Warm Bodies

Cowboys Vs. Aliens was a boring mess and Outlander is one of those “it’s so awful, let’s get drunk and watch space Jesus fight vikings and an alien/dragon/predator!” kind of movie. Genre mash-ups are hard to pull off but when done properly can be the most rewarding, like combing Ryan Gosling with a toothpick or your cat with a laser. A romantic comedy with zombies?!?! Fuck yeah, I’m in!

R (Nicholas Hoult) spends most of his days wandering, questioning his existence, occasionally bumping into his only friend M (Rob Corddry) and listening to old records alone. All of this changes when he meets a group of people his own age and eats them. That’s when R meets Julie (Teresa Palmer) and suddenly he doesn’t feel so…dead. I was talking about a zombie the whole time you fools! HA HA.

Even though it was sort of beat to the punch by Shaun of the Dead by almost a decade, Warm Bodies is still really good. The movie clearly lifted the narration and inner monologue straight from the book but it worked really well and contained some of the best jokes. The casting is really strong with future superstar Nicholas Hoult as a lonely, self-aware zombie that yearns and emotes but Rob Corddry seemed like a weird choice until I read that he is exactly like the character in the book Warm Bodies. Dave Franco is Dave Franco and John Malkovich is largely coherent.

I have to give the music its due. The selections that writer/director Jonathan Levine made not only fit the scenes but also enhanced each section. I can think of a few times that the musical cues were used for some of the best laughs of the movie.

For the zombie purists out there that I’m sure will think “ERRR zombies can’t love, that’s stupid! SKREE” I must say that zombies can’t do anything because they are fictional characters and thus could build a tower of Harry Potter Lego to the moon if a writer wanted them to. I say this while at the same time suffer from an irrational fear of zombies.

Why on earth is John Malkovich in this movie?!?! Don’t get me wrong, I love me some John Badassovich but the character he plays is a seldom seen, one note angry dad type that could have been played by anyone. Did the studio think that it was going to draw in the art house crowd to see a movie with zombies and a Franco? If they needed a name actor then they should have used the biggest name…that’s right…Liam Neeson. R technically DOES kidnapped Julie so Neeson WOULD want her back. I think I just added kicking to that movie.

I was going to close with a list of other mash-ups that you should check out but then realized that everyone has seen at least one of the movies on my list. Well here’s the list anyway.

5. Back to the Future III  A comedy western with time travel and Lea Thompson. Fuck you! all 3 movies are awesome!

4. The Nightmare before Christmas  Despite being driven into the ground by tweens, do you watch it every year at Halloween or Christmas?

3. Evil Dead 2  For me it was the first hilariously scary movie. A Farewell to Arms. Still funny.

2. Predator  Starts out as an Arnold shoot ’em up that delves into a sci/fi horror that ain’t got time to bleed.

1. From Dusk till Dawn  Quentin Tarantino. George Clooney. Harvey Keitel. Hard boiled crime. Mexican strippers. Vampires. Holy water condom bombs. Amazing.

Go see Warm Bodies.

THE BEST:  Nicholas Hoult has already been an X-Man, a zombie and this summer he will be Jack from the bean stock. What’s next for him? a Jedi maybe? I bet you 10 bucks…

THE WORST: If you don’t pick up on the hijacking of Romeo and Juliet then you are a nipple head.

THE LINE: “Bitches, man“. -M

THE FINAL: 4 out of 5. Destined to be a sleeper hit on Blu Ray, your Netflix que and your torrent list. I didn’t make a single rigor mortis dick joke …that’s progress.

-Rob-

Abraham Lincoln vs. Zombies

I swear that I’m not making this up.

President Abraham Lincoin (Bill Oberst Jr.) travels to an abandoned fort with his very first CIA team to fight some undead southerners. Along the way he crosses paths with Stonewall Jackson, John Wilkes Booth and Theodore Roosevelt. Exactly what you think would ensue…ensues.

I finally discovered what Wal-Mart is good for beside people watching.

Mockbusters

They always get these direct-to-dvd movies that are essentially big blockbuster knockoffs that are made dirt cheap. I spotted this gem and laughed at the idea of someone dropping 30 buck on the blu ray…even though I can’t wait to see Abraham Lincoin: Vampire Hunter. Turns out there is a company called The Asylum and all they do is churn out mockbusters and they just sold a bunch of content to Netflix. All praise the Netflix. This is exactly what the Netflix mini synopsis said:

“Unrelated to the big-screen vampire hunter, the Great Emancipator battles an attacking horde of Confederate zombies.”

That should have been on the poster.

I watched this movie. It sucked. I have nothing productive to say. I should have thought of that before I started this write-up. Don’t see this movie…or have some wobbly pops and really enjoy it.

THE BEST:  Abe Lincoin dropping action hero lines all over this bitch

THE WORST:  The whole movie is fucking awful

THE LINE: “Emancipate this!” -Abe

THE FINAL: 0 out of 5.  I could have made a better movie on my Iphone with cats instead of people

-Rob-

Resident Evil: Retribution

The video game Resident Evil 2 scared the shit into me. I know what I said. When those blocky 32-bit zombies came shambling after me, I threw my Playstation controller at my tv and ran away. I never realized then that I would be watching movies based off of the game for more than a decade. I should have thrown my controller at the screen and ran away.

Alice (Milla Jovovich) awakens inside an underwater Umbrella Corp facility in the Arctic Circle. The facility is used as a testing ground for the deadly T-virus complete with zombies, famous city facsimiles and clones. As Alice makes her escape, she is joined by a who’s who cast of characters from the video game series such as Ada Wong (Li Bingbing), Leon S. Kennedy (Johann Urb) and Barry Burton (Kevin Durand). Can Alice DO something before SOMETHING happens or before time runs out…or whatever.

Sooooo there is a really cool hallway fight scene that reminded me of Oldboy largely due to it being in a hallway…and against Asian zombies. Do you know how to recap 4 movies seamlessly? Well neither does director Paul W.S. Anderson but he takes a decent stab at it. That is all that I enjoyed.

After using “retribution” in the title, I feel like the Resident Evil series might be running out of clichéd nouns for any future sequels. I’m going to toss a few out there just to be generous.

Resident Evil: Revenge

Resident Evil: The Quickening

Resident Evil: Pig in the City

Resident Evil: Tokyo Drift

Resident Evil: Live Free or Die Hard

Resident Evil: Lost in New York

Resident Evil: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: Secret of the Ooze

Ok that last one kind of got away from me there but you get the point.

SPOILER MANIA

Alice discovers that Umbrella tests plagues in fake cities using clones of all the main characters so we get the return of the very awesome Oded Fehr and the ugly ethnic chick from the first film and some of the fast cars movies or something. The problem with having clones around is that my “caring for their safety” meter drops to zero. There is even a little deaf girl who Alice has to drag around until they get to the clone room where I would react like “Oh, there are a thousand of you…better luck next time” and she even gets captured by a giant monster at the end and has to be saved. Of course the whole scene was lifted from the end of Aliens and my girlfriend and I started whispering “Riiiiippleeeeeyyy!!” in the theatre to stop ourselves from laughing.

I guess instead of hiring actors, they  just hired models and people who looked like their video game counterparts which to me is the equivalent of eating a hunk of dirt that reeeeeally looks like an Angry Whopper instead of actually eating an Angry Whopper. I have sat through a handful of these stupid movies just to finally see Leon in real life, kicking throats and taking the moral high ground but instead I get a model that needs more vowels in his name, looking and acting like a douche…like a hunk of dirt.

I wish I lived in a world where Paul W.S. Anderson made 5 or 6 movies based off of his amazing sci-fi/horror flick Event Horizon, at least then I would know that Sam Neill wasn’t just living off of his Jurassic Park residuals and could have some walking around money. I guess it was either this or 9 Mortal Kombat movies with Christopher Lambert just smirking at the camera and eating a sandwich.

THE BEST:  Leon S. Kennedy is finally in the series!!! The “S” stands for “sweet”

THE WORST:  Leon S. Kennedy is finally in the series…

THE LINE: “Umbrella are more powerful than ever….” -Alice

THE FINAL: 1 out of 5.  I am fucking psyched for Resident Evil: Jack & Jill

-Rob-

The Walking Dead

Zombies. The word, image and concept frightens me to my handsome core. In October of 2003, bearded writer Robert Kirkman unleashed The Walking Dead onto comic book nerds everywhere. Kirkman took a concept that I didn’t think was possible and made it a reality…a never ending zombie movie. Of course it was a black and white comic book and not actually a movie but it was something I always wondered about after the credits would roll in any zombie flick. What happens next? Do all the zombies fall over and stay dead? Do they Thriller dance over the earth and that’s the end of the human race? The answer is just like the title’s antagonists, it just never stops. Several attempts were made to turn the comics into a movie which makes zero sense because unless someone planned on making 20 movies then they were going against the concept right from the start. Enter the gun carrying lunatic director of The Shawshank Redemption Frank Darabont and the network with the best shows on television AMC. Together they created something besides internet porn that make me lock my door.

Southern Sheriff’s Deputy Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoin) awakens from a coma to discover that the world he knew has been devoured by reanimated corpses with a taste for flesh. As Rick searches for his missing wife Lori (Sarah Wayne Callies) and son Carl he encounters others who are struggling to survive in their dangerous new world. Like other AMC series it is a short form consisting of 6 episodes for the 1st season but jumping to 13 for the 2nd. Each episode is an hour in length but the start of each season is built more like a movie clocking in at 90 minutes and yet you still want it to be longer (that’s what she said).

I started writing this after re-watching the 1st season and now I’m finishing it after having watched the start of  the 2nd and I would definitively have to say I’m a die-hard for this show. Yes, I am a fan of the books so liking the show should be easy but not all comic adaptions work out, have you ever seen Green Lantern? GONG! The Walking Dead works on every level. The look of the show goes in the opposite direction of other horror media by being primarily shot during the day to give you more of a clear view of the disaster and desolation that has occurred. The zombies look like something that shuffled out of my night terrors and aren’t just extra’s covered in grey paint like the zombies you find in some knob job’s home-made zombie movie.

The cast is as close to the books as you can get with the exception of the douche-y Shane (Jon Bernthal) and the new original characters. Survivors Glenn (Steven Yeun), Andrea (Laurie Holden) and Dale (Jeffrey DeMunn) all bring something different to the table and make you care when people get nixed. So AMC are ruthless cutthroats and they fired Darabont and slashed the show’s budget so I guess time will tell how the 2nd season shakes down. Makes perfect sense to me that if you have something that’s amazingly successful that you try to run it into the ground as quickly as possible…of course the most successful thing I ever did was reach the 1,000,000 population point of Sim City…then I ran my city into the ground by deleting all the roads so what do I know. Thank you very much if you are still reading this mess.

If you were thinking of checking out the show then it’s not too hard to find, AMC constantly has Walking Dead marathons and their site streams all of the episodes. The Walking Dead is a must for horror fans with a strong dramatic narrative, a few one-note characters and some genuine scares. Jump on the bandwagon while you still can because it might not be perfect but it is the best Drombie…Zombra?….the best scary show out there.

THE BEST:  It is a really good way to think about what you yourself would do when the zombie apocalypse finally goes down. Not me though because my plan involves laser cats.

THE WORST:  Some of the characters that they added that weren’t in the books are kind of one-dimensional stereotypes…..”T-Dogg” !?!? really?!?!

THE LINE:  “This is what takes us down. This is our extinction event”   -Dr. Jenner

THE FINAL:  4 out of 5   Emperor Palpatine likes the show but wasn’t really scared of zombies until some dick-bucket wrote a book about zombie stormtroopers called “Death Troopers”

– Rob –

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1520211/