Blu-ray Review: The World's End (2013)

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A postmodern version of an epic Arthurian quest lays just below the surface of as you like it hilarity in The World's End, the third and final installment of Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg's Three Flavors Cornetto trilogy of sorts.

Wright's own junk food hangover cure he referenced along with co-writer Simon Pegg in their slacker vs. zombie cult classic Shaun of the Dead and then devoured onscreen in their Midsomer-like village set Michael Bay actioner Hot Fuzz, it's only fitting that the hangover cure come full circle for use in a film about the ultimate pub crawl.

 

Yet just like an inebriated man with beer goggles, it's safe to say that a good many will watch The World's End drunk on the overflowing humor and only begin to peel back the layers after it's finished. And not only do Wright and Pegg seem fine with that but they damn near count on it, building a vastly intoxicating behind-the-scenes Blu-ray experience that's almost as enjoyable as the film itself.

Guiding you through every aspect of the moviemaking process in more than three hours worth of footage, the two walk you through the insanely detailed, screenplay blueprint flip-chart, pointing out all of the signs and omens audibly and visually, before giving every department and/or topic its due.

With the benefit of knowledge meeting you halfway with your sense of humor already engaged -- it's safe to say that just like the film's main character, you're sure to want to go on the pub crawl a second time with fresh eyes as opposed to solely under the influence of beer (or humor) goggles.

Centering the onscreen quest on a very different King than Arthur, we're introduced to Pegg's irresponsible, overgrown adolescence in arrested development Gary King, who first brings us up to speed wearing rose colored glasses.

 

Reliving the greatest night of his life embarking on The Golden Mile pub crawl with his four best mates after graduating high school, Gary happily idealizes the past before a comment from a fellow addiction anonymous group member plants the seed of dissatisfaction in his middle-aged life.

Having failed to make it to all twelve of the pubs that make up the Mile in the past, Gary sets off -- determined to get the old band back together... well, not literally since he'd sold their instruments to buy drugs ages ago and all of the other men are in respectable careers now.

 

Manipulating each man with various tales until they bend to his will, the five knights embark not on horseback but via his vintage car nicknamed the Beast complete with a killer late '80s/early '90s mix-tape blasting away mile after mile.

While it doesn't seem to have a lot to offer in the way of plot -- at least initially -- things start going from strange to worse shortly into their Mile journey from one Tarot-card like symbolized, ominously named pub to the next all the way through to the titular World's End.

 

From the corporations that have taken over the pubs so that they've all begun to look the same to the bizarre behavior of the locals (moving in concert -- conformity and group-think gone haywire), our heroes begin to realize things aren't like they used to be.

And even though there's always the question of whether or not you can really go home again, the widening gap between us vs. them (or the heroes vs. the "blanks" as they come to be called) come to the forefront shortly after they begin slamming down pints as embodied in an apocalyptic twist midway through the movie.

 

Realizing they must come together to save the town from annihilation one pub patron at a time, Gary's pub crawl takes on a far more epic meaning as he and the others struggle to make it to the final destination of The World's End alive.

Actually, "blanks" turns out to be a great word as issues of any prejudice can be used to literally fill-in-the-blank if you want to read deeper into the movie (and indeed, are teased in a tongue-in-cheek conclusion as well). However, just like appreciating the humor first and the layers later, the apocalyptic comedic horror smackdown soon takes center stage over anything else, dominating your brain-space for the rest of the film.

 

An enjoyable romp that intriguingly pays off on the previous two films as we discover the way the blanks multiplied has zombie-ish similarities and reveling in the same type of over-the-top action we witnessed in Fuzz, The World's End marks a surprisingly soulful conclusion to the trilogy-in-jest.

 

While I still have a special place in my heart for Fuzz, in a year over-crowded with topically similar movies of every genre, comically speaking it's The World's End rather than This is the End that I think I'd sooner grab hold of a second time for a night of apocalyptical hilarity ever after.

Related Review

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Movie Review: Star Trek (2009)

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Last week, Hugh Jackman officially kicked off the summer movie season by clawing his way into the international box office with the number one blockbuster X-Men Origins: Wolverine. To this end, it's probably a good thing that television brainchild turned action director J.J. Abrams didn’t call his take on the science fiction classic Star Trek: Origins. However, as we learn right from the start of this deafening loud but truly entertaining summer popcorn movie, he very well could have.

And sure enough, by cleverly avoiding the trappings of the franchise’s more than forty-year history on screens both big and small—he bravely chose to hit “reset." In doing so, he conceived a work, along with his Mission Impossible III, Lost, and Alias screenwriters Robert Orsi and Alex Kurtzman that started at the very beginning of the Trekkie mythology as conceived by its mastermind and creator, Gene Roddenberry in the 1960s.

While it’s definitely a Paramount Studio classic and not part of the Marvel Studio umbrella (a la Wolverine)-- the film’s incredibly effective opener utilizes two of the strongest elements of last year’s Marvel Robert Downey Jr. double-play in the form of director Jon Favreau's Iron Man and its Marvel companion, The Incredible Hulk from Transporter 2 director Louis Leterrier.

One of the gifts that we've begun to take for granted when it comes to J.J. Abrams that made me an Alias fan right from the start is his truly unique, confident, and powerful ability to draw upon raw human emotion that builds into extraordinarily riveting (yet natural) plot points within the framework of the most complicated action sequences you can imagine.

In the bravura opener of Star Trek that serves as either a literary-like prologue managing to satisfy comic book fans and those who worship at the altar of Russian tragedy, he blends action and drama in a daring pre-credit sequence. Within moments, we witness the birth of the man who will become the notorious James Tiberius Kirk as his father sacrifices his life to save countless others in an escalating war with the monstrous Romulan villain Nero (a nearly unrecognizable turn by otherwise dishy Munich star Eric Bana).

Segueing from dazzling effects work as the battle rages on with scenes of Kirk’s mother in labor—Abrams takes an operatic cue to use simply visuals and a gorgeous score by composer Michael Giacchino as we view the sequence as if it were a modern day silent film until Kirk’s cry as a newborn bursts onto the soundtrack like a crescendo.

Unexpectedly moving and cinematically daring—it takes the opening of Leterrier’s beautiful beginning of Hulk a step further by wordlessly bringing us into the visceral realm of the film. And indeed, this was no accident as Abrams admitted to Bill Goodykoontz in The Arizona Republic that it was “the visceral experience, the feeling, the emotional experience” he “always [found] more critical than the intellectual one” that had made him “more of a Star Wars man growing up.”

And honestly, before I’d even read the article in The Republic, it’s one I referenced in my hastily scribbled screening notes when I wrote that George Lucas should’ve consulted Abrams for the development of his horrific prequels that seem to be a cautionary tale against too much CGI.

Yet, forgetting the sins of the latter day Lucas-- the man's earlier work provides an influence you can spot throughout Abrams’ version of Star Trek. When you couple this with Abrams' dedication to Roddenberry’s source material, it makes a stirring concoction of classic sci fi to reach devotees of both franchises.

And indeed Wars and Trek have become part of this generation's DNA and throughout Trek, Star Wars doesn't seem too far from Abrams' mind as it appeared to influence aspects of the film whether it’s in the way that the young Spock reminded me a bit of Luke Skywalker or Kirk giving off a distinct Han Solo vibe.

However, it’s just one of several post ‘60s works Abrams drew inspiration from as collaborators in Paramount's official production notes cited Philip Kaufman’s The Right Stuff as another film that lended to Trek's "origin" structure. And it definitely stands out when we catch up with the mischievous ladies man James T. Kirk (Bottle Shock’s Chris Pine), the gorgeous brainiac Uhura (Guess Who star Zoe Saldana), and the paranoid chatterbox scene-stealer Dr. Leonard “Bones” McCoy (Karl Urban) as they train at Starfleet Academy.

However, prior to their training-- the vastly different childhoods of Earth resident Kirk and Vulcan inhabitant Spock are touched upon in another nicely paced storytelling approach by Abrams and his writing team. While things for Spock are quite difficult as he faces intense prejudice and bullying for being the product of a Vulcan father (Chariots of Fire’s Ben Cross) and human mother (Winona Ryder), Kirk gets an Iron Man-like introduction. Yet to switch things up in a delightful futuristic anachronism, Abrams substitutes ACDC’s “Back in Black” used in Favreau’s film for the Beastie Boys' anti-authority classic “Sabotage” as he’s chased by a flying motorcycle cop while careening down a desert road.

Thereafter we're reunited with the adult versions of the two characters and the primary cast at Starfleet. And very quickly we see the makings of the captain Kirk would become, having to leave his tendency for Top Gun Maverick style heroics and bar brawls behind under the guidance of the tough but fair Captain Pine (The Republic of Love’s Bruce Greenwood) and the half-Vulcan, half-human with a chip on his shoulder larger than those memorable ears in the form of Dr. Spock (Heroes’ Zachary Quinto).

Although those familiar with the series recall the dynamic friendship of Spock and Kirk and the way they complemented each other—getting to that point in this film isn’t reached until the end. Typical for the Joseph Campbell-like Hero's Journey (a George Lucas favorite), it occurs as the U.S.S. Enterprise crew members (also consisting of John Cho’s Mr. Sulu and Anton Yelchin’s Chekov before Simon Pegg’s Scotty arrives very late into the picture) find themselves jeopardized when Bana’s über-villain makes a recurrence.

Easily setting the audience up for an inevitable sequel by crafting a new Star Trek mythology that builds from the preexisting one as in-jokes, signature lines and even an extended cameo by Leonard Nimoy abound—it’s a highly satisfying “reintroduction” to the characters.

Despite this, it’s safe to say that die-hard Trekkies may resist change and even those—like myself—who’ve only seen one of the films and a handful of classic episodes definitely missed the intellectual allegories that existed on the small screen. For beneath the cheesy pretext of the Shatner era series-- vintage Star Trek also managed to comment on race, religion, prejudice, politics, war, disease, diversity and more during the Vietnam era by providing an atypical science fiction version of a positive and damn near Utopian—as opposed to doom-ridden and dystopian—view of the future.

And while overall, it’s a blast and a true big screen cinematic experience, I wished that some of the awesome Star Wars like action sequences may have been infused with the same level of Abrams intelligence he imbued into the film’s opening. Moreover, even though he revealed to Goodykoontz that he “thought the original show was too intellectual” and wanted to emphasize the adventure based pleasure of Lucas’ universe that enraptured him as a child—I’m hopeful that, along with his talented screenwriters-- they’ll pack a little more brain crunch into the next delicious bag of popcorn they manage to “beam up” in the future.

Star Trek

DVD Review: How to Lose Friends and Alienate People (2008)

Annoying You Into Hysterics
On DVD 2/17/09

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The dumbing down of the media has been a sad trend for a long while. And more recently it's taken shape via the same "mouth breathing" critics who pose for photos with celebrities that Roger Ebert warned against in his wise and witty list of rules for those in the profession to the recent announcement that the one man hype and buzz machine Ben Lyons was named the most hated critic in America.

Namely, journalism has been on a downward slide for roughly a decade and former pop culture magazines like the lauded Rolling Stone and film fan favorite Entertainment Weekly have begun moving into Tiger Beat and Bop Magazine territory filling pages with gossip and an emphasis on tween friendly items. Of course, this includes the massive disappointment for Juno enthusiasts everywhere that the former Minnesota stripper turned Oscar winner turned EW columnist Diablo Cody checked her intellect at the door and has begun penning a column that reads like a nonsensical and arrogant "Dear Diary" entry with topics mostly consisting of herself, guest-starring on 90210 and her unabashed love of New Kids on the Block.

While Rolling Stone is still the go-to source for some truly hard hitting political journalism (often by writers such as Matt Taibbi), overall, it's lost the same sting it used to have in holding up a much needed mirror to our celebrity obsessed culture. Therefore, is it any wonder that newspapers are on the decline with massive layoffs of hard-working staff members and the threat that perhaps by the end of the year, my most cherished publication-- The New York Times-- may indeed go under?

While environmentalists will breathe a happy sigh of relief that more trees won't be wasted, the fact that we won't even have certain papers and columnists to read online is disheartening as they've been made obsolete with the media's emergence of "infotainment." This finds CNN inviting users to leave comments on their anchors' blogs, get in touch with them via Facebook, MySpace or Twitter-- in a way in which the worldwide public is shaping the news by leading journalists to ask certain questions, make assumptions and otherwise neglect the integrity that previously held their work together. Social networking conversations are one thing but what is "news" is something else or at least it should be.

Yet, long before journalist Stephen Glass began faking stories for the National Review, Britain's controversial writer Toby Young left his homeland for a gig in New York, perhaps predicting this decline of Access Hollywood and speculative rumor mill news. It was in New York that Young proved that, in addition to being an utter pain, he may in fact have been ahead of his time.

Lewd, crude, rude, and filled with attitude, Young was hired away from his co-editorship of London's groundbreaking and staunchly critical, in your face magazine Modern Review by Vanity Fair's Graydon Carter in 1995. It was a disaster all the way as Young was simply unwilling to play ball with our buzz filled journalism. Yet instead of taking a high and mighty road, he took the lowest one imaginable which he chronicled in his infamous memoir, upon which Curb Your Enthusiasm director Robert Weide based this film.

Young's time spent working for both Vanity Fair and becoming a failed screenwriter were perhaps best summed up by the man who invited him from across the pond in the form of Vanity Fair's editor Carter, whom New York Times critic Manohla Dargis quoted as likening Young's short tenure to "a brief one-night stand that results in octuplets."

The octuplets remark seems especially fitting as Young was never content to just let one thing happen without knocking as many dominoes as he could down in the process. Moreover, he made a grand display of all he did including sending a stripper-gram to his sleazy superior (played in the film by Danny Huston) for stealing his story idea before realizing it was "Bring Your Daughter to Work Day."

Additionally as Roger Ebert noted, Young "blew through deadlines, vomited on people, wrecked parties, brushed with libel, suggested offensive story ideas, alienated the very celebrities he was paid to celebrate, and pulled off the neat trick of being shunned by most of the publicists in America."

Based on the memoir written by Young and turned into an engaging satirical script by screenwriter Peter Straughan-- Straughan took some of Young's most revolting and hilarious "greatest misfires" as well as a few "hits," to develop it into a contemporary plot where Toby becomes Sidney Young and Carter becomes Clayton Harding (Jeff Bridges).

And this time around, he's embodied by one of my current favorite British comedic actors, Mr. Simon Pegg (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz). A man so hilarious that even when he's leaving Thandie Newton fully pregnant on her wedding day in Run Fatboy Run, Pegg still somehow remains an underdog hero you can root for when he tries to win his lady back, thus making him the ideal choice to bring Young to life.

Fittingly he'd been Toby Young's dream version of himself and as such Pegg was actually "approached to play the role back in 2004 for a stage version," but a scheduling conflict found him having to bow out. Dubbed by Toby Young on the DVD release as "the Dudley Moore of our generation," Simon Pegg's name was the only two-word answer Robert Weide used when people approached him to ask how on Earth he was going to make the notoriously loathed Young sympathetic. And while all on the set seem to concur, honestly, you get the feeling Weide is being a tad humble as-- having been a part of Curb Your Enthusiasm for years-- by now he's a pro at finding the funny in the most despicably selfish of human behavior.

Yet, it's quite a fitting comparison to make in likening Pegg to Dudley Moore who managed to make his perpetually drunk and childish title character in Arthur, downright lovable. And although there's nothing remotely lovable about Young-- you just can't help crossing your fingers for the man that Pegg deemed is "obnoxious and slightly loathsome," but still can't hide the "bit of honey" buried within his heart. It's a heart he covers up on his first day of work wearing one of the most inappropriate t-shirts imaginable.

And, in proving he's not ready to play ball anytime soon, he alienates an actor he interviews by asking if either the character or the individual is Jewish and/or gay in one of the most appalling yet hysterical scenes of the film that goes against the kiss-ass press junket spirit. Instantly loathed by his superior Danny Huston, Gillian Anderson's controlling publicist who has everyone wrapped around her little finger, Max Minghella's overrated, and young Tarantino like director for avoiding phony small talk, Young proclaims that Con Air is the best movie ever made. And in doing so, he nonetheless manages to intrigue his new cute colleague Alison Olsen (Kirsten Dunst) despite his hilarious satirical story pitches that he write a piece about Paris Hilton as though she were a near Greta Garbo-like recluse.

However, although they develop a camaraderie and flirtatious friendship as she bails him out of a tight spot and he does the same for her later, as soon as he sets eyes on the gorgeous sexpot ingenue Megan Fox (hired by Weide actually before Transformers made her a superstar) who saunters in an evening gown across a pool and seduces a la Angelina Jolie, he begins to change everything about himself to get close to Fox's Sophie Maes. And in landing Maes, he crosses so many lines that he can't even see the lines he'd set for himself when he first became a writer anymore.

The film was mostly panned by critics who may have felt as though the film and its subject were hitting a little too close to the nerve of what celeb driven media coverage has become. Despite this, I must admit that it was a genuinely entertaining surprise aside from its awful trailer and poor advertising campaign that tried to masquerade the film more in the vein of Judd Apatow and less like Barry Levinson's 2008 Hollywood satire What Just Happened (also based on a memoir).

Additionally, much better than some of 2008's super-hyped films with multi-million dollar ad-campaigns, it was sadly another one of those movies just sort of dumped in the fall when theatres were already over-crowded. However, I can only hope viewers will give it a chance despite the misleading trailer and the fact that, perhaps like fellow Brit Ricky Gervais in the other fall charmer Ghost Town (which is downright Capraesque next to this one), possibly Pegg has yet to be recognizable to mainstream audiences.

And while you can't exactly root for Sidney Young-- much like Weide's HBO curmudgeon Larry David-- you don't exactly want to root against him either. Filled with a cool, contemporary soundtrack-- intriguingly the '95 events have been now set into an even more unrealistic Hollywood time of constant text messaging and YouTube. Weide and screenwriter Straughan's update of Alienate is a fervent reminder that-- although not to the extreme of Mr. Sidney or Toby Young-- possibly what journalism needs right now is less celebrity worship or mushy, "OMFG, I starred on 90210" Tiger Beat styled columns. And in their place, we deserve more work that holds those responsible for pop culture accountable by kicking them off those pedestals that find young girls starving themselves in emulation.

Although, to this end, I'd suggest to emulate Young in using a pen, in lieu of embracing Young's penchant for vomit, party crashing, and bringing an animal to a film event in the hopes of gaining admission. But, something tells me that even then, the story would be much better than watching Twitter, Facebook, or MySpace messages fill up the bottom of a CNN screen as the anchors turn our carefully chosen thoughts into news.

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