Has anyone else seen it yet? If not, I highly recommend it. It's certainly a very quirky film (based on a very quirky comic), but I think it's a unique film experience and one worth seeing. There are some slow points, and it takes the story a while to really kick in, but that's intentional (and wonderfully built up in the comic).

I'm really hoping this one will do well at the box office (I fear the opening weekend was a little on the weak side), so I'm trying to get the word out. As far as comic book movies go, this one is at the top of the heap. And as far as visual experiences go, I honestly don't think I've ever seen a movie like this.

Add to all that:

The acting is great: at first glance Michael Cera is playing his usual schtick, but it's not quite the same, which I was happy to see because I was worried that he couldn't capture the character from the comic. Other than him, the performances were pitch-perfect (at least in portraying their comic book counterparts). Everyone played their characters just right, and made the translation from page to film.

One thing I was happy to see after watching The Expendables the night before was the top-notch fight choreography. Yes, I'm saying that, IMO, this weekend a movie with Michael Cera and Jason Schwartzman had better fight scenes than one with Jet Li, Sylvester Stallone, and Jason Statham. It amazes me. But when I came out of the Expendables the thing that disappointed me the most was how the fighting was shot. It was done with the current action movie trend of the last five years or so of filming everything up-close with quick cuts. It just didn't work, especially considering the scenes in tight quarters where everyone is wearing black and face paint, so most of the time I couldn't tell which guy was which.

In Scott Pilgrim, however, almost all the action shots were backed out, at a reasonable distance. Sure, it frequently looked like they were acting out a preset sequence, but personally I'd rather have that then not be able to tell what's going on.

So in case you couldn't tell, I loved the movie. I'm sure some people won't, but I loved it. I loved the comic too, and Edgar Wright (who has yet to do wrong in my book) is a genius. I didn't know how this book was going to translate into a film, but he did it better than anyone possibly could. Bravo to that man.

I'm very much looking forward to seeing it this week. I'm squarely in the "Michael Cera can't act his way out of a paper bag" camp, but he didn't look too terrible in the previews.

Re: The Expendables: worth seeing in theaters, or wait for the video release?

I won't argue with you that he doesn't, but I think he can. (cf. this)

I'm also a Cera fan, though I do think that in most of the stuff he's done he has played the same guy. The thing is, I find that guy hilarious, so I don't mind. Seeing the stuff he did at a young age on Arrested Development is really impressive. You should go back to that again.

He does a great job in this role, though. The main character isn't supposed to be all good, he's supposed to have flaws and be kind of a lazy inconsiderate guy, sort of bumbling through life. The book fleshes the character out more, of course, but Cera does as good a job getting that through as you can in the shorter format.

In fact, I was concerned that he would be doing the same thing he always does when I saw the preview. That scene where he says "yeah, well my baggage doesn't try to kill me every five minutes" did not strike me as something that Scott Pilgrim from the books would say. The guy in the books had little to no clue what was going on at any given time. He was sort of clueless as a defense mechanism (at least that's how I read it). The one in the preview seemed to be a little too aware of himself and what was happening. The scene still played out that way to me, but it's an important character scene in the movie that takes some of the emotions going on over the course of 20 pages in the book and condenses it to one scene out of necessity.


As for the Expendables, I was less enthusiastic about it than my three friends I saw it with were. They were super psyched for it so we went to the midnight showing. I was excited for it to, being a child of the 80's and having gone to plenty of action movies with my father over the years, but my excitement for Expendables was somewhat tempered by being more excited for Scott Pilgrim

I'd say that Expendables was worth watching with a crowd for all the scenes where people shout out and stuff. Other than that I don't see a whole lot of reasons to see it in the theater.

My biggest surprise was that my favorite moment in the movie didn't involve the biggest names, but Terry Crewes. I won't spoil it, but there's a hilariously violent moment in the tunnels toward the end.

As for the movie as a whole, it was flawed but enjoyable. There were a lot of points where the movie dragged with very little action, which was a surprise for this type of film.

I think the funniest part of the movie was that it has almost no interest in its characters. You will never find out anything whatsoever about any of them.

Oh, and Mickey Rourke has a five minute monologue in the middle of the film, and I didn't have a freaking clue what he was talking about.

I'm with you on that one, completely.



You've just hit the reason why I hate watching movies in most US cities I've been to. People just don't know how to f'in shut up when the movie is on. I don't need someone behind me yelling "don't go down there!" or other instructions at the screen.



Sounds like the movie "The Losers" I just watched last night.

You've just hit the reason why I hate watching movies in most US cities I've been to. People just don't know how to f'in shut up when the movie is on. I don't need someone behind me yelling "don't go down there!" or other instructions at the screen.[/quote]
I think you misunderstand me, because I despise what you're talking about. I'm talking about whole-theater reactions, like when someone "blows sum'in up reeeal good," and everyone goes "WOOOOAAAHHH!!" That's the kind of stuff that's fun with a theater. It's why seeing Snakes on a Plane was fun (and why Piranha 3D will probably be fun too). These are, frankly, bad movies, but they're the kind that are fun with whole-audience participation. If there's just one jackass in the back who thinks he's a comedian and is commenting on everything, that's when I get an usher.


Sadly, yeah. However, The Losers failed a lot more as a movie. I think it was mostly due to poor direction. The Expendables, for the most part, knew exactly what it was and when it did what it did best it excelled. It just seems like perhaps the old action stars weren't up for a few more setpieces. Still, there's nothing quite like seeing Jet Li fight Dolph Lundgren.


To tie it all together, Chris Evans is really growing on me. He started out as the pretty boy actor, but has really appealed to me in some wacky roles. He was easily the best part of the Losers, and he really showed his acting chops in Sunshine (a movie criminally under-appreciated by the mainstream). He was hilarious in Scott Pilgrim, and I'll be interested in what he does as Captain America.

I already have super-low expectations for the Avengers movie and so far it sounds like it may just very well suck, without so much as seeing a trailer for it. The producers just don't seem to give a rat's ass about character continuity and think re-casting is a good thing at every opportunity. Chris Evans may be fantastic in it (no pun intended), but now we're supposed to believe he's both Captain America *and* the Human Torch.

I'm almost tired of mainstream comic adaptations. If it wasn't for the new Batman franchise, I would have given up on them a long while back. Honorable mention to Iron Man as the best Marvel-based movie - but it still doesn't touch the tippy-toes of Batman.

I'll probably see Scott Pilgrim once it's out on DVD/BR. That's how I usually consume my Michael Cera movies.

I meant to edit this onto the previous post. The Losers was a bad movie because of a crap screenplay/story. It's either the fault of the screen writer, the original comic series or both. The story sucked, the characters were underdeveloped and not at all believable. Direction was a strong point in that movie.

Just saw Scott Pilgrim last night. Easily my favorite movie that I've seen in the last year or so, with Kickass and Zombieland coming very close seconds.

I seem to recall reading a review that complained about how Scott wasn't given any motivation for falling in love with Ramona. That turns out to be what I found best about the film: The motivation for his love for her was all in the acting and the direction, which was superb. Here's why I think it was so great:

Every character in the movie, even Scott himself, was, in a very subtle way, some sort of twisted caricature that seemed ever so slightly "off" of normal human behavior. Nothing you could put your finger on exactly, but you got the feeling that everyone was looking at life as if they were watching a TV show. No one was grounded in reality, everyone was slightly odd, everyone seemed just a little bit lost. But whenever Ramona was on screen, that's what struck you: her "real-ness" was so striking in contrast to everyone else. She felt solid and grounded. Even when she was indecisive, you felt like she knew what she was doing. Like you could follow her wherever she was going and end up in the right place, even if she didn't know where she was headed when she started the journey. This was obvious not just from her dialogue, but from her eyes and her expressions. Even when she wasn't saying anything, she *looked* focused and sure of herself. And each time she left Scott behind, you could feel that same desire to follow her.

In general, I thought the jokes and gags were hilarious, too many to list here. And the action scenes were appropriately over-the-top.

Excellent! I'm glad to hear you liked it.

I don't know if I subscribe to your theory, but I like it.

The book, frankly, didn't give him much more of a reason to fall in love with her either, but it all played correctly to me somehow.

I've read some snarky bad reviews of the movie, so I liked reading this one. I'm not a huge fan of the person's writing in the entry, but it calls out some critics pretty well.

Heh, she makes good points. Those criticizing the movie for being "fan service"... um... isn't that what they're supposed to do in Hollywood, give the fans what they want? I know it's what I wanted, and I loved it.