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Tag Archives: Damon Lindelof
World War Z (2013)
Be Prepared for Anything. Our War Has Just Begun.
I feel a little awkward going into this review. I indeed saw this movie, and I even saw it in theaters, but as I go to write the review, I feel like I don’t remember the movie at all. It hasn’t even been that long! I saw this movie a week ago! I don’t know if that’s a sign that this movie is bad, or that drugs are bad. Mmmkay? Either way, it’s a big movie, and one that I was excited to see because of the subject matter, so it deserves a review, as best I can muster one. Let’s see if I can jog my memory as I review World War Z, based on the novel by Max Brooks, written by Matthew Michael Carnahan, Drew Goddard, and Damon Lindelof, directed by Marc Forster, and starring Brad Pitt, Mireille Enos, Fana Mokoena, Daniella Kertesz, James Badge Dale, David Morse, Ludi Boeken, Matthew Fox, Peter Capaldi, Pierfrancesco Favino, Ruth Negga, Moritz Bleibtreu, Abigail Hargrove, Sterling Jerins, and Fabrizio Zacharee Guidoas.
While sitting in traffic, former UN employee Gerry Lane (Brad Pitt) and his family – wife Karin (Mireille Enos), and daughters Rachel (Abigail Hargrove) and Constance (Sterling Jerins) – are witnesses as mayhem breaks out all around them. Radio reports suspect a massive rabies outbreak, but it looks a lot more like zombies. And an extremely fast-acting strain of zombification that turns people into zombies 12 seconds after being bitten. Gerry manages to get his family to the safety of a naval landing craft, but in exchange he must return to his former post and find the cause of the infection in hopes of finding a cure.
From what I have deduced from my notes and my limited memory, I enjoyed this movie very much. I also didn’t have the same problems that I heard from many people that disliked this movie because I have never, and would never, read the book this was based on. Or any other book for that matter. But most of the anger I heard about this movie was based around the fact that they didn’t stick very closely to the book, but I would have no idea about that. Judging this movie on its own merit, I enjoyed it. I did feel like the name was a little mediocre, and that it also was probably the result of someone’s sloppy hand-writing when they were writing a movie about World War 2. But then I appreciated that they didn’t waste much time getting into the movie. They get started with the zombies right away. The virus doesn’t waste any time either. It takes about 10 seconds for it to work. That keeps the action moving, but I did think that it hindered a staple of the zombie movie. There could be no real suspense built in scenes where the audience knows someone’s been infected but the other characters do not, or when someone really close to one of the characters is turning zombie right in front of them. Zombie movies love to do that! But in this movie, all you have to do is wait 10 seconds and if they haven’t turned, they aren’t going to. It’s a minor gripe, and I did like the scene Gerry thought he might be infected so he prepared himself to jump off the roof of the building if he thought he was turning. Downright noble of him. I also thought this movie showed for the first time how easy it could be to survive a zombie apocalypse with things like battleships at our disposal. Especially since it only takes 10 seconds for someone to turn. There’d be no chance that zombies could make it onto one of these ships, allowing us to be safe on them for a very long time.
I would say there were a couple of parts to the story I took issue with, and almost all of them require ::SPOILER ALERT:: The first one was when the scientist that accompanied Gerry died. The savior of humanity is really gonna die by slipping and shooting himself with his own gun? I know he probably had minimal military training at best, but come on. That’s a little goofy. And then I took issue with the part where all of Jerusalem falls. They all died because some people in the city had the rhythm in them? They started singing and dancing for no reason, which attracted the attention of the zombies and caused the entire city to die. And people wonder why I refuse to dance. From now on I’ll be able to say, “Because of the zombies.” And how about the doctor in the WHO (World Health Organization) facility that turns because he’s looking through a microscope and reaches for the infected blood while not looking? I’ve seen that episode of Scrubs and I know that kind of thing can happen with infected blood, but shouldn’t you be a bit more careful? And how is there not a doctor in the WHO facility that refers to himself as Doctor WHO? Also, how does that facility not have some ability to set off alarms remotely so that they can draw the infected away from where they need to go? I also thought it was interesting that they overcome the problem by infecting people, because the infected wanted a clean host for their own virus. It especially made me happy because my Hepatitis C would save me from the zombie apocalypse. ::END SPOILERS::
I dug all the performances in the movie. I love Brad Pitt. He’s one of those people that I want to hate because they’re so handsome and women love them so much that I wish they weren’t also great actors, but he is. I would say that his lady, Mireille Enos, was not believable. I guess her performance was, but I don’t see someone that looks like Brad Pitt going for a chick that’s just cute at best. He pulls Angelina tail! I also took issues with her, and all of them were based around her cell phone. I wanted to thank the movie for showing the world the arduous process of entering a contact into a cell phone. It’s something no one in the world has any familiarity with, so I’m glad they spent so much time showing it. And then this bitch almost gets Brad killed, and DOES get some nice military guys killed, because she had to try to call him multiple times. He said he’d call you, bitch! As good as I thought Brad did in the movie, I found myself less interested in him and more interested in Daniella Kertesz, the bald Israeli lady. I liked her. She was badass and hot. And she was missing a hand, and that’s my biggest fetish.
One could say that I’d have to call World War Z completely forgettable because of the empirical evidence I have from personally forgetting most of the movie shortly after watching it. But as I started writing the review I realized that everything I could force myself to remember was enjoyable. The story was good and kept me interested all the way through, even with the few small quibbles I had with some parts of the story. And the performances caused no complaints. I’m perfectly comfortable recommending that you see this movie while it’s still in theaters. World War Z gets “Mother Nature knows how to disguise her weakness as strength” out of “That’s not stupidity or weakness; that’s just human nature.”
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Star Trek Into Darkness (2013)
Enjoy These Final Moments of Peace.
Tuesday again. Time again for a double feature at my local theater. It’s problematic for a film critic to hate crowds so much that he doesn’t like to go see new movies until the theaters have slowed down, but that’s the kind of critic you idolize. Me. This would normally be too soon for me to want to go see a movie of this magnitude, but there weren’t a lot of options in theaters right now, and my desire to see this movie was pretty strong. I was never a fan of the TV series this movie comes from, and I didn’t see the greater majority of the movies that helped make the series so popular. But I did see the movie right before this one and it made me a fan. I absolutely loved it. So when they put out a new one, it made me very excited. Did it live up to those expectations? Find out as I review Star Trek Into Darkness, based on characters created by Gene Roddenberry, written by Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman, and Damon Lindelof, directed by J. J. Abrams, and starring Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Benedict Cumberbatch, Peter Weller, Bruce Greenwood, Zoe Saldana, Simon Pegg, Anton Yelchin, John Cho, Karl Urban, Alice Eve, Noel Clarke, Nazneen Contractor, and Leonard Nimoy.
On a mission to the planet Nibiru, Captain James T. Kirk (Chris Pine) violates the Prime Directive in order to rescue First Officer Spock (Zachary Quinto) from danger. This causes Admiral Christopher Pike (Bruce Greenwood) to be forced to relieve Kirk of his command of the USS Enterprise. Elsewhere, a man named John Harrison (Benedict Cumberbatch) offers Starfleet Officer Thomas Harewood (Noel Clarke) a way to save his dying child in exchange for blowing up a Starfleet archive. Admiral Alexander Marcus (Peter Weller) calls together the captains of Starfleet to figure out their next move, falling directly into Harrison’s plan. Harrison attacks the meeting, killing many of the Starfleet commanders. In retaliation, Kirk is sent out with 72 prototype Photon Torpedoes with the order to destroy Harrison, while trying not to bring on a full scale war with the Klingons. But all is not as it appears…
For the first half of this movie, I admit that I was feeling a little underwhelmed by it. It was good, but it was not living up to my expectations for it. Then shit started to get real. Some might be embarrassed to say that they started to tear up near the end, mostly on moments between Spock and Kirk, but I’m not your usual man. I’m barely a man at all! What I am is a nerd, so it’s completely appropriate. The story is also heavy with references to the past of Star Trek, which I’m sure I missed a bunch of because of my relative inexperience with the franchise, but I still got most of them. I know Khan, for instance. I know Tribbles. I also know what happens to Spock at some point in a radioactive room. But I like that these movies are taking place in an altered timeline so thing happen close to what happened in the past, but occasionally roles are reversed to be able to still catch the audience off guard. But I was beginning to get trepidations in the beginning because a few things made me think they’d be treading the same ground as the previous movie, like when they took away Kirk’s ship and wanted to put him back in the academy, but they didn’t waste that much time in that. Then Kirk would start getting at odds with the crew again, although he had a good reason. I got most worried about how I’d feel about this movie when Kirk and Scotty parted ways. BRING PEGG BACK!! But then they did, and I could calm down. But the end of the movie was filled with some great action and great emotional moments, and I’ve always said that ending strong is more important than opening strong. I won’t spoil what was happening, but when Uhura told Spock to, “Go get him,” I got some wood, and surprisingly more because of the awesomeness than Zoe Saldana’s hotness. I would have to admit that I saw the ending coming, making it not that much of a surprise when we find out Kirk’s fate. I even wrote it in my notes just after I first saw the Tribble. That being said, I didn’t feel like it was any less effective just because I knew how it would turn out.
There’s really no point even talking about the look of the movie, is there? You saw the commercials and how awesome and epic they make the movie look, right? Yeah, that’s what it looks like. They were not lying to you.
I loved all the performances in this movie as well. Chris Pine is great as Kirk. He does the funny parts as well as he does the emotional parts. He also plays a dick very well, easily making me silently curse him in the theater for making Simon Pegg leave. I find it hard to talk about Zachary Quinto’s performance as Spock. Through most of the movie, he’s acting really robotic. On the other hand, that’s exactly what he’s supposed to be doing. And he’s able to convey quite a bit of emotion through his performance while still being such a Vulcan, and he kind of breaks down at the end of the movie in an awesome way. Zoe Saldana is hot. Simon Pegg is awesome. Peter Weller was Robocop. I was unfamiliar with this Benedict Cumberbatch before I went into this movie. I had heard him talked about a lot in nerdier crowds, so I knew he must have some nerd cred of some sort. I think it’s because he’s in that Sherlock show, but I’ve never seen it. And you never see him in The Hobbit because he only lends his voice to it. That being said, I still thought he was pretty awesome in the movie. Maybe not quite a Ricardo Montalbán, but pretty damned solid. Even with the emo hair that occasionally happened in the middle of a fight, he maintained a certain level of quiet badassdom. And the starring role in this movie for me is the white-haired chick on the command deck of the Enterprise. I don’t know who she is, but I want to be in her.
Star Trek Into Darkness is another addition to the series that wins in my book. The movie starts off a little slow for my taste, but ends strongly with a great deal of awesome action and emotion that actually made me tear up. It looks great and all the performances were also top notch. I’ve never considered myself a Star Trek fan, but if Abrams keeps this up, I might actually start watching the stuff that inspired the guy to make these awesome movies. In the meantime, I recommend getting yourself to the theaters to check this one out as soon as you can. Star Trek Into Darkness gets “If you test me, you will fail” out of “Because I am better.”
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Prometheus (2012)
My God, We Were So Wrong…
When Samrizon recommended that I watch today’s movie, she seemed a little deflated that I said it may have to wait quite some time. As with most movies in theaters, I can’t really afford to go and see everything people want me to when it’s in theaters. I’d much rather wait until I can find it for a dollar on RedBox or on Netflix. But I did indeed want to see this movie, being a fan (to different degrees) of the quadrilogy that already existed. When Friendboss Josh heard the Who’s singing in Whoville and his heart grew three sizes this day, I was afforded the ability to go to a theater that was playing the movie for only $5. This movie is Prometheus, written by Damon Lindelof and Jon Spaihts, directed by Ridley Scott, and starring Noomi Rapace, Logan Marshall-Green, Michael Fassbender, Charlize Theron, Idris Elba, Guy Pearce, Sean Harris, Rafe Spall, Kate Dickie, Emun Elliott, Benedict Wong, and Patrick Wilson.
In the year 2089, two archaeologists, Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) and Charlie Holloway (Logan Marshall-Green), find a cave painting in Scotland that, along with similar murals from groups that never met each other from around the world, points to a star like our own sun and a habitable planet. They take this as an invitation from a group they call “the Engineers”, who they believe created our species. The elderly CEO of Weyland Corporation, Peter Weyland (Guy Pearce), funds a ship called Prometheus to take the two archaeologists and a group of other people to the planet to see if they can find the Engineers. An android called David (Michael Fassbender) wakes up the crew as they arrive in the year 2093. They find a collection of non-artificial structures and start to explore them, soon finding dead bodies of the Engineers, which are more human than they originally thought. Also, there’s a black goo that they find that starts some bad things into motion. And also some good things. I mean, have you seen Alien? That’s a good movie!
I went into this movie REALLY wanting to be blown away, but try as it might, the movie never really resonated with me. It wasn’t a bad movie, but I was hoping for a major nerd boner that never arrived. And I need this, guys. I’m single and hurting. I’ll probably need to watch Avengers again to get my fix. This movie just didn’t excite me. It was pretty slow moving until the last half hour. At first it’s just archaeology, then it’s just space travel, then it’s just a mystery that’s not that mysterious. Not until someone gets infected later in the movie does shit start going down that captures my attention. The mystery part is somewhat excusable because I went into this movie know it was a prequel to a movie I’ve already seen, so this entire movie just becomes a waiting game until we get to see a Xenomorph. I got a little excited that shit was gonna go down when Shaw told one of the other crew members to leave the weapon behind when they were heading into the structure. I didn’t get excited because that’s a good idea, because it’s entirely not. Sure, it’s a scientific expedition, but better safe than sorry, right? But usually when a bonehead decision like that is made in the name of noble scientific enterprise, shit goes down and people start dying. That didn’t happen. Around the time when someone gets infected is when the movie starts to pick up, but I was also getting angry because some jerkfaces in the audience were talking and someone said, “He’s infected,” really loudly. Ya think? Are you basing that on what you’re seeing now or the part where we watched the guy cause him to get infected in a super obvious way? Later on, there’s a hurried surgery scene that is rich with thrills, and from that point on it doesn’t let up, but I wished it had happened sooner. For one more thing, I won’t spoil it directly so I’ll just turn it into a metaphor. If two people are running away from a hula hoop, should it really take that long to realize that you can side-step it instead of continuing to run in front of it? If you see the movie, that’ll make more sense.
I would say that, by far, the best thing about this movie is definitely the look. It’s a spectacular visual feast. The movie lets you know that much pretty quickly into the movie as they open with a big sweep over huge and gorgeous landscapes on the moon LV-223. Almost everything looks amazing in this movie. The Engineers (though they look like Powder on steroids) are great looking creatures that could look either benevolent or malevolent, so you never really know which way they’ll go with the story. The structure and the aliens are still heavily influenced by H.R. Giger, which means they’re going to be creepy and dark, but also awesome. The first version of the aliens that are encountered bummed me out for two reasons. First, they didn’t look like the facehuggers that we know and love. Second, they were REALLY phallic. And they go into the mouth. I can’t wait until they turn Prometheus into a porn. The holographic star map that David watches later in the movie is also a visual delight, but I couldn’t help but think that it was the futuristic version of a laser light show, without the benefit of REO Speedwagon. The only real visual problem with the movie was Peter Weyland. You could have actually hired an old guy instead of putting really unconvincing old guy makeup on a young dude. And you didn’t even try when it came to his feet!
The performances in the movie were good, but not what I’d call great. They were what the roles called for, but that usually left them being not altogether compelling to me. Noomi Rapace did a good job, but I was disappointed by her character. I think one of the things that’s been a staple in all of the Alien movies is a badass female lead. Sigourney Weaver was a boss. Ellen Ripley was always right up there with Sarah Connor as some of the most badass women to ever grace the screen. And it’s not like Noomi can’t do badass; she was the original Lisbeth Salander in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo movies. But in this movie, she was never a badass. She was pretty standard damsel in distress all the way through that was just a scientist and was only our heroine because we were watching the bad things happen all around her. I know it wasn’t really the character she was going for, but I missed it. Charlize Theron was kind of a badass bitch, but way more bitch than badass, so certainly no replacement for Ripley. I liked that apparently all it takes to have sex with her is to suggest that she might be a robot. Speaking of which, Michael Fassbender was good in his role, but it was totally ruined for me when Samrizon ruined that he was a robot. Okay, so you find that out pretty quickly, but Samrizon should shut her damned cake hole. Fassbender definitely acted like a robot, but a robot isn’t always the most impressive performance. You have to be stiff and robotic, which isn’t all that interesting to watch. And you kind of get the idea of where the movie is going from his performance because he doesn’t hide the fact that he’s not that big of a fan of humans.
I really wanted Prometheus to blow me away, but it didn’t really manage to do so. The story was fine, but it takes a while for it to get going. Once it does, it remains pretty awesome for a while, but I started to get bored waiting for that to start. The look of the movie was completely fantastic and worth seeing for just the spectacle alone. The performances were fine in the movie, but never blew my mind. I understand that you couldn’t put Ellen Ripley in this chronologically, but that doesn’t mean you can’t have a character that’s just as awesome. The movie didn’t impress me, but I still think it’s worth seeing in the theaters. It’s a good movie, but not as good as I wanted it to be. Check it out, but it might help to have lower expectations. Prometheus gets “Big things have small beginnings” out of “WE are the gods now.”
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