This Week in Movie Nights

Scott Pilgrim and the Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Despite this being a vacation week, we ended up only watching the usual two movies spread over two weekends. We left for California last Friday, and came back this past Friday, but while we did set up Netflix on one of the hotel TV’s, it was only used for SteelyKid’s ongoing binge-watch of The Flash.

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World:

This rounded out the Edgar Wright binge. We initially started with Netflix’s Apatow comedy The Bubble, but there were too many sex jokes for the kids’ tastes, so we switched. This was a re-watch for The Pip, but SteelyKid had previously been very resistent to watching it.

Anyway, this remains a really fun movie. Kieran Culkin as Wallace really stood out this time, but the whole cast is terrific, and it’s got all the great style flourishes you expect from Wright.

The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy:

This is the 2005 movie version, which came up early in the Amazon Prime recommendations when The Pip asked me to just scroll through. It’s got Martin Freeman as Arthur, part of his amazing resume of geek-fandom parts, Mos Def as Ford, Sam Rockwell as Zaphod, and Alan Rickman doing the voice of Marvin. Also some very cool production design, with the Vogons looking very much like Ralph Steadman drawings come to life.

This hits a lot of the best jokes of the source material, but also leans maybe a little too heavily on an invented-for-the-movie romance between Arthur and Trillian. Anyway, it’s good fun, and worked well to round out a pretty lazt recovery Saturday after our Friday flight home got in past 1am.

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Nothing else media-wise of note; SteelyKid’s powered through a couple of seasons of The Flash but I only watched snippets here and there, and The Pip watched a lot of episodes of One Piece, which I haven’t even looked at. I did finish three books during our many flights, though, and will write them up tomorrow. Here’s a button if you want to get that as soon as it goes out:

And if you have thoughts on funny British movies we should check out now that we’ve run out of Edgar Wright, suggestions are welcome in the comments: