Wednesday, 26 March 2014
Scott Pilgrim Movie Review
The lead role is played by Michael Cera and yet again his
part is the awkwardly charming and somewhat clueless underdog. However this
time he’s flawed, he’s self-centered, can be a jerk at times and doesn't always
make the right call, but you can’t help but root for him, even if it’s because
things never seem to be going his way. Although
he is seen as loser by most people Scott can still kick some serious butt when
things get hot.
The world of Scott Pilgrim is based on an alternate world
Toronto which runs on video game rules, which goes blissfully unexplained. As
the story begins Scott (22) has just started dating a 17 year old high school student,
but his affections quickly change when he meets the girl of his dreams: Ramona
Flowers, a rollerblading delivery girl.
She is quite literally from his dreams, as she uses an inter-dimensional
highway which runs through Scott’s head, when he finally meets her in the real
world he is instantly smitten. The good
news, Ramona kind of likes him too. The bad news, to date her he must defeat
all seven of her evil exes (each one representing a boss fight at the end of a
video game level, complete with power-ups and the loser bursting into coins),
needless to say they all have superpowers. These powers make sure now to
battles are the same, so Scott is left figuring thing out on the fly.
Being largely based on the comic series by Bryan Lee
O’Malley, there are a lot of graphic call-outs like sound animations when music
is playing or the statistics of each character that appear throughout the film.
The best lines and entire scenes have also been pulled directly from the
books. Even though it was O’Malley who came
up with the concepts and the characters it’s Edgar Wright that makes them
really work in live action. The problems
that do arise are from the fact that all six books are crammed into one film
leave some things seeming rushed, especially the ending, but also that you want
to see more of the supporting characters because of how good those characters
are. The other problem is that the final
third differentiates somewhat as the books were still coming out as the film
was being shot.
This is one of those movies where you can walk into the
theater and see one of two versions: one being a romantic comedy which doesn't
take itself too seriously, with lots of jokes, cool action and plenty of eye
candy and pop-culture references. The second being a smart romantic comedy that
once you look past all of the above has a lot to say about young adult relationships in this modern era,
love and the human condition.
Overall the film is great,
with really clever editing where conversations take place over multiple locations
and times, and even smarter directing where subtle hints will leave you
wondering what happens after the credits roll, and the only fatal flaw being
that all of the pop-culture might leave some people feeling overwhelmed and
take away from the experience.
Soft and Telling Lies Contrast and Comapre
Both of these are short films made by Simon Ellis and though
they are both written and directed by him, they are fundamentally different in
visuals and the telling of narrative.
Soft is the story of a boy and his father being essential
bullied by juveniles and the story is told as it happens, as the characters
experience it. Telling lies on the other hand has the characters recount to us
the events of the previous night. Experiencing the story as it occurs is a good
way for the audience to get to know the characters, even empathise with them
because we get to see how react to the events that happens and understand their
thought process. It is however the way Telling Lies recites what has already
happened that I believe works more in getting us to empathise with the
characters. And that is quite simply
because we are in their heads especially Philip’s as he is the only constant
character and we see, well more hear everything happened from his end of the
line. The recounting works so well because it’s after a night out and as you
can imagine Phil’s memories must be quite blurry and he is most likely in no
hurry to recall them, now presentations plays a big part in this because right
after he reluctantly tells his mother what happened the calls start coming in
quick and each one tells more of what happened as is they were memory flashes
of the night prior.
Both films develop characters as much visually as
narratively. In Soft it shows how the father is not a strong or confident
person by simple visual clues like him nervously trying to avoid the eye
contact of the chavs outside the shop and then flinching when they pop the
balloon because he is already intimidated. The shop keeper also has no respect
for him because he purposely drops the change on the counter even though he
could have just put it in the other man’s already out stretched hand; we see a
similar thing happen between his son later on. Although the visuals in Telling
Lies are quite simplistic, they are also quite cleaver through the use of
colour to better describe the characters like Philip whose orange which can be
a calming colour but can also be alert kind of like Phil, he starts off trying
to be composed but quickly becomes frantic and panic; Sarah is red, the colour
of danger and anger and the mum is green, a neutral colour showing that she is
but a by stander with nothing to do with the previous nights events or the
fallout. But the one thing they all have in common is that when they lie the
text is always white, a simple white lie.
Even with the aid of the visuals Soft still relies on
dialogue as much as Telling Lies, especially right after the dad’s gotten in
after being beaten himself to find that his son has too now he tries to be
reassuring but his voice fails him making the words not only mean nothing but
also showing that he can’t protect himself or his son. Telling Lies only has
dialogue but it holds up just as well because we can clearly tell how the
characters are feeling like when Victoria calls and the calm and collected
voice cheers Phil up instantly but as she carriers on talking we see straight
through her façade because of the pauses and how carefully she puts her words
together. Philip recognizes this too before she even has to tell him this was
an easy let down as we hear him get audibly disappointed.
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