Category:David Cronenberg
Naked Lunch (1991)
Director: David Cronenberg
Cronenberg's strange, over the top comedy is based on the William S. Burroughs book, and right off the bat during the title sequence we can see the director has really taken great care to set this up as a pure mood piece. The titles are revealed by multi colored art deco shapes and lines of pale greens and magentas.
Peter Weller's performance is the funniest thing about the film. He is so cool and deadpan that it's as if his eyes take an extra 5 seconds to catch up with his words.
The plot is absurd. A bug exterminator becomes hooked on his own powder, shoots his wife by accident, and goes into the
Interzone, an imaginary world where roaches, centipedes and aristocratic writers assign him to certain "reports" about things we don't quite understand.
Many of the themes in this film seem to be about homosexuality. Possibly the writer's own denial? I got many laughs at the recurring insinuations and the way Weller handles them, eventually coming clean in a brief description of his alter ego dancer mada'am. Other aspects seem to linger on sickness, possibly the AIDS virus, and yet again a recurring character is a hemmeroidal butt hole for a mouth as part of an agent typewriter. This movie is absolutely insane!
I'll never need to watch this again. The plot is totally nuts, and the length of the film stays way, way past its welcome. Though it is funny and perverse, I can't say it's a "great" film because it really isn't. If weird is your flavor well then I suppose this movie is a masterpiece, and there are plenty of interpretations and underlying things to try and dredg up into discussion, but even with a very literary spine, I felt like this was just one bad acid trip with some chuckles.
Category:George Romero
Land of the Dead (2005)
Director: George Romero
The Walking Dead and every other zombie film owes to not only this franchise, but to this 2nd sequel to Night of the Living Dead. From the opening credits, all tattered and stylish, we can see where Darabont took his show running creative direction to implement the
Walking Dead opening. The nice thing about this film is that it was, like
TWD, shot on film. Fuji film, with digital intermediate. That explains the tricks (DI) thrown in with quick cuts and circus-like effects and staging. There are some fantastic deaths on display here.
John Leguizamo is one of my old favorites, and he is great here. I didn't care much for the lead actor. I thought he was a bit too plain. I really liked the slow sidekick, though. His lines and acting were good. Some scenes were very creepy. Shot at night, Romero really knew how to set the mood and keep the tension on. Lots of darkly lit photographed entrail mayhem. Digital doesn't do these kinds of things justice.
The porous characteristics of film are suitable, and that is one of the circumstantial reasons why Romero's films are far above any extensions of his proprietary genre kind of pale in comparison. That and the fact that he knows how to write good characters who aren't completely one dimensional. Most all characters are given something to play with, and they do. This seemed to be on the edge of the big zombie turn in characterization in commercial cinema. Good old 2005.
I really liked the writing of this chapter.
Day of the Dead was gritty and fulked up in all the right ways, but Land of the Dead is a fresh take, and still has a bit of the Harrison score in brief piano bits like when the zombies first start to cross the water. I'm glad he directed that mood to revisit. Too much sonic wall music is boring and actually works against a film being memorable. When will Hollywood learn. The answer is never. But that's OK. They're idiots. Moving on..
Dennis Hopper gives one of his last hurrahs and he's good but not great. He could've been in the film more and I wouldn't have minded at all. Zombies "creep him out", but that's about as far as we get from a usually very outspoken Hopper. Still, the The Nicotero/Berger effects make his death scene Ramboesque enough to at least finish up his job tidy for a film that wants to be more, but doesn;t have the budget to be.
This is the most ambitious chapter in the series yet, and goes the extra mile to make it atmospheric. Some of the make up isn't very convincing, namely the main "Bub" like zombie who seems to lead the pack in revolt. His zombie mask is clearly visible to start at the bridge of his nose and it's distracting. Maybe the effect team figured film would carry on longer than it did, and that the blurriness and saturation of colors would mask this limitation from the unforgiving sharpness of high definition. Who knows?
I did enjoy this movie.It very much deserves it's place within the series.
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. The social commentary was just okay but i did think some of this was pretty horrifying; the cannibal cellar, the boiling bath punishment, just how unhinged in general the mother was. My biggest surprise was easily the performances, no one was great, the only person i thought was pretty bad was the dad though; he was supposed to come across very sinister and alot of the time he came across silly; i mean why was he in a gimp suit? haha. Anyway not a favourite but a nice watch.
This isn't really a movie I can get all wordy about. 
