Who else but Edgar Wright can draw so much pathos and emotion from almost nothing at all? “Nothing” in the sense that when his best films Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, and now, The World’s End jerk you into seriousness, you’re surprised by how you care about the characters – before then it’s been joke after joke, and somewhere along the way, or perhaps all during it, they’re endearing themselves. Since he’s been able to do it twice before, it’s not a fluke; it’s a skill, and a damn good one.

I’m still not entirely sure how he does it, but I do know that he doesn’t pause every other moment for some dubious self-reflection, and he makes a lot of character-based jokes – that is, jokes that are funny within the context of the character telling them. He also drops clues here and there so that when the tonal shift comes, it’s a payoff instead of a distraction – more importantly, it means something.

Vague enough? Well, whatever it is that Edgar Wright’s able to do and do well, The World’s End is the best display of that yet – in addition to being a very funny movie.

The story proper follows Gary King (Simon Pegg), a man inches away from full-on dereliction who opens with a story of the greatest night of his life. We see VHS-style grainy flashbacks to the early ’90s when Gary and his crew attempted the Newton Haven Golden Mile – a 12-pub crawl that no man survived, or at least conquered. Gary gave up after the ninth and went to watch the sunrise. As he glows in nostalgia, the camera zooms out to show the people Gary’s telling his story to, and it’s a very big laugh.

Recently, we were able to bring you a shorter, and somewhat vague, trailer for the next cinematic collaboration between Simon Pegg, Nick Frost and Edgar Wright called The Worlds’End. Now, there’s a much longer trailer that finally, we think, captures the essence of this movie.

What is that essence? Well, it’s a movie where a group of pals go on an “Epic” pup crawl only to discover the world is in danger and they’re the only ones who can save it. Oh, and they drink a lot of beer in the process.

And really, who doesn’t like beer?

The film also stars Martin Freeman, Paddy Considine and Rosamund Pike. It hits theaters on August 29th.

Check out the trailer after the break.

When we need a good laugh around the office, or at home, we often watch one of two movies: Shaun of the Dead or Hot Fuzz. Both of these are highly amusing and also filled with action, great characters, extensive pop-culture references and excellent performances. Did we mention they’re also damn funny? They are.

So, when the team behind those two movies gets together to make a new one, we get very happy. The new one in question is The World’s End, directed by Edgar Wright and starring Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Martin Freeman, Paddy Considine and Rosamund Pike, it’s the the story of childhood friends who come together after 20 years to stage an epic pub crawl.

Of course, things do not go quite as planned. And thank goodness for that.

Check out the trailer after the break. Look for The World’s End to hit the U.S. on August 29th.

Fans everywhere who were grinding their teeth during the reboot of the classic Clash of the Titans back in 2010 will finally have another reason to have the studio system as the trailer for Wrath of the Titans has hit the web.

Sure, it had a bad wrap the moment we found out a reboot to such a classic was even getting made, but the trailer doesn’t do much to show us otherwise. Here’s the unnecessarily massive synopsis, so you don’t get lost.

A decade after his heroic defeat of the monstrous Kraken, Perseus (Worthington) –the demigod son of Zeus (Neeson)–is attempting to live a quieter life as a village fisherman and the sole parent to his 10-year old son, Helius. Meanwhile, a struggle for supremacy rages between the gods and the Titans.

Dangerously weakened by humanity’s lack of devotion, the gods are losing control of the imprisoned Titans and their ferocious leader, Kronos, father of the long-ruling brothers Zeus, Hades (Fiennes) and Poseidon (Danny Huston). The triumvirate had overthrown their powerful father long ago, leaving him to rot in the gloomy abyss of Tartarus, a dungeon that lies deep within the cavernous underworld.

Every once in a while, you connect so deeply with a movie that it shakes you to your core. Thus was the case with Barney’s Version, a remarkable story about an unremarkable man. This movie made me do two things I have not done since I began reviewing films. About ten minutes into the film, I could tell it was something special, and I put down my notebook (which I’ve never done) because I did not want anything to interfere with the story unfolding before me. I just wanted to drink it in from beginning to end.

After I saw the movie, I sat in my car, and cried. Like big, huge, racking sobs that would not stop.  It was a full fifteen minutes before I was composed enough to drive home from the theater. The last time I had this kind of reaction to a movie was after I saw the traumatizing documentary Dear Zachary.  I cried for about three weeks after that.

But this is what movies are all about-how wonderful to find this hidden treasure that made me laugh, cry, and feel so deeply for the characters. I was emotionally devastated by this wonderfully quirky and unconventional love story.

Okay, I think I have the studios figured out. The recent trend toward not screening a movie, or screening it too late for reviewing press to make deadline, must be the studios’ clever attempt at using  reverse-psychology. We (reviewers) are conditioned to believe that any time a movie is not screened or screened last minute, that there must be some horrible problem plaguing the movie, hence their unwillingness to pre-screen it. Such was the case with Surrogates when I saw it last night.

Bracing myself for a stinkbomb, I emerged from the screening and proclaimed to the studio rep: “It was not terrible. I think I kind of liked it.” Hardly a ringing endorsement, to be sure, but I think that is part of their strategy. If they set the expectation bar low, when the movie is not horrible the viewer will be delighted by this welcome surprise. 

Surrogates could have been one hell of a movie had it’s intriguing premise been well executed. Despite the film’s flaws, I found it thought-provoking enough that I would definitely recommend it to fans of the sci-fi genre or Bruce Willis.  I absolutely love a movie that makes me think, and this one had my head swimming with the ethical implications of bio-medical research, the prevalence of electronic media in our lives, and our (as a society) startling retreat from one-on-one human interaction.  Any movie that makes me take pause to analyze the message is worthy of a recommendation.

Robots can be a pretty scary thing, but not nearly as scary as Bruce Willis when he has something to prove. We all remember Die Hard. That seems to be the fight card for next week’s release of Surrogates: Bruce Willis vs. Robots. Who wouldn’t want to see John McClain fight Optimus Prime? Same concept.

There’s a brand new international trailer out for the film, that shows a few more scenes, and gives us a deeper look into a world where humans control their robot counterparts from the comfort of their own home…until something goes terribly wrong.

Check out the new trailer after the jump, and enjoy Bruce Willis, Radha Mitchell, Rosamund Pike, James Francis Ginty, Boris Kodjoe, and Ving Rhames in theaters nationally on September 25th for Surrogates.