Hot Fuzz Scandal
Hot Fuzz
Edgar Wright (Dir.), Simon Pegg, Nick Frost
Notes on a Scandal
Richard Eyre (Dir.), Judi Dench, Cate Blanchett
From the makers of Shaun of the Dead comes Hot Fuzz, which is by far the funniest movie I've seen in a long time, actually not much of a surprise, given that comedies don't tend to appeal to me much. But what sets Hot Fuzz apart is some great writing, which innocently introduces random bits of character observation that later serve to set up gag after gag. The story involves PC Nicholas Angel, whose exemplary record as a police officer in the Metropolitan Police Force leads his superiors to assign him to a remote village in the middle of Gloucestershire so as to prevent the rest of the force looking bad. Angel soon finds out that policing in rural Gloucestershire is rather different from the adrenaline-charged crime-fighting of London and soon becomes the butt of jokes from the local police force for his paranoid intent on investigating a spate of seemingly accidental deaths. The rest I can't describe, because it's just too insane and it would give too much away, so you'll just have to watch it yourselves. The cast includes a whole bunch of cameos from the likes of Timothy Dalton (as manager of local Somerfield, Sissy Skinner...), Jim Broadbent, Steve Coogan, Edward Woodward and Bill Nighy.
Bill Nighy provides the link to Notes on a Scandal, playing the loyal, older husband to Cate Blanchett's bourgeois art teacher. Based on a novel by Zoe Heller, the story follows a young art teacher, whose ineptness at instilling discipline in her students facilitates her friendship with Judi Dench's old-school history teacher. From Dench's narratives of her diary entries, we learn that her interest in the young art teacher is not without an ulterior motive, but is instead an obsessive and manipulative ploy. When she discovers that Blanchett is having an affair with one of her students, she believes she has what she needs to split up the young teacher's marriage and make her the lasting companion she has been looking for to relieve her loneliness. Despite a superficially mundane plot, the movie is made compelling by outstanding performances from Dench and Blanchett, who convincingly portray their characters' obsessions, driven respectively by fear of boredom and fear of loneliness. Dench's portrayal is particularly unsettling, and you'll leave the film thinking twice about striking up a conversation with that nice elderly lady in Hampstead Heath.
Edgar Wright (Dir.), Simon Pegg, Nick Frost
Notes on a Scandal
Richard Eyre (Dir.), Judi Dench, Cate Blanchett
From the makers of Shaun of the Dead comes Hot Fuzz, which is by far the funniest movie I've seen in a long time, actually not much of a surprise, given that comedies don't tend to appeal to me much. But what sets Hot Fuzz apart is some great writing, which innocently introduces random bits of character observation that later serve to set up gag after gag. The story involves PC Nicholas Angel, whose exemplary record as a police officer in the Metropolitan Police Force leads his superiors to assign him to a remote village in the middle of Gloucestershire so as to prevent the rest of the force looking bad. Angel soon finds out that policing in rural Gloucestershire is rather different from the adrenaline-charged crime-fighting of London and soon becomes the butt of jokes from the local police force for his paranoid intent on investigating a spate of seemingly accidental deaths. The rest I can't describe, because it's just too insane and it would give too much away, so you'll just have to watch it yourselves. The cast includes a whole bunch of cameos from the likes of Timothy Dalton (as manager of local Somerfield, Sissy Skinner...), Jim Broadbent, Steve Coogan, Edward Woodward and Bill Nighy.
Bill Nighy provides the link to Notes on a Scandal, playing the loyal, older husband to Cate Blanchett's bourgeois art teacher. Based on a novel by Zoe Heller, the story follows a young art teacher, whose ineptness at instilling discipline in her students facilitates her friendship with Judi Dench's old-school history teacher. From Dench's narratives of her diary entries, we learn that her interest in the young art teacher is not without an ulterior motive, but is instead an obsessive and manipulative ploy. When she discovers that Blanchett is having an affair with one of her students, she believes she has what she needs to split up the young teacher's marriage and make her the lasting companion she has been looking for to relieve her loneliness. Despite a superficially mundane plot, the movie is made compelling by outstanding performances from Dench and Blanchett, who convincingly portray their characters' obsessions, driven respectively by fear of boredom and fear of loneliness. Dench's portrayal is particularly unsettling, and you'll leave the film thinking twice about striking up a conversation with that nice elderly lady in Hampstead Heath.
posted by CCT at 7:25 pm
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