Even More Catching Up

Yes, just a few more.


Cloverfield (A Revisit)
A ground-level view of a giant monster attack on New York City is a fantastic premise for a movie, and it mostly works in Cloverfield. The shaky-cam thing gets really annoying at times (which instilled a lot of hostility in me the first time I watched it), but is extremely effective in several scenes (the subway tunnel sequence in particular). The characters make the same dumb decisions that get made in every monster movie, but their fear and disbelief always seems real. It works well as a popcorn movie, and has several memorable action setpieces. And a special mention goes to Lizzy Caplan, who takes a minor role and upstages everyone with it.

Diary of the Dead
Diary of the Dead does the Cloverfield shtick, but with zombies instead of that weird Godzilla thing. And does it very poorly, I might add. George Romero has never cared much about characterization, focusing instead on the bigger themes. That approach has always worked for him in the past (even in Land of the Dead, a film that was mediocre for Romero but still better than most genre movies out there), but fails spectacularly in Diary of the Dead. Romero tries to make some statements about the media, but indestinguishable characters spell death for a movie that is shot in the first-person perspective. We have no interest in the people holding the camera, so we don't care what happens to them. At least the movie is mercifully short.

Strange Wilderness
I liked Grandma's Boy. Sue me. It was dumb humor, but it largely worked because it all felt so unforced. The cast was just so comfortable playing a group of underachieving stoners (gee, I wonder why), and the humor felt natural. Strange Wilderness tries to mine the same territory, but everything about this movie feels labored. Much of the Grandma's Boy cast returns, but without any of their humor. The bad jokes (and there are a LOT of them) don't just fall flat, they land with a deafening thud and are then kicked an additional 12 times. Being extremely generous, I'd estimate that only 1 out of every 9 jokes actually works. And that's only because Justin Long and Jonah Hill knock their roles out of the park. Steve Zahn does what he can in the lead role, but his efforts are not given any rewards by the script. Everyone else is a waste. Cameos by Harry Hamlin and Robert Patrick have the potential to be comedy classics, but end up just laying awkwardly lifeless on the screen (though Hamlin's death is funny...kinda). Here's the best way to describe the movie: it's the kind of film that features a man's penis getting stuck in the throat of a turkey and having to be removed in a very sensual way by a busty female nurse. Am I the only one smelling an Oscar?