Things I love about Kick-Ass...

Damon: Have you thought a little more about what you might like for your birthday?
Mindy: Can I get a puppy?
Damon: You want a dog?
Mindy: Yeah, a cuddly fluffy one! And a Bratz movie star makeover Sasha.
Damon: *amazed, confused look*
Mindy: I'm just fucking with you Daddy. Look, I'd love a Benchmade model 42 butterfly knife.
Damon: Oh child...you always knock me for a loop!
^if this scene doesn't make you fall in love with the movie, then I'm not sure what does.

I know quite a bit about Kick-Ass. Why? Because I have watched four times in the past week (well, I practically watched in once a day for four days). Trust me, even though most of the people I know hate this movie (no idea why), I find it insanely addictive. Must be time to roll out one of the Cinematic Paradox favourites: 'Things I love about...' (it's become a regular feature, in case you hadn't realized).


Realistic superheroes...so to speak.


Okay, so maybe Hit-Girl isn't exactly 'realistic'. I mean, the girl is about eleven years old, and can kick serious ass. I know she didn't go to school or anything, but if I ever met a girl who could do half of what she does in this movie, then I would be...shocked. Utterly shocked. On the subject of Hit-Girl, I still don't get why people get so angry about the fact that Chloe Grace Moretz spends most of this movie using *oh my goodness* profane language. Swear words are just another part of the English language, love them or hate them, and it's not like any little kids would be watching this movie. If they were, I would seriously have to question the mental state of their parents. And anyway, Hit-Girl mutilated at least ten people in this movie...isn't that worse than swearing??


Dave Lizewski, played by my latest guy crush Aaron Johnson, is a very believable super hero. He starts all the madness, only with a pre-concieved idea from his childhood and a dream that he may be able to fight crime. Sure, he has the advantage of being made out metal and having 'fucked up nerve endings', but he can't really 'kick ass' like all the other superheroes. Aaron Johnson does a great job of playing a loveable nerd, not unlike Jesse Eisenberg, and clearly needs some more roles. The guy is a hero.


As for the other two, Big Daddy and Red Mist, well, the former is definitely trained but not the sort of hero one would expect, and the latter isn't a hero at all. I think I may have liked Nic Cage in this movie, but the way he spoke when he was being Big Daddy sure did piss me off. Christopher Mintz-Plasse was equally great as the kind of misunderstood child. Look at it this way: Chris D'Amico is like Harvey Dent. Harvey lost Rachel, he went nutso. Chris lost his dad, and he looked well on the way to becoming a nut job. "You either die a hero, or live long enough too see yourself become a villain" definitely applies to Chris D'Amico.



Mark Strong


Mark Strong gets his own little section because I really respect this guy. He is in what seems like every single movie that comes out, yet still hasn't gained the accolades he deserves. His performance as the evil guy Frank D'Amico is a far cry from his previous days in films like Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day. He just oozes with this tough guy exterior and totally has fun with the archetypal villain character. Who didn't wanna kill him? And the line he has: "Mummy, I wanna Kick-Ass party. Dumb little fucks." stays in my mind for some reason. Maybe because I wouldn't mind a Kick-Ass party.

Superhero spoof movie...is it?


I'm not talking those stupid spoof movies like Vampires Suck and that kind of crap. This movie very quietly takes the piss out of other superhero movies, or it has taken something from one and used it. Like, I'm pretty sure in one scene, you can here a piece of music that was used in The Dark Knight. The movie is all about being a superhero without superpowers or money, just a bit of naivety, and therefore it takes the superhero genre and turns it on it's side. Which I thought was pretty clever. And I got it all because I am a self confessed superhero movie geek...which I'm told is strange for a 15 year old girl.

The soundtrack...
...is totally rocking my world at the moment. So I'll just share some tunes from the movie which I really like.

This track, incidentally, was also on the soundtrack of 28 Days Later...which I am yet to review. There's another track in the movie, which is also composed by John Murphy, which was used in Sunshine, another movie directed by Danny Boyle.

Lastly, Matthew Vaughn's direction
He started with Layer Cake, which was a pretty standard British gangster flick which wasn't too memorable. Then he directed some schmaltzy fantasy flick Stardust, which wasn't really that great. I can hardly believe that Kick-Ass is by the same person. He's really studied what other action directors have done, and has added his own thing into there. I mean, watching this, I could definitely see similarities in his work to works of Quentin Tarantino and Christopher Nolan. He knows how to set up an action sequence, slow mo in all the right places, capture emotions and keeps a good comic book feel to it. Matthew Vaughn is clearly at home making action and comic book movies. Let's see more of these as opposed to fantasy slice-and-dice (ahem, Stardust).

^ Beautifully set up scene, probably made all the better because of the music.

Five things I love about Kick-Ass. I am going to try not to watch it again for a week...which I can tell will be pretty hard. Can't wait for Kick-Ass 2: Balls to the Wall in 2012!