The Money's Out There

Graduated from college, I'm suddenly liberated from a multitude of responsibilities. Save one: making money. Finishing college has handicapped me in that regard, though; my Writing Center can (technically) only employ enrolled students, and that no longer being my status, I have to search for some other income.

Time to quit messing around. I'm going to put my Intro to Screenwriting class to lucrative use, and flesh out a movie concept effortless to write, impervious to all focus groups, and, once I negotiate an option, pegged to cash out like a mother:

Pirate Penguins


Hm. Needs something.


Pirate Penguins: Based on the True Story


I'm going to be rich.

Braaaains...

Excuse me while I justify a fascination with a traditionally schlocky genre of movies.

Next year will mark the 40th anniversary of Night of the Living Dead, granddaddy of all zombie flicks. Since 1968, other subgenres have lost their appeal while these movies keep shambling along. With their promise of violence, zombie movies still fit in with today's horror audience, which for the time being is chiefly enthralled by torture porn (Saw, Hostel, etc.) We rely on zombie movies to deliver gory kills by way of tire iron, chainsaw, boomstick, or what have you. And it's kind of okay because the heroes aren't exactly mowing down humans, but it's close enough.

They're some of the most exciting movies that can be made dirt cheap. Since they've always been such staple for B-movies, any zombie flick coming in to be taken seriously is really asking for it; most attempts at the genre just don't bother anymore. Robert Rodriguez's half of Grindhouse -- Planet Terror -- is the best recent example I've seen of this. It's a wonderfully deliberate kind of bad.

(I was going to post a review on the horribly marketed Grindhouse last month, but by the time I came back and booted up my laptop, it was already gone from theaters. I looked in the newspaper. Gone. I checked Fandango. Gone. I drove back to the theater where I swear, I had just seen it. The old man running the box office said to me, "Grindhouse? Why, sonny, we ain't never shown a movie here called Grindhouse. You hit your head or somethin'?")

The 28 franchise, on the other hand, tends to surprise people. It's in the order of zombie movies that manipulates this stereotypically mindless concept to communicate something socially relevant (if you forgive the occasional plot foible, at least). The thing is, doesn't have far to go in order to spin zombies into cultural critique.

I think zombie movies are always going to be subconsciously fascinating because what the zombie flick appeals to more than anything else is the fear of epidemic. This can be biological, of course, playing on our paranoia of looming diseases like the bird flu and West Nile. But what filmmakers long knew is that the represented plague can also be social. Political movements, religious cults, MySpace, all of these can be implied by the terrifying swell of mindless flesheaters. Culminating in the classic scenario: a band of the unconverted struggling to retain their humanity in a last stand against the mob that will stop at nothing to "eat their brains".

Look at the shopping mall-based Dawn of the Dead (George Romero's, not Zack Snyder's), which doubled as a parody of all-consuming consumerism.

Romero and his original crew, it should be noted, literally wrote the rules of zombiedom with Night of the Living Dead. For one thing, it was the first movie/book/anything where zombies were portrayed as cannibals. Maybe I'm being obsessive here, but critiques on racial tension, social class, the breakdown of the nuclear family are very legitimately applied in that simple little movie shot in Pittsburgh. I wouldn't recommend that as a topic for a Master's thesis, but it's all there.

I've always been interested in Horror movies where the line between human and monster become obscured, and in good zombie flicks, that happens all the time.

Part of what made Night unexpectedly disturbing was its minimalist zombie make-up effects. Without exposed entrails and rotten flesh, Romero's ghouls weren't very distinguishable from the humans; oftentimes the only tell was that they were acting kinda strange.

The finale of 28 Days Later played with this ambiguity when its hero, shirtless and covered in blood, ran mad through a military compound in a way similar to the Infected. He ended up dispatching the human villain in an eye-gougingly gruesome kill worthy of more shudders than any of the Infected crazies.

Any decent zombie flick brings the question to mind, Just how far off are we from being these empty-headed, groupthinking killers? That's why a zombie movie, no matter how intellectually bankrupt, has this social commentary innately within.

Actually, I take that back. There are very special exceptions.

Just Saw a Movie: 28 Weeks Later

GRADE: B

I don't know why this question gets asked of Horror films anymore, but 28 Weeks Later has been probed for this, nonetheless: Is there an artistic reason for this sequel to exist?

Well, the answer's no. It doesn't blaze any new trails to emotionally or intellectually distinguish itself from Danny Boyle's 28 Days Later. Unless you want to count its political statement on over-aggressive American militarism, which I'm reluctant to consider new in any form.

It does, however, showcase the Rage Virus spreading en masse, whereas the first movie (probably lacking the funds to do much more) followed a band of survivors in the disaster's fallout. What 28 Weeks Later gives you, then, are scares based more on clusterfuck chaos than deep psychological tension. For this reason, 28 Weeks Later can be even more entertaining than its predecessor but rarely as involving.

Most of the film takes place after mainland Britain has been quarantined (for a rather unambiguous period of time) following the initial outbreak. A U.S.-led force moves in and coordinates a re-colonization in London under heavy surveilance and occupying troops. Okay, so you can see where this might be going, not only in terms of plot but also political commentary. Let me just say this: if a major rebuilding of Britain is to be conducted when most of it is dead, who's going to to come put on the big boy pants? And for a proper Horror to ensue, said pants-wearers must screw up massively. And boy, do they.

Fans of Danny Boyle (Trainspotting, Millions) may be disappointed to find that the sequel's direction was handed over to Juan Carlos Fresnadillo (umm... Intacto?). Thankfully, Fresnadillo's style mostly retains loyalty to the oddly-refined grittiness of the original. The most noticeable deviation is his machinegun cutting during action scenes, which leaves you just as frantically dizzy as the zombie fodder in the film. This one's all about the adrenaline.

One of the movie's biggest letdowns, partially due to that action emphasis, is its dearth of sympathetic characters. Unlike the original, we almost never see the protagonists in their human livelihood, trying enjoy life when they're not being chased/eaten/spewed upon by crazies. Not when it makes sense, anyway. Some of the main characters also suffer from that special Horror movie ignorance that distances us from them, the kind where we just beg for natural selection to take its course. Like the unassuming teenage girl who encounters her first flesh-eaten corpse, then snatches its keys to take a joyride on Deadguy McGee's abandoned moped. I mean, she represents us all, wouldn't you say?

Robert Carlysle (The Full Monty, The World is Not Enough) is probably the only recognizable face here, and he plays the character with the most dramatic potential. The fan-freakin'-tastic opening sequence finds him and his wife scrambling to escape a cottage overrun by "Infected," and when confronted with a slim chance of rescuing his wife, he buggers off to save his own panic-stricken hide.

So it becomes a story of redemption, eh? Where a man must atone for that moment of weakness while fighting to protect his kids from the second outbreak?

Would've been pretty cool, huh? But they don't go that direction. Instead they hand the story over to his kids and a couple American soldiers. All of whom, as mentioned, aren't particularly interesting.

Ultimately, though, for those seeking a blood-slathered onslaught of action, 28 Weeks Later can overcome its defects (by "those", I confess, I am often referring to me). The set pieces are so viscerally satisfying that you'll forgive most of the plotwise stupidity that arranges them. Like this one:

Hundreds of confused evacuees. Locked in a hallway. In a blackout.

Now here comes an Infected.


(*Sob*) Thank you, movie.

Just Saw a Movie: Spider-Man 3

GRADE: C

If I'd ever written a wholly superfluous review, I'm sure it's this one. I'll forgo providing a synopsis because chances are, you've already seen Spider-Man 3. Last month on YouTube, for all I know.

Before you even saw it, you'd probably already heard that the movie suffers from the X-Men 3 Syndrome, where it asserts itself as the be-all end-all Spider-Man flick, cramming enough characters for two sequels into 2 hours and 20 minutes.

Yeah! So I'm thinkin', all right, Raimi -- try to cap the trilogy and satisfy my Spider-Man movie fix forever. But I did I really need Sandman?

Well, that's interesting because what Sandman does is provide a bad guy who can be both a sympathetic human figure and a towering collosus for the fight scenes --

And I didn't need "New" Goblin, either.

Right, right, but that's a loose end that needed to be tied up, unlike some others...

Venom should have been in the whole flippin' movie.

You know what? Yeah. Not just because Topher Grace as Eddie Brock is the film's most giddy surprise, but that if Venom is done justice, he needs no sideshow villains (unless you want to throw in Carnage, and most fans would be down for that). Back in the day, I was leery to hear that Spider-Man 2 would feature only Dr. Octopus as an adversary, but seeing what impressive depth came from the focus of this pseudo-Father/Son conflict, just think of what fun Spider-Man 3 would have been if it were Venom's movie?

But 3 wants to parcel itself out to too many characters. Rushing through all its subplots, the script has to take numerous shortcuts to move the plot along, and you get some laughably on-the-nose soap opera dialogue as a result. When young Harry Osborn refuses Spider-Man's plea for help, for one, the rich boy's "Alfred"-esque butler steps in to make this solemn revelation:

"When your father died, I cleaned his wound. Spider-Man didn't kill him. He was killed by his own glider."

Priceless.

Very few scenes can take their time to maximize their drama. The mesmerizing sequence in which Sandman first struggles to reclaim his human form out of a mound of sediment is a standout for this reason. And because it is so damn cool to watch.

The Amazing Spider-Man, The Spectactular Spider-Man... My Chemical Spiderman? This is where the film lost me. Tear-jerky Peter Parker embraces the Angst Suit From Outer Space and brushes his bangs down -- over one eye -- and it is played in earnest for some scenes. Most of the time Peter's new personality (thank God) milked for laughs, but it becomes bewildering when they try to make poor Tobey Maguire sexy and badass in addition to emo. The cocky Saturday Night Fever montage that follows is a head-scratcher (some onlooking ladies are blowing him off while random others want to jump his bones -- c'mon, movie, which is it?), and it seems to want the same comedic effect as the campy "Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head" sequence from Spider-Man 2, but that one worked because we liked that Peter. This one, in spite of the silliness, can go write Mary Jane a love letter in blood for all we care.

Really, the black-suited Peter Parker couldn't have been more emo if he were weeping into his Nightmare Before Christmas hoodie while blogging a poem on the evanescent nature of cigarette smoke. And I'll be damned if footage from the Peter/Harry penthouse fight scene doesn't get sampled for the next Hawthorne Heights music video, interspliced with a silhouetted girl ruthlessly stomping on a human heart.

The Venom suit does this?

I found it difficult to take the rest of the film seriously thereafter. Did Raimi want the audience to laugh uncontrollably when Spidey swung in to land in front of a flowing Star-Spangled Banner? Because we did. Trouble was, by the time Spider-Man had to make his rounds in the end and have all his tearful goodbyes, we were already emotionally jettisoned from the film and the maudlin conclusion was just as laughable as the intended camp.

Spider-Man 3 has the goofiness of the first movie while aspiring to even higher drama than the second. It ends up surpassing neither predecessor. I'm skeptical that after three webslinging movies that Raimi and Co. would sign on for yet another, even though they would likely be paid the GDP of Sweden to do so. For now, consider this sequel the capper, and one that, considering the genre, makes some familiar third-movie mistakes. And then some utterly strange ones.