Before Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, director Edgar Wright and actor/writer Simon Pegg collaborated with actress/writer Jessica Hynes on the cult BBC sitcom Spaced (1999-2000, TV-14). Pegg and Hynes play Tim and Daisy, slackers who meet at a pub and decide to pose as a couple to get a great flat. They’re not […]
The apocalyptic hysteria of the zombie film has always been pitched on the edge of comedy: a horrible black joke played on humanity by a god with a sick sense of humor. Director/co-writer Edgar Wright and co-writer/star Simon Pegg’s self-proclaimed “rom-zom-com” (romantic zombie comedy) Shaun of the Dead (2004) simply nudges it over the edge. […]
Talk about boldly going: Star Trek (2009)—no numbers, no subtitles, no tags—is not simply a prequel to the franchise. It’s an entire relaunch and director J.J. Abrams dares to rewrite Trek lore with an origin story that chronicles the first voyage of the Enterprise crew with a mission that sends them into a whole new Federation […]
Star Trek Beyond (2016) is the third feature in the “when they were young” reboot of the franchise and the first one since J.J. Abrams left Federation space for a galaxy long ago and far, far away. Justin Lin, who souped up the stalling The Fast and the Furious sequels into a series of high […]
Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation, the fifth film in the big-screen franchise based on the sixties Cold War spy TV series, continues to spin its alternative to the James Bond brand of espionage thriller. Like the 007 films, they are globe-hopping spectacles with spectacular set-pieces and stunts. But while each film is tethered on Tom […]
Man Up (2015), a romantic comedy for the modern age with a decidedly British sensibility, stars Lake Bell as Nancy, a 30-something writer and singleton in London who has given up on dating, and Simon Pegg as disappointed divorcé Jack, who is trying out internet dating for the first time. His blind date is the […]
A couple of Thanksgivings ago, as the family hung out the few hours before dinner, my brother and I started telling my dad why he would like Hot Fuzz (2007), a film that otherwise doesn’t appear to be his cup of English tea. It was from the guys who made Shaun of the Dead and […]
