Warm Bodies Review

                            
                             

            Warm Bodies tries to do something that I feel pretty safe in saying has never been done in a movie before.  They take the usual run of the mill zombie movie and basically turn it into a romantic comedy.  This is a concept that really shouldn’t work but against all odds it does thanks to a witty script, likeable lead characters and a talented comedic director in Jonathan Levine (50/50). 

            In the aftermath of a zombie apocalypse, a zombie simply named R (Nicholas Hoult) spends the majority of his days walking around an abandoned airport and sometimes hanging out with his best friend M (Rob Corddry).  One day R, M, and several other zombies decide to take a trip into the nearby city in search of some new victims to eat.  Eventually, they find a group of humans led by Perry (Dave Franco) and his girlfriend Julie (Teresa Palmer) who are out searching for medical supplies.  R quickly kills Perry and starts eating his brains which gives R all of Perry’s thoughts and memories.  Eating Perry’s brains also causes R to instantly fall in love with Julie and decides to rescue her from the wrath of the other zombies instead of killing her.  In an effort to spend more time with Julie, R convinces her to hide out in the abandoned airplane he lives in.  As the two grow closer, R slowly becomes more and more human which also begins to rub off on his fellow zombies including M and it isn’t long before Julie begins falling for R as well. 

            While R and Julie have some nice chemistry as the two star crossed lovers, I still thought their romance moved unrealistically fast.  Julie reacts to Perry’s death not so much with sadness but with a rather disturbing indifference.  Whenever anybody tries to console her over the death of her long term boyfriend she mostly shrugs it off with the same amount of emotion as someone who forgot to pay their water bill.  Once he’s dead she moves on from it quicker than a trophy wife in one of those Lifetime movies.  Afterward she seems to warm up to the idea of getting into a relationship with a dead guy alarmingly fast, not even really caring that much when R eventually admits that he was the one who killed Perry.  I have to admit though that despite my gripes over the speed of which their relationship progresses Hoult and Palmer both work off each other well enough that I was willing to overlook it for the most part.    

            I have to admit that even though I’m not really a fan of Rob Corddry, his role as the zombie M is easily the best part of the movie.  Besides getting the best one-liners, even as a zombie he proves to be the best actor here (Hoult acts a little too human to be a truly believable zombie and John Malkovich goes into default mode by chewing the scenery).  When he’s a zombie I find him believable as a zombie and when he begins to turn back into a human I find him believable as a human.       

            The idea alone of Warm Bodies borders on completely ridiculous but Levine more than manages to pull it off.  He has proven before with 50/50 that he knows how to balance comedy and drama and here he offers more of the same.  He makes R sympathetic without making him pitiful and he makes Julie vulnerable without making her helpless.  Most of all he seems to acknowledge that their romance is weird but he somehow keeps it from being creepy.

            Despite the odd premise, clever writing and excellent directing elevates Warm Bodies into a surprisingly entertaining and funny film. 

            Grade: B+

World War Z Review

                          

            For about a year now I have been expecting World War Z to get released only to fall flat on its face.  It had all the makings of a box-office bomb.  The troubles with its production have been well documented (and not to mention mocked) after going through multiple rewrites, budget overages, and several weeks of reshoots leading to their already large production budget to almost double by the time it was over.  I had been preparing myself for a stinker of Waterworld proportions.  The whole time I was following this I couldn’t help but feel sorry for Brad Pitt (who over the years has proven to be a surprisingly good actor) and Max Brooks the author of the book World War Z (which I find to be an excellent read for any zombie lover).  In short, I was pretty much expecting this to suck.  Then I actually took the time to watch it.  While it’s not a masterpiece, World War Z proves to be a surprisingly solid movie. 

            I’m going to start by being blunt to the fans of the Max Brooks novel.  If you’re looking for a faithful adaption of the book, you will be greatly disappointed.  While the movie does indeed center around a zombie apocalypse the similarities more or less end there.  You might be asking yourselves “Well why did they even bother buying the movie rights if they were just going to make it into something completely different and unrecognizable anyway?”  Well, sadly I can’t help you there.  Instead, I urge you to let it go and simply enjoy the book for what it is (an excellent and unique piece of literature) and enjoy the movie for what it is (a good zombie/action movie).  While I admit I probably would’ve preferred they stay true to what Brooks had written, the movie shocked me by being a perfectly good story in its own right.

            When a mysterious zombie outbreak quickly overruns his hometown of Philadelphia, former U.N. investigator Gerry Lane (Brad Pitt) is recruited to investigate the cause of the outbreak which has already begun infecting people worldwide.  Gerry reluctantly agrees for the sake of his wife (Mireille Enos) and kids.  From there, his investigation takes him to a military base in South Korea, a quarantined Jerusalem, and a medical research facility in Wales. 

            Naturally in between all of the inevitable exposition there are the inevitable zombie attacks.  Some of the CGI zombies in the bigger scenes leave a bit to be desired but for the most part the action sequences are well executed.  Where World War Z really shines though is with the climax.  I won’t tell you what happens so that you have a chance to see for it for yourself.  I will say however, that I found it to be genuinely creepy and suspenseful.  As I was watching I got the feeling they trying to recreate the tone of The Walking Dead and mostly succeeded.   

While the epidemic does appear to have been spread worldwide, most of (if not all) the focus is centered on Gerry and his family and with that comes a double edged sword so to speak.  None of them are particularly interesting people which is only made worse by the fact that their character development is probably the weakest thing about the movie.  Luckily, however Pitt brought his A-game for this picture and has more than enough talent and charisma to make up for the script’s shortcomings. 

            While fans of the book may be dissatisfied by what’s on the screen, the movie has plenty to offer as well.

Grade: B

Man of Steel Review

                                   

I’m not going to lie; I’ve been a fan Superman all of my life.  To me, he will always be the gold standard of what every superhero should be.  What has made him such a great character over the years really has little to do with the number of superpowers he has (though admittedly it doesn’t hurt) but his unwavering moral compass and his strong sense of right and wrong.  Do to my said love of Superman, I probably ended up hyping myself for Man of Steel more than I have for any movie with the exception of the Harry Potter series.  However, despite my incredibly high expectations, for the most part Man of Steel did not disappoint. 

As anybody familiar with Superman’s (Henry Cavill) origin story might expect, the film opens on his home planet of Krypton which is on the brink of destruction.  Superman’s father Jor-El (Russell Crowe), resigned to his planet’s fate saves his infant son Kal-El by putting him in a rocket headed for Earth and infusing him with the planet’s codex in an effort to preserve their race.  Meanwhile, General Zod (Michael Shannon) in what he feels to be a last ditch effort to save what’s left of their planet attempts a coup and apprehend the codex that Jor-El had just taken.  His plan however, ultimately fails and shortly before the planet’s ultimate destruction, he and his co-conspirators are sentenced to the Kryptonian jail the Phantom Zone.  Young Kal-El eventually makes it to Earth where he is raised by his adoptive parents Jonathan (Kevin Costner) and Martha Kent (Diane Lane) in Smallville, Kansas and named Clark.  On a side note I have to say that in this version Jor-El is a total badass. 

The best thing about Man of Steel is also the movie’s kryptonite so to speak and that is the way the supporting characters are written.  Man of Steel shows not only how Clark is affected with trying to cope with his powers but possibly more importantly how it affects the lives of the people around him.  Perhaps the most obvious example of this is Clark’s adoptive father Jonathan Kent who in a major departure from most of his comic book portrayals (or any other medium for that matter) strongly discourages Clark from using his powers in public out of an understandable fear that the world will reject him.  By his own admission he is making things up as he goes along which is also understandable since both he and Clark are in rather uncharted territory.  

Superman’s perpetual love interest Lois Lane (Amy Adams) also goes through some significant changes in this version but in my opinion they are made for the better.  Most versions of Lois make the audience wonder if she will ever figure out Superman’s identity even though the only real effort he makes to disguise himself is by wearing a pair of glasses.  In this version, she thankfully proves to not be a complete idiot which is more than I can say for some of her other interpretations.  While on assignment in the Arctic for the Daily Planet she is rescued by Superman after being injured in a cave containing another Kryptonian spaceship.  She’s smart enough to realize that even though nobody may know exactly who he is, that this probably wasn’t the first time that he’s saved somebody using his powers.  She is able to quickly trace his origins back to his hometown of Smallville, and in the process Superman joins Batman and Green Lantern in the group of superheroes that are hilariously inept at keeping their identities secret.


As good as I find the development of Man of Steel’s secondary characters it leaves the picture with one significant drawback.  The problem with all of this is so much screen time is spent developing these characters that there’s not much room left to properly develop Superman himself.  The only aspect in which he is allowed to fully develop as a character is in his constant feelings of being isolated from the world.  Due to his alien heritage and Pa Kent’s constant warnings of how the world will react to him makes him question if he has any place in this world.  This effects Clark well into adulthood as he basically becomes a drifter and taking assorted odd jobs wherever he can get it but never really staying in one place for long.  While there isn’t anything wrong this, we never really see him overcome his insecurities enough to make a fully convincing transition into hero (at least not as good as the Christopher Reeve version).    

While not what I would classify as perfect, Man of Steel is a solid opener to a promising series which is good since I hear they’re already hard at work on a sequel.  

Grade: B+     

Oz the Great and Powerful Review

                                    

            The Wizard of Oz is the first movie I remember watching as a kid and since then I’ve watched it more times than I can count.  So naturally, when I heard Disney was coming out with Oz the Great and Powerful, it gave me some mixed feelings.  The Wizard of Oz has always been one of those movies that I thought should be left alone because there is no possible way that anything they put on the screen could possibly live up to what the original had to offer.  While Oz the Great and Powerful certainly has something to offer to the audience, it still does not hold a candle to The Wizard of Oz (though to be fair, very few movies are capable of that).

            In 1905 Kansas, Oscar “Oz” Diggs (James Franco) is a struggling magician with a small-time traveling circus.  As a dangerous storm heads toward the fair, Oscar is attacked by the circus strongman.  Oscar makes his escape in a hot-air balloon and, like Dorothy, gets swept away by a tornado into magical world of Oz.  Here Raimi pays one of many homages to the beloved classic by opening the picture in black-and-white and Academy-ratio before we are taken to the bright and colorful (and widescreen) land of Oz.  Once Oscar lands in Oz, he meets the young and naïve witch Theodora (Mila Kunis), who believes him to be the prophesized wizard (why does every single fantasy movie have to have some ridiculous prophecy?) that will overthrow the Wicked Witch, bring peace the land, and become the new king of Oz.  Enjoying the prospect of the riches and power that come with being the King of Oz, Oscar decides to play along and in the meantime strikes up a flirtation with the impressionable Theodora.  Before he can claim his throne however, he is informed by Theodora’s sister Evanora (Rachel Weisz) that he must first journey into a dark forest (another fantasy movie cliché) to kill the Wicked Witch.  During his journey he meets a talking flying monkey Finley (Zach Braff) who is mostly useless, a little girl made of china (Joey King) who is also useless, and Glinda the Good Witch (Michelle Williams) who despite having legitimate magic powers mostly relies on Oscar to do her dirty for her.     

            Naturally you might think it would be hard for Oscar to keep up this charade of being an all-powerful wizard without actually possessing any magical powers.  Luckily for him, however, most of the people of Oz appear to be complete nitwits.  Only about a handful of citizens ever question his so-called powers while the rest of the people become completely mesmerized by his great powers of access to basic technology.  Even the people that know he isn’t really a wizard don’t really seem to care enough to do anything about it.  I guess I shouldn’t be surprised though, since the people were also dumb enough to believe that Evanora was the good witch despite being so obviously evil that the only stereotype missing is a mustache for her to twirl.    

For some time now, I’ve found the quality of the special effects in Raimi’s movies to be rather inconsistent and sadly this one is no exception.  At certain points the CGI gets so bad, I actually found myself preferring the effects of the 1939 original.  Raimi has made some beautiful images but I didn’t always find them to be believable which is kind of disappointing given the over $200 million price tag it took to make this.     

It would be easy to write this off as just another cash grab made by a greedy movie studio but I don’t think that’s what happened here.  While it’s not a great movie there are some strokes of brilliance to be seen and I actually believe that some genuine effort was made for this to be a good film.  James Franco gives a great performance as the slick, silver tonged magician and Michelle Williams fills the role of Glinda perfectly.  It’s clear that director Sam Raimi has great respect for the source material but the end result still leaves a lot to be desired. 

            Grade: C+

Cloud Atlas Review

                    
                              

There is no doubt that Cloud Atlas is quite possibly the most ambitious movie made in the last decade.  It takes more than ambition, however, to make a film that can match up with the size and scope necessary to make this truly memorable. 

Based on the 2004 novel of the same name by David Mitchell, the film contains six separate stories, spanning across six different time periods that are all connected to each other.  The six stories are as follows: an American lawyer named Adam Ewing (Jim Sturgess), who while journeying the Pacific Islands in 1849, tries to help a runaway slave while suffering from a mysterious illness; aspiring musician Robert Frobisher (Ben Whishaw) works as an assistant to the world renowned composer Vyvyan Ayrs (Jim Broadbent) in 1936 Europe;  gossip columnist Luisa Rey (Halle Berry) investigates a dangerous conspiracy at a nuclear power plant in 1973 San Francisco; opportunistic publisher Timothy Cavendish finds himself trapped in the nursing home from hell in present day England; Sonmi~451 (Doona Bae), a genetically engineered clone, tells the story of her escape from a life of servitude in the dictatorial society of 2144 Neo Seoul; and primitive tribesman Zachry’s (Tom Hanks) life threatening and life-altering journey with the enigmatic Meronym in a post-apocalyptic society (dated “106 Winters after The Fall” but listed in the credits as the year 2321).

As you may already be aware, the leading actors play several different characters throughout the six stories in an additional effort to link the tales to each other.  For example, throughout the movie Tom Hanks plays a mysterious doctor, a hotel manager, a scientist, a hot-headed gangster, an actor, and a primitive tribesman.  The rest of the principal cast all have a similar set of roles to fill that vary in size and quality.  While this is certainly a fascinating concept in theory, it might also very well be the movie’s biggest problem.  The Wachowski’s seem to be so focused on having their actors involved in as many of the stories as possible that several of the roles are dreadfully miscast.  Perhaps the most glaring example is during the Sonmi~451 story in which the British Jim Sturgess plays the rebellion commander Hae-Joo Chang.  There are also certain points where Halle Berry plays a Jewish woman, Doona Bae a white woman, and Jim Broadbent, Hugo Weaving and Hugh Grant all trying to pass as Asians (the only reason they’re not as noticeable as Sturgess is because their parts in this particular story are much smaller).  At some point it also seems that the make-up artists ran out of ideas to help the audience distinguish the actor’s individual roles and as a result some of them can get quite embarrassing with them often going into default mode and simply giving them large prosthetic noses and presumably calling it a day.

While some liberties have naturally been taken with the source material, there is one difference in particular that’s pretty hard to ignore.  In the book, the way Mitchell would tell each of the stories is that you would read about halfway through each narrative before it’s interrupted by a cliffhanger and you would move on and start the next one.  The cycle continues until you get to the last story which, unlike the rest of them goes from beginning to end uninterrupted.  You would then continue to where you left off on the previous story and when you conclude with that tale, you finish off the story you were reading before until you make your way back to where you started.  In the movie however, the Wachowskis have instead opted to spend no more than five minutes of screen time at a time on each story before abruptly cutting away to the next one.  The problem with this is (at least for me anyway), is that with so little time spent on each narrative it becomes difficult to get emotionally invested in any of them and I suspect that if I hadn’t already read the book beforehand I would’ve had an even harder time keeping up with what’s going on.  After about the first hour, I eventually got used to it but I still found myself preferring the book. 

While the Wachowskis make a valiant effort, the finished product is just slightly off the mark.  However, it’s not without its truly beautiful moments (such as Jim Sturgess performance as Adam Ewing and Tom Hanks’ role as Zachry being some of the best work he has done in years) that prove it’s worth watching and reading at least once.  I get the feeling this will be one of those films that I’ll need to watch at least a couple of more times to truly appreciate but the first time has not been too bad either.

Grade: B-