5. Hot Fuzz (2007)
Edgar Wright's hilarious homage to Hollywood action movies plays a coy little game: for its first half,
Hot Fuzz makes a point of subverting each and every one of the tropes associated with excessive and explosive action flicks, and then spends the second half embracing them all with a giddy enthusiasm. But apparently that wasn't enough for the filmmaker and his co-writer Simon Pegg, who opted to switch genres entirely at the movie's mid-point:
Hot Fuzz merges into occult horror territory, playing tribute to iconic movies like
The Wicker Man. And it's safe to say that this only really half works, because the two genres - action movie and atmospheric occult horror flick - don't feel right for one another, even as the butt of a joke. It's a case of too muchness, though
Hot Fuzz still scrapes by because it's so damn funny. Compared to the perfectly paced and ingeniously plotted zombie homage
Shaun of the Dead, though, Edgar Wright's sophomore feature looks like a bit of a mess. Still, there's a bit where Timothy Dalton gets his face pierced by the spiral of a miniature church, so it's hard to stay too mad.