jürgen fauth’s muckworld

More amusing silliness from the guys who made Shaun of the Dead. After demolishing the zombie film, Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg, and Nick Frost are taking aim at the Jerry Bruckheimer action flick, and they’ve set it in the picture-postcard English countryside. Bobbies with firearms–what’s not to like?

Simon Pegg plays Sgt. Nicholas Angel, a London supercop who is sent off to the provinces because he’s making everybody else on his team look bad. In sleepy Sandford, the only available heroics consist of chasing underage kids out of the pub and catching runaway swans. Angel’s new partner PC Danny Butterman (Nick Frost) is an action-movie fanatic whose dearest wish is to fire a gun while jumping through the air in slow motion. But ah, evil lurks in Sandford, and Danny might get his wish after all….

It takes a while for Hot Fuzz to ramp up the action, but in the meantime, the spectacular supporting cast keeps things very entertaining: Jim Broadbent, Timothy Dalton, Paddy Considine, Bill Nighy, and a slew of other familiar faces populate the town with characters that range from oddly endearing to cheerfully creepy. My patented scientific method for objectively judging comedy reveals a favorable chuckle-to-groan ratio, one dozen solid out-and-out laughs, four roll-out-of-your-seat moments of uncontrollable hilarity, and a steady state of hearty bemusement. For a 120 minute film, that’s not bad at all. Hot Fuzz opens on April 20th.

Hot Fuzz. Edgar Wright, 2007. ***

• The trailer

Most of the recent computer-animated movies feel like endless remakes of Toy Story. This one, about the adventures of a bunch of mice in the London sewers, is produced by Aardman of Wallace & Gromit, and it’s more inventive and, for my money, funnier than your regular Pixar flick. We’ve all come to expect the winking references that are supposed to fly over the kids’ heads (like the cockroach reading Kafka) — but Flushed Away also has visual quotes from Akira. Voices by Hugh Jackman, Kate Winslet, Ian McKellen, Bill Nighy, and Jean Reno as “Le Frog.” Fun.

Flushed Away. David Bowers and Sam Fell, 2006. ***

• 75% on Rotten Tomatoes

Drama about a teacher in a frustrated marriage (Cate Blanchett) who begins an affair with a 15-year-old student, and the bitter old spinster (Judi Dench) who develops an unhealthy crush on her. It’s all told in the voice of Dench’s journal entries, which provide a cynical counterpoint to the slightly pathetic front she puts on. But whoever wrote this thing (Patrick Marber, based on a novel by Zoe Heller) takes Dench’s character much too far into the schlocky B-movie territory of Fatal Attraction or any number of insane-babysitter movies. We’re left with a very well-acted popcorn flick, ripped, I’m sure, from some headline or other. Opens December 27.

Notes on a Scandal. Richard Eyre, 2006. **

[tags]2 stars, film, drama, england, judi dench, cate blanchett, bill nighy, teachers, kids, affairs, obsession, richard eyre, zoe heller[/tags]

Liked this much better than the previous two by Zhang Yimou, Hero and House of Flying Daggers. Perhaps seeing it on the huge screen at Alice Tully Hall helped. This was the New York premiere with Gong Li and Zhang Yimou in attendance. They said a few words via an interpreter who botched Gong Li’s comments but it didn’t matter–we just wanted to gawk at her looking tall and beautiful in an amazing dress. I’d seen her once before, in Cannes, but I was much closer this time, and she looked almost superhuman. (Other celeb sightings that night: Glenn Close, Bill Nighy, Julianne Moore.) Where was I? Oh right, the movie. Like its predecessors, Curse of the Golden Flower is absolutely gorgeous–lavish rainbow-colored interiors, massive tableaux of clashing armies, ninjas descending into a valley from a hundred ropes, etc etc. But for the first time with Mr. Zhang’s wuxia pictures, the melodramatic story appealed to me, too. Opens December 22. We have a photo gallery over at About.com.

Man cheng jin dai huang jin jia. Yimou Zhang, 2006. ***

[tags]zhang yimou, gong li, 3 stars, china, historical, wuxia, film, chow yun-fat, lincoln center, glenn close, bill nighy, juliette moore[/tags]

How did we end up seeing this movie about a teenage secret agent saving the world from Mickey Rourke? It’s a long story, but it’s my blog, so I might as well tell it. It involves a severely sprained ankle, ridiculously oversold showings of The Departed at both 34th and 42nd Streets, and time to kill before the NYFF closing night party. All in all, we claimed three sets of free tickets before I simply couldn’t walk any further.

Turns out Stormbreaker was no dumber than a regular James Bond movie, and the cast–Ewan McGregor, Bill Nighy, Alicia Silverstone, Rourke–was obviously having a splendid time. And to think that I’d never even heard of it before my ankle gave out!

Stormbreaker. Geoffrey Sax, 2006. **

[tags]film, 2 stars, james bond, alicia silverstone, mickey rourke, bill nighy, ewan mcgregor, explosions, action, teenagers[/tags]