Zombieland

Posted on February 2, 2010 at 8:00 am

B +

Lowest Recommended Age:	Mature High Schooler
MPAA Rating:	Rated R for horror violence/gore and language
Profanity:	Constant very bad language, some crude
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Drinking
Violence/ Scariness:	Constant peril and violence, characters injured, killed, and eaten, zombies and other graphic and grisly images
Diversity Issues:	None
Date Released to Theaters:	October 2, 2009
Date Released to DVD:	February 2, 2010

What is it about zombies?

Dating back to 1932’s “White Zombie,” the stories of the relentless, omnivorous undead and the humans who try to escape them have been one of film’s most popular genres, with sub-genres including the flourishing category of zombie comedies, best described as gallows humor, gasps of horror alternating with gasps of laughter. Zombie films turn out to provide many opportunities for some core elements of humor, especially the juxtaposition of dire circumstances with trivial detail and the deconstruction of our assumptions about what we need and the norms of lifestyle and behavior. As its title suggests, “Zombieland‘s” take is darkly comic, with zombie encounters as theme park or video game. It even ends up in a real theme park, the few remaining humans battling the hordes from rides and concession stands.

One thing about zombies is that they thin out the herd. In this story, only four non-zombie humans seem to be left, which gives them an opportunity to try to band together with people with whom they would otherwise have nothing in common and show each other and themselves that they are capable of more in both physical courage and relationships than they ever thought possible.

The mixed bag, all known only by the names of cities, includes shy college student (Jesse Eisenberg) who tries to maintain some sense of control by compulsively making lists of rules for survival. He meets up with a modern-day cowboy (Woody Harrelson) in search of his favorite Hostess treat and a pair of sisters (Emma Stone and Abigail Breslin) who have their own methods for taking care of themselves. And even though they have not much idea where they are going or why they should go there, they hit the road.

Funny zombie movies can be just as scary as straight zombie movies, but they leaven the terror with humor that comes as the characters try to find some element of normalcy in between double-tapping zombies (one of the rules), grabbing whatever they want among the abandoned cars and grocery stores. It also includes checking out the home of a major movie star who shows up for an hilariously deadpan cameo before one last zombie attack in the actual amusement park — that juxtaposition element again.

The actors, including the movie star, are all superb. Eisenberg and Stone are two of the most talented young performers in movies and they hit just the right notes here. The usual getting-to-know-and-trust-you road trip developments play out in a manner that is both endearing and funny, as when Eisenberg asks Breslin if her sister has a boyfriend as though there are any other possible candidates for dating who would have a very different idea of having her for dinner. It goes on a little too long and does not match the inspired lunacy of “Shaun of the Dead,” but it will keep zombie-philic audiences as happy as finding the very last Twinkie.

Parents should know that this film has extreme and graphic violence involving zombies, guns, characters in peril, injured, killed, and eaten, drinking, smoking, and very strong language including crude sexual references.

Family discussion: Why didn’t the characters use their real names? What do you think of Columbus’ list of rules? What makes zombie movies so popular?

If you like this, try: “Dawn of the Dead,” “Shaun of the Dead,” “I am Legend,” and “28 Days Later”

Edge of Darkness

Posted on January 28, 2010 at 8:00 pm

Lowest Recommended Age:	Mature High Schooler
MPAA Rating:	Rated R for strong bloody violence and language
Profanity:	Some vary strong language (mostly f-words)
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Some drinking, cigar
Violence/ Scariness:	Very graphic and brutal violence including scary surprises, guns, a knife, cars as weapons, dead bodies
Diversity Issues:	None
Date Released to Theaters:	January 29, 2010

As he continues to work through personal issues that seem to require expiation through his characters on screen, Mel Gibson, plays a Tom Craven, a Boston cop out for more than justice after his daughter is murdered. His face deeply lined, his hairline receding, just about all of his movie star glamour etched away, he is no more the larger-than-life hero of “Braveheart” and “Mad Max.” He is not a big man; we often see him standing next to bigger ones, contributing to the movie’s claustrophobic feeling. He does not have a big life. He is still in the house he has lived in for decades, with one bottle of good booze covered with dust and one person he cares about, his daughter Emma (Bojana Novakovic). He’s not much good at talking or for interacting with the complexities and ambiguities of the world. Emma teases him, perhaps a bit ruefully, that he doesn’t even know what her job is. But she knows he is safe. And so when she needs help, she comes home.

A couple of hours later, she is killed in a drive-by. The logical conclusion is that the culprit is someone who was after Tom, some bad guy he put away. But the use of logic is the first of many assumptions Tom will have to relinquish to understand what trouble Emma had gotten into and what he must do about it.

The movie is based on a Thatcher/Reagan-era British miniseries, itself perhaps inspired by the 1970’s American cinema of paranoia, lone individual against grand conspiracy movies like “Three Days of the Condor” and “The Parallax View.” This version reverses the nationalities; Yorkshire becomes Boston and the American with a shady past as a spook played by Joe Don Baker becomes a Brit with a cockney accent played by Ray Winstone as Jedburgh, the most compelling character in the film because we do know know why he seems to know everything, whose side he is on, or what he does. “I’m usually the guy who stops you connecting A and B,” he says.

Connecting A and B is what we look for in movies, at least studio movies with big stars, but we are perfectly happy to spend two hours figuring out what that connection is. If the murky intersections of various categories of bad guys makes that connection not entirely unexpected, there are a few good twists along the way. Director Martin Campbell (“Casino Royale” and the upcoming “Green Hornet” as well as the original BBC version of this story) keeps the tension taut and the action compelling. There are fine details, a too-smooth executive rolling his gold wedding band through his fingers as he pretends to be concerned, Tom off duty reaching instinctively for a gun that isn’t there. The build-up of Tom’s sense of urgency and the directness of his instincts counterposed with the murkiness of other characters’ motivations works well, too. He literally smashes through walls as he psychically smashes through the boundaries of his profession, of law, and even of rationality itself, ultimately acting on the purest of instinct, as he says, a man with nothing left to lose.

Both Tom and the man who plays him seem intent on expiating some transgression. Gibson is often drawn to roles that involve physical abuse and exposure down to the bone. Here that works well up to the very last scene, where Gibson the man seems to break away from the character with a final image that tells us more about the struggles of the Hollywood actor than the Boston cop and would take us out of the movie if it wasn’t already over.

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Action/Adventure Movies -- format

Whip It

Posted on January 26, 2010 at 8:00 am

Drew Barrymore has devoted more time than most people to growing up and has done it more publicly than most people, too. At age 34, she has been acting for nearly three decades. Here she makes her directing debut with a coming of age story that may be conventional in structure but has some unexpected warmth and wisdom.

Ellen Page of “Juno” plays Bliss, a small-town girl whose undefined sense of displacement and dissatisfaction never got more specific than feeling inauthentic in the beauty pageants her mother insists on or working as a waitress at a barbecue place called the Oink Joint. She feels fully herself only with her best friend Pash (the bountifully freckled Alia Shawkat), until she gets a flier for a roller derby. She convinces Pash to go with her. The roller derby girls are full-on smash and bash and brash and completely unabashed in a way that makes Bliss feel fully alive. Even though her “last pair of roller skates had Barbies on them” and she is tiny and not especially athletic — not to mention that her parents would never approve — she decides to try out.

Even in movieland, girl squab Ellen Page seems like someone you skate over. But they do the Harry Potter thing and give her the one attribute that makes it possible for her to compete with women three times her size and five times her weight class. She is very fast. And that is how she is taken on by the “Hurl Scouts,” including Maggie Mayhem (Saturday Night Live’s Kristin Wiig), Bloody Holly (stuntwoman Zoe Bell), Rosa Sparks (rapper Eve), and Smashley Simpson (director Barrymore). Their Girl Scout-inspired uniforms and cheerfully bad attitude make her feel at home. Bliss becomes Babe Ruthless and she is on the team. And before long, she has a fan, a handsome young musician (Landon Pigg), who likes her very much.

Do you think that Bliss is about to embark on a journey far more fraught with peril than the roller rink? Well, then, you’ve seen a movie before. Yes, there will be complications and painful disappointments involving her friend, her parents, the musician, and the friend.

What is best about this is the way Barrymore gently sells the niceness of it all. It turns out that roller girls just wanna have fun and that the sisterhood of the traveling skates is one big happy family. Barrymore has spoken frankly of her essentially parent-less childhood and here, as she often does in movies, she conveys a young girl’s feelings of isolation and the longing for motherly guidance. Bliss finds that guidance from an unexpected place in one of the movie’s most affecting scenes. The overt message about girl empowerment may focus on hip checks and punches, but what lingers are the lessons that nothing is more powerful than forgiveness, that loyalty to others enhances your ability to define your own space, and that at every level within and outside the film sistas are doing it for themselves.

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Based on a book Family Issues Sports

Post Grad

Posted on January 12, 2010 at 8:00 am

There is not one single thing in this movie that you don’t see or guess from the trailer, but for some audiences that means that it will deliver just what they are looking for.

Alexis Bledel plays Ryden, who thinks the hard part is over because she is graduating from a good school with an excellent record and has lined up an interview for the job of her dreams at a publishing house. But she discovers that, as her father says, “the world doesn’t play by the rules.” Everything is messier and harder to control than she thought. She soon finds herself living back at home with her parents and going on an excruciating series of job interviews only to be subjected to an even more excruciating series of rejections. And to make it all worse, her rival at school (played with zesty mean-girl brio by Catherine Reitman) seems to have effortlessly taken over the life she thought she was supposed to have.

To add to the confusion, there is a handsome and devoted friend who wants to be more (“Friday Night Lights'” Zach Gilford), a handsome next door neighbor who is accomplished, sophisticated, and exotic (Rodrigo Santoro), and an assortment of quirky family problems from her assorted quirky family members.

The most creative part of the film may be the opening credits, as we watch Ryden’s vlog and she tells about her plans. After that, it’s pretty much by the book.

It’s nice to see Michael Keaton back on screen, and the always-watchable Jane Lynch makes the most of the underwritten role of Ryden’s mother. Carol Burnett lugs around an oxygen tank as the irascible grandmother, with her face oddly stretched and kind of spooky. At times the film’s disjointed, almost random moments help to make it feel less formulaic. Santiago and Reitman are more vivid and interesting than any of the main characters, throwing it all off-kilter. And then it takes a predictable, but retro turn that will leave audiences feeling unsatisfied and even cheated. The folks who made this movie need to go back to school and study a little harder.

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Comedy Family Issues Romance

I Can Do Bad All By Myself

Posted on January 11, 2010 at 12:00 pm

Tyler Perry’s movies are review-proof. Not just because he does not let critics see them before they are released, knowing that his audience won’t care about reviews, but because they do not lend themselves to the usual kind of analysis. They are not the usual kind of movie. They don’t fit into any category except their own: Tyler Perry movie. And as his wildly enthusiastic and utterly devoted fans know, that means a walloping portion of high drama and low comedy, with suffering women who are afraid to trust and very hunky men who are good with their hands, endlessly patient and thoughtful and — in both senses of the word — faithful.

Taraji P. Henson plays April, who lives in a decaying house she inherited from her father, and shuts the door on rooms that are about to collapse rather than trying to repair them. She supplements what she earns by singing at a tiny club with support from her married boyfriend (Brian White). Madea (Perry) catches April’s 16-year-old niece and two younger nephews trying to rob her house. She feeds them, scolds them, and delivers them to April, who has no interest in taking care of anyone, even herself. They are the children of April’s sister, who died of a drug overdose, and they have been cared for by April’s mother, who has disappeared. April is a bit slow on the uptake about what could have happened to her mother, which gives the story a few days for everyone to get acquainted, including a recent immigrant named Sandino (Adam Rodriguez) who is conveniently enough a handyman installed in the house by the kindly preacher around the corner (real-life pastor and gospel great Marvin Winans).

April’s one friend is Tanya (Mary J. Blige) and there is a woman from the church named Wilma who knows April’s mother (Gladys Knight). This gives the film an opportunity for some raise-the roof singing and praise, including the title number. Pastor Winans lends his voice to a heartfelt “Just Don’t Wanna Know/Over it Now,” and we believe that April, hearing it through her window, is genuinely moved by its powerful message. The songs and Henson’s sensitive portrayal of the woman who has neglected herself and her home keep us involved.

Some audiences object to Perry’s portrayal of the popular character Madea, calling her an exaggerated caricature or an embarrassing stereotype. But Perry knows that she provides some counterpoint to the melodrama, in this case including drug abuse, adultery, child molestation, and disability. I am far more troubled by the stereotypes in films like “Friday After Next,” “The Cookout,” and “Next Day Air” than in Perry’s films, which always include an assortment of thoughtful and responsible characters. A little comic relief with Madea’s jumbled-up Bible stories keeps things from getting overheated and reminds us that life — and families — are always a jumble of good, bad, wicked, kind, and silly.

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Drama Family Issues Romance