Impossible Missions 5 and 6!!!

Mission: Impossible -  Fallout (2018): based on the series created by Bruce Geller; written and directed by Christopher McQuarrie; starring Tom Cruise (Ethan Hunt), Henry Cavill (Walker), Ving Rhames (Luther), Simon Pegg (Benji), Rebecca Ferguson (Ilsa Faust), Sean Harris (Solomon Lane), Angela Bassett (CIA Director Sloan), Vanessa Kirby (White Widow), and Alec Baldwin (Hunley): 

Enjoyable sixth installment in the Tom Cruise action series once again features a lot of action sequences that seem to involve some actual real-world stunt work. And Tom Cruise running!

Tom Cruise's personal writer-director Christopher (The Usual Suspects screenwriter) McQuarrie writes and directs this installment as he did the last. He's very good -- the action sequences and chase scenes are choreographed so that one can actually follow what's going on! And there's not too much quick editing during fight scenes! A three-person battle in a Kubrickian White washroom is especially fun and brutal. A skydiving sequence and a final battle in, around, under, and over helicopters are also really nice pieces of action film-making.

Fallout follows Rogue Nation (see below) in using one villain and one heroine from that film, along with returning players Ving Rhames and Simon Pegg as Tom Cruise's trusted tech support team. Jeremy Renner was apparently off filming the next Avengers movie. Thankfully, Rebecca Ferguson returns from Rogue Nation as the hyper-competent British Intelligence agent who's Cruise's equal in motorcycle riding and fisticuffs. 

This Mission: Impossible is self-deprecating and light on its feet, with a recurring jocularity that's reminiscent of the Original Series Star Trek movies. A character even gets the McCoy shout-out line, "I'm a doctor not an electrician!"

The plot is pretty much the plot of every M:I movie. Evil terrorists want to nuke something. The Impossible Mission Force has been at least partially discredited (apparently the IMF is kinda sorta a CIA Joint). A certain amount of fun is had at the IMF's use of astonishingly effective masks since the days of the 1960's TV series ("The IMF is Hallowe'en" scoffs one character). 

Henry Cavill and his mighty facial hair are also on-board as a CIA assassin assigned to monitor the actions of the IMF and bring an end to their shenanigans if need be. Cavill is much better as an occasionally threatening jerk than he is as Superman. Go figure.

Critics seem to be so tired this summer of super-heroes that Fallout has been getting reviews that are perhaps a bit too gushing. But it's an enjoyable ride, and certainly better than the last James Bond movie. Cruise is starting to show his age in his face, though. Just saying. Recommended.

Mission: Impossible -  Rogue Nation (2015): based on the series created by Bruce Geller; written and directed by Christopher McQuarrie with Drew Pearce; starring Tom Cruise (Ethan Hunt), Jeremy Renner (Brandt), Ving Rhames (Luther), Simon Pegg (Benji), Rebecca Ferguson (Ilsa Faust), Sean Harris (Solomon Lane), and Alec Baldwin (Hunley): Fifth Mission: Impossible movie is solid, stream-lined entertainment. Adding Rebecca Ferguson to the recurring cast as a British Intelligence operative pays off big -- she's super, and a lot more interesting than the last dozen or so Bond girls, that's for sure.

Once again, Cruise's Ethan Hunt has been discredited and the IMF disbanded. It feels like this happens in every Mission: Impossible movie. I hope everyone still gets their pensions. Anyway, it's up to Cruise, tech-support Simon Pegg and Arby's spokeman Ving Rhames to save the day, perhaps with the help of Jeremy Renner, perhaps not. I think Jeremy Renner's character is the IMF's office manager but I'm not entirely sure. HR?

There are good action sequences here, along with one that becomes stupefyingly goofy by its end (it involves yet another insane computer room brought to you by the designers of the deathtrap engines in Galaxy Quest). A climactic chase around London, England is a bit too low-key for this franchise. The opening sequence involving Tom Cruise and a plane is terrific, though, as is an insane motorbike chase. Tom Cruise does some running too! Recommended.

A Giant Squid, Simon Pegg, A Dragon, And A Poltergeist Walk Into The Bar

20 000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954): adapted from the Jules Verne novel by Earl Felton; directed by Richard Fleischer; starring James Mason (Captain Nemo), Kirk Douglas (Ned Land), Paul Lukas (Professor Aronnax), and Peter Lorre (Conseil) : Jesus Christ but does Kirk Douglas ever get out-acted by a trained seal in this movie. Douglas is both terrible and miscast as harpooner Ned Land, a character one wishes would just die. He's the angry, stupid American. James Mason, Paul Lukas, and Peter Lorre seem to be acting in a different movie.

The biggest-budget, live-action Walt Disney film to hit the screen in the 1950's (and for at least a decade afterwards), 20 000 Leagues Under the Sea remains involving despite its occasionally torpid pace and that godawful performance by Kirk Douglas. The design of Nemo's Victorian-era super-submarine, the Nautilus, is superb and steampunky. James Mason as Nemo, Paul Lukas as Professor Aronax, and Peter Lorre as Conseil are all solid in their roles. And the squid fight still works, with the mechanical effects making the squid seem as unearthly as the tornado in The Wizard of Oz.

Made now, 20 000 Leagues Under the Sea would play Nemo as even more of a hero -- he's attacking the slave trade, after all, having been enslaved himself in some South Seas mining colony. Of course, Nemo was a native of India in the original novel. James Mason, not so much. The often languid pace can get a bit wearing at times, as does Kirk Douglas, but 20 000 Leagues Under the Sea still works for the most part. Recommended.

How To Train Your Dragon 2 (2014): based on the books by Cressida Cowell; written and directed by Dean DeBlois; starring the voices of Jay Baruchel (Hiccup), Cate Blanchett (Valka), Gerard Butler (Stoick), Craig Ferguson (Gobber), America Ferrara (Astrid), Jonah Hill (Notlout), and Djimon Honsou (Drago) : How To Train Your Dragon was a lot of fun. So too this sequel, though its frenetic pace and much longer action sequences make it a far less charming movie than the original. Still worth watching, though, for the animation, voice acting, and story. The designs of the seemingly endless number of different dragon species remain a highlight. Recommended.

Run Fatboy Run (2007): written by Michael Ian Black and Simon Pegg; directed by David Schwimmer; starring Simon Pegg (Dennis), Thandie Newton (Libby), Hank Azaria (Whit), Dylan Moran (Gordon), and Harish Patel (Mr. Goshdashtidar) : Fun, amiable comedy takes full advantage of the good will Simon Pegg generates when playing hapless heroes. Hank Azaria seems like an odd choice as the handsome boyfriend, but he does a good job. Thandie Newton is lovely but stuck with being a straight woman to pretty much everyone else in the movie. Recommended. 

Poltergeist (2015): adapted by David Lindsay-Apaire from the 1982 movie written by Steven Spielberg, Michael Grais, and Mark Victor; directed by Gil Kenan; starring Sam Rockwell (Eric Bowen), Rosemarie DeWitt (Amy Bowen), Saxon Sharbino (Kendra Bowen), Kyle Catlett (Griffin Bowen), Kennedi Clements (Madison Bowen), Jared Harris (Carrigan Burke), and Jane Adams (Dr. Brooke Powell): It's probably a much better-acted film than the original, this Poltergeist remake. Sam Rockwell certainly does everything he can with his role, which actually seems to be modeled on the father in The Amityville Horror rather than Poltergeist (1982): financial woes occupy him.

The kids are much more front and centre here. The scares are pretty light. Perhaps most notably, the Tree and Clown scenes have been completely bungled. It also doesn't help that the gateway to the Underworld looks and acts like a Stargate, or that occult investigator Jared Harris is dressed like a leprechaun. It's a diversion, but just barely. Lightly recommended. 

Men in Flight

The Game: written by John Brancato and Michael Ferris; directed by David Fincher; starring Michael Douglas (Nicholas Van Orton), Sean Penn (Conrad Van Orton), Deborah Kara Unger (Christine), James Rebhorn (Jim Feingold), Peter Donat (Samuel Sutherland), and Carroll Baker (Ilsa) (1997): A twisty and enjoyable 'What's reality?' plot derails towards the end for reasons I'll leave to you to discover. Still, it's fun getting there in what was director David Fincher's third feature film (after Alien 3 and Se7en). Michael Douglas is suitably flustered, though the character's anti-social tendencies and rigidity needed more development at the beginning to make the the ending work the way it seems to have been intended to work. This initial softening of the character helps make an improbable ending almost intolerable. Lightly recommended.

Hector and the Search for Happiness: adapted from the Francois Lelord novel by Maria von Heland, Peter Chelsom, and Tinker Lindsay; directed by Peter Chelsom; starring Simon Pegg (Hector), Rosamund Pike (Clara), Jean Reno (Diego Baresco), Ming Zhao (Ying Li), Christopher Plummer (Professor Coreman), Stellan Skarsgard (Edward), and Toni Collette (Agnes) (2014): Well, the whole thing is a bit gooey. Or perhaps mushy. But Simon Pegg is Simon Pegg, and much of the writing in this picaresque film is light enough to keep things from bogging down in First-World Problems. 

The cast is first-rate throughout, though Pegg's character is somewhat unbelievable as a psychiatrist: just imagine he's the comic-book-shop employee/comic-book illustrator he played on Spaced and the whole movie makes way more sense. Funded by what seems to be about nineteen different countries, supplied with an international cast, and seemingly only released to about three theatres, the film almost seems to have been some sort of tax shelter scam. Oh, well. Recommended.

Unstoppable: written by Mark Bomback; directed by Tony Scott; starring Denzel Washington (Frank), Chris Pine (Will), Rosario Dawson (Connie), Ethan Suplee (Dewey), Kevin Dunn (Galvin), Kevin Corrigan (Werner), Kevin Chapman (Bunny), and T.J. Miller (Gilleece) (2010): Denzel Washington and the new Captain Kirk strive to stop a runaway train from blowing up half of Pennsylvania. This film was indeed inspired by real-life events which are crazy enough -- both reality and film involve a train on the same tracks chasing down the crewless runaway. The movie pumps things up with helicopters, explosions, and domestic drama for Captain Nu-Kirk.

Still, the late Tony Scott was in his wheelhouse for this action/chase movie. He keeps things tight and tense, brings the movie in under 100 minutes, and supplies the viewer with enough train technobabble and real-world stunts to make the whole thing an engaging, old-school diversion. One could imagine this movie being made almost verbatim in the 1950's, albeit with Humphrey Bogart in the Denzel Washington role and John Derek in Chris Pine's position. The supporting cast is surprisingly deep and well-served by the movie, with Rosario Dawson as a female lead who isn't required to fall in love with either of the male leads. I guess that's progress. Recommended.

Captains of Action!

Mr. Baseball: written by Monte Merrick, Kevin Wade, Gary Ross, John Junkerman, and Theo Pelletier; directed by Fred Schepisi; starring Tom Selleck (Jack Elliot), Ken Takakura (Uchiyama), Aya Takanashi (Hiroko), and Dennis Haysbert (Max) (1992): So-so Fish Out of Water Learns From Others As They Learn Also From Him comedy-drama. The laughs mostly come in the second half. Tom Selleck goes topless for about half the movie and looks pretty good for a guy in his late 40's. Lightly recommended.

The Equalizer: adapted by Richard Wenk from the TV series created by Michael Sloan and Richard Lindhelm; directed by Antoine Fuqua; starring Denzel Washington (Robert McCall), Marton Csokas (Teddy), Chloe Grace Moretz (Teri), and Johnny Skourtis (Ralphie) (2014): A revenge action-thriller lifted by the moody direction of pulp-auteur Antoine Fuqua (whose Training Day nabbed Denzel Washington a Best Actor Oscar), Washington's quirky, OCD-tinged performance as a hardware-store employee with more specialized skills than ten Liam Neesons, and a very solid supporting cast in both sympathetic and antagonistic roles.

It doesn't really resemble the 1980's TV show (and Washington doesn't resemble in any way Edward Woodward's slightly foppish original Equalizer) until the very end, when it comes into full focus as an origin story. It's the sort of relatively low-budget, low-CGI action movie that now seems refreshingly old school in an age of superhero slug-fests. Bonus points for using The Old Man and the Sea and Don Quixote in a respectful and surprisingly relevant manner, especially the former. Recommended.

Hot Fuzz: written by Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright; directed by Edgar Wright; starring Simon Pegg (Nicholas Angel), Nick Frost (PC Danny Butterman), Timothy Dalton (Simon Skinner), Olivia Colman (PC Doris Thatcher), Jim Broadbent (Inspector Frank Butterman), Edward Woodward (Tom Weaver), and Paul Freeman (Rev. Philip Shooter) (2007): Really, pretty much on my top-ten of all-time action comedies, and closer to the top of that list than the bottom. Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright riff on everything from Chinatown to Midsomer Murders to Point Break to Bad Boys II to Harry Potter to The Wicker Man and many, many others in this tale of a big-city cop (Pegg) shipped off to a seemingly idyllic small town because he's so good at his job that he's making all the other cops in London look bad.

Nick Frost plays Pegg's buddy here as he does so often, equipped with some ridiculous malaprops along the way. The lengthy, town-ranging battle that rages at the end sends up an almost infinite number of movies and TV shows while simultaneously being both thrilling and hilarious. The second movie in Pegg&Wright's Cornetto Trilogy (following Shaun of the Dead and followed by The World's End) , movies which use many of the same actors in different roles while nonetheless featuring the ice-cream treat Cornetto at some point in each. Flash Fact: In Canada, we'd call a Cornetto a Drumstick. Highly recommended.

Wrecking and Wrecking and Wrecked

Wreck-it Ralph: written by Rich Moore, Phil Johnston, Jim Reardon, Jennifer Lee, Sam Levine, Jared Stern, and John C. Reilly; directed by Rich Moore; starring the voices of John C. Reilly (Ralph), Sarah Silverman (Vanellope), Jack McBrayer (Felix), Jane Lynch (Calhoun), and Alan Tudyk (King Candy) (2012): Jolly video-game-based fable about a hero who Learns Better. Ralph is the Donkey-Kong-like villain of a still-popular 1980's arcade game called Fix-it Felix. In the world of the movie, the characters in video games have regular lives when the games are over and the arcade is silent. They can even leave their games to visit one another in a central city that appears to exist in the electrical cables of the arcade.

Ralph is bored of being the villain for the last 30 years. Moreover, he's tired of being ostracized by his fellow characters. He may be a bad guy while someone is playing the game, but otherwise he's just a regular fella, the lonely Marty of the eight-bit world. So he decides to try to get a hero's medal. And things start to go awry.

Sharply written and closely observed when it comes to video games, Wreck-it Ralph is a really enjoyable piece of entertainment. The animators made their characters at least vaguely resemble their voice actors in many cases. Ralph, a hang-dog John C. Reilly, is perfectly acted and animated. Vanellope, voiced by Sarah Silverman, is equally enjoyable. Alan Tudyk does his best Ed Wynn as King Candy, and Jane Lynch and Jack MacBrayer do solid back-up work as a hard-case space marine and Fix-it Felix, respectively. My attention didn't flag. Recommended.

A Muppet Christmas Carol: adapted by Jerry Juhl from the novella by Charles Dickens; directed by Brian Henson; starring Michael Caine as Scrooge and the voices of Dave Goetz, Steve Whitmire, Jerry Nelson, and Frank Oz (1992): The first Muppet movie after the death of Jim Henson, with Steve Whitmire taking over the role of Kermit and other characters Henson voiced. And it's really a nice piece of work, with a remarkably sophisticated frame story in which Gonzo plays Charles Dickens as a narrator taking us through the events of Ebenezer Scrooge's fateful night. Michael Caine is solid as Scrooge, though the rest of the human supporting cast is a bit bland. The Muppets are in fine form, though. Recommended.

How to Lose Friends & Alienate People: adapted from the book by Toby Young by Peter Straughan; directed by Robert B. Weide; starring Simon Pegg (Sidney Young), Megan Fox (Sophie Maes), Gillian Anderson (Eleanor Johnson), Jeff Bridges (Clayton Harding), Kirsten Dunst (Alison Olsen), and Danny Huston (Lawrence Maddox) (2008): A fictionalization of Toby Young's memoir of working at Vanity Fair, How to Lose Friends & Alienate People wastes a metric shite-tonne of good actors with a bland, cliche-ridden script. It's not a terrible movie. It's just a boring one, with not one scene that rings with anything resembling verisimilitude. 

Apparently, Toby Young was banned from the set because he kept making suggestions. Given what a bollocks the writer and director made of this production, my sympathies are with Toby Young. A book that criticizes selling out, sells out to a bland Hollywood ideal. Megan Fox, as a scheming, ditzy starlet, steals the movie. Pegg looks lost as a Romantic Lead with no good lines. Jeff Bridges just seems miscast as a fictionalized version of Graydon Carter. Not recommended.

Rise and Fall

The World's End: written by Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg; directed by Edgar Wright; starring Simon Pegg (Gary King), Nick Frost (Andy Knightley), Martin Freeman (Oliver Chamberlain), Paddy Considine (Steven Prince), Eddie Marsan (Peter Page), Pierce Brosnan (Guy Shephard), and Rosamund Pike (Sam Chamberlain) (2013): Even more fun upon a second viewing. The movie gleefully subverts cliches from dozens of science-fiction sources while nonetheless making more sense than most 'serious' summer movies.

As with previous films Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz from stars Pegg and Frost and director Wright, The World's End strikes a fine balance between dialogue comedy and often uproarious slapstick. And as goofy as the fight scenes are, they're still better choreographed than those in the vast majority of action movies. The soundtrack offers a time capsule of late 1980's/early 1990's BritPop, with an appropriate Doors song (appropriate to a pub crawl, that is) thrown in for good measure.

There's a certain amount of seriousness floating around just beneath the surface, especially concerning addiction and free will, but the filmmakers wisely don't bash the viewer over the head with it: they know when to jump back to comedy. Highly recommended.

The Steve Ditko Archives Volume 3: Mysterious Traveler: edited and introduced by Blake Bell; written by Joe Gill, Steve Ditko and others; illustrated by Steve Ditko (1957; collected 2013): The great Steve Ditko, co-creator of Spider-man and Dr. Strange in the early 1960's, can be seen herein becoming a great comic-book artist less than a decade into his illustrious career. The character work, panel composition, and experimentation with layout are those of a mature artist approaching the peak of his powers.

The weirdness of Ditko is that all this rising greatness comes on short horror and science-fiction stories for the lowest of the low of 1950's comic-book publishers, Charlton Comics. Charlton paid the least of the major publishers. However, they also didn't care what appeared in their comics, just so long as it passed the scrutiny of the new Comics Code Authority and then made a profit on the newsstands. That freedom set Ditko free, and he knew it -- that's why he worked for Charlton. He was doing a graduate course in comic-book illustration. And creative freedom has always been one of Ditko's needs.

Most of the stories here are competently written, though there are some stinkers. But Charlton's desire for 5-page and 6-page stories so as to give them flexibility in assembling comic books also means that even the worst story ends quickly. And you've got Ditko to watch. Many of the stylistic choices that would make Spider-man, Dr. Strange and many other later Ditko work so appealing and idiosyncratic find their first expression here.

The character work, especially with faces and with body poses, is already exquisitie and quintessentially Ditko. While Ditko was a poet of the ordinary-looking, he was also a master of the weird, and that too finds expression here. And as usual, editor Blake Bell does a fine job in assembling the material and in penning the autobiographical introduction to the volume. Highly recommended.

Allegorical Alien Alcoholics

The World's End: written by Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg; directed by Edgar Wright; starring Simon Pegg (Gary King), Nick Frost (Andy Knightley), Martin Freeman (Oliver Chamberlain), Paddy Considine (Steven Prince), Eddie Marsan (Peter Page), Pierce Brosnan (Guy Shephard), and Rosamund Pike (Sam Chamberlain) (2013): The third film in the Cornetto Trilogy (so named for the British ice-cream treat that appears in Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, and this film) is a lot of serious fun.

40-year-old alcoholic Gary King's greatest life moment was the night in June 1990 when he and his four best friends attempted the Golden Mile, a 12-pub pub crawl in their quaint English home town. Now, 23 years later, Gary wants to get the band back together so as to actually finish the crawl, which ended at pub 9. But he's a genuine toxic screw-up whose friends haven't talked to him in years. And he lives entirely in the past, still listening to the music and wearing the clothes of 1990. He's frozen in time, a Goth time traveller still decked out in dyed-black hair and a Sisters of Mercy t-shirt.

But primarily through skullduggery and guilt-tripping, he gets the crawl going. And then things go bad. Science fictiony bad. And it ends up looking like the fate of the Earth will rest on Gary's drunken shoulders, and the shoulders of his friends. All this in a small town whose main claim to fame, as a giant road sign tells us, is that it's the site of England's first roundabout (in 1909!).

The science fiction in The World's End holds up better here, in a comedy, than it does in pretty much all the 'serious' releases of the summer. It's a droll homage to science fiction British (Village of the Damned, Quatermass, and any number of Doctor Who episodes) and American (most pointedly the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers, but also The Day the Earth Stood Still, classic and remake). And the movie, while making something of a serious point about addiction and man-children, doesn't necessarily suggest any personal growth by the end of the picture. Or the hope of it.

As in other projects from Pegg, Edgar Wright, and Nick Frost, The World's End teems with pop-culture riffs and references, though here they're as much to the music of 1990 as they are to science fiction and comic books. It's a great, fun piece of work, and maybe the most consistent in tone of the films in the trilogy. Highly recommended.

Elysium: written and directed by Neill Blomkamp; starring Matt Damon (Max), Jodie Foster (Delacourt), Sharlto Copley (Kruger) and Alice Braga (Frey) (2013): The allegory is thick as syrup in this second project from Neill Blomkamp, whose first foray into feature-film science fiction, District 9, was a bit lighter on its metaphoric feet (though admittedly not much). It's a film that could easily have starred Charlton Heston and been released in 1972. It's exactly that sort of science-fiction film. It's Silent Running, but the plants are made of people, and the people are jerks.

That this is a heavy-handed allegory about the Haves and Have-nots short-circuits an awful lot of plausibility in the film, which looks great but just has too many ridiculous moments crafted entirely to allow the allegory to lurch towards its endlessly telegraphed conclusion. To name just one, the air defences of the giant orbital habitat of the rich that gives the movie its title consist of...a guy on the ground with a rocket launcher. Seriously? And that goofiness occurs in the first 20 minutes. Further goofiness is to come.

The acting is fine, so far as it goes -- no one's really playing a character here, so there's only so much anyone can do. Damon is Christly as action-Christ Max, and Jodie Foster is cool and sinister as the power-hungry defence minister of Elysium. Sharlto Copley, who played the mutating nebbish-hero of District 9, seems really miscast here as Elysium's kill-crazy enforcer Kruger. It doesn't help at all that much of his snarled Afrikaaner-inflected dialogue is nigh-incomprehensible. He sounds a lot of the time like an Australian with marbles in his mouth.

In any case, this is an enjoyable action-allegory that doesn't bear any scrutiny for plausibility. And I wish filmmakers would assume that we could come to believe in a hero's actions by observing those actions, rather than telling us how someone (in this case, a loveable nun) tells the child who will become the hero how he someday will become a hero who does great things. Because, you know, foreshadowing or whatever. Lightly recommended.

BritZom

Shaun of the Dead, written by Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright, directed by Edgar Wright, starring Simon Pegg (Shaun), Nick Frost (Ed), Kate Ashfield (Liz), Lucy Davis (Dianne), Dylan Moran (David) and Nicola Cunningham (Mary) (2004): Pegg, Frost and Wright made the jump from the loveable BBC series Spaced to the big screen here with this part-satire, part-straight take on zombies and the film geeks who love them. It's become a cult classic, and deservedly so -- it's sharp and funny.

Shaun is a retail drone (the movie overtly and repeatedly hammers us with the idea that modern jobs, and modern life in general, have made zombies of us all) saddled with a hilariously lumpen best friend, Ed, who messes up the apartment they share and steadfastly refuses to get a job. Shaun's having girlfriend troubles, partially because of Ed and partially because the only thing Shaun wants to do after work is have a few pints at the Winchester Pub.

Zombies really shake things up, and soon Shaun is the only remotely competent person in his group of survivors (which includes his girlfriend Liz's roommate and her boyfriend, Shaun's mother, and Shaun's stepdad). Who will survive and what will be left of them?

As with the later Pegg/Frost/Wright movie Hot Fuzz, comedy gives way to (relatively) straightforward action over the last 20 minutes of the movie. One's reaction to this will depend a lot on how many zombie movies you've seen and how funny you think the blood-and-gore stuff is. All in all, a dandy movie. Highly recommended.

Paul

Paul, written by Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, directed by Greg Mottola, starring Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Seth Rogen, Kristen Wiig, Jason Bateman, Bill Hader, Jane Lynch and Sigourney Weaver (2011): Pegg, Frost and director Gregory Wright (absent here) have previously given us British metapop confections Spaced, Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz. With Superbad director Greg Mottola subbing for Wright here, the action moves to America, and while things take awhile to really get going, the result is another humourous meditation on American pop culture -- in this case, centered on alien contact and invasion movies.

Pegg and Frost play an aspiring artist and science-fiction writer respectively, delighted to have taken a vacation from England to go to the mega-geeky San Diego Comicon and then onwards for a vacation touring famous science-fiction and UFO landmarks across the Southwest in a rented motorhome. Their characters are more genial and less sharp-edged than we've seen them assay before, fitting for a movie that's ultimately more genial and less sharp-edged than we've seen them do before. The whole enterprise is really quite warm-hearted -- there are villains, but almost no one gets killed. Almost.

Stopping to check out a car wreck in the desert, the two meet up with Paul, an alien who looks like a traditional Gray and talks like, well, Seth Rogen when he's being genial and funny, as opposed to Seth Rogen when he's mailing it in or Seth Rogen in a part Seth Rogen isn't really equipped to play. After much confusion and several faintings, the two agree to drive Paul to his retrieval area.

Paul's been stuck on Earth since he crashed his spaceship near Roswell, New Mexico in 1947. The U.S. military abducted him then, and he's since been helping both them and Hollywood out with various alien ideas (he consulted on both E.T. and The X-Files) under the mistaken impression that he's a guest of the U.S. government. However, his technological and cultural knowhow exhausted after 60+ years, Paul is now expendable -- the powers that be want to dissect him to find out how his healing and invisibility powers work. Luckily, a sympathetic government agent managed warn him of his coming vivisection; Paul escaped; the government now pursues.

The somewhat unlikely trio proceed to have adventures as they attempt to get Paul off-planet ahead of government pursuit. Along the way, they pick up a fourth party member played by Kristen Wiig -- a socially backward fundamentalist Christian creationist they have to kidnap from a trailer park lest she reveal their location and plans to the government. Luckily, Paul's telepathic powers show her that the universe is actually more than 6000 years old and that "eyes didn't just happen!", and she becomes a foul-mouthed agnostic with a driving need to lose her virginity to Pegg's character.

The whole thing's a lot of fun, especially if you've seen the TV episodes and movies Paul refers to both explicitly and in passing. There are also some nice background bits of business, some surprisingly funny stoner comedy, and maybe a few too many jokes about Paul's junk. Recommended.