Zombieland (2009)

(R-L) Woody Harrelson Jesse Eisenberg

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Writer: Rhett Reese, Paul Wernick

Director: Ruben Fleischer

Notable actors: Bill Murray (in clips of Ghostbusters)

I’m coming to realise movies are made of many more elements than I’d previously considered, and it’s harder to have a ‘good film’ then I’d ever thought. Everything has to be spot on – as well as the main four; acting, directing, story, script; there needs to be consistency in lighting, justified cinematography…and, of course, so much more.

And so we come to Zombieland, a film better viewed in its previous incarnations of 28 Days Later and Shaun of the Dead. That’s not to say it’s not a fair-enough waste of a couple hours, but it will leave you with the notion your time would have been far better spent re-watching either of these modern classics. Viewing Zombieland becomes a mental game – that’s from Shaun, that’s from 28, that’s just plain Hangover Humour…that’s also, by the way, the most enjoyment you’ll get out of little-miss-predictable here.

OK, Woody’s grown up but he’s still quirky as ever (Twinkie, anyone?). The decision for the character’s only to be known by state names adds the element of fear of connection. That is, until, Woody’s ‘dog’ turns out to be called Buck. Really? Oh, yes, I agree, it’s all so awful; but Buck? Perhaps I’m a little too English sometimes. I also have no idea what a Twinkie is, save gay slang, so I’ll thank you to not enlighten me on the subject. The unintended comedy was fantastic for a moment until I twigged it was some sort of ‘candy’.

So, what else? Bill Murray’s cameo is well-done but gives us a chance to see the characters, him included, as so fucking stupid there’s really no need to feel sympathy at all. The funniest part in the film is when Columbus, played by Eisenberg, insults Facebook. The creator of Facebook invented Facebook and thus may insult Facebook. Or something.

There’s about a thousand things this movie is not. What it certainly is is aimed at boys. Boys my age, much to my disparity. The sort of guy who looks fondly back on Atari even though it had been eliminated years before his birth. The sort of guy who gets pissed off with ‘smart’ horror because there’s just not enough blood, damn it. The sort of boy who is mentally fourteen. I’ve close friends who love this film, who laugh hardest at the gore. Believe me, I love my gore. But it has to be justified, and you can’t even attempt to consider the rest when those main four have been so carefully ignored.

A Serious Man (2009)

(L-R) Richard Kind and Aaron Wolff

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Writer: Ethan Coen, Joel Coen

Director: Ethan Coen, Joel Coen

Notable actors: Michael Stuhlbarg, Aaron Wolff

I don’t know what A Single Man is. Maybe I’m not old enough. Maybe I’m not smart enough, not Jewish enough. Too Jewish? Maybe it’s because I’m not American, and no matter the way it’s put, the cultural differences are, in this instance, too much.

Maybe I shouldn’t have watched it after being up all night, out of my mind from mixed medication. Maybe there’s wondrous philosophy to be found within its flickering images, philosophy I will never, no matter what I do with my life, be smart enough or experienced enough to understand.

Maybe it truly was a Mike Leigh film with none of the charisma, another tale of American’s fucking up what we do so well. Some of the taste, minimal of the magic. Or they take it out and replace it with their own, too different for me to understand.

Maybe I’m overcomplicating things. Maybe it’s just crap that I wanted to be good so badly I’ve made it too complex for my own understanding in my head.

Maybe I need to see it again?

One thing’s certain. It wasn’t worth my time, and I'd be gobsmacked if it was worth yours.

Julie & Julia (2009)

(L-R) Meryl Streep and Amy Adams

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Writer: Nora Ephron, Julie Powell (book - Julie and Julia), Julia Child, Alex Prud'homme (book - My Life in France)

Director: Nora Ephron

Notable actors: Worryingly, I can honestly say (hopefully for the first and last time) there were none.

Julie and Julia was, certainly, a good idea. I recall a vague thought of wanting to see it when it was first released. It’s quaint, certainly. And that’s just about where the good points end.

The first buggering irritant was Meryl Streep’s height. In real life, Julia Child was six foot two. Well, that’s all very good. In real life people are taller than others, and indeed shorter than others, all the time. I know an extremely feminine-in-appearance girl who just happens to be well over six foot. But was this really the most important factor in a damn movie in which height plays no point other than to distract?

The infamous Sherlock Holmes is described as being well over six feet by creator Conan Doyle, but in recent years he’s been played by Benedict Cumberbatch (a dead 6’0) and Robert Downey Jr (5’8) respectively. Did this height loss somehow fail either production? No, because in the real world nobody gives a flying fig about height. Nobody, that is, expect those with short on talent but lumbered with height somewhat pathetically use said height in order to lose an argument (have you ever seen an argument won with a height-related insult?).

I cannot for the life of me understand why Child’s height was so drastically important to her character in the film. All I know is that it was perhaps the most distracting thing the filmmakers could have done, even overlooking Streep’s ridiculous accent.

As you may have guessed I will never be one, no matter who it is, to play favourites and blindly believe every fine actor is fine in every performance they give. If you’re an obsessive Streep fan, there are, as Kermode says, other opinions available.

So, the film’s barely begun and there’s already two massive irritants you’ve got to put up with for two rather pointless hours. Watching Julie and Julia is quite literally watching the same film in two different time settings with differently abled actors. It’s a bit like going to see a RSC production of Hamlet only to have each scene repeated, straight after the RSC do it, by the local primary school. While Amy Adams may be adorable, her character here is deplorable. No sympathy is felt for either character.

Julie has to create drive for herself, despite the fact she’s getting on fairly well in life. What a shame, you’re one of the billions of people around the world who live in accommodation best suited to their needs. The accommodation best suited to my needs is a mansion fitted with a traditional pub, the biggest private library in Britain, a theatre/music room complete with stage so I may host my own private performances...ok, I’m running away a bit with the idea. My point is, there is absolutely nothing here which gives you sympathy to Julie. Perhaps reading the slog of her blog would produce such an effect, but the small glimpses given here try far too hard without giving the audience anything to work with.

The story is similar with Julia. Bored well-to-do housewife who in another time would’ve been Julie. We get it. I admit my working class ethic may make me biased to dislike Julia, but I do, and the wording toward the end when Julia is said to have knowledge of Julie’s blog ...well all that does is make you realise both characters are bitches and you’ve wasted two hours of your life.

Julie and Julia haplessly makes every mistake possible several times before the film is through. There’s only so much I can take of watching scene after scene repeated straight away in a different setting, and it’s even worse with unsympathetic characters and a storyline so predictable you knew the end before even sitting down in your chair. And nope, I knew nothing of Julie or Julia prior to seeing this.

I hope dearly the real Julie isn’t as vapid as the real one makes her out to be, and equally do I despair of what Julia Child’s estate has allowed to become of her memory. I care nothing for each individual on a personal level through interaction with their fictional selves, by the by – this is simple human sympathy.

The worst part? After you've been so nice as to sit through the whole damn thing you're given the most condescending good-bye; just before the credits role, text upon the screen proudly proclaims ‘Julie’s book was made into a film.’ No shit, diminutive height Sherlock.

New Moon (2009)

(L-R)Peter Facinelli, Jackson Rathbone, Kellan Lutz
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Writer: Melissa Rosenberg, Stepheine Mayer (book)

Director: Chris 'career highlight came with only decent work, About A Boy, in 2002' Weitz

Notable actors: Michael Sheen, Peter Facinelli, Robert Pattinson

How this made a lengthy book is beyond me (I refuse to degrade the art from by referring to it as a novel). The important thing to note in New Moon is that there’s no story. Just two hours or so at finding excuses – or, as is more often the case, not bothering at all – to have the two male leads take their tops off.

I realise I am far away from Twilight’s audience. I’m not a teenager, I’m not a girl, I’m not a moron, and I appreciate talent in acting, writing; anything creative really. I’ll stop with the insults now, my apologies. If this was just another banal come-and-go series I could put up with it. What incenses me, and many others, is the way Twilight’s misguided fans hold it to some great literary tragedy, not realising the story is the same Shakespeare cobbled together all those years ago.

You know the one – paedophilic guy preying on a young lady, but it’s fine because it’s so gosh darn romantic. Whoops, my apologies, again. I should have said romantic. Twilight’s premise is downright creepy, especially considering all the religious things thrown in there. As if a guy who would be seventeen forever would ever turn down sex. With anyone. Most would say yes to a squirrel, if my memory of the tortured time serves well.

Nevertheless, I’ve been trying to be a good brother and understand my baby sister’s obsession. I saw Twilight in the cinema and was unimpressed in a mildly irritating sort of way, then it blew up and wood was served as talent to the children of western nations. I was completely and unashamedly biased sitting down to watch New Moon, but, sad to say, I was disappointed.

Robert Pattinson can act. Taylor Lautner may be able to scrape by on American sitcoms yet, but he needs a few years at drama school first. Kristen Stewart is beyond hope, while Peter Facinelli and Michael Sheen were fabulous, and it was most definitely a case of paycheck for one and doing-it-for-the-kids for the other. Michael Sheen’s moment as the head of the Volturi was terrifying.

This film is not made for me. It’s made for me, and men like me, to be dragged to by sisters, girlfriends, and that best friend you’ve had since childhood and just can’t gather the courage to risk the friendship by telling her you love her. All the same, it’s nowhere near as bad as I expected it to be. Yeah, it’s bad, but not outright bad in the way many films aimed at the target audience I do sit squarely in are.

I can quite easily imagine, if I were a fifteen-year-old hormonal girl, that I’d swoon understandably for a series containing countless shirtless men balanced perfectly with over-the-top romanticism. So, try as I might, I can’t really insult Twilight; not as a film in its own right, because the truth is that it does the job it was designed for perfectly well. And I’m sure the next one, or however many there continue to be, will do so equally well.  Me not being a target audience doesn’t make it a bad movie. Even casting a plank as the lead doesn’t make it bad movie, try as I might to wish both those things true.

The truth is that films like Twilight is the reason popcorn in the cinema caught on; so the boys have something to do while just being content the one they love is enjoying the screen immensely. If not a little too much. Oh, and Robert Pattinson really can act, I wasn’t taking the piss. It shows across sometimes even through the fog of long-repressed-vampiric hormones. That was the most shocking thing of all. Well, that and the fact small children now believe vampires fucking sparkle.

Watchmen (2009)

 (L-R)Matt Frewer and Jeffery Dean Morgan

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Writer: David Hayter, Alex Tse, Dave Gibbons (graphic novel illustrator), Alan Moore (graphic novel writer)

Director: Zack Snyder

Notable actors: Jackie Earle Haley

 

Allow me to declare myself. I’m a comic book geek of the worst kind – I do not hold myself exclusively to superheroes. So Watchmen, the perfect mixture of classic super-telling and harsh realities of series like Joe Sacco’s autobiographical Palestine, is perfect for me. Just as it is for any other person on this earth happy to proclaim they’re a comic book guy when it’s not cool (ie any decade other than our current one). Which is basically why Watchmen’s such an underground phenomenon. It’s all the fun of masked heroes with some real seriousness thrown in.

And, I am surprised to say, the film adds...nothing. OK, so I lied a bit there, I’m not surprised at all. Even Jon’s giant, blue, glowing cock, of which I’ve heard so much fanfare, was barely glimpsed. When it was it was from afar afar afar, if you get my meaning. The jumps and losses from the novel, even at well over two hours, are very painful indeed. I wonder if one could make sense of the story without the background of reading the strip first.

The other possibility, of course, is that the film makes things far easier to understand, as it isn’t until the last 30 pages of a 400 page graphic novel that the reader feels settled enough to read without interruption from another storyline. Indeed, the perfect parts of Watchmen were little nods to those who had read the book, which would be rather wonderful if those who read the book didn’t make up %99.9 percent of this film’s audience. The other 0.01% were dragged to the cinema by their boyfriends in revenge for always making him sit through rom coms.

To be fair to the film’s makers, Watchmen has been seen as the latest in a small collection of unfilmable written stories since its inception. Its medium is key to its success, and I’m afraid to understand that statement you’ll have to go and read it, as to do so would take up the entire page. Trust me; you’ll be glad of it.

That said, some shots, where the storyboard had evidently been ripped straight from the strip, were gorgeous, giving one a rush unrivalled even by faultless adaptations such as Iron Man. Rorschach was even almost as creepy as he is in his original, although not nearly ugly enough. As beautiful as these moments were, the decision to omit the novel’s subplots to almost entirety is unforgivable, seeing as in replacement all that was received were an abundance of fight scenes.

Well, I hear the cry, what do you expect? There’s a reason the most physical scenes of theatre – those containing violence and/or sex – are so sparsely available, even in a theoretical film about rent boys who are paid in revenge killings. Too much and the excitement is gone. This is exactly what Watchmen suffered from. Hell, even the much worked for climax loses almost all it’s meaning. The fact half the lines were jumbled out of order so some made absolutely no sense didn’t help much either. I honestly needed the book by my side so I could pause the film and check what was going on whenever something didn’t seem right.

The best thing I can say about Watchmen is that if you’ve read the book, seeing the film is mandatory, just so you can appreciate that no matter how hard the cast and crew tried; there is nothing to rival the excellence of Alan Moore. And to think, I live just down the road from him...let’s hope he never finds out I gave in and saw it.

There are reasons some things are unfilmable. Watchmen explains them all.