New Movie Review: The World's End (2013) - Edgar Wright

"We're going to see this through to the bitter end. Or... lager end."  - Garry King

          For anyone to make a film that not only balances the elements of Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz (it's sister films) and introduces a few of its own, they'd have to be a mad man or Edgar Wright, the director of the massively popular Cornetto Trilogy. To call World's End the concluding chapter of this trilogy it to miss the point of this trilogy, it been British-ify-ing popular genres (Zombie & Buddy Cop respectively) while gently parodying them at the same time. While I could go on about the similarities, nods and links between these film's (and maybe I will sometime), for now I'm here to review The World's End as it's own film.

          The film starts off with five estranged friends reuniting twenty years after their secondary (American's read: High-) school graduation and trying to complete their hometown's legendary pub crawl and in the hopes of the groups de-facto leader Gary King (Simon Pegg) finish what they started and recapture their glory days. I have to admit, I loved the start of this film I would of loved to of seen what Edgar Wright would of done with these characters and how he would of developed the story had this not of been part of the Cornetto Trilogy, Mint Cornetto in this case, incase you were wondering. But instead just as the reunion film is about to reach its conflict and gets really interesting, the aliens show up, which we should of been looking forward to, instead signals a complete tonal shift in the film and the dropping of most of the major elements of the reunion film, which is a pity as that would of been as equally an interesting picture. From this point on though the film does get more funny and was genuinely one of the funniest films I've seen in ages, it also becomes more of an action film, with Wright bringing all the skills and techniques he learned from Scott Pilgrim vs. The World to the fight scenes.

          From here on out the review gets tricky, as I don't want to spoil the film and want instead you to go see it. So maybe I'll wrap up my review here, for now and tell you that I loved this film and that it definitely holds up against Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz and is worth checking out in the cinema. Hopefully once this films been out a bit longer I'll get around to reviewing it in more detail. But for now the film gets a 9/10.

Review: The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012) - Peter Jackson

"Why don't we have a game of riddles and if I win, you show me the way out of here?"

          To say I’ve been looking forward to this film along time is an understatement, so unfortunately I cannot promise an unbiased review, I can instead promise a fan’s review. So for me personally the build up and production history of this film are as big a part of its story as the actual film and book on which it’s based. This is quiet a rare film for me where I knew the story going in and for the most part knew what to expect having read the book, and yet half the films story was new to me, you could say the story  was Unexpected.

          Ok on to a bit of the history of this film, I’ll try and keep this brief. The film has been in production since late 2007 and was originally set to be two film directed by  Guillermo del Toro, with Peter Jackson serving as Executive producer, development of the film was notoriously slow which eventually lead to Del Toro’s departure from the project and Jackson taking over directing duties. Now as most of you will know the story of The Hobbit is a prequel to The Lord Of The Rings (LOTR), it was originally written as a children story and having read the book the story is very light and doesn’t have the same depth to it as LOTR so I was shocked when it was announced that Peter Jackson was looking to split the story up into three films, as I personally thought two was stretching it a bit but made sense if they were going to tie the plot of The Hobbit into that of LOTR. I think what we got in the cinema was the extended version cut of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing if you’re a fan of the extended versions of the LOTR movies, but can turn off casual/new fans of the film franchise. Also the addition of a lot of extra material from JRR Tolkien’s other works mainly the Appendices from the end of The Return of the King and possible taking some cues from The Silmarillion (especially the parts filling in the blanks between as well as around The Hobbit and LOTR stories).

          So thoughts on the film, as much as I loved it, it was a bit slow and took ages to get going. We’re introduced to a younger Bilbo (Sixty years before the events of the LOTR took place), who for the most part isn’t as likable character as the Bilbo we meet in the LOTR. This younger Bilbo is quiet reserved and stuck in his ways and has very little interest in doing anything out of the ordinary. He is whoever forced into action by his friend Gandalf the grey and eventually agrees to join an adventure with a group of thirteen Dwarfs and Gandalf looking to reclaim the Dwarves lost home from the possible deceased dragon Smaug. This first film is mostly following Bilbo’s journey to overcome his more comfort-loving reserved side and him realising that he can be a useful member of the team and that he has unique skills to offer. There is also a lot of side plots introduced in this movie that weren’t present in the book that while the fill in the blanks of what’s happening in Middle Earth, do little to serve the story except increase the running time. Having said that though, I really did enjoy this film, visually its stunning and while practical effects such as having actual actors in make up as the Orc’s were replaced with Computer Generated Graphics this time around I still found myself being drawn into the story and investing in the character.

          While I think the decision to split the story into three films was foolish and resulted in scenes that would have normally been included on an extended cut of this film making it into this movie, it was still a great movie. The only warning I’d put on it was to only go see it if you love The Lord Of The Rings movies (especially the extended cuts) if you only liked them maybe just wait until its out on DVD/BluRay and rent it then. For me personally this film was an 8/10, great potential but a bit bloated in part.