Review: Scott Pilgrim Vs The World

Lord help me, I just didn't get it.

It seems that this film has been on the horizon forever and on paper it's a winner. Edgar Wright, creator of the sublime Spaced, the brilliant Shaun of the Dead and the very good Hot Fuzz, was to adapt Bryan Lee O'Malley's Scott Pilgrim series into a feature film. This is what's known as a match made in heaven.

But Scott Pilgrim just isn't quite as good as that promise and the fact that it comes so close makes it worse.

You've seen the trailers. Scott Pilgrim (Michael Cera) is your typical slacker twenty something. Coasting through life, he is in a go nowhere band and in a relationship with a highschooler when  he meets and falls in love with Ramona Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead). Much to his surprise she returns his affections but there is a catch, he must defeat her seven evil exes.

First things first, the film is every bit as beautiful as those trailers promise. On a visual level, Wright has made an incredible film. No comic book adaptation has done this much to translate the aesthetic of a "funny book" to the screen. POWs, BANGS and WHIPS litter the screen, music comes to life and weaponry is summoned from thin air. At the moment the comic book movie is on the verge of shifting; Snyder's Watchmen, Vaughn's Kick-Ass and Nolan's Batman films are all pushing the genre and experimenting with what it can do. Edgar Wright has taking it a giant leap further and on that level Scott Pilgrim is a slam dunk.

Review: Toy Story 3

Toy Story 3 will make you ponder your mortality.

Yeah, I wasn't expecting that either.

Pixar studios have made their name loading their films with concepts and themes that, on paper, have no business being in family films and yet time and time again they succeed. Each film feels like a challenge to the rest of the industry to, well, challenge their audience.

Now that this trilogy is complete (and it is definitely complete) the themes it has laid down are clear. The first film was about Love, the second about abandonment and the third, death. The best thing to be said about Toy Story 3 is that this truly feels like a necessary chapter in the story and a worthy finish to the franchise. Compare this to Dreamwork's Shrek the Third and the difference is clear. Consider as well the eleven years since the first sequel, and Toy Story 3 is something to be truly admired.

Taking place eleven years after the events of the last installment, Toy Story 3 sees a 17 year old Andy ready to leave for college. After a mixup during a clearout of his room Woody, Buzz and the gang find themselves donated to Sunnyside Daycare centre a paradise for toys who have "moved on". In most cases toys accept and embrace this new life but Woody cannot let go and sets out to find his owner.

These deep themes have been present throughout but have never been quite so explicit as in this instalment and never have they been so singularly personified than in the film's antagonist, Lotso. Lotso's backstory mirrors Jessie's in Toy Story 2. Both were seemingly abandoned by the people they loved the most and left alone. But while Jessie eventually came to terms with her loss, Lotso got angry. Lotso is a villain who, unlike Sid, Al or Stinky Pete, has nothing to lose. What's interesting is that while all of the toys in the series have been aware that they are just toys, Lotso is the only who realises how disposable they are and that even the most cherished of toys are replaceable. Perhaps moreso that Jessie, his story is the most tragic.