Movie Review: World War Z Review

Rated PG-13 for intense frightening zombie sequences, violence and disturbing images.
Time: 115 minutes (Unrated Version: 122 minutes)
Buy at Amazon

I'm not the biggest fan of zombies, but I've grown to like zombie stories in the last couple years. Mainly this comes from reading books like Mira Grant's Newsflesh trilogy and Rhiannon Frater's The Last Bastion of the Living among others.  I read World War Z when it came out and enjoyed it very much. But hearing about a movie version concerned me. I wasn't sure about whether it would translate very well. I had even more reservations about Brad Pitt, who isn't a favorite of mine. I usually find him kind of boring, like Tobey Maguire, he's in the film, but I usually find the other actors in the film more interesting (examples: Tom Cruise and Kristen Dunst in Interview with the Vampire, Bruce Willis and the directing style of Terry Gillam in 12 Monkeys, Morgan Freeman and the dark story of Se7en) than him.

At first, my concerns seemed to be justified. Brad Pitt is the only major actor in the film. David Morse has a small (cameo might be a overstatement) as a CIA operative who knows something and Peter Capaldi appears in the last third of the film as a W.H.O. Doctor (ironic since will become the next Doctor Who in December). IMdb says Matthew Fox is a paratrooper, but I'd have to watch the film to look out for him. Since almost every Brad Pitt movie I can think of features at least one major actor with him, I didn't like this idea.

The movie has a great deal of suspense and a fair amount of gore. The PG-13 was a bone of contention for some people who believe that all horror movies should be R rated and then pray for an Unrated cut. The gore level is kind of muted but the real reason for the PG-13 rating is really because of the lack of adult language. If Gerry or some other character said a couple F-words, then an R would have popped up.

Overall, the movie was better than I thought it would be. It's a smart, thought-provoking zombie movie that should start a franchise of World War Z movies (or maybe a Showtime series).

My Grade: B.

Book about Movies Review: Roger Ebert's A Horrible Experience of Unbearable Length:More Movies That Suck

Review based on Kindle version

Okay, this is a book review instead of a movie review, but it's a book about movies, and I make the rules on this blog, right?

This is Ebert's third book of collected bad reviews (his others are I Hated, Hated, Hated This Movie and Your Movie Sucks), this time from 2006 to early 2012. In most cases I usually agree with the late Mr. Ebert's reviews. Of course, I'm not one of those loudmouths who bitch and moan when a critic hates a movie I like. In this book, there are a couple movies that are in this book (note: any movie he reviewed as 2 stars or lower qualifies) that I liked (Kevin Smith's Cop Out [it's supposed to be a stupid parody of 80's Buddy cop movies], From Paris with Love, Kick-Ass, The Mist, Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist and X-Men Origins: Wolverine [although I think it's easily the weakest X-Men film]).

The only review I had a complaint about was The Devil Wears Prada. A movie I do like a lot, mainly for introducing me to the amazing Emily Blunt (BTW, why the Hell wasn't she nominated for that role in 2006? She easily would've beat Jennifer Hudson), who stole the film from Anne Hathaway, Meryl Streep and Stanley Tucci.  He gives it 1 and a half stars and seems to think the movie is like a kid's book about a girl dreaming of a career as a fashionista assistant. It's a very weird review since he doesn't seem to have any real problems with the film. He seems to think Ann Hathaway's character is a little annoying (yes, she is, but she's that way in the book too) and that Simon Baker and Adrian Grenier should've switched roles. The only thing I can say about that review is that Ebert did in three pages on my Kindle what Leonard Maltin could say in a paragraph. Basically dislike (or like, for that matter) a film without really saying why.

That being said, most of these films mentioned I completely agree with. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and Transformers" Dark of the Moon (a movie I wanted to stop watching 15 minutes in, plus, I have never watched neither movie without Rifftrax playing (and even them I want the movie to end), The Last Airbender, The Love Guru, Atlas Shrugged: Part 1, Boondock Saints II, The Pink Panther II, Ridley Scott's Robin Hood, Season of the Witch and many others I completely agree with.

There are also films I have never seen or even never heard of and probably never will. I don't ever plan on watching The Human Centipede films (unless I'm tied to a chair and my eyes are forced open like A Clockwork Orange), I Spit on Your Grave (never seen the original or the remake) or The Nutcracker in 3-D. So Ebert essentially watched them for me. Thanks, Roger.

Overall, like the previous two books, a funny romp of bad films.

Rating: B+

Marooned Review, Part 2

Marooned is really the first big-budget disaster film that was successful, this came out the year before Airport came out (although I don't consider Airport a disaster film, especially when you compare them with The Poseidon Adventure, The Towering Inferno and the Airport sequels). Maybe that might be its fault. The movie goes for a overly melodramatic feel, almost as if they think that relieving the tension a little bit might hurt the movie. Humor always loosens the tension and lets the audience breathe a little. This movie isn't Schindler's List, it may be life or death, but it's not an atrocity. So it would've been a good idea to loosen things up.

My biggest problem with this film it that this film was supposed to be a factually realistic movie. In my previous review on Amazon, I listed several problems, and I've found a couple more in the two years since then (including once after reading that response).

1.  If Keith (Gregory Peck) is Chief of Manned Space, why does he need to drive from Houston to Cape Canaveral? I'm pretty sure he has a plane that could fly him there in a much quicker time than in a car. This may be the one attempt to add humor to this dry film. It really doesn't work.

2.  The producers decided to not include a Flight Director, who would be in charge of Mission Control. They apparently thought that adding a third person would ruin the dynamic between Keith and Dougherty. Or more realistically, adding a third actor (preferably a popular TV actor or veteran character actor) would've added more to the already high budget.

3.  I get that this is the Space Station's first mission, but I'm sure they had each astronaut go through a tough regiment in long duration survival. They should have caught Buzz's (Gene Hackman) problems with long duration space flight.

On a personal level, I find that because this movie was featured on Season 4 of Mystery Science Theater 3000 (Under the name Space Travelers) and I think this is why some people take offense with me and others criticizing this film. Let me say that, yes, it was the first time I saw this film, but I've seen in about 10 times in the 20 years since then and my opinions are based on the original film, but the MST3K version (that scene with Keith being pulled over on the way to Florida wasn't in the MST version).

This movie is a very stiff, boring, and slow film that never reaches the level of average space travel films like Robert Altman's Countdown or Capricorn One, let alone The Right Stuff, Apollo 13, 2001: A Space Odyssey, or 2010.

Grade: C-

First Blog and Marooned Review, Part 1

I'm a big fan of movies, TV and video games and love to talk about all of these things with my mother and brother, but it's time to spread the word to other people. The easy thing to do is to write a little bit of everything I watch or play. The first time I'll write about is a movie from 1969 that won an Academy Award for Special Effects but 44 years later, it's lot a lot of its luster and was the subject of a classic cult series in the 1990's. My review of Marooned will be first up.

Credit: Wikipedia

When I first saw this picture on MST3K, I admit I wasn't overly impressed with it. Looking at it now, it may have been because I didn't think MST did a great job with it. Too many Gregory Peck and David Janssen imitations and too much of the movie was cut for time. A couple months later, TNT showed the film and I recorded it and watched it very carefully, since NASA is another little hobby of mine (thanks to my ADD, I have tons of them, BTW).

There were several things that kind of confused me about the film. This movie strove to be very realistic. Looking on Wikipedia now, I saw that the budget was between $8 and $10 million. I don't know how much that is in 2013 money, but I would guess maybe $150 million. They hired Philco-Ford to build a replica of Mission Control, used a "Block 1" Apollo Capsule (one that was similar to the capsule used during the Apollo 1 test that caught fire and killed three astronauts in 1967) for Ironman One, the Apollo capsule being used to go to an American Space Station (it was never given a name in the movie, NASA would launch Skylab four years later).

This movie was directed by John Sturges, director of several great action films, The Great Escape and The Magnificent Seven, produced by Frank Capra Jr. (originally Frank Capra Sr., who last directed a film in 1961 considered directing the film himself) and was released in November 1969, after the first men walked on the moon and in time for Oscar season.

So why is this film now as good as it should be? I'll explain in detail soon.