Why I Love Scott Pilgrim (And Why You Should See It, Despite What You May Think))

"Not so long ago...in the mysterious land...of Toronto, Canada...Scott Pilgrim was dating a high schooler."

August 12th, 2010. I am moving a desk with my dad from a friend's house, ready to drive it to Philadelphia the next day. On my way home, I am listening to the Phillies on the radio, and they're slowly coming back from a pretty large deficit against the dreaded Dodgers. I go home, check my facebook, and Lucas wants to go see Scott Pilgrim vs. The World with me at midnight. Finally! I say to myself. I have someone who wants to see this movie. An hour later, right as I'm about to leave, the Phillies whoop Johnathon Broxton's big ass and walk off on the Dodgers. I couldn't be happier: my favorite team just came back from being down more than five runs, and I'm about to see the movie I've been impatiently waiting a year for.

And now it's Christmas Eve. Since midnight on August 13th, I have seen this movie an estimated 15-20 times, and no, I'm still not tired of it. I tried to write an "On Second Thought" review about it, but I couldn't possibly say everything that I wanted to into one cohesive article. I was still too blown away. I wanted to see it a third time but I had to hold back before I finished the article, but I waited way too long and forgot about it. Around the time it got released on Blu-Ray, I downloaded a beautiful 720p version of the movie, and since then I have turned it on every time I can't think of something to watch. Now, I know if I were a true fan I'd actually get the Blu-Ray, but I waited until Christmas to ask for it, and if my dad is smart at all, he'll remember me gushing about it on our 6 trips to and from philly the night after I saw it.

So let's get this out of the way. I know I said Black Swan might be the best movie of the year in my last review, but can I go back on that? It's not even comparable to Scott Pilgrim in terms of theme or story, so how about I go and say that Aronofsky made my favorite drama of the year, while Wright made my favorite comedy. There we are.

Here's your synopsis: Scott Pilgrim is a 22-year old slacker who lives in his hometown of Toronto, Canada. He is in a band called Sex Bob-Omb with his friends Steven Stills and Kim Pine, and he is dating a 17-year-old Chinese girl named Knives Chau. He faces criticism for this, as people are saying he's only doing it to get over his ex Envy, who is the lead singer or an extremely popular buzzband called The Clash at Demonhead. One day he sees a girl with purple hair on roller skates, and he is floored. At a party later that night, he learns that her name is Ramona Flowers, that she's American, and that she's at the party. They begin to date even though he's still with Knives, but there is a catch. Ramona has seven evil exes that Scott must defeat if he wants to continue dating Ramona. Fights and jokes ensue, and soon the movie is over, and you're extremely happy (probably).

So how does a movie that made none of its money back get to the top of my list? Mostly because box office figures have become moot points in the past few years thanks to 3D and the outrageous amount of inflation we've seen over the past ten years. But I thought Scott Pilgrim would be a huge hit. I thought 13, 14 year old kids would flock to the theater to see it. I know I would have when I was that age, and I would have fucking loved it. I thought that the older gamer generation would show up in droves and be instantly hooked when they saw the 8-bit Universal logo at the beginning. I mean, Michael Cera is in it, and he's already a huge star. How could it possibly flop??

As always, the marketing department might have killed it. They did everything right when it came to the nerdy cult scene. They screened it at Comic Con and every other convention they could find, and the viral marketing on the interweb was awesome...if you were a cult nerdy gamer person. It's everyone else that they needed to sell this movie to, and that didn't go so hot. Walking into the near-empty theater at midnight, I checked my twitter feed to see my friend Lauren's newest tweet: "Scott Pilgrim looks like the dumbest movie ever made." I hadn't even seen it and I came to its defense, telling her she couldn't be more wrong. But Lauren's conclusion was shared by many. Neither of my step-brothers wanted to see it, and virtually everyone I talked to hadn't even heard of it. It might have been the TV Spots that killed it, when the dummies in the editing room take all the lines and make it seem like the characters are talking about the reviews (how clever!), but maybe it was never meant to be a huge theater hit. Thanks to OnDemand, Netflix, and Blu-Ray though, it looks like this movie's making it all back.

So I've taken the position that most people who haven't seen it yet don't really want to see it at all, and I aim to change that. Let's start with the biggest excuse I've heard for why people won't see this movie:

"Oh, look, Michael Cera's playing a geeky, awkward boy who falls for a girl out of his league, and he does all sorts of awkward things to win her over. I am tired of this same Michael Cera shit..."

WRONG. WRONG WRONG WRONG.

I know, the trailer makes it look that way, but would you believe me if I said that this general belief that Michael Cera can only play one role is wrong, and that Scott Pilgrim proves it? First off, Scott Pilgrim is an action movie. And if you thought Michael Cera couldn't kick major ass, then shame on you.

There are scenes where Michael Cera does his trademark awkward stuff, but it becomes clear that it's not Michael Cera saying these things, but rather Scott Pilgrim. A great acting job means you never say "Wow, Michael Cera is really good," but rather, "Oh my god, look at what Scott Pilgrim just did..." Thanks to a killer script, nothing feels like it's pulled out of Cera's hamper of jokes. The characters all fit perfectly into each scene, so it's never quite the Michael Cera show. Everyone has their moment in this movie. It almost seems like the Scott character is a tool that Wright uses to bring out the hilarity in each character, all of whom are distinctly different from each other. But in the scenes where Scott is the main point of interest, Cera kills it, using a larger range of emotions than we've ever seen him capable of. Especially in the dream sequences, or when he is talking to his ex Envy Adams, Cera displays a terrific heart-broken attitude that feels all too real to those of us who've had to deal with awful relationship drama. But when it counts, when Scott needs to become an action hero, Cera completely kills it, racking up hit combos and coins like a mad man, fighting off whole teams of stuntmen and constantly finding a way to defeat the exes that stand in the way of his love.

It should also be mentioned that Scott Pilgrim is kind of a dick. He's dating a high school girl only because it's "easy," and he doesn't hesitate to cheat on her with Ramona. There are multiple conversations in the film about his rocky history of breaking girls' hearts, including Kim's. He ditches band practice, he doesn't have a job, he kind of floats around from place to place in an apathetic daze, and he lives directly across the street from the house he grew up in. He's not some total nice guy like he is in Superbad or Youth in Revolt (which might be the worst movie ever made). So don't come in expecting him to always be in the right, because as Guillermo Del Toro says, Scott is a character who changes the least and the latest.

I mentioned the rest of the cast being absolutely spectacular. I might not have used those words, but that's what they are. They were totally snubbed for a best ensemble cast nomination from the SAG Awards, which i think it a travesty. As my one friend pointed out, it's probably because the cast is so young, and most of them aren't very famous. Let's start with Scott's band, Sex Bob-Omb. There's Stephen Stills (The Talent), played by Mark Webber, Kim Pine (Drums), played by Alison Pill of Milk fame, and Young Neil (Lives Here), played hilariously by Johnny Simmons, who doesn't really have a part in the band besides just hanging out and playing DS while they practice. Then there's Knives, played by Ellen Wong, who is their biggest fan. And of course, there's the lovely Ramona Flowers, played by the now-celebrity-crush-of-my-life Mary Elizabeth Winstead of Death Proof fame. Why is she my celebrity crush? Well...it might be just because of one shot.

Then there are the evil exes. Satya Bhabha plays Matthew Patel, the pirate-dressed hipster who Scott fights first. Chris Evans plays Lucas Lee, a movie star who has the greatest line in the movie (36 seconds, check it out). Then there's Brandon Routh (a.k.a. the most forgettable Superman in history) as Todd Ingram, the bassist for Envy's band The Clash at Demonhead, who might be funnier than Lucas Lee, I can't decide. Mae Whitman makes a completely awesome appearance as Roxy Richter, Ramona's flame when she was a little bi-curious. If you don't know who Mae Whitman is, then you should turn off your computer and go watch Arrested Development right fucking now. No, seriously. Stop reading my blog. GO. Then there are The Katayanagi Twins, the electronic musicians from Japan played by Shota and Keita Saito, real life twins who don't get much of a back story, but do get what is probably the best battle in the whole movie. And then there's the always magnificent Jason Schwartzman as Gideon G-Man Graves, a popular record executive who organized the whole league of evil exes in the first place. Edgar Wright even threw in some Rolling Stones for his first scene, which seemed simultaneously very appropriate for the scene (the song is "Under My Thumb") and for the actor (Wes Andersen, anyone?).

Everybody else is also awesome in this film. Kieran Culkin steals the show at points as Scott's roommate Wallace Wells, as does Aubrey Plaza as Julie Powers (Has Issues), my second choice for celebrity crush of the decade. Anna Kendrick and Brie Larson also rock, but Nelson Franklin has some great scenes as Comeau, a character who "knows everybody." Franklin played the newest IT guy on The Office, if you're wondering. Be prepared to see him more in the future.

I haven't even had time to talk about the visuals. It's not every day you see a movie that hooks you with their opening credits, but Scott Pilgrim certainly acheived this. When the title came up on the screen, the sparse crowd at the midnight showing erupted with cheers, and the whole time it was playing people were yelling and screaming. Thanks to an awesome song by Beck (but actually performed and alternatively recorded by the members of Sex Bob-Omb), the opening to this movie kills it and makes you want to see more. Unfortunately this clip doesn't have the first scene in the kitchen, where you first get a glimpse of the comic book style visuals for the first time when Knives rings the doorbell (a delightful "ding dong!" appears above Scott's head). But still, you get the idea. Enjoy the opening to the movie here.

Besides that, I'm going to go and say what everyone else said about this movie. It completely floored me how much this movie looks like a comic book. Movies recently have tried to impersonate the comic book look, and some have rocked (Sin City, Kick Ass), and some have kind of sucked (Watchmen). But this film really delivers. When someone hits the ground, the word "thok!" appears, or when someone gets thrown into the side of a castle, the word "wwooooooooosh!" flies with him. I'm not a huge comic book fan at all, but I've always loved the illustrations. This movie takes us back to when the Batman TV series made these things campy, only this time it makes them really cool again.

And then there's Edgar Wright. If you don't know his name, learn it, love it, live by it. Edgar Wright directed this fine film, as well as Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, which starred his buddies Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, who both starred in the show Spaced, also directed by Wright. Shaun of the Dead is one of my favorite comedies of all time, but I have yet to see Hot Fuzz or a full episode of Spaced. He has a lot of cred in the industry these days, and Scott Pilgrim certainly helped him there. It also helps when Guillermo Del Toro thinks you're the shit, as is clear in this INCREDIBLE 80-minute symposium that he hosted with Wright, Cera, and Bryan Lee O'Malley, the writer of the script and the original comics.

Del Toro points out that this is no ordinary film. Really, this kind of a movie is a huge bet when it comes to how the studios see it. It has an audience, sure, but not a very large one. For Wright to be able to come out and put all of his cards on the table and "go for broke" is admirable in itself. But as Del Toro says again and again, this is a movie that is clearly a labor of love. Edgar Wright shows his full capacity to make interesting, entertaining, heartfelt movies that beg to be watched again and again. Not to mention making a huge action packed, special effects filled movie that also needs to feel like a romantic comedy. He paces the film perfectly, transitioning scenes with the sound of a Blackberry Alert so that everyone in the theater checks their phone before realizing they've been fooled. He fills the movie with sounds of our childhood, like the sound of Link opening a treasure chest in Zelda, or the sound a computer makes when you've clicked something you're not allowed to click. He's synthesised our generation into sounds and fast dialogue, and he did it perfectly. My friend Jeremy said that he thought the two movies that defined our generation both came out this year, and they were Scott Pilgrim and The Social Network. At completely different ends of the spectrum, both are written and directed wonderfully, and both feature really awesome soundtracks (Trent Reznor is getting nominated, just you watch). The way these movies feel when you watch them would send the elderly into a tizzy, but for us it seems normal to move so fast and see so much and digest all of it. And it also helps that because there's so much a second screening will always show you things you missed the first time.

Something else that people seem to have a problem with is the way the fight scenes begin. For example, no one thinks it's weird that Ramona is able to pull a giant human-sized mallet out of her purse, or that Matthew Patel just crashed through the ceiling. Wright has said that he wanted it to feel like a musical, how when a song starts no one thinks it's strange, it's just the way that world works. Same thing here: a fight happens and everyone just watches and goes back to what they're doing. It never bothered me because it's funny. Suspend your disbelief for a bit and try to enjoy the absurdity instead of asking why the police never seem to show up when they're fighting.

I've reached the point where I don't know what else to say about this movie. If you thought you wouldn't like Scott Pilgrim, I highly suggest giving it a shot. I think it's the movie this year that has the most balls and the biggest payoff. When Michael Cera saw it for the first time at Comic Con, where the audience freaked out in hysterical happiness, he apparently cried, hugged Edgar Wright, and said "thank you." They've already had independent screenings all over the world after it left theaters, all of which sold out to huge crowds of delighted fans. In Toronto, where the movie takes place and also where Alison Pill is from, the audience chimed in every time Kim screams "WE ARE SEX BOB-OMB! ONE TWO THREE FOUR!" It hasn't even been six months since it premiered and it's already a cult smash. Wright even tweeted that someone said it could be the new Lebowski, a statement that left Wright especially humbled.

That's why you should see this movie, because it really means something to people. It's not just a funny comic book romp. There are real emotions that we, as young people, feel all the time and brush under the carpet. The characters are far deeper than they seem. Alison Pill, who should win an Oscar someday, plays Kim very deadpan, but there are moments when the pain from her past with Scott shine through. Ramona and Scott deal with all the troubles of a new relationship the way we all do, like we're seasoned vets and we know what we're doing, only to be hit by a bus when we realize we don't know anything.

It's a movie that's made for us, the people watching. Not for the stars, or the director, or the special effects guy, or for the dumb fucks at the Academy. It's made so that every year, we can gather in a theater, and scream things at the screen while we laugh and enjoy the company of our peers. If that's not real movie magic, then I don't know what is.


By Brad Moore

Black Swan

It might be a stretch to say that all of Darren Aronofsky's films are about some form of paranoia. I have not seen The Fountain, and I was only able to start The Wrestler before I fell asleep, which wasn't the movie's fault at all. But Pi and Requiem for a Dream certainly draw on the paranoia theme: did that really just happen? Did she ever get that call saying she would be on television? Is he really being chased by dangerous people? In Pi, the main character installs multiple locks on his door to make sure no one gets into his wild, computered-out apartment. In Requiem, everyone does drugs in the cover of New York City buildings, locked away from the outside world, trying to catch a dream that won't ever, ever come.

So it's no surprise that Black Swan follows suit into the realm of endless, seemingly unprovoked paranoia. The story is simple: Nina (Natalie Portman), a twenty-something ballerina in New York City, gets cast as the Swan Queen in her company's performance of Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake after the company's prima ballerina (Wynona Ryder) proves to be getting too old. She is a natural fit for the shy, virginal White Swan, but she has trouble adapting to the seductive twin role of the Black Swan. Her director (Vincent Cassel) constantly tries to bring it out but each attempt comes up short. Her overbearing, clingy mother (Barbara Hershey) doesn't do much to help her stress either, vicariously living through her daughter's dream while never allowing Nina any room to breathe. A new ballerina, Lily (Mila Kunis), shows promise and a certain devil-may-care attitude that the director notices early on, threatening Nina's security as the Swan Queen. Their rivalry swings in and out of friendly and passive aggressive confrontations, until everything boils over and goes wild. As Nina becomes the Black Swan, things become increasingly uncertain, until no one is sure what's reality and what's all inside her head.

I was able to see it the first time for free, thanks to my friend Clio Brown, who knows everyone who works at the Ritz theaters in Philadelphia, and is my golden ticket in these dark, desperate college times. We walked out in a daze, both of us already obsessed with talking about this movie. When we went out later that night we were still talking about it, trying to pick around all of the surreal images that Aronofsky dishes out in this film. After another day of thinking about it, the film left my mind until my brother came home from college, which means we're gonna spend a lot of money at the movies. We followed True Grit at Midnight on Tuesday with a 10:30 PM screening of Black Swan at Neshaminy's AMC theater. The audience was mostly teenagers on Christmas break from high school, and it didn't seem like they liked it very much. My brother and our friend Dave enjoyed it very much however, and I was pleased to be there with them for their first viewing.

There is so much to say about this movie, but I'll start with my general consensus. I think that this movie might be the best of the year, but it's a hard and diverse crop to pick from. My other favorites from this year include The Social Network and Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, two movies that are very different from one another and even more different from Black Swan. I can assure you that I will see Scott Pilgrim more than I will ever see the other two, but that doesn't mean it's the best necessarily. Aronofsky has been around for a while, and though he's always been respected, he hasn't gotten the wins he needs from those dumb, dumb Academy voters. But I think this might be his year. It wouldn't surprise me if this stole Best Picture from The Social Network, which is really the only other true contender in that race at this point, and the nominees haven't even been announced yet. True Grit is still too fresh in my mind to add to that list, but something tells me the Academy won't give the Coen Brothers another Best Picture statue for another western, even if it was really fucking good.

Visually this film was remarkable. Regardless of your opinion on handheld filming, this film certainly needed this aesthetic. It's not for a pseudo-documentary thing or anything silly like that. It was for a point-of-view experience which allows the audience to remain in the dark about what's happening around Nina, who is in every single scene in the movie. The dance scenes, from the remarkable opening inside Nina's dream all the way to Opening Night, seem much smoother than the rest of the film, like the choreography was made for the camera movements. These allow you to feel the rhythm of the dance, the way the dancers know it and breathe it every day. Everything outside the studio is unsure to Nina. Things are becoming more and more foreign, and more and more the audience falls into her paranoia, walking fast behind her through the city streets wondering what crazy shit is going to happen next. All of the special effects in this film are seamless, dreamlike, and completely breathtaking. It's refreshing that they're not there to show off how great CG is, but how wonderful it can be in digging right into the viewer, forcing them some sort of catharsis, and confusing them as to whether or not any of it is really happening.

I keep mentioning that unsure, not-quite-right feeling you get while you watch this movie. The movie starts off pretty normal. Exposition, exposition, blah blah. She has a small, seemingly innocent rash on her shoulder that her mother points out, but nothing serious. When she's on the subway for the company's first rehearsal, she thinks she sees someone familiar through another car window, but she shakes it off. After she wins the role, things get weirder. She is getting strange cuts around her cuticles that seem to come and go when they please, she keeps seeing doppelgangers of herself that turn out to be nothing, fleeting glimpses that we all have from time to time. Moments where we go, "Huh?? What?" on the street when we are so sure we see someone who we know it can't be, only these things are happening to Nina constantly. Aronofsky twists and turns her world, almost to the point where you're never quite sure when she's awake or in some sort of waking dream. The only place things seem sane is the studio, but even that falls victim to the horrific, dreamlike qualities of Nina's developing madness. At the end, nowhere and no one is safe or untouched by Aronofsky. Nothing can be known for sure, something which I'm sure frustrates many viewers, but kept me glued to my seat.

The performances are usually the first thing people talk about, and Natalie Portman really, really deserves some credit for this movie. Some might argue that Nina is a one trick pony until the end, a constant neurotic prude who tries to experiment but always falls back into her naivety. But I don't see it that way at all. From very early on there are flickers of madness, frustration, and completely unfiltered emotion in Portman's performance, but she quickly shoos them back under the carpet until we fully realize Nina's potential. By the end of this film, Portman is completely locked in. I mentioned already that she's in every scene in this movie, but she's in almost every single frame, so it's easy to gush about her. Vincent Cassel delivers a truly sleasy performance as Thomas Leroy, but he does it with such charm that when Nina calls him a genius you feel like you should defend her. He seduces Nina constantly to try and bring out her wild side, but refrains from fully satisfying her. Barbara Hershey also gives one of those great crazy mom performances, up one second and down another, constantly making the viewer want to rip her throat out. I hesitate to talk about Mila Kunis, but that's not because she didn't act the part well. In fact, this role is different from anything I've ever seen her do, which is refreshing. But I feel like I'm more impressed with how Aronofsky used the character, not necessarily how Kunis portrayed her. Lily is a tool, a villain that might not be, and just when you think she might be evil it's clear that she isn't--but is she? Aronofsky and Kunis play with the character a lot, but maybe it's just because she's the least melodramatic character in the film that I hesitate to call her performance "brilliant." All that being said, if Natalie Portman doesn't win Best Actress for what was surely an emotionally and physically tolling role, I'll eat my head.

I'm a sound guy, but I don't want to talk much about it. I will say this: absolutly see it in a theater with surround sound. Most theaters these days do, like your Regal Cinemas or AMC stuff. But smaller theaters that only have front projection should be avoided. Darren Aronofsky allowed the sound engineers to really go all out on this movie, constantly panning effects so that they glide across the theater like they're moving with the characters. Laughter can be heard all around, and Nina's name or the constantly repeated phrase "sweet girl" swells in and out, back and forth. The transitions with sound are exceptional and sometimes disturbing, such as when an old man on the subway mimics the sound of a wet vagina in Nina's direction until the next scene begins with Nina lighting a lighter to her ballet shoes, two sounds that sound more alike than I ever realized. This is simply another movie that shows how much further sound can take a movie past the mise-en-scene and straight into our brains. For more on this stuff, check out this great video that my friend Dan Santelli sent me. Seriously, follow that guy on twitter, he posts the best stuff.

This script won't win any awards, I'm almost certain of that. It's not because it isn't good, but nothing really stands out in terms of dialogue. The story itself is what really makes this film special. It's a movie all about a performer, and how the passion to be the best can drive someone to the brink of madness, and how it can be worth it. Dancers put themselves through more strain that almost any other performer, because as Black Swan constantly restates, you can not achieve greatness with technique alone. You need to lose yourself, to "surprise yourself so that the audience can be surprised." I think dancers will appreciate this film very much, as it holds a pretty accurate mirror up to the incredibly competitive, heartbreaking careers of the ultimate dreamers. It's performance anxiety that's driving this paranoia in Nina, but more than that it's the anxiety that she is getting older and beyond the dreaded 30's there isn't much left for her. Like the White Swan, she gets a chance to taste her glory, her moment in the sun. If she can keep it, that's another question.

By Brad Moore