REVIEW: The World's End

The World's End (2013): Dir. Edgar Wright. Written by: Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg. Starring: Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Paddy Considine, Martin Freeman and Eddie Marsan. Rated R (Language, robot blood). Running time: 109 minutes.

2 stars (out of four)

The World’s End starts promisingly as a the-boys-are-back-together comedy, slips into sci-fi mediocrity roughly a third of the way in, and ends with a slapdash epilogue so lazy, it feels like an insult, or maybe a mistake. The film was directed by Edgar Wright and written by Wright and Simon Pegg, who previously collaborated on the zombie comedy Shaun of the Dead and the (even better) tongue-in-cheek buddy cop movie Hot Fuzz. In both of those earlier films, as well as this one, Wright and Pegg meld the comedy of small town caricatures with more conventional genre-movie entertainment.

Their films also have a wry, distinctly British wit. They aren’t afraid to go for the jugular (sometimes literally, by way of decapitating a character), and for the first half hour or so, The World’s End appears willing to mine some good, uncomfortable laughs from its reunion of middle-aged blokes.

The organizer of this class reunion is Gary King (Pegg), a hyper, alcoholic mess of a guy. On a whim inspired by some mid-life crisis combo of boredom and desperation, he decides to get his old mates from high school back together for an epic pub crawl called the Golden Mile. Twelve pubs in one night, a pint (or more) in each one, is no easy feat for anyone, certainly not a group of men pushing forty. As teenagers, their first attempt at the Golden Mile left them passed out in a field somewhere between pubs nine and ten, getting sick all over themselves (which is also to say it was a smashing success).

The friends are played by a charming and accomplished group of actors that include Paddy Considine, Martin Freeman and Eddie Marsan. Nick Frost, again taking up his usual sidekick role beside Pegg (though, for the first time, as the straight man), plays Andy, Gary’s former best drinking buddy turned teetotaler. An incident from his and Gary’s post-grad years has made him swear off booze (as well as his friendship with Gary), but darned if his old friend can’t drag him back out for one more night.

Andy and the rest of the guys eye the former leader of their group with a mixture of morbid fascination and deep concern. He hasn’t changed a bit. He even still drives “The Beast,” his 1989 Ford that coughs black fumes at the slightest bump in the road. For a while, they enjoy the nostalgia of being in his company, but the sadness of his situation soon sets in. Watch the worried looks Considine and Freeman exchange when they realize Gary has been jamming out to the same cassette tape since high school, some twenty years ago.

The first act of the film is rich with moments like that one, suggesting that The World’s End is heading for bold, uneasy comedic territory. Pegg’s performance walks a careful tonal tightrope. Gary is the type of eternally upbeat guy who wants you to have a blast but just ends up depressing the hell out of you because it’s painfully obvious how in denial he is.

But an earnest set-up is wasted with a hard left turn toward science fiction that, this time around, feels forced rather than inspired. A plot about extraterrestrial robots taking over the guys’ hometown has potential for satire (they also find that the once colorful characters of their favorite pubs have been homogenized as a result of corporate buy-outs, a fate that mirrors the alien takeover) but it belongs in a different movie.

The World’s End’s jarring shift of gears also allows it to duck out of dealing with the more complex and interesting issues its characters face, such as settling into middle age, dealing with alcoholism and the effects of nostalgia.

Instead there are a lot of fight scenes, which are hectic, decently choreographed, squirt blue synthetic blood all over the actors, but are nothing special, really. I find it hard to recommend The World’s End even as simple-minded fun when you can just rent 2011’s way cooler, more inventive and way better alien invasion movie Attack the Block (also produced by Big Talk Productions, the same company that produces all of Edgar Wright’s films).

Fans of Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz may be satisfied enough with The World’s End but I’d be surprised if it attained anything near the cult fandom of those movies. There are enough good scenes and chuckle-worthy jokes to remind you of Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg’s earlier successes but the movie ultimately becomes as weary as Gary King does to his friends. You wish it would dispense with the distractions, grow up and deal with something real.

- Steve Avigliano, 8/28/13

REVIEW: Star Trek Into Darkness

Star Trek Into Darkness (2013): Dir. J. J. Abrams. Written by: Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman and Damon Lindelof. Based on Star Trek by Gene Roddenberry. Starring: Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Zoe Saldana, Benedict Cumberbatch, Karl Urban, John Cho, Alice Eve, Simon Pegg, Peter Weller and Anton Yelchin. Rated PG-13 (Bloodless action). Running time: 133 minutes.

4 stars (out of four)

Star Trek Into Darkness is a perfect summer movie. It is smart, fast-paced and emotionally engaging, grabbing your attention in the opening moments and refusing to let go until it’s over. Scene after scene, it surprises and thrills. You can’t help but get drunk off its relentlessly exhilarating energy.

The film, which is J. J. Abrams’s second Star Trek feature, begins by following what I feel is one of the cardinal rules of any great action movie: Open with a scene so good, a lesser movie would have used it as its climax. Captain James T. Kirk (Chris Pine) runs through the blood orange jungle of an exotic planet, chased by spear-throwing natives with chalk white faces. A mostly self-contained episode, this first mission involves dropping First Officer Spock (Zachary Quinto) into an active volcano and sets the tone for the rest of the film, which oscillates between edge-of-your-seat suspense and comic levity.

This is a delicate movie alchemy and too many directors get it wrong, overloading their films with convoluted, disorienting action and occasionally punctuating the monotony with ham-handed one-liners. But J. J. Abrams makes it look simple. The comedy flows easily from his cast and the action is never difficult to follow. There is a clear sense of space and Abrams plays with it.

Take one scene, for example, when the starship Enterprise is under attack. The ship spins through space, tossing around the crew inside. This forces our heroes to run along walls and ceilings as the ship turns. Another scene gets a laugh from watching Scotty (Simon Pegg) sprint down the seemingly endless length of a ship’s hangar. Abrams delights in creating locations that feel real and lets his characters interact with the space. I’d bet half my paycheck he played with Legos as a kid.

He also uses this inventiveness to build a large, richly detailed universe. Even a relatively agnostic Star Trek fan such as myself (in my formative years as a nerd-movie padawan, I sweat and bled Star Wars) could not help but become completely absorbed by it. Along with production designer Scott Chambliss, costume designer Michael Kaplan and countless others, Abrams creates an authentic, believable world. Any given shot is packed with fun things to look at in the background. You get the sense that not a dollar of the movie’s massive budget was misspent. Even the ice cubes at the bar – little spheres of ice that spin when dropped into a whiskey glass – are cool.

But all of these details and embellishments are merely decorative, like so many ornaments Abrams hangs on this dazzling Christmas tree of a movie. The script, written by Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman and Damon Lindelof, is the fuel that powers this warp speed adventure. Into Darkness is always two steps ahead of its audience; just when you think you know where it’s heading, it twists and turns back on itself. The stakes are always high but ever changing. Villains become allies, friends become enemies and the movie keeps cartwheeling like this until the very end.

Following the wonderfully fun prologue, the plot begins in earnest with the bombing of a Starfleet building in London. Admiral Alexander Marcus (an excellent Peter Weller, growling and snarling his lines) assembles a group of Starfleet commanders and explains who the suspect is: a disgruntled former employee named John Harrison (a steely and terrifically ruthless Benedict Cumberbatch). Harrison attacks a second time and flees to the Klingon homeworld of Kronos. Tensions are already high between Starfleet and the Klingons, and Harrison believes Starfleet would not dare risk starting an all-out war by following him there.

Harrison does not take into account, however, the daring of James T. Kirk, who offers to take the Enterprise and its crew on a covert mission to Kronos to take out Harrison. Armed with seventy-two of Starfleet’s newly developed and highly deadly photon torpedoes, the Enterprise blasts off in hot pursuit of the fugitive.

As the plot rockets down its twisty roller coaster tracks, the crew members on board the Enterprise trade snappy banter and gently poke fun at the proceedings. The dynamic between Pine’s Kirk and Quinto’s Spock is much as it was between William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy (who has a brief cameo here). The cocky bravado of Kirk provides a nice foil for Spock’s rigid adherence to logic and following protocol. They frustrate the hell out of each other but they also share a deeply rooted respect and love for one another.

The beautiful Lieutenant Uhura (Zoe Saldana) is romantically involved with the half-human, half-Vulcan Spock and has her own reasons to be annoyed with him. Think your boyfriend has trouble expressing his emotions? Just imagine if his species was genetically predisposed to be devoid of emotions.

Other franchise mainstays include the ship’s doctor, Leonard “Bones” McCoy (Karl Urban), and its chief engineer Scotty (Pegg, relishing the character’s trademark Scottish brogue). A few, including Sulu (John Cho) and Chekov (Anton Yelchin) are present too but are featured less prominently.

For some viewers, there may be additional buzz surrounding this movie beyond the anticipation generated for a sequel by Abrams’s lively and entertaining Star Trek in 2009. Earlier this year Abrams was announced as the director of the upcoming Star Wars: Episode VII. But calling this movie an audition for Star Wars feels unfair because Into Darkness, one could argue, is actually better than at least half the Star Wars movies. Prior to seeing Into Darkness, even thinking such a thing would have seemed blasphemous to me. (I believe I already mentioned my allegiance to the Force.) But perhaps the clearest sign of this movie’s greatness is its ability to turn anyone who sees it into a Trekkie.

- Steve Avigliano, 5/21/13

REVIEW: The Adventures of Tintin

The Adventures of Tintin (2011): Dir. Steven Spielberg. Written by: Steven Moffat and Edgar Wright & Joe Cornish, based on the comics by Hergé. Starring: Jamie Bell, Andy Serkis, Daniel Craig, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost. Rated PG (Swashbuckling and a boozing sea captain). Running time: 107 minutes.

2 stars (out of four)

Steven Spielberg built his career on turning his boyhood fantasies into Hollywood blockbusters. When you watch the most imaginative of his big-budget adventures – Raiders of the Lost Ark, Jurassic Park, Minority Report – you get the sense that a young Spielberg might have made the same movie had he had the technical skills and financing at his disposal the adult Spielberg does. The same is true of his buddy, George Lucas. At some gut level just they knew the stories in their heads, full of dashing heroes and journeys to exotic worlds, would make fine crowd-pleasers.

So the pairing of Mr. Spielberg and Peter Jackson, that Kiwi who had the crazy idea he could turn The Lord of the Rings into a trilogy of hit movies, makes sense. They share a mutual love of the French comic book series, The Adventures of Tintin, and set out to recreate on the big screen the rich, vibrant world they had already known for years. Mr. Spielberg would direct the first and, should it be a hit, Mr. Jackson would helm the second installment.

The Adventures of Tintin, which was filmed with motion-capture animation and released in 3D, seems to have all the right ingredients – a boy and his dog discover a clue to a mystery and embark on a globetrotting trek to solve it – but the movie fails to capture the magic that seems so effortless in other Spielberg films.

The boy is Tintin (Jamie Bell) and the clue is a cryptic piece of parchment concealed inside a model ship he bought secondhand from a street vendor. He might have known the purchase would spark trouble after a man named Ivan Sakharine (Daniel Craig) tries to buy the ship off Tintin. Sakharine needs only to utter a few words in Mr. Craig’s ominous, British drawl for us to know he’s the Bad Guy and Tintin wisely keeps the ship for himself, sensing an opportunity for adventure.

And how right he is! Before he knows it, Sakharine kidnaps him and he is onboard a real ship where he meets a drunken sea captain, Haddock (Andy Serkis). Haddock and Sakharine have a longstanding feud that is apparently news to Haddock; their ancestors were rival pirates and Sakharine’s relative cursed Haddock’s after the latter robbed him of his gold. Or something.

The plot details in these sorts of movies are more-or-less irrelevant as long the story takes our heroes from Land A to Land B and back again, which The Adventures of Tintin does. As it turns out, the parchment features as series of cryptic symbols along the bottom that can only be understood when read with two other notes, also hidden inside model ships. So we begin in Europe, where the first two ships are, then hop over to Morocco where the third is. The intervening trip involves travel by boat, plane and motorcycle and there is no shortage of dazzling animated action sequences.

So where does Tintin go wrong? To be honest, I’m at a bit of a loss to say but let’s start with the animation, which, on a surface level, is stunning. How an animator is able to recreate the look of a rainy street or the sun glistening off ocean waves in such a way that looks somehow better than the real thing, I’ll never know. The movie also looks great in 3D; the animation is crisp and sharp, and the added effect of the 3D is seamless.

But the inhabitants of this digital world have an odd quality about them. Because the actual physical performances of actors are being used through motion-capture, the characters of Tintin move like real people. Yet they remain cartoonish; they have big heads, exaggerated features and curvy, rubbery bodies. The strangeness of this look is especially noticeable in the film’s comedy, which is mostly broad and slapstick. The antics of a pair of bumbling coppers (Simon Pegg and Nick Frost) are limited by the use of real actors. They appear to be cartoon characters but because their bodies have none of the elasticity of say, Wild E. Coyote when he steps off a cliff, their movements appear curiously stiff.

This creepy middle ground between animated people and the real thing kept the movie at a distance for me. A scene such as a motorcycle chase through a Moroccan town, shown in one long take, is breathtaking but also not as exciting as it should be. There is too much of a sense that these are pixels being cleverly manipulated to look like buildings, boats and boy who ducks and dives between them. The movie is visually impressive but only superficially so.

The failings of The Adventures of Tintin are not so great as to shake my faith in Mr. Spielberg’s talent, but the movie does make me realize how much I take for granted the action movies of his that do work. My inner child is always eager to escape into a movie and who knows, maybe Tintin’s next adventure will allow him to do so.

- Steve Avigliano, 01/02/12