Movie Picks of the Week

Hot Fuzz – Danny Butterman: "Ever fired your gun in the air and yelled, 'Aaaaaaah?' "
So goes the line that sets up one of the funniest scenes I’ve seen in years. Hot Fuzz comes from the guys who did Shaun of the Dead (a movie I only saw parts of, but heard good things about).

These are guys who I would love to sit down to dinner with and just talk about movies because clearly their minds are as gunked-up with celluloid as mine. This movie reminded me a lot of Talladega Nights in the way it manages to almost lovingly skewer its target, in this case the buddy-cop genre which gave us classics like Beverly Hills Cop and regurgitated tripe like Rush Hour (or “-2”, or “-3”).

They respect the genre which is what allows them to mock it so effectively. You’ve got everything ranging from a very well telegraphed Point Break reference that had me in tears to toss away references of movies like Chinatown. Clever chaps. British humor doesn’t seem to translate too well in the States which is a shame because I feel as if you’ve not completely experienced comedy if you’ve never watched one Monty Python film or at least seen an episode of Mr. Bean. Simon Pegg and Nick Frost have impeccable comedic timing and play off each other exceptionally well. I look forward to whatever they have next on tap.


28 Weeks Later

28 Days Later was an imaginative take on the zombie-genre where instead of the living dead, we were given people infected with “rage.” (You know what just occurred to me though? The whole “rage”-virus was stolen from the Transformers cartoon. Specifically this episode. Man I’ve seen too much crap. What have I done with my life?) Anyway, it was the first time (as far as I know) that you had “zombies” running like track stars trying to take down anything in sight.

It was truly intense, especially the early scenes where we have the protagonist Cillian Murphy wondering around a seemingly abandoned London. The tension is ratcheted up to the point of being unbearable. I loved every minute. I’ve watched Boyle’s films since Shallow Grave which introduced me to Ewan McGregor who would go on to make Trainspotting with Boyle a couple of years later.

After a tidy return at the box office and decent DVD sales, four years later we have the sequel which returns none of the original cast and Boyle overseeing only as executive producer. The movie starts off well enough with a man making an obvious, but tough choice (c’mon does she really leave him a choice?). But instead of really exploring the consequences of his decision, we get your standard “let’s do everything that doesn’t make sense to progress the plot.” Now this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Many an entertaining film has come from watching people make god-awful decisions (Friday the 13th series, Aliens, Poltergeist—should have just left the little girl in the TV—as Eddie Murphy said, she was only five and they couldn’t have been that attached to her). In this case, I just got a bit frustrated as to how stupid everybody was being. Also, it felt too much like a retread of the previous film which was a bit lame since they had such great ideas to start this one off.

On the bright side, the film does have a decent amount of scares in it and although I’d seen it all before, it was done competently (except for the awful ‘chaos-cam’ whenever up-close ‘rage’-attacks happened). I can’t really recommend this one as a $10 expenditure, but if it’s on cable I wouldn’t make you change the channel. Until that happens, go rent 28 Days Later!