Land Of The Dead

So, what do you do 20 years after you’ve left a genre behind? Well, if you’re George A. Romero, you go back to it. We’ll get to how he did in a minute. Let’s get to some previews first.. SERENITY–I saw this preview online a few days ago, but on the big screen it looks much better. I’m a pretty recent convert to Firefly, but I think it’s one of the best sci-fi tv shows ever. And, of course, it only lasted one season. Bastard tv execs!

The only thing that’s kind of disturbing about the trailer is that Kaylee and Inara don’t seem to have much to do at all. In fact, you would barely know that Kaylee was in the movie! And that sucks. She’s a cutie.

Otherwise, I can’t wait. I know someone who’s already seen it. He said it was pretty good, but you had to have watched the show to really get it. From what I hear, though, it’s not quite done yet, so we’ll see when the time comes. I’m still excited!

DARK WATER–”From the author of The Ring.”� Uh-huh. And it looks like it’s The Ring with an apartment instead of a video. But it’s got Jennifer Connelly in it, so I’m there. And it looks kind of creepy. I just suddenly don’t have very high hopes for the movie.

THE SKELETON KEY–”From the author of The Ring.”� From this you would think that Koji Suzuki was getting a lot of money from Hollywood these days. Well, this in fact refers to Ehren Kruger who wrote the SCREENPLAY for The Ring. Bastards.

Well, this one actually looks better than Dark Water. Kate Hudson plays a young woman (it’s always a young woman, right?) who is helping an old man (John Hurt) who is bedridden in what appears to be a haunted house. Or is Gena Rowlands doing something to keep the old man in bed? Is she using voodoo to keep everyone at bay? Looks pretty creepy to me. I’m there even if I think Kate might be stretching a bit here. Can she scream?

SUPERCROSS–Robert Patrick, Daryl Hannah and Robert Carradine co-star with”¦um”¦Aaron Carter? And a bunch of other young punks who no ones ever heard of in a touching story of…um…motocross.

Dude! It’s Rad!!!

This looks really bad in every way. There are some hot girls in it, but, seeing as how it’s PG-13, I doubt that this will be worth the time and money it takes to sit through the whole movie. Skip it.

THE DEVIL’S REJECTS–I know I’m the only person in the world who actually kind of liked House Of 1,000 Corpses, but I’ll go see this on because of that one. It’ll probably be just as bad (’cause even I can tell you that House was BAD–I just liked it), but it’ll be weird and gory, too. I’m so there! Plus, it’s obvious that Rob Zombie is a big Marx Brothers’ fan, so he just won a few points. I still think he’s probably a completely talentless hack, but he makes some weird movies.

THE CAVE–Not to be confused with The Core. This is about a bunch of folks who got lost in a big cave and the folks who are sent in after them to find them. Unfortunately for everyone involved (including, probably, the audience) there are big ol’ monsters living down there. The only names I recognize in this one are Cole Hauser and Piper Perabo. She’s hot. Maybe I’ll catch it on video. It doesn’t look very good, though.

FOUR BROTHERS–This was actually one of the two best trailers today. Mark Wahlberg, Tyrese, Andre 3000 and Garrett Hedlund (Patroclus from Troy) play the titular brothers who now have to find the person who murdered their adopted mother. John Singleton looks like he’s wrung every bit of emotion out of these guys and put it on the screen. I’m there.

I think that’s it. There were a LOT of trailers, though, so I might have left one out.

By the way, I’m sick of the “Turn your cell phones off”� clips they play that look like real movies. They got me this time with what looked like it was going to be a kick-ass wushu movie like Hero. Then the phone started ringing. FUCK! I HATE THAT!!! I want people to turn off their cell phones, too, but I don’t want Hollywood spending money on making commercials for it. Put that money into real movies!

Anyway, on to the zombie shooting gallery!

In Romero’s first Living Dead movie since 1985′s Day Of The Dead, we get a parable of terrorists, poverty and the upper crust who keep everyone else under their thumbs.

In this case, that upper crust is symbolized by a big building in the middle of what I guess is supposed to be Pittsburgh (although the production company wouldn’t let Romero film it there because of tax breaks in Canada) that houses the rich and keeps them away from the zombies on the outskirts of town. This giant apartment building is “owned”� by Kaufman (Dennis Hopper), a man so into keeping what he’s got that he doesn’t care about the people who work for him. He’ll kill them to keep his riches even if they don’t do him any good.

Riley (Simon Baker from LA Confidential and The Ring Two) is kind of the leader of the guys on the ground. He works for Kaufman, but he’s not too happy with that position. He’s ok with helping the folks down here out. In fact, he often gives stuff to the folks that he’s probably not supposed to. But he wants to quit and go somewhere where he can be alone. This is his last job and then he’s out. He plans on giving the job over to Cholo (John Leguizamo), but Cholo is even less happy with his position. He plans on getting his own place inside Kaufman’s building. But will Kaufman let him in?

Riley’s crew includes Charlie (Robert Joy), a borderline retarded man with a good eye for shooting who Riley saved from a fire and Slack (Asia Argento), a feisty young lady who is also pretty handy with a gun. He managed to save her from a cage fight with two zombies.

And, of course, there’s the zombies. This time out they’re learning. They’ve started to kind of communicate and take back their old lives. Their leader, Big Daddy, even figures out how to use a gun. And he wants to take his people to have a little chat with the Big Man.

Of course, we all know that zombies chat with their teeth. And they want to talk to your intestines.

Or something.

The story is pretty good here. In fact, I almost cared about some of the characters, which is kind of new for the genre. (Sure, we cared a little bit about Ben in Night and Bub in Day–he or someone like him shows up in this one–but did we really care about anybody else in these flicks? Not really. They were just fodder for the zombies to eat.) But it almost seemed like the story took away from the movie, if that’s possible at all. There was too much, strangely enough. And there were a few characters that I really thought should have died (not that they were bad, but they seemed like perfect zombie food) who never even got touched! What’s up with that?

Has George gone soft in his old age? Well, the gore is turned down a bit here. Yeah, there’s still some awesome work by Greg Nicotero. (Watch for the zombie sticking his hand down the guy’s throat and pulling it out. The whole throat. I think that was Greg’s favorite bit. “‘Cause that’s what they would do!”�) But I have a feeling that there’s an unrated version of this movie out there somewhere. Hopefully on DVD.

What’s really strange for me is that this movie seems to be getting the best AND the worst reviews of Romero’s entire career. Hollywood Reporter said that this is his best film ever. Personally, I think they feel that way because they, like I am, are bleeding heart liberals who saw the parallels between Kaufman and the current administration. Oh, I saw that, alright. But that didn’t make this a great movie. It just seemed kind of toned down and muddled to me. The acting was alright, though. Except, inexplicably, for Dennis Hopper. This should have been a role that he could really sink his fangs into. Instead, he just seemed kind of wooden. Maybe that’s the way a guy like Kaufman would be, but I would expect Hopper to come up with a better way to play him.

I would say that this is the weakest of Romero’s zombie flicks. (And, yes, they use the zed word. Not so happy about that. But only Kaufman uses it, so maybe that’s ok.) It’s still worth seeing for us acolytes, but it’s not going to win him any new fans.

Watch for Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright as zombies in a photo booth somewhere. I didn’t seem them. In fact, I didn’t even see a freakin’ photo booth.