Hello true believers (or at least cynically informed). I have two movie reviews for you today, if Jewel will let me type and stop butting my arm.
District 9
This was a dark, gritty and bleak movie, told documentary style, about our first contact with aliens and how we treat them. It's location (Johannesburg, South Africa) and director/co-writer (South African Neill Blomkamp) sets it apart from the usual Hollywood genre films. As such, the actors are unknown (to North American audiences), their characters are rarely sympathetic, the ending is bleak (to say the least) and the apartheid themes are not hard to miss. Think "Flowers for Algernon" meets "Robocop". Ok that was very trite and does not convey the complexity of the film or the underlying theme that humans easily forget the crimes of the past and therefore repeat them. Highly recommended but not for the faint of heart.
Zombieland
We received advance passes for this flick last night (thanx Happy Harbor!) as it doesn't open till this Friday. And wow. I haven't laughed so hard at human degradation and misery since Shaun of the Dead. This was an engaging and hilarious "zom com" (zombie comedy from the Brits), Hollywood style. Andrew didn't think it was possible to make an original zom com since Shaun but he was pleasantly surprised. And so was I.
The basic story can be easily seen thru the commercials: very few people have survived the zombie apocolypse and those who have are ruthless, cutthroat, crazy and neurotic. Of course this ragtag bunch get together for a cross country journey to an amusement park for the youngest member (played by Abigail "Little Rock" Breslin) so she can have a bit of a childhood amidst all this death. The road trip is full of personal revelations and amusing zombie kills. I felt kinda guilty enjoying the violence as much as I did, but there it is. I can't go into too much more detail as it would ruin some delightful surprises that were cleverly kept from the commercials and online chatter.
I have never been a fan of zombie flicks but have quite enjoyed Shaun of the Dead, Pontypool and now Zombieland: each one quintessentialy of their country but still universally funny. And in an interesting turnabout, in the British and Canadian versions, order is eventually restored and things go back to "normal"; in the American Zombieland, order is not restored; chaos is the new world order.
The cast (all four of them) was amazing, although Jesse "Columbus" Eisenberg may be in danger of being typecast to theme park movies. The chemistry between the two male leads (Eisenberg and Woody Harrelson) infused the flick with a modern Odd Couple hiliarity. And an aside about Tallahassee: Wow. Psycho hot. Crazy redneck with a brain and a heart. We need to see more of him!
It is also great to see Emma "Wichita" Stone again after Superbad and The Rocker. She is a really talented actress who held her own against wunderkind Breslin and over the top Harrleson. She is an actress who is going places (not just Pacific Playland).
Two enjoyable and different movies. One will make you think, one will make you pee your pants with laughter. You decide which is which.
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