Warm Bodies

Movies to See Right Now

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Brit Marling in THE EAST

Best bets in theaters this weekend:

  • Before Midnight, the year’s best romance continuing the story of Ethan Hawke’s Jesse and Julie Delpy’s Celine from Before Sunrise and Before Sunset.
  • Stories We Tell, Sarah Polley’s brilliant documentary about discovering her family’s secrets; unfortunately, Stories We Tell is going to be hard to find in theaters this week, but well worth the trouble.
  • The absorbing and thought-provoking eco-terrorism thriller The East.
  • The Iceman is a solid true-life crime movie with an outstanding performance by Michael Shannon.
  • Mud, the gripping and thoughtful story of two Arkansas boys embarking on a secret adventure with a man hiding from the authorities – learning more than they expected about love and loyalty. Mud is also one of the best movies of 2013.
  • The documentary We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks is Alex Gibney’s inside look at an improbable scandal.  It’s also available streaming from Amazon, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play and other VOD outlets.

Before Midnight, Stories We Tell and Mud are on my Best Movies of 2013 – So Far .

I like the unsentimental Western Dead Man’s Burden, available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Amazon, Vudu and other VOD outlets.  Other good choices on VOD: 

PBS’ American Masters series is showing an endearing and insightful documentary Mel Brooks: Make a Noise.  PBS is also broadcasting the unexpectedly beautiful documentary Detropia, about the city of Detroit’s collapse and decay.

Also out right now in theaters:

    • Fast & Furious 6 has exciting chases, a silly story, a smoldering Michelle Rodriguez and a hard ass Gina Carano.
    • HBO’s Behind the Candelabra is familiar territory but entertaining, with Michael Douglas’ all-out re-creation of Liberace.
    • Kon-Tiki is a faithful, but underwhelming account of a true life 5,000 mile raft trip across the Pacific.
    • Don’t bother with Baz Luhrman’s flashy, hollow and lame The Great Gatsby. Re-read the Fitzgerald novel instead – it’s only 192 pages.

I haven’t yet seen the contemporary Shakespeare adaptation Much Ado About Nothing, which opens this weekend.  You can read descriptions and view trailers of upcoming films at Movies I’m Looking Forward To.

My DVD/Stream of the Week is the zombie romantic comedy Warm Bodies.  Warm Bodies is available on DVD from Netflix and Redbox and streaming from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu and other VOD outlets.

Tonight Turner Classic Movies brings on Czar of Noir Eddie Muller to present films from the novels of David Goodis: The Burglar, The Burglars, The Unfaithful, Shoot the Piano Player and Nightfall.  (You may have seen Goodis’ Dark Passage with Bogie and Bacall.)

DVD /Stream of the Week: Warm Bodies

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Take the zombie version of Romeo and Juliet meets Beauty and the Beast and we have the charmingly funny Warm Bodies.  When marauding zombies corner some human teens, a hunky teen zombie is smitten by a saucy live girl (Teresa Palmer), saves her from his comrades and shambles her off to his lair.  After he saves her life a few times, she begins to look past his deadness.  But her people want to shoot him in the head, and his people want to feast on her organs, so there’s that.

Nicholas Hoult, all grown up from his role as the kid in About a Boy, plays the zombie.   Although he can only grunt to the zombies and live humans, the audience hears him narrating his thoughts.  It’s normal for any besotted guy to warn himself, “Don’t be creepy! Don’t be creepy!”, but it’s very funny when the guy is dead and looks dead.

Director Jonathan Levine’s (50/50) screenplay is adapted from Isaac Marion’s novel, and it hits all the right notes.  It’s the story of a really nice boy trying to get a girl to like him, and it’s just hard for her to get past the fact that he ate her boyfriend’s brains.

Rob Corddray is excellent as Hoult’s zombie best friend and, hey, John Malkovich is in this movie, too.  I’ve included Warm Bodies in my list of Zombie Movies for People Who Don’t Like Zombie Movies.  Warm Bodies is available on DVD from Netflix and Redbox and sreaming from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu and other VOD outlets.

Movies to See Right Now

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LEAD US NOT INTO TEMPTATION at Cinequest

We’re now in the final two days of San Jose’s Cinequest Film Festival.  It’s been a good year for thrillers at Cinequest, and you can still see Lead Us Not Into Temptation, Dose of Reality and Chaos, as well as the German dark comedy gem Oh Boy.  Check out my CINEQUEST 2013 page for comments on these films, plus another 20 or so that I’ve seen.

In the theaters, I recommend The Gatekeepers, a documentary centered around interviews with all six surviving former chiefs of Shin Bet, Israel’s super-secret internal security force; these are hard ass guys who share a surprising perspective on the efficacy of Israel’s war on terror.  The Alex Gibney (Taxi to the Dark Side) documentary
Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God is now playing on HBO; it explores the Catholic Church’s decades-long cover-up of priest abuse from a Wisconsin parish to the top of the Vatican (and I mean the top).  I admire Steven Soderbergh’s psychological thriller Side Effects, starring Rooney Mara, Jude Law and Catherine Zeta-Jones.

Quartet is a pleasant lark of a geezer comedy with four fine performances. The charmingly funny Warm Bodies has made my list of Zombie Movies for People Who Don’t Like Zombie Movies. The drama Lore is about the innocent children of monstrous people, but its intensity is so unrelenting that it wearies the audience.

I haven’t yet seen the Chilean historical drama No (with Gael Garcia Bernal), which was nominated for the 2013 Foreign Language Oscar and opens widely today. Nor have I seen Emperor, with Tommy Lee Jones as Gen. Douglas MacArthur leading the American occupation of Japan. You can read descriptions and view trailers of upcoming films at Movies I’m Looking Forward To.

You can still catch the Academy Award winning Argo, as well as Zero Dark Thirty and Silver Linings Playbook. To ride the momentum of director Ang Lee’s surprise Oscar win, Life of Pi is now out again in 3D, which I recommend. The Oscar winner for Best Foreign Language Picture, Amour, is brilliantly made and almost unbearable to watch.

My DVD of the week is still Undefeated, last year’s Oscar winner for Best Documentary.

Movies to See Right Now

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THE GATEKEEPERS

Three documentaries are dominating this week’s cinematic landscape:

  • The Gatekeepers is a documentary centered around interviews with all six surviving former chiefs of Shin Bet, Israel’s super-secret internal security force.  These are hard ass guys who share a surprising perspective on the efficacy of Israel’s war on terror.
  • Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God, now playing on HBO, explores the Catholic Church’s decades-long cover-up of priest abuse from a Wisconsin parish to the top of the Vatican (and I mean the top).
  • 56 Up is the surprisingly mellow next chapter in the greatest documentary series ever.  Starting with Seven Up! in 1964, director Michael Apted has followed the same fourteen British children, filming snapshots of their lives at ages 7, 14, 21, 28, 35, 42 and 49 – and now at 56.

We’re now in the third day of San Jose’s Cinequest Film Festival.  I’ve updated my CINEQUEST 2013 page, which includes comments on The Sapphires, In the Shadows, Lead Us Not Into Temptation, The Almost Man, Panahida, Dose of Reality, White Lie, Aftermath and The Hunt.

Opening this week, the drama Lore is about the innocent children of monstrous people, but its intensity is so unrelenting that it wearies the audience. You can read descriptions and view trailers of upcoming films at Movies I’m Looking Forward To.

I admire Steven Soderbergh’s psychological thriller Side Effects, starring Rooney Mara, Jude Law and Catherine Zeta-Jones. Quartet is a pleasant lark of a geezer comedy with four fine performances. The charmingly funny Warm Bodies has made my list of Zombie Movies for People Who Don’t Like Zombie Movies.

You can still catch the Academy Award winning Argo, as well as Zero Dark Thirty and Silver Linings Playbook.  To ride the momentum of director Ang Lee’s surprise Oscar win, Life of Pi is now out again in 3D, which I recommend.  The Oscar winner for Best Foreign Language Picture,  Amour, is brilliantly made and almost unbearable to watch.

My DVD of the week is another documentary, Undefeated, last year’s Oscar winner for Best Documentary.

Turner Classic Movies is celebrating the Oscars with its annual 31 Days of Oscars, filling its broadcast schedule with Academy Award-winning films. This week, the lineup includes Inherit the Wind and Elmer Gantry.

Zombie Movies for People Who Don’t Like Zombie Movies

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SHAUN OF THE DEAD

Here’s my list of Zombie Movies for People Who Don’t Like Zombie Movies.  I’m generally not a fan of the genre because the primary elements of a zombie movie  – gross looking zombies, gory human deaths and spectacular zombie slaughter – just aren’t enough to keep me coming back.

That’s why the best zombie movies are hybrids of another genre.    I’ve highlighted five movies that use the framework of the zombie genre to create movies that can stand on their own as comedies or thrillers.  Plus they ease off on the gore, which is just fine by me.

The very idea of reanimated dead who must eat live humans is, of course, absurd, and that absurdity can set up some fine film comedy, including Zombieland, Shaun of the Dead, Fido and Warm Bodies.  And when you add a first rate filmmaker like Danny Boyle to the mix, you can get a top thriller – 28 Days Later.

Movies to See Right Now

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Jude Law in SIDE EFFECTS

The best new movie is Steven Soderbergh’s psychological thriller Side Effects with Rooney Mara, Jude Law and Catherine Zeta-Jones.  In Stand Up Guys, Al Pacino, Christopher Walken and Alan Arkin play old mobsters gearing up for one last surge of adrenaline. Quartet is a pleasant lark of a geezer comedy with four fine performances. The charmingly funny Warm Bodies has made my list of Zombie Movies for People Who Don’t Like Zombie Movies. The pretty good horror movie Mama (with Jessica Chastain) can send chills down your spine without any slashing or splattering.

Zero Dark Thirty, Argo, Lincoln and Silver Linings Playbook are on my list of Best Movies of 2012 and all are nominated for the Best Picture Oscar. The French language drama Amour, also nominated for Best Picture, is a brilliantly made film about the end of life – it’s also an almost unbearable viewing experience.

If, like me, you worship the spaghetti Western, the Quentin Tarantino blockbuster Django Unchained is gloriously pedal-to-the-metal, splattering exploitation. The intelligent drama Rust and Bone is the singular tale of a complicated woman and an uncomplicated man. Ang Lee’s visually stunning fable Life of Pi is an enthralling commentary on story-telling.

Skip the unoriginal mob movie Gangster Squad, which wastes its fine cast. Also pass on the lavish but stupefying all-star Les Miserables, with its multiple endings, each more miserable than the last. The FDR movie Hyde Park on Hudson is a bore. The disaster movie The Impossible is only for audiences that enjoy watching suffering adults and children in peril. I have not seen Movie 43 – it is the most critically reviled movie in a looooong time.

You can read descriptions and view trailers of upcoming films at Movies I’m Looking Forward To.

My DVD of the week is the underrated 2012 thriller Deadfall.

Turner Classic Movies is celebrating the Oscars with its annual 31 Days of Oscars, filling its broadcast schedule with Academy Award-winning films. In the next week, the especially rich lineup will include Double Indemnity, A Place in the Sun, Seven Days in May, All the King’s Men, Anatomy of a Murder with its great jazz score, On the Waterfront, The Caine Mutiny, Easy Rider, The Last Detail, The Bridge on the River Kwai, Lawrence of Arabia and Tootsie.

Warm Bodies: the zombie version of Romeo and Juliet meets Beauty and the Beast

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Take the zombie version of Romeo and Juliet meets Beauty and the Beast and we have the charmingly funny Warm Bodies.  When marauding zombies corner some human teens, a hunky teen zombie is smitten by a saucy live girl (Teresa Palmer), saves her from his comrades and shambles her off to his lair.  After he saves her life a few times, she begins to look past his deadness.  But her people want to shoot him in the head, and his people want to feast on her organs, so there’s that.

Nicholas Hoult, all grown up from his role as the kid in About a Boy, plays the zombie.   Although he can only grunt to the zombies and live humans, the audience hears him narrating his thoughts.  It’s normal for any besotted guy to warn himself, “Don’t be creepy! Don’t be creepy!”, but it’s very funny when the guy is dead and looks dead.

Director Jonathan Levine’s (50/50) screenplay is adapted from Isaac Marion’s novel, and it hits all the right notes.  It’s the story of a really nice boy trying to get a girl to like him, and it’s just hard for her to get past the fact that he ate her boyfriend’s brains.

Rob Corddray is excellent as Hoult’s zombie best friend and, hey, John Malkovich is in this movie, too.  I’m going to include Warm Bodies in my upcoming list of Zombie Movies for People Who Don’t Like Zombie Movies.

Movies to See Right Now

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THE KID WITH A BIKE

Okay, here we are, and I’m recommending a zombie movie and a horror film.   In the charmingly funny Warm Bodies, Rome and Juliet meets Beauty and the Beast in a zombie movie.  The pretty good horror movie Mama (with Jessica Chastain) can send chills down your spine without any slashing or splattering.  In Stand Up Guys, Al Pacino, Christopher Walken and Alan Arkin play old mobsters gearing up for one last surge of adrenaline.  Quartet is a pleasant lark of a geezer comedy with four fine performances.

The Oscar Nominated Short Films are in theaters only for another week.  Last night I saw the Live Action and Animated Shorts.  If you can see just one, I recommend the Live Action Shorts, especially Curfew.

Zero Dark Thirty, Argo, Lincoln and Silver Linings Playbook are on my list of Best Movies of 2012 and all are nominated for the Best Picture Oscar. The French language drama Amour, also nominated for Best Picture, is a brilliantly made film about the end of life – it’s also an almost unbearable viewing experience.

If, like me, you worship the spaghetti Western, the Quentin Tarantino blockbuster Django Unchained is gloriously pedal-to-the-metal, splattering exploitation. The intelligent drama Rust and Bone is the singular tale of a complicated woman and an uncomplicated man.  Ang Lee’s visually stunning fable Life of Pi is an enthralling commentary on story-telling.

Skip the unoriginal mob movie Gangster Squad, which wastes its fine cast. Also pass on the lavish but stupefying all star Les Miserables, with its multiple endings, each more miserable than the last. The FDR movie Hyde Park on Hudson is a bore. The disaster movie The Impossible is only for audiences that enjoy watching suffering adults and children in peril. I have not seen Movie 43 – it is the most critically reviled movie in a looooong time.

You can read descriptions and view trailers of upcoming films at Movies I’m Looking Forward To.

My DVD of the week is my pick for the very best film of 2012, The Kid with a Bike.

Turner Classic Movies is celebrating the Oscars with its annual 31 Days of Oscars, filling its broadcast schedule with Academy Award-winning films.  Don’t overlook the overlooked film noir thriller The Narrow Margin or the WW II spy thriller The Fallen Sparrow with John Garfield and a 22-year-old Maureen O’Hara.

Movies to See Right Now

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AMOUR

Try to catch the Oscar Nominated Short Films – in theaters only for this coming week.  The pretty good horror movie Mama, with Jessica Chastain, can send chills down your spine without any slashing or splattering. Quartet is a pleasant lark of a geezer comedy with four fine performances.

Zero Dark Thirty, Argo, Lincoln and Silver Linings Playbook are on my list of Best Movies of 2012 and all are nominated for the Best Picture Oscar.  The French language drama Amour, also nominated for Best Picture, is a brilliantly made film about the end of life – it’s also an almost unbearable viewing experience.

If, like me, you worship the spaghetti Western, the Quentin Tarantino blockbuster Django Unchained is gloriously pedal-to-the-metal, splattering exploitation. The intelligent drama Rust and Bone is the singular tale of a complicated woman and an uncomplicated man.

Ang Lee’s visually stunning fable Life of Pi is an enthralling commentary on story-telling. Denzel Washington stars in Flight, a thriller about the miraculous crash landing of an airliner and the even more dangerous battle against alcoholism. Skyfall updates the James Bond franchise with thrilling action and a more shopworn 007 from Daniel Craig.

Skip the unoriginal mob movie Gangster Squad, which wastes its fine cast. Also pass on the lavish but stupefying all star Les Miserables, with its multiple endings, each more miserable than the last. The FDR movie Hyde Park on Hudson is a bore. The disaster movie The Impossible is only for audiences that enjoy watching suffering adults and children in peril.  I have not seen Movie 43 –  it is the most critically reviled movie in a looooong time.

I haven’t seen the Pacino/Walken/Arkin geezer mob film Stand Up Guys or the inventive zombie movie Warm Bodies, which open this weekend. You can read descriptions and view trailers of upcoming films at Movies I’m Looking Forward To.

My DVD of the week is the deliciously pulpy neo-noir The Paperboy.

Today Turner Classic Movies begins its annual 31 Days of Oscars, celebrating the Oscars by filling its broadcast schedule with Academy Award-winning films.