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The Great Gatsby – Review

4/5 – See this in 3D!

Here’s a piece of advice I never thought I’d be giving for a film adaptation of The Great Gatsby: see it in 3D. Seriously, no joke. See it in 3D. “But 3D is stupid! It never adds anything to the movie except three dollars to the ticket price!” you exclaim. Most of the time, I agree with you 100%. But it’s worth it with Gatsby.  Trust me. Baz Luhrmann makes very good use of 3D tricks to make a beautifully shot movie look even more beautiful. It’s not just people reaching out from the screen towards the audience, aka every other 3D movie. It’s the way Nick’s reflection shimmers in a window, or the way the green light from Daisy’s dock glows across the bay. This is 3D all grown-up, not the adolescent stunts it’s usually associated with.

The Great Gatsby is a very good movie. I doubted it, based on the trailer. And then the movie came out to middling reviews and I doubted it more. The trailer looked beautiful, but I worried Baz Luhrmann would give in to excess and make it too over the top. But instead, he strikes a great balance between energy and elegance. The entire movie is shot beautifully and paced excellently.

I think Leonardo DiCaprio has over taken Joseph Gordon Levitt as my favorite actor of the 2000s. Looking at DiCaprio’s track record from 2002 onward, when he starred in Gangs of New York opposite Daniel Day Lewis, you would be hard pressed to find a bad movie. Note: As of today, I haven’t seen The Aviator, Body of Lies, Revolutionary Road or J. Edgar. But even if those four movies were clunkers, the remaining films are all high quality. These days, you can pretty much bank that if you’re going to see a Leonardo DiCaprio movie, you’re going to see a good movie. How many other actors without the initials JGL can you say that about?

I don’t know anything about The Wolf of Wall Street other than Leonardo DiCaprio stars and Martin Scorsese directs.
I’m doubly sold.

I forgot that Carey Mulligan played Daisy Buchanan in this movie. While watching it, I kept thinking I was looking at Michelle Williams, and then at one point, I couldn’t tell if she was Michelle Williams or Katie Holmes in a blonde wig. She didn’t have Holmes’s signature half-smirk, but she sounded more like Holmes than Williams and looked more like Williams than Holmes. Then the credits rolled. Carey Mulligan. Huh. It turns out Carey Mulligan is who you get if Michelle Williams and Katie Holmes have a baby in some out-of-left-field Dawson’s Creek subplot.

Dawson, it turns out it wasn’t Pacey you had to keep an eye on.

See The Great Gatsby in the theater in 3D. Otherwise, you might as well wait to see at home.

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Beam Me Up, Von Scotty

Recently, my new husband and I were coming back from our honeymoon and, by a cruel twist of fate, we happened to be booked on a 23-hour, 3-flight trip from Croatia to New York.
The first of our two layovers was a 10-hour one in Dusseldorf, Germany. Being a fairly frequent budget traveler, I am no stranger to long, restless hours sitting uncomfortably in airport chairs around the world. (N.B. Sofia, Bulgaria has the worst of them; Amsterdam’s airport was one of the best).  My husband, however, wisely suggested we try and get a hotel room in Germany so that we could at least sleep for a few hours before getting on two more flights. Brilliant man.
Not so brilliant was the fact that despite having Wi-Fi for the entirety of our two-week trip, it wasn’t until the airport in Croatia that we realized that maybe we should have booked said hotel.
We managed to get onto the spotty airport Wi-Fi for about one minute, long enough to see that there was a Dusseldorf Sheraton that was – oddly – completely booked. But that there was also another nearby hotel called the Maritim Hotel. And, even better, I actually saw the hotel as we landed.
Perfect. We’d have dinner: traditional German fare at the Dusseldorf airport McDonald’s, of course. Get a room at the hotel. And then roll on out of bed at 5 AM the next day to walk right on over to our terminal for our 6 AM flight (we even already had our boarding passes).
Capital plan.
Except as we’re walking over to the airport, we start to see throngs of people congregating near the front door. I catch a couple of girls in some leather get-ups. But I think, “Hey, I’m in Germany” and shrug it off.
And that’s when we see it. The guy who strolls out of the hotel’s front door in a full Trekkie uniform and Spock ears. Immediately, my husband grabs my arm, glee in his eyes, as he asks me: “Do you know what this is?!”
Yup. We have somehow managed to wander into a huge sci-fi convention in the middle of the Dusseldorf airport hotel. We wander around in a daze as we see Star Trek and Syfy booths, lots of happy geeks and, in all fairness, a lot more leather than I’m used to seeing even at a convention. Turns out German geek chic is metal goes on the Enterprise.
Naturally, there were no rooms to be had at this hotel. Which, considering the fact that I was tired and that we had an epic travel day still ahead of us, might have led me to muttering some curses under my breath. Something like: “Come oooooon, geeks. I mean, you’re my people, but seriously?! The Dusseldorf sci-fi convention is today?!” But with more f-bombs.
We ended up having to grab a cab to another hotel that did have rooms available. Which was annoying as I had just perfectly used up all of my Euros. However, as I was muttering expletives at the hotel ATM, my husband took my arm and said, gently. “I know you’re pissed. But, seriously, can we just take a moment to realize how amazing this is.”
I looked around at the costumes, let myself soak in the excited chatter taking place entirely in German – which of course makes everything sound extra vital — and realized, he was right. It was amazing. Or, more accurately, wunderbar.
And that, ladies and gentleman, is why I married him.

Written by Sarvenaz Tash. whose debut novel, The Mapmaker and the Ghost , can be purchased at your local bookstore or with a few clicks of your mouse here.

 

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3-Day Tickets to NYCC 2013 Now on Sale…And They’re Over Halfway Gone

3-Day passes for NYCC went on sale yesterday at noon. Last night, New York Comic Con tweeted that over 50% of the 3-Day passes have already been sold. If you’re interested in buying one, do so NOW at New York Comic Con’s website. Today may be your last day to secure one. A 3-Day pass is cheaper than two 1-Day passes, so it really is worth it.

4-Day passes sold out from NYCC a few weeks ago. If you missed out, a limited number of 4-Day passes will be available at Midtown Comics in June.

Tuesday Night Movies is looking forward to covering all the awesomeness sure to be at New York Comic Con this coming October!

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Django Unchained – Review

4/5 – Django Unchained is Tarantino’s best movie in years!

Five minutes into Django Unchained, I said, “I already like this more than Iron Man 3.” That feeling stayed throughout the entire movie. That’s a long time to feel that way, as Django Unchained clocks in at close to 2 hours and 45 minutes.

But Quentin Tarantino pulled off an excellent take on the spaghetti western. Looking back the 10 feature films that Tarantino directed, I would call Django Unchained his third best film, behind Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs (Note: I haven’t seen Death Proof). In other words, this is Quentin Tarantino’s best movie in 18 years. That said, the gap between Reservoir Dogs and Django Unchained is much larger than the gap between Django and next movie I’d put on that list.

The cast in Django is superb. Christoph Waltz definitely deserved his Oscar for playing Dr. King Schulz. He was easily my favorite character in the movie. Dr. Schulz is like an old west Danny Ocean. He has all the angles figured out, and is both the smartest and most charming man in the room.

I want Django’s jacket.
Jamie Foxx is wonderful as Django. He plays him as a soft-spoken force of nature who won’t stop until he’s reunited with his wife, Broomhilda, played by the stunning Kerry Washington. I haven’t seen many of Foxx’s movies, and this has me excited to see his take on the villain Electro in Amazing Spider-Man 2.
The object of Django’s quest. His wife, and fellow runaway slave, Broomhilda.

In my review of The Help, I noted that southern racists and Nazis were very easy go-to Hollywood villains. It’s interesting that Quentin Tarantino’s last two movies have featured those two groups as their main antagonists. It’s also interesting how much I loved both of them. I found Django killing slave owners to be as cathartic as Lt. Aldo Raine hunting Nazis in Inglourious Basterds.  Inglourious Basterds, by the way, is my 4th favorite movie directed by Tarantino.

Definitely worth seeing.

There are funny scenes scattered throughout the bounty hunting and payback in Django Unchained. It’s the kind of humor that you would expect from a Tarantino movie. A group of white men in white hoods spend a few minutes complaining about the quality of the eye holes in their hoods before attempting to lynch Django and Dr. Schultz. Like the diner scene in Reservoir Dogs, it focuses on the day-to-day minutiae of these men. It’s not a scene you’d expect, and plays like a very good deleted scene. It was very funny, but you would understand if the director dropped it on account of time.

I thought Django Unchained was great from beginning to end. I only wish I had taken the opportunity to see it on the big screen when it was in theaters this past winter. I highly recommend watching it. One caution though, like me, you might find yourself humming the main theme for a few days.

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Iron Man 3 – Review

2/5 – The curse of three continues for Marvel franchises

The person next to me fell asleep early on during Iron Man 3 and woke up late in the movie. “What did I miss?” she asked. “The entire movie,” I responded, “and it’s terrible.” Okay, maybe terrible is an overstatement, but it is definitely a disappointment.

What is it with Marvel being unable to make a good third movie in their film franchises? X-Men: The Last Stand was terrible. Spider-Man 3 was all over the place. And now that Iron Man joins that club, delivering a very disappointing sequel with Iron Man 3.

I should have known it was going to disappoint when it was announced that Jon Favreau wasn’t returning as director. Or maybe when Robert Downey Jr and Gwenyth Paltrow said they didn’t think there would be an Iron Man 4 while promoting Iron Man 3. Tobey Maguire, James Franco and Kirstin Dunst all had the same attitude about another Spider-Man movie when they were promoting Spider-Man 3. Is Iron Man 3 Spider-Man 3 bad? No. But it was nowhere near as good as any other Marvel movie that Iron Man has appeared in to date.

There’s going to be plenty of spoilers in this post, so if you haven’t seen Iron Man 3 yet, you make want to not read further until you’ve seen the movie. 



The first two Iron Man movies are two of my favorite superhero movies. They were nuanced, with a great mix of action, plot and humor. Tony and Pepper had real chemistry. But here, their magic is gone. Yes, they care for one another, but the perfect banter they had in Iron Man, Iron Man 2 and The Avengers is gone.

Tony Stark is in a doldrums throughout Iron Man 3 because of “New York.” He’s questioning his place in the world because he’s now met gods, monsters and aliens. Are you kidding me? This isn’t Tony Stark. Tony Stark has one of the most curious scientific minds of any character in fiction. If he encounters things that fall outside the norm, he doesn’t retreat into a shell. He gets answers.

Remember that scene in the Avengers where Tony Stark is falling and the Iron Man races in and attaches itself to him? I thought it was awesome. Apparently, so did Iron Man 3 screenwriter Drew Pearce and director Shane Black. That scene happens over and over again throughout Iron Man 3. The armor attaches to Tony, to Pepper. The Iron Patriot armor vomits out the President at one point. Side question: Why is the President a generic crusty, old, white guy? Marvel knows that Mitt Romney lost in ’08, right?

Take a shot every time someone falls into or out of some armor.

And the Iron Patriot armor. Can we talk about the Iron Patriot armor for a minute? This armor was clearly put in the movie just to sell another action figures. At least the War Machine armor in Iron Man 2 was integral to the story. But in Iron Man 3, the Iron Patriot armor is brought in because “it tests better with voters than War Machine” and is then relegated off-screen until very late in the movie.

Iron Patriot was in the movie just long enough to get a good shot for the blister card.

But who has time to have Jim Rhodes in his new Iron Patriot suit? That would have taken time away from Tony Stark’s kid sidekick. That’s right, in case you haven’t seen the movie yet, IRON MAN GETS A KID SIDEKICK! I’m pretty sure this was the scene where I threw my hands up and said, “Oh, come on!” I didn’t realize those Verizon Fios ads were canonical. Iron Man, say hello to Cousin Oliver. He’ll be joining you for the next 20 minutes.

No, seriously. What the fuck?

When I first heard that Iron Man 3 was going to be pulling a lot of its story from the excellent Warren Ellis penned Extremis story, I was excited. But, wow, the Extremis bad guys in Iron Man 3 come across as if the producers asked “What if we cross the Human Torch with a T-1000?” Unfortunately, the answer is not “It’s awesome.”

The bad guy, Aldrich Killian’s entire motivation is this: Tony Stark ignores him when Killian tries to cock block Stark on New Year’s Eve with a botanist that looks kind of like Alanis Morissette . To get back at Stark, Killian gets really good looking and plans his revenge. I get “bros before hoes,” but this is a little extreme. In a plot twist that should have haters of Dark Knight Rises saying, “You know what, that whole Ra’s Al Ghul daughter thing kind of works,” Killian enlists the botanist that Tony Stark banged that fateful NYE 13 years ago to help him make human bombs.

Jagged little plot twist.

In another Batman-franchise move, the Mandarin and Killian’s relationship is ripped off from Ken Watanabe/Liam Neesan Ra’s Al Ghul plot twist from Batman Begins filtered through the 1960s Batman TV show and telegraphed very early on in Iron Man 3. It’s interesting that Killian is the true Mandarin. In the first Iron Man movie, Tony Stark is abducted by the 10 Rings, which leads to Stark creating his first Iron Man armor. That’s the Mandarin’s (aka Killian’s) organization. What the Killian/Mandarin Iron Man 3 plot twist reveals is that if Tony Stark didn’t snub Killian in order to have sex with a botanist, the world may not have Iron Man to protect it.

The Mandarin never reaches the coolness of this poster in the movie.

Did you stick around for the scene after the credits? The one where Tony Stark is telling Dr. Bruce Banner about all his problems, and Banner completely zones out. It’s like Banner just watched Iron Man 3 too.

Man, I really wanted to like Iron Man 3. But I just can’t. Looking at Twitter, I seem to be in the minority. People are raving about this movie. I just do not get the love that people have for this movie at all. I’m giving it 2 out of 5 stars and hesitating, because I feel like I might be rating it too high.

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Jack The Giant Slayer – Review

3/5 – An entertaining second half to our Nicholas Hoult double feature.

After watching Warm Bodies, we promptly snuck our way into the theater down the hall to catch Jack the Giant Slayer and make it a Nicholas Hoult double feature night. I didn’t have any particular desire to see Jack the Giant Slayer. If Nicholos Hoult wasn’t in it, we probably would have skipped it. It just seemed funny to base a movie night around him. Plus the movie was starting 5 minutes after Warm Bodies ended. It’s like they wanted us make it a double feature night.

Yes, this is the awkward kid from About a Boy.

I’m amazed we didn’t get caught sneaking into Jack the Giant Slayer. Two of us were lugging around yoga mats on our backs, so we weren’t necessarily inconspicuous. But we didn’t even register on the staff’s radar.  I guess the theater employees have better things to do than hunt down people sneaking their way into a very less than full theater.

Understandably, I wasn’t expecting to particularly enjoy a CGI-heavy live-action remake of the Jack and the Beanstalk story. Not being a child, I’m not in the target demographic. I was fully prepared to sneak out of Jack the Giant Slayer as quickly as we sneaked into it.

Perhaps that’s why I was pleasantly surprised with how much I enjoyed Jack the Giant Slayer. It’s a good movie.

Second head or well executed photo bomb?

I really liked how they reworked “Fee, fie, foe, fum.” for this movie. I thought that was pretty clever. I also thought Ewan McGregor was perfect as the knight Elmont. He seemed to be channeling his inner Cary Elwes in the role. There seemed to be a touch of the Dread Pirate Roberts in Elmont. The Tooch, Stanley Tucci, is also in the movie and was awesome, as usual.

Elmont, I want your hair.
 
Jack the Giant Slayer is not going to blow your socks off or walk away with any awards, and I doubt I’ll ever meet a person whose favorite movie is this one, but if you’re looking for an entertaining escapist film, you could do far worse.
After the movie, I took in another “double feature,” this time at the nearby Taco Bell to try both the Nacho Cheese Doritos Taco and the Cool Ranch Doritos Taco. The Cool Ranch taco wins, but that’s not saying much. Anything from Taco Bell has a low ceiling in terms of quality. And the weirdo crowd hanging out there at midnight on a Friday? You would have thought you were in a Mexican food themed Waffle House. I haven’t been inside a Taco Bell in years. I think it’s more likely I’ll find myself going to another Nicholas Hoult double feature in the movie theater before I make my next trip to Taco Bell.
If you have to have one, make it this one.
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Chasing Ice – Review

4/5 – An Engaging Inconvenient Truth

If you liked the idea of An Inconvenient Truth, but found the movie itself to be as exciting as, well, a PowerPoint presentation, I recommend checking out Chasing Ice.

Chasing Ice is much more personable than An Inconvenient Truth. It puts a human face on climate change. The film  follows environmental photographer James Balog in his quest to document the melting occurring at glaciers around the world. Balog and his team create their own camera housings that can withstand subzero conditions day after day and still function. They also have to trek out to hazardous and inaccessible frozen locales. It’s a project that takes its toll on Balog, both physically and mentally. This toll is what puts the human face on the project. Chasing Ice involves the science that made An Inconvenient Truth what it is, but seeing Balog struggles while undertaking this important project is what sets Chasing Ice a step above Gore’s movie.

What comes out of this project are amazing photographs that show the rapid decline of the polar ice caps. These are photos that should put any climate change naysayers to rest. Chasing Ice is the Food Inc. of climate change. It’s a movie that you must see, but also one that will leave you shaken after you see it.

While I usually catch documentaries at home, I suggest seeing Chasing Ice in the theater if you can. Seeing James Balog’s photographs blown up on the big screen is an awe-inspiring sight. The man is a tremendous photographer. The big screen allows you to really take in what is happening to these ice caps, and serves to make it more dramatic when they fall.

I caught Chasing Ice at the Sebastiani Movie Theater in Sonoma, CA. Expect a post all on its own about that theater soon. If you’re ever in the area, I really recommend catching an evening show there after you’ve spent an afternoon wine tasting at the various wineries’ tasting rooms that dot village square.

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The Best of Marvel’s 700 #1s

Last month, Marvel and Comixology announced they would be giving away the #1 issue of 700 Marvel titles through their joint digital comics service. This quickly crashed the Comixology servers and the program was suspended. The program is reopening today for readers who signed up on Comixology’s website earlier in the week (check your inbox today for an email from Comixology if you signed up). The different #1 issues available to download span decades; you can download the Avengers first appearance as well as the first issue of a new Avengers series that debuted earlier this year. 700 comics can be a little daunting. Here are what Tuesday Night Movies feels are your best choices:

Hawkeye #1 – You might recognize this from our Best Comics of 2012 post. Hawkeye is the best series that Marvel currently produces. The creative team of Matt Fraction and David Aja are working magic on the page. When I recommend this series to people, their reaction is usually, “Hawkeye? The guy from the Avengers? With the arrows?” Yes, yes and yes. This series is so much more than that though. It focuses on what Hawkeye does when he’s not with the Avengers. It’s very street level. His main antagonist is the Russian mob. After you download the first issue for free, you may want to buy the just released Hawkeye, Vol. 1: My Life as a Weapon, which collects the first five issues of the series.

Avengers Arena #1 – If you like The Hunger Games or Battle Royale, I highly recommend checking out this series. 16 heroes have been captured by murderous villain Arcade and taken to an island where they’re told they have to battle it out to the death. I won’t lie, when this series was first announced I thought it would be cheesy and shallow. I was wrong on both counts. Writer Dennis Hopeless is giving us great stories on what it means to be a hero. The pacing reminds me of the TV show Lost.

Infinity Gauntlet #1 – That purple guy at the end of The Avengers movie? That’s Thanos, an alien obsessed with death. Infinity Gauntlet is the tale of Thanos getting the power to do what he wants. He starts the story by wiping out half the universe with the snap of his fingers. Needless to say, Marvel’s heroes aren’t happy about this (the half of them that are left, that is).

Amazing Fantasy #15 – Spider-Man is my favorite superhero. After four movies and countless cartoons, I’m sure you know the story by now. Nerdy high school student Peter Parker is bitten by a radioactive spider, imbuing him with spider-like superpowers. Yes, this isn’t technically a #1. But this is the issue that started it all, and Marvel is including it in this promotion. See Spider-Man’s origin as it was originally told by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko.

Superior Spider-Man #1 – What you need to know: Doctor Octopus switched brains with Spider-Man. Spider-Man died in Doctor Octopus’s body, leaving Doctor Octopus in charge of Spider-Man’s body. Having access to Peter Parker’s memories have inspired Doc Ock to use his powers for good and become a superior Spider-Man to Peter Parker. It’s an exciting series full of thrills and intrigue. Will Ock woo Mary Jane? Will Peter find a way back to the land of the living? Will Peter’s friends realize it’s not him in his body? Only time will tell.

Fantastic Four #1 – Another classic. Stan Lee. Jack Kirby. This is the one that really started it all. This is the birth of the Marvel Universe right here.

Daredevil Volume 3 #1 – The best Marvel comic on the stands right now not named Hawkeye. For years, Daredevil has been portrayed as a hard boiled action hero. Writer Mark Waid flips the script with the new Daredevil comic, giving readers the first lighthearted Daredevil in decades. Artist Paolo Rivera gives us the coolest visuals from Daredevil’s POV that we’ve ever seen.

Wolverine #1 – Without a doubt, the most popular character to wear a X on his belt in the Marvel Universe, it was years before Wolverine starred in his own solo comic, a 4-issue mini-series. This is the start of that mini-series. Besides having one of the coolest covers of all time, this comic takes Wolverine away from the X-Men to Japan where he fights ninjas. Ninjas!

All-New X-Men #1 – In the next X-Men movie, the story is going to focus on Days of Future’s Past, a story where X-Men from the future come to the present to stop the annihilation of the mutants from coming about. In All-New X-Men, the original five teenage X-Men from the past come to the present and aren’t exactly happy with what they see.

If you’re a Deadpool fan, you’ll find a bunch of comics to choose from. The two that I recommend most are Deadpool #1 and Uncanny X-Force #1. The latest volume of Deadpool is written by comedian Brian Posehn and his TV writing partner Gerry Duggan. Uncanny X-Force #1 is the first issue of the recently completed 35 issue epic by writer Rick Remender. It gives you Deadpool, Psylocke, Wolverine and Archangel at their absolute coolest. It’s a must read.

That’s 11 of 700. There are a lot of other really good stories among the 689 that remain. Try some out. What’s it going to cost you?

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Eulogizing Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert passed away yesterday. He was 70.

If you read movie reviews regularly, you probably have a favorite critic. The wild-haired, bushy mustached Gene Shalit has his fans. I feel like Leonard Maltin owes Doug Benson an agent’s fee for introducing his podcast listeners to Maltin’s reviews. Others will identify themselves with the late Gene Siskel or Joel Siegel. I, like many, always preferred Roger Ebert.

I first encountered Roger Ebert when I was a young boy, turning the dial on my parents’s wood-pane-encased television on a weekend morning. Siskel and Ebert At the Movies was on. They were talking in a  movie theater, about a movie I was probably too young to watch and whose name is lost to time. But, I found them both fascinating, though to be truthful it would be years before I could remember which one was Siskel and which one was Ebert. Their thumbs up, thumbs down rating system quickly made its way into the US’s, and my own, lexicon.

I didn’t always agree with Ebert’s reviews (I still haven’t quite forgiven him for calling The Blair Witch Project a masterpiece), but I always respected him. Like any great review, his reviews were both well thought out and well written. I wish my reviews were written half as well as his. His reviews didn’t come from his ego, and he wasn’t trying to show you that he knew more than you did like those guys at the New York Times. His reviews came from a love for the movies. They were often a jumping off point for my cousin and I when we would talk movies.

It wasn’t until Esquire published his portrait in February, 2010 that I knew about the extent of his battle with cancer. Ebert’s perseverance while battling cancer was extraordinary. The disease took his jaw, but not his will. His final byline, a review of The Host, was published just days before his death.  It saddens me how many people, both celebrities and in our own lives, that we’ve lost to cancer. I hope a cure is discovered in our lifetime.

Ebert was the gold standard of movie reviewers. American cinema is lesser for Roger Ebert’s passing.

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Warm Bodies – Review

5/5 – Warm Bodies is like the anti-Twilight. See it!

Zombies are very hot right now. Just ask Robert Kirkman, the creator of The Walking Dead. The success of The Walking Dead has led to a huge influx in the amount zombie-related fiction making its way to movie theaters, bookshelves and comic racks. Unfortunately, the majority of these zombie stories have me wishing that the copycats would leave the zombies to Kirkman. Thankfully, Warm Bodies does not fall into that category.

I loved Warm Bodies. It works on so many levels. It’s a great satire of both zombie fiction and modern society. It points out that we are already a bit zombie-like before any zombie plague hits, walking around heads down, staring into our iPhones, oblivious to the world around us. Warm Bodies is my favorite horror comedy since Shaun of the Dead and my favorite adaption of Romeo and Juliet since West Side Story. I never thought I would have to ever write that previous sentence, but I did.Thanks, Warm Bodies..

Most of the movie is narrated by R, the main zombie played by Nicholas Hoult. Yes, that’s the awkward kid from About A Boy. No, I don’t get how he grew up to be so good looking either. But he did, and he’s better looking dead than I am alive. Theresa Palmer seems to be channeling her inner Hayden Panettiere when she plays J. Hoult and Palmer have great chemistry, which is something, because unlike the marble-like vampires of Twilight, R is a rotting corpse.

Rob Corrdry wins in Warm Bodies. He’s M, another zombie, and the closest thing R has to a friend. Without a doubt, M has the best line in the movie, which I won’t spoil here.

When the first Twilight movie was released, before supernatural romance has its own shelf at your local Barnes and Noble (I’m not kidding. Look for it next time you’re there), I joked that I wanted to write a movie about a girl falling in love with a zombie. We laughed it off; a zombie isn’t something you’d expect a girl to fall for. Needless to say, that joke movie idea I had was nowhere near as good as what Warm Bodies turned out to be.

There will be obvious comparisons made to Twilight. Yes, they both fall into the supernatural romance genre and star guys that make girls giggle. But Warm Bodies is so much more than those surface comparisons. I’m guessing those Twilight similarities helped keep people away from Warm Bodies in the theater. It would have kept me away if I hadn’t frst seen the trailer. Warm Bodies did nowhere near the business that the Twilight films did. If that’s not proof that there’s no justice in the world, I don’t know what is.

Upside of a zombie apocalypse? No more Twilight movies.