Scott Pilgrim vs. The World (2010)

This is an adaptation of the graphic novel series by Bryan O'Malley, of which I have read half of the issues so far, deciding to start before I watched the film. Edgar Wright ("Spaced", Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz) directs this astounding adaptation, which has a visual flair beyond anything else this year, and a script that is just good enough to keep up.

The film stars Michael Cera as the title character, who we first see dating 17-year-old high schooler Knives Chau (Ellen Wong), though they haven't even held hands yet. Scott Pilgrim also has a band, Sex Bob-bomb, which has two friends of his, Stephen Stills ("The Talent", played by Mark Webber), and Kim Pine (Alison Pill), who Scott used to date. The band also plays at Young Neil's (Johnny Simmons) house. Scott's house is one he lives in with gay roomate Wallace Wells (Kieran Culkin), and sleeps in the same bed as Wallace, though nothing is going on.

This is Scott's life before he has a dream, where he sees a mysterious girl. He then sees that girl at a store, before meeting her at a party, where he tries and fails to pick her up. His desperation knows no bounds however, and he succeeds in picking her up the second time.

The description sounds pretty normal so far, but things take a somewhat drastic shift here. After Scott starts dating this girl, Ramona Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), it turns out he must defeat her seven evil exes to continue dating her.

The plot summary is amazingly straight-forward, but the plot really isn't the most important part of this movie. The visual design replicates the comic-book feel amazingly, with transitions that look like panels side-by-side, and onomatopoeic sounds that pop up on the screen to show a phone ringing, and generally energise the movie.

Edgar Wright is an incredibly talented director, and a large part of that is in recruiting the best talent he can find to help bring his vison to life. His DP Bill Pope (Army of Darkness, The Matrix, and Spiderman 2, among other films) is able to create an amazing visual style, by far the best of a movie released so far this year (including Inception), that is incredibly good at replicating the video-games that the comic and movie seem to be inspired by (fighting games, early Nintendo). Wright also recruited Jackie Chan's fight choreographers, and it shows in the amazing fight scenes. The fight sequences are shot in such a way that, though it may cut incredibly fast, you actually get a sense of spatial awareness in the fights because they shoot in a way that is a little bit reminiscent of Hong Kong action movies.

The plot may be simple, but the performances are amazingly strong, with Chris Evans and Brandon Routh stealing their scenes as evil ex two and three respectively, not to mention Jason Schwartzman as big bad Gideon Graves, and the dialogue is great, with words such as "Hasbian" used to describe bi-sexuals. Michael Cera is able to finally show that his comedic style doesn't have to be annoying, with the possible exception of Arrested Development, in this movie. He delivers the lines in a brilliantly deadpan way that plays against type a little bit, with Scott being a bit dumber than the average Michael Cera character, but works quite effectively.

The references, as you would expect in a Wright movie, come thick and fast, but often aren't the centre of the jokes, which is something that people seem to forget these days. The only joke I can think of where the reference took a primary role was the "Seinfeld" gag, which was a hilarious parody. The visuals are full of sight gags, such as Scott's shirt, which has, by my count, Astro Boy, the Fantastic Four and Rock Band references. There are also moments where he turns convention on it's head, such as Nega Scott, who turned out to be a really nice guy instead of evil Scott the way you would expect in a video game.

Overall the film plays much more like a $60 million version of Spaced, though the subtle British comedy isn't quite as present. Not that there's anything wrong with that. This is a fine entry in Edgar Wright's body of work, and hopefully it will allow him to continue to do what he does best with the money it makes.

5/5

Cyrus (2010)

Well, at the end of my last review, I put Four Lions before Cyrus, but it turned out that the tickets we had booked put Cyrus before Four Lions. Not that it really matters anyway.

Cyrus is a film about John (John C. Reilly), and Molly (Marissa Tomei), and her son Cyrus (Jonah Hill). John has been divorced for seven years, and the film begins with his ex-wife Jamie (Catherine Keener) coming over to visit, only to catch him masturbating. She has came because she is worried about his increasingly depressed state, even more so after she announced her engagement to Tim (Matt Walsh). Jamie invites John to a party, where he embarrasses himself in a way that you only do in comedies, before meeting Molly at the party.

Molly and John hit it off instantly and, after Molly leaves in the middle of the night when she comes over for the second time, he stalks her to her house and falls asleep parked outside her house. He wakes up the next morning, goes to her house, and finds Cyrus, who seems friendly at first, but turns out to be worse for their relationship than they could imagine due to him and his mothers' relationship.

The reason that this plot summary is sitting here is because I want the very few of you who read this blog to understand the sort of movie I am talking about here. It is a romantic comedy, albeit an "indie" rom-com, but a rom-com nonetheless. It is formulaic, and follows the conventions throughout the movie. I find rom-com's excruciating to watch, and leave the room very abruptly if there is one on.

Cyrus was not excruciating to watch. The hand-held camera shook like hell, objects were zoomed in on with home-video techniques, the dramatic moments were telegraphed like there was no tomorrow, and the whole thing, frankly, stank of that sickening sweetness that only a modern Romantic Comedy has. But I watched it, without thinking of nails on a chalkboard as I do when stepping in to see a romantic comedy playing on the TV.

The reason behind this is the way the Duplass brothers make their films, similar to the way that Apatow makes his. They give a huge amount of freedom to improvise, knowing that with talented comedians they are more likely to be funny when they improvise than when they stick to the script. Jonah Hill and John C. Reilly, both talented comedians, use this to breathe life into a movie that otherwise would have had none. Their interactions, which still follow the conventions of romantic comedies, with Cyrus being the obstacle that comes between the happy couple, are hilarious. They play off each other naturally and their ability shines even in scenes without each other. It doesn't take a talented comedian to make a drunk character hilarious, but it sure as hell helps.

The movie can't escape the plot with improvisation, and that is ultimately the downfall of what could have been a far better comedy. The improvised scenes, particularly the beginning where the rom-com plot hasn't started yet, are very funny, to the point that I was chuckling through most of the first third or so. The plot was thin, but it was just present enough to be cloying, particularly towards the end, where the bulk of the plot seemed to be for some reason.

The technical elements really didn't help, with the music being designed to reinforce the rom-com stereotype, and the camera-work a stark reminder of the way that cinematography seems to have taken a back seat over the last decade or so, with film-makers who started in the last decade often not bothering with the conventions of their antecedents, to the point that tripods are supposedly unecessary. The editing was good though, moving along at a good clip, though the plot would have moved at a fast clip anyway.

Overall, I would give this a 3/5, based on the hilarious performances of Jonah Hill and John C. Reilly, who stood out in the dramatic moments as well. The rest of the movie should have just functioned as a frame-work for their performances, but in the end it interfered far too much with my enjoyment of their performances, and made the movie a lot worse, in my mind at least.

Predicament

This review is a bit old, seeing as I watched the film on Sunday, but I was a bit too busy with other things to get around to it. Either way this is my first (out of three) reviews from films I will be watching at the New Zealand Film Festival.

And what a way to start. Predicament is the new film from director Jason Stutter (Tongan Ninja, Diagnosis Death), making his first "real feature", collaborating yet again with Jemaine Clement, who is such a New Zealand icon he needs no introduction. The film also stars Heath Franklin ("Chopper Reid"), Tim Finn (musician from Split Enz and the Finn Brothers), and first-time film actor Hayden Frost.

Predicament is an adaptation of a New Zealand crime novel of the same title by Ronald Hugh Morrison, and it is a visually stunning dark comedy about student Cedric Williamson (Hayden Frost), who is a scrawny loner, and sometimes slips into fantasises about his dream girl. He is then unsuspectingly used by black-mailer Mervyn "Merv" Toebeck (Franklin), as an alibi for the "suicide" of his father. Merv pretends to be distraught so he can crash at the ill-kept mansion that Cedric lives at with his grand-mother, and insane father (Tim Finn), who is building a giant tower to heaven to see his dead wife. Soon Merv has brung in his friend Spook (Jemaine), and they decide to rope Cedric into a blackmailing scheme, where they take images of men having affairs at the local club. Cedric goes along with their plan, trying to get back at the Bramwell family, who swindled his family out of land.

Unfortunately things don't go to plan with their plan as Cedric, torn by guilt, decides to tell their mark, who was poorer than they expected, about the fact they had no camera, only the flash bulb. After a little bit of persuasion they find Blair Bramwell, the spoiled son, sneaking off with his step-mother. Spook screws up the plan, and suddenly the police are on their tail.

In a lot of ways this is essentially a Coen Brothers-esque film set in New Zealand. A lot of the dark comedy parts in the film clearly owed a lot to their films, but to call it that would be dismissive. After watching the New Zealand TV series "This is Not My Life", I was shocked at the poor quality of television in New Zealand. This however, along with "I'm not Harry Jenson", is showing that our film industry is on the rise. The comedy, though borrowing from the Coens, is very much in the New Zealand style that has been developing recently. Clement is, as always, hilarious in his slightly off-kilter way, showing his skill at comic timing. Franklin is very good as the boorish bludger Merv, and Frost shows very good skill at playing the awkward teenager.

The cinematography is very good, if a little showy, with quite a few crane shots, and a general sense of polish that really helped to sell the film. The art direction is where the film really succeeds. Very ably re-creating 1930's New Zealand with an almost fairy-tail like brush, the set design adds a lot to the movie. The true show-piece of the set is the tower that Tim Finn's character is building throughout the film. A tower built out of every-day objects, it's haphazard nature makes for some very amusing sight gags, and general jokes made at the Williamsons' expense.

The end isn't the strongest around, and is very much a tonal shift from the rest of the film. It is very strange to have a dark comedy that ends on such a saccharine note, though it does sell it reasonably well. Stutter definitely showed potential as a "proper" director with his two other movies I have seen, but this really realises that promise into a film that is very strong.

I would give this a 4/5, a quite well-realised dark comedy. It loses points on the ending though, and a few minor issues that are ingrained into the movie. The other two films I will be reviewing are "Four Lions", a British comedy about a group of would-be terrorists, and "Cyrus", which is a Duplass brothers film starring John C. Reilly and Jonah Hill.

Rescue Dawn

It's been a couple of months. Not that I haven't stopped watching movies (watched about 30 over the school holidays), but more that I have been absorbing a lot of information recently about film in general. I have been watching a lot of "art" movies, and I have been reading a lot of books on film, all of which has lead me to conclude that my reviews and criticism add very little to anything in terms of film criticism, not that I had any pretensions about this earlier.

I will be coming back to this to develop my writing skills, and to create focussing points for my heated discussions about movies with friends. I probably won't comment on all the movies I have watched in the mean-time, though I will come back to some.

Onto this movie, my third Herzog film, after "Fitzcarraldo", and "Even Dwarfs Started Small". Interesting that my third would be his most accessible film, instead of the first film by him that I watched. But make no mistake, Herzog is a man who does not make easy-to-digest movies, even at his most accessible. Rescue Dawn is the tale of Dieter Dengler (Christian Bale), a German-American pilot involved in a top-secret mission bombing the Ho Chi Minh trail in the early stages of the Vietnam War. This is also a studio film, produced and distributed by MGM.

He is shot down on his first mission, and stays on the run for a while before being captured by the Viet Cong. Once in the prison camp, he befriends the fellow inmates, a mix of Vietnamese and other US pilots. He forms a close bond with Duane (Steve Zahn), who has been in the prison camp for a year and a half. He then formulates a plan to escape by stealing the guards guns when they go to get food by breaking out of their handcuffs and chains using a nail. From there the group get very aggressive, with Eugene DeBruin (Jeremy Davies), who is mentally unbalanced and was against the plan from the start, stealing guns and shoes, but not getting any shoes for other people. This leads to Dieter and Duane trying to make it to Thailand on their own.

Their increasingly depressing tale of survival through the jungle, while Dieter desperately tries to signal US planes, though being shot at as he looks like Viet Cong from up high, reaches a very depressing end with Duane being killed by villagers and Dieter at the end of his wit signalling a plane. But at that point things take a turn for the better as he is rescued by US soldiers, leading to a very sentimental ending, a little unexpected to those who know anything about Werner Herzog.

What makes this phenomenal tale all the better is that it is based on a true story, which Herzog followed earlier in this 1997 documentary "Little Dieter Needs to Fly." Liberties are taken (he was captured twice and the plan had been hatched before he arrived), but the integrity of it remains the same. His penchant for stunning vistas, shot on location, isn't removed when working in the studio system.

He uses the Thailand jungle to great effect, particularly in the demoralising section after the break-out. The cinematography is stunningly effective, shying away from the intensified continuity that is the hallmark of studio films, and the location looks fantastic on film, like in all Herzog films. The Steadicam shots through the jungle are highlights, as are the crane shots of the prison and in the jungle.

The writing is well-paced, telling the story well over the two-hour run-time. Dialogue is often sparse and whispered, with Herzog preferring to let the actions speak for the characters as much as what they say. The ending is perhaps a bit out of character, as he gives the big sentimental ending that Hollywood so often has, complete with text at the end explaining what happened to him in the future. The film is so well-paced though, that the ending feels deserved, if a little over-the-top.

The plot has been done before in movies, but I have never seen one that has been quite so effective. The vistas and story-telling combine very effectively to create a tale that strikes the right balance between depressing and up-lifting. Two hours is a long time to fill with quite a sparse story, but you never really feel bored during watching it.

Overall this would be a 4.5/5 for me, a brilliant film by Herzog, who comes into the studio system making a film that is clearly made on his terms. My gripe with the ending is the main thing holding it back from a 5/5

Devil in a Blue Dress (1995)

One thing I have often asked myself while watching film noirs is why aren't there any black people? The cool black person should have played well with the white audiences, even back in those incredibly racist '40's. Maybe not as the lead, but having more black characters would have lent itself to the noir style.

Devil in a Blue Dress however, is so similar to the way a "black guy" noir would have played that I can see why they weren't made. Maybe the message about racism wouldn't have been as heavy-handed as it was in this 1990's film, but no doubt it would have been there. It isn't that message which I disliked, it was more the way it was presented.

Devil in a Blue Dress is set in 1948 L.A., and follows the honest, hard-working black man who is dumped on by the whites, Ezekiel "Easy" Rawlins (Denzel Washington, in a role which he so often plays). Out of luck, and employment, he takes a job from a detective DeWitt Albright (Tom Sizemore), who originally says he is employed by mayoral candidate Todd Carter (Terry Kinney), but turns out to be far more sinister. He is employed to find the mayoral candidate's former lover, Daphne Monet (Jennifer Beals) who happens to sympathise and hang out with black people at illegal nightclubs.

Easy then tracks down a friend of hers, Coretta James (Lisa Nicole Carson), at an illegal black nightclub. He goes to her house and sleeps with her, while finding out a fake address for Daphne. Coretta turns out to be dead the next morning, putting detectives Mason and Miller (John Roselius and Beau Starr) on his tail. To help him find and help Daphne once he realises who DeWitt really is (a criminal), He brings in gun-toting badass Mouse Alexander (Don Cheadle) to help him find her.

The movie oozes with class and style. The cinematography is very impressive, and more than suitably in the style, even though it is in colour. The music is suitable, with a very nice rendition of "'Round Midnight" during a montage as well as a generally jazzy score. Denzel Washington has the sound of a typical gumshoe down, and the voice-over is also quite good. Don Cheadle is electrifying as Mouse Alexander, and Sizemore is menacing as well.

The issue is the predictable story. Most neo-noirs try to get a story which is original and fresh, and put it over the classic noir backdrop. This story is quite uninspired by those standards, and by regular noir standards. The plot is twisty, but the resolution only really serves to hammer in the hammy message of tolerance. The message is poorly handled throughout acutally, with some clumsy scenes thrown in there to try to ingratiate the viewer with the plight of the blacks in the '40's. The third act drags a little as well.

Overall it is pretty good neo-noir, oozing with style as well as giving viewers the first noirish black lead since Shaft, though Shaft is a blacksploitation flick. The story is predictable, but most noir stories are. In the end it is very solid, but it lacks the skill of neo-noirs like "Chinatown", "Blue Velvet" and "L.A. Confidential."

3.5/5, good but could have been better without such a heavy-handed message obscuring the already thin plot.

I'm not Harry Jenson. (2009)

New Zealanders have a certain inherent innovativeness about us. We always look for cheaper solutions to complex problems. We often cobble together these solutions with little more than some no.8 wire, and a can-do attitude. We are also beset by small country syndrome, where we often strive to be the best at what we do to prove to others that we aren't just some speck on the map. These two qualities have led New Zealanders to punch well above their weight in many things, including sport and economics.

They also aid our film industry, which is virtually non-existent. Outside of the very few New Zealand Film Commission grants for film funding, there is no other underlying structure except for Peter Jackson's Wellywood, which is primarily geared towards more expensive US productions. This means that New Zealand directors tend to cobble together films on a shoe-string budget, often improvising solutions to staging and technical faults.

I'm not Harry Jenson is a fantastic example of what New Zealand film-makers are capable of achieving on a low budget. Written, Directed and Edited by James Napier, this is a professional-looking production through and through, suggesting the tremendous amount of time that he, and many others, would have put into this movie to make it this good.

The film follows crime novelist Stanley (Gareth Reeves), who wrote a very successful novel under the pseudonym Mike White. He is struggling to write his next book, about serial killer Harry Jenson, who killed 37 people. On the advice of his agent he goes on a trek in the New Zealand woods, with strangers Marissa (Jinny Lee Story), Jon (Ben Mitchell), Bill (Ian Mune), Margaret (Ilona Rodgers), Rick (Cameron Rhodes), Kevin (Tom Hern), Anna (Rachel Blampied). They are led by tour guide Colby ( Renato Bartolomei.)

The first day is all fun and games, but on the second morning they awake to find Jon murdered. This drives a stake through the group as they grow more and more suspicious of each other, eventually settling on Stanley as the killer after another person turns up dead. We follow from Stanley's perspective, often given insights about him via stories told to others.

The story is told with a mixture of present thriller techniques, combined with some Hitchcockian ones as well. The twists at the end are very good, with some great misdirection throughout the film building to them, which throw you off-guard. I will not spoil them here, in case others (Patrick) want to watch this movie.

The film is wonderfully shot by DP Rhys Duncan, with a great colour scheme and some very sophisticated camera work, including some dazzling helicopter shots of the woods. The camera is very good at capturing little details in people's faces and looks very clear over-all. There are a couple of minor shaky-cam issues, but given the logistics of mounting a camera in some of these situations they are easy to overlook.

The editing is mostly pretty slick as well, particularly in some of the transitions between Stanley's thoughts and what is actually happening. The shots are given plenty of time to linger, and the pace seldom feels rushed and events unfold in plenty of time.The acting was good as well, with brilliant performances from Gareth Reeves and Renato Bartolomei, and solid work from the others.

As a young aspiring film-maker it is very heartening to see that such a professional, polished thriller can be achieved in New Zealand on a low budget. There are many great New Zealand comedies, and a few great dramas, but genre films are rarely made by New Zealanders successfully, and this Hitchcockian thriller is in that respect a great achievement.

my rating is a 4/5, a very good film.

Mystery Team (2009)

The Mystery Team is the first feature film from comedy troupe Derrick Comedy, who have many members in US TV comedy shows, mostly on NBC. This is about a team of Hardy Boy-esque young detectives in a small town, who are still solving similar mysteries now that they are 18, and about to finish High School. They are then given the task of solving a murder of two parents by their younger daughter, and then the movie turns from there, with a balance of these immature buffoons solving the case, and some heavier dramatic stuff about who they are, and why they behave like small children still.

The main mystery team member is Jason (the hilarious Donald Glover from "Community"), who really wants to be a detective, while his dumber side-kick Charlie ( Dominic Dierkes), and "boy genius" Duncan (D.C. Pierson) follow along with him. These three do have very good chemistry together and, as they wrote the film, deliver the lines brilliantly. The love interest of Jason, Kelly (Aubrey Plaza), who is the older daughter who had her parents murdered, also has her moments comedically, but serves more to bring out some of the more dramatic moments.

Donald Glover though, is far and away the best of the main actors. He seems to be innately aware of what he looks and sounds like with the camera pointing at him. His every gesture comes across brilliantly and unforced, while he creates a character which is both hilarious and poignant. The only shame about his performance was that he wasn't able to be delivering lines with his "Community" co-star Danny Pudi, who would have fitted in well to the movie.

The cinematography was also surprisingly good for a comedic first feature. Using almost all non-handheld shots, with some great lighting and dolly use. The cinematography would have only appeared competent in a serious feature by an experienced director, but in a movie like this it truly stands out as being a cut above normal.

The film does have some pretty serious flaws unfortunately. The pacing is one thing that really does not work. The opening couple of scenes set the mood very well, but the solving of the murder does drag a bit, and the dramatic scenes between the mystery team don't always fit smoothly with the comedy. The ending scene is also very effective, showing that for all the change they have gone through they are still just as immature as ever.

The music is also not as good as other elements of the movie, with some musical cues that are re-used far too much. The comedy is a bit hit-and-miss, for example a scene where they fetch a ring out of a toilet is comic gold, whereas a scene with a kid that seems just a bit too mature for his age is quite unfunny as he keeps on coming back. The comedy seems just a bit too much to be based around the child-like mental state of the mystery team, and as a result is inconsistent. When it does hit though, it is often hilarious.


In the end, it is a pretty ambitious first attempt from these guys, and it is often hilarious, but in the end it just didn't quite connect well enough for me to be a brilliant comedy. I will definitely be looking forward to their future work though, whether it be on TV, or another feature like this.

3/5, good in parts but inconsistent overall.