WORLD WAR Z

Max Brooks' book "World War Z" is a masterwork thriller. It drips information about the zombie apocalypse to the reader through short stories, so that as you read the survivors' accounts you piece together a much bigger story. It would make a brilliant anthology series on HBO. They could hand chapters off to individual filmmakers to adapt into hour-long episodes.

But that is not what happened. Rumour is that there was an earlier script that would have made this film 3+ hours and hewn much closer to the book's structure. The rumour also says that it would have been the first Oscar-worthy zombie film.

But that is not what happened. Instead, the filmmakers behind World War Z, including producer Brad Pitt, have looked at the macro-political story that Max Brooks wrote and wrote a Hollywood hero into it. Brad Pitt plays Gerry Lane, a former UN agent who is drafted to find a cure. Forced away from his family to globe-trot the apocalypse, he deals with a variety of situations borrowed equally from zombie films and apocalypse disaster movies.

Plenty of fans of the novel will be disappointed by this. But the fact that the movie follows a new character while (roughly) following the bigger story of the book means that the characters of the novel are out there. They are facing their own apocalypses. They just didn't cross paths with Brad Pitt. Sequels or (hopefully) an HBO series could give them their time on screen, but for now we have this film starring Brad Pitt.

As far as films starring Brad Pitt go, this one is quite good. It didn't try to be funny, which most zombie films do, and the resulting tone was closer to Contagion than Dawn of the Dead. Brad Pitt is a solid leading man as usual. Mireille Enos (The Killing) is his wife, and in her short time on screen she manages to be a competent survivor.

Something that often sinks apocalypse films is a transparently manipulative character. The screaming blond in Jaws 2 should have been the first one eaten, but she stubbornly survives to annoy the audience to the end. Fred Astaire's part in The Towering Inferno was specifically designed to break your heart. 2012 was hemorrhaging selfish and annoying characters to hate. These cheap emotional manipulations reveal bad scripts more often than bad actors, so it was nice to see World War Z did not burden its good cast with cheap tricks.

Perhaps we will see a WWZ adaptation some day, but for now there is a solid zombie thriller starring Brad Pitt that happens to use the same title.

WARM BODIES

Nicholas Hoult plays R, a zombie who cannot remember his full name. He shuffles around an airport with dry, witty narration filling his thoughts. M (Rob Corddry) is his best friend, and sometimes they get hungry and team up to go look for brains. During one of these meals out, R eats the brains of Perry (Dave Franco), and R finds Perry’s feelings for his girlfriend Julie (Teresa Palmer) becoming his own. R then saves Julie and hides her in his Wall-E like shelter full of the remains of human society.

Director Jonathan Levine made the indie coming-of-age film The Wackness, which was reasonably entertaining if not very original. His follow-up feature was the terrific 50/50, which was a great convergence of actors and script. Warm Bodies ends up somewhere between the two. The highlight of the film in terms of both actor and script is Nicholas Hoult. His depressed narration includes most of the best lines and Hoult manages to get across a lot of emotion despite sticking to the grey, dead features of the classic Hollywood zombie.

The supporting cast fits the film, but no one is trying too hard to make Warm Bodies a very serious film, which for a Rom-Zom-Com is the best choice. Rob Corddry just plays himself, Teresa Palmer is a beautiful and relatable lead, and John Malkovich agreed to be in this movie, which is less impressive now that his recent work has included Transformers: Dark of the Moon and Jonah Hex.

As for the story itself, if R and Julie wasn’t enough of a hint, Perry sounds like Paris, R’s best friend is M, and Julie’s best friend wants to be a nurse. The star-crossed connections become painfully clear when R approaches Julie at her balcony, and this is the main flaw of the film. Director Jonathan Levine keeps the focus on the Shakespeare romance instead of on the zombie comedy. This is only a problem because it places the audience in the awkward position of rooting for necrophilia, an obstacle that even the most dedicated romantic would have trouble overcoming.

Warm Bodies is an entertaining riff on Romeo and Juliet that seems very original at the start, but soon reveals its conventional side. It’s not gory enough to be a zombie classic, but it’s good enough to be the first worthwhile film of 2013.

HITCHCOCK

Two brothers are digging a hole outside a farmhouse. After a disagreement about their mother, one of them walks out of frame. He returns a moment later to bash his brother over the head with a shovel and the camera pans to the side where Alfred Hitchcock (Anthony Hopkins) is watching, just like an audience member at a theatre. He turns to the camera and delivers the first charming quip (of which there will be many) to his audience about Ed Gein and how he inspired Psycho. And so begins the entertaining, somewhat lightweight look at one of the most famous directors in history, and the production of his most-famous film.

When it was released in 1960, Psycho made a huge impact on Hollywood that affects movies to this day. It was near the end of the censor’s reign, which had held films back from including content that would get anything beyond a PG rating by modern standards. It was also at a time when television was stealing audiences, and filmmakers were looking for new ways to lure people to the theatre. Hitch created a pre-release buzz that was unheard of, but has since become standard. In the 60s a film could open in a couple of theaters and play for months before finding an audience and becoming a nationwide success; today studios release films in thousands of theaters, and if they don’t make the top three on their opening weekend they are considered flops.

But all of this history is secondary to the real purpose of Hitchcock.

Under all the film trivia, the focus of the story is Alfred (“Just call me Hitch, drop the cock.”) and his wife Alma Reville (Helen Mirren). They are a couple heading into their golden years together, and comfortable performances from Hopkins and Mirren make their long-lasting love affair very believable. Running gags with Alma trying to make Hitch eat better food, and Hitch trying to hide his drinking, play out in scenes of Hollywood negotiations and production stress to bring these two characters firmly to life.

This care and attention given to develop the two lead characters is great for them, but it leaves most of the supporting cast underdeveloped. In the lead up to the production a series of short scenes introduces characters who are offered up like garnish; they look great, but they have little substance. Ralph Macchio plays the psychiatry-obsessed screenwriter Joseph Stefano, Kurtwood Smith is the hardliner censor who hovers over the script with a red pen, and James D’Arcy is Anthony Perkins,  the actor playing the titular psycho. D’Arcy’s performance seems to avoid any of the complexity of the real Perkins in favor of his character in the film, Norman Bates.

A supporting part that actually does get some development is serial killer Ed Gein  (Michael Wincott) who haunts Hitch’s dreams like a psychotic muse. There are times it seems that Gein might have more influence over the director than his long-suffering wife. Gein is one characters who, along with beautiful blonde Janet Leigh (Scarlett Johansson) and slick writer Whitfield Cook (Danny Huston), starts to come between Hitch and Alma, and his appearances are some of the only real insights given to Hitch’s thoughts.

By the end, with a great reference to Hitchcock’s next film, the piece that will be remembered most is Hopkins’ performance. His makeup is perfect and he uses the fat suit and prosthetic lips to make Hitch be the charming, troublesome, childish genius he is known to have been. He has some great lines, but it is his physical reaction to the first audience seeing the shower scene that makes him a likely contender for this year’s awards. Standing outside the door he conducts their screams like Amadeus and stabs the air with an invisible knife.

The simple supporting parts, all of them brilliant impersonations, and Hopkins’ easy-to-like lead create the film’s simple, tongue-in-cheek style. It is the sort of biopic that Hitch himself would have enjoyed because it has the bare minimum of personal insights and regularly choses entertainment over historical accuracy. We can never know exactly what went on with all these people during the making of the film, and we can never know exactly what Hitch and Alma’s relationship was like, so having a lot of talented actors performing an entertaining script is really all we can hope for, and Hitchcock delivers. It might not be perfect, but, after all, “It’s only a bloody movie.”

PREMIUM RUSH

Premium Rush is an urban action thriller about Wilee (like the Coyote), a Manhattan bike messenger who picks up an envelope that a corrupt cop is desperate to get his hands on. It uses old fashioned stunt work in combination with digital maps and a non-chronological plot to keep its 91 minute runtime breezy and accessible.

The story is told in a fractured manner, which has become standard practice for thrillers. Starting in the middle and jumping back and forth through the day with a digital clock to orient the viewer, Premium Rush hits many familiar points and plots. Despite the familiarity it won’t feel like an assembly line film because it has a good script and strong performances by Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Michael Shannon.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who was once best-known as “Tommy” from 3rd Rock From the Sun, plays Wilee. Since Mysterious Skin, Brick, and The Lookout he has graduated from child actor to up-and-coming performer, and 50/50, Inception, and The Dark Knight Rises have started him on the path to being an A-list star. The last 10 years of his career is a mix of arthouse and blockbuster, and his performances have been stellar in both. With mind-bender Looper and Oscar-bait Lincoln on the way he has picked the perfect time to be involved in an easy entertainer like Premium Rush.

The corrupt cop Bobby Monday is a great role for Shannon because he is another on-the-edge psycho for Shannon to add his unique voice and physicality. Shannon is not a household name and his face is probably only familiar to the small audience who has seen his indie drama work like Revolutionary Road or Take Shelter, and his role as Agent Van Alden in Boardwalk Empire. Next year he will bring a new on-the-edge psycho to life as General Zod in the Superman reboot, Man of Steel. Some have called him the next Christopher Walken, but until Shannon tries a full-on comedy he is more likely to follow his Zod predecessor Terrance Stamp and continue to play corrupt psychos, which is fine because he is terribly good at it.

Premium Rush is directed and co-written by David Koepp, who is best known for writting the screenplays for Jurassic Park, Mission: Impossible, and War of the Worlds, but he also directed the entertaining Stephen King adaptation Secret Window. A major part of Koepp’s career has been as a script doctor, and many of the better Hollywood adventure films of the last twenty years have his finger prints on them.

If there is a criticism to be layed on Koepp’s direction it is the over-use of 3D maps and other digital flourishes. When Wilee approaches an intersection the film slows down to show him imagining his route options. These scenes are at times funny or suspensful, but the “Frogger vision” gimmick runs dry and spoils some of the tension.

I tend to get annoyed when characters in action films act stupidly just to extend the plot, but it is nearly universal in recent thrillers. Luckily David Koepp is an old pro at this and he keeps the contrivances to a minimum. By the end of the film you won’t be thinking that you could have handled the situation better. Unless, that is, you are a world-class athlete, bike acrobat, and an expert at interpersonal communication.

Premium Rush is worth the ticket price, but it’s also worth the rental price. It isn’t an event picture like The Dark Knight Rises or a potential mind-bender like Looper, so there is no need to hurry. It is an exciting and entertaining action thriller that will be just as exciting and entertaining if you happen upon it on cable next year, but if you’re looking for a new action film then this is your best option until James Bond returns in Skyfall on November 9.

JOHN CARTER

Two-time Academy Award winner Andrew Stanton is one of the core group that has made Pixar the powerhouse production company that it is. Both Finding Nemo and Wall-E are very high on my favorite movies list, and Stanton’s TED talk (available on YouTube) is a terrific lesson for storytellers everywhere. With that said, Stanton’s first attempt at live-action is not on the level of his previous work.

John Carter is the story of a US Civil War vet who is transported to Mars, which is in the middle of its own massive conflict. Sab Than (Dominic West) has been given an unbeatable weapon by the mysterious Matai Shang (Mark Strong), and he is using it to conquer the planet. John Carter finds himself captured by the 9-foot tall, four-armed Tharks and their leader Tars Tarkas (Willem Dafoe). Carter manages to get into the Tharks’ good books by jumping really high, which is an advantage he has from lower gravity and his Earthling bone density.

The questionable science and awkward names are the fault of Edgar Rice Burroughs, but since A Princess of Mars was written in 1917 the story has to be taken with a grain of salt. The problem with adapting this narrative is the massive backstory that is required to tell it, and massive backstory is not easy to do in two hours. Advertising can only do so much, so a significant portion of the movie’s opening act is devoted to explaining the various races and their motivations. Some elements, such as Thark child-raising, are explained in dramatic and sometimes shocking scenes, but others are explained in dry narration.

With a film this big there was obviously some pressure to make it crowd-pleasing and accessable, and in the hands of a lesser director this film would have collapsed under its own weight.  Despite the obstacles, Andrew Stanton still manages to include the wry humor and visual flair that his Pixar features are so good for.

John Carter sags a bit under the pressure to be successful, but it delivers visual spectacle in spades. I wasn’t sold on the post-production 3D conversion, so I will recommend seeing it in 2D unless those extra $3 are begging to be spent. Some massive battles make it clear that Disney wanted their own Avatar, and for better or worse that is what they got.