap off a very good film that is about taking chances, and being yourself.  Pegg and Bell had great chemistry together and that makes you actually care for their characters.  Bell in particular gives a great performance; she had such a convincing English accent, and looked to have a lot of fun on the film.  Fun on the set nearly always translates to excellent performances. Sure the outcomes of Man Up are a little predictable and even a little improbable, but this one had me hooked and enjoying it all the way to the end.

Bottom Line: Man Up also had a great classic rock soundtrack.  The Duran Duran Reflex scene was great!

Kill Me Three Times – ★ ★ ★ ★ DVD Review

Simon Pegg as a hitman?  Driving a Oldsmobile Toronado?  You bet I’m in.  With time jumps and plot crossovers, Kill Me Three Times really hit the spot.  Charlie Wolfe (Pegg) finds himself in three tales of murder, blackmail and revenge as he takes on a contract killing.  After first determining that Alice (Alice Braga) is cheating on her husband Jack (Callan Mulvey), he’s asked to kill her, unfortunately several other parties have decided to kill Alice today as well.  Lucy (Teresa Palmer) and Nathan (Sullivan Stapleton) Webb; the local dentists; are in debt up to their eyeballs thanks to Nathan’s gambling and have decided to kill Alice and swap her records for Lucy’s so it appears Lucy has died and they can collect the insurance policy.  Alice’s boyfriend Dylan (Luke Hemsworth) wants to kill her abusive husband Jack, so they can run off together, but that doesn’t work if someone kills Alice first….

Kill Me Three Times had a very clever plot, with lots of intriguing motivations for everyone, and I thought it had lots of fun for a semi-serious, very stylish thriller.  Simon Pegg really brought the levity to the film, and perhaps that is why I was pulling for his character all movie long.  He’s this spectre of death, a professional hitman.  Sure he’s a bad guy, but I thought that he was also the only one in the film who was killing for the “right” reasons.  He was paid to do it.  It’s his job, plain and simple and he enjoys it, as you can tell from his “happy music” ring tone that pops up throughout the film.  Everyone else in the film was killing for greed, for revenge, or for control, but he’s doing it because he’s supposed to do it.  Though, for a professional, he’s really having a bad day, as just about every meeting he had came with a little hiccup attached to it.

Pegg was brilliant as always, and so were the rest of the cast really.  I particularly enjoyed Teresa Palmer (who was also very good in Warm Bodies), and felt a bit of sympathy for her character too, as she was initially pulled into all this mayhem by her husband’s gambling losses.  It’s pretty obvious though that she’s the brains of their operation, so she’s definitely not an innocent victim who just happens to get drawn in.  Still, I sympathized with her a bit.  Kudos as well to Australian acting legend Bryan Brown (F/X) who plays the local policeman, who controls the remote Australian town this all takes place in.  Nothing happens without his approval, legal or illegal, and Brown played the role perfectly.

Bottom Line:  As well as being a sucker for attractive blondes, I’m also a sucker for cool cars, and that Toronado was pretty darn cool car.  A cool car that became another character in the film, with the roar of it’s big engine announcing Charlie Wolfe’s arrival and signalling somebody’s death.

The Boxtrolls – ★ ★ ★ ½ DVD Review

I really felt like watching a cartoon tonight, so I watched The Boxtrolls.  Quite an entertaining little film, perhaps a bit predictable, and a little light on plot, but I suppose the intricate work involved in making a ninety minute stop motion animation film may restrict the story from going off in too many directions.  Don’t get me wrong, there were a lot of great looking effects in the story, and it was a good story too.

Boxtrolls live under the town of Cheesebridge, where the aristocratic “white hats” run the town, with their minds more on cheese than on running the town.  One day they boxtrolls steal a child, the Trubshaw baby, and take him back to their underground lair to eat him, or so the official history goes.  The boxtrolls do end up with the Trubshaw baby, and they raise him as one of their own.  The town exterminator, Mr. Snatcher (Ben Kingsley), wants to be a white hat, and Lord Portley-Rind has agreed if he can rid the town of the boxtrolls, he will get his reward.  Along with his henchmen, Mr. Pickles (Richard Ayoade), Mr. Trout (Nick Frost) and Mr. Gristle (Tracy Morgan), Snatcher hunts down the boxtrolls who come to the upper world each night, scavenging scraps materials to build up their underground world.  The boxtrolls by the way, are all named by the boxes they wear and hide inside.  Fish lives in a box that fish came in, Shoes wears a shoe box, and even the Trubshaw baby (who is all grown up now and voiced by Isaac Hempstead Wright) is known as Eggs.  As his friends are captured one by one, Eggs has to save them, and along the way makes friends with Winnie (Elle Fanning) Lord Portley-Rind’s daughter.  Once she knows the truth about Snatcher, the Trubshaw baby, the death of his father Mr. Trubshaw the town inventor, and the nature of the boxtrolls themselves, the pair try to convince the timid boxtrolls to stand up and fight back, leading to a dramatic showdown with Snatcher.

The Boxtrolls was like steam-punk puppet show as the multitude of gears and springs and scraps they find are used to create the world around them, and even to create Mr. Snatcher’s steam driven giant spider attack machine. You certainly cannot fault the animation in these films.  The animators and voice actors really did bring the story to life, and I loved every scene that involved Pickles and Trout, as they debate whether or not they are the good guys, as they’ve been told by their evil master.  My only complaint with The Boxtrolls was that it seemed to start off very slowly.  I wanted to learn about the boxtrolls quicker.

It was a fun story, and had a good message to it, which is little surprise, as it was from the same company that made ParaNorman and Colaline.  Not laugh out loud funny, though there was one joke that had me in stitches (Where’s the Red Hat Exterminators?  On Curd’s Way.  How do I get there?  Milk turns into it (as Winnie points to the “Milk Street” sign) followed by a rimshot and a man dropping a cymbal).  The film simply restates the old adage of judging books by their covers and reinforcing that cheese, hats and boxes, don’t make you, you make you.

Bottom Line: Herbert Trubshaw was played by Simon Pegg, so we got another team up of Pegg and Frost. Ironic that yesterday’s post was about screen duos…

Hector And The Search For Happiness – ★ ★ ★ ★ DVD Review

I don’t remember when I saw the trailer for Hector and the Search For Happiness, but it immediately drew me in.  Simon Pegg and Rosamund Pike are two excellent actors (both having starred together in The World’s End), and more importantly, two actors I like.  The trailer made the film look light and quirky – a nice journey of self-discovery.  Just the thing to help clear away the winter blues.

Hector (Simon Pegg) is a successful London psychiatrist who lives a very routine life with his long-term girlfriend Clara (Rosamund Pike).  She makes him his breakfast everyday, and ties his necktie everyday.  Hector goes to work at his own practice, where he is starting to realize his own apathy is not allowing him to help his clients.  He listens, but he isn’t making their lives any better.  He’s not happy, and he’s not making them happy.  The same is true when he makes his rounds at the psychiatric hospital, and the same when he’s at home.  Struggling with his predicament, he one day asks Clara, flat out, if she is happy.  Unsure where their relationship stands, Clara gives her approval for Hector to go off and research “happiness”, hoping he will find it, and hoping it will bring him back to her.  Why wouldn’t it?  It’s not like she found a picture of an old girlfriend (Toni Collette) in the bottom of his sock drawer…

Hector travels the world, meeting people and recording what they think happiness is.  In China, he meets a rich business man (Stellan Skarsgård) who shows him how money can buy happiness, and how work (or overwork) can be happiness too.  He travels to Tibet and meets monks, he travels to Africa and volunteers at a clinic with an old friend.  He aids a local warlord/drug lord (Jean Reno) and is eventually kidnapped by his enemies.  During his incarceration he reflects on his life and his loves, his joys and his regrets.  Thinking often of Clara, he finally, cleverly secures his release.  Thankful to be alive, Hector flies from Africa to Agnes, his old girlfriend (Collette), now living in Los Angeles who is working with a professor (Christopher Plummer) who is also researching happiness, and the chemical and scientific mappings of the brain.  Thinking again of Clara, Hector knows what will make him happy, but will she still have him?

An incredible cast of supporting stars and great light humour, this movie had me involved from the very beginning.  Mainly because I was cheering for Hector to solve his dilemma.  I really wanted him to stay with Clara and not to mess things up, and I was worried what would happen when he met back up with his old girlfriend.  The film though is warm and inspiring, and generally was a treat to watch.

Bottom Line:  A lot of people have compared Hector to the Secret Life of Walter Mitty; which I also really liked; but I think the only real similarities are that both Hector and Walter travel the world on their respective “quests”.

The World’s End – DVD Review 3½ stars

As the third movie in Simon Pegg, Nick Frost and Edgar Wright’s “Cornetto trilogy”, The World’s End may suffer a little bit with comparisons to the trio’s prior films.  The World’s End was quite funny and action packed, but in my opinion was the weakest of the three films.  Shaun of the Dead was brilliant, but Hot Fuzz was my favourite, as a fan of British crime drama the spin it took was fantastic to me.  Perhaps The World’s End was trickier because it wasn’t the first, there had been lots of humourous science fiction films before it.  Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz kind of paved the way with their humourous spins on their respective genres and were something that we really hadn’t seen before.

In The World’s End we follow a group of five childhood friends who are reunited by their ringleader Gary King (Pegg), who wants to relive what he feels was the greatest night of their life. The night they tried to complete the “Golden Mile”, a pub crawl through their hometown consisting of twelve pints at twelve pubs. They couldn’t complete it in their younger days, but somehow Gary convinces his friends, who have all moved on to seemingly successful lives, to come back to Newton Haven and try it again.  The only one who hasn’t moved on is Gary, who still drives the same Mk 2 Ford Granada he was driving 20 years ago.  Andy Knightly (Frost), Peter Page (Eddi Marsan), Steven Prince (Paddy Considine), Oliver Chamberlain (Martin Freeman) all fell out with Gary years ago and but because Gary said he got Andy to go along the others commit too.  As the “five musketeers” start along the pub trail, they discover that things in Newton Haven are not what they seem.  The town has been taken over by alien robots who have replaced most of the human citizens.  The action now kicks into high gear, as the terrifically choreographed fight sequences start, turning Nick Frost into an action hero.  The five friends meet up with Oliver’s sister Sam (Rosamund Pike) who joins them in their escape from the town.

What I love about these films is the reward you get if you pay attention; the films are full of foreshadowing and full of Easter Eggs. Did you notice that the main characters surnames all have royal/court connections: (Gary) King, (Andy) Knightly, (Peter) Page, (Steven) Prince, (Oliver) Chamberlain?  Or that Edgar Wright basically tells the entire story in the opening scenes?  The characters essentially meet the same fates that they met when they originally attempted the Golden Mile.  Even the names of the twelve pubs of the Golden Mile foreshadow the events that will take place there:

• The first pub they visit is The First Post.
• The second pub, The Old Familiar is exactly the same inside as The First Post. 
• The Famous Cock is where Gary was banned for his actions as a teenager.
• They get into a fight at The Cross Hands.
• The drug dealer Reverend Green is met in The Trusted Servant.
• They meet twin sisters in The Two-Headed Dog.
• The characters are tempted to their downfall by beautiful women at The Mermaid, and the pub’s sign depicts a redhead mermaid with a blonde on each side, just like the “marmalade sandwich” that they meet inside.
• They fight off swarms of robots enemies at The Beehive.
• At The King’s Head, Gary King makes a last stand and decides to continue his journey without anyone else’s help, and the pub sign is a painting of Simon Pegg’s face.
• Gary’s car is driven through The Hole in the Wall, leaving a hole in the wall.
• Finally the events that transpire at The World’s End lead to the end of the world.

A nice switch in The World’s End, was that this time out Nick Frost played the kind, responsible friend and Simon Pegg played the much less likeable character.  He was a jerk, a drunkard and a bit of a loser at first.  Once things reveal themselves though, we understand how and why all the characters are where they are in their lives. The World’s End developed it’s characters very well through their various personal reveals and flashbacks.  I really enjoyed the journeys that all of them took, and it really made me care about them which added to my enjoyment of the film.

Review of Star Trek: Into Darkness or just me ranting and raving…

Before the summer blockbusters came out, I compiled a list of the ones I wanted to see, that list has now evolved from a “to see” list to a “missed it” list, but now I’m crossing off number two, with the J.J. Abrams Star Trek sequel Into Darkness.  It was enjoyable enough but difficult to review without spoilers, so be warned, I’ll try to be careful, but there are a few things I need to talk about.

First, there thankfully seemed to be less lens flare than the first one.  Second, there is something about these Abrams’ Star Trek films that just doesn’t seem Star Trek to me.  Not all the time, but sometimes things slip in, and I just have to sigh a little bit.  There doesn’t seem to be the big message of exploration, discovery, acceptance and social and moral responsibilities that the Roddenberry Trek had.  They are there, but just not addressed enough to make it Star Trek enough to me…I know that some fans will grow up only knowing these newer Star Trek movies, just like there are children who will grow up thinking Jar Jar is representative of Star Wars.

I was talking to a co-worker tonight about Into Darkness, and learned that he hadn’t seen Wrath of Khan.  I don’t think you can appreciate either of these new Trek films without having seen TWOK, since both borrow so much from it.  Remember the Kobayashi Maru test in the last one?  Where do you think it came from?  TWOK.  The Into Darkness villain?  Khan, and the worst kept secret of the summer.  I do like what Abrams and company tried to do by keeping the villain’s identity a secret but in this day of blogs, Twitter, the IMDb and the antiquated print media known as magazines, this secret was spilled long ago.  It’s also spelled out in the first line on the back of the DVD box so I guess Paramount gave up on maintaining the suspense too.  Benedict Cumberbatch (Sherlock) was revealed to be playing Khan Noonien Singh, the villain from the classic series episode Space Seed and of course Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, played both times by the legendary Ricardo Montalban.  I’ll give Abrams and his crew some more credit: they do seem to do their homework, as parts of both the TOS episode and the film were adapted for Into Darkness.

This will be the spoiler paragraph, so skip this if you don’t want to know details, or HIGHLIGHT to read what’s blanked out. Okay, I liked how things were reversed yet still mirrored TWOK, even the way the lines were swapped about worked for me.  This time Kirk is trapped in the radiation flooded compartment, not Spock.  This time Kirk “dies” but the resolution to that was so blatantly obvious.  They almost spelled it out half an hour earlier in big neon letters!  “Look what I discovered this will do to this dead tribble Jim!”  Though the way they went about it didn’t make much sense to me…. HIGHLIGHT TO SEE: They need Khan’s blood to resurrect Kirk, fine.  I’ll even accept they need him alive for the blood to work for some reason…but how about those 72 other genetic super beings frozen in the cryotubes, couldn’t they just use some of their blood?  They’re frozen so you don’t really need to chase them down…. …

My biggest complaints about the new Star Treks are that they don’t really seem to use the “trinity” that existed in the original Star Trek properly.  There was very little Kirk-Spock-McCoy, which made up the core of The Original Series; Spock being the mind, McCoy the heart and Kirk the balance.  Now, Kirk is not yet a balancing factor and McCoy has been replaced by Uhura, which I suppose is a big step up from answering the phone on TOS, but for an old fan like me, it’s just not the same….  I’m still a little unclear why Spock needs a love interest, but as she has this role, Uhura does fit nicely as the new “heart” of the franchise.  I would have liked to have seen more of Karl Urban, seeing his McCoy truly acting as the heart would have been very satisfying.  After his excellent performance in Dredd 3D I wanted to see more of his acting range.  They seem to have made Scotty a bit too much of a comic relief character, perhaps because they Simon Pegg.  I suppose if you’ve got a fairly well known comic actor, you might as well use him for the comedic parts, but they can’t forget Scotty’s “genius” just for the sake of humour.  I suppose these changes also come from having a primary crew of seven (or eight) characters and casting “name” actors for each.  You have to make sure that every actor gets their screen time, but too many cooks spoil the broth.  I’ve got to say that I have really enjoyed all the casting decisions for the rebooted Treks, and hope that if they continue, Alice Eve returns as Dr. Carol Marcus.  After each scene, I wanted to see more of both the character and the actress.

My bottom line on Star Trek: Into Darkness is that it was fun, the action was good, but the sci-fi or Star Trek elements were a little down played for my liking.  I would have to say this was a must see for Star Trek fans, though maybe not Star Trek enough for die hard purists.  If you’re a newer fan, you definitely need to watch Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, though I’m not sure if you would benefit more by seeing it before or after Into Darkness.  I know that after watching it I wanted to pop TWOK in right away but think I’ll save that for the weekend, and watch it with my kids, who have never seen it, but did see Into Darkness before I did.

Paul

Pegg.  Frost.  They’ve done it again.  From the director of Superbad (which probably explains Seth Rogen’s voice casting) we get the buddy/road trip/geek comedy Paul, written by Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, of Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz acclaim.

Two UK geeks come to the USA for Comic-Con, and stay for the adventure.  The science fiction author Clive Gollings (Frost) and his artist friend Graeme Willy (Pegg) rent an RV and follow a trail across the mid-west of famed alien landings and sightings such as Area 51, the Black Mailbox, and of course Roswell.  Along the way, our team pick up a few strays.  Paul (voiced by Seth Rogen), the alien, who has escaped the government (after 60 years of faithful service) to be rescued by his people; and the sheltered Ruth (Kristen Wiig), who grew up on an RV Park with her bible toting father.  Our foursome attempt to dodge the government agents sent out to prevent Paul’s escape from Earth.

I’ve liked all of Pegg and Frost’s work together dating all the way back to Spaced, and Paul does not fail to impress.  This was a very funny movie, well written, with snappy dialogue and tremendous casting.  I loved all the quotes and lines from other films, that really did fit.  We all know how it is.  You and your friends have just been asked for your identification and someone in the group tries to pull the old “Jedi Mind Trick”.  The quotes and homages were worked in so naturally to the movies that they were just like a pair of friends bantering back and forth, using common movie references to relate how they were feeling at a particular situation.  Jason Bateman, who seems to be popping up everywhere these days, co-stars as Agent Lorenzo Zoil hot on the trail of our alien.  Yes, his name is a great movie pun, but he also gets one of the best “quote lines” in the film.  Dealing with the “Big Man” on the other end of the Secret Service radio, he gets frustrated, shoots the CB unit and quotes “Boring conversation anyway”.  Classic!  We get many other nods to Star Wars and other cinematic gems throughout.  In one scene upon entering a bar, the band is playing the Mos Eisley Cantina band music.

The visual effect of Paul himself was quite well done.  It must have been difficult to have your main character be absent and only fully realized in post-production, but the actors interacted well with whatever substitutes were used, and for the most part, everything seems to have come off flawlessly and looking fantastic.

The film has a lot of fun with itself, including it’s own running gag of  “Who is Adam Shadowchild?”  Adam Shadowchild is an arrogant science fiction author (played by Jeffrey Tambor) who wrote such books as  Prison Hulk 451,  The Skyfarm Trilogy, Night of the Moths, The Robot’s Mistress, The Jenny Starpepper Mysteries and Flux In Uranus.

“You have to spin a good yarn before you can weave a great dream” Shadowchild tells us, as does Paul who reveals the line was stolen from him.  I found Paul to be an awfully good yarn for the most part.  I think there was only one small bit that really didn’t seem necessary to me, and that was a pot smoking scene in the forest with the alien, which seemed more Superbad than Shaun of the Dead to me.  It made me wonder what the film would have been like if Edgar Wright had been chosen to direct instead.  Still a very enjoyable film that I definitely recommend.