WARM BODIES Throws The Zombie Rulebook Out The Window With Mixed Results

Opening today at nearly every multiplex in the Triangle area:

WARM BODIES
(Dir. Jonathan Levine, 2013)

The premise of this film, which is being hyped as the zombified answer to TWILIGHT, is promising. 

After a zombie apocalypse, which is getting easier and easier to set up - just display some headlines and news clips about a plague and you're in, a teen-aged member of the walking dead falls in love with a human, and that love may not just bring him back to life, it may save the entire zombie population.

Nicholas Hoult (the kid from ABOUT A BOY and Beast from X-MEN: FIRST CLASS) plays the young zombie who tells us through a running inner dialogue voice over that he doesn’t remember who he was, or what he did, but figures “My hoodie would suggest I was unemployed.”

But wait a second, zombies aren’t supposed to have inner dialogues, right? Well, that’s our first indication that WARM BODIES, adapted from the bestselling novel by Isaac Marion by director/screenwriter Levine, is going to mess around a bit with zombie mythology.

Hoult lives at deserted airport in Montreal, Canada (at least that’s where it was filmed) among dozens of the undead who shuffle around aimlessly, grunting, like zombies do. Our protagonist has what he calls “almost conversations” with his best friend, Rob Corddry (The Daily Show, HOT TUB TIME MACHINE), consisting of mild groans, and he spends his nights in an airplane filled with stuff he collects, sort of in a WALL-E way.

Meanwhile, back in the world of the living, Teresa Palmer and Dave Franco portray a young couple who leave their heavily-guarded walled-off section of the city, ruled by John Malkovich as Palmer’s stern self-appointed General father, with a small group of fellow survivors to raid abandoned buildings for meds and other supplies.

Things go awry with they run into Hoult and other walkers, out on a hunt for human flesh, in a lab. Hoult kills Franco, but saves Palmer from the other zombies as its love at first sight.

Hoult takes Palmer back to the airport, telling her she’ll be safe there - yes, he can actually form a few words - and entertains her by playing records on a somehow functioning turntable from his vinyl collection (kudos for the extremely appropriate use of Bruce Springsteen’s “Hungry Heart”). “Better…sound” he actually musters about his preference for the vinyl format.

This is where the plot mechanics break down a bit. Hoult keeps his dream girl at the airport because it’s too dangerous for her to try to return to the safe zone, but then we see them taking a joyride in a snazzy red Mercedes around the runway. If they have access to a car like that, surely they can get her back home, but whatever.

The film breaks more of the established zombie rules by having the real villains be what’s called “Bonies,” that is zombies that are so far gone they have ripped off all their flesh and are just evil not-too-convincing CGI-ed corpses.

So the zombie romantic comedy (zom rom com?) WARM BODIES, with its conceit that the undead can be saved by love, is a mixed bag that made me laugh a few times, but ultimately I couldn’t completely buy into it.

It swiftly runs its course through to a battle climax between the Bonies and the humans, who learn that the not as dead zombies are on their side, but by then its spirit of invention has been replaced by an all too predictable formula.

Still, there’s some wit and charm here that may appeal to matinee moviegoers, Levine's direction is sharp (his previous film 50/50 was a lot sharper), and the visual style of the film, provided by cinematographer Javier Aguirresarobe, absorbingly keeps in line with the horror aesthetics of the zombie genre, despite the rest of the movie throwing the rule book out the window.

As for the cast, Hoult and Palmer are likable even if they don't have much chemistry together, Franco has a pretty throwaway role mostly seen through flashbacks (you see, when Hoult snacks on his brains he gets to experience his victim's memories), and Malkovich isn't given the material needed for him to make his mark so he barely even nibbles on the scenery.

WARM BODIES severely stretches its premise thin with its lapses in zombie logic, and its high concept gets overly compromised by rom com conventions. Perhaps if it were funnier I could overlook its faults, but as it stands its promising premise never fully paid off.

More later...

Hey, I Finally Saw…ROUNDERS

Now, when I’ve added to this feature in the past it was usually because I caught up with a classic, like the original TRUE GRIT or ERASERHEAD. But this time out, I’m just catching up with a movie that I’d been meaning to see since it came out fifteen years ago, I just never got around to it.

So now, mainly because I noticed that it’s just about to expire on Netflix Instant, I finally watched John Dahl’s 1998 poker-driven crime drama ROUNDERS.

But hold on, maybe it’s more than just a movie I missed - the A.V. Club’s Scott Tobias wrote an entry for it in their New Cult Canon series back in 2008.

Tobias argues convincingly that ROUNDERS is an extremely influential film that “lit the fuse on a multi-billion-dollar industry.” He points to the plethora of online poker sites that have endless usernames and/or avatars referencing the film as proof of its huge popularity among players.

For my first time watching it though, it felt less like an iconic celebration of the underworld of high-stakes gambling, and more like a slightly better than average late ‘90s crime drama that effectively maximizes on the then budding stardom of Matt Damon and Edward Norton. Both were fresh faced 20-somethings at the time, who had both gotten acclaim and in the case of Damon an Academy Award (shared with Ben Affleck for the GOOD WILL HUNTING screenplay).

In ROUNDERS, which is defined by the Urban Dictionary as “a player who knows all the angles and earns his living at the poker table,” there’s a familiar dynamic at work as Damon is, in a role similar to his working class but brilliant minded character in GOOD WILL HUNTING, the good guy trying to go straight, and Norton is the bad influence who wants Damon to get back in the game.

Damon, whose voice-over narration is overly prominent, has good reasons for turning his back on the lifestyle – he lost his entire life savings of $30,000 to a ridiculously accented Russian gangster played by a very hammy John Malkovich, and he promised he wouldn’t go near a card game again to his girlfriend (Gretchen Mol), who he is now in law school with.

Still, you know that he won’t be able to resist the lure of the game. Otherwise they’d be no movie, right? The basic premise boils down to the slimy Norton, who is actually nicknamed “Worm,” being heavily in debt, and his old partner Damon dusting off his mad poker skills to help his friend. This makes for some great gaming scenes, particularly one with the duo trying to hoodwink a room full of hard ass New Jersey State Troopers.

The second hour of ROUNDERS which begins with the nagging Mol leaving Damon to his gambling devices, is consumed by these tense gaming scenarios yet despite its predictable plotting, it still pulled me in.

I wasn’t interested as much in Damon’s predicament of choosing the proper father figure - Martin Landau as a muddled but wise professor and John Turturro as a somewhat beat down old-time rounder have hazy scenes in which they somewhat compete for the part, I think - than I was into the bad friend who manipulates his good friend basics this film nails.

Fanke Janssen is on the sidelines as a possible new love interest for Damon, but the movie doesn't seem too interested in that. The poker-powered bromance is what gets the spotlight.

In retrospect, the film foreshadows the relationship between Norton and Brad Pitt in FIGHT CLUB, which would be on Norton’s roster after his turn in AMERICAN HISTORY X (the era was busy for the actor). But if you’ve seen FIGHT CLUB you know what that relationship turned out to be.

ROUNDERS’ had a palpable impact on waves of impressionable poker players, many of who are no longer lulling about casinos or sleazy backrooms, but now playing high or low stake games comfortably at home in thousands of rooms online. For all you cyber-gamers out there, here are some of the better rooms available if you want to try your hand at some virtual Texas Hold’em, so you can sample the game yourself that provides the bookend scenes in which Damon goes up against Malkovich.

It may overly glorify the rush that makes a talented player like Damon’s character unable to quit the game, but it captures that pure excitement (Damon even regrettably tells Mol that he felt alive for the first time in 9 months when he sat back down at the table) so well that ROUNDERS may be the ultimate double edged sword of gambling movies.

ROUNDERS, which I’m glad I finally saw, is available for one more day on Netflix Instant (it expires at the end of February 1st).

More later…

The Film Babble Blog Top 10 Movies Of 2012

Yeah, I know it’s the end of January, but I had a bunch of movies to catch up with so back off! 2012 wasn’t really a bad year for film, but it was far from fantastic. Looking at the top ten highest grossing films of the year, I see that all of them were franchise entries.

Maybe 2012 was the most formulaic year for film ever, I dunno, but I do know that there were some worthwhile films that stood out from the usual glut of super hero sequels and here they are - Film Babble Blog’s Top 10:

1. THE MASTER (Dir. Paul Thomas Anderson)

The immaculate imagery provided by cinematographer Mihai Malaimare Jr., the layered construction of Anderson’s screenplay, and the powerful performances by Philip Seymour Hoffman, Joaquin Phoenix, and Amy Adams (who ought to win the Oscar just for having to sit nude except for a pregnant-belly prosthetic in a central surreal scene), all make up the most memorably stirring movie of the year. Shame on the Academy for not nominating it for Best Picture. Read my review. 

2. HOLY MOTORS (Dir. Leos Carax)

The freakiest film of the year is also one of the most invigorating. French film maker Carax gives us Denis Lavant as the eccentric Mr. Oscar, whom we watch being driven around Paris by his associate Céline (Édith Scob) in a white limousine that functions as his dressing room to various odd jobs. And I do mean odd. Read my full review here.

3. ARGO (Dir. Ben Affleck) 

Another shameful omission by the Academy was Affleck for Best Director for this superb thriller, but some are predicting that it will win Best Picture to make up for it. I would be cool with that because his terrific take on the joint CIA-Canadian secret operation that used the ruse of a sci-fi film production to rescue a group of American diplomats from Iran’s clutches in 1980 is well deserving. Read my full review. 

4. BERNIE (Dir. Richard Linklater) 

Linklater’s 15th film takes the true story of a Texas mortician (played to perfection by Jack Black) who kills a wealthy widow (a sharp harpie depiction by Shirley MacClaine), and makes a matter-of-fact comic docudrama out of it that really works. Read my full review here.

5. SKYFALL (Dir. Sam Mendes)

Who expected that the return of the iconic superspy after a four year hiatus would yield an Oscar caliber James Bond movie? I sure didn’t. I’m happy to have it as Daniel Craig’s third outing as 007 isn’t just one of the best of the series, it’s one of the best full throttle action films in years. Read my full review.

For my full reviews of the rest – please click on the highlighted titles:

6. LINCOLN (Dir. Steven Spielberg)

7. SAMSARA (Dir. Ron Fricke)

8. MOONRISE KINGDOM (Dir. Wes Anderson)

9. LOOPER (Dir. Rian Johnson)

10. ZERO DARK THIRTY (Dir. Kathryn Bigelow)

Now bring on 2013! Again, I know it’s a month into it, but go with me on this. 

More later…