Just before the semester ended, I made this video with my friends Alan Schulte, Jennie Latson, and Alicia de Los Reyes, in honor of Lee Gutkind, the “Godfather of Creative Nonfiction.”
Kick-Ass
First off, don’t worry: “Kick-Ass” is as violent, funny, and colorful as you might expect. It’s also probably as close as we’ll ever get to a movie about real-life superheroes. And even with such stabs at realism, the film remains delightfully cartoony. As “Kick-Ass” so helpfully demonstrates, putting all those superhero ideas into practice would end not with glory and accolades, but with an extended trip to the ER—and that’s only if things go right.
“Watchmen” and “The Dark Knight” gave us superheroes in a semi-realistic setting with operatic action. “Kick-Ass” gives us realistic people learning the hard way that superheroing sucks. It’s hyper-violent but funny, cartoonish yet sometimes uncomfortably graphic. Mostly, though, it’s a lot of bloody fun.
The Ghost Writer
The manuscript at the center of “The Ghost Writer” is said to be “more like a bomb than a book,” and throughout the movie, the prospects of explosive revelations and destructive bombshells hang in the air. The prospects turn out to be duds, though, which carry a menacing air but pose no real threat.
Well, no threat to real people, at least. The wispy characters that populate “The Ghost Writer,” led by Ewan McGregor, seem to dissipate at the slightest disturbance, and all the thrills that director Roman Polanski attempts to build up turn out to be not so thrilling to the rest of us. Once the bombshells finally drop and the smoke clears, nothing is left to care about.
Crazy Heart
Cynics, it’s claimed, are nothing but bruised romantics. In “Crazy Heart,” Bad Blake, a former country music legend turned broken-down workhorse, carries the wounds that come from life on the road in his guitar case and on stooped shoulders. “Crazy Heart” is a film about a musician, and Blake tells his life’s story in songs—regrets and missed opportunities, nights spent in dirty juke-joints and years spent drinking away whatever money he earned from his music. But thanks to Jeff Bridges’ fantastic performance as Bad, the music is secondary. The bruises surface whenever Bad picks up his guitar, but they bloom most brightly when he’s offstage, drunkenly stumbling through his house or puking behind a bowling alley. To be Bad is to live with bruises that never fade, a dull throb of pain that only whiskey and music can momentarily quell.
Robin Hood
“Robin Hood” aims to be many things, and it’s good enough at all of them. But maybe it would be better for “Robin Hood” to be just one thing and do it really well?
First, it’s a prequel, for those of us curious as to how Robin Hood ended up in Sherwood Forest and decided to rob from the rich and give to the poor. That probably would’ve been enough for one movie, but “Robin Hood” features a bonus second movie, full of political espionage and courtly intrigue, in which both civil war and a war with France loom in England’s future. Director Ridley Scott mashes these two very different plotlines together, and instead of two really good movies, we end up with one adequate movie destined to be watched casually on cable on some idle Sunday afternoon.
Legion
If you need an example of how not to conduct an apocalypse, look no further than “Legion.”
Among all the available options, the God in “Legion” chooses to end the world by turning small children, the elderly and people with offbeat clothes and accessories (ice cream truck drivers, guys wearing party hats, etc.) into monsters. God, equipped with an army of bad-ass, sword-swinging angels, and, well, dominion over everything, decided to outsource Armageddon to the least qualified, it seems. File this decision under the “works in mysterious ways” category if you must, but know that this inexplicable apocalypse is actually the least of the many problems that plague “Legion.”
Daybreakers
Is it possible for a vampire movie to fly too close to the sun? “Daybreakers” does just that—it’s a stylish, ambitious melding of sci-fi and horror. When it succeeds, it does so gracefully, but when it stumbles, it nearly collapses.
“Daybreakers” promises so much: visceral vampire action, clever world building, and a thoughtful tweak on the vampire mythos, all wrapped in an allegory about dwindling natural resources. Brothers Peter and Michael Spierig, who wrote and directed “Daybreakers,” deliver on a handful of these promises and make half-hearted attempts at the rest. It’s not a complete failure, but it’s more than a bit disappointing.
Sherlock Holmes
Director Guy Ritchie doesn’t do anything new with Sherlock Holmes, but that’s OK. Innovation is nearly impossible to come by when you’re dealing with a 120-year-old character. As Holmes says in the novel “The Sign of the Four,” when you’ve eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, is the truth. And the truth is that “Sherlock Holmes” is good, but not improbably great.
Paranormal Activity
It took two years for “Paranormal Activity” to reach a wide audience, and in that time, the film attracted a fantastic amount of hype online. Filmed in a week in 2006 with a budget of only a few thousand dollars, first-time director Oren Peli’s film bounced around from festival to festival and studio to studio before it finally earned a limited release, and—thanks to sufficient internet buzz—a wide release. It’s been tagged as “the scariest movie ever,” and while that particular hype is a bit exaggerated, it is an extremely unsettling, captivating movie, full of old-school thrills and genuine spookiness.
Zombieland
When it comes to shaking up the status quo and establishing new ground rules by which to live, there’s nothing more motivating than an apocalypse. And there’s no better apocalypse than a zombie apocalypse, an end-of-the-world scenario that started out as a favorite genre among horror fans and then shambled into the realm of big-budget mainstream movies earlier this decade.
No matter what our foibles and flaws, zombies bring out the best and the worst in the still-living, and a few days stuck in a world populated by gore-caked ghouls hungry for flesh is a self-improvement tool that puts Oprah, Dr. Phil and the rest to shame. Zombies are gross, deadly and grim reminders of our base instincts, but damn it all if they don’t help us become better people (or, for those who fail to heed the zombie’s lesson, become lunch).
Any self-improvement movement must have a guide-book, and that’s partially the function that “Zombieland” fills. When it comes to living with (and dispatching) the undead, there are plenty of rules to abide, and as the “Zombieland” cast demonstrates, ignoring those rules most often leads to serious peril. As the movie opens, Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg), a college student/shut-in, goes over the ground rules: keep yourself in shape, go the extra mile when killing zombies, and always wear your seatbelt. And—this is a big one—don’t get too attached to anyone, since, in Zombieland, they might very well end up trying to snack on you later.
