My Favo(u)rite Flavo(u)r Of Cornetto

"We're going to see this through to the bitter end. Or lager end."

There are a select few movies I consider my all-time favorites. The top spot tends to rotate, but there are a handful of movies that are in constant rotation for that top spot. Superman. The Fly (Cronenberg's version). Do The Right Thing. Psycho. The Fisher King. Movies that, for me, are perfect or near-perfect. This is the first time in my life I've found myself adding a movie to that list after living with it for less than a month. That movie has not only shot directly to my all-time favorites list, but may have already become my favorite movie full-stop. That movie is Edgar Wright's masterpiece, The World's End.

As much as I loved the movie, and in particular Simon Pegg's performance in the lead, Pegg's character Gary King scares me a bit. To explain why, a brief autobiographical intrusion: toward the end of my senior year of high school in Baldwin, NY (a town in which I had lived my entire life) my father got a job offer in Florida. My folks put the house on the market, figuring it wouldn't sell until at least summer and then we'd head down to FL. It sold almost immediately, so in March of 1994, with three months to go in my senior year, we moved to another state. After that, I spent a whole lot of time angry (because it's all about me, you understand) and miserable. For the next few years, I was pretty much a Gary King in training. I couldn't let go, I was fairly impossible to be around, and I was thoroughly full of myself. I could so easily have ended up just like Gary that it's a bit terrifying. I almost hate how much I identify with him, but that also helps me to find him endlessly compelling.

I've loved all of Edgar Wright's movies so far, but while I tried to keep my expectations in check for this one it still surprised me just how much I loved it right out of the gate. I've seen the other two "Cornetto" movies several times each, and I'm proud to say I saw Scott Pilgrim 4 times during its theatrical run, a feat for me only equalled by my 4 theatrical screenings of Pulp Fiction. His movies are all so densely layered that I find new things no matter how many times I see them, and though I've only seen The World's End twice now it affected me more profoundly than any movie I can recall. I can't wait to see it again, to dig deeper into it and to poke around the corners. I love so much of what it has to say about nostalgia, about "Starbucking", about putting up fronts, about the things that separate who we are from how we see ourselves.

The great Heath Holland wrote a piece recently on the equally great F This Movie! (fthismovie.net) about a trip he took with his family across Route 66, and so much of what he had to say about "Starbucking" was echoing through my thoughts as I watched The World's End, particularly during my second viewing. All Invasion Of The Bodysnatchers style movies cover the subject to some degree, but it hit me much harder this time, even while working as a very funny aspect of the movie (I've actually taken to thinking of any one of my 30 zillion local Starbucks as "The Old Familiar").

In short (too late, the cast of Clue says in my head), The World's End is that most elusive of creatures, a movie that works as a comedy, as a genre piece, and as a character study that truly has things to say. I don't know that I've ever fallen quite this hard for a movie all at once, and perhaps future viewings may temper that a bit, but right now I'm high on a movie that touched me, and that's my favorite feeling in the world. Thank you, Edgar, and thank you, The Five Musketeers.