The Return of the Living Dead (1985)

The film that is generally considered as the true start of the modern zombie movie, Night of the Living Dead, didn't really become a pop culture phenomenon until after repeated television showings in the 1970's. The two writers of that film George A Romero and John A Russo had different visions of what they wanted to do with the now re-invigorated property and parted ways, with Russo retaining the rights to the 'Living Dead' title and Romero free to make his own, ultimately better known series of zombie flicks. Various circumstances kept Russo from making an additional zombie film until 1985 and by that time his vision for the franchise may well have changed. While Romero's films are noted for their subtext of social commentary, Russo's work is decidedly more tongue in cheek.

From the Wikipedia plot description of this movie:

"At a medical supply warehouse in Louisville, Kentucky, a foreman named Frank tries to impress the company's newest employee, Freddy, by showing him military drums that accidentally wound up in the basement of the building. The drum contains the remains of an army experiment gone wrong that inspired the film Night of the Living Dead. Frank accidentally unleashes the toxic gas inside the barrel. Frank and Freddy discover that the body inside the tank has disappeared, believing it to have probably melted. The gas reanimates a corpse inside a meat locker, forcing Frank and Freddy to call upon their boss and warehouse owner Burt Wilson to help them deal with the situation. When the three fail to kill the walking cadaver by damaging its brain and decapitating it, Burt decides to bring the zombie to the nearby mortuary to have its dismembered parts burned in a gambit to destroy it once and for all."

So there you get something of a sense of the movies tone, its a sort of sequel to Night of the Living Dead, only in this film Night of the Living Dead is treated as a heavily fictionalized version of the 'real events' this movie is a true sequel to. While the zombies in Romero's and most subsequent zombie films are relatively easy to kill, you just destroy the brain, Russo's zombies are much more freighting in that they are almost impossible to 'kill', you destroy the brain, you slice them up, they still keep coming at you. These zombies differ from the now generally accepted Romero from in other significant ways, they eat only living human brains rather then all kind of living flesh, they are re-animated corpses in the truest sense not merrily the recently deceased victims of a 'zombie virus', and they are considerably more intelligent, capable of group planning and speech. These latter attributes also make them seem sillier then Romero's zombies.

Despite how terrible and freighting these zombies are, here they are mostly re-animated corpses in various stages of decay from a Louisville cemetery that are brought back to life by the leaked chemical from the medical supply warehouse (though a couple of characters exposed directly to the chemical later join their number, and possibly some of the brain eaten victims as well), this movie is played kind of for laughs. It's a dark comedy, moments of terror intermixed with moments of ridiculousness. In addition to the employees of the medical supply warehouse you have the kind of acerbic director of the neighboring funeral home and a group of 80's style punk rocker youths, the friends of new warehouse employee Freddy. There is also an army colonial based in California who has been charged with eliminating the zombies at all cost should those long missing barrels from the failed army experiment of the 1960's ever show back up. It is because of this latter characters actions that the movies end becomes even more apocalyptic then it might otherwise have been.

One the whole this is an odd but satisfying film, enjoyable for having a take on zombies so different from that of the current norm.  ***

Hitchcock (2012)

In 1959 Alfred Hitchcock was on top of the world, his bright Technicolor thrillers such as North By Northwest were making fortunes, he had a top rated television series and was recognized and admired all over the world. What Hitchcock wasn't however was cutting edge (any more) and that's what he wanted to be. So along comes Psycho, author Robert Bloch's novel based loosely on the life of Wisconsin murder and grave robber Ed Gein. This gruesome property was quickly snapped up by Hitch and with the weight of industry opinion against him the 'master of suspense' mortgaged his own home to get his movie made. In black and white, inspired by an unpleasant  true story, a quarter of the budget of his previous picture, little advertising, and with undertones of homosexuality and mother obsession, not to mention losing its female lead less then halfway through the story, Psycho quite unexpectedly become a phenomenal, cinematic touchstone, career highlight of a success  (Budget $806,947, Box Office $50,000,000).

Based on Stephen Rebello's 1990 non-fiction book Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho, director Sacha Gervasi's film tells the behind the scenes story of a landmark films creation, from Hitchcock's initial desire to shatter the expectations of all he had done before, to Psycho's ultimate great success. Now Hitchcock pads things, its not a documentary and I'm not sure how much strain Alfred and wife Alma's marriage was going through during all this, and I don't much care either way because the weakness of the film is inherent in the conceit of its basic plot, its just about making a movie, and we know how this one turns out, so its not a lot to hang a 98 minute dramatic narrative on.

The best thing this movie has going for it is Anthony Hopkins as Hitchcock, he does an amazing imitation, with the voice, and in all that prosthetics, but I honestly think it would have been put to better use hosting a new version of Alfred Hitchcock Presents. Helen Mirren plays Alma Reville Hitchcock, she's always good and Mrs. Hitch is interesting, but the marital difficulties here feel pro-forma, I'm sure he wasn't the easiest man to live with, but I'm sure she had her ways of dealing with it, they were married for 54 years after all. Scarlett Johansson and Jessica Biel are eye candy who play eye candy of a different era, Kurtwood Smith plays the Breen Office, James D'Arcy suitably brings out Anthony Perkins fay qualities, and Michael Stuhlbarg is safely cast as Lew Wasserman but sadly given the perfectness of this has very little to do.

In short Hitchcock is just an okay movie about a really impressive movie. **1/2

Boise Classic Movies

Classic Nick Online

Rome, Open City (1945)

After Mussolini's ouster from power in mid 1943 it was not long before the remaining Italian government found its self no longer capable of defending the capital and declared it an 'open city', a Nazi occupying force quickly took over and held Rome until the Allies took it in June of 44'. Six months later Roberto Rossellini begin the filming of Rome, Open City based on a screen play co-written by Frederico Fellini, which came about as a fictionalized amalgam of what started as two different documentary projects, one a film about the patriot priest Don Pieto Morosini who assisted the resistance in the' open city' days and was killed by the Nazi's, and another about Roman children who fought the Nazi's during the occupation. With the Italian film industry literally in ruins Rome, Open City was made on the cheap, used real locations, and mostly non-professional actors.

The movie is a slice of life tale about occupied Rome, it tells the stories of a number of different players in the resistance, including a patriot priest (an impressive performance by Aldo Fabrizi), an atheist resistance fighter (Marcello Pagliero) and his pregnant semi-lapsed Catholic fiancé (Anna Magnani, amazing performance) as well as a group of young boys who have formed themselves into a resistance unit, but whose use of home made bombs on occupying targets ultimately draws unwanted Nazi attention to the tenement complex where most of the characters live. A very important early example of what became known as the Italian neo-realist school of film making, Rome, Open City is a dynamic, heart felt, jagged, character infused, tale of courage, all the more remarkable for the hard circumstances of its production, and its incredible proximity in time to the resistance, I mean all involved were making a movie that could have gotten them executed for treason less then a year before. An important and fantastically good film that would be an important addition to anyone's film literacy. ****

Niagra (1986)

As part of  my recent vacation I went with my tour group to a first generation IMAX theater in Niagara Falls, Ontario to watch this 41 "docu-drama" about the famous falls. Basically Niagara is a bunch of little vinyets about highlight moments in the history of the falls, including an Indian legend about its origin, the journey of a former tour boat down the river, a guy who tight rope walked half way across the falls, a middle age lady who went over the falls in a barrel with her cat, and a young boy who survived going over the falls after a boat accident on a family outing in the 1960's. Now the quality of the acting, the costuming (except for the last sequence when they didn't even try to make it look like the 60's), and the style of the music and cinematography kept making me think of the early 1990's church film Legacy, and when the first title card came up in the credits I knew why, 'Directed by Keith Merrill'.

Now my mom grew up with the Merrill family in the San Jose area of California in the 1960's, so I'm more aware of Keith's work then I might otherwise be, though growing up LDS and visiting the Legacy Theater in SLC several times I couldn't help but encounter his work. Keith Merrill was long the go to director for LDS Church produced features, they probably got the idea because this Mormon filmmaker did short touristy films for places like Niagara Falls and the Alamo. As Legacy and later The Testaments: Of One Fold and One Shepard would be the tourist oriented films shown at Church venues like Temple Square, the choice must have felt right. Anyway Merrill has a style that's readily identifiable, its hooky and idealistic, of a best face forward temperament. I've long been curious to see the film that won Keith Merrill his first Oscar early in his career, the 1973 documentary The Great American Cowboy (he later won a second Oscar, in this case for best documentary short for Amazon in 1997), but this early film is surprisingly hard to find.

Niagara is fine for the kind of movie it is, though since they've been showing it at the falls for almost thirty years it might be time for the local tourist board to think about updating it, Keith Merrill's probably available. **

The Velvet Mouse Show

Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011)

This most recent effort to revive the once prominent Planet of the Apes franchise is far more successful on nearly every level then was the disastrous 2001 Tim Burton reboot. (As a side note I remember hearing in the 1990's that Oliver Stone of all people was interesting in doing a remake of Planet of the Apes with Arnold Schwarzenegger, I'm pretty sure that would have been a disaster as well, but probably a more interesting one then Tim Burton's rather pointless and uninspired effort. Moving on). Screen writers Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver's new take servers as an origin story or jumping off point for what 20th Century Fox no doubt hopes will be a long and success series of films, and I'm pretty sure at least one of those predicted future films will deal with the crew of the first manned mission to Mars as this movie goes out of its way to mention them although it has no bearing on the immediate plot. Also (spoiler) there is that plague the apes are immune too which is hardly dealt with in this film but will doubtless be the catalyst for the Earth becoming a 'planet of the apes'.

The plot of this movie has to deal with Dr. James Franco and his efforts to come up with a cure of Alzheimer's as his father Jon Lithgow has that tragic disease. Dr. Franco is testing the potential cures he is working on on Apes, his viral-based drug "ALZ-112' shows promise until one of the test apes "Bright Eyes" (wink, nod) goes nuts and the project is terminated with the surviving apes on the serum all slated to be exterminated. One Ape, a new born  James names Caesar, is saved however and taken home by the doctor to live with him and his father. Caesar shows that he has inherited the heightened intelligence his mother had developed as a result of James drug, Dr. Franco studies him and keeps working on his serum which he eventually gives to his father to great effect, at least temporarily. James also gets an obligatory love interest in the form of a veterinarian played by Freida Pinto (note to studios, more Freida Pinto please).

The ape Caesar is played by the Olivier of motion capture Andy Serkis and is the best thing in the film, which is rather odd when you think about it.  Much of this movie is from an apes perspective, and Caesar, a non-human is by far the most developed and nuanced character in the film. Now I'd say this mostly works, but it also kept tugging at the back of my head throughout the film as I watching a lot of humans die at Ape hands, its a weird position for a viewer to be in loyalty wise. Not great, not bad, but intriguingly original in its take on a nearly half century old movie property. ***

To Boldly Flee (2012)

The third movie in the TGWTG (That Guy with the Glasses) Website 'Anniversary trilogy', proceeded by Kickassia and Suburban Knights. TGWTG is a website that hosts various comedic reviewer 'personalities' who discuses and skewer, in character, various pop culture products like movies, video games, comic books ect. For three years most of the better known reviewers got together to create multi-part 'anniversary movies' for the website. Each year the movies actually got more ambitious, and even contained semi-legitimate character arcs.

Like the previous entries in this series To Bold Flee is largely a combination of website in-jokes and pop culture references, the plot cut, pasted and riffed on various films it parodies, in this case large portions of the film (even down to extended dialogue sequences) consist principally of  plays on such movies/franchises as Ghostbusters, Star Wars, Star Trek, and The Matrix. This is also the film where website creator Doug Walker killed off his principle character 'The Nostalgia Critic', a decision he fairly quickly regretted as he brought the character back from the dead about seven months later.

I found this film quite enjoyable and well done, the special effects especially good and appropriately tongue in check for this kind of production. Despite having much backing in website in humor, the plot is coherent enough that you could watch it without  being familiar with the website, though it would doubtless be kind of  a surreal experience. The movies build on each other well and this film (video) is more emotionally effective if you've seen the previous entries in the series. There is nothing quite like this series, and the care and enthusiasm with which these movies were made makes them something kind of special. ***

Clear History (2013)

Like John Wayne, or more obviously Bob Hope and Woody Allen, Larry David has a basic character he has refined and plays in nearly all of his work, namely that of a fussy, self-obsessed, socially awkward, sabotager of self, and HBO's surprisingly big modest scale comedy Clear History is the perfect vehicle for him, pun intended. David plays Nathan Flomm, a veteran advertising man who has gotten in on the ground floor of a California based company hopping to put out the first affordable mass market electric car in America. However Nathan has a falling out with his boss Will Haney (Jon Hamm, showing again that ultimately what he wants to do is comedy) over the latters decision to name the new car after his son Howard. Nathan doesn't think that Howard's an appropriate name for a car and says so loudly, ultimately agreeing to take up Wills offer to by out his share in the company before the vehicle is released. Needless to say given the kind of movie this is 'The Howard' is tremendously successful (I'd drive one) and Nathan has lost out on the Billion dollars he would have netted on his former share of the company.

Extremely embarrassed at being known as the man who foolishly lost out on a billion dollar investment at the 11th hour, Nathan goes underground, changing his appearance (early in the film he sports wild hair and a massive beard), and reinvents himself on Martha's Vineyard with the  new identity of Rolly DaVore, he gets a job as the care taker of an older women and becomes surprisingly well liked by the locals. Only after 10 years on the down low it looks like Rolly/Nathans old life might come back to haunt him, when his now multi-billionaire former boss decides to build a massive mansion on the Vineyard. At first Rolly thinks he's going to have to pick up an leave again, but when he catches a late night showing of the movie The Fountainhead (for whose protagonist Will's son, and by extension electric car model are named) Nathan gets the idea of blowing up the mansion, thus driving Will from the island forever.

Nathan via the agency of his best friend Frank (Danny McBride) recruits two locals  to blow up the mansion, Joe Stumpo (Michael Keaton) and "Rags" (Bill Hader) who are rednecks and particularly resentful of Will for building on what was once Stumpo family land. However they need both a fuse and an in at the site, which results in Rolly having to purchase the former from a shady Chechen named Tibor (Live Schreiber, unaccredited), and quit his job with the old lady to get the latter, guilting Philip Baker Hall into giving him a job on his construction team because he once found the mans lost dog years ago. On the job site Rolly accidently strikes up a friendship with Wills young trophy wife Rhonda (Kate Hudson), who seems unhappy and who Rolly convinces himself is romantically interested in him. What better way to get back at Will then to steal his wife out from under him thinks Rolly, but Stumpo and Rags have their hearts set on blowing the mansion up, and Tibor is after Rolly for more money for a fender bender he had with the formers Howard, while simultaneously the Chechen is courting Rollys newly slim friend Jennifer (Eva Mendes), and Rolly also just must know if the rumors he's heard about his ex-girlfriend Wendy (Amy Ryan) and members of the soon to be visiting band Chicago (who provide the movies sound track) are true. The awkward thus escalates until it ends in a perfect self defeating crescendo.

This is a  fun, satisfying comedy, which while boosting a large all-star cast, thanks to the fact that its a cable TV vanity project doesn't have to try too hard, which relives it of the kind of financial pressure which makes so many comedies opt for the safe and routine. Clear History is not routine, rather its a lightly quirky little gem of a comedy. ***

Cloud Atlas (2012)

When I first heard/saw images from the movie Cloud Atlas I knew that I wanted to see it. The more I read about the movie however the more I came to the conclusion that I should really read the book first. Cloud Atlas, both book and movie are very epic in scope and somewhat complicated in structure, I even read one reviewer state, and I'm paraphrasing, that you basically need to have read the book first as a sort of atlas to help you find your way around the movie. So I read the book.

David Mitchells 2004 novel is an epic, philosophical mediation on a number of subjects, as well as an impressively pulled off exercise at writing in multiple voices, styles and genres', and yet having the six tales that comprise the book be complimentary and add up to a much greater whole. The movie is also quite impressive, the late Roger Ebert called it "one of the most ambitious films ever made", and indeed the film is reminiscent of  the silent epic Intolerance, with its multiple store lines set in different times but all built around the same theme or subject matter, which in this earlier case being 'intolerance.'

A film adaptation of a novel, especially one as epic and multi-layered as this one, is forced to cut, compress, and change things in order to be workable, but the hope is always (or should be always) to stay more or less true to the spirit of the source material, Cloud Atlas the film does this well.  I'd say the film stays about 60% true to the book story wise, with the most faithful segment being The United Kingdom 2012, and the lest faithful probably England and Scotland 1936, which leaves out a major romantic sub-plot and relocates its setting from Belgium to the UK. As part of this necessary compression the films three directors, Tom Tykwer and Lana & Andy Wachowski center there philosophical mediation on the  maxim "only the strong survive" or in this rendering "The weak are meat the strong do eat" as a kind of law of nature that is periodically upended when brave individuals rise above themselves for the sake of others, and that it is this rebellion against the natural order that constitutes the essence of what makes one truly civilized.

This theme is played out through the stories of an American lawyer traveling the South Seas in the mid 19th century, a struggling English composer during the great depression, an investigative reporter in 1970's San Francisco, a sixty-something book publisher in the contemporary UK, a cloned waitress in 22nd century Korea, and a struggling goat herder in the post-apocalyptic ruins of 24th century Hawaii. The film emphasizes the link between these characters and stories as being symbolic of the human condition, or looked at another way as evidence of re-incarnation, by casting largely the same group of actors in multiple stories lines, sometimes under unrecognizable layers of makeup, sometimes playing characters of different genders. So needless to say there is an awful lot going on here in both stories and visuals, and that can no doubt be overwhelming and off putting to some views. I myself have wondered how I would have received this movie had I not read the book first.

These theoretical reservations aside however I think there is an awful lot in this movie to go away impressed, and even moved by. It's extraordinarily well put together, where is its editing Oscar, the main cast's a fine one including Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Hugh Grant, Jim Broadbent and Hugo Weaving, though on occasion they can be sort of awkwardly worked into some stories. The sets, visuals, costumes, all show tremendous dedication to detail, and while I have a long standing tradition of acting put off at the Wachowski's all but inevitable (Speed Racer excluded) instance on ostentatiously loading their films with material from a freshman philosophy class, here I thought they were appropriately restrained, you come to the films meaning more or less on your own, they don't club you over the head with it, save lightly at the very end.

All in all a dammed impressive project that shows there is still a lot of freshness and vibrancy available to the film medium, even when its put in the service of mining some of human civilizations oldest questions. ***1/2