A note on The World’s End
Please do go to see The World’s End. Apart from being very funny and genuinely thrilling in the Shaun of the Dead mode (it’s almost Invasion of the Shaun Snatchers), it features a downright incredible performance by Simon Pegg as the worn-down burnout Gary King, whose life came to its peak in 1990 and who has been unable to move on since. Gary King could have been – and occasionally is – presented as a cartoon character, but Pegg makes him electrically alive. His performance is complex, detailed, incisive, lacerating and ultimately heartbreaking. If you only know Pegg as Scotty in Star Trek or Benji in Mission: Impossible, or even from Shaun or Spaced, those performances barely scratch the surface of what he’s capable of doing.
Agreed. I wasn’t expecting that sort of performance from Pegg. I was really surprised, in a great way, but the first act of the film, by the story and all the acting, but Pegg especially. The movie would have been heart wrenching if not for the “robots.”
Pegg’s a great comic actor, but I think this may be his best work to date.
Given how easy it would have been for me to hate Gary, it’s a testament to both the writing and the acting that I didn’t.
BTW, did you look for the symbolism in the names of each pub?
http://bkhemphill.wordpress.com/2013/08/23/the-worlds-end-the-entire-plot-is-ingeniously-in-the-pub-names/
Meanwhile, back in Metropolis…
Did you also see THIS IS THE END? Favorite movie I’ve seen this year.