McBone Mini-Reviews are back! Hopefully on a more permanent and regular basis. Scott Pilgrim vs. the World - Anyone who has ever played too much Mario Bros. will revel in watching dweeby Michael Cera take on seven evil exes in the name of scoring a babe who is way (way!) out of his league. In a character-driven tale, the acting is uniformly pretty awesome. Cera is reliably awkward as the hero, but the real stars are the scene-chewing Kieran Culkin as his sage gay roommate, Jason Schwartzman as the seventh boyfriend and Mary Elizabeth Winstead, who is merely the gorgeous, acid-tounged girlfriend with hair that is pink, then blue, then green (think Kate Winslet in Eternal Sunshine), until she pulls a sledgehammer out of her handbag and starts swinging.
I'm not going to say this one is especially profound or important. I don't think it will change the course of cinema or make you rethink your life. What it does is exhilirate. Get your ass to a theater, nestle it comfortably into a seat and enjoy the ride. Official McBone Rating: 4.0 McBones
Also seen
Resident Evil - Speaking of video games, who wouldn't want to see Milla Jovovich kick some zombie ass in an underground research facility nicknamed the Hive? Best of all is the computer program who runs the place. Bent on containing the virus and letting no one out alive, the Queen (voiced in the creepy, cherubic prepubescent voice of an English girl) is the most murderous disembodied voice since HAL. This film is everything it should be, but most of all shameless. 3.0 McBones
Synecdoche, New York - Philip Seymour Hoffman is an anxiety-ridden playwright whose wife (the transcendent Catherine Keener) up and takes off with their daughter. Subsequently, he earns a Macarthur Fellowship and begins work on his magnum opus. The work slowly consumes him and becomes a parable for the way we construct and reconstruct the story of our lives. Watching Hoffman navigate his love affairs recalls Fellini and 8 1/2, but the ghostly dream state that our protagonist inhabits is all Charlie Kaufman, making his directorial debut. While certainly intellectual, Kaufman and Synecdoche skirt pretension and always entertain. 4.5 McBones
nwb
2 comments:
Just came back from watching the epic Scott Pilgrim! Made for video game (and of course comics) nerds. No detail was spared. I couldn't agree more with your review.
Wait till you get to Resident Evil 3. That's my favorite. (So far...)
I liked SNY, but I think I prefer Kaufman's neuroses filtered through another director. This felt a bit too claustrophobic for me.
I'm looking forward to seeing Scott Pilgrim. I loved SNY! It was masterfully made. I don't know if another director would have been able to tackle this film, like the other Kaufman written movies. He has become one of the view current moviemakers that guarantee I will see his latest project no matter what.
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