Weekly Cinemeh

Hello, and welcome back to Weekly Cinemeh, where two friends watch a few movies because we get bored, and then write about it on the internet. This week's theme is the Three Flavors Cornetto trilogy. For those of you not in the know, the Cornetto trilogy is a series of movies from director Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg, and Nick Frost each dealing with a genre of film (with a "relationship" genre smuggled in underneath). Shaun of The Dead is a Zombie movie that is also a romantic comedy, Hot Fuzz is a Buddy Cop action flick that is also a "bromance", and The World's End is an alien apocalypse movie with a greater focus on the overall theme of the three movies "prolonged adolescence is bad". All three of these movies are great, but lets do the individual breakdowns.

1: Shaun of The Dead
This is a romantic comedy in a zombie apocalypse. Shaun (Pegg) loses his girlfriend and gets in a lot of trouble with one of his roommates because he is stuck in a perpetual adolescence along with his best friend Ed (Frost). Shaun decideds to get his shit together and win back his girlfriend, but oh shit! Zombies coming up the hell right now! SotD is great at referencing other zombie movies and TV shows. It is a lot of fun, and has a lot of fun with the genre. It is thanks to movies like this, that I have trouble taking Simon Pegg seriously though, but to be fair, I have never seen him do anything completely serious.

Eshi: Shaun of the Dead is our dedicated Halloween movie, with good reason. The number and depth of references layered through this film is just delightful, and gets better the more of them you understand. It makes a big deal of the growth and development Shaun goes through but really (spoilers?) at the end he's just doing the same shit he did before the zombies, just with better priorities.

2: Hot Fuzz
Nicholas Angel (Pegg) is the best cop ever. So good, in fact, that his superiors ship him off to a little hamlet so he stops making them all look bad. When he gets there, he is introduced to a huge cast of oddball country folk (David Lynch would be proud) including his "partner" Danny (Frost). While in town, Angel uncovers a massive conspiracy which has left a lot of people dead. It is up to Angel and Danny to take down the culprit! This movie is basically all buddy cop/action movie rolled into one. The friendship between the two leads is the focus of the bulk of the film as Danny tries to become a better cop, and Angel tries to pull the stick out of his ass. The ending fight is epic and exciting while still managing to be funny.

Eshi: This is my favorite of the trilogy, mostly because it shows a Paladin recovering from a fall and becoming a better person for it. Pegg's character is straight-laced to a fault at the outset, but bad-assing his way through a rural community opens his mind to a variety of balance he wouldn't have come across on his own. Angel actually ends up less conventionally mature than he starts, but he's a better friend and a better cop for it. 

3: The World's End
This movie starts with a line from the movie "The Wild Angels" and basically sets up the core dogma laid fourth by Simon Pegg's character, Gary King. This movie basically has Pegg playing a burnout while Nick Frost plays a character (Andy Knightly) that is anathema to the starting positions of his other two roles in the trilogy. Andy is grounded, sober, and focuses on his career and being an adult. Also, he beats crazy robots to death with bar stools. This is a movie about how dangerous extremes are, and how homogenization is not the best way to go about things either. The film is about a group of high school buddies getting together to attempt a pub crawl when they discover that the town is being taken over by robotic aliens. The robots (although they aren't robots, just ask 'em) represent conformity, and explores how it has some good bits, but since it is enforced so heavily, becomes to restricting. Its a good movie, though a bit more serious by the end, but still a fun movie.

Eshi: The World's End does not fuck about. Gary King is a fucked up dude, but his oppressive narcissism keeps the people around him from being able to help him out of the deep, fuckered hole he finds himself in. There isn't much in the way of subtlety as far as the moral goes but the humor and clarity of purpose kinda make up for that. Also, Nick Frost is fucking Boss in this one.

Honorable mentions: Spaced
Spaced is a great TV show for people who love nerd culture and British comedy.

Paul: A great movie with Simon Pegg and Nick Frost playing nerds from england that go on a road trip with an alien played by Seth Rogan. Its awesome, and follows along the same lines as the cornetto triology and Spaced by being crammed full of referential humor.