January 25, 2005  

Zombie comedy

Some people with whom I’ve shared my Netflix queue using the new Friends feature think I watch too much horror. True, some of the worst movies I’ve rented fall into this category. Maybe that’s what makes Shaun of the Dead such a great movie. On the surface this British “romantic comedy with zombies” is just a parody of the undead-run-amok flick. But also in way it is a double-parody, implicitly mocking the now-established horror parody subgenre (think Scream and its offspring).

The movie is simply hilarious. A scene where Shaun argues with his slackass friend about which of his vinyl record collection they should fling at approaching zombies approaches perfection. And you just know the whole time that the final stand against the hordes will happen at the local pub.
Describing zombie behavior, one of the characters notes that they are “Vacant, with a hint of sadness. Like a drunk who’s lost a bet.” This parallel between the modern slacker and the classic revenant runs throughout the film and provides seemingly endless fodder for joke-making.

OK, back to the crappy horror in my queue …

January 4, 2005  

Lamerica

Netflix finally got Lamerica, a film I’d been hunting for a while. This is a wonderful movie about two Italian carpetbaggers who come to Albania shortly after the fall of Communism and attempt to set up a fraudulent business. Well, that’s the plot anyway. What it is about is the way Italy has become a symbol of hope for the destitute Albanians, their own “America” across the western sea. It is an allegory of Italian fantasies about coming to the USA so many generations before. And it is a beautiful one at that.

December 5, 2004  

Donnie Darko

I’m late to the game on this, but no matter. Donnie Darko is the best film I’ve seen all year. I can’t remember the last time a DVD finished and I immediately jumped to the menu to play it again. (My normal post-movie routine is to visit IMDB to read the trivia on the flick.) Re-viewing is almost built into the movie itself. The dramatic fulcrum of Donnie Darko is the title character’s reaction to knowing how things will turn out before he should know. Donnie Darko is richly rewarding, bitingly funny at times (Patrick Swayze is absolutely superb), and even frightening. Apparently the director, Richard Kelly, was 26 when the movie, his first, was released in 2001. Goodness gracious.

Time travel, a creepy man-bunny, Michael Dukakis. It’s all there. Rent this movie.

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