Ten Statements About....SCOTT PILGRIM VERSUS THE WORLD (2010)

Beware Michael Sera's video-game-inspired power!

“Next time, we don't date the girl with eleven evil ex-boyfriends."
“It's seven."
“Oh, well, that's not that bad.”

1) This film has a great, well, texture.  The way director Edgar Wright’s storytelling approximates a video game creates something unique even among comic book movies--namely a movie that looks like a comic book contemporary to the making of this film.  The introductory panels for each character, the way papery graphic sound effects rise from actual sounds, the combat titles, the transitions all help to build the world Wright wants us to dwell in.

2) I know some people didn’t care for Michael Cera, but I think the film needed him as Pilgrim.  Sera has just the right level of insincerity in his performance that it works.  Through his eyes, we understand that Scott is a big dick, which is essential for us to buy into the journey he goes through.

3) You know, I think Elizabeth Winstead is stunning, but her Ramona is, well, a bit of a dick as well, and has less screentime to show any change she may have gone through.  I think that the film needed to give her that to justify the ending it came up with (an ending that was made up before the last issue of the comic came out).

There are so many jokes I could make, but none of them would
paint me in a good light...

4) But what the film really needs to do is more clearly justify and define the story arc for Ellen Wong’s Knives Cho.  Given how she’s treated by Scott in the first act and gets all stalker-y in the second, the argument the film seems to make for her in the third seems so disjointed and strange--and it leads to a denoument at (literally) the film’s end that seems to dispute that third act entirely.  That Wong almost makes it work is a credit to her as an actress.

5) Can I admit to having a slight crush on Allison Pill’s Kim Pine?  Maybe it’s the way she delivers each line with a sort of controlled fury, but she seems to draw the eye with each scene she’s in.

6) One of the things that makes this film work besides its unique look is how much fun so many of these actors, especially those that play Ramona’s seven evil ex’s.  I’m a big believer in the principle that if the people involved are having fun (without breaking the third wall), then that fun will rub off on the viewer, and it works here.

Yeah, it's a Michael Sera film...but don't fight this film's
unique, sugar-coated charms.

7) I really respect the fact that Wright establishes the video game motif of his world extremely quickly, and then sticks to the the rules inherent in such a background.  Hell, the resolution of the third act works only if we buy into his world-as-video-game conceit...and it’s to his credit that the big twist is set up very clearly, yet we might not figure out what went down right away.

8) Every time I see Brandon Routh, I am convinced he needs a bigger career.  His telekinetic (apparently in the world of Scott Pilgrim, veganism gives you super powers) Todd Ingram is one of the highlights of the film, and he makes the most of his screentime.  And apparently Thomas Jane gets to drag him off for violation of the Vegan Code.  And speaking of the Vegan Police....

9)  I do appreciate how, after Wright gives us the prerequisite hyper-kinetic fight scene (because, you know, video game and all), Scott ends up using his head and, in one memorable moment, his musical skills to triumph over each of the exes.  It shows that there are qualities that could raise Scott above his dickishness, and it makes that ultimate rise above his flaws work in that third act.

10) Bless this movie for being shot in Toronto and...being set in Toronto.  Hell, one of the major reasons Ramona becomes an object of desire for desire for Scott is because she’s from the States and, as such, is ‘exotic.’

Overall...this is one of those films, like Speed Racer and Josie And The Pussycats, that will get the following it deserves with distance.  Wright creates a world, sticks to it, and is unafraid to give us an unsympathetic lead (who becomes sympathetic through what he learns from the events of the film), and presents a unique moviegoing experience.  While the ending is a little sour, it doesn’t change the fact that this is a very good film.

Ten Statements About....RED (2010)

Much of what is right in this film--and the world--
is encapsulated by this one photo.....

1) This is yet another film that contributes to the Year Of The Caper Flick, with a group of colorful types banding together to pull off a job/clear their name/redeem themselves....you get the idea. And I suspect the reason it's being dumped in The Fall Graveyard is because Summit Entertainment's executives knew it would suffer from comparison to some of the caper films we've experience this summer.

2) I have not read the story the film was based on--although the collection just came in via my DCBS Shipment--but even though the film seems proud of its comic pedigree (the logo and the poster is consciously designed to mimic the cover of the miniseries), it seems to be leeched of everything that makes Warren Ellis such a distinctive comic book writer.

3) Like Live Free or Die Hard, Bruce Willis plays a character who's one step away from a super-hero. Unlike Live Free or Die Hard the moments that shore up his super-hero-ness, like the shot of him calmly stepping out of a car spinning out of control, works.

4) The reason Mary-Louise Parker is so integral to the film is not only that she's incredibly beautiful but very credibly middle-aged, but because she has this sort of endearing gawkiness that allows her to become the POV character and give us a grounding presence to all the silliness. Her enjoyment and excitement as she gets deeper invested in the caper is genuine and effective. She also shares perhaps the single funniest scene, an exchange with Helen Mirren.

"Laugh, or I'll blow your ass up!"

5) The way John Malkovich's Marvin is written to be the 'wacky comedy relief' character is painfully over-the-top and winge-worthy. The way Malkovich makes the character not only palatable, but likable is a credit to his abilities as an actor.

6) Every action movie could benefit from Helen Mirren shooting people. I cannot imagine original choice Meryl Streep playing wetworks expert Victoria anywhere nearly as perfectly as she does.

Bruce Willis: schoolin' you young'uns since 1985...

7) Karl Urban, playing the kinda-sorta-bad-guy-who-really-isn't-that-bad, is super cool. And his fight scene with Willis is one of the highlights of the movie. If only the central exchange from said fight wasn't featured as the punchline of the trailer, it would have more impact.

8) The actual bad guy is so wipsy, and the resolution of the problem, is anticlimatic. I wonder if the film would have been improved if Richard Dreyfuss' arms dealer Alexander Dunning was the real villain. Lord knows he proclaims himself the 'bad guy' enough...but his brief scene blows the actual villain out of the water.

9) I really like Christophe Beck's score, which starts off soft and jazzy and grows in freneticness the further along we get in the story. And even the few song choices work--my favorite being when Parker's Sarah wakes up from being drugged to Jackson Browne's "Doctor, My Eyes"--which serves to comment on both her and Willis' Frank's condition at the time.

10) I like Brian Cox. I like Morgan Freeman. I like Bruce Willis and Helen Mirren and Karl Urban and Julian MacMahon. Why do these actors together not generate enough heat to keep my eyes glued to the screen?

In short...a film that really should be better judging from all the disparate parts, a movie that pales in comparison to all the other Caper Films we've been treated to in 2010.

It was back to the Atlas for me, which means a forced viewing of The Regal Firstlook (although even I thought the Daft Punk video tied in Tron Legacy was entertaining)....and another fistful of trailers, the worst being Drive Angry, a Nicholas Cage horror film that comes off as a parody of Ghost Rider and looks so epically awful I have to wonder if it started out as a joke gone horribly wrong, and presentations yet again of both The Green Hornet and Due Date--which is made even more dreadful by the way the trailer hews so closely to The Script. At least I also got to see the trailer for Faster again, which doesn't hew close to the script, and seems to promise the return of Dwayne Johnson to action-y goodness.

Ten Statements About....THE LOSERS (2010)

Nope...nothing subtle about this photo...nothing a'tall...

1) This film rises and falls on the chemistry of its leads....and luckily, that chemistry is there from the first frame. Because we believe these five people have a history, we can go along with all the wild insanity that follows them throughout this movie.

2) I liked the fact that the film never shied away from acknowledging its comic book roots, from the Jock-drawn introductory cards to the place titles done in the style of the comic's logo.

3) It took a while, but Jeffrey Dean Morgan has managed to find his place in the world. His raw-but-smooth voice, his body language and the way he handles firearms makes him this generation's 'quiet cool' action star along the lines of Clint Eastwood.

4) The script, by Peter Berg and James Vanderbilt, understands a fundamental rule of action filmmaking--keep it moving, keep it fast. And, refreshingly, the film also understand what far too many filmmakers these days don't...namely, that not every movie needs to be two hours or more. Some, like this one, are perfectly fine at a little over ninety minutes.

5) Another clever thing about the script--Berg and Vanderbilt cleverly seed the film with a few outlandish element like the 'snuke' that pretty much clue the audience into the fact that this is Not A Realistic Film...thus allowing director Sylvain White to go a little overboard with the stylized action. And speaking of overboard...

6)...one of the two weaknesses lie in Jason Patric's villian, Max. He certainly digs into the role with both hands, but oversteps the generous boundaries set up by Berg and Vanderbilt. It doesn't help that Max seems to have invaded the world of The Losers from the land of Mark Millar, with the way he casually kills, or orders killed, people for the simplest of reasons, makes racist comments and primps like a cartoon transvestite.

7) A little better is Holt McCallany as Wade, Max's henchman, who has a similar 'quiet cool' feel about him, and has a wry delivery that is highly reminiscent of Clancy Brown.

Cougar, he may not know much English..but he knows he's coo'.

8) Chris Evans should have Ryan Reynolds' career, if not his wife. The man does everything that ass-hat does in terms of comic timing and handling action moments, only he does it better. His give and take with both Columbus Short's Pooch and Oscar Jaenada's Cougar goes a long way to cementing the sense that the leads have a history prior to the film. Anyone worried about him being Captain America needs to shut up.

(Hell, on second thought, give Evans Reynolds' wife. That asshat doesn't deserve coming home to Scarlett Johanssen every night.)

"Alright, Reynolds...hand her over..."

9) The other big weakness is how the film very, very self-consciously presumes there's going to be a sequel. Yes, there's a final confrontation between Morgan's Clay and Patric's Max, but it ends up being too short, and no amount of humorous codas featuring Patric getting mugged on a public bus can help disguise that.

10) I still don't get why everyone is going nuts over Zoe Saldana, who seems to have that Ally-Sheedy-like tendency to let her smirk do all her acting, but she does show up in a number of revealing outfits, including a black corset-and-panties number she engages in a firefight in. I'm sore a lot of people would argue that there's nothing at all wrong with that; I'm just not one of them. I fear she is going to go the way of all these 'It Girls' who disappear after two or three years of intense stardom.

In short--it's a big, dumb, action movie with very little touch in touch with reality. But the cast of known-but-not-very-known stars manages to hold it all together by sheer dint of chemistry.

Incidentally, there was a strange frission going on in the trailers, as we were treated to The A-Team (There are shorts where Liam Neeson looks positively eireely like George Peppard), The Takers and The Expendables....all films about outlaw mercenaries trying to pull off impossible missions, all but The Takers to clear their names. It only emphasized how in marchstep some of these studios are creatively. But at least they're better than Lottery Ticket or...shudder....Step Up 3-D. Who is actually watching movies like this? Who'd be willing to watch movies like this in 3-D?

Oh, and this is the first time I had to pay nine dollars for a matinee show. Thank God the film was worth it.