Dawn Of The Dead Review

    In 1978 George A. Romero made Dawn of The Dead, a film that many still to this day consider to be the “Greatest Horror Film In History.” The film starred a cast of unknown yet talented performers such as Ken Foree, David Emge, Gaylen Ross, and Scott Reiniger. It also featured Tom Savini in a small role as a biker gang leader. I actually just got done watching it and I must say that I was utterly and completely full of crap when I said in my last blog that Night was the best of his series. The social commentary in this film was, unlike in Night of the Living Dead, was both intentional and well done. It used the idea of zombies to touch on the slow decay in our society caused by corporate greed and blind consumerism. It was symbolic of a true capitalistic apocalypse where the consumers consume each other. Despite all of what was good and entertaining about this film, it was not devoid of weaknesses. The weak parts of this film are almost so bad that it cancels out all that made this film a respected classic.

    My first problem was with the dialogue, or at least what Romero passes off as dialogue. This is a consistent weakness in most of his work in that he seems to be unable to write speech that sounds like an actual human would say it. The actors do their best to make some of these atrocious lines sound good but most attempts are in vain. I had trouble taking these characters seriously at some points. Luckily, the shitty dialogue was only in certain parts and not really consistent. Some of my favorite lines in the film are delivered by Ken Foree, who played the SWAT officer Peter Washington. In fact he was really the only character that I was not hoping would be turned into zombie chow.

    Another weakness in this film is that it runs out of gas around the middle of act two. The film starts off great with the scene in the TV studio. The frantic pace of that scene, the screaming people, and the crew members slow walking off was a very cool way of showing the societal impact of the zombie apocalypse. It was subtle yet twice as effective if they had shown some wide panoramic shot of zombies marching up and down the town square eating everyone in arms reach. It then takes us to a raid on a housing project. The raid is being conducted by SWAT in order to enforce the President’s new law stating that “all private home, no matter how well stocked or secure, are no longer safe to dwell in.” He basically declared martial law and the members of this housing project seem to not have gotten that memo. This is where we meet Peter and Roger. Long story short the tenants were hiding undead loved ones in the basement and there is a very creepy part were Roger and Peter are executing all the restrained zombies in the basement. Later Roger offers Peter a chance to escape the city in a helicopter because as he put it, “lot of people running out there right now.” Peter accepts the invite and they meet with Francine and Stephen who have recently borrowed the local news channel’s helicopter in order to more safely GTFO. Again, everything so far is excellent. They get into small fights with some zombies at a refueling center ending with one zombie getting his head cleaved half off by helicopter blades. Shit doesn’t really start getting bad until they get to the mall.
 Apparently there was enough room in hell for this movie because that is where it goes. Seriously, Romero Trojan horsed my ass with the sudden shift in quality. The film was better while they were on the run, maybe the helicopter should have died at that air field and they are forced to steal a truck and drive through the zombie apocalypse. That would have been so much better. Once they get to the mall the story just starts to get tedious to watch. Yeah they had to secure the mall but that sequence was over far too quickly and left us with almost an hour of these three assholes screwing around in a mall. It was so boring that part of the “we’re safe, yay!!” montage is them shopping. That’s right folks a montage of motherfuckers shopping like this is Mr. Mom of some similar bullshit.

   Sensing the film’s plot was at a dead stop, Romero decided to introduce a new threat to our main characters. The new threat is not undead but a post-apocalyptic biker gang. They scope out the mall and after seeing the helicopter they decide to drop in for some tea and rape. They get in and start looting/fucking around in the mall, one guy even stops at one of those blood pressure machines. Seeing the destruction of their new home and the misuse of their medical kiosks Steven goes nuts and starts shooting the biker pirates, Peter lets the zombies in, and Tom Savini starts yelling racial slurs. It’s all is just kind of corny and a lot of the scenes demonstrate how non-threatening the slow moving classic zombies are. The film ends with the zombies eating a few of the bikers, causing them to retreat. Peter flees to the safety room where he and Francine decide to blow that Popsicle stand. They escape unharmed to the cheesiest music I have ever heard. As the helicopter disappeared into the distance the film faded to black.
 
   This was the best of the Dead films as far as overall quality goes but honestly it is only good when compared to the other movies in Romero’s Dead series. Say it is the best out of that series is like being the strongest retard.

Oh did I mention that the bikers have a pie fight with the zombies, I guess Romero wanted to pay homage to Tex Avery?

Why is George A. Romero so popular?

    I generally hate most “genera” movies with a passion. Ok, maybe “hate with a passion” is too strong, but it does annoy me when good stories get bogged down in genera expectations. It is hard for characters to develop well, or at least in any realistic sense if he or she is preoccupied fulfilling their genera archetype. The Hero must win, Good must prevail, and the male lead must get some action from the outrageously hot actress regardless of his social and/or financial inferiority. To me it makes for lazy writing and a weak story, like a novel that stopped working out and devolved a taste for malt beer and calzone. No one has the balls to mix things up any more, or when they do it is poorly received because most movie watchers are just content with the beige colored mediocrity that is modern film making. No film series is a better example of hacky, lazy story telling than George A. Romero’s Dead Series.

    I am not just referring to the latest installments to his series either, I mean all of them. Night of The Living Dead was the most tolerable of the bunch and honestly was not half bad for Romero’s freshman film. It was creepy, atmospheric, and had this “doomed from the start” feeling I love in stories. It also was not afraid to touch on social ills of the time, or at least that is what you drooling fan boys of his would say. Truth be told Romero often pointed out that he did not mean for any political message to be read into his movie, his intentions were just making a straight gory horror show that was very good for its time yet has not aged well. These claims of its “gripping social commentary” are just a prime example of his fans giving him more credit than he deserves. Yeah, it had a black lead and a white female protagonist, so what? You people act like this film was “Look Who’s Coming to Dinner” only with zombies when it was nothing more than what it claimed to be. Also, is it just me or are all the side characters in a Romero zombie flick so nails-on-chalkboard irritating that you find yourself rooting for the zombies to have a little picnic on their digestive systems? Seriously, the character Cooper was a balding walking excuse for legalized murder. The guy was an insufferable prick, so much so that he wasn’t even that believable. And the rest of his family was just as bad. Cooper’s wife spent most of the movie wandering around gasping at anything looking remotely like a zombie while the daughter laid in the basement slowly turning into a zombie herself. One thing I thought was funny was that as much as I hated Cooper, he was right about it being a stupid idea to try and barricade the house with ironing boards and plywood. He insists over and over that it is safer in the basement that he was going down there and he wasn’t letting anyone up.

     A few zombie fights, a car explosion and a laz-e-boy recliner Molotov cocktail later and the barricade plan crumbles to nothing, the zombies break through and eat everyone but Ben (charismatic black guy), Cooper, and Cooper’s wife. She runs down to the basement and is quickly stabbed and ate by her newly undead daughter. Cooper meanwhile is trying to get the only remaining gun away from Ben but is quickly thrown to the ground and shot. Ben goes down stairs to the basement and kills zombie girl and zombie wife. He locks the basement door and chills till that morning when he gets accidently gunned down after being mistaken for a zombie. Moral of the story, “racist asshats like Cooper can be right sometimes, they were safer in the basement.” The film ends with a bunch of sepia still shoots of rednecks burning bodies and striking semi-menacing poses at the camera. Yeah, nothing spells out ground breaking horror like sepia still shots. But remember folks, this was the best of his dead series, the rest get exponentially worse in every conceivable way.

Inception Review

This weekend I finally got to see Inception, a film I have been waiting to see since it started being advertised. The film was made by director Christopher Nolan, the man who brought us The Dark Knight and Memento. The film features a strong ensemble cast of very talented young actors. Inception also had some of the best visuals I have ever seen. The cinematography was top-notch excellent and the visual effects gave the film its dreamlike qualities that were surreal, yet subtle, never becoming so big and bright that they become a spectacle on to themselves.


That being said I cannot shake the thinking that Christopher Nolan is fucking with me. The plot to this film is almost unreviewable; seriously I do not know what to say. Inception presents this twisted rat’s nest of a narrative about a man haunted by the death of his wife. The man also happens to be a professional thief who breaks into dreams and pulls heists on their memories and sells the secure information to the highest bidder. The job is made difficult in the opening scene when the vengeful sub-conscious ghost of his wife endangers every mind heist the characters embark on. He is a fugitive because the US authorities think he killed his wife. His last chance to see his kids again is doing this one last job for some generic rich guy. The job involves implanting an idea in the mind of a business competitor; this is where the title of the film comes from. This technique is largely thought to be impossible, only Cobb has the skill to do it. Already this is starting to feel like every heist movie ever made. It hits all the genera cliches making this feel less like a psychological thriller and more like the weirdest Ocean’s Eleven sequel ever. That is the closest thing to a coherent plot this film has. After that it is nothing more than a convoluted series of ill-paced flash backs and time jumps. Another problem I had was that it spent a good portion of the film explaining how the dream technology worked. I hate it when sci-fi movies do that, do they really think the audience gives a fuck how the dream Mcguffan works? Did we really need all those scenes explaining that weird sedative and how effective it was? It had no impact on the story as a whole and just padded the film for time. Also, why in the hell did Cobb agree with generic billionaire guy to and let him go along for the heist? Why was his presence necessary other than to become a hindrance later?

I honestly do not understand why this film is getting so much praise. What was so ground breaking? It was not the themes because I can think of several movies that approached the question of if or not our world was real of some kind of dream. It was not the character’s relationship with his wife because that story was better when it was called “What Dreams may come.” This movie felt not at all original, in fact nothing about it was. Nolan cannibalized themes from his own film Memento while flagrantly ripping off films like What Dreams may Come, Cell, Dark City, A Clockwork Orange and The Matrix Trilogy. All those movies had the themes of Inception or had similar visual and all are better than Inception. Inception is a great example of something that fails to be greater than the sum of its parts. Yes the actors were wonderful in this film and yes the cinematography was great, but several points in the film made me think about when I saw them happen in better films. Those films had coherent plots, with narratives that make sense and do not read like the ramblings of a crazy person of his meds.