The Daily Procrastinator

Rule #34: See this film immediately

Zombieland, and I mean this in the most admiring way, is a fast-food movie. Just as Super-Sonic Cheeseburgers aren’t wolfed down for their nutritional value, Zombieland is mindless fun: it’s hilarious, winks at the audience continually, and takes well-deserved shots at the now-established traditions of zombie flicks.

No where are these shots more obvious than in Columbus’ (Jesse Eisenburg) rules for survival (”Rule #1: Cardio” – as scenes of fat guys being chased down by zombies are played). Throughout the film, Eisenberg’s rules are displayed on screen as those who fail to follow the rules end up as human tartare for the zombies. The gore of these kills, though, is more cartoonish than frightening, and only serves to elevate the humor of the film. Dispatched zombies (of which there are plenty), are always accompanied by satisfyingly large splatterings of blood and bile as it’s vital not to forget Rule #2: the Double Tap.

Batter up!

The plot (okay, the term is used a bit loosely here) of the movie centers around Eisenberg’s milquetoast, who is attempting to make his way back to his hometown (Columbus) to see if his parents are still alive. This journey is interrupted by Tallahassee (a screamingly funny Woody Harrelson), a man with two drives in life: revenge against zombies and a quest to find Twinkies. These two later take up with two other survivors, Wichita (Emma Stone) and her 12 year old sister Little Rock (Abigail Breslin). The city names are references to their hometowns, as Tallahassee wishes to avoid any emotional attachment (which, in the movie’s only truly sentimental moment, is revealed why later). The four end up traveling together to California to search for zombie-free areas.

The cast of Zombieland

So much of the fun of the movie is seeing the relationship develop between Tallahassee and Columbus, as their back and forth bantering and antagonization of each other reveals real comic timing. But, of course, the true hilarity of the film comes with the creative zombie deaths – look for the “Zombie Kill of the Week” performed by a nun with a piano. And a certain movie star’s cameo is inspired (don’t look at imdb’s credits if you want to be surprised).

At a running time of just about an hour and a half, Zombieland never has a chance to go stale, and remains pitch perfect in its blend of humor and horror. But don’t be fooled: this movie is first and foremost a comedy, and the frights only serve to set up the reactions from the film’s players. If you’re looking for a post-apocalyptic film with a message, wait for Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. If you want some fries with your zombies, though, Zombieland’s being served at a theater near you.

Months ago, when I saw the first film trailer for the movie Where The Wild Things Are, I freaked out with anticipation. Images of Maurice Sendak’s big furry beasts galumphing through the wilderness in a wild rumpus immediately flooded my mind. I had flashbacks to lying in my bed as a kid and trying to figure out how that one monster could possibly have lizard legs, buffalo horns, tiger stripes, and bear paws and yet still intend no harm to little Max.

Since I was a kid, this has always been my favorite image from Wild Things.

I had high hopes that the movie would echo the idea, so prevalent in the book, that not everything (or everyone, more to the point) that looks scary is actually a threat. My hopes were sorely denied.

Apparently, Spike Jonze (who is now on my List Of People To Punch In The Nose On Sight not only for his mistreatment of Wild Things, but also for his ridiculous deliberate misspelling of his assumed last name) didn’t think that the original text of the book was important to the making of the film. Instead of being the benevolent beasts of the book, the Wild Things in the movie are a bunch of whiny, self-obsessed, violent conflict-mongers.

When Max arrives on the island, his first encounter with the Wild Things involves watching the monster pictured above (named Carroll in an apparent homage to the creator of the Jabberwock) as he destroys the homes of his fellow Things for no apparent reason. We soon learn that he’s pissed because one of his fellow Things, K.W., has run off. No explanation for K.W.’s behavior is ever offered, though, and the plot of the film never regains any sense of purpose. This first encounter does, however, set up the complicated relationship that Max and Carroll will share throughout the rest of the film.

In one of the film's best moments, Carroll gives Max a lift.

To complicate matters further, Jonze (and collaborator Sendak, the book’s original creator) decide to make the Wild Things clearly male and female, and two different pairs of them are couples. The Things Judith and Ira, a bumbling oaf of a guy and a narcissistic bitch of a woman, plague the film with their relationship. Likewise, Carroll’s anger over K.W.’s departure seems to be based on a relationship that the two may or may not share. It’s never really clear.

When K.W. brings back some new friends to the Things’ fort, the rest of the gang, especially Carroll, refuses to accept them as part of the group. Carroll turns to Max to solve the situation, since he’s serving as their erstwhile king, but he doesn’t have any answers. It seems that Jonze is trying to make a political statement about how we and our leaders treat those unlike ourselves, but the issue is left unresolved and only serves to complicate an already unnecessarily complicated film.

Although the plot of the movie is disastrous, Where Wild Things Are is interesting to look at. The costumes of the Things are fantastic, accurately duplicating the images from the original art. The film offers many close-ups of the Things as they speak, and their big furry faces clearly register a variety of emotions that must have required untold hours of either mechanical animatronics or computer animation. The Things’ eyes, in particular, are beautiful. As the adage suggests, they give us a view of each Thing’s soul.

As the Things rumble around the island, they often jump to great heights, and the animation of their jumps is wildly amusing. They seem to rise into the air as if by levitation, springing toward the treetops despite their stumpy legs and thickly built bodies. In fact, they jump exactly the way the monsters in a little boy’s imagination might jump, which I find perfect, as all the events on the island happen in Max’s imagination.

Q: What have learned so far? A: While the plot is bad, the visual effects are good. That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it. The plot isn’t a complete loss, though. I need to mention a couple moments that stand out as high points. As I mentioned above, the scene in which Carroll lets Max ride on his back is sweet. Also, there’s a scene in which all of the Things sleep in a giant pile, calling good nights to one another as they collectively drift off into huge, furry slumber.

Finally, the scene in which Max leaves the island (don’t groan about spoilers; you knew it was going to end this way) is simultaneously beautiful and infuriating. All the Things gather at the beach to watch Max as he sails back to his home, and their howling as he sails into the surf is heart-wrenching. Visually, it’s a beautiful scene, and the music, camera work, and sound effects are perfect. I wish I could stop writing about the scene now, but I can’t. Although Max’s farewell is a fantastic moment, it’s also ridiculous because there’s never any explanation of why Max chooses to leave the island. It’s as if he just randomly decides to split in the middle of the conflict on Thing Island. The implied theme: When you mess things up really badly, run away; that will make things better.

It makes me want to scream like a Wild Thing.

Occasionally, Jonze's adaptation is beautiful.

I wish I could tell you to go watch Where The Wild Things Are. I wish I could celebrate the successful translation of a classic children’s book to the big screen. I wish I could tell you to take your children to the movies. I can’t do any of those things, though. (I especially can’t recommend the film for kids. This is NOT a children’s move. They’ll be alternately terrified and bored. I promise.) Frankly, I’m saddened that future generations of kids will say things like, “Where The Wild Things Are is a book, too? I didn’t know that!”

Do yourself a favor: preserve your love of Where The Wild Things Are by avoiding this film. Let your imagination give life to the Things. If not for yourself, avoid the film for your kids’ sake. They deserve to see the Wild Things like this:

May 1st is going to disappoint a lot of Wolverine fans. It’s going to enrage a lot of every single Deadpool fan. Gambit and Emma Frost fans are going to feel slighted. Hell, the three Blob super-fans out there are going to have to commiserate over a bucket of fried chicken skins after seeing Wolverine: Origins. To a Marvel comic book reader, the movie is that bad.

To non-comic book readers, the movie might be a mindless, action-filled romp, which is apparently all Fox wanted this movie to be. To fans of the comic book characters, the movie will be yet another example of why Fox should keep their hands off of Marvel properties.

Think about it. The most successful comic book movies have been films that, above all, stay true to the characters they are representing from the comic books. The Dark Knight takes enormous liberties with the details of how Bruce Wayne manages to be the caped crusader, but the movie never falters on the reasons why he does what he does. The first two Spider-Man films might diverge from the stories as presented in the comics, but they don’t infringe on who Peter Parker is, who Spider-Man has historically been (and even the third can only be faulted for how poorly the symbiote’s influence on Parker was portrayed). And the first two X-Men films, while not presenting the exact stories from the books, get the characters right.

Even with Storm's bad hair, you can still recognize each character

Look at the failed superhero movies: Daredevil, while not a complete bomb, tried to make the Man Without Fear into a Spider-Man/Batman hybrid. He’s not. It should be the simplest thing in the world to make a solid Punisher movie, but it hasn’t happened yet. Elektra might as well not have been about the Marvel character. The Fantastic Four films chose to go cheap on characterization, heavy on the campiness, and any sense of these characters beyond cartoons is never allowed. The casting wasn’t all that great, either (note: when re-booting, keep that guy who played Johnny Storm, can the rest – yes, including Jessica Alba – and make the Thing CGI).

Shouldn't The Thing look more physically imposing?

Wolverine: Origins commits the same damn mistake that those latter films do: it’s not true to the source material. Listen, I could care less how Ryan Reynolds character becomes Deadpool, so long as the figure called Deadpool is a mouthy killer who’s good with all kinds of weapons. He shouldn’t shoot Cyclops’ beams out of his eyes nor should swords the length of his arms come out of his forearms, AND HIS MOUTH SHOULDN’T BE SEWN SHUT! And it follows that if a prior film suggests that Wolverine has a dark past (you know, like X2 – and all of Marvel continuity – suggests), I’d expect to see some dark times rather than a character that is utterly heroic and noble throughout his entire life. As the tagline suggests, what Wolverine does isn’t very nice.

FOX studio's version of Deadpool - I'm not kidding.

I don’t think it’s any coincidence that the most successful comic books films remain true to the source material. There’s a reason these characters have remained popular with readers for decades, and when a studio disregards these qualities in favor of a chance to dazzle with some meaningless special effect, they are not creating a Wolverine movie, a Marvel movie, or a DC movie, but a _______ studio movie.

And that’s not what comic fans are paying to see.

“So. The Spear-Danes in days gone by/and the kings who ruled them had courage and greatness./We have heard of those princes’ heroic campaigns.” — opening lines of Seamus Heaney’s powerful 2000 verse translation of
Beowulf.

Outlander makes no secret about its desire to be a fantastical re-imagining of the Beowulf story and its “heroic campaigns” we are taught in high school, where the hero defeats the monstrous Grendel and a host of other horrors before dying nobly in battle against a dragon (sorry for any spoilers – you should have read the poem). Set in late eighth century Norway, the titular Outlander is not the Geat Beowulf come to save the Danes from Grendel, but instead Kainan, a very human-looking alien (played by John Caviezel), who crash lands on Earth, and in doing so sets free a monster (the “Moorwen”) which seemingly takes the place of all the beasts referenced in the original poem. Kainan first must convince the Norsemen he is not a threat, and then leads them against the monster, with predictable results.

And that’s the real issue with this film: there’s nothing here that we haven’t already seen, and not just in that long poem. Outlander cribs a bit from Alien here, a bit from Predator there, and then throws in a smidge of Braveheart for good measure. Moving beneath all of this is a not-so-effective sub-plot that seems to want us to feel some, if not sympathy for the Moorwen, than some recognition that it, too, has been wronged, but John Gardner’s Grendel did that, too. The battles between the Norsemen and the Moorwen are appropriately violent, though I rarely felt a sense of horror, which is a fatal flaw for such a film. Together the movie moves stiltedly toward its conclusion, as if it were walking on legs not its own (which, of course, it is).

Beowulf has been re-imagined a number of times, most notably in Antonio Banderas’ underrated The 13th Warrior, which retells the legend through an Arab’s eyes. Outlander is not quite so rousing as Warrior, which was both adventurous and fun, nor are its characters as memorable. Caviezel’s Kainan is distant in his relations with the Norsemen (perhaps justifiably so – he IS an alien), but this also precludes the audience from forming some attachment to him. The Norwegians are a conglomeration of long-haired noble (and not-so-noble) ruffians, with little to humanize them and make us care about them before they’re in turn eaten up by the monster.

What we’re left with, then, is another in a long string of effects-driven monster films, whose chief problem is that it depends too much on what has come before. And, as Beowulf suggests, living off past deeds is no way to make a name for oneself.

Liam Neeson in Taken

Do you remember the old Harrison Ford movie Frantic? The one where his wife gets kidnapped in France and he spends the entire movie trying to find her while whining incessantly about getting her back?

Taken kicks Frantic’s ass up and down.

Liam Neeson is Bryan Mills, a retired black-ops spy who spends his days hanging around his old crew while picking up the occasional high-profile security job to keep himself occupied. His past has left him seeing the world as a very dangerous place, an attitude that has driven his ex-wife (Famke Janssen) into the arms of another (rich) man, taking with her the daughter (Kim, portrayed by Maggie Grace) he dotes on. But when his daughter begs to be allowed to take a trip to France with a friend, without parental supervision, against his better judgment he relents.

Kim is about to get . . . grabbed.

As you have no doubt seen in the trailer, things take a dark turn for Kim when she is kidnapped from her villa. This leads to Neeson’s over-the-phone plea and threat to her kidnappers: let her go, all is forgiven; refuse, and he’ll kill them all.

Obviously, the captors choose poorly.

What follows is a one-man wrecking machine taking out everyone who had any involvement in his daughter’s abduction, desperately trying to find her before she is lost. As he tears his way through the hierarchy of the underground sex-slave trade, the film plays as an hour-long chase scene. His methods are not for the faint of heart: suffice to say that Mills would disagree with the now-popular belief that torture is not an effective means of interrogation.

This movie makes no pretense of being anything but pure escapism, although the presence of Liam Neeson lends it a significant measure of respectability. But it’s a hell of a fun ride.