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: Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World (2010) - Edgar Wright

          I remember when this film came out in the cinema all my friends that went to go see it kept telling me how amazing it was how original and unique the story was and how I never got to see it in the cinema. So instead I read the comic and fell in love with the beautiful black and white images that Bryan Lee O’Malley had drew and the strange love story presented on the pages. The problem was now I was very emotionally attached to the story and had such high expectations for the film (after all the hype my friends had given it) I was worried how it would turn out, by this stage I had decided to wait for the film to be released on DVD. So were my worries justified? No. Putting it simply this is one of (if not my) favourite films ever.

          So what’s it all about then? Well if you haven’t seen Scott Pilgrim, I suggest you do go see it, but if you’d rather not then I’ll try and not give away to many spoilers. Scott (Michael Cera) is in his early 20’s, he’s a musician and he’s started dating a high schooler (Ellen Wong as Knives Chau), he’s never worked a day in his life and he’s very happy go lucky. His friends don’t approve of him dating her. He then meets another girl Ramona Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) who is quiet literally the girl of his dreams and becomes obsessed with her ignoring Knives completely. He starts dating Ramona and knows he has to breakup with Knives but keeps putting it off, there’s also one tiny little catch with dating Ramona. Scott has to defeat her seven evil exes. As you can imagine things don’t play out smoothly for poor Scott and around evil ex 4 he begins to wonder if Ramona is worth it, and Knives now realising Scott had been seeing her as well as Ramona does what everyone in the same situation would do she blames everything on Ramona.

Scott then starts to realise how much Ramona means to him but he might of drove Ramona back into the arms of her seventh evil ex, Gideon Gordon Graves/G-man (Jason Schwartzman) who’s the one responsible for putting together the seven evil exes, he’s also literally inside her head by  a conveniently placed control chip. So Scott goes to win Ramona back and challenges Gideon to a final fight with the power of love and is killed, however following the films gamer logic Scott uses his 1up he got earlier to give the fight another go and this time with the power of self respect he along with help from Knives and Ramona defeats Gideon and walks off into the distance with Ramona.

          Ok so as I mentioned I love this film and comic, I loved the use of gamer, music and general nerdy references and here the film is not only extremely faithful to the comic but takes things one step beyond for example each ex is given a symbol representing their number. I also love the actors, I’d love to be able to pick out a stand out but everyone is so true to their character and represents them so well, the one I’d pick if I had to though would be Kieran Culkin as Wallace Wells, Scott’s roommate and all around scene stealer when he’s on screen and takes some liberties with the character that make him probably my favourite. However there are some things I take issue with the main one being the shortening of the story, in the comics Ramona and Scott’s relationship takes place over the course of a year so it makes sense that the two fall in love with each other and it also makes the ending more believable, where as in the film it takes place over the course of about a week so the ending doesn’t feel deserved, the film makes even thought as much putting in an alternate ending where Scott ends up with Knives, that fits with the film. I also missed certain characters/scenes from the comic but I can see why they were cut.

          I realised I never gave a rating before to any of the films I’ve reviewed, that’s because I think you should be able to tell from how I talk about a film how I feel about it, but I think I’ll start giving ratings on a 10 scale. So Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World is a 10/10 for me. I highly recommended you check out this film and hopefully you’ll enjoy it as much as I have.