I’m a big fan of director/writer John Carpenter. One of my all time favorite films is the original Assault on Precinct 13 (1976), and feel Escape From New York (1981) is one of the most fascinating, original story concepts to make it to the screen.
The Thing, released in 1982, is considered by many John Carpenter fans to be his all time best film. Sadly, like too many of Mr. Carpenter’s films, it didn’t do well at the box office. In fact, it flopped, pretty hard, and audiences and critics weren’t all that impressed by it… at the time.
1982 was a wonderful year for movie releases (don’t believe me? Check it out here).
There are a wealth of great features released that year, but the biggest smash hit was Steve Spielberg’s E. T. The Extraterrestrial. There was also the release of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, perhaps the best of all the Star Trek films.
These two sci-fi classics were generally feel good films (even with the sad events at the end of STII). They were audience pleasers, through and through, and they did extremely well with audiences.
Which may explain why two other prominent science fiction films, Blade Runner and The Thing, didn’t do quite so well.
Both Blade Runner and The Thing presented more morose, not so crowd pleasant stories. In the case of Blade Runner, there was little action and plenty of self-introspection along with sticky questions regarding humanity. Sure, it presented a visually spectacular futuristic L.A., but one where people were down and out and audiences had little to actually cheer about.
With The Thing, we had a out-and-out horror story with some very gruesome effects and an ending which (MILD SPOILERS) is far from upbeat.
Yet if you’ve clicked on the list I presented of 1982 films, you’ll find both The Thing and Blade Runner at the top of the list, critically, and some of the bigger box-office successes lower.
Time has been kind to both movies.
Anyway, I have The Thing in multiple formats and recently upped the digital copy quality to UHD and decided to give the movie another look. It had been years since I’d seen it start to end, and I was curious how I’d feel about it.
Because unlike many, I feel the film has some pretty serious flaws.
Don’t get me wrong: I think its overall a pretty damn good film and the special effects, even for today, are jaw dropping. But I felt the film wasn’t as suspenseful as Assault on Precinct 13 or as clever as Escape From New York.
Seeing the film again, I wondered: Would my opinion change?
Alas, it didn’t.
Again: I think the film is quite good and deserves all the lavish praise its gotten.
However, by leaning so heavily into the at times superb grotesque effects and presenting characters who, IMHO, were pretty one note, the film to me failed to create a more suspenseful mood.
For example, the very first time we see the Thing in action, he’s with the other dogs in the kennel. The scene is a wonder of practical effects, but I wonder if it might have been more effective, a la Jaws, to hint at what grotesque things are happening through the dogs barking and moving about and us hearing these strange ripping sounds. We could have had everything there with a more shadowy presentation, leaving the first “big” showcase of the Thing being the “heart attack” scene.
But that’s just me and I know there are those who love all the effects work.
As for the characters, the “hero” of the piece, Kurt Russell’s MacReady, is the hero by virtue of the fact that he’s Kurt freaking Russell and I didn’t feel there was a sense that he was necessarily more competent than the others. True he’s in the middle of all the major set-pieces (as he should be!), but that just further showed how the others were mostly window dressing and/or victims to be. Keith David’s Childs, for example, the secondary protagonist of the piece, in the end does very little in the film but because he’s one of the “survivors” (maybe!) at the end, he’s raised in importance in retrospect.
I know it sounds like I’m sour on the film, but I’m truly trying to present the reasons why I feel that the film is quite good, it doesn’t -for me- rise to the level of some of Carpenter’s greater works (all IMHO!)
In the end, my opinion of The Thing remained roughly the same upon watching it again after several years. If I were to put the film on a star system, it would easily merit 3 stars out of 4.
At least for me, The Thing doesn’t quite hit the suspenseful highs of some other Carpenter films.
Continuing my adventures with HBO Max, yesterday I looked around and found the movie Malignant available to stream.
Directed and from a story co-written by James Wan (Saw, Aquaman, The Conjuring), it focuses on Madison Mitchell (Annabelle Wallis) who -after a brief intro to events at some strange psychiatric facility that occurred in the past, 1993- arrives home late one night tired and, from appearances, experiencing considerable pain because of her pregnancy. She heads to her bedroom where her deadbeat husband is watching TV and they eventually get into an argument.
She’s been pregnant, it seems, multiple times and each has resulted in some problem and no child. The husband, a nasty piece of work, shows little sympathy for her and they get into an argument. He slams her against the wall and she hits the back of her head. Blood flows and, in horror, the husband rushes downstairs to the kitchen to get her something to stop the bleeding.
Madison locks him out of her room and he is unable to get back in. She eventually goes to sleep on the bed while he sleeps on the couch downstairs.
However, he is awoken by strange sounds and attacked… and killed in a very vicious manner.
Who did him in? And who is the crazed killer who seems to have been unleashed that night?
And what does that have to do with the brief intro of events from a psychiatric hospital in 1993?
The answers come, eventually, and they are wild.
However…
Malignant is one of those films that I suspect people will either like or hate. It presents its scares in a straightforward manner but the story itself is beyond silly when all is said and done, a film that might have benefitted from more humor a laEvil Dead 2.
On the other hand, I found the plot to be somewhat reminiscent of early David Cronenberg, specifically his 1979 film The Brood. Mind you, I’m not saying the films have similar plots, more like similar thematic ideas and body horror.
Once I finished up Malignant, I couldn’t help but wonder what a more serious -and stronger- horror film it could have been had it toned down some of the silliness (there’s a scene toward the movie’s climax involving a prison cell then the entire police department which is… yeah… silly) and focused more on making this body horror film.
Still, for what it is, Malignant is not terrible by any means and is often entertaining enough despite some of the sillier elements.
I recommend this film to people who are fans of James Wan but, again, expect a more silly horror feature rather than a more serious one.
By now, most people with a passing interest in this film know the story. Zack Snyder makes Man of Steel (2013) it does good business -despite some controversy regarding the film’s ending- follows it up with Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice which gets, for the most part, annihilated by critics but which proves to be a far better film than the theatrical cut (imposed by the studio, no doubt) would have you believe when the extended version is released to home video…
Warner Brothers, worried about the critical reaction of BvS and Suicide Squad (the first one), get really nervous. Meanwhile, Snyder is directing -and finishes all principle photography- of Justice League, the third film in his DC arc, but the death by suicide of his adopted daughter causes him to abandon the project. Joss Whedon steps in, reworks the film, and when Justice League is released to theaters, it does weak business while creating a backlash for many who viewed that film as a very inferior work compared to what Snyder was bringing to his DC films previously.
Petitions were made and Warner Brothers was harassed with a “release the Snyder cut” of Justice League campaign. Some scoffed at the notion that there existed such a cut while others, such as myself, felt the film was completed, at least with regard to the main cast’s work, but that to finish the film off properly likely required considerable CGI work and that involved considerable money to be invested.
Would Warner Brothers be willing to spend such cold hard cash?
Truthfully, I wondered. Estimates ranged from the movie needing 50 to a whopping 100 million dollars to be completed, and that seemed like a really tall order for a studio to invest in, given the original film didn’t do all that well to begin with.
But then… opportunity appeared in the form of HBO Max.
Last year studios began their move toward creating their own streaming services and Warners did so with their HBO Max service. The trick with any new service, though, is to get people interested in using/paying for it. Someone at Warners realized they had a very unique opportunity here: They could complete the Zack Snyder cut of Justice League and use that film’s premiere as an HBO Max “exclusive” to get people interested in the service.
Thus, Zack Snyder was able to finish off his version of Justice League and, to boot, was even able to add a couple of minutes of extra new footage at the movie’s end.
The movie was released and, somewhat incredibly considering how negative the critics were to BvS, Zack Snyder’s Justice League was very well received. Audiences too seemed to have far warmer feelings toward this film, though there remained those who felt the movie was long and dull.
As I mentioned in my last post, I switched/updated my TV/cable service and was given HBO Max free for a year. Finally and several months after its original release, I was able to see Zack Snyder’s Justice League.
And I must say… it was quite good.
At four hours long, this is the DC pantheon of heroes by way of King Arthur (those who noticed such things probably saw what was playing in the theater at the beginning of BvS… Excalibur!), grand and immersive and allowing viewers a taste of each and every character while building up the threat to Earth, via Steppenwolf and, in the background, his master, the New Gods’ uber-villain Darkseid.
ZSJL is a film that gives viewers a wonderful, in my opinion, view of this world and builds a great amount of suspense while doing so.
Having said that, its not without its flaws. The movie’s climax, in particular, made the (MINOR SPOILS!) returning Superman seems way too powerful when he confronted Steppenwolf and essentially kicked his ass without too much difficulty.
Further, I’ve noted some people say this film, and Joss Whedon’s theatrical cut, feature the same basic plot and that’s all… ho hum.
To this, though, I would say that while the two films feature the same essential plot, its all in the way its told that makes Snyders’ version all that much better. Thus Whedon’s cut was never going to be a complete reworking of Snyder’s Justice League. Instead, what he offered was a simplification of the story with some added humorous bits, some of which worked (Aquaman accidentally sitting on Wonder Woman’s magic lasso) and some of which absolutely did not (Flash falling on Wonder Woman, his hands on her breasts… a grotesque bit of “humor” that should have been dumped well before it was made).
In the end, the only new bit I felt Whedon added to the movie which I miss is the one at the very end of his version of the film, where Superman and the Flash race to see who is quicker. That bit, I felt, was really good.
Otherwise, though, my advice regarding Joss Whedon’s version of Justice League is the same advice I gave regarding the theatrical cut of BvS: Throw it away and forget it ever existed.
Given the COVID era, “new” movies are being released in odd ways. Tenet, for example, was released to theaters before quickly being streamed. I suppose there was money to be made doing the streaming thing because several films have been released “simultaneously” to steaming and the theaters.
I haven’t seen many -actually none– of the streamed features because until yesterday, I didn’t have any of the various streaming services dedicated to movie releases.
So yesterday I updated my current TV/cable service and, in the process, was given a free year of HBO Max. Suddenly, I was able to dip my toe into the new movie scene and discovered that Reminiscence was available for a few days more (the simultaneous streaming ain’t forever, folks!) and so I gave it a shot.
For those unfamiliar with the movie, here’s the trailer:
Reminiscence features Hugh Jackman, Rebecca Ferguson, and Thadiwe Newton and was written and directed by Lisa Joy. Mrs. Joy is married to Jonathan Nolan, the brother of famed director Christopher Nolan, and, like her spouse, is a well established screenwriter who was involved in, among others, the HBO series Westworld.
With such well regarded talent involved, I figured the film had to be at the very least intriguing. There was, however, one other element that made me curious to see the film: It was filmed in and around Miami and Miami Beach and I knew about it when, just around the time COVID was becoming a thing, staff from the movie came around our business on Miami Beach to have us sign a waiver for some scenes they were going to film on a nearby building’s roof.
(The scene, if you’re curious, involves Hugh Jackman romancing Rebecca Ferguson while on said rooftop).
Anyway, Reminiscence is set in a near future where global warming has caused the sea levels to rise and Miami and Miami Beach are inundated. Hugh Jackman and Thandiwe Newton play “memory” detectives, people who delve into other people’s memories. At times they do this for the police when they’re trying to get information from someone who may not be willing or able to give it.
On the side, they offer their memory services to people who want to …uh… reminisce about something that occurred in their lives, be it for the sake of nostalgia or anything else.
Both our protagonists are presented as generally good souls, allowing some people to use their services for free while eeking out their existence.
And then, one day, appears Mae (Rebecca Ferguson) with a very dubious request: She says she lost her keys and would like our protagonists to do a memory search to find where she left them.
Now, let me stop right there: She arrives into this business which delves into people’s memories to just find some… missing keys??!?
I have to say, this bit really kills me. What a seriously weird misstep in an otherwise reasonably well thought out/written story. It just seems so damn ordinary –trivial– to get a story going but that’s what we’re given.
Nick Bannister (Jackman) is of course instantly attracted to Mae and they romance for a few months and then… she vanishes.
No explanation, no words.
What follows is Bannister using his memory machine as he increasingly desperately attempts to figure out what has became of her.
I won’t get into too many more details but suffice to say there is plenty of stuff revealed in the course of the movie, including sorting out Mae’s ultimate moral compass.
There is plenty of neat stuff to be found and some truly poetic lines but sadly the film ultimately left me dissatisfied.
To begin, as good as the actors are, I found it hard to see beyond who they were. I’ll try not to get into too many spoilers, but I never felt the characters -possibly because of the actors involved- would surprise me. By the end of the film, lo and behold, they did not. They were what I thought they were and there was no hidden layers to them.
Further, the mystery, which could have been intriguing as hell, winds up being not quite as gripping and emotionally involving as it should be. In this it felt like the fault lies in the way the film was presented, which ultimately falls on Lisa Joy’s direction. There is a lack of urgency and gritty darkness to grip us as viewers… and that’s a real shame because the elements were there.
In the end, I came away from Reminiscence feeling it was an average film with some good ideas but which lacked the emotional punch needed to pull me as a viewer along.
Its a shame. What could and should have been a movie right up my alley winds up being one I can’t recommend.
I’m a big fan of the late actor Charles Bronson. He may not have had the greatest range, but he was a hard working actor who seemed determined to keep working through his entire life.
A while back, and just for the heck of it, I looked up all the films he was in in through the decade of the 1970’s (ie, 1970 through 1979) and was stunned to find he was in an astonishing 24 films during those nine years, most of which he starred in!
Not all of them were great, but a surprising number are, IMHO, watchable, and I even listed some I really enjoyed (you can read that original post here).
But, IMHO, things changed once we reached 1980. By that point, Bronson was approaching his 60th year and, frankly, wasn’t looking quite as spry as he was before. Worse for him, the quality of the movies he was in started to lag, sometimes -especially with the grindhouse-like Cannon Films- into seemingly countless repeats of his Death Wish role and roles similar to that.
In looking over his filmography, its interesting to see that the shift from decent/quality films to lesser works does seem to fall in the year 1980, when Charles Bronson starred in a “mere” two films, the Casablanca (!) like Cabo Blanco and Borderline, the film I’m reviewing here.
At this moment, the film is available in its entirety on YouTube, and I’ve provided a link to it here:
I saw Borderline many years before and, frankly, I had very few memories of it, if any. I recalled Bronson was playing a Border patrol cop and dealing with a problem that seems to be a constant: The flow of illegal immigrants into the U.S. from Mexico.
What was somewhat surprising about seeing the film is that it truly seems to try to show sympathy for those who are illegally crossing, pointing out that they do so because jobs -menial though they may be- are offered and that there are rich folks in the U.S. who willingly take them on… even while they wash their hands about what they’re doing.
Borderline specifically focuses on Bronson and his overwhelmed group and how they have to deal with one particular human smuggling operation and one particularly nasty smuggler, played by Ed Harris in what as his first theatrical movie role (he had appeared in TV shows prior to this film and had a extremely small cameo/extra role in Coma). Here, he’s the one Bronson is after, though their confrontation winds up being one of the very few “action” sequences in the film.
Indeed, the film plays itself out mostly in a tame way. Bronson and his boys are dealing -as nicely as possible- with the illegal immigrants while Harris’s character treats them like cattle and, when nearly caught by one of Bronson’s deputies (played in a very small role by Wilford Brimley), blood is shed, Bronson decides to focus on finding and apprehending this particular human smuggling organization.
What follows is Bronson going deep undercover and seeing the smuggling operation first hand -as an illegal immigrant!- but truthfully its all presented in such a laid back manner that one never gets terribly worked up or feels any particular suspense.
The big showdown at the end of the film between Bronson’s Deputy and Harris’ smuggler seems out of place in this film, as if a decision was made to give us an action climax, but it simply isn’t all that exciting, either.
Perhaps in its time, the film played out far better, but when viewed some forty plus years later, it feels like a sedate TV movie.
While not awful, its difficult to recommend Borderline to anyone but fellow Bronson fans like me.
This is the type of news that both shocks and depresses me… as if I needed more of that…!
Markie Post, known best for roles in the TV show Night Court (1984-1992) and The Fall Guy (1982-1985) has passed away at the age of 70 after a three year battle against cancer.
For me, Markie Post was an actress who I must admit I had a bit of a crush on back in the day. She was an incredibly beautiful woman but her looks weren’t all… she was quite good in Night Court, holding more than her own with the large cast…
As one gets older, one of the very sad things one comes to find is that people who, in your mind, are frozen in time do indeed -like all us mortals- age.
For me, Markie Post was forever young and beautiful in my mind. Frankly, it was something of a shock to realize that not only was she 70, but that she passed away at that age… nowadays that seems way too young.
Sad word came last night that actor Ned Beatty had passed away at the age of 83.
Mr. Beatty was an incredible movie and TV actor. Though he may have never been “good looking” enough to be a dashing leading man but he was so talented that he never fell into what might be considered “regular” supporting roles.
His first big role was a startling one, that of Bobby, one of the four would-be outdoorsmen who made the very bad decision to canoe out into a Georgian river soon to be wiped out by a dam and encounter hostiles and quite literally a U.S. version of The Heart of Darkness…
From left to right, Ronny Cox, Ned Beatty, Burt Reynolds, and Jon Voight in Deliverance (1972)
The relationship between Burt Reynolds and Ned Beatty seemed to be a positive one. He would go on to play the in three other movies with Mr. Reynolds.
As mentioned before, he would play so many different types of characters. In White Lighting (1973) he was a cold-blooded corrupt sheriff up against good ol’ boy Burt Reynolds. In Network (1976) he had a six minute role as a high ranking executive, a chilling scene which earned him an Oscar for best supporting actor.
A few years later he would play the buffoon right hand man of Gene Hackman’s Lex Luthor in the incredible -and still my all time favorite superhero film- Superman (1978)…
He would also be memorable in Silver Streak (1976) the first film featuring the pairing of Gene Wilder and Richard Pryer, and was terrific in the TV series Homicide: Life on the Streets.
Amazon.com has acquired MGM which means they have purchased the back catalogue of films which means (redux) that they now own the James Bond films.
Screenwriter John Logan, who worked on both Skyfall and the (IMHO) abysmal Spectre, had some thoughts about that and wrote an opinion piece lamenting/worrying about what that might mean to the long running franchise.
Over at deadline.com, Tom Grater writes about Mr. Logan’s thoughts:
In essence Mr. Logan’s fealty is with the Broccolis, who have controlled the James Bond franchise since its inception, and worries that if some corporate overlord worms their way into decisions regarding the franchise -versus continued control by the Broccolis- the brand may be diluted.
His worry isn’t far off. We’ve seen what’s happened -some good, some pretty bad- following George Lucas selling his ownership of the Star Wars franchise to Disney.
Certainly one thing that does seem to happen with these well known franchises that are acquired by studios is that there is an effort to maximize releases of new material and, hopefully, then make the brand even more profitable.
Mr. Logan likely worries that there might be a Miss Moneypenny TV show/movie down the road or perhaps something with Q or M. Given the way Disney is now releasing movies based on villains of their popular movies (Cruella being the latest release), might there not be the possibility of a Goldfinger (the villain) movie? Or perhaps something with Blofeld?
I can see Mr. Logan’s worry…
…but…
The fact of the matter is that the James Bond movie franchise has existed since the very early 1960’s. There have been great James Bond films. There have been mediocre James Bond films. And, yes, there have been pretty abysmal James Bond films (looking at you, Spectre).
There was a time when the James Bond films were the state-of-the-art action/adventure films but that, it seems, hasn’t been the case for quite some time.
The wonder surrounding the franchise -which for many years was the only movie franchise out there- IMHO has lost that luster.
James Bond films were essentially lost in the wilderness following Pierce Brosnan’s run. If it wasn’t for the success of the Matt Damon Bourne movies and the franchise using them as a template, perhaps the James Bond franchise might have faded away anyway.
Much as I love Casino Royale, the first and best of the Daniel Craig Bonds, it was clearly a film that benefitted tremendously from using elements found in the Bourne films.
What followed, sadly, has proven disappointing to me. Quantum of Solace was a slick looking film with some good action sequences but a story which was murky… and that’s being kind. Granted, the movie was a victim of a writer’s strike, but still. Skyfall, as I’ve noted before, I absolutely loved when I saw it in theaters upon its initial release. However, the moment the film was over and I thought about what I just saw, I realized that movie’s plot was complete nonsense as well and my opinion of the film has subsequently dropped.
And Spectre, as I’ve mentioned twice before above, I felt was absolutely abysmal, easily IMHO the worst Bond film ever made.
Would more Bondian works dilute the franchise?
I suppose its possible but I wonder if it matters at this point. The James Bond franchise seems to move in waves, sometimes good sometimes forgettable/bad.
Could more James Bond make the franchise better or worse?
Either is possible, certainly, but given the very long history to date, I wonder if audiences will be as preoccupied about that as Mr. Logan is.
Have to say… I was looking forward to seeing this film.
While I’m one of those nut-cases that defended -and continue to defend- Zack Snyder’s Batman v Superman despite so many hate-hate-hating the film, I kinda loved it, especially in its Extended/Director’s Cut (truly, that version made the theatrical cut unnecessary).
Having said that, I’m not a Zack Snyder uber-fan. In total and before seeing the above film, I’ve seen a grand total of two of his films start to end: Dawn of the Dead and Batman v Superman. I’m well aware of his other films, including Man of Steel, the film that led to BvS, as well as the very recently released Zack Snyder’s Justice League, his version of the infamous film which has received quite good reviews. I intend to see that later film as soon as possible.
Regardless, I was a little more curious to see Army of the Dead and, voila!, that’s what I’ve done.
Army of the Dead, a Netflix exclusive film, was released yesterday and I wound up seeing it in two sittings. It is a long film and, frankly, with one hour of it left yesterday, my poor (increasingly) old body wasn’t up to catching the full thing as night was closing in and I was very tired.
Lest you think otherwise, though, I would have sat through the whole thing if I had the energy.
It was quite good!
Here’s the movie’s trailer:
Army of the Dead brings director Zack Snyder back to the “zombie” genre he had so much success with in his first feature film, the remake of George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead.
I recall when word came out that he was remaking it people thought it sacrilege: How could anyone dare to remake what is probably the all time best zombie film ever made? (I know, I know… there are those who think Night of the Living Dead, George Romero’s first zombie film, is his best… I think it, along with Day of the Dead, are both incredibly good, but Dawn IMHO is his very best)
Incredibly, Zack Snyder and screenwriter James Gunn (yes, the very same James Gunn that would go on to make Guardians of the Galaxy and the upcoming Suicide Squad film) did the near impossible: Create a film that touches upon George Romero’s classic -at least with regard to the movie’s setting- yet goes down its own fascinating path.
And that opening sequence…!
Fast forward to yesterday and, as I said, Zack Snyder’s Army of the Dead is released and once again we’re back to those darn zombies.
First though: Army of the Dead (let’s call it AotD from now on, ok?) is not a direct sequel to Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead.
While it does feature zombies, the cause of their appearance and the setting is vastly different from the end of the world scenario presented in Dawn of the Dead.
AotD’s plot goes like this: Las Vegas gets a zombie infection, is closed off (a la Escape From New York) and, maybe a few years later (or a little less), a very rich Japanese businessman approaches Scott Ward (Dave Bautista, quite good) one of the “heroes” of the Las Vegas evacuation who helped save many others, including a VIP right as it was closing off, to “break into” Las Vegas (again, a la Escape From New York) to get to a vault in one of the city’s buildings and steal back some 200 million dollars in it. He stands to claim $50 million of it and split it however he wants with his crew.
Tempting though the offer is, Ward, who turns out to be suffering PTSD from the events of the evacuation of Las Vegas and has nightmares and visions, including the death of his wife, of that time, isn’t willing to say yes right away. Though he’s working in a greasy hamburger joint and is estranged from his daughter and could use the money, it takes him a full day to agree to the job and gets his old crew together for it.
But Ward is no amateur: He knows there’s more here than meets the eye and doesn’t trust his employer at all.
Among the old group he gets together are Maria Cruz (Ana de la Reguera), Vanderhoe (Omari Hardwick), safecracker Dieter (Mathias Shweighofer), and helicopter pilot Marianne Peters (Tig Notaro). But as the group is about to leave, they’re thrown a curve: the billionaire who hired them insists one of his security men, Martin (Garrett Dillahunt), accompany them.
Further complicating things a little later on is that Ward needs his estranged daughter, Kate’s (Ella Purnell) help to get them into Las Vegas because she’s a volunteer at a shelter just outside the city and that, in turns, leads them to Lilly the Coyote (Nora Amezeder) who knows just how to do this but may not have the group’s best intentions in mind.
Each and every one of the actors are damn good in their respective roles and a further note should be made regarding the ingenuity of Zack Snyder with regard to Tig Notaro’s role.
For those unaware, the film was completely shot with comedian Chris D’Elia in the helicopter pilot role. However, after the filming was complete serious sexual misconduct accusations were leveled against Mr. D’Elia and Zack Snyder chose to scrub the comedian from the film. He was digitally replaced, in post production, with Tig Notaro (you can read more about that here).
While the end product isn’t completely seamless, it is damn close and Notaro’s interactions with the cast -which she never had!- work an incredible 99% of the time. In fact, there was only one occasion where I felt it was obvious she and the others weren’t acting against each other and that was the very first scene where Ward and Maria Cruz meet and recruit Notaro’s Marianne Peters. That was the one, and only scene, where it felt obvious their performances were pierced together.
Incredible end result, truly!
So the various characters eventually make their moves and more intrigue forces compromises -I won’t spoil everything!- to their group. Once they do make their entry into Las Vegas, the zombie plague they expected to find isn’t quite what many thought it would be and the zombies may not be completely brainless murderers after all.
AotD, to its great credit, doesn’t fully take itself seriously. There’s plenty of tongue in cheek elements and humorous interplay along with the serious -and at times gory- elements. The last hour/climax of the film, in particular, left me pretty breathless but that worked so well because the buildup made me care for what happened to the various characters in the end.
Still, there were little things here and there that annoyed me, particularly Mr. Snyder’s use of out of focus frames here and there. I know he gets a lot of grief for using too much slow motion -he really didn’t do so here- but this time around he seemed enamored with doing these hazy out of focus shots and, at times, they were perhaps a little too much.
The film is also quite long, clocking in at 2 and a half hours and maybe some might consider that a little too much. There’s a CODA as well that, for me, maybe was better left either on the cutting room floor or after the credits rather than in the film proper.
But that’s just me!
Regardless, if you’re in the mood for some good action/suspense and aren’t too burned out with the zombie genre, AotD is a perfect time killer.
Recommended.
POSTSCRIPT:
I’ve been intrigued to see the various comments from people regarding this film, mostly very negative.
Over on rottentomatoes.com, Army of the Deadis currently earning a very good 70% positive among critics and a 76% positive among audiences.
And yet… I see plenty of online posts in the various blogs and places I visit with people quite literally wondering why anyone would like the film.
One of the bigger criticisms I see involves the character of Martin who joins the team at the last minute and works for the billionaire who hired them originally. To everyone -including the members of the team- he clearly has an agenda of his own, and later in the film we find out that the money the billionaire claims to want to recover is not as important as getting the head/blood of one of the uber-zombies.
Later in the film he, along with the “Coyote”, capture the female uber-zombie and he decapitates her, taking her head with him at that point.
However, these people point out, early in the film they first encounter the female zombie and her companion, and he could have captured her then and taken off, leaving the others to get the money on their own.
I suppose… but…
This was early in the film and Martin had yet to have any interaction with the Coyote character and, like everyone else, wasn’t as sure of the so-called “lay of the land” within Las Vegas. Because of that, attacking her at that point might have resulted in a really big attack on them.
So, yes, I can see why he didn’t act at that point and it wasn’t such a huge plot hole to me as some feel it is.
Regardless, there are those who feel the film was terrible even without this particular issue. They feel the film was either too slow or too long. Both criticisms, IMHO, are certainly valid to these individuals. The film is 2 and 1/2 hours long and I can certainly see people becoming anxious for it to move along. For me, this too wasn’t such a big bother.
Another criticism is that the movie’s ending is too much of a downer, that (SPOILERS!!!!!) all these characters die out so quickly at the very end.
This I kinda don’t understand.
Zombie films, especially those by George Romero, tend to end on a very downbeat nature and with most of the main cast annihilated. Thus, people we’ve come to like generally tend to not make it to the end. Further, this is also a heist film, and if you’ve seen many of them, they don’t always follow the lighthearted pattern of an Ocean’s 11 (the original or remake). In fact, more often than not these films are about not only the heist, but the disintegration of the team after said heist. Often, characters are double crossed or captured and/or killed before they can spend their ill-gotten gains.
I’m talking about films like The Anderson Tapes or The Killing or The Brinks Job.
So, again, not much of an issue for me.
Elsewhere, I found it interesting when I interacted with someone over on i09.com and s/he noted that perhaps because we are dealing with a Zack Snyder film, there is a certain amount of baggage inherent in people’s reaction to it, not unlike they have a certain reaction to the works of J. J. Abrams or Michael Bay.
It seems to me this may be a valid issue, at least with some people’s reactions out there, but I doubt it has to do with the vast majority of the negative reviews I spotted.
Understand: To me, people’s opinions are just that. What may work for me may not for you and vice versa and therefore I take people’s criticisms at face value and try not to look beyond it at possible agendas that may -or may not!- be there.
Still, its intriguing how many people had a very negative reaction to what I thought was a decent action/suspense film!
There are few actors alive today who I can say have been a big part of my awareness from pretty much the moment I first got into film/TV shows back in the very, very early 1970’s and through today.
William Shatner is one of them, certainly, and its always fascinating to read interviews with him.
Of course, Mr. Shatner, the man, has an equally long history, sometimes not so good. Cast members of his biggest hit, the original Star Trek and the subsequent movies made with them, have been at times very harsh toward Mr. Shatner. Several of them felt slighted by Mr. Shatner and accusations of being a diva on set while demanding the spotlight are a near constant accusation.
I suppose it could be much worse but, then again, I never worked with him so I don’t know how accurate these stories are… though their consistency lends a certain credence to these stories.
Regarding this interview, Mr. Shatner sure does come across as one expects: He’s at times flamboyant, humorous, and nonsensical… and yet at other times offers profound statements as befitting someone who has lived as long as he has.
Regarding Leonard Nimoy -and at the risk of spoiling the interview- Mr. Shatner seems sad that their relationship, toward the end of Mr. Nimoy’s life, was at a low ebb and confused as to how it got there.
I wonder, though, how much of this is due to Mr. Shatner’s lack of self-awareness.
I’ve noted before elsewhere that Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, considered by almost everyone the worst of the original cast Star Trek films, is also the only one of the Star Trek films Mr. Shatner directed. Many point their fingers at Mr. Shatner and his direction for the film’s failure, but the reality is that he didn’t do a bad job, IMHO, directing. What led to the film’s failure was a studio that kept cutting the film’s budget -the shoddy effects in that film are easily the nadir of Star Trek features- and the story, also by Mr. Shatner, was perhaps a little too ambitious and needed more polishing.
However, if there is one really big failure William Shatner, director, had with Star Trek V it was, again IMHO, in not getting any sort of decent performance out of Leonard Nimoy as Spock. In fact, it felt to me like that was the worst performance Mr. Nimoy ever gave of his beloved Spock character.
Why is that?
In part, one has to remember that at that time –Star Trek V was released in 1989- Leonard Nimoy was on a roll as a director himself.
Thanks to the shocking ending and stunning success of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, the studios were forced to offer Leonard Nimoy more to return to the franchise. One of the lures was that he be allowed to direct the next Star Trek film.
Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, Leonard Nimoy’s directing debut, was a success and Mr. Nimoy then directed its follow up, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. That film turned out to be perhaps the biggest critical success of the franchise, mixing humor and suspense and delivering a delightful experience to fans of the franchise as well as those who knew little to nothing about it.
So successful was Mr. Nimoy that he would go on to direct Three Men and a Baby, a non-Trek comedy, and it too was a HUGE success. Quite suddenly, Mr. Nimoy was in high demand as a director.
However, Mr. Shatner, seeing how Mr. Nimoy was able to get to direct, also used his clout to get a clause in his contract which would allow him to direct Star Trek V and he came to do just that… just as Mr. Nimoy was enjoying all his considerable successes.
I can’t help but wonder, given how poor Mr. Nimoy’s performance -again IMHO!- in Star Trek V was, whether his poor acting in that film was due to petulance, disinterest, or just plain unhappiness about working under Mr. Shatner.
Worth noting is that the next Star Trek film, Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, the last featuring the original cast, would feature a story where Nimoy’s Spock and Shatner’s Kirk were kept apart for the bulk of the film.
Was this done on purpose? Was Nimoy essentially done with Shatner by that point and no longer cared to engage with him?
I don’t know though its hard to read the above interview and subscribe entirely to Shatner’s view that their friendship had simply cooled down with Shatner having no clear idea why.
I recall William Shatner was interviewed not too long after Mr. Nimoy’s passing in 2015 on the Howard Stern radio show and he was asked if he attended the man’s funeral. Mr. Shatner said he didn’t and I got the impression that he didn’t really want to be there, either. If memory serves, Mr. Stern then noted that just because people were close in their film/TV appearances, it didn’t mean they were equally close in real life.
I don’t recall Mr. Shatner dispelling that notion in the interview, but I could be mis-remembering.
Regardless, the above interview is a fascinating one and the title of the interview, in particular, really hits home for me as the years pass:
Take it easy, nothing matters in the end.
It’s a particularly heady statement, one that resonates and saddens me because of how true it is. But, it’s not the full quote. Here it is:
I’m glad I didn’t know because what you know at 90 is: take it easy, nothing matters in the end, what goes up must come down. If I’d known that at 20, I wouldn’t have done anything!
An interesting notion and a paradox of sorts. While its true that we have only so many years to “make our mark”, and its equally true that in perhaps a hundred years whatever we have done with our lives may not “matter” as Mr. Shatner puts it, we nonetheless must feel like it does matter or else we “wouldn’t have done anything.”
