Zombieland

First Hit: It is a fun horror film and I enjoyed it a lot.

Woody Harrelson is perfect as Tallahassee the lone ranger and killer extraordinaire of zombies. Jesse Eisenberg is superb as Columbus the nerdish young man who, through his rule making,  finds himself skilled at being one of the few humans left in the USA.

As a team they are fun to watch as they traverse the USA in hopes of finding other humans or maybe sanctuary. Columbus has stayed alive by following certain rules like: “Always check the back seat.” “Never use public restrooms.”

These rules pop-up on the screen as the film moves along and add to the campy enjoyment of the film. Tallahassee is hell bent on killing zombies any way he can. He has found his calling and thoroughly enjoys the subtle enticement of a zombie towards him followed by a browbeating that is second to none (Zombie kill of the day, sort of stuff).

On their travels towards Ohio, they run across sisters Wichita (played by Emma Stone) and Little Rock (Abigail Breslin). These two girls are a tightly woven pair and dupe Tallahassee and Columbus twice by taking their car, guns and ammo. However, each time the men run across them again. It is the last time at Pacific Playland where they finally decide to hang out together and fully trust each other.

The film is filled with vomit, black vile, killing and stringy human flesh everywhere. This is a zombie film so expect it.

Once you get over those visuals as being too disgusting, it is a fun romp with a great reference to the film Deliverance and also a reference to either Dan White or Russell Crowe because of Tallahassee’s sole desire to score some Twinkies.

Harrelson is simply perfect in this part. This underrated actor always makes me believe he is the character he is playing. One may not like his choices, but he is not afraid to show you he is not the aw-shucks guy he was on Cheers. Here, he is simply a down home boy who doesn't think too far into the future, isn’t afraid to be kind, but is prone to use a gun to settle an argument or to gain a Twinkie. In zombie killing he has found his calling. Eisenberg wonderfully fits his character as an antisocial nerd who spends most of his time in front of his computer playing games. He is lonely, wants a girlfriend, and wakes up one day to find a zombie in his apartment. He decides it is time to get outside more only to find he may be the only human left, at least in LA. Stone and Breslin are great as sisters plotting to keep themselves alive and protected. Their first allegiance is to themselves. Lastly, Bill Murray shows up as himself, living life the best he can in a zombified world and his get-up is perfect Bill Murray stuff. Ruben Fleischer perfectly paces this film and his direction is spot on throughout, job well done.

Overall: This was fun film and crisply executed. It is a no frills event and will find its place in the hallowed archives of fun horror films like the 1964 film "Zombies", the 1968 film "Night of the Living Dead", Mel Brooks "Young Frankenstein" and "Love at First Bite" because it sets a mark right between them all.

Twilight

First Hit: The young teen girls in the theater cheered and swooned, the rest of us watched a mediocre story that was generally poorly acted.

Stephanie Myers wrote a book about a young girl falling in love with a vampire whose family only drinks animal blood (the vegetarians of vampires), not the blood of humans.

Kristen Stewart plays Bella the young girl having to move from Arizona to a small town in Washington State where her father lives. She is the new girl in school and becomes immediately attracted to one particular boy who is very pale and doesn’t come to school on sunny days.

The boy, Edward (played by Robert Patterson), hangs out with his family. His relatives all go to school together. They look and act a lot older than the rest of the high school kids which is mostly because they’ve been stuck at approximately age 17 for hundreds of years.

Edward is confused by and attracted to Bella because she is the only person whose mind he cannot read. She is fascinated by his shy reluctance, cute paleness, and brooding nature.

The film is about their trials and tribulations of becoming an accepted couple by their families and the community. Just as things start going well, a renegade trio of human blood sucking vampires come across Bella and would like to suck her blood. This, of course, leads to a fierce battle between two vampire types.

Stewart plays her character reasonably well as does Billy Burke who plays her quiet introverted policeman father. I didn’t think Patterson did much with his character except to look sullen, needy and wanting to be saved from his destiny. The story seemed haphazard and all over the place with filler stories trying to make this whole thing plausible. Catherine Hardwicke, who directed a very good Lords of Dogtown, did well to keep this thing on a track. I just don’t know if it was a poor story or a poor translation of the book.

Overall: There must be something about young girls wanting to save or fall in love with a vampire because the girls in the theater got off on this film. I think that a more interesting story would have been to explore the local Indians who made a deal with the vampires centuries ago. This was only briefly touched on a few times during the film.

Quarantine

First Hit: I liked the style in which it was shot, one camera from a news crew caught inside the quarantined apartment building provided for some interesting shots. However, it was unrealistic in the premise that the people quarantined inside the building would be treated the way they were by the people on the outside.

I really liked the beginning of the film because it starts off with no credits. It just jumped right in with a special news crew doing a piece on “night work”. Everything is shot from this single camera and it worked well in this film.

The news team was made up of Angela Vidal (played by Jennifer Carpenter) as the reporter and Steve Harris playing Scott Percival her cameraman. They become quick friends with a couple of firemen and are having fun at the fire station but then the station gets a call to go to an apartment building. There is no fire but there is a woman in distress because she is foaming at the mouth and there is blood on the front of her dress. Very quickly everyone in the building becomes quarantined by the outside authorities and anyone attempting to escape is shot and killed.

The film quickly digresses from here and what started out as interesting becomes uninteresting. However I did like the ending as it wasn’t typical.

Jennifer Carpenter was effective at the beginning but as it moved along her acting seemed pressed. Harris, with limited screen time, showed his character by his camera shots and one very intense scene when he kills a person with the lens of the camera is not easy to watch.

Overall: There were a couple scary moments, but otherwise it was predictable.

Stuck

First Hit: What a bizarre, funny, odd film. If people are or become as jaded as this film projects, we’re seriously in trouble.

This film is supposedly based on a true story. I never heard about the story so I don’t know.

Brandi (played by Mena Suvari) works as a nurse’s aide taking care of aging people in an elderly home. She is attentive and caring in her work and some patients only want her to help them. It is fair to say does a great job at work.

At night she likes to drink, do drugs, and party with her dope-dealing boyfriend Rashid (Played by Russell Hornsby). Leaving a club one night she hits a pedestrian homeless person played by Stephen Rea (Tom). He was downsized out of his past job, has just been kicked out of his skid row hotel, and is heading for a homeless shelter when Brandi hits him.

The impact places his body half in and out of her car by way of the windshield. Brandi panics and drives home with his body half lying on the hood of the car. She parks the car in the garage and yells at the still half alive and still Stuck Tom, “it’s all your fault, you should have been watching where you are going”.

Believe me when I say this film gets more bizarre. However, this tongue in cheek film has some merits in that it calls to question our disassociation with our fellow human beings. It calls into play not wanting to be blamed or taking responsibility for our actions. And when I look around the world today I can actually imagine this happening. Scary thought and I guess it is true because was based on a true story.

Overall: I laughed, I hid my eyes (some windshield wiper impelling was a bit squeamish), I was dumbfounded, and was left an impression about the human race, our selfishness and unwillingness to take responsibility. It is out there in the real world; don’t you see it?