Today's Mini-Reviews: Zombies, zombies everywhere!

World War Z: ***/*****, or 7/10

Huge big budget blockbuster adaptation, albeit loosely, of the Max Brooks novel of the same name. More serious in tone, the film explores the consequences of a viral pandemic that turns its victims into zombies, only driven by the urge to infect more people. A star vehicle for Brad Pitt, World War Z follows an ex-UN employee who is blackmailed by his former superiors into tracking down the origin of the plague in exchange for the guarantee his wife and children are protected from the terrors of the outside world. Unfortunately, it turns out it's not so easy to pinpoint just where the virus originated, necessitating him to travel around the globe whilst following various breadcrumbs in hopes of finding an answer, and if possible, a cure. Of course, this results in an array of close calls with ravenous zombies in various major cities, including New York, Philadelphia and Jeruzalem. The movie incorporates both close encounters with only a few zombies as well as major zombie offensives against large human populations as seen through Pitt's eyes. It's the former that make for the most suspenseful edge-of-your-seat moments, while the latter gobble up the vast majority of the FX budget, as we see zombie armies attacking helicopters and city walls in force. Such scenes look grandiose and work equally well as further examples of ever active post 9/11 paranoia, but ultimately feel hollow compared to Pitt's more personal experiences up close with the creepy undead. However, in those instances, these zombies just don't appear as frightening or disturbing as those of previous zombie flicks. In fact, if you're watching the TV-show The Walking Dead on a regular basis, World War Z offers little you have not seen before (save for zombie attacks on a bigger scope) and certainly isn't as poignant as a parable showcasing the failure of humans to work together for mutual survival, nor delivers it any moments of intense horror and gore that can match that show's contents. As an exploration of the legitimacy of our fears for pandemics, this movie also proves less effective as more scientific accurate fare the likes of Contagion: think of it more as the silly popcorn variety of that more intelligent type of flick. In addition, Brad Pitt is much too big a movie star to convincingly play the everyman out for basic survival and answers in a world overrun by the living dead. A less well known actor would have worked better for this movie's purposes, but in this day and age of ever increasing numbers of Hollywood flops, studios are afraid to make summer movies that cannot benefit from having big names to draw in audiences. World War Z witnessed its fair share of production problems, including a need for drastic rewrites and 20 million dollar reshoots of its entire third act. To the credit of those involved, you wouldn't think this film experienced such obstacles, as it has a fairly solid ending – including a surprising method of avoiding zombie contact – that still leaves ample room for an unavoidable sequel or two.

Warm Bodies: ****/*****, or 7/10

Zombies admittedly are having a big break on the silver screen this year. While World War Z is the sort of epic flick meant for the usual audiences blockbuster movies are made for, the zom-romcom Warm Bodies should attract crowds looking for more unusual horrific fare, and even – gods willing – teenage girls that want to fill the gap left by the finale of the Twilight movies by exploring similar themed films. Fortunately, the fact this movie combines thematic elements from the horror genre with all the qualities of romance is as far as the parallel between Twilight and Warm Bodies ought to be drawn, as the latter is a delightful off-beat comedy that hopefully will stay a one-shot instead of being milked for many more movies to come. The film follows R (Nicholas Hoult of X-Men: First Class and Jack the Giant Slayer fame), a teenage zombie male who does what zombies usually do: incoherently move about the place looking for people to eat, either alone or in a pack with his undead friends. One day he happens upon the brains of a living teenage boy, and after devouring them finds he is attracted to his girlfriend Julie (Teresa Palmer), the sole survivor of the zombie attack that claimed her boyfriend's life. Hiding her from the other living corpses, R soon displays amorous behavior towards her, or attempts at such as good as any dead boy could make, and because of these sudden feelings appears to regain his past humanity slowly but surely. Eventually the plot allows for a certain degree of romance between the pair which is developed compellingly enough to make it rise above its ludicrous premise. The problem the fledgling lovers face is how to overcome the prejudices dominant in a world where one group in society aims to eat the other. Matters are complicated by the fact Julie's father (John Malkovich) is the stern and uncompromising leader of the human survivors, while the rise of a subspecies of zombies named 'Bonies', zombies so far gone they have lost every shred of humanity and form a danger to both humans and regular zombies, also is cause for concern. Can R and Julie's mutual love for each other bridge the differences between both groups in time for man and dead man to overcome their hatred and unite against their common foe? As the movie draws towards its close, the plot focuses more on action and the expected preachy messages, but it's the first half of the movie that makes for a wonderfully funny viewing experience totally worth your while as R, via voice-over, details his dreary everyday life, illustrating a zombie's daily routine to hilarious results. While people who might fear the love affair between live girl and dead boy is not convincingly carried through, they're in for a nice surprise. In fact, it turns out there's not so much difference between the awkward experiences of young love as seen through a dead boy's eyes as there is from a living one. Few guys who tried to hit on girls in their teen years won't recall similar instances of acting odd in front of the opposite sex that made them wish they were dead, right?

Today's mini-review: Jack the Giant Slayer

Here's a quickie for ya. Saw this movie two months back but didn't get around to post stuff about it.

Jack the Giant Slayer: ***/*****, or 7/10

Bryan Singer's reimagining of the story about the farmboy Jack who fought savage giants mixes the cheerful British fairy tale Jack and the Bean Stalk with the darker and more violent related tale of Jack the Giant Killer, resulting in a hybrid which incorporates the key narrative elements of both for its own plot purposes. The result is an entertaining adventure flick which sadly looses some of its pleasuring punch by trusting in overly trite but true fairy tale signifiers too much. Simple country boy Jack (Nicholas Hoult, X-Men: First Class) meets gorgeous princess Isabelle (Eleanor Tomlinson), who prefers adventure over the boring life of royalty. She gets more than she bargained for when she seeks shelter at Jack's home during a stormy night, just when alleged magic beans he spilled take root and quickly form a giant bean stalk, rising to a strange land above the clouds and sweeping the girl along. The King sends a rescue party to retrieve his daughter, and Jack volunteers to save this girl that's oh so out of his league despite their mutual attractions. Unfortunately for their young love, the land in the skies is inhabited by a race of brutal giants, who were exiled there in ages past so their taste for human flesh would no longer plague mankind. Of course, upon learning a new connection between their two worlds has been established, the monsters soon plan to make use of it to return to Earth and scour the land for human snack food. Thrown in the mix is a subplot regarding a treacherous count (Stanley Tucci) set to marry Isabelle, who only wants to use her to become king himself, and eagerly turns towards controlling the giants via a magic crown to achieve his goal. A solid and simple plot, devoid of surprises, and regrettably hindered by cliché character building, clearly delineating the good guys from the bad, while centered around a fairly boring love affair that all too typically rises above class dinstinctions. It's all a tad too 'Disney' for a capable director like Singer, but there's still a few things to enjoy here. For one thing, there's the abundance of good character actors the likes of Ian McShane and Ewan McGregor (with intriguing facial hair!) that take good care of the supporting roles, but unfortunately can't make the bland performances by the main couple more lively. For another, there's the impressive array of nasty giants that make for a formidable enemy and fun action scenes galore, as well as a bunch of morbidly gory instances of suspense. It's clear the huge budget went first and foremost to the FX departments, who did a hell of a job with the overall design of the vicious creatures – the grotesque two headed giant leader particularly – and their grandiose final battle against their favorite food. If only Singer had spent more time finetuning the story to make it feel a little less old-fashioned and predictable, this movie might have done more slaying at the box office.