31 Days of Halloween: Shaun of the Dead

2004, Edgar Wright (The Sparks Brothers) -- download/Blu-ray

Yes, I download movies because getting the game system setup to play a Blu-Ray when I haven't touched it in months is dusty & arduous and I am impatient & lazy.

Also, and again, "You haven't written about this in one of the many rewatches since 2004 ?!?!?"

Clever. The clever zombie movie. I love this clever zombie movie, which in case you have been under a cinematic rock, is part of Wright's tap-side-of-nose "Cornetto Trilogy". This is my movie, while Hot Fuzz is Marmy's movie, if we can claim ownership.

The season has been a bit ragged, as we have been tired and distracted, so we broke a generally unwritten rule, in adding more rewatches into the mix. I mean, traditionally watching horror movies during the Halloween season always involved your favourite and even just before this blog began this series, we had plowed through all the "classics" during Halloween of years previous. Rambling way to say, we might end the season with a handful of our previously seen favs, not yet written about.

Shaun's (Simon Pegg, Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One) a bit of a cockup, working a dead-end job, living with two old friends, only one of whom is paying rent. He does the same thing every day, every weekend and his girlfriend Liz (Kate Ashfield, Byzantium) is getting sick of it. He kind of likes his life, but is also kind of just stuck with it. So, she breaks up with him and as fate would have it, its on the night of the zombie apocalypse. Like many of the genre, its happening in the background, on the telly, but everyone is too caught up in their own drama to pay attention. Shaun doesn't even notice when the regulars in the neighbourhood are either gone or shambling.

And then he's caught up in it, with two things in mind: save Liz, save his Mum.

Some day I would like to track back and watch the movies that set the tropes for the genre. Even Night of the Living Dead had it on the television in the background, but more the idea of gearing-up and going on a quest to find a secure place. The journey through the zombi-fied London suburb is strewn with obstacles and dangers, but finally motivated Shaun has it in him to prove to Liz that he can do this even if it ends up at the last place on Earth she wanted to go -- the Winchester Pub. But still, she cannot deny, it feels like a more secure location than Shaun's flat. Myself, I would suggested Liz's second of third floor flat but... Shaun doesn't know it well. They don't actually lose anyone until they are "safe" inside the pub, and it quickly goes from a slightly-buzzed safe to a shit-show very quickly, mainly because of personal drama. And it ends with only Liz and Shaun left alive.

Clever. So many cute and witty things, from the obvious to the thin. People on the bus look like zombies long before these are coughing & sneezing. As someone who rides the TTC pretty much every day, I can attest to that. And the line from Ed (Nick Frost, Tomb Raider), "We're coming to get you Barbara!" (a nod to Night of the Living Dead) always makes me chuckle. Of course, the best gag is Shaun's rag tag sloppy crew running into a mirror image group, full of capable (and recognizable ! Martin Freeman! Reece Shearsmith! Tamsin Greig! Matt Lucas! Jessica Hynes!) survivors. 

This movie is brains comfort food.

31 Days of Halloween: The Elixir

2025, Kimo Stamboel (Headshot) -- Netflix

Wouldn't be the season without at least one zombie movie.

A family patriarch is gathering his family at their home in a small village outside Jakarta, Indonesia. He is Sadimin (or Dimin; Donny Damara, Hotel Sakura), a greying widower who married Karina (Eva Celia, The Shadow Strays), his daughter Kenes' (Mikha Tambayong, Blood Curse) childhood best friend, which caused an irreparable rift between the two women. Kenes husband, whom she is also at odds with due to his infidelity, is there to finish a merger with Dimin's small but lucrative herbal supplement company. I guess herbal medicine is big there? Unfortunately Dimin's rushing to produce a new age defying concoction before his scientists have tested it thoroughly and downs a sample. Amazing, it takes decades off his appearance.

Except under an hour later, he dies in painful throes and is turned into a zombie, immediately attacking his family and staff. His staff succumb pretty quickly, while one grounds man who got sprayed in the face with blood drives off seeking medical help. He only gets as far as a large family gathering celebrating a circumcision (!!!), before he too succumbs to the zombie infection, slamming his car into the celebration crowd and immediately munching down on them. Thus the plague has begun.

Like most zombie that take place at the beginning of the plague, its about a small group fleeing the ravenous hordes of flesh eating dying and dead. There are the two young women, Kenes' husband & son and eventually another couple who they blunder into. The small village doesn't make for many secure buildings, so everyone ends up at the local police precinct where all but one cop have been eaten & transformed. How will they survive? Or more typically, who will survive.

The movie had two things going for it: a very very good special effects budget, and choosing to have the movie set absent of any "zombie" mythology at all, i.e. even the video game playing, crossbow building brother-in-law doesn't bring up zombie lore. The practical effects are pretty impressive here, and the drone shots of the running hordes along the narrow right angle streets between the rice fields in the lush, verdant rural village are incredible. CG or a cast of hundreds of extras? Hard to tell, which is a good thing. This movie treats its zombies as something of its own, their own gnashing teeth, their own twisted contortions and the panic stricken irrational responses of the survivors. These people have zero situational awareness, but they don't know they are in a zombie movie, so... In some ways, a little silly, but it takes itself seriously. 

Note: I watched this on my own, as seasonal filler, and even if Marmy had been interested in a zombie movie, and she isn't, this one would have immediately turned her off. It depicts the infection moving quite quickly through the body, visualized by a spread of holes in the flesh akin to those caused by parasites, giving a quick trypophobic reaction to even me, who is not bothered by it. It was gross; gross gross gross.

31 Days of Halloween: Quarantine

2008,  John Erick Dowdle (Devil) -- Netflix

This movie is a remake of the 2007 Spanish movie Rec by Jaume Balagueró & Paco Plaza, who also directed the sequel [Rec]². This movie is of the tradition of faithfully remaking a movie exactly as the first, but for American audiences, and set in the US.

I rewatched this as a filler for this year's "31 Days of Halloween" as there are always a few days we miss due to ... life. I am also tempted to rewatch the original, just because.

Found Footage movies usually have the conceit that we know everyone is dead. The footage is supposed to be recovered after they all die, or disappear. In this case, the "everyone is dead" comes preposed because the trailers had the final scene of the movie -- main character Angela Vidal (Jennifer Carpenter, Dexter) being dragged off into the darkness by an unknown assailant. 

The movie begins with her footage of the San Francisco firehall. She is one of those fluff reporters building a repertoire of feel-good stories, and this one is a ride-along with a local fire station. There is some lively banter, some flirting between her and a couple of handsome firefighters Fletcher (Jonathan Schaech, Takers) and Jake (Jay Hernandez, Magnum PI), and then the call comes. They tell her that most of their calls are paramedic in nature, and most of the firefighters are trained in medical first response. An elderly lady in an old apartment building has been making a godawful din and they have called police & paramedics. A bunch of tenants have been wakened, including the super. When the cops investigate, the aggressive old lady pounces on one of the cops and tears out his throat. Everyone panics, carrying the bleeding cop to the lobby floor. Not long after, Fletcher the firefighter comes plummeting from above, crashing into the lobby floor in a bloody, broken mess. When they try to exit the building to the waiting ambulance, they are halted by men with guns and the doors are locked. 

Remember, the entire introduction is via the camera man's viewpoint, and Angela's constant coaxing to get it all on camera. At this point, she isn't panicking, but everyone around her is. Full on chaotic panic from first responders & residents with only Jake doing his best to keep a level head. The super points out that there is an overhang with window access from his office, and maybe someone could escape from there, but before they can, spotlights and armed forces and a big plastic tarp is dropped. The are being sealed in, entirely. Soon power and phone are cut. They are trapped inside with whatever is going on. The old lady has been shot, as she has killed her housekeeper. The panic ramps up.

Some details are eked out as the movie progresses. One of the residents had a sick dog, and her husband brought it to the vet. Their daughter has a fever. Another resident shows signs of illness, frothing at the mouth. The injured cop and firefighter and both salivating really bad. A vet who lives in the building comments on that being signs of rabies, but rabies takes month to progress to that state, and by that time it is fatal. The CDC sends in bunny suited specialists to test Fletcher and the cop, but that doesn't end well. Yep, zombies or Infected, but aggressive and killers.

The movie is very very effective in keeping the tension high, like on the edge of a knife high. There are lots of people screaming at each other, emotions are ratcheted up to 11 and normally this just bugs me, but here it feels appropriate. Soon, the movie escalates from a group of people trying to figure out how to escape the building, to just fleeing and hiding, until its only Jake and Angela and Scott, the camera man. They flee to the penthouse apartment, rented by a man not seen in months. His is not an apartment, more a chaotic mess of a lab, an Angela cannot help herself but rifle through the notes, giving us hints of this man investigating some sort of ancient tribal virus, something horrific and violent. The movie ends with the camera light breaking, Scott is down, the nightvision filter is on and Angela is doing her best to hide from a gaunt creature that must be the tenant. And then, like he poster, she is dragged screaming off into the dark.

Being a faithful remake of the original, I do like this movie, but again recall liking the original better, but likely only due to it being my first exposure to the story, and my enjoyment of another country's vision of an infected zombie apocalypse emerging. The found footage nature is mostly effective, if not entirely realistic. At some point, someone would have just said "fuck this" and tosses the bulky camera, screwing the record of events.

1-1-1: Marvel Zombies

2025, 4 episodes - Disney+
Created by Brian Andrews and Zeb Wells

The What 100:In an alternate reality, a zombie plague has ravaged the earth. The survivors are few and the struggle grows increasingly dire. The zombies are not just mindless, hungering hordes, but being controlled by the Scarlet Witch. Despite seeking complete assimilation the witch has set her focus on Ms. Marvel Kamala Khan who seems to be more important than any other survivor, and not just because Kamala has the maguffin that may just cure the whole thing.

(1 Great) It's no secret that for many Avengers: Endgame was a definitive stopping point and that the MCU has largely been pointless excess since. The "Phase 4" expansion, introducing new characters across movies and television, and introducing new "grand arc" threads of the multiverse proved too much for not just much of the general audience, but also too much for Marvel Studios to replicate the success of the past.

But for all the wobbliness of Phases 4 and 5 (and the uncertainty of Phase 6) what has never failed the Marvel Cinematic Universe was great casting. Marvel Zombies, an animated series spinning out of an episode of the animated multiversal anthology What If?, puts a spotlight on all those great casting choices, starting with Iman Vellani, who has never been anything but spectacularly charming and delightful in the role of Kamala Khan. (Also, in recent years in the Marvel Comics, Ms. Marvel has been portrayed as one of the main survivors of many different possible apocalypses, so it's nice to see that into play here as well).

The series opens with Kamala, Hawkeye Kate Bishop (Hailee Steinfeld), and Riri Williams (Dominique Thorne) finding food and resources while dodging regular zombies as well as "turned" superheroes. They discover a Pym-particles-shrunken unit that may just be Earth's last hope at salvation and they meet the Blade Knight (a Blade-Moon Knight hybrid, designed to be Mahershala Ali's Blade-that-never-happened, but voiced by Todd Williams) who helps them on their journey to try and find a rocket that will get them into space. Along the way they meet Russian heroes Yelena Belova and Red Guardian (Florence Pugh and David Harbour) as well as Shang-Chi(Simu Liu), his friend Katie (Awkwafina), Jimmy Woo (Randall Park) and the silent assassin Death Dealer. They hitch a ride on the floating prison, the Raft, operated as a survivor's community by Baron Zemo (Rama Vallury subbing in for Daniel Bruhl) and John Walker (Wyatt Russell). Eventually they meet up with Spider-Man (Hudson Thames, voice mimicking Tom Holland) and head-in-a-jar Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) and make their way to New Asgard seeking the assistance of Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson).

I don't usually write so much plot in a 1-1-1 review, but this is just a super-stuffed four 20-ish-minute episodes that really explore the post-Endgame MCU, but in a very different capacity. It's all built out of Phase 4 -- so no She-Hulk, no Fantastic Four, no Thunderbolts, no Red Hulk -- but just looking at that superstar voice cast just showcases how stacked Phase 4 really was, and that's not even talking about Zombie Namor, or the setpiece of zombie Captain Marvel fighting Ikaris from The Eternals in a seemingly endless battle. This is a butcher looking to use the whole cow.

(1 Good) Animated movies and tv often struggles with creating action sequences that truly pop, mainly because in animation nothing is real or tangible, and often the animators are limited by time and budget (and sometimes technology) into how much effort they can put into a sequence to give it some physical weight. As well, you can do anything in animation, and sometimes that limitlessness means that there's no reference point and creating something out of nothing can lead to messy sequences that move awkwardly or don't feel human enough. Marvel Zombies does struggle with these problems at times and also overcomes them other times. As such there's some wildly thrilling sequences of heroes facing incredibly overwhelming odds against them, swarms of zombies, regular and superpowered, that just spell doom before them.

If there was any doubt that this would be a "soft" show because it's MCU and the MCU is for kids...well, it's not so soft. It's tepidly gory, but there's still gore, and the oppressiveness of this nihilistic scenario was still enough to give Lady Kent nightmares after only one episode.

But at least once per episode I couldn't help but react out loud, either in appreciation or shock or surprise as to something happening on screen. The Pymed-up zombies in the Shang-Chi flashback were astounding, as was the Captain Marvel/Ikarus backdrop, and the Blade Knight is such a fabulous extension of both Blade and Moon Knight (F. Murray Abraham returns to voice Khonshu). This whole series really impressed me...

(1 Bad) ...Except I don't really understand what game Wanda was playing. I don't really understand why Kamala was so important to her. Kind of the whole build-up of the series was around this confrontation between Kamala and Wanda and I don't think I understood the purpose of it.

META: Zombies, the took a little break for a while, but with 28 Years Later and Marvel Zombies they're back in the spotlight again. Let's hope this doesn't spark another zombie trend though, because zombies get overexposed and derivative real quick. 

I read the original Marvel Zombies mini-series when that debuted 20 years ago, and it was a gross, fun, funny romp through a po-ap Marvel Universe. But then the powers that be at Marvel started milking that property on a regular basis and I don't think I followed along past a few issues of Marvel Zombies 2 in 2007 which were really bad.

This was super fun, but it could have been a movie.

[Poster talk... the ten Marvel Zombies posters all feels pretty drab to me. there are ones that are show-focused which center largely around Scarlet Witch as the queen of the dead, and there are the parody posters mimicking The Avengers, or Ant-Man or Age of Ultron posters with the undead, even though Cap and Iron Man and most of the others aren't in the series in any meaningful way. they avoid altogether promoting the show with any of the Phase 4 characters, which I guess reflects how the studio thinks the audience feels about those characters, which is too bad, because I think these are some of the best MCU characters and deserve to be celebrated. gimme a Kamala poster, a Kate Bishop poster, a Blade Knight poster, a poster spotlighting the zombie Namor attack...so much cool shit happens in this series with great characters, that it's a real shame they focus more on looking back on many of these posters)

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): 28 Years Later

2025, Danny Boyle (Slumdog Millionaire) -- download

And even before I get my first paragraph into the stub post, the trailer for the follow-up movie, a sort of Pt 2 to this one, has arrived. I did not know they were going to do that. At least it lifts us from expectations of '28 Decades Later'.

My rewatch at the beginning of the year, and Kent's post about this movie.

I'm feeling a recappy coming on...

When last we left our spreading red map of an infographic, the Rage Virus, having jumped the Chunnel to the mainland, was taking over the world and.... record scritch... nope, the rest of the world beat it back. Like the Americans in the last movie, the rest of the world has survived, and unlike the Americans in the last movie, nobody came to the assistance of the UK, after the failed attempt at resettlement. They just quarantined the whole goddamn nation and let them die, infected and survivors alike.

A whole generation has past.

On the island of Lindisfarne, in northern England, near the Scottish border, on the east coast, a settlement of survivors ekes out a meagre life. The island is connected to the mainland by a tidal causeway providing protection against the mindless infected. Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Bullet Train) is taking Spike (Alfie Williams, A New Breed of Criminal), his 12 year old son to the mainland for his manhood ritual. Spike is younger than normal for this event, but Jamie is a bit of a overinflated ego on the whole matter. The idea is that if you go to the mainland, and don't come back in the alloted time, nobody is allowed to go find you. You died or got infected; that's it, end of story. Isla (Jodie Comer, The End We Start From), Spike's mother, spends her day in bed, suffering an unknown malady, likely neurological in nature, as she has lucid moments followed by ranting outbursts. Spike loves his mum; Jamie seems... burdened.

This is a hunting trip, but not for food. Spike is learning how to kill infected, and learn a bit about the past. They pass through the deforested land where the island cuts its wood, they see massively repopulated herds of deer, and they see the evolution of the infected. Unlike the second movie, where all died off, a new ecosystem seems to have formed, likely built on a slow depopulation cycle of survivors, infected and non-infected alike. They run into the obesely fat "slow-lows" who belly-crawl across the forest floor eating every living thing they come across: bugs, worms, etc. Their constant eating has made them... something else. Elsewhere in some sort of pack mentality, an "alpha" has risen, a massively muscled, bigger & less vulnerable to damage example. But Jamie and Spike are not there to investigate, but to ... run. Once they get an Alpha on their tail, the only thing to do is hide or flee. And flee back to the island they do, finally killing the Alpha on the causeway. Spike has survived his first trip, barely, and with the guilt of being utterly terrified almost every moment of it.

But Spike did learn one thing from his father while over there -- that there is a doctor, a man who survived all these years, a man with mainland medical knowledge. Spike, whose awareness of doctors and medicine is entirely mythical, thinks the man can help his mother, and so formulates a plan. He escapes with her and some meagre supplies, back to the mainland, to find this doctor and save his mother from whatever ails her. Jamie is not allowed to chase after.

What Spike finds first is the lone survivor of a capsized Swedish patrol boat. They were beset by an Alpha and despite superior weaponry & training all but one died horribly. This Alpha likes to pull people's heads off, along with a bit of spinal column -- his trophies. From this cocky mainlander Spike hears, but learns little, of a world of cell phones, and jobs, and videos, and parties and take-out food. The rest of the world has continued after the rage plague, carrying naught for the plight of the UK. 

They do find Dr. Kelson (Ralph Fiennes, The Menu), but not before losing the Swede, and gaining... a baby, from an infected mother, but one who bore an apparently uninfected child. Dr. Kelson has lived on solitude, on his own little island, one decorated with effigies to the dead -- massive towers of boiled, beach skulls & bones. In his own more than a little mad way he remembers the old world and all those who lost their lives. His quick examination of Isla tells him she has cancer, and doesn't likely have long left to live. To him, memories of the lost are as important as the living themselves, but really, that's all he has. 

Kelson leads Isla to an early and painless death. A new life has replaced her soon to end one. Spike climbs one of Kelson's towers to lovingly place his mother's skull upon the altar of memory. Instead of peace, they are attacked by the Alpha who has been dogging their trail. Spike does fight him off, saving Kelson, and leaves with the new baby. He leaves her, now named Isla for his mother, at the gate, with a note to his father, before returning to the mainland. Spike's journey is not over; he has yet to find meaning in his fruitless quest to save his mother, in continued existence, despite bringing new life to his island.

The movie comes to a close with Spike fleeing a pack of infected, only to be saved by a very very odd bunch of survivors. Dressed in track suits, bouncing about and cackling like baboons, these are the Jimmy's, surviving youth who follow a now grown young boy from the movie's preamble (no, I did not recap that). They invite Spike to join.

What the what? This almost-coda, doesn't give us any closure to this movie without much resolution. Like Spike, we are left wondering what was the point of it all, why introduce all this post-apocalypse world, why give us hints of memories of the past, but... leave it all hanging. The first two movies, more the first, successfully had endings, survivors getting away. Spike did get away, but the movie not being all about survival hinted that there should be more.

Oh, there was. In another movie.

This is an odd little/big movie. Its the most po-ap of the trilogy, the most packed with (new) world building, which always catches my eye. It is about survival, but its not. It has hints of beauty, but is mostly horror. The design of the movie, shot all with unsophisticated cameras, like iPhones and GoPro's and drones, is fascinating, but not sure it lent a whole lot to the experience. I liked what I got, but until I got that surprising exposure to the next movie I was not sure of the why of it all. Now, I am more than a little intrigued.

KWIF: 28 Years Later (+4)

 KWIF=Kent's Week in Film. One brand new movie and a lotta real old shit. Yes, stuff from the 90's is now real old.

This Week:

28 Years Later (2025, d. Danny Boyle - in theatre)
Earthquake (1974, d. Mark Robson - HollywoodSuite)
The Swimmer (1968, d. Frank Perry - HollywoodSuite)
Look Who's Talking (1989, d. Amy Heckerling - HollywoodSuite)
Sudden Death (1995, d. Peter Hyams - HollyWoodSuite)

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28 Weeks Later was my inauguration into the post-apocalyptic trope of "the worst thing about the end of the world are the other survivors". Ever since that film, any time I'm watching anything po-ap I've come to expect the worst out of the people we haven't met yet, the others alluded to off in the distance. It is, frankly, my least favourite part of po-ap, but also probably the most honest.  Zombies, aliens, natural disasters, giant/tiny monsters we can survive...but each other? We're showing ourselves Right.Now. we really can't do it, we can't learn a goddamn thing about peace and harmony and coexistence as long as there are people who want more than what others have and are willing to go to any extents to have it. But I digress.

So imagine my surprise when the spectre off in the distance is not what they are believed to be, and in the darkest of spaces we find humanity, and humanity not just caring about life, but caring about death. 

In 28 Years Later, the UK is closed off from the world and the survivors are left to the infected, and the infected are left to the survivors. Our protagonists Isla (Jodie Comer), Jamie (Aaron Taylor Johnson) and Spike (Alfie Williams) live in a busy, close-knit village on an island connected to mainland Scotland by a causeway. Tide goes out, one way in, one way out, tide comes in. Jamie is taking 12-year-old Spike to the mainland for his first hunt, a right of passage among the villagers. Isla suffers from an unknown malady and is only sporadically aware of the here and now. There is no medication and no doctors to aide her. So after a very tense hunt full of close calls, when Spike hears of a doctor, even one gone mad, out on the mainland, he takes Isla out by himself to get her care.

I'm skipping over plenty, but that's the glory of discovery in a film like this, where our protagonists (and the filmmakers, and us, the audience) have gotten to a certain comfort level with the setting, surroundings and threats... it's the unexpected, and scripter Garland and director Boyle have much up their sleeve in this regards.

This includes hints at the nature of the infected, survivor subcultures on the mainland, the status quo of the outside world, and a bookend that... well... let's just say there'll be a lot of discussion around it until the sequel comes.

I had no expectations when it came to 28 Years Later, so they were neither met, nor dashed. Boyle both impresses and frustrates with his choices in direction and editing, but more the former than the latter. His shots of wilderness (with cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle) are incredible, but his zombie frenzies, full of quick cuts and abstraction, are the weakest part of the film, and the style pulls me out more than enhances the chaos and scariness. 

Garland's script takes a turn that pleased me greatly, as I worried Jodie Comer's whole role was to be the frail, discombobulated matriarch whose whole purpose and contribution to the story is to motivate young Spike into rash action. I mean, it's a bigger role than just that, but doesn't exactly serve a nobler purpose (in a turn in Garland's script that displeased me only minorly).

But, that ending is bound to baffle, or even infuriate some, especially if you didn't know there's more on the way. Even if you did... I mean... I couldn't help but laugh at the absurdity of it, which, after nearly 2 hours of stone-faced severity in muted, grainy colours, to have this blast of pizzazz and vibrancy...it's jarring. It hearkens to British subcultures, nodding to the droogs of A Clockwork Orange and the Inglorious Basterds, and promises something quite different in the picture to come.

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The disaster movies were the superhero movies of the 70's. All spectacle, where big stars would grab their paycheque to entertain the masses with an eventful show of calamity and destruction. There are the ones with the lasting legacy, like The Towering Inferno, The Poseidon Adventure and Airport, and then there were the rest.

I don't think I had heard of Earthquake before this year (if I had, it definitely didn't stick in memory), the Charlton Heston-led production which attempts the same ensemble cast put though their paces through not dissimilar story beats in the aftermath of calamity. In this case, if it weren't evident, there's an earthquake in Los Angeles.

Of course, the first act is all about setting up our cast of characters whose personal drama don't really matter at all once the shit goes down. It's all just kind of about survival. Ol' Chuck plays an ex-football star with a trope-addled wife (Ava Gardner) one could only call "queen of the harpies". There's a young woman (Geneviève Bujold) with a pre-teen kid who Chuck likes to visit. The film plays it off as altruistic, Chuck helping the widow of a colleague, but his wife thinks he's having an affair.  

There's a good cop having a bad day (George Kennedy), the seismologists who, in Jaws-like fashion, warn the mayor of the earthquake, but refuses to sound the alarm, and there's a motorcycle stuntman (Richard Roundtree) and his team who are also here because Evel Knievel (only took me 3 tries to spell it correctly) was hot at the time. There's also a few other odds and sods, including a creepy grocery store manager and Lorne Greene playing Chuck's father-in-law (only 8 years older than him in Last Crusade fashion).

The earthquake kicks off the second act with a whole lotta miniatures, and Star Trek-caliber flopping about as the camera shakes and tilts and applies an in-camera distorting effect to make it look like buildings are wobbling. It's delightfully corny, but the titular earthquake is not the threat of the film... it's all the crumbling infrastructure, downed power lines, and, of course, the human component afterwards that are the real threat.

Earthquake is not a great movie, it's most definitely a product of its time, but it is tremendously entertaining. I loved all the creative effects and model work and set pieces and matte paintings. I also really appreciated how the filmmakers here really tried to think logically about what the threats would be in a post-earthquake scenario, and how normal people, not superheroes by any stretch, could work through their treacherous situations. In keeping with the formulae, not everyone comes out unscathed.  If only there were any real weight behind it all. The characters are so basic and average, you almost forget most of them are movie stars.

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When we first meet the titular Swimmer, Ned, he's running through the woods in his swim trunks... it's a 55 year old Burt Lancaster looking better than I ever did at my absolute fittest. He breaks through the clearing an dives into a pool. It's not Ned's pool, but he is also not an unwelcome guest, although he has missed the party by 8 hours or so. The hungover men love him, the hungover women love him even more, and Ned ably flirts with them all. He's far from home, but obsessed with pools and swimming and reckons he can "swim" home, backyard hopping from pool to pool.

As Ned progresses through his journey, hitting on anything with breasts along the way, it becomes clearer and clearer that Ned isn't right in the head. He's having some kind of existential crisis mixed with a nervous breakdown peppered with a psychotic episode.

The closer Ned gets to home, the more the real Ned comes to light. He's not that life of the party to those who had really gotten to know him, he's not the wonderful father he purports to be, and as a lothario he's left them wanting, but not wanting more Ned. He's a cad, a deadbeat, and probably broke.

The journey of The Swimmer is one of character discovery for the audience, the teasing out of information that paint the picture of the man, but leading to no decisive clarity as to what triggered Ned's break, and leaving dangling the question of "how did he get here?" (both in the physical and metaphorical sense).

It's at times a riveting journey, but also at times a tedious one. The film could easily shave 25 minutes of montages and kaleidescopic lollygagging and not be the lesser for it (it's s film padding out a short story and it shows). I have to imagine that Matt Weiner, creator of Mad Men is a huge fan of this film, as Ned's journey seems to have made the map that Don Draper would follow.

I never knew where The Swimmer was going. It opens with such jovial frivolity, that it seemed like it was just to be a simple lark of a movie, a real late-stage Rat Pack-style hangout film with good looking people in swim trunks having whatever kind of conversations people in the 1960's had. Instead it doglegs pretty sharply into uncomfortable and darker terrain that had me saying "nope!" out loud, only for the film to be fully aware of its impropriety. It is a fascinating film, one I knew nothing about as it played immediately after Earthquake (it self sort of a random find one evening) and so happy to have had the chance to watch it.  It's stuck in my mind more than almost any other film I've seen this year so far.

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My favourite film podcast, Blank Check, has been covering the films of Amy Heckerling the past two months. As is typical with me and Blank Check, I want to follow along, but if the films aren't readily available on the streaming services I have (or in my DVD binders), then I tend to fall off the "follow along" train pretty quickly. Fast Times at Ridgemont High is streaming nowhere at the moment, nor is Johnny Dangerously  (while National Lampoon's Euorpean Vacation seems to have just popped up on Crave, weeks after "the two friends" have ripped the movie a new one so I think I safely pass that one up)  Look Who's Talking and Look Who's Talking Too popped up on the cable package Hollywood Suite last weekend, and I couldn't set the PVR to record any faster.

I can't remember how many times I saw Look Who's Talking, but it seemed like a lot. I was pretty into Rebecca from Cheers at that time -- hot messy women were my thing as an adolescent -- but even so, this Kirstie Alley-starring vehicle about a woman who has a baby as a result of an affair with a married man was such a quintessential 1980's "chick flick", I really shouldn't have cared. But for that baby to have an inner monologue voiced by Bruce Willis, suddenly this "chick flick" was the comedy sensation of the decade, drawing in people from pretty much every age group.  I mean, can you believe the things Baby Mikey is thinking?

Honestly, it was a revolutionary concept at the time, one which very quickly got beaten into the ground with subsequent sequels, TV spin-offs, and other shows and movies and commercials pilfering the gimmick.

The reality is Look Who's Talking is a sort of charming film about a woman, Molly Jensen, becoming a single mother and struggling real hard at it, trying to date and find a dad for her baby (the wrong way to date), while she strikes up a weird alliance with a hairy taxi driver (John Travolta) who agrees to babysit for her so that he can use her address to set up his grandpa in a local care home. There's definite chemistry between them, but she doesn't see him as being a good baby daddy, even though he's awesome with kids. *Shrug*.

The fact that baby Mikey has his inner monologue said aloud it Willis' playfully wry cadence kind of gets in the way and undercuts the journey Molly is on by more than half. At least a third of Willis' interjections were jarring in their insertion and, since we've all long gotten over talking babies, not contributing anything of real merit to the plot or story.

It is a strangely personal films for Heckerling, who found herself pregnant as a result of an affair, and George Segal's character reflects Heckerling's frustration with her real-life baby daddy, and doesn't paint a very kind picture.

It really is a hard film to hate. It's bright and filmic with two leads who are the opposite of unappealing, but whatever it was about its gimmick that made it such a phenomenon in 1989 has mostly worn off.  My apathy towards this one has left me with zero desire to watch Look Who's Talking Too.

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Director Peter Hyams has not gotten a series on Blank Check, where they review directors' filmographies one film at a time, nor will he likely ever. He is a journeyman director, one who had a stable career for over 30 years, and he quietly made some of the sleepiest of sleeper cult hits during that time. Three of his films have been covered on the Quentin Tarantno/Roger Avery podcast Video Archives (Bustin', Narrow Margin and The Relic) all with largely favourable critiques, and they haven't even touched 2010, Outland, Capricorn One, Timecop or Sudden Death.

It's almost too easy to look at the cover of any 90's Jean-Claude Van Damme flick and snicker, at least just a little, but Sudden Death is probably the least JCVD-esque vehicle of all JCVD films. In what can only be called "Die Hard in a hockey arena", JCVD is playing a fire marshal at Pittsburgh's Civic Arena, and he's scored seats to the Penguins' Game 7 Stanley Cup final against the Chicago Blackhawks bringing his pre-teen son and younger daughter. In attendance at the game is the vice-president so security it high.  But not high enough.

A large, well prepared team of mercenaries have descended on the stadium and successfully taken the vice president hostage, murdering plenty along the way. A deeply complicated money transfer scheme is their aim, based on seized off-books reserves the US government has access to, and their leader, Joshua Foss (Powers Booth), will stop at nothing to coerce the VP into getting it for him, including blowing up the arena.

The surprising thing is that there's really only one lengthy choreographed fight sequences (between JCVD and a stuntwoman in the Penguins' mascot costume) that shows off JCVD's usual fighting prowess. In this, his fire Marshall isn't an ex-marine, or has a black belt in tae-kwon doe, he's just a scrappy person with a few power moves, but he still gets his ass beat up quite a bit.  Most of what JCVD is asked to do is look stressed and panicked as he tries to disarm bombs and figure out how to rescue his kids, all while a big-time hockey game goes on inside, and the Secret Service attempt to reign in control on the outside. Is it the best use of JCVD's talents (and butt)? No, but he serves it just fine.

It's all second-tier Die Hard stuff, but it's still really damn enjoyable. Booth may not have the same gravitas as Alan Rickman or Jeremy Irons, but you want a big bad on a budget the man can deliver.. He's absolutely vicious, and the death toll he and his team are responsible for is ridiculous. They really don't care (they even pull the trigger on a child at one point!).

Hyams and crew use the Civic Arena to its fullest. The arena sports a moon roof feature where a wedge of the roof retracts to reveal the night sky and fireworks.  It also is wide enough to, infamously, drop a helicopter into. There's such an energy added to the movie by having a hockey game going on in the middle of it, with the big roar of the crowd and the excitement of the goals being scored. It's a film taking its threat and its scenario seriously while also remembering to have fun with it (at one point JCVD needs to go out on the ice disguised as the Penguins' goalie, to which he keeps repeating "oh shit oh shit oh shit oh shit" as the play starts streaking towards him).  

I delighted in this movie. Hyams is such an ultra-competent director, he keeps the suspense suspenseful, the action actiony, and paired with JCVD manages to keep the protagonist of the film the underdog throughout.

Rewatch: 28 Days Later & 28 Weeks Later

2002, Danny Boyle (Shallow Grave) -- download
2007, Juan Carlos Fresnadillo (Damsel) -- download

Its been more than a decade since I last rewatched either of these movies. But the new one is coming out, and I wanted to remind myself. And also see how I felt about the groundbreaking first one. 

28 Days Later opens with a naked Jim (Cillian Murphy, Peaky Blinders) on the operating table in a hospital. Given he is not aware of any virus, I would imagine he's been hooked up to enough fluids to ride out the entire 28 days? Speculative Fiction always requires a certain amount of forgiveness as to how he would still be alive. But this opening, cribbed only a year later by The Walking Dead ("don't dead, open inside") comic, provides the opportunity to be exposed to an empty London. Well, mostly empty.

Technically it opens with the stupid eco kids ignoring the scientist warning them to not release the monkeys that they have infected with RAGE !!

The "reprieve" in this movie is terribly short. He gets to slurp a few cans of pop and is immediately introduced to a church full of dead bodies, and an infected priest, after which he is rescued and gets an explainer from a couple of crafty survivors -- Mark (Noah Huntley, Snow White and the Huntsman) and Selena (Naomie Harris, Skyfall). Mark dies not long after, cut into bits by a remorseless Selena, after getting bitten.

While fast zombies were not entirely new, nor were "not zombies at all" infected, this movie pulled them out of the B and Z grades into (almost?) mainstream movie focus. The existential dread of the hordes of shambling dead, never stopping, never falling down, was replaced by "OH SHIT RUN RUN RUN RUUUUUN !!" sheer terror. You would exhaust yourself, you would make mistakes, you were so easily infected, while they just came in numbers, not tiring, not easily hurt, a fallen one replaced by three more.

The movie flits from the terror of running to moments of safety and contemplation, even some levity. Despite all of England having fallen, the low budget lends itself to only the occasional crowd of the infected wandering the countryside. The survivors, who eventually include Frank (Brendan Gleeson, In Bruges) and his daughter Hannah, in Frank's trusty (and well stocked) cab, are given a destination, a goal, a light at the end of the tunnel, which no matter how tenuous, they have no choice but to cling to.

Of course, also cribbed by The Walking Dead, but nothing really new, the real challenge turns out to be other humans infected by nothing more than barbarism. They, soldiers camped out in a posh mansion, are thinking about more than just the next meal or surviving the incursions of the infected, but how they choose to deal with the future is far less than savoury. 

Did I find it as "ground breaking" as I did when I saw it in the cinema? No, not at all. It looks like a bad pirate copy. But its a solid story, a journey from A to B, from waking in fear, to finally sleeping with comfort and safety.

28 Weeks Later comes (initially) as a geeky contemplation of the backstory after the rage virus destroys the UK. They are just infected people and people have to eat, and despite us seeing the infected chomping down on necks, we never actually see them eating the people they attack. They either kill them and leave them lying, or infect them. Its more about the virus propagating itself, than nourishment. So then, the infected people will eventually starve, and die. After six months you can assume even the domino effect has burned itself out (a near dead infected bites a well-fed human creating a new cycle) combined with the severely reduced number of living people to actually infect, means ... they are all dead? 

The Americans assume as much, and having survived their own plague (the first movie mentions the virus appearing in NYC), they have come to London to setup a safe zone, and help repatriate British survivors who fled to the mainland. They still have to deal with the city full of dead bodies and the fear of someone being infected always looms, so the entire "safe zone" is one big armed camp full of check points, safety doors, rooftop snipers, patrolling helicopters, etc.

Our main characters come from a refugee camp in Spain, to the Isle of Dogs in London, isolated from the rest of the city by water and guarded bridges. There are homes, beds, food, clothing, water and electricity. They are Tammy (Imogen Poots, Green Room) and Andy (Mackintosh Muggleton [now THAT is a name], Salem Witch Doll), the children of Don (Robert Carlyle, Ravenous), a facilities manager in this area. The movie opened with Don hiding out with his wife and other survivors in a countryside house, until it falls, and a cowardly Don runs, instead of defending his wife. He carries the guilt of what he did, but does not admit to his children on how their mother died.

Buuuuut, if all the infected are dead, how can this be a sequel? We need the running and chasing! Oh, we have possibilities, like Dr. Scarlet (Rose Byrne, Insidious), an American doctor studying the disease and the measures the US army is putting in place. Don't they always have vials of infected blood stored badly for accidental exposure? No matter, what happens is more insidious. Don's wife Alice (Catherine McCormack, Braveheart) did not die; she was bitten but had natural immunity, and is now a carrier -- a half-mad, starving carrier when they find her. And when her husband comes to see her, barely believing what he is seeing, desperate for forgiveness, she gives him the kiss he wants. We think she knows exactly what she is doing, as seconds later he turns and tears her throat out. Patient 0+1.

What follows is action thriller lunacy. The Americans have measures in place to deal with this, and they activate them. But the doors don't stay closed, the infected spread quickly, and Don seems to have preternatural intent, unlike the infected that came before him. To be honest, I was very annoyed how easily the American security measures fell. They herd all the survivors, some 15000 of them, into ... rooms. They would have probably done better letting them shelter in place while securing the doors to the towers the residents lived in. Or at least started by making stronger doors protected by more soldiers. No matter, all Hell breaks loose and not long after The General (Idris Elba, Luther) issues "code red", i.e. fuck it, kill em all -- infected, survivors, anyone on the ground. Oh, that didn't work either. Fuck it, just firebomb the entire fucking island. Oh, and gas the surrounding city, just to make sure.

Meanwhile, Don's wife is dead, Don is a monster, and his kids are being protected by Dr. Scarlett who has realized the kids might carry the same natural immunity as their mother. And Random Soldier Doyle (Jeremy Renner, Hawkeye) has decided the "kill em all" order is bad, and protects the small group as they escape the city. I know that Robert Carlyle was the Named Name for this movie, and they need him on camera as much as possible, but his Lone Infected act is just ... odd, and never explained. Eventually he catches up to his kids, reasons unknown, probably just Angry Dad Syndrome, and that weeds the survivors down to just the kids... who do escape, much to the detriment of the rest of the world.

Don't get me wrong, the action lunacy is well done. Its non-stop tension and terrible and tragic. But I would have preferred if they had double-down-ed on the geeky backstory contemplation. They could have maintained the "investigate the immunity" concept, highlighted how even the best security measures could be bypassed by foolish behaviour, had The General have emotional reactions to seeing his best laid plans fail, give hints as to why Don was an entirely new breed of raging monster, dealt more with the conflict between "protect the world" vs "save the innocent". Instead, they just all ran in terror and tore everything down.

Obviously, in that we are getting a 28 Years Later movie, the "wait out the starvation effect" factor becomes less reliable. And while it could be just a "the UK was abandoned entirely while the rest of the world recovered", I suspect the movie will be true post-apocalypse, the virus having finally reached everywhere and all measures failing and now.... a few struggling pockets of "civilization". But we know how people treat each other when things are at their worst, don't we?

Kent's recent post about it.

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Apocalypse Z: The Beginning of the End

2024, Carles Torres (Pet) -- Amazon

Despite not having any evidence to such, I want to say this movie was released because of the trailers for 28 Years Later appearing, with such impactful tension. Not because this movie has the same level of tension or gravitas, but merely because in the world of "zombie" sub-genres, these two share a world. Not literally, just that both "plagues" are people infected with a rage virus. To be clear(er), this is not a movie about the dead rising or walking or shambling. This is about a pandemic that quickly infects people and changes them into running, screaming, biting, tearing, eating monsters.

Oh, and its set just before Xmas, so if I had felt so compelled, I might have included it in the Xmas Leftovers.

So, just before Xmas in Spain, Manel (Francisco Ortiz, Amar es para siempre) is driving home from his sister's place, with his GF, and crashes his car -- she dies. One year later he is a mess, so much so that he just ignores all the news going on about the emerging pandemic. Via said news in the background, and over video call arguments with his sister, we see the pandemic go from "its in Russia" to Spain closing its borders to "shit, its here too". His sister and family, with ties to the government, are evacuated the the Canary Islands and she makes her brother promise to not be sent to any quarantine zones -- "shelter in place" is his best option. Not long after, he and his cat Lúculo are the only ones in his neighbourhood.

My favourite zombie survival movies give me this brief period of reprieve where the survivor can hide away in their home. As long as the water continues to flow, the automated power plants provide some electricity and you have plenty of food stored away, you can go ... for a while. Survival is counted in days, weeks and rarely looks to the future, nor to the reasons as to why you are fighting to survive. I guess, no matter how bleak it is, we always expect things to just "blow over" eventually. Manel has all this, and an additional boon of a side-gig in the solar power business. Even when the power goes down, he can still charge his phone.

Eventually he starts running out of the essentials and has to go outside. And eventually he realizes he has to leave the whole area. Via an elderly neighbour he finds, he learns of boats leaving the coast, bound for the Canaries. While he hasn't heard from his sister, as even with power, cell towers have died, he believes her to be safe. But now he has to find his way to the coast, with his cat.

Zombie flicks are almost always road movies. There are always obstacles and ever present danger, but the point is to get from A to B where maybe there is something better. We know that the 'maybe' is always tenuous. Zombie plagues tell us that, really, there is no where safe. Manel tries to escape by water, but his boat breaks down. He is picked up by Russian sailors, but learns they are more dangerous than the zombies and escapes with one of the less-evil sailors when Manel tells him he knows where a helicopter will be, and the Russian Ukrainian knows how to fly it. I am not sure why Manel thinks the helicopter will just be there, unused, just waiting for them to find it, but sure.... a lot of the movie has Manel acting on faith, an automated belief that safety is around the next corner.

Of course, there are more people at the hospital, and LOTS of zombies (hospital = infected people) and the Russians have followed them... for revenge? They have to make their way quietly through the maze of an abandoned hospital, to the miraculously still-there helicopter, through the hordes, and avoid the Russians. It felt like the end-scenario for a video game, the final chapter in a game where getting onto the chopper precedes the closing credits. And, actually, my favourite zombie game, Left 4 Dead from 2008, had this exact scenario --- get through a hospital, to the roof, to be picked up by a helicopter.

Unfortunately, as the chopper flies over open water, packed with kids, Manel's phone finally connects and.... "DON'T COME TO THE CANARIES !!" The End.

They likely won't get their sequel, but for a generic zombie flick, it was pretty solid. Like in 28 Days Later, they find the balance between survival and the journey and the tension-terror of fighting off the zombies. Most of the thrilling escapades feel plausible, and there is just enough background behind Manel to actually root for him. But it's no Danny Boyle movie. We rewatched that last night and it feels so much like the template for movies, and video games, to come. Obviously this one. Boyle stripped his movie down to the bones, especially with the camera work. The movies that follow will always be bigger, brighter and attempting more, but I hope that this one stands out, in the world of Spanish zombie movies.

31 Days of Halloween: Outside

2024, Carlo Ledesma -- Netflix

Full disclose; watching after October, but inserting into the empty spots, just because.

There is an aspect of zombie flicks that I would say started when The Walking Dead kicked off 14 years ago, in that the story is more about the humans than about the zombies, or the apocalypse, or more facetiously, "the humans are the real monsters here...." I think I have distinctively tired of that aspect.

Fourteen years ago I was fully immersed in the zombie survival story, in The Walking Dead, where we found out Rick and his wife Lori were having marital issues, and she ended up sleeping with Rick's best friend, and deputy, Shane. I mean, yeah they all thought Rick was dead, but... it was For the Drama. These days, this drama just tires me out.

I get it, you often write in interpersonal disputes to round out the characters, to make them more relatable, make them more human so they don't end up just being cardboard zombie killing machines. But I tire quickly when the human drama overshadows the survival story. Maybe its just me now, but I don't need to hear about your issues.

The movie opens with a family escaping an existing zombie apocalypse. The van they are riding in is damaged and covered in filth, dirty bloody handprints covering it all over, showing what they have come through to get here. The "here" is the family hacienda, the home where the parents of Francis (Sid Lucero, The Fake Life) live(d), a place he hasn't been to in decades because his father was an abusive asshole. After dispatching his zombified mother and finding his father dead from a self-inflicted bullet, Francis moves his family in.

Of note, this is a movie from the Philippines and the family home is a familiar character from other South Asian movies, what I can only think is a colonialist style of large home. I could probably find at least 3 other South Asian horror movies on Netflix right now that have such a house dominating the story. I suppose that is no more prevalent than Gothic Victorian Mansions playing the part of haunted houses in all American horror movies from an era. I wonder when they will be supplanted by McMansions from the last twenty years....

But all is not right in the little family. Iris (Beauty Gonzalez, Stolen Life), the mother, is more than a little shell shocked, and its not just from the zombies. Apparently she and her husband were already on the outs before people started eating each other. Francis owed a lot of people a lot of money, and it felt like it had only recently been revealed that she slept with his brother at least 15 years prior and Francis's oldest son Josh was actually his brother's child. Francis has only dragged the family to this last place he would ever go due to some desperate attempt to show control over his family situation. And control is all he really wants. They could have gone to a safe zone but he chose otherwise.

I would have been fine if this was established as character development, but this becomes the whole fucking movie. This movie is less about the zombies and more about Francis unravelling. And sure, if you want a movie about the drama of a man coming undone as the cycle of abuse repeats itself, then at least do it well. I am so tired of the cliches of a "weak man" being depicted as the one wearing glasses and a little chubby, while his more handsome, six-packed, perfect-haired brother is the "strong one".

Eventually the movie plays up to a point where Francis starts stopping his family from going "outside", not because there are zombies out there, but because freedom is out there. None of it makes sense; if no one goes outside, then there is no water, no food and death soon to come. But I guess that is supposed to be part of his psychosis?

The movie does try to redeem Francis, the external forces (the zombies) forcing him to actually protect his family instead of abusing them, but too little, too late and there is no way anyone was actually going to have sympathy for him.

But what about the zombies? At least the little part they played had some interesting ideas. They are not actually the undead, just infected people who ignore bodily harm as much as the walking dead do, but Iris does point out that they are dying off, all on their own, the bodies breaking down. They also have a little affectation that has shown up in a few zombie movies over the last years, in that their brains seem to be stuck in the last thing they were doing, the last utterances which they repeat over and over, full of anger and remorse, instead of guttural moaning. Still, not enough to redeem the movie anymore than Francis was.

Of note: because of the poster I swore the movie was going to be about the family retreating to a bunker where things would get worse, but I see now that was just a depiction of the basement, oddly ornate, where Francis was abused by his father as a child.

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Final Cut

2022, Michel Hazanavicius (The Artist) -- download

Or Coupez!

When I was writing the post about The Animal Kingdom, I noticed that Duris, the star, was in the French remake of One Cut of the Dead, and also a survival movie I had meant to download, called A Breath Away.

Nothing like benefiting from a terrible memory, in that I had the same reaction to the opening of this movie as I did to the original, i.e. is it supposed to be this bad? Was that intentional? What the fuck are they going on about? Is this ... an art film zombie movie?

And then the movie ends, and then the movie really begins.

I have done work as an extra in the distant past. Its fun to see behind the scenes, but Big Hollywood Productions are massive, so your peek is very minimal. I have also more recently done a few scenes in a few shorts, where the BTS (not the Korean Boy Band, as I always first think) is much more tangible. With lower budgets, you see they often have to just make-do, live with results, and pivot a lot, given unforeseen circumstances.

This is the crux of the core of the heart this movie (in for a penny, in for a pound). The lead actor and actress are in a car accident on the way to the set, so Rémi (Romain Duris, Eiffel), the director, a man more comfortable with doing "cheap & cheerful" then anything involving producer meddling and "staying faithful to the script", and his wife Nadia (Bérénice Bejo, Under Paris) step into the roles. Another lead, with a drinking problem, accidentally has an expensive bottle of Japanese Whiskey sent to his dressing room. Another actor, who has a long, complicated rider, is really not kidding when he says he can only drink the water he brought with him. The recognizable actor is constantly trying to add gravitas to his role as a zombie. Nadia, who had once been an actor but had to step away because she takes method acting to the n-th level, begins getting far too into her role. Yeah, shit is unexpected, and Rémi is constantly altering the production, on the fly, with whatever and whomever is at hand, in order to just complete the live event.

Suddenly all  the fucking weird shit you see on camera, from the first part of the movie, make more sense.... kind of.  Rémi, is under a lot of pressure from his own usually supportive producer (lots of money on the line) and the Japanese bankroll who have brought this script, which is to be made, explicitly, live, unedited, on the launch of the French version of a Japanese network dedicated to B and Z grade schlock horror, which of course the Japanese excel at. They won't even let him change character names leading to me saying, during the first part of the movie, "Wait, is this movie based word-for-word on the script of the original movie ?!?!" I was ... kind of right? But, oh my, the fun that is to be had as all  the weird camera angles, confusing action, confounding plot & dialogue is all explained away as part of a production that falls apart as we watch it, live.

Without exposure to the original Japanese movie (the real movie, not the one we are watching being made), this would have been an incredible romp. Even so, as a French Remake of something I loved so much, this was pretty good.

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): I Am a Hero

2015,  Shinsuke Sato (Gantz) -- download

This was one in the Halloween list from a few years ago, because zombies are always Halloween to me, even when they are just action movies.

I Am a Hero is based on a manga about an unsatisfied manga artist (assistant; the assistant part is important to the unsatisfied bit) who feels like an NPC in his own life, fantasizes about being the hero (with his trusty sport-shotgun; the SPORT is important to the trusty-shotgun bit) and is suddenly thrust into the role, when an actual zombie outbreak happens. The Mary Sue aspect of the original manga, and the movie, is unmistakeable and there must be an equal number of indie (American style) comics about comic book makers thrust into fantastical situations. 

If the goal of the movie is to just fulfill the expected plot, then it does so admirably, alas not doing anything new or even interesting with the genre. And it doesn't even follow the more extreme, more base aspects of the manga, only touching upon them -- no giant hivemind kaiju sized creatures, no sex with teenage girls.

Hideo Suzuki (meaning hero, as he stresses) is said comic book artist, spending all day drawing lines for background in manga, while unsuccessfully pitching his own comic, and disappointing his girlfriend. It is notable that he is in his mid-30s, long after he either needs to be successful or start finding a "real job". They live in one of those cliche small Japanese apartments that would fit into my living room. Then a disease starts spreading, following the format of zombie movies, in that its on the news and everyone postulates but either ignores it or denies its happening, like our pandemic ran. Until its too late and Hideo's coworkers and girlfriend are trying to eat him.

The news tells him that high altitude can protect against the virus so he and his shotgun head off. He rescues a schoolgirl Hiromi, actually acting heroically when he doesn't think about it, but quickly finds out she is bitten; but by a baby, so the blood borne disease is taking its time. They walk for days, if not weeks, her not getting better nor worse, definitely not in the eating-his-brains category. Eventually they end up at a mall where a group of survivors are hiding out on the roof, occasionally venturing out for food and supplies.

Like most zombie movie collectives, a Lord of the Flies effect has taken hold and the more sociopathic leaders are in control. When they find out about Hiromi they want to kill her, and after a quick scuffle where a less than courageous Hideo loses his shotgun, they shoot her in the head with a crossbow. While they are out on a raid of a food store locker room, all the shit hits the fan, and Hideo ends up defending the last few survivors, playing out what must exceed even the fantasies in his head, a scene right out of video game, shooting up to a 100 undead monsters in the head, in explosive gore.

The end. The hero.

Again, all went on as expected. This was more a live-action movie for the fans of the manga, giving them just enough to... be satisfied? It was well enough done, by a director familiar with adapting materials, but it neither really, truly explored the "what it means to truly be a hero" nor went to any great extremes of Japanese zombie fiction. A kaiju sized monster might have made it more fun.

KWIF: Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves (+3)

Kent's Week in Film is this: each week (or so) I have a spotlight movie which I write a longer thinkier piece about, and then whatever else I watched that week I do a quick little summary of my thoughts... just to speed things along. This entry covers the past two weeks, less my watching of the Scream series which will get its own entry.

This week:
Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves - 2023, d. John Francis Daly & Jonathan Goldstein - In Theatre
Marcel, the Shell With Shoes On - 2022, d. Dean Fleischer - Crave
28 Weeks Later - 2008, d. Juan Carlos Fresnadillo- Disney+/Star
Dressed to Kill - 1980, d. Brian Di Palma - Criterion Channel

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Of all the things I'm nerdy about, D&D is not one of them. I've RPGed a time or three, but I'm by no means invested in the property. Hell, fantasy, in general, is not a genre I particularly even like....something about magic having basically no rules and being able to do anything is ever a barrier. Here, Justice Smith's awkward and sometimes ineffectual mage, Simon, literally has a retort about the fact that there are rules and magic can't just do anything. I appreciated the sentiment, but magic kinda just does what ever it wants in this film, ultimately. Yet, the magic here, like in the game, is just one facet of the world. It's not all about magic. There be monsters, beasts, creatures, dragons, critters...different races and classes, all of which just coexist in this realm without excessive exposition (if any at all).

D&D:Honor Among Thieves starts by introducing us to a pair of partners in crime -- Chris Pine's bard, Edgin, and Michelle Rodriguez's latest badass character, the barbarian Holga -- on the date of their fantasy-realm-equivalent of a parole hearing. Edgin has the gift of gab, regaling the parole board with his backstory and how he and Holga came to be in their prison. Holga is far more stoic (having already proven herself an ace fighter) and chimes in bluntly when she needs to. This does follow, quite precisely, the show-don't-tell rule as it cuts back and forth between enactment and retelling in an amusing manner (almost too amusing, threatening to overpower even the mildest sense of drama, but the writer-directors know quite what they're doing). It's a deft move, repeated multiple times in the movie, characters breaking into story, cutting to the flashback, all evoking the effect of a player character providing other players around the table top background info on either the character or the campaign.

Edgin has a daughter, Kira (Chloe Coleman), to return to but she's ostensibly been raised and brainwashed by his ex-band-of-thieves-mate Forge, who has reached lofty status after helping send Edgin and Holga to prison. He's also collaborating with a red wizard, Sofina (Daisy Head with a bald head) the worst of the worst denizens of the land, and has the fugitives taken away. They escape, enlist the help of their mate Simon, and a tiefling (sp) Doric (Sophia Lillis) before formulating a plan to rob Forge and get Kira back.

It all leads to one adventurous sequence and/or fantastical sequence after the next which then leads them to a remarkably subdued but ridiculously entertaining paladin in the very charming and handsome form of Rege-Jean Page. If there was a doubt as to Page's on-screen charisma, consider it quashed. He literally steals the show for the second act (and he's a lawful good, not a thief!).

Every new adventure and every twist in the journey is a delight. I found myself enjoying the film increasingly more and more as it progressed, and where I may have questioned the tonal balance early on, it's just crackling with energy and parading forward to the end to the point that I could only enjoy the ride, no questions. By the time the credits rolled, I felt good...like...invigorated and satisfied. As much as I can enjoy a Marvel, leaving the viewer at the end with a tease for the future sometimes just leaves the viewer puzzled or tantilized in an unsatisfying way. Here, the film, the journey, the story is a complete one and it feels damn good to have that sense of completeness. Nothing is left dangling. In this age of franchises, to have a done-in-one massive picture is such a rarity (and for it to be so entertaining is a blessing).

I liked the cast, but I loved the characters. Each gets their shining moment and their own arc, and most are pretty satisfying. There's a seeming kismet to this assembly, everyone working so perfectly in their role. Lillis manages to be both slight and imposing, Pine is charismatic and self aware, while Rodriguez negotiates being the tough badass and having a deep sense of love for people that isn't buried and doesn't need to be drawn out, she wears both quite ably at the same time. Smith, as he did so adeptly in Sharper, manages to be appealingly vulnerable, and then grow into his strength in a captivating way. Grant, for his part, is just playing his Paddington 2 role again, just in a different setting, and hey, if it works, why not?

John Francis Daly, once the D&D nerd on Freaks and Geeks, has fulfilled his destiny in creating an unbelievably enjoyable motion picture out of a property where others have tried and failed so miserably. With long time collaborator Jonathan Goldstein, they've topped any of their prior directorial efforts (the strongest next contender being Game Night a distant second) and this screenplay rivals their Spider-Man: Homecoming (one of the MCU's best). Just...awesome. Love a geeks-make-good story.

If say another one of these does get greenlit, as much as I love this group of characters, I hope Daly and Goldstein create a whole new roster of players to send out on a new adventure.

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I first heard about "Marcel, the shell with shoes on". When I started really getting to know Jenny Slate as a comedic performer (I recalled her from her short stint at SNL [where she said "Fuck" live on TV back when people still gave a shit if you said "fuck" live on TV], but she started to pop in her small roles on shows like Parks and Recreation, before really popping in Kroll Show and starring in the indie angel factory romcom Obvious Child). I looked into it briefly, but it didn't strike in any particular way. But it was a viral hit in the fledgling days of YouTube, and people really dug it.  Slate made only three videos, each under 4 minutes, with Dean Fleischer-Camp directing and animating, the last one appearing in 2014, but there was obviously enough cache behind the series to get both a kids book and a feature film made. 

The feature was critically praised but not a breakout success by any means. Having finally caught up with it, I can see why. It's a quiet, bizarre little movie about a little creature and the guy who films him. The people who own the home in which Marcel lives have split up and vacated the property, turning it into a short-term rental (AirBnB-style), and in the process of leaving accidentally took most of Marcel's family with them, save for his Nana (Isabella Rossellini). Dean (largely an off-screen/behind-the-camera/question-asking persona, having just gone through a break up himself), is renting the place and has discovered Marcel, and begins filming him and posting about him online, leading to a bit of a Marcel craze, that makes both Marcel and Dean quite uncomfortable.

If there's a journey, it's much more about Dean, primarily an off-screen persona, than Marcel. Marcel is an open book, talks about anything, where as Dean is closed off and wants the detachment of the lens to keep a barrier between him and the world. Marcel's sensibility is a trifecta of naivety, deep empathy, and zen-like acceptance for what is, and Marcel's point of view begins to affect Dean's world view but in really, really small ways. Nothing excessively large happens in this film. Marcel learns about the Internet and gets invited to be on 60 Minutes (the Shells' favourite show) and also takes a ride in Dean's car for a first trip into a much larger, mind-blowing world.  

It's a sweet, delicate film that feels like it could just fall over and shatter at any moment, but it's also so blazingly different from pretty much any other all-ages entertainment out there, that it's hard not to get charmed by its uniqueness, even if I'm still not stricken with it.

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I'm not a zombie or horror guy, but I was a Danny Boyle for a long time so 28 Days Later was sort of a thing for me. It was an awakening of my mid-20s self to understanding that I could tolerate horror in a way I hadn't before.  I liked the film, a lot.  I saw 28 Weeks Later in the theatre, and found it to be more action-oriented, but also kind of nerdier in its examination of a kind of post-zombie contagion England. 

Where 28 Days Later started in media res, this one manages to both be a sequel and a new beginning, kickstarting a brand new wave of the pandemic, ultimately resulting in a fairly good follow-up. In a COVID-is-our-reality existence, but effectively demonstrates how a highly transmissible virus can spiral out of control, and even the most extreme efforts to contain it appear futile. It's fucking bleak.

The rage virus is still the most intense and scary of the "zombie" plagues, and I'm absolutely shocked that after, like, 10+ years of The Walking Dead, there still hasn't been another "28 X Later" sequel, or prequel.  You'd think Fox would just crank these things out. But no. There's still talk from Boyle and Alex Garland about making another one. They really should.

I'm not keen on the handheld style of filmmaking here from Fresnadillo, but it wares on me less the more the film goes on.  It's got a phenomenal ahead-of-its time cast with Imogen Poots, Rose Byrne, Jeremy Renner, Idris Elba, Harold Parrineau, and Robert Carlyle. It's just straight up solid.  I recall Renner really standing out when watching this in the theatre in 2008, like I remember distinctly thinking "should I know him?"  The Hurt Locker was only a year later and then he would be Hawkeye... coulda used him in the zombie apocalypse.... Oh wait, they did.

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I probably shouldn't hold an 80's film up to modern standards of representation of mental health and gender identity, but it's hard not to. As it stands, Dressed to Kill could have been a lot worse, but it also doesn't escape Trans panic. The film's murderous character is never formally described as having a split personality, (which they clearly do), and the identities are then conflated with being transsexual rather than a mental health crisis, which sends a pretty awful message.

It was a recommendation from the Tarantin/Avery podcast "Video Archives", as part of their "American Giallo" profile. As a production, it's a gauzy yet stylish movie, that goes big and hard on the melodrama, sometimes to ludicrous excess, and manages more than a few effectively tense sequences. It does fit a giallo mold.

I'm not certain any of the performances in this film are particularly good...Angie Dickinson seems uncertain of her provocative, outwardly sexual role (looking far more fetching in that white dress than masturbating nude in the shower), while Nancy Allen never quite sells her toughness as the savvy sex worker. Michael Caine seems a little bored (sometimes works, sometimes doesn't), while Keith Gordon's gadget-wiz teen isn't really given time to develop a personality. Dennis Franz was born to play a douchebag cop, but it borders on parody here.

It all comes together to form a compellingly bizarre film that is at once in confident filmmaking hands, in a genre DiPalma seems really tapped into, but also working with subject matter(s) way out of their frame of reference.