Wesley Fenlon | Not with a bang but a whimper.

Question: how hard must a movie rock to escape from the pull of the Earth’s gravity, to jettison itself from our planet and our universe, and then to carve out its own world with the power of an electric bassline and pop-culture references to define a generation?

Answer: about as hard as Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, a nonstop whirlwind of energy which delights in cranking the fun up to 12 or 13–all the while winking back at us, because it knows a simple 11 would’ve sufficed.

Edgar Wright doesn’t settle for good enough.  Every inch of Scott Pilgrim is meticulously detailed, every scene packed with sounds and costumes and posters and special effects that, quite frankly, make Scott Pilgrim the film a more unique creation than Scott Pilgrim the comic.  In comics, onomatopoeia are almost necessary to transform the silent print medium into something we can fully relate to, but in film the audio pretty much takes care of that itself.  Yet this alternate reality, this wonderful vision of Toronto brought to life as a 21st century version of magical realism becomes more authentic and individual for all its comical sound effects, CG embellishments and narrative exposition.

Wright is relentlessly inventive, employing a dazzling variety of effects that blend together to create this coherent piece of media that doesn’t quite behave like any other movie out there.  And just when you think you’ve seen all the tricks, an old one will suddenly be used in a different way, as if the blend of sight gags and chiptunes and soundbytes and references could be endlessly combined in innovative ways.  This is just what we get.

A very few fans may gripe that Cera’s Scott isn’t the same as the Scott from O’Malley’s comics, or that the secondary cast are marginalized to make way for the hugely entertaining battle scenes.  Scott Pilgrim vs. the World is a movie that never slows down once it gets up to speed, and combat does take center stage.  But it’s only a sign of excellence that we want more time with these characters–they’re far from neglected, all played with style and talent, and besides, this is Scott Pilgrim’s show.  He kicks ass, smiles goofily, rocks his heart out and freaks out about his haircut in perfectly measured proportions.

If this is a genre film, I’ll be damned to tell you which one. No action movie has this kind of music, crafted by Beck and other visionaries into an intrinsic element of the film’s world.  No romantic comedy has this much cultural awareness, this keen a sense of the baggage we all carry with us writ large with glowing katanas and videogame sound effects.  And no comic film ever used the elements of comic books so blatantly or originally, mixing illustrations and wild camera technique and multi-frame action to suit the scene at hand.

I don’t know how it could be possible not to like Scott Pilgrim vs. the World when it enjoys itself so much.  As long as you’re willing to leave our world and travel to one very similar, which delights in the sights and sounds we’ve grown oblivious to and promises to one-up your expectations at every turn, you will find something to love in Scott’s fantastic battle.

As a genre, buddy cop movies thrive on the cliche.  Oftentimes they are nothing but a series of recognizable cliches strung together, from the sassy love-hate relationship to the victorious shootout finale.  Sometimes they’re done well and you get Lethal Weapon.  Sometimes you get Rush Hour 3.  Adam McKay’s The Other Guys may share structure with those movies, but its tone is so utterly bizarre that between every bout of laughter, I was left feeling downright weird.

Ferrell and Wahlberg star as a number-cruncher and a screw-up who get no respect around the office, and hardly deserve to.  They’re pretty terrible police officers by movie standards.  When they happen to stumble upon a major case, they immediately screw it up, but keep doggedly pursuing it to prove they have what it takes.

The most interesting thing about The Other Guys is how McKay intentionally plays with the genre–the plot actually intentionally subverts a lot of predictable cop movie elements, and the action actually involves very little ass-kicking.  In one awesome White Stripes-driven scene, Mark Wahlberg wields two guns in a slow-motion shootout…and doesn’t actually seem to hit anyone.

The Other Guys does have a few problems, mainly driven by a minor identity crisis.  Yes, it’s a comedy first, but as the film draws closer to the end it begins to focus more and more on the nation’s financial crisis and the crimes perpetrated by mega corporations.  The ending credits even go so far as to provide facts and figures about the government banking bailouts and ludicrous salaries of CEOs.  It’s actually really disturbing, and retroactively paints earlier moments in a pretty dark light.  Michael Keaton’s turn as by-day police captain, by-night Bed Bath and beyond manager sounds funny and looks funny, but man is that a depressing image.

The Other Guys either needed a bit more comedy or a bit more serious cop drama–either way, the two made for a slightly uneven mix, which the writing capitalized on to make things even more awkward.  It’s hard to describe what makes the movie so downright bizarre–the writing and delivery are so off-kilter that they clash with the relatively realistic world Wahlberg and Ferrell bumble through.  It’s like this celluloid version of New York has its own reality–common for cinema, especially comedies or fantasies–where we don’t know quite how seriously we’re supposed to take things, which leads to quite a few “Oh man did that just happen” moments.

Even if the movie bounces kind of weirdly between farce and reality, the writing is spot-on most of the time and stays pretty damn funny throughout–though the film begins on such a high, it would be impossible to retain that momentum until the end.  You may finish the movie feeling as though you’re not quite sure what you just saw.  But for a genre movie, isn’t that the most pleasant of surprises?

With the company of a friend or two, sometimes a terrible movie can be a whole lot more fun than a great movie.  It’s simply a cinematic truth.  How else could Mystery Science Theater 3000 lasted for a decade and developed a massive cult following?  Mystery Science Theater builds the friends right into the experience, of course, but they’re hardly pivotal for the bad movie experience.  In high school, a friend and I had a monthly tradition that included deep dish pizza and the worst direct-to-DVD movie we could find on the shelf (Hint: Lionsgate likely guarantees a winner).

So I love watching B-movies: the ham-fisted acting, the amateur camerawork, the cheaper than cheap special effects.   But until recently, I never thought about reading B-…books.  Some things I am powerless to resist, though, and when I came upon Runespear in a used bookstore, I had no choice.  I had to buy it.  The cover was what piqued my interest, at first.  A giant man with an eye patch and a spear, whose torso inexplicably melds into a mountain range?  Tell me that wouldn’t wouldn’t grab your attention.  Considering it indirectly led to me buying the book, it may well be a pretty clever cover — but in my mind it conjured up a long history of cheesy paperback science fiction and fantasy, pumped out in such mass quantities that better representatives of the genres are lost in the noise.  Still, there’s something kind of fascinating about sci-fi and fantasy covers from the 50s and 60s, some winning mixture of camp and cliche and weirdness that makes them fun to look at, even if the books themselves are pretty terrible.

With a general interest in sci-fi covers suddenly triggered by Runespear, I flipped the book over to read the back, but man was I not even slightly prepared for the sheer ridiculous joy wrapped up in its brief plot description.  It’s like the perfect mixture of genre cliches and powerful goofiness — Nazis, Indiana Jones ripoff Rafe Springer, Norse mythology, and…British Professor Melbourne Shrewsbury.  The greatest name of all time?  Quite possibly.  Naturally, I had to buy it.

Reading it, on the other hand, was a different matter.  Could a book that looked so hilariously awful actually be fun to read, or would it simply be dull and painful?  I waited a few weeks before taking the plunge, but the results pleasantly surprised me.  The characters clung to adventure cliches and the writing occasionally dipped into bizarrely overwrought analogies, but for the most part it was descriptive and entertaining.  And every time I found myself criticizing the writing, I realized I probably couldn’t write an entire novel with the same degree of creativity.  Maybe it wasn’t so bad after all.  My brain could also be permanently damaged from watching too many B-movies, but next time I see a mass market paperback with a hideously awful cover, I might have to give it a try.  And if you ever come across Runespear, buy it.  You probably won’t regret it.

The paths we take to movies can be strange, sometimes.  Case in point: after I first listened to an audio book of John Grisham’s The Pelican Brief more than half a decade ago, Three Days of the Condor set up shop in a tiny corner of my brain.  Grisham’s shadowy assassin loves Three Days of the Condor because it’s familiar territory for him: a smart espionage thriller set in a world of hired killer, government operatives, and code names.  All I gleaned from the brief reference was that it was a spy movie with Robert Redford, and that was enough to keep it bouncing around in my mind until the time was right to finally see it.

And when I did, imagine my surprise when Redford turned out to be a computer geek (to the extent that was even possible in 1975) dealing with arcane bits of data in a cleverly disguised CIA office.  The technology of spy movies has certainly moved on since Three Days of the Condor was released — and it seems like the world has, too.  It’s a movie I’ve never heard mentioned or seen on TV, though perhaps I’m not talking to the right people or watching the right channels.  But you’d think one of the smartest thrillers ever made — with a talented pair like Sydney Pollack directing and Robert Redford starring — would show up a little more often.

Three Days of the Condor begins innocently, introducing you to a small group of CIA researchers, which makes their murder all the more abrupt when it happens.  From that point on, it’s intensity overdrive, with Redford gradually shedding his bookworm persona to become more confident, more daring, more in control.  Unlike most thrillers, in which the gun is the weapon of choice, Redford fights primarily with information.  For most of the film he’s fighting to figure out who wants him dead, and why, he knows it’s something he knows.  So he’s constantly thinking and planning, desperate to untangle the knot of secrets surrounding him before he’s caught.

The weakest link of the movie is Faye Dunaway’s presence as a requisite love interest.  Her acting is by no means bad, but after Redford hijacks her and her car and holes up in her apartment to lie low, their ensuing romance is slightly unbelievable.  Then again, it’s pretty standard fare for these types of movies — I don’t know if we can write it of as Stockholm syndrome or simply accept that people in emotionally charged situations tend to develop feelings for each other, but the romantic subplot is the only element of Three Days of the Condors that plays it by the book.  And really, it’s pretty hard to imagine anyone could resist Robert Redford in his prime.

We’re obviously geared to love Redford from the start, but Max von Sydow utterly steals the show during the finale, driving home a magnificently taut twist ending that’s far too good to spoil.  From the first time Sydow appears on screen, we know quite clearly that he is the enemy, that he is cold, merciless, and evil.  But by the end…he is, perhaps, the most respectable character in the film.

Watch Three Days of the Condors for the fun of keeping up with the plot.  Watch it for Redford or Max von Sydow.  Watch it for the 70s charm of ancient computers and phone booths.  But definitely watch it, because thrillers that brew intensity and brains into this fine a cocktail are few and far between.

As part of an ongoing summer campaign to catch up on the all-too numerous pop culture landmarks I’ve somehow missed over the years, I recently found myself watching two of Scorsese’s most famous movies, Raging Bull and Taxi Driver, within the span of a couple days.   While both fantastic films, neither would top my list of Scorsese’s best.  But with all the acclaim Raging Bull gets, it would have to be damn incredible to outmatch my expectations.

As a boxing film, I think I prefer the story of Rocky more.  Stallone’s original manages to capture something special about boxing as a way of life.  It draws in the 70s culture, and admirably balances the sad state of urban decay with Rocky’s heart and clumsy romance.  But Raging Bull is an altogether different movie — after all, it’s based on a real man, a real story, and has a narrower focus.  And for the first time in a long time, it made me appreciate what an amazing actor De Niro is.  So when I was going into Taxi Driver, an idea was already crystallizing in my mind.  I wondered: would Travis Bickle disturb me more than Jake La Motta?

Few biographical films can match the intensity of Raging Bull.  Of course, few biographical films are directed by Martin Scorsese — but the cinematography, editing, and sound work during the boxing matches are absolutely incredible, creating this sharp, powerful edge that goes beyond the typical heavy-handed (no pun intended) sound effects of Hollywood brawls.

Still, as impressed as I was with the filming, De Niro’s acting undeniably deserves even more praise.  His portrayal of Jake La Motta had to be one of the most realistic — yet inhuman — performances I’ve ever seen.  He seemed all too believable at times, which was what made La Motta’s madness so difficult to watch.  In one moment, he clearly adores his wife and cares deeply for his brother.  In another, he stands in the ring, absorbing blow after blow as blood and sweat fly from his body, daring his opponent to continue, enjoying it.  I haven’t seen too many depictions of masochism in movies, but unlike Bill Murray’s hilarious bit part in Little Shop of Horrors, De Niro’s masochist is chillingly insane.

The way De Niro captures La Motta’s calm moments really highlights his shocking ones.  And as the film goes on, it’s not just the pleasure he pulls from violence that eats away at you — it’s his constant, neverending jealousy and insecurity, which builds and builds until it’s clear something is seriously wrong with him.

That’s about where Travis Bickle comes in.  Maybe it’s because Taxi Driver dips further into extremity than Raging Bull, or maybe it’s because I already knew more about the film’s main character, but I actually found Travis to be less disturbing than La Motta.  What’s interesting is how well De Niro plays crazy, but in completely different ways.  Travis is obviously unbalanced and deranged from the very start — he can barely relate to other people, suffers serious insomnia, and harbors a volatile anger that he gradually feels right in letting loose.  That he plans to die by story’s end indicates he simply can’t cope with the world — or how he sees the world, anyway — and has to simply mark it with destruction before leaving for good.

Given that Taxi Driver is fiction and Raging Bull is grounded in history, saying Travis is more of a character than LaMotta may seem pretty obvious.  But it’s true.  And what’s scarier to watch — a homicidal madman, only a step removed from serial killer territory, or a man subtly coming apart as his life progresses, who thrives on pain and slowly self-destructs, both in his personal life and his career?

Yeah, I guess both of them are pretty disturbing!  For my money, LaMotta is the true madman, and De Niro deserved his Oscar.  Maybe it’s time I watched Cape Fear.

For reasons I’m not sure I can fully explain — or even understand – Primer is one of the most unsettling movies I’ve ever seen.  Like the most important works of science fiction, it eschews drama for ideas, or an idea, in this case time travel.  Here is why this is great science fiction:

Compare Primer to Back to the Future.  Back to the Future is a fantastic movie; it’s a classic adventure, fun and heartwarming and flashy and entertaining, which dances around the concept of time travel with faux-concern about disrupting the space-time continuum.  Doc Brown’s eyes bug out whenever Marty tries to change the future, but ultimately this issue is dismissed and relegated to something that concerns only these characters.  Recreate the past or your whole family will slowly disappear from a photograph, culminating in the erasure of your birth!  Back to the Future is Marty’s story, and the “right” thing to do in any situation regarding time muckery is to make sure everything turns out well for Marty.  Everyone goes home happy.

In Part II, you’ve got the evil Biff who uses knowledge of the future to get rich, rule the world, blah blah.  He’s a comical villain, his ancestor was a villain, his kids will be villains.  There’s destiny at work, here, and the grand design allows for the underdog McFlys and the mean old Tannens to be at odds forever, which makes for fun call-backs in the world of cinema.  What it doesn’t do is provide any sort of genuine questions of how time travel would affect real people.  And that’s fine — it doesn’t have to.

Primer does.  We see two men — two good men, kind and hard-working and smart — run aground the rocky morality of time travel.  We first see them labor, as scientists, to understand what they have created, and the implications of it.  We see them take great pains to avoid anything dangerous beyond their understanding — to prevent any sort of possible paradox, in case such an event may irrevocably damage their lives and the lives of others.  And when, inevitably, they begin to make meticulous changes to the future, we see the damage done to their own friendship.

Primer is certainly no cheeky adventure in a badass flying car, and even the inevitable destruction of the DeLorean does little to make a real case for the moral implications of time travel.  In Primer, we see the implications of their actions eat at the characters from within, just as the effects of their device eat at them from without.  In the end, the narrative becomes almost impossibly complicated — and it starts out pretty damn hard to follow.  But following the exact series of events isn’t really necessary.  It’s not the point.  Knowing that these men are dealing with forces outside of their own understanding, and seeing how power weighs on them is what makes this great sci-fi.  And, as I mentioned at the beginning, seeing what actions such believable, rational people will inevitably take is seriously unsettling.  Primer weighs heavy on the conscience.

A rational movie about time travel?  Yup, turns out it is possible after all.

Perhaps he doesn’t deserve the credit, but ever since Judd Apatow re-branded the adult comedy scene with his balance of foul language and from-the-heart sincerity, genre movies have started to step up.  Of course, you’ve still got piles of shit like Meet the Spartans and plenty of chick flicks like Valentine’s Day that aim for the lowest common denominator.  Cheap, poorly written comedies and sappy, predictable romances will still be around to exploit the stupid and the emotionally susceptible.  But ever since Apatow came along with The 40 Year Old Virgin, and especially since he followed it up with Knocked Up, more than a few romantic comedies that looked bland and cookie-cutter have turned out to be — surprise! — quite sharp.

Enter She’s Out of My League — this is a funny-ass movie..  With the exception of Blood Diamond, no movie has surprised me as much from the trailer to the real deal.  Starring Jay Baruchel as the skinny loser guy with no self-confidence (but a heart of gold!) who somehow snags the hottest chick on the block, She’s Out of My League hardly steps outside the bounds of its genre expectations, but it sure plays well within them.  The biggest weapon in its arsenal is the supporting cast of lovable losers, who, again, couldn’t be much more predictable.  But it doesn’t matter — they’re funny anyway.

T.J. Miller, who you might have heard, but barely seen, as the likable camera-guy in Cloverfield, channels Seth Rogen in The 40 Year Old Virgin as the wildly inappropriate crazy friend with curly hair.  He threatens to steal the spotlight away from Jay, but Nate Torrence often gets to it first.  He simply radiates charming innocence, and any roly-poly grown man citing Disney movies as allegories for romantic situations is guaranteed to win a few laughs just on principle.  That he does it so well only makes his character more endearing.

With a couple great backers behind him and some laugh-out-loud dialogue guaranteed from their hang out scenes, Jay Baruchel carries the leading man position surprisingly well.  Perhaps it’s no coincidence that he’s from the Apatow school of young actors, having starred in the TV series Undeclared and popping up as a bit part in Knocked Up.  As he proved in Tropic Thunder, there’s something infectious about his nervous mannerisms and voice — which is exactly what She’s Out of My League needed, since it’s playing on our sympathy for Jay’s character Kirk throughout.  Kirk is a nice guy, though he doesn’t really know it, barraged with one horribly uncomfortable situation after another.  His job as an airport security agent actually seems pleasant next to his Nascar-loving, Branson-bound family, who have essentially adopted Kirk’s ex-girlfriend and her new boyfriend into the family.

For the most part, Kirk simply absorbs the awkwardness, and only one or two moments in the film reach out of the screen and make you squirm in your seat.   It’s a nice change from comedies that revel hanging awkward terror in the air like an oppressive cloud, and it’s much more fun to gawk and how totally, dreadfully, shudder-inducingly awful Kirk’s family is.

The movie’s propelled along by an energetic soundtrack and solid cinematography.  The camera work isn’t anything revolutionary, but it puts a stamp of quality on the movie that’s yet another sign She’s Out of My League stands above the pack.  It may not quite pack the emotional power or humor of Forgetting Sarah Marshall.  But it ends in the best possible way: leaving me wanting more time with this particular group of misfits.

Something about the heist genre seriously confuses me.  No no, it’s not the intricate/incomprehensible plots or the way the audience is manipulated into rooting for a lovable bunch of criminals.  Basically, what I don’t understand is why modern remakes like Ocean’s 11 and The Italian Job, and original creations like The Bank Job, exist at all.  I’m not saying they’re bad movies!  Ocean’s 11 in particular is tons of fun, with a fantastic cast and a great finale.  It’s just that, well, they’re all entirely unnecessary, because The Sting perfected the genre in 1973 and there was simply nowhere to go but down.

Robert Redford and Paul Newman star as a pair of lovable con artists — one up-and-coming, one an old pro — out to pull the ultimate grift on uptight Irish mobster Robert Shaw.  Redford and Newman don’t quite recapture the insanely perfect chemistry of Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid, but that’s the kind of magic that only happens once in a lifetime.  Nevertheless, they both play their characters with easy grins and are a joy to watch.  Newman plays one of the best poker games put to film against an increasingly furious Shaw, while Redford bounces around Chicago looking utterly dashing in 1930s clothing, and boy does he know it.

If the film was down to Redford and Newman as Johnny Hooker and Henry Gondorff carrying a heist all by themselves, it would probably still be pretty great.  But the supporting cast comes into play in a big way, and the scope of the con dwarfs anything I’ve seen in another heist film.  The secondary characters like Kid Twist and J.J. Singleton show up, make sure the job sounds good and impossible, then jump in feet first and make it happen.  The Sting portrays an entire culture of con-men, interconnected and operated like a genuine industry.  Kid Twist rounds up recruits to perpetuate a massive robbery, and they’re all, obviously, perfect gentlemen.

That’s really what separates The Sting so profoundly from the rest of its genre — everything works together to project an easy, charming atmosphere of pure confidence, which permeates everything from the costuming to the set design to the intertitles.  The setting feels utterly authentic, even if it’s clearly filmed on sets, and Scott Joplin’s ragtime piece “The Entertainer” add enormously to the 1930s flavor.

The plot carries its weight just like everything else, and strikes a typical balance between revelation and secrets hidden until the grand finale.  And if a twist is a necessary component of any heist movie, The Sting may, again, have the very best.  It’s also the only film I’ve ever seen that begins a con with the opening credits.  But that’s easy to do, when you know you can pull it off.

Nintendo’s Super Mario Galaxy 2 may be a bastion of creativity and fresh ideas, a wealth of originality crammed into a lovingly-crafted 3D platformer.  But behind that creativity lies an insidious case of theft.  Nintendo clearly poured so much effort into coming up with new ideas, when it came to a chubby-space-faring guide, they had to reach back into gaming’s past for inspiration.  And so we were given Mario’s new guide, Lubba, born from another blobular adventurer — though obviously a much more brodacious one.

Total bummer, Nintendo.  Total bummer.

Previews for Parenthood had me interested in the show before its March debut, mainly due to the involvement of producer Ron Howard.  And once I saw the pilot, I was mighty hopeful: Peter Krause led the cast with energy and believability, Lauren Graham played a pretty good Gilmore Girl, and in general the whole Braverman clan seemed to fit snugly together as a new TV family.

By the end of the season, though, things had changed.  What was my least favorite plot thread in the pilot — Dax Shepard’s discovery that he had a son — had become the stand-out relationship in the show, while the rest of the family’s problems sank deeper and deeper into melodrama.

In the pilot, Crosby (Dax Shepard) played the typical goof-off irresponsible brother who suddenly found himself confronted with parental responsibility.  It was easily the most predictable element of the show, starting off, but Dax Shepard really put his heart into it, creating both the funniest and most appealing member of the Braverman family as a result.  The writers kept it interesting by focusing on both his relationship with his son Jabbar and mother Jasmine, and wisely writing Crosby’s girlfriend Katie out of the show early.

Parenthood managed to balance lighthearted moments with serious “raising kids is tough” drama throughout the first half of the season, but inter-family drama just made the show less fun to watch as it went on.  Of course, “fun” isn’t a requirement for television drama: The Wire certainly never held back from brutalizing its characters.  But Parenthood is hardly The Wire.  At its heart it’s a feel-good show, about people overcoming their problems and living happily ever after, or at least happily until next season.  And I’m completely okay with that.  I may have snickered when my high school government/economics teacher took two class periods to show us Remember the Titans because it was a feel-good movie, but it does make you feel good, dammit.

Problem was, Parenthood got bogged down in entirely too much family melodrama to be fun or especially believable.  A teenage love-triangle can go a long way towards killing a show, and the resulting family in-fighting buried some of the more interesting relationships, such as Adam’s (Peter Krause) attempts to bond with his nephew.  In the end, Parenthood resolved most everything with a pretty little bow on its head, so maybe it will come back stronger next season with more interesting plot threads and less teenagers crying and squabbling.  But if I tune in, it’ll mostly be to see where Crosby’s going, and I’ll have my fingers crossed that his character can continue to surprise and improve through season two.