Scott Pilgrim vs. The World

Scott Pilgrim was bloody great.

Comedy and action. Amazing direction and fantastic writing. Fun music, great nerdcore references and spot-on acting. I really don't have anything bad to say about this movie. The only thing I can say against it is that occasionally people in the theater were laughing too hard, which made it hard to hear some of the jokes. But that is not a cause for serious concern.

If you have any sense, you'll see this movie. Everything you want in a movie is in this film. A guy fighting against seven evil ex-boyfriends for the sake of the love of his life. It's honestly the best movie of 2010. Yeah that's right, fuck Inception. And if you're from Toronto it's basically mandatory viewing.

Watch it immediately.

Anyhow let's talk about it...

First of all, I've pointed this out to many people before but it bears repeating for those of us who weren't raised on Super Mario Brothers.

This is a Bob-Omb (of the non-sexual variety):


That aside, I've been a fan of the comics since a friend introduced me to them in the Second Cup that Scott's sister works at. After I read the first volume there, we went to the park where Ramona and Scott go to (the one with the swingset). Close to home, no?


It's great to see Toronto moving up the cultural ladder a bit. This is really a city that gets no damn respect. It's always New York or LA or Paris or London. When a city in Canada is used it's going to be fucking Vancouver or Montreal or something. Unless it's a fucking Robert J. Sawyer novel or something, Toronto doesn't really exist. And Robert J. Sawyer's portrayal of Toronto is just really a name with no soul. Scott Pilgrim is probably the first thing I've seen that's really captured the spirit of my city.


Emphasis on the word spirit. It's not just a matter of familiar locales and landmarks, it's a matter of actually showing the character of the people who live here. Scott Pilgrim's brand of a shy/sincere nerdy/somehow cool sort of guy is a prime Toronto specimen. Scott Pilgrim could easily be the guy I bought this computer from or one of the assholes I play Left 4 Dead with. I guess in the comic he's more plain old crazy, but in the movie that's less apparent. But the point I'm trying to make is that this is that this is the first work of fiction set in Toronto made by someone that seems to really love Toronto in a non-superficial way. The movie is sort of a love letter to the entire city.



I don't think it's just the Toronto thing that made it good though. My favourite part of the movie was the fight with Lucas Lee. It's a brilliant scene for a lot of reasons... the stunt doubles thing, Lucas' awesome lines ("The first click will be me hanging up... the second will be me shooting you dead!") and the awesome direction to name a few. When he went for coffee as the stunt doubles beat on Scott I was just cracking up.


That's an amazing scene no matter what the context is. The fact that that was Casa Loma and that I sometimes go and sit on the steps Lucas skateboards to read sometimes is just really an extra bonus.

I kind of like that. This is Toronto's movie. Anyone else can see Scott Pilgrim and love it. But only people from this city can truly appreciate it. And even among that select few, not many can appreciate the way I can. I mean, I live just down the street from Scott after all.

But anyhow, Toronto aside...

One thing I especially liked was getting to hear the music. A comic can't really convey what a song is supposed to sound like. I'm listening to the soundtrack right now and it's actually kind of bad, but that actually fits the fiction quite well. The Sex Bob-Ombs are supposed to suck. That's explicitly spelled out in the canon. I see that Beck did a bunch of the songs, which is a band that's big enough for me to actually know of them in spite of my obscure musical tastes. I imagine that they thus weren't actually trying to suck. But well, in spite of their best efforts, things worked out!

Plus this thing was fucking awesome.

Knives Chau was done brilliantly, but I think they made her click with Scott a bit too much at the end. It made it feel just weird when she just gave up in the end. If there's one thing I think the movie didn't handle too well, it's probably that. But that is extremely minor.


I think Ramona was pretty perfect. That sort of elusive air they gave her was nice and I liked the actress. I didn't think I would when I first saw her, but she more or less was the way I always imagined Ramona to be. Tough, smart independent, bit bitchy but still very cool. Pretty enough to justify the infatuation too. I think the problem with the trailers is they mostly showed the pink haired incarnation rather than blue or green.

The text stuff worked really well. Really kept the story going along at a good pace. I'm not sure how someone who hasn't read the comic would react to it, but I felt the pacing was pretty much perfect.


They also started to the Ninja Gaiden showdown a few times, but never did the finish. That was in the comics once or twice (I think that's how he finished the girl, I can't remember). They should've gone all the way with it. It's a classic.

So yeah, overall Scott Pilgrim was a great movie that everyone should see, particularly anyone that lives in Toronto. It was made for us and we should appreciate it. There's more ...

Inception

Going to make this one quick.

I liked the movie, but I feel like I'm still going to end up being a bit of a killjoy here because I'm going to mainly be talking about why I didn't like it that much. So let's first talk about why I liked the movie in a quick and dirty 1-2-3 list.

1) It's nice that Nolan trusts in the intelligence of his audience. The dream scenes got pretty complicated with the different time frames and time going slower in one scene than it is in the next. It was fun to keep track of all that without too many stupid visual clues with close ups of watches and shit.

2) The fight scenes were neat. I liked how the physics of the dreamworlds overlapped, with the van in freefall resulting in no gravity in the hotel and all that stuff. That was pretty unique and tense, although somewhat subverted by the fact that if the guy on the upper layers actually lost the other scenes would just collapse (and you knew it wouldn't end like that).

3) Witty banter, good music and a fairly original premise kept me interested. Little funny moments like the firefight that Eames ended abruptly with a grenade launcher helped piece this together.

So in other words, it was a popcorn flick. A few hours of good honest fun. If you want to see a movie that you can spend a few harmless hours enjoying, then Inception is a good pick.

Here's why it's nothing more than that:

1) Leonardo DiCaprio.

At no point in the movie did I find Cobb's character to be convincing. The story with his wife and kids, his emotional problems, his character as a smart dream spy guy... really everything about the guy just seemed so flat and artificial. I think he was a fine character on paper, but the problem is that Leonardo DiCaprio is a ham actor who had no business playing this kind of part.

The whole movie I was wondering why Nolan hadn't gotten Aaron Eckhart or raised Heath Ledger back from the dead or at least hired some sort of actor instead of a damn aging pretty boy that can read a script in an Acting Voice. It's especially weird since everyone else in the cast put on a fairly strong and convincing performance. Did Nolan think people wouldn't notice how fucking terrible DiCaprio is if he surrounded him with talent perhaps?

2) "You mustn't be afraid to dream a little bigger, darling" is a nice line, but the movie really did seem to be quite afraid to dream a little bigger.

Everyone has a different way of dreaming. When I dream (and remember it) it is usually a long tragic narrative, but other people just see images of sheep eating grass or something. What more or less everyone agrees upon, however, is that in a dream anything is possible. You can fly, you can breathe underwater, you can shoot lasers out of your eyes and lightning out of your fingers.

In Inception, everyone used guns. Nothing else. There's one instance where that one guy used dream magic to use those 'paradox' stairs to get the drop on a projection, but that's really just about it. You could argue that they can only use the things that the architect provides before they go in and that she isn't supposed to twist the world too much lest they attract the attention of the projections, but she's shown to have the ability to affect dreams on the fly. Why didn't she just manifest a fucking giant fire breathing robot dragon when things started getting ugly? What was stopping her? She could have hidden the thing when Fischer was around.

It feels to me that Nolan just wanted dream gun battles and nothing else and so nothing else was put in.

3)It was predictable.
I feared at the very beginning of the movie that it would end with some bullshit 'it was a dream the ENTIRE TIME and he was just trying to get the last secret from the Japanese guy' ending. I was relieved when it was apparent that that wasn't the case, but everything else was fairly predictable and straightforward. DiCaprio's wife being the first inception target and the entire story with her could really be traced twenty minutes in advanced.

This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but when you combine it with the fact that I never gave a fuck about Cobb or anything related to Cobb thanks to the ham acting of Leo DiCaprio you get certain stretches of the movie that are really fucking boring. If I'd had control in the theater, I would have skipped a bunch of those fucking scenes and just gotten back to the people with funny accents shooting assholes.

And that's about all I've gotta say about that. There's more ...

District 9

District 9... hmmm. Not too shabby.

Gotta give a film credit first and foremost for innovation. An alien refugee crisis in Africa filmed in pseudo-documentary style complete with occasional cuts to random experts/acquaintances of the main character. I've never seen anything like that before and it's a neat idea. The documentary aspect sort of breaks down after a while and it becomes what I think is fairly straight-forward science fiction. But still, I tip my hat towards risk-taking.

The movie was fairly politically charged, perhaps even a bit too politically charged. The politics of District 9 are pretty heavy handed, but also kind of vague. Refugee camps have extremely poor living conditions. Racism is bad. Okay sure. But these are bloody aliens.

Personally if alien refugees came to earth I would be in favour of a massive quarantine. You can't just let a bunch of people from another damn planet set up camp without knowing anything about them. Who knows what damn biological weirdness can come out of that? I don't care how damn malnourished the damn aliens are, you don't just let in a bunch of unknown organisms onto our planet. That's just stupid.

But in any case, details aside it was good. So let's talk about some specifics here...

Documentary-style:

I liked this. Documentaries have sort of become an art form these days, what with the spooky music and the interviews with loved ones/generic experts with European accents. It's all pretty standard and so seeing science fiction using the documentary style like this was rather nice. I would go so far as to say that I think that the first chunk of the movie before the infection part took off was actually the best part.

I especially liked the use of past tense. "Wikus was this" "Wikus was that"... made the movie more tense as you watched to see what was going to happen to the guy.

Main Character:


I liked the actor, I have to say. He really played the part of the semi-charismatic pseudo-liberal nerd pretty well. You could tell right from the get-go that this is the kind of guy that was picked on in high school and probably got his degree without doing anything that remotely resembled field work. He talks a lot about things being illegal, doesn't seem to like violence but is still kind of prejudiced. I don't think the audience is supposed to really like him, but he really works as a believable character.

That is until he gets some alien guns and becomes frackin' Rambo. Up until that point I was really liking the whole documentary aspect of it, but when Wikus blew up that whole military base and then escaped... well, he also blew up the documentary part too. Which is a shame really, as they could have still kept it going and put up some interviews with some people that survived his onslaught. That would have been awesome.

"He came through the door and shot the guard, yelling 'FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK!'. We hid under a table and then he..." *breaks down weeping* "He told us to run... to run or else he would... he would..." etc. etc.

I don't know why they just abandoned that in favour of just a standard action scene.

That said, that mech he had was pretty cool.

Politics:



My main objection:

Why is it a stupid private contractor managing the aliens rather than some sort of government or UN agency? I mean, sure, I understand. Blackwater (or whatever the fuck those fuckers renamed themselves... Xe or something, isn't it?) is one of the most evil organizations on the globe. But for crying out loud, Blackwater are a group of mercenaries who are given contracts. You can't just put them in charge of the aliens. The whole shadowy 'MNU' thing running the show just felt silly.

Good Detail:



I think the movie does a fair enough job with explaining why the aliens don't just attack. They might have cool guns but when they get shot they die just the same and there aren't so many of them that they can just take over the Earth. If you chuck missiles at their spaceships, they will explode and if you shoot their crazy mech enough it will be destroyed. Nice way of justifying the refugee thing.

Bad Detail:

I don't understand how a trigger pulling mechanism is supposed to be linked to DNA. That's nitpicking though. But while we're on the subject, why exactly did alien fuel stuff make him turn into an alien?

Worst part of the movie:

Cannibalism. Or well, maybe not 'cannibalism', but the whole alien eating thing. I know that there are some weird cults with inhuman practices in Africa. But that was still really stupid. "I'm going to eat this thing to see if I can use this gun" is an idea with practical intentions. When that shit doesn't work then you can maybe see it not gaining too much traction.

The whole 'scary African gun guy' thing just felt out of place and unconvincing.
There's more ...

Wolverine - "Every single time."

This rocked.

Seriously, I can't imagine why it got such negative reviews. I mean, prequels are sort of problematic because you know in advance who's going to live through 'em, but that honestly didn't detract much from the movie. The main complaint I could see people having about the movie is that it's not terribly realistic, but for crying out loud it's a movie about a guy with a metal skeleton and claws. It's not supposed to be realistic.

What it is supposed to be was Wolverine chopping things up as various tragic things happen all around him. The plot twists and turns in a rather comic book-like way and there are many fights and explosions. It has everything you would really want from a Wolverine movie. I guess if you don't have any particular Wolverine-related desires, you could conceivably be disappointed, but I think most of the film's detractors must have their heads up their ass.

Was it as good as X2? No, probably not, although it does get bonus points for not having Halle Berry. But it was still a damn good watch.

Spoiler talk after the jump.

(If you ever get the chance, see if you can read the Marvel Wolverine Origins story, it's quite good)
I'm going to keep this short, so let me hit on some key points:

1) The intro sequence was damn good.

The whole point of the Wolverine character is to be this incredibly tortured creature that clings to a minuscule amount of goodness in a world where everything bad has happened to him. The war montage got that across, while also doing a good job of differentiating between him and Sabertooth. I thought it was genius.

2) The plot was wacky.

This is what all the critics on rotten tomatoes seem to agree on, but I'm not sure how it wasn't more twisty or farfetched than X2. Yes the 'Achtung, spy!' bit and 'he was working for me all along' stuff is loopy, but it's not hard to follow and this is what comic book storylines are like. I don't see why this is a bad thing in Wolverine and not in X2. X2 has mind-control drugs leeched out of a wheelchair psychic guy and two attempts at psychic genocide.

I think a lot of these 'oh the plot sucks' people are just hopping aboard a bandwagon. The main problem with the plot is that it's a prequel and you know generally what's going to happen. Content-wise, it was comic-booky but I sort of want comic-booky when it comes to comic book movies.

3) Hugh Jackman is too clean.

He plays a great Wolverine and I wouldn't have any one else. And most of the time he looks fine... grizzled and weary, just like you'd expect Wolverine to be. But there are certain scenes where the guy will look at the camera after a rough fight and just shine with excessive prettiness. Yes, I realize that Mr. Jackman has a female following to be concerned with, but they could've gone a little easy on the make-up.

4) Some of the minor characters are pretty stupid.

I think Marvel writers are partially spoiled by their movie success and think they can insert whatever bollocks characters they please into their movie. I'm not even talking about Blob (his scene was at least funny), but rather the throwaway mutants like Agent Zero or the guy with the swords. The Marvel universe has always been about a solid backing of b-list gimmick characters, but that doesn't mean that those clowns should get into the movies. Though I guess they aren't that much worse than your Toads or what have you, so this isn't a Wolverine-specific problem.

I didn't mind the last guy though, if only because it's sort of been established that that's the kind of thing that Stryker apparently likes.

5) The adamantium bullets thing was also stupid, but it's not the kind of thing I dwell on because (again) it's a bloody comic book movie. There's more ...

Futurama: Into the Wild Green Yonder - "But if I keep them and she marries him... then he probably won't want me dating her."

I'm a long time Futurama fan. It's the sort of thing that seems to have been designed explicitly for the use of me or people like me. In no other place can you find jokes about Star Trek, scifi cliches and Nixon in the same place. Not to mention that on average it's got a really great cast and an incredibly compelling romance plot in the background. The fifth season of Futurama is I think one of the finest mixes of sci-fi romance comedies that shall ever be forged.

The last two Futurama movies have, however, been complete disappointments. Bender's Big Score was okay, even if it was a bit redundant storywise with the fifth season... but The Beast With a Billion Backs' arbitrary break-up of Fry and Leela and shitty octopus plot really brought Futurama into a nosedive. Bender's Game was a bit better, but I was still thinking by the end of it I was thinking that the magic was gone and Futurama's glory days were over.

Into The Wild Green Yonder proves that I was wrong and it does so by quietly pretending that the last two movies didn't happen.




I've been saying ever since these movies started airing that the Futurama writers fear Fry and Leela's relationship. They're really good at writing Fry as the lovable nerd pursuing and idolizing Leela, who is a pretty ordinary person. One of my favourite scenes in Futurama is probably from the last episode of season 5, where Fry tells Hedonism Bot that he's going to make his opera and then it cuts to Leela on the other side of the room eating what appears to be a giant severed cockroach leg saying " *gasp* Me?!". It's just brilliant stuff. But the fear the Futurama writers possess is really of what comes after that... whenever Fry and Leela have had a moment that makes you think 'oh they're together now', it's often completely forgotten a few moments afterward.

I think the reason for this is a desire on the part of the writers not to interfere with the character dynamic. Futurama stems from the Simpsons and if there was ever a series that tries to maintain the status quo, it's the Simpsons. But for whatever the reason, the writers kept the two in a sort of pre-dating stasis field for the longest time... until, that is, now.

Into The Wild Green Yonder is not a Fry and Leela movie. The plot doesn't have much to do with their relationship and it's only in the background. But here's the thing: they have one. After so much bullshit about Fry suddenly dating someone else and Leela going back to being completely disinterested, they finally did a Futurama story where the two of them appear to already be together. And guess what? It doesn't actually change much! The character dynamics are more or less the same, except that I'd say that both Fry and Leela are greatly improved. They aren't mushy at all... Fry will still be as tasteless and dumb around her as always, while Leela still has a healthy amount of contempt for him. It's actually a bit sudden, considering that nothing happened between them last movie, but again that's why I'm saying they're pretending the last two movies did not happen. And in any case, what you get as a result is a nice breath of fresh air.


Amazing what happens when you let your characters develop rather than futilely clinging to an outdated status quo. One wonders why they didn't do it earlier.


Besides that, the rest of the movie was really nice. The first three movies often resorted to rehashed jokes. You know what I mean... having Mom do various Mom things that she's done before or just throwing the Hypnotoad out there. But this movie decided to do something controversial, mainly: tell new jokes. Fry's bits about how to be dramatic, the protesting feminists, Bender's bit with the Robot Don and pretty much everything Nixon said and did were just hilarious. For the first time, it felt like the Futurama writers were really having some fun.


What's more, I'd say this is the first actual movie out of the set. The other three had the problem of being a bit like three or four episodes of Futurama with a vaguely overarching plot gluing it all together. This one though had a beginning, middle and end. The major plot twist actually managed to be a bit surprising and it all wraps up nicely.



I've heard it said that this may be the last bit of Futurama ever made. If so, then I'm glad they went out on a note like this. It certainly wasn't the best bit of Futurama ever made, but it was quite well done. There's more ...