theOneliner.com: Handling the Truth

Back once again, it's the renegade masters! Well, it's theOneliner.com guys, really, but they promise to renege as masterfully as possible on the subjects of Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, Cyrus, The Town, The Other Guys and Black Dynamite.

Kicking off with Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, which transports us to a NES-era videogame themed comedo-relato-action flick as Michael Cera attempts to win the heart of Mary Elizabeth Winstead, defeating her seven evil exes along the way. Massively stylised and amusing throughout, this wins a recommendation from these quarters although we do fit rather squarely into an ill-advisedly slender target demographic. Those without may not be so agreeable.

While Cyrus has a cast that would seem to if not absolutely guarantee success, at least heavily imply it, it leaves us rather cold. Presented as a relationship driven comedy with John C. Reilly and Marisa Tomei's burgeoning relationship in danger of being sabotaged by Jonah Hill, it turns out that the distractingly creepy relationship between mother an son casts a pall over the movie that makes it hard to get on board with its comic agenda.

The always affable and unfairly shunned Ben Affleck directs and stars in The Town, a tale of small time bank robbers going large and the FBI agents on their trail. While it suffers a little from the pretty common affliction of asking us to empathise with the bad guys more than the forces of law and order, it's a well acted and efficiently directed low-key crime drama that's perhaps not pushing any envelopes, but is as good an example of the genre as we've seen in recent years.

Will Ferrell returns in this years Standard Issue Will Ferrell Vehicle, The Other Guys, along with Mark Wahlberg, Sam Jackson and The Artist Formerly Known As The Rock. There's really nothing here that won't be familiar to anyone who has seen any of the previous ten years' Standard Issue Will Ferrell Vehicles, but it remains a consistently amusing and slickly produced offering that's well worth a look if you are in the market for a laugh.

We close off with Black Dynamite, and while it's far from the first Blaxploitation parody it's certainly the most amusing. With substantially better faux era-isms that either of Tarantino or Rodriguez's Grindhouse offerings, some great lines, amusing action scenes and a plot that starts of silly and gets sillier, Black Dynamite is a great candidate for enjoying over a few beers.

That is all for now. We'll be back sometime soon, so until then keep your nose clean and if you can't be good, be lucky.