This week's fighters:
The Extra Man (2010)
vs.
Colin Fitz Lives! (2010
vs.
Hot Tub Time Machine (2010)
vs.
Scott Pilgrim vs. The World (2010)
vs.
Colin Fitz Lives! (2010
vs.
Hot Tub Time Machine (2010)
vs.
Scott Pilgrim vs. The World (2010)
The Extra Man swings out the gate with the immediate advantage of one of Kevin Kline's best performances. Unfortunately, Kline doesn't provide the legs to keep the film at the forefront for long. And holy bajeezus, Paul Dano does everything he can to stop the movie dead. The guy's been great in a few good films, but between this and Gigantic, I'm really starting to not like him very much. From the directors of American Splendor, Dano plays a shy and quiet aspiring writer new to New York City. He finds an unlikely roommate in Kevin Kline's mysterious playboy. Kline takes Dano on as a protege. The film is fun and a touch moving when it keeps to this main plot. A side story of Dano's interactions with hot co-worker Katie Holmes feels like it's from a different, crappier movie, and it occupies too much time without really going anywhere. But Kevin Kline, I must say again, is at his manic, hilarious best. Will the competition be weak enough for Kline to sail this flawed ship all the way to the end?
Based on Colin Fitz Lives! alone, Kevin Kline won't break a sweat. Fitz supposedly made a pretty significant splash at Sundance in 1997. The director, Robert Bella, went into debt making the film, and no distribution company offered enough money for him to pay it off. 13 years later, he's paid off his debt and IFC has swooped in to finally release the film VOD, where it will at least get an eventual DVD release. Here's all you really need to know about the film. It's a Clerks knockoff. It's two mismatched buddies, working a nightmare shift at a shitty, dead end job. I don't really like Clerks... Fitz has a semi mockumentary angle that shows up periodically, and this part is actually pretty funny. William H. Macy shows up briefly for an enjoyable performance, and then is wasted. The rest is all very derivative, '90s indie comedy crap. Maybe 13 years ago this was a hilarious movie. It's a shame that there probably isn't much of an audience for this kind of humor anymore.
The Extra Man almost finds a competitor in Hot Tub Time Machine, a sad case of wasted title that still includes many hilarious bits, before its conclusion kills the whole thing. 3 best friends and one dude's nephew are transported back 20-something years to a weekend the 3 shared partying at a ski lodge. It's pretty typical second chance, wish fulfillment stuff. Rob Corddry steals the show as the asshole fuck-up. John Cusack gets to hog the screen time with an annoying kill-joy that gets to hang out with an epically wasted Lizzy Caplan. Craig Robinson continues to able to sell almost any line he delivers. Clark Duke doesn't get anything to do besides make witty comments in the background. I know this isn't much of an endorsement so far, but the film throws up a thousand jokes per minute, and a large enough percentage of them land for the film to be worth a watch.
Sorry Kevin, I'm sure you weren't counting on a ringer like Scott Pilgrim vs. The World to show up today. Edgar Wright adapts Bryan Lee O'Malley's fantastic comic to great success. I feel like my writing from the past few weeks reads a bit hyperbolic, but I really have been watching things I've never experienced before, and Scott Pilgrim is another one. Wright uses so many visual techniques and ideas to create the video game obsessed and music-inspired world that these characters inhabit. He also crams six books into two hours in a mostly seamless way. The film never stops moving, or even slows down, but it also doesn't ever feel rushed. The large cast of supporting characters is uniformly fantastic, with Chris Evans and Kieran Culkin as a couple highlights. Unfortunately the two characters who lose the most in translation are Scott Pilgrim, himself, and love interest Ramona Flowers. Michael Cera and Mary Elizabeth Winstead, respectively, are great, but we lose a lot of the time, and thus a lot of the nuance to their relationship. That's one of the only problems I had with this hilarious and heartfelt film. Definitely one of my favorites of the year.
And so Scott Pilgrim wins in a rude landslide. Here's the battle's final results:
Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: 1st place with an 8.9/10
The Extra Man: 2nd place with a 6.6/10
Hot Tub Time Machine: 3rd place with a 6.1/10
Colin Fitz Lives!: 4th place with a 4.8/10
Honorary award:
Sadly, Road to Morocco was just too old to compete in today's Battle. Although a great, timeless comedy, it didn't really fit in with the competition. It's timeless, but definitely of a different time. It's sometimes hard to even create an evolutionary thread of comedy from the joyful bickering between Bob Hope and Bing Crosby to the gross out humor of something like Hot Tub Time Machine. If it were in it's prime though, it would have landed in a solid second place slot with a 7.8/10.
Tomorrow we have a horror/thriller battle planned with another set of widely varied films within the genres. Tentatively.
Based on Colin Fitz Lives! alone, Kevin Kline won't break a sweat. Fitz supposedly made a pretty significant splash at Sundance in 1997. The director, Robert Bella, went into debt making the film, and no distribution company offered enough money for him to pay it off. 13 years later, he's paid off his debt and IFC has swooped in to finally release the film VOD, where it will at least get an eventual DVD release. Here's all you really need to know about the film. It's a Clerks knockoff. It's two mismatched buddies, working a nightmare shift at a shitty, dead end job. I don't really like Clerks... Fitz has a semi mockumentary angle that shows up periodically, and this part is actually pretty funny. William H. Macy shows up briefly for an enjoyable performance, and then is wasted. The rest is all very derivative, '90s indie comedy crap. Maybe 13 years ago this was a hilarious movie. It's a shame that there probably isn't much of an audience for this kind of humor anymore.
The Extra Man almost finds a competitor in Hot Tub Time Machine, a sad case of wasted title that still includes many hilarious bits, before its conclusion kills the whole thing. 3 best friends and one dude's nephew are transported back 20-something years to a weekend the 3 shared partying at a ski lodge. It's pretty typical second chance, wish fulfillment stuff. Rob Corddry steals the show as the asshole fuck-up. John Cusack gets to hog the screen time with an annoying kill-joy that gets to hang out with an epically wasted Lizzy Caplan. Craig Robinson continues to able to sell almost any line he delivers. Clark Duke doesn't get anything to do besides make witty comments in the background. I know this isn't much of an endorsement so far, but the film throws up a thousand jokes per minute, and a large enough percentage of them land for the film to be worth a watch.
Sorry Kevin, I'm sure you weren't counting on a ringer like Scott Pilgrim vs. The World to show up today. Edgar Wright adapts Bryan Lee O'Malley's fantastic comic to great success. I feel like my writing from the past few weeks reads a bit hyperbolic, but I really have been watching things I've never experienced before, and Scott Pilgrim is another one. Wright uses so many visual techniques and ideas to create the video game obsessed and music-inspired world that these characters inhabit. He also crams six books into two hours in a mostly seamless way. The film never stops moving, or even slows down, but it also doesn't ever feel rushed. The large cast of supporting characters is uniformly fantastic, with Chris Evans and Kieran Culkin as a couple highlights. Unfortunately the two characters who lose the most in translation are Scott Pilgrim, himself, and love interest Ramona Flowers. Michael Cera and Mary Elizabeth Winstead, respectively, are great, but we lose a lot of the time, and thus a lot of the nuance to their relationship. That's one of the only problems I had with this hilarious and heartfelt film. Definitely one of my favorites of the year.
And so Scott Pilgrim wins in a rude landslide. Here's the battle's final results:
Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: 1st place with an 8.9/10
The Extra Man: 2nd place with a 6.6/10
Hot Tub Time Machine: 3rd place with a 6.1/10
Colin Fitz Lives!: 4th place with a 4.8/10
Honorary award:
Sadly, Road to Morocco was just too old to compete in today's Battle. Although a great, timeless comedy, it didn't really fit in with the competition. It's timeless, but definitely of a different time. It's sometimes hard to even create an evolutionary thread of comedy from the joyful bickering between Bob Hope and Bing Crosby to the gross out humor of something like Hot Tub Time Machine. If it were in it's prime though, it would have landed in a solid second place slot with a 7.8/10.
Tomorrow we have a horror/thriller battle planned with another set of widely varied films within the genres. Tentatively.
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