“Jennifer Lawrence just gave the best performance I’ve seen since Heath Ledger as The Joker…”

Those were the first words out of my mouth as I exited the theatre, amazed at what I had just seen. Truly, even if you have little interest in the movie itself, if you are a fan of the art form, you must see this for her performance alone. If she doesn’t win the Oscar for this role the Academy will have embarrassed themselves. The scene before Katniss enters the tube sent chills down my spine and solidified Jennifer among the acting elite. But the good news is, beyond her masterful performance, this was one of the best films I’ve seen in the past few years. No hyperbole, this movie was far better than anything that you saw released in all of 2011.

The film stays as close to the novel as possible despite having to condense certain things in order to contain all that content within the confines of a films timeframe. You have to take your hat off to the writers and the director for being able to condense things together while remaining true to the source material and, at the same time, creating something that those few filmgoers unfamiliar with the source material could easily follow.

Only a few things get lost in translation. For instance, those who have not read The Hunger Games may be a bit confused by the whole opening segment with the cat, being unaware of Buttercups back-story. The importance of the mockingjay and the mockingjay pin are also lost in the film translation, which is all right for those of us in the know, but may be problematic for the uninitiated later down the line. The level of abject poverty and the significance of Peeta tossing Katniss the burnt bread is also a bit fuzzy in the film, but again, is given enough screen time to satisfy die hard fans.

One of the best features of the film for those of who have read the novel, is the expansion of the universe, the peak behind the curtain. In the book we know the Gamemakers are pulling the strings and setting up traps, like the fireballs, but here we see into the control room. We get a peak at the machine in action, as well as the personalities of those in charge. This aspect of the film not only makes the movie more compelling but it also enriches the universe for avid readers of the series.

The style in which they shot the action sequences is also something to be applauded. Often in PG films we get ridiculous looking fighting, where knifes and swords pierce flesh yet leave no cuts and draw no blood. Fighting that completely takes you out of the film and shatters your suspension of disbelief. Here the brutality of The Huger Games and the vicious hand to hand killings are captured via close up shaky-cam shots, with the gruesome violence happening slightly off screen with blood splattering into frame to convey the horrifying slaughter. This gives the viewer the same emotional retention a vicious kill in an R rated film would wield, while keeping the deaths tame enough to keep the film PG-13. Which is a pretty big achievement to say the least.

The visuals of the film were also impressive. The Capital looks as rich and lavish as you imagined it would and the people appear just as strange. Effie Trinket for one was the stuff of nightmares. Beyond that everything else was pitch perfect. From the training sequence, to the girl on fire scene, to the friendship with Rue, everything was spot on. Fans will not be disappointed.

Bottom-line, this film is incredibly. If you haven’t seen it yet, you need to ASAP. As a matter of fact you should do what I did. Go watch the movie, read back through the book, then go see the movie a second time. It is that damn good. I for one, can’t wait for the sequels.

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As if it wasn’t bad enough, AT&T activation even applies to the suits.

I see some people complaining that Whiplash wanst a prominant enough figure in this film, to the point where they lost track of who the villain even was. To them I say they missed the point. Whiplash was a villan, but not the main villain. The main villain and foe Iron Man had to battle in this film was Tony Stark. Tony’s alcoholism and womanizing behavior we’re a main focus because the viewers needed to see that while Iron Man is a demi-god, Tony Stark is nothing more than a flawed egomaniac with a death wish. Nothing he does is truly altruistic. His actions are to impress and further fuel his massive ego. His ego is killing Iron Man literally. His womanizing is the chink in his armor that allows Black Widow to get close to him and hand deliver him to S.H.I.E.L.D.

Samuel L. Jackson reprises his role as ‘Samuel L. Jackson with an eyepatch’ in Iron Man 2

Whiplash isn’t that important to the film because he isn’t very important in the eyes of Stark. He is Iron Man everything else is beneath him, not a real threat. Hammer on the other hand is a real threat. Not to Stark’s safety but to his ego and star power. Hammer wants to steal his lime light. Hammer wants to be Tony Stark and will do whatever it takes to snatch the fame from Stark. In a sense they are extremely similar characters, the only thing separating the two is Tony’s ties to reality, mainly Pepper. Hammer is a good example of what Tony could have become if he hadn’t had those bonds keeping ego somewhat grounded.

I have no problem with Mickey Rourke having an acting career, I just have a problem with him not wearing a shirt.

I see some complaining that the film seemed chaotic in places or poorly paced, to me that wasn’t a detriment, it enforced the film as Tony Stark isn’t exactly a conventional or logical character. A battle that is life or death to a normal superhero holds little meaning to Stark. He knows he will win. Thus there is no need for him to worry. His ego won’t allow it. He is a different kind of superhero. This might be hard for some to embrace but if you are going to truly capture the essence of Tony Stark than you can’t make a traditional three act superhero film. It needs to be chaotic. It needs to weave in and out of plots. It needs to have imperfections because it needs to follow an imperfect protagonist.

Not Pictured: Optimus Prime and Shia LaBeouf

In my eyes this film did exactly what it needed to do and did it with flying colors.

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From the very beginning, James Cameron has attempted to teach humanity that it just isn’t supposed to get along with creatures different than itself. He’s shown us how man fares against mechanical monstrosities (The Terminator), acid blooded aliens (Aliens…), and giant unsinkable ships (Titanic). We just weren’t meant to befriend these creatures. Finally, James Cameron showed us why all these creates and inanimate objects are trying to kill us or willing to watch us drown: we killed the blue people.

At the beginning we are introduced to Jake Sully: a paraplegic, British accent hiding, crew cut, traitorous swine! Ah, well, not yet at least. Right now he’s just a man in a wheel chair looking to earn his legs… You can laugh. Upon arriving after the long space voyage to the planet Pandora, it becomes evident that Jake’s twin, able bodied brother who was also born with a larger brain, died in cryosleep. This makes Jake valuable to the on planet ‘Avatar’ research program. Since each of the telepathically controlled blue kittens are tailored specifically for certain DNA pilots, it’s impossible to just hand the controls of one to someone else. What a fortunate break for the science group. Eywa be praised!

Look, I could go on for exactly two hours and forty minutes about the incredibly thin story mechanics present in this. But I’m assuming you’ve watched a trailer, read another review or gotten a phone call from your friend after they saw it and were forced to hang up on them and block their calls. You can piece together everything that is going to happen in this movie, and chances are you did so a long time ago. Especially when James Cameron was thrown out on stage at last year’s Ubisoft Conference at E3 2009. He gave away everything.

I’m going to get to the point here and tell you what you wanted to know: it’s worth seeing. More importantly, it’s worth seeing in 3D, or IMAX if you have it available in your area. The movie is definitely long, and as such you really don’t notice any of the depth effects that may be going on during the film, but there are those times when it reminds you why you’re wearing those goofy glasses. This bodes more for my personal theater, but I’m glad the glasses we were given were new. Last time mine were – well, we won’t say what was on the first pair I got.

The CG in this film is definitely impressive. Only other movie that I can call off the top of my head with as good presentation was King Kong, where they digitally reduced Adrian Brody’s nose from dwarfing the screen. I don’t know why they decided to put Peter Jackson in a suit for the majority of it though. A WETA created ape would have looked just as good. Like King Kong, Avatar was very long. But thank God it wasn’t half as boring.

You can’t really ignore a movie like this no matter how hard you try. When Hollywood spends this much time, money and effort on something, you’re guaranteed to see it mentioned everywhere for a while. If you think it’s bad now, wait for when the DVD/Blu-Ray goes on sale in a few months. You better see it now so those MPAA spy chips can relay the neural patterns to your television sets that you’ve seen the movie already and reduce the ads during commercials. I bet you didn’t know they worked that way. All makes sense now, doesn’t it?

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This movie isn’t as much a disaster film so much as it is a disaster of a film. For those of you that have had the unfortunate fate to have seen 10,000 B.C. I can tell you 2012 isn’t a whole lot better. The acting is really bad, the script is even worse and dear God the thing just will never frickin end!

Let me start however with the positives, well what little positive things there were. The CG affects were top notch. The disaster scenes were epic, even more so than those seen in The Day After Tomorrow. These are what brought people to the theatre and they did not disappoint. Seeing California disappear into the Pacific Ocean was one of the most fantastical moments in disaster film history.

Entertaining too was a cameo appearance by one Woody Harrelson. The opening of the film was about as slow moving and dry as can be and without his entertaining portrayal of a conspiracy nut the film would have lost the audience much earlier than it ultimately did. This however is a double edge sword and ultimately leads to the films biggest failure.

It has no identity. In every aspect it tries to play things both ways and as a fan of films you know that never ends well.

For starters rather than play it like a straight drama as we saw in The Day After Tomorrow, Roland Emmerich puzzlingly instead decides to add in extremely cheesy and annoying comedy. The scenes of disasters surrounding all this dumb comedy however are delivered with raw realism. Buildings are collapsing and people are falling out of them to their deaths like we all saw when the twin towers fell and the film is cracking Disney channel level jokes during all this. The world is ending, billions of people are dying, and dying before you ON SCREEN and we are getting Hannah Montana level jokes about mosquito bites, breast implants, racial stereo types, dumb blondes and exposed ass cracks. To put things in perspective 2012 made the comedy of Race To Witch Mountain look mature and eloquent. I cannot under score enough how big of a problem this was. Emmerich sets up scenes to have really raw emotional responses from the crowd but then he completely pulls the rug out from under himself with stupid comedy and over the top unbelievable action sequences.

Now you could describe John Cusack as many things, but one of those things would certainly not be tough guy. I would find it unbelievable to see him defeat a woman in a fight let alone see him pull of the Jason Statham level stunts his character achieves in this flick. Again the problem arises of Emmerich trying to have it both ways. He picks Cusack to play an every man, weak and helpless, which works if you make them weak and helpless! He even goes so far as painting the picture of him as this weak pathetic shell of a man who cant even father his own children or care enough to fight for his marriage, but then when the action starts what do we get? John frackin Cusack jumping cars through buildings like hes the Transporter. Jumping RV’s over lava filled craters and I kid you not, driving a car out of a crashing airliner onto an Icy Mountain. Yes. John Cusack. Un-frickin-believable! If you want it to be an action film then cast an action star. Casting an actor who usually plays, lets just say, less than masculine characters is an epic failure.

Also not to be underestimated is how poor and clunky the script is written. Pick a Hollywood cliché and you’ll find it here. This script redefines “by the numbers.”.

Pilot dying and someone with flight experience stepping in… Check.

Dumb blonde girl getting who cares more about her dog than surviving herself… Check.

Escaping at the last minute every single time… Check.

I could go on… And on.

To paint the picture of the craptastic levels this script hits I give you these particular examples.

John Cusacks character is a divorced writer who is a limo driver part time. He drives around the film’s Russian Billionaire who just so happens to be married to a hot blonde who gets plastic surgery from Cusack’s ex-wife’s new husband. Holy sitcom plot but that’s not all. The book he wrote only sold 500 copies yet the main geologist who discovers everything is currently reading it and low and behold they end up meeting! Great writing guys you might just have a future writing for CSI.

The most insulting part of the film however is the double sided government plot. They are pure evil and have numerous people killed to protect their secret throughout the course of the film, they use slave labor, leave billions to die horrible deaths to save only the rich, yet one heart felt speech changes all their minds? Are you f’n kidding me?

The film is ridiculously long as well clocking in at around an intolerable 2 hours and 30 mins. Now I’m not against long movies if they need to be that length. This however did not. We get treated to side stories featuring characters that are secondary to the secondary characters. This too is one of those movies where the world is falling to bits but the characters have all the time in the world to stop and discuss things and by things I don’t mean how they will survive, I mean why the girl got a boob job. You know. What we’d all be discussing if we were likely going to die soon. The CG scenes grow old fast as well, unlike The Day After Tomorrow the variety is sparse. We get Earthquakes, Lava and floods, rinse and repeat 10 times.

That is only about half the fail. To truly convey how awful this movie is would take a 25 page paper. So basically my final statement is…

RUN! As far away from this film as possible. If someone tries to make you go see it they are not your friend. Cut them from your life. If you feel the impulse to see this just remember 10,000 B.C. and if that doesn’t work, well, all I gotta say is…

I warned you.

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Animated by Studio4°C, The Babysitter tells the story of four Helljumpers, sent on a mission to eliminate a key covenant prophet on a distant planet and to photograph ancient architecture that predates both the humans and the Covenants. Their biggest concern being the Spartan sent to accompany them on this mission. The Babysitter focuses on the rivalry between the Spartan-II Commandos and the ODST.

The story starts off on the Destroyer DD-933 where MSgt Cortez and his team are briefed on the mission at hand and informed that they are to be accompanied by Spartan Cal-141. Minutes later they are dropped from orbit in their HEV’s onto an unknown Covenant-held world. Checkman, a member of the team, is killed after his Drop Pod collides with an asteroid and enters the atmosphere sideways. After landing, the remaining team consisted of Dutch, O’Brian, Cortez, and Cal-141. O’Brian felt that this entire mission was an insult to his abilities after being delegated as back up and seems to spend the entire movie being rescued numerous times by Cal-141. When they first land, O’Brian’s SOEIV (HEV) crashes into a pond and while the rest of the team struggles to get to him, Cal-141 effortlessly walks in and tosses the SOEIV out of the water like it was nothing more than a toy. After a quick stare down between Cal-141 and O’Brian, they were on their way. As they traverse through the woods, they come across a pack of grunts that they kill silently and meticulously, like they are trained to do. Just before they kill the last grunt, a Brute Chieftain shows up wielding a gravity hammer.

After an epic battle between Cal-141 and the Chieftain, with a busted eye and a face only a mother could love, the Chieftain is thrown over the side of the waterfall. O’Brian is tossed to the side during the altercation and is sent over the side of the waterfall, only to be saved again by Cal-141, who carries him off like a baby. After a days walk the group finally makes it to where they are taking the shot. As Cal-141 is about to take the shot, the Chieftain from earlier returns and attempts to kill O’Brian. Cal-141 saves him at the last second and ends up taking the blow from the Chieftain’s hammer. The ODST’s tackle the Chieftain to the ground and Cortez shoots the Brute in the eye with his M7S. Cortez goes to Cal-141 and takes off the destroyed helmet only to find that this bad ass Spartan is a girl. Cal-141 yells at O’Brian to take the shot, which he does after minimal hesitation and the Prophet is taken out. Cal-141 then hands Cortez a memory chip with the data from the mission and tells him to take it to Dr. Halsey. Cal-141 dies and the team returns to the Destroyer where they are congratulated by Berger for stopping the Covenant supply chain for the entire arc sector.

Making a film of Halo in anime-style isn’t the best idea in the world but it turned out rather well. If it had been done more like Vexille it would have been perfect only because the animators would have been able to give the characters more detail. This lack of detail causes the characters to come off as being really bland, with no attitude or personality. Cal-141’s walk through the water reminded me of how all girls walk in anime. Short, dainty steps. The Spartan’s armor was very plain and seemed out of proportion. While Studio4°C did an awesome job with the backgrounds, they just didn’t follow through with the different characters. Other than that, The Babysitter was awesome to watch.

The next film, Duel, will be released on November 21.

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Depending on how much you believe in ghosts and demons, this film can be either really scary or really boring.  Also, this is a film made to look like it was done with a camcorder (Blair Witch, Cloverfield, etc.), so some people may be turned off right from the get-go by this style of film making.  Basically, the  film starts out with a boyfriend, Micah, that bought a new camera and wants to see if the house he lives in is being haunted.  Micah’s girlfriend, Katie, is no stranger to these odd encounters, but both are excited to just try and catch some evidence on camera.  The best scenes in the film are taken while the couple is sleeping, because it seems that the “ghostly” visitor only shows up at night.  The true terror of the films strikes the audience by making them question, “Do these things happen while I’m asleep?”  The thought of demons and ghosts invading your personal life is scary, because there truly is nowhere to hide, and we see that with Micah and Katie feeling like a prisoner in their own home.

If you were a ghost, you'd want to haunt this couple...right?

While it is nice to see a fresh new horror film in theaters, I think the pacing on the film is a bit too slow for many people.  The first half of the film is more like an episode of True Life: I Live in a Haunted House, then the latest scary theater outing.  The start of the nightly scares are nothing more than a door moving or a shadow grazing the door, and then it goes back to daytime, where we see the couple just watching and questioning their footage.  While I wish it would of picked up much earlier on, I must admit, that a  little over halfway through the film, all Hell breaks loose and we get some good scares.  The final twenty minutes of the film has to be some of the wildest stuff, and your girlfriend will be clinging to your arm like a fat man clings to a Big Mac.  One little gripe I had was with the acting…which is tough to do with a movie like this, that requires the actors to look like they are not acting.  While Micah was pretty funny and gave a solid performance, Katie sometimes was so melodramatic, that people in the theater were actually laughing at some of the lines she delivered.

If you are one of those people that are into shows like Ghost Hunters and anything about the supernatural, then Paranormal Activity is the film for you.  While the film wasn’t all about huge scares, it was more haunting than anything, and you will be thinking about it for a week after viewing.  The guerrilla film work, reminiscent of The Blair Witch Project, really works for the film, making things a bit more believable; they even went as far as showing no opening or closing credits.  It’s not really a film worth seeing in theaters, but I recommend that everybody see it at least once, since it’s more about the experience than some that will scare you again and again.  While it is far from perfect, it’s a hell of a lot better than another crappy Saw sequel.

One of many haunting images in Paranormal Activity.

Christine Brown is a rather unremarkable female lead. She’s a loan officer at her bank and she’s trying to get a promotion. Things aren’t going to well for her, but she’s got plans on going places. Her bank rival Stu has his own plans which most definitely include seeing Brown in the mud. That was wit, I had to use as much as was found in this movie. Things do however start to get somewhere when a gypsy woman shows up for an extension on her already twice overdue loan. Christine seeing the woman as a credit accident waiting to happen refuses her. After begging, then striking her, the woman is forcibly removed from the bank. Lo and behold, if Borat has taught us anything it’s to never scorn a gypsy. After the only real highlight of the film, an attractive young woman versus an aging old one, she is cursed by the powers that probably don’t be and sentenced to hell.

It’s worth saying that the fight scene is the best sequence in the film. It’s also worth saying that I hope to never see it again. I don’t want to spoil anything, but keep your mouth closed. Someone has to. the resulting curse from the gypsy woman causes a ton of weird things to happen. Christine is witnessing some abnormal stuff from the likes of Poltergeist, Ghostbusters, and Ghost. Standard fare, but the pacing is killer. A lot of modern day horror movies fail on this front altogether, when just a few more seconds of tension can tell the difference between a “Boo!” and a *sound of crapped pants*. Unfortunately the scares are mild at best. In fact the most frightening moments came from me leaving the room and finding that the plot hadn’t progressed from when I’d left. Also, I don’t know if Christine was cursed before or something, but her husband is played by Justin Long. She might want to see a priest about that shit right there.

After Christine stands all she can stand of this torment she consults the patented medium guy who is frightened to call for the aid of someone higher up than him. A spiritual sacrifice ritual is held with a goat. The goat begins to talk at one point, and I nearly died choking on popcorn when the goat bit a man and the demon possessed a flying Mexican man. I’m probably ruining some of what previous viewers of this film consider the better portions, but I’m sorry. I didn’t find the film all that frightening. I was weirded out in the beginning, but that soon passed as I found the film wasn’t going make that next level leap. I’ll admit that it has great execution and good timing, but you have to do something unexpected to scare someone.

I’ll give it that it’s better than The Grudge. How and why Raimi associated himself with that I’ll never know. If I were deathly afraid of hair and security cameras I believe I’d be cowering in fear. I literally found John Cusack’s film ’1408‘ to be more frightening than this. John Cusack was in that. Oh well, hater’s gonna hate I suppose. I just don’t see what the critics saw in this one. The ending was as obvious as endings get, and some of Raimi’s quirks and camera movements that were pioneered in the 90′s can bring about a laugh in this day and age. I will warn you this: apparently the demon’s name is Lamia. I thought they were trying to catch a Labia for the whole damn film. Thank you Wikipedia.

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Trick ‘r Treat follows four interwoven stories that occur on the same particularly spooky night. Five stories if you want to count the very opening scene. Following the old tale that the rituals of Halloween are done to protect us from the evil of mischievous demonic dead, several people get taught a horribly terrifying lesson when they don’t follow these traditions. Keep in mind that this movie back tracks, a lot. You get through one story just to be dumped back at the beginning to follow another one. Where does it end? Back at the beginning.

Right off the bat someone gets murdered. Is there really any other way to start off a horror flick? I think not. This first bit continues to get explained throughout the movie and you get dumped back at it in the end. In the first story, we have Charlie, a greedy troublemaker looking to steal all the candy from the neighboring houses. Lucky for the viewers he picks the wrong one and ends up at the home of school principal/serial killer Steven who is more than willing to share his candy with the kid. Jump across town and you will meet a group of twenty-something year old girls who are looking to bag some guys. One girl in particular, Laurie, is still a virgin who finds herself a definite catch. The only problem is he moonlights as a vampiric murderer who is leaving a trail of dead bodies in his wake, but that’s all fine because these girls all have a huge secret of their own.

The third tale involves a group of trick-or-treaters who decide to play a nasty trick on their nerdy classmate Rhonda. These kids take things a little too far and end up learning more than they bargained for about the town’s infamous urban legend. Lastly we end up following a grumpy old hermit named Mr. Kreeg. This guy has absolutely no Halloween spirit and more than a few skeletons in his closet. These things come back to haunt him in a big way. Now, that creepy little kid on the cover, he’s all over this film. His name is Sam and he seems to be Halloween’s answer to Santa Clause or the Easter Bunny. You see him as a spectator in some of the stories and he plays a big part in one of them. I have to say though that my favorite part was the end only because that pumpkin kid was awesome as all hell. It makes me not want to stand next to my bed for fear of getting some tendons cut by the monster hiding under it.

Dougherty has set out to make this the definitive Halloween movie. The only film to out-do it, of course, would be “Halloween”. And no, I don’t mean the Rob Zombie rip-off. I am referring to none other than John Carpenter’s immortal classic. Although any scary movie that takes place on Halloween pretty much sells itself, this movie is actually worth the money. A tad short on running time, this movie is incredibly detailed in every aspect with an awesome score by Douglas Pipes. It will definitely leave you in the Halloween spirit and wanting much much more.

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We meet Carl Fredricksen (voiced by Ed Asner) as a wide eyed young boy watching an old black & whilte b-roll of his hero, the aviator-explorer Charles Muntz. A forced disappearance amidst accusations of fraud to nothing to diminish Carl’s fascination with his hero and soon this brings him together with a tomboy named Ellie who gleefully shows him her spirit of adventure. What follows over the next few minutes is a montage of Carl & Ellie’s life together, from playful daydreaming, tragedy and dreams of adventure that could never quite be fulfilled. It is easily the most heart-wrenching, poignant and beautifully paced sequence Pixar have ever done leaving not a dry eye in the house.

Now a widower, Carl is faced with eviction. His martial home surrounded by towering skyscrapers in a scene reminiscent of the house from Batteries Not Included. Defiant to the end, the construction companies have got their way but Carl has other ideas. In a magical scene, Fredricksen’s life as a balloon seller is put to good use as with the help of thousands of helium filled balloons, he and his house take off to the skies in search of Paradise Falls, the place that occupied his and Ellie’s lifelong dreams which they could never go to.

Along for the ride however, is 8 yr old ‘Wilderness Explorer’ Russel (Jordon Nagai). Originally sent on a wild goose-chase by Carl, his perseverance in attempting to achieve his “Assisting the Elderly” badge sees him trapped on the front porch as Carl takes off. Unwitting travel partners they may be but Russell’s GPS sees them arrive in sight of Paradise falls in South America after a violent storm.

It’s as this point the plot gets a little more wacky. It would be too easy, after all, for Carl to be able to set down his house in the very spot his late wife visualized by the Falls and put his feet up to call it a day. Instead Carl and Russel’s journey is colored by a rare flightless bird, a surprise from his past and a pack of dogs fitted with collars that renders them able to voice their thoughts. Although there are plenty of laughs up to this point, it is the dogs who provide much of the comic relief in the second half of the film, especially the gloriously innocent and dopey Dug.

Initially, having developed the two human characters so masterfully in the first hour it might be a little jarring to see Pixar revert to “talking animals” later in the film but whilst there might be a some compromise here to keep younger audiences entertained, it is executed with such humor and panache that it is quickly forgotten amongst the laughs.

Though it doesn’t quite hit the emotional heights of it’s opening, UP still remembers that ultimately it is a film about love, mortality and dreams not fulfilled. Amongst the later zaniness there are still some genuinely touching moments and whilst the ending is notably upbeat, the subtler conclusion to Russell’s side-story is no less moving.

UP also marks Pixar’s first serious attempt at digital 3D which is the way I watched it and they should be commended in their restraint and tact in utilizing the technology. As a film, it is beautiful and moving in any dimension. There are no gimmicks or “popping out effects” here. Similar to Coraline however, the added depth is used selectively to draw you into the world when required. It is hard to say whether I would have found the film quite so powerful in it’s tender moments without it but what I do know is that in my opinion it is the most accomplished 90 minutes Pixar have put to film and one of the most affecting I have seen this year. Without hesitation, if there is warmth in your heart; you should go and see it.

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The movie doesn’t bother with a slow start, they just throw you right into the flesh-eating fun.  The opening credits show a slow-mo montage of people getting attacked by zombies, while Metallica’s “For Whom The Bell Tolls” plays in the background…to sum it up, it’s badass and it really puts you in the right mood for the next ninety minutes.  The story revolves mainly around a college kid (Jesse Eisenberg) on his way back to Ohio to see if his family survived the zombie outbreak.  The four characters in the film, are named upon which cities they come from, so his name is rightfully, Columbus.  Now, Columbus is an overly cautious individual, so he lives his life according to a number of rules, and these rules have saved him throughout the outbreak.  This constant reminder throughout the movie of every rule is a nice setup for the ending, when Columbus has to rise up and break some rules.  Early on, Columbus runs into a man by the name of Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson), who is pretty much your usual anti-hero type that doesn’t really care for much, and he just loves to take out his anger on the undead.  I think the best thing about Tallahassee would be that he may seem rather shallow at the start of the film, but as the film unfolded, we actually see him evolve a little…something I didn’t really expect from a movie like this.

powah slide!

The final two characters, Wichita (Emma Stone) and Little Rock (Abagail Breslin), come into the mix and begin to complicate things for the somewhat simple Columbus and Tallahassee.  All four of the survivors have some major trust issues, and these begin to elevate as the small group grows, and they find it hard to get out of that “trust nobody” survivalist mentality.  The zombies themselves are great characters, because they aren’t your old-school, slow-poke zombies.  Think 28 Days Later…they were fast and furious, which makes it funny to see this oddball group of people just completely lay waste to them.

One of the most crucial factors that will probably make you see this movie, would be the humor.  It’s a special kind of humor, especially on Jesse Eisenbergs part.  If you have ever seen Eisenberg in a film like Adventureland or The Squid and the Whale (my personal favorite), then you will already know that his awkwardness is a great punchline to a joke you didn’t even know you wanted to hear.  Some of his most subtle lines had me in stitches throughout the movie.  While the two girls couldn’t make you laugh if their life depended on it, Woody  Harrelson was a pretty funny redneck; his search for Twinkies in this zombie wasteland really helped with keeping the movie lighthearted and goofy.  About halfway through the movie, you get treated to probably the funniest fifteen minutes of the entire film.  Tallahassee takes the group to a celebs house, and while I don’t wanna ruin the surprise, a hint would be that he is an actor from one of the best films of the ’80′s…Ghostbusters.  While the ol’ Ghostbuster may be a bit rough around the edges, this small cameo shows that you just can’t beat the classic comedians.

Zombie Clown...two nightmares rolled into one.

Going into the movie, I expected a lot of the usual zombie film stuff, but Zombieland had a perfect mix of humor and action to make me one pleased movie-goer.  The most obvious comparison that comes to mind is, which is better?…Shaun of the Dead or Zombieland?  That question really depends upon taste, because I felt they were completely different types of movies.  Shaun was a straight-up, love letter and parody to zombie films of yesteryear; while Zombieland felt like a fresh, zombie adventure with comedic elements, as well as a few “jump” moments.  Regardless of tastes, both films are probably going to be in your top five list, anyways.  Overall, this film was just a lot of fun to watch, and it does something many movies have been failing at lately; it entertains.  From the moment the film opened, till the closing credits I was either laughing my ass off or enjoying the action.  Zombie fans have already seen this, so there is no convincing there, but for people on the fence, this is one of the must-see movies of the fall.  This was one of those few movies, I actually would like to see one more time before it leaves the theater…I guess you could say the fun of this film was pretty “infectious.”  Bad pun?…Sorry, I’ll just finish off with these wise words:  See Zombieland solely for the fact that when a zombie outbreak really does happen (and it will, trust me), the film will give you a few handy rules for ensuring your survival.

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