Shaun of The Dead (2004)

Despite the fact that I am of the opinion that zombies are played out and are officially boring at this point, in an ironic twist one of my favorite comedies remains to this day "Shaun of The Dead," a film that is so genius it manages to make me laugh my fool head off in spite of the zombies within it. It's one of those wonderful movies that gets better the more you watch it, since the jokes contained within are so dense and fast-paced that it's probably close to impossible to catch everything the first, second, or even third time you see it. That combined with the fact that it contains two of my "Three Funniest People in The World in No Particular Order" makes "Shaun of The Dead" a film that I'm always okay with busting out.

The film follows a couple of days in the life of Shaun (Simon Pegg), a 30-something who is a bit of a slacker without much direction in life. After he gets dumped by his girlfriend Liz (Kate Ashfield), he gets very drunk and then decides to get his life sorted out the next day. Unfortunately for Shaun, the next day is when the zombie apocalypse happens.

Who knew, right?

Shaun and his flatmate Ed (Nick Frost) head out to safety, deciding that the best place to go is the Winchester, the pub they are regulars at. On the way there they pick up Liz and her two flatmates, along with Shaun's mother and step-father. Together do their best to survive the onslaught of zombies, as well as their leader Shaun who, despite the best of intentions, has a habit of mucking things up. To be sure, the whole "Go to the Winchester" idea turns out to not be a very good one. This all leads to a finale which gets surprisingly grim given the light, fun-filled tone of the rest of the film, although at the end of the day "Shaun of The Dead" still ends on a relatively happy note. (And song.)

While both Simon Pegg and Nick Frost are comedic geniuses, that wouldn't have mattered much had they not had a great script to work with as well, which they fortunately do. "Shaun of The Dead" is written as tight as a drum, with barely a word wasted or not made to return later as a gag. This includes entire sequences both physical and verbal repeating themselves in different context. Things like a passing exchange during a video game session coming back verbatim during a last stand at the bar makes for extremely rewarding re-watching when you catch it. The iconic "walking to the store" shot playing out twice in extremely different but yet oddly identical ways is probably the best example of that.

And if you notice, he does switch it to a Diet Coke. I love those little touches.

Most likely surprising to most people is that aside from being very funny, "Shaun of The Dead" functions quite well as a straight-up zombie film. All the tropes and standard elements of the genre are present, which makes sense considering its parodic nature, but what's interesting is that were you to take all the humor away the film is actually a far better zombie movie than most legitimate zombie movies manage to be. And I'm not talking a little bit here. I'm talking light years ahead of anything a maestro like Romaro has done in decades.

Perhaps the reason it works is because of the fact that, since it's a comedy, the stone-faced seriousness of the genre along with its fatalism and commentary on human nature is absent. To me, that garbage usually makes zombie films a boring sit, and I have a difficult time caring about any of the characters because generally speaking, in a zombie movie most every human is a terrible person. And if they aren't, by the end it's usually a good bet that they'll have lost most of the humanity they had. Since you know, these movies are very diverse in their plots.

Since "Shaun of The Dead" is free from that crap, and it's okay to actually like the characters since it's a comedy, when bad things happen to them it actually has the shocking side effect of being sad, which the movie plays up to a heartrending degree on occasion. You don't want to see these people get killed (Well, maybe David), which is such an alien reaction for me to have in a zombie movie that it's hard for me to comprehend. Even Ed, the most obnoxious, dense, and insufferable member of the group is a fantastic character who usually ends up being everybody's favorite despite him being a total chump. In fact he's front and center of the second most emotionally charged and tearful scene of the film. And how many zombie movies can you remember which had a death scene you even felt like considering entertaining the notion of crying at in the first place? And that's for the "loser" of the movie.

Damn it, Ed. That was an original pressing.

I would also feel remiss to not mention that the acting in "Shaun of The Dead" is unexpectedly fantastic. And I'm not just talking comedic acting here, although this film is a master's class in the very finest of British humor. While every single actor here is hysterical, even the deathly serious Bill Nighy (I freaking love that guy), there are scenes of such emotional depth, particularly from Simon Pegg, that on occasion it is easy to forget that you're watching a zombie spoof.

You know, it's a difficult thing explaining why you like a certain comedy. Humor is always troublesome to quantify without sounding redundant, so I'll just leave my comments regarding the comedic aspects at "This is one of the funniest movies I've ever seen." It speaks completely to my particular tastes in comedy. Whether or not it will for anyone else is completely dependent on that individual. But seriously, I have a hard time believing anyone could watch this movie and not love it. Unless of course they're deathly offended by zombie gore and gratuitous f-bombs.

I should probably stop there. The more I think about "Shaun of The Dead," the more I want to write. And I don't really want to write a novel here. Just freaking watch it. If you've already seen it, see it again. It gets better each time. If you're like me and have already seen it like a dozen times, well hell. Let's give it another go. You grab the hog lumps and I'll grab the pints. (Might be a bit warm. Cooler's off.)

I'm actually not a huge fan of this trailer, but it's decent I guess. At least it's not made to look like a dumbass American comedy like the American trailer made it out to be.

THE BOTTOM LINE - "Shaun of The Dead" makes my short list not only for favorite comedies, but it's also probably one of my favorite films, period. Like "The Big Lewbowski," it's an infinitely quotable and re-watchable film that somehow, impossibly still manages to get better every time.

Prometheus (2012)

Sometimes writing this blog sucks. When a movie reaches a certain level of quality it quickly becomes really hard to write anything about it out of fear of sounding redundant. Or sometimes there's just so much to talk about that you either write a novel or nothing at all. Here's one of those moments.

I'll own up to something right off the bat here, so everyone knows where I'm coming from with this. I am a HUGE "Alien" fan. The "Alien" franchise is one of my favorites of all time, right up there with "Star Wars." And while I didn't see them as a child, the "Alien" movies helped define my taste in both the science fiction and horror genres, and was a big part of my adolescence.

I'm such a big fan I even like "Alien Resurrection." Now, don't get me wrong, that is a terrible movie, but I still inexplicably have fun with it despite how terrible it is. "Alien Resurrection" is a glorious wreck of two trains, one carrying Joss Whedon writing a story about cloning while not knowing how cloning works and the other carrying 5,000 gallons of KY jelly. And he had the gall to come out and say that the reason it sucked was because all the actors said their lines wrong. Did he read his script? What an asshole.

Yup. Totally Sygourney Weaver's fault right there...

I'd been keeping on and off again tabs on "Prometheus" for years, ever since it was called "Alien 5." Then Ridley Scott changed the name, it became a prequel, then it wasn't a prequel, then it was, and it just kept going back and forth until I stopped listening. It was too painful to hear every time they made a big change. Eventually I walled myself off from it and kept in the dark. The only thing I allowed myself to see was the trailer when it was first released. And it looked so good that out of all the movies coming out in 2012, the only one that I was more excited about was "The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey."

Needless to say, the expectations were sky high.

I ended up seeing "Prometheus" twice, in actuality. I saw it on opening day, but I realized I couldn't write a review of it at that point, because I didn't really know what I thought. I knew that I didn't hate it. I knew that I enjoyed myself, but I didn't know if that was because of my "fan-goggles" or not. Perhaps the fact that I was practically wetting myself with joy every time I saw something familiar was tainting my opinion of it.

So I went back and watched it again a few days later. And I'm happy to say that "Prometheus" improves drastically on a second viewing, and it confirmed my original thoughts on the film: "Prometheus" is really, really good.

Whoa! They made a "Mass Effect" movie? Sweet!

The thing about "Prometheus" is that there's a lot of ideas going on in it. Any movie that asks the question: "Who are we and where did we come from?" and attempts to give some answers is biting off a big mouthful to chew. Aside from that, there are recurring themes of evolution, rebirth, and parricide that really give "Prometheus" what I have to be snobby and call "an intellectual edge" that makes it a much smarter film than any film in the "Alien" franchise to date. Not to say that "Prometheus" is better, or that the others weren't "smart," but they were horror/action films. "Prometheus" is a before anything else a sci-fi film.

Not really knowing where to begin, I'll just start by saying that the cast was phenomenal. I was happy to see that Noomi Rapace confirmed my suspicions that her portrayal of Lisbeth Salander in "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo" series was simply the result of a horrible character, and that she is actually a very good actress. I enjoyed her greatly in "Prometheus," although it is inevitable that comparisons to Sygourney Weaver will occur, since she is the Ripley character of this one.

Is she as good as Sygourney? That's impossible to say since Ripley and Beth are two completely different characters. I'd say that overall Beth isn't as emotionally (or physically) strong as Ripley is, but the way Noomi plays Beth, she never comes off as weak - just realistic. In fact you could argue that Beth is far more logical and intelligent than Ripley since she thinks about things instead of acting out of blind emotion (re: running back into the alien hive to save Newt). Perhaps that evens things out. Ripley is a badass, Beth is smart.

Noomi is also looking a HELL of a lot like Kari Byron in this. Ridley Scott must have been reading my "wish list."

 Oh baby. You can bust my myth any day. Awww yeah... #needsgirlfriendbadly

And of course, adding to the lovely factor is Charlize Theron, playing the corporate jerk who doesn't really care about any of the crew, kind of like Paul Reiser's character Burke in "Aliens." Between this and "Snow White and The Huntsman," she really can play wicked quite well. The real star here, though, is Michael Fassbender, who seems to be on a mission to completely dominate every single movie he is in. His portrayal of David, the ship's synthetic (robot) is, in a word, stunning. He had a lot to live up to, filling the shoes of Ian Holm and Lance Henriksen, but Fassebender is a mack-daddy, so of course he pulls it off.

And if you squint really hard and huff a lot of paint, Fassbender kind of looks like the love child of Ian Holm and Lance Henriksen.

I know there has been some division among fans, however. Honestly, I don't get it, but if someone wasn't paying attention, they might come away with misconceptions since this is not really like the other "Alien" films, at least at first glance. There really isn't any horror element to it, at least not in terms of what we've come to expect. Whereas the other movies were essentially slasher movies in space, "Prometheus" is more of a suspense/drama. The gore, for the most part, isn't really there like in the others, there is less emphasis on action, and there is more of a sense of mystery and discovery than tension and dread, although those do make themselves known on occasion.

But at the same time, there are a lot of similarities, particularly in the pacing department. It begins slow and it takes it's time until a nasty discovery is unveiled which threatens the crew. Slowly they begin to get picked off, just in this case not by a monster in the conventional sense. There is the equivalent of the chestburster scene, and although it is much later in the film, I would say that it's far more intense since the scene in the original was much quicker. A corporate betrayal is uncovered, and the ending is actually quite similar in a lot of ways. There's also a "fourth act" confrontation, which "Alien" basically invented. Hell, even the android's severed head starts talking.

And for being not as action-oriented, there are some legitimate squirming-in-your-seat nail biting moments that I imagine would be especially rough for anybody who has ever given birth. C-Section nightmares all around, kiddos.

 Nobody can watch this scene and tell me later it wasn't intense as all hell.

So I guess I don't understand where the split comes in. It may anger some to hear this, but take it from a person who is quite protective of the series: This is not a betrayal. This is "Alien" with an intellectual spin on it, and there's a lot to talk about in it.

When I talk about an intellectual spin and "big" ideas, dig on this:

SPOILER WARNING

According to "Prometheus," a race of aliens ("The Engineers") created human life on Earth by sacrificing one of their own into the primordial waters. In fact, that is presumably what's going on in the very first scene. The very first scene of the film is the beginning of life, and "The Engineers" are for all intents and purposes, God.

When the crew find the alien ship on the distant planet, it was on a course for Earth. It's reason was to wipe out all life in order to start again. It had been sitting there for around 2,000 years. Now, "Prometheus" takes place less than 100 years from now. Can you think of something possibly God-related that happened about 2,000 years ago that might make the creator of human-kind upset? Something that might make them say, "Ok, you've all had your fun, but you all suck, and it's time to start from scratch" perhaps?

That's right. "Prometheus" drops the hint of the idea that Jesus was an alien. That's a big idea.

/SPOILERS

"Prometheus" may be upsetting for someone looking for a movie just like what the rest of the movies were, but was that really all you wanted? Getting the same thing over and over again can get boring, and I personally didn't want to see Ridley Scott get back in the directors chair only to do his best James Cameron impression. James Cameron is the guy doing the best impression of James Cameron, anyways.

I guess what I mean is that if all you wanted was to see "Aliens" again, throw in the DVD of "Aliens." After all, there really was no improving on that one anyways. When I get Ridley Scott, I expect a high level of quality, and hopefully some interesting intellectual angles. And that's exactly what I got.

Well, that and a whole lot of creepy H.R. Giger looking architecture.

THE BOTTOM LINE - "Prometheus" was not what I was expecting, but that didn't stop it from being very good. It's a fine entry into the "Alien" franchise which gets better with repeat viewings, since there's a lot to take in, and I dare say it's objectively the best of the series since "Aliens." If it doesn't make my Top 10 of 2012, I will be shocked. Its biggest problem is that it will feel very hollow if it's not followed up on. This NEEDS a sequel, or even better to be made into a trilogy to be linked into the events of "Alien." Highly Recommended.