The World's End - DVD Review

Starring Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Paddy Considine, Martin Freeman, Eddie Marsan, Rosamund Pike, David Bradley and Pierce Brosnan.
Directed by Edgar Wright.

★★★

Pegg/Frost/Wright do here for the Body Snatcher films what Shaun of the Dead did for zombies and Hot Fuzz did for buddy-cop films. What I like about their films is they set up characters thought-out enough that even if mayhem didn't break out, the characters still feel like they have lives to lead.

Pegg plays the former leader of a band of mates from their school days, and one thing they tried to do in their youth but never finished was The Golden Mile - twelve pubs, twelve pints.  Of course, the other four friends have grown up and moved on with their lives, but Pegg's in a state of arrested development. The four friends decide to humor him and give him one last night of glory.

But that's when the robots show up. From there, they figure that in order to stay low and not tip off the body-snatchers they know what's going on, they finish what they started and carry through getting their pints...

Loved the ending too.

Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol - Movie Review

★★★½

Starring Tom Cruise, Jeremy Renner, Simon Pegg, Paula Patton, Michael Nyqvist, Vladimir Mashkov, Josh Holloway, Tom Wilkinson, Anil Kapoor, Samuli Edelmann and Lea Seydoux.
Directed by Brad Bird.

Tom Cruise has turned the Mission Impossible movies into his own James Bond franchise, and while I've enjoyed all of them, I can't say I've loved any of them. The first one was a fun mystery, the second one was John Woo's parody of himself, and the third one was fast and fun, but all three were pretty disposable. This one's easily the best in the series.

Cruise, for the couch-jumping hullabaloo and the Stepfording-of-Katie-Holmes kerfuffle and the Scientology bruhaha, is still one of the coolest movie stars working today. He's back as superhuman spy Ethan Hunt, a Jason Bourne with a perfect memory. This time around he has to stop a nuclear activist trying to start World War III so Earth can be rebuilt from the ashes.

Movies on one level are supposed to transport the viewer, and here we go from the Kremlin to Dubai to India. Director Brad Bird brings a lot of sensibilities he displayed in The Incredibles, and that's a good thing. We get sweeping shots of the cities, we get heroes barely avoiding sudden death. I saw it in IMAX, and when Cruise has to step out of the world's tallest building in Dubai, it feels like we've gone out on the ledge with him. That's exactly what I would want.

And it's funny. The makers have Cruise, they have co-action-star Jeremy Renner, they have the sexy Paula Patton, and they make full use of the comic potential of Simon Pegg's chatty Benji. One thing Iv'e appreciated about the MI franchise is while Cruise is the star, Ethan can never accomplish his missions without a team.

This was Bird's first live-action directorial effort (he also did Iron Giant and Ratatouille), and the transition is seamless. I look forward to whatever he does next (which happens to be about the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.) ((Wow, he's younger than me. Man, I've made some wrong choices in life.))

Paul - Movie Review

ll 1/2

Starring Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Jason Bateman, Kristen Wiig, Bill Hader, Joe Lo Truglio, Blythe Danner, John Carroll Lynch, Jane Lynch, David Koechner, Jesse Plemons, Sigourney Weaver and the voice of Seth Rogen.
Directed by Greg Mottola.

Ever see someone faint in real life? Or fainted yourself? My experience is you do not freeze with a grin on your face before falling straight back. Nevertheless everyone who faints in this movie does so the same way. Lot of fainting. It's indicative of the lazy writing that creeps in to this otherwise interesting premise.

Pegg and Frost, the duo from Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz (both better movies), are Graeme and Clive, two sci-fi geeks who've made their way to Comic-Con in San Diego. They are starry-eyed and thrilled to be amongst the sword-makers, Klingon-speakers, and parade of Princess Leias in golden bikinis. They've also decided on this trip to hit all the alien hotspots (Area 51, Roswell, etc.)

But somewhere along the way they encounter an actual alien. He's Paul, a little green man who's been here for sixty years but has decided now's the time to go home, and since he's voiced by Seth Rogen, he smokes weed.

The movie has a slew of pop-culture references, mostly of the Spielbergian sort, to the point that it ceased being funny and became just distracting. It also features some American caricatures that might be amusing through the British lense, but the rednecks are just a little too rednecky, the anti-evolutionist Christians just a little too kooky, and why does everyone they meet want to know if they're gay or not?

There's a lot to enjoy here and a lot not to. I recognize the same description could apply to a bowl of Lucky Charms and cat food.

P.S. I applaud that a movie this self-referential did not exploit the fact that Pegg is Scotty in the new Star Trek movies.

How to Lose Friends & Alienate People - DVD Review

HOW TO LOSE FRIENDS & ALIENATE PEOPLE (*1/2) - Starring Simon Pegg, Kirsten Dunst, Jeff Bridges, Megan Fox, Gillian Anderson, Danny Huston, Miriam Margoyles, and Max Minghella.
Directed by Robert B. Weide.

This movie should have ended at the 40-minute mark with Simon Pegg's Sidney getting fired. Or if he had another chance, at the 60-minute mark. But somehow at the 60-minute mark, Sidney is still not fired.

Sidney is the editor of a struggling gossipy-snarky celeb magazine who gets hired to join the staff of one of New York's most successful magazines (it's called Sharpe's but I believe it's based on Vanity Fair). His first day on the job, he wears a widly inappropriate T-shirt. It's hard to empathethize/root for someone who's such a fool.

Sidney's goal is to make Sharpe's more hard-hitting, more snipey. Apparently he's never heard of the internet, home of a million snarky celeb-centric blogs. Sidney is unlikeably written but he's played by Simon Pegg. Which just reminded me of Run Fatboy Run, another movie where he plays a boor where I kinda wanted him to lose in the end.

This is like The Devil Wears Prada, except the employee isn't that nice to begin with, and the boss isn't that evil. Opportunities for a sharp satire are left by the wayside, and we get mushy scenes and slapstick scenes mixed in with a little Hollywood nastiness.