The best movie I've seen this year

[andrewducker]

Went to see Kick-Ass last week, with meaningrequired, werejud, cairmen, Alex, Ian and Mike from Cambridge who was up visiting.

It was fantastic. It's smart enough to undermine the superhero genre while also revelling in it. It tells you how superhero stories work, brings you onside in finding them ridiculous and then does one so well that you get completely caught up in it.

Three quarters of it takes you through how messed up a person would have to be to be a superhero, the problems they'd have and the way it couldn't possibly work, and one quarter operatic, balletic action-fest that lead to everyone leaving the cinema on a complete high.

It managed to make me laugh. And make me cry. At the same time.

It comes out in America on the 16th. Go see it.

(Warning, movie contains scenes of violence. And swearing. If you don't like either of those things then this it not for you.)

Comments

[likeneontubing.livejournal.com]

Me and 1 guy outside the cinema at the end of the film must be the only people I know of with something bad to say about it.

Fuck it - I am going to track this man down and sit and bitch with him about films. I am too damn critical it seems!

[ninebelow.livejournal.com]

I hadn't realised it came out in the UK before the US, an unusual state of affairs.

I reviewed this for Strange Horizons (it is up on Wednesday, I think) and whilst I think Vaughn and Goldman did a good job, I don't think they managed to overcome the problems inherent in Millar's source text (although I've not actually read it).

[ophelia-complex.livejournal.com]

I really really like the sound of that! Will definitely go see it.

[captainlucy.livejournal.com]

I absolutely loved it. Other than Avatar (and its shiny effects), it's the first movie this year that I've wanted to go back and watch again, because it's so damn fun. The action sequences are a perfect mix of 1960s Batman and Hard Boiled, and it's made pretty clear that the violence hurts and has consequences.

[khbrown.livejournal.com]

"Three quarters of it takes you through how messed up a person would have to be to be a superhero, the problems they'd have and the way it couldn't possibly work, and one quarter operatic, balletic action-fest that lead to everyone leaving the cinema on a complete high."

It sounds a bit like Taxi Driver, except that once it's sucked you in it doesn't then turn on you or confront you in the same way as TD does when Bickle first appears with his mohawk, intend on political assassination.