I don't typically care for zombie movies. The older I get, it seems the less tolerance I have for blood and guts. So why did I go see a zombie movie on purpose? Partially because I needed to kill some time while I waited for my nephew to get done with Cub Scout STEM camp. But mostly for the cast: Bill Murray Adam Driver Tilda Swinton Danny Glover Chloe Sevingy Selena Gomez Tom Waits Steve Buscemi Rosie Perez I mean…why wouldn't you go see this movie? The premise of this particular zombie apocalypse is that fracking at the north and south poles has resulted in an axial tilt that has also done something to the moon which is causing everyone to come back from the dead. Listen…it's a zombie apocalypse, it doesn't have to make sense. There are two words that I would use to describe this movie. Slow and weird. The main characters are played by Bill Murray and Adam Driver, the police officers in the town. The dialogue is slow and awkward at times. Other times the actors break the fourth wall and it's hard to tell if it's an improv that they just put into the movie or if it was written that way. The slow and awkward pacing leads to the description of weird. It's just odd. By the time you get to the end and the most random and weird thing happens…you're pretty much on board in a "well of course!" kind of way. The entire movie plays as a thinly veiled "humans are zombies for material things" until the end when the narrating character flat out tells you this and how sad it all is. This is certainly not the best zombie movie ever made. Nor is it the funniest. It does have funny moments but overall I found it to be meh. Honestly if I hadn't needed someplace to be for a few hours, I wouldn't have stayed in the theater. I probably would have been better off seeing Yesterday again. Save your money and wait for in home rental.
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I had the privilege of seeing the new movie Yesterday over the weekend. The premise is that a struggling singer/songwriter, after a freak power outage is hit by a bus. When he wakes up, he realizes that no one has ever heard of the Beatles. At first he thinks he's gone crazy or hit his head too hard, but little by little he realizes that if no one knows the songs, he needs to get them recorded. Or, well, he sort of gets pushed along into recording them. Since no one has ever heard them before, everyone thinks he wrote them. From here the story sort of takes off running. Jack is thrust into the spotlight, the entire time bearing the weight of knowing that they aren't his songs and starting to lose the life that he loved before his newfound fame. The Beatles are one of my favorite bands. They always have been. The movie Across the Universe is a great adaption of their music into a musical. It was wonderful to hear them performed differently throughout the movie. Jack's version of Help Me is raucous and loud and damn near punk, as was Back in the USSR. The movie is full of laughs and excellent dialogue. Since the director Danny Boyle is probably known more for Trainspotting, seeing him do something as light as Yesterday is a nice change of pace. It's the perfect vehicle for his direction. He does large scenes just as well as he does the small and intimate ones. I was impressed by the comedic timing in the movie. There was one big twist at the end. I was pleasantly surprised to have been among those who literally gasped. If you like spoilers, I'll reference you here: https://ew.com/movies/2019/06/29/danny-boyle-beatles-twist-yesterday/ Kate McKinnon plays the record exec with demented glee. There was one part of the movie when she's doing her big eyed creepy stare while Jack is on the phone having a really serious moment…and I laughed out loud. I was the only one. But it just further proves to me that she's incapable of not being funny. I loved this movie and it's swiftly climbing up my "all time" chart. Oh…and Ed Sheeran is in it. He's part of a very funny catalyst that gets Jack's career going, but he's not the focus. If the crowded theater is any indication, I'm not the only one who enjoyed this movie. I hope that more people get to see it and enjoy it as much as I did. We watched the HBO Documentary over the weekend for various reasons…the main one being that my sister and I went to high school with someone who was interviewed in it. Wig takes us through the Drag Queen "scene" of the 80s and 90s as they came together as a community and put on Wigstock. We're introduced to various Drag Queens as they reminisce about the old days and watch older footage of the old drag clubs. Now while most would think of RuPaul when they think of drag (and they wouldn't be wrong to do so), RuPaul was just one cog in the drag machine back in the day. RuPaul is not interviewed for this documentary though, which is a little disappointing. It's hard to nail down what to tell you about this documentary…and I say that not because I had issues with anything in the movie, but because it felt disjointed the entire time. While a good doc will have you jumping between the old and the new, the entire thing felt a little like someone just cobbled together a bunch of old home movies and ended with the new Wigstock 2.0 that occurred in 2018. The more notable names, Willam & Neil Patrick Harris (notable to me anyway), are not heavily featured. We get to see them talk for a little while but not much. One of the biggest disappointments was the end of the movie in which we are treated to a compilation of Wigstock footage. We get to see a lot of quick performances and short clips of the behind the scenes things. Now, I don't know if NPH as Hedwig was actually not the ending act of Wigstock, or if it just got cut that way for artistic purposes…but having a performer who is basically a glorified stripper lip syncing on stage after watching NPH as Hedwig was a massive letdown. If you know nothing about the drag queen culture, this could potentially be a decent way to get a start, but I'm not sure I'd call it the best way. One of the gals, whose name escapes me, even says it during the movie. The sense of community feels gone. Everyone seems to be in it for the money. Even, apparently the makers of this documentary as they have done these performers a major disservice. |