by admin on August 23, 2010
By Jamie Wynen
The most coherent thought that comes to mind about this film is ‘too wierd to live, too rare to die.’ Based on a comic book series, the apathetic garage rocker Scott Pilgrim (Michael Cera) falls helplessly in love with Ramona Flowers, but discovers that he has to defeat her seven evil exes to win her over.
It blends underground cool with nostalgic retro – making unobtrusive use of Zelda’s sound-bites in an almost Pavlovian effect during the opening scene and character-statistic intros. Comic book graphic style also permeates the film, with ringing telephones and guitar chords appearing in intense visual form.
It’s an unusually physical role for Cera, who becomes improbably dynamic as an ass-kicking action hero. Indeed, one of the most gratifying moments of the film is seeing Cera unexpectedly perform a spectacular Shouryuken straight out of Street Fighter. Yet the film pokes fun at itself and its characters with an incisive, offbeat wittiness.
From the grunge-rock intro credits to the classic boss-battles, this story cheerfully exploits every Gen-Y meme while smashing the associated clichés into showers of coins. Entertaining, surprising and utterly unique, Scott Pilgrim’s logline ‘an epic of epic epicness’ is well earned.
4 STARS
by admin on August 5, 2010
By Howard Shih
Splice is the latest freak-of-nature sci-fi horror from director and co-writer Vincenzo Natali (the brains behind the innovative Cube) and executive producer Guillermo del Toro (who brought us the fabulous Pan’s Labyrinth and Hellboy). The track record of such films has not always been great, but if anyone could pull it off, it’s these two guys.
The verdict? I think they came remarkably close.
Hip scientist couple Clive and Elsa (played by a pre-buffed, pre-Predators Adrien Brody and a matured Sarah Polley) have become rock stars in the scientific community for their revolutionary breakthroughs in splicing animal DNA to create mutant hybrids for the treatment of human diseases. Naturally, the next step is to splice animal with human DNA, but when their financiers refuse, Clive and Elsa take their experiments underground.
As usual, the less we know about the intricacies of the plot the better, but it’s not difficult to imagine the trajectory of this film. That said, Splice is still a genuinely creepy, unsettling and confronting (not to mention at times utterly bizarre) film fuelled by strong performances from the two leads, as well as newcomer Delphine Chaneac as ‘Dren’, their unnatural creation.
Of course, it’s far from perfect. There are a couple of over-the-top moments likely to generate more laughter than gasps. It was also difficult to sympathise with the unlikable and supposedly intelligent protagonists who keep acting recklessly. But these are relatively minor complaints because it’s not like Splice was pretending to be anything more than a straight up horror/psychological thriller. Thankfully, the moral aspect of genetic engineering is no more than a subtext in the movie or else it would have totally ruined it.
Splice is certainly no masterpiece, but for this type of film, we shouldn’t ask for too much more.
3.5 stars
