Cinema Dispatch: 28 Years Later

28 Years Later and all the images you see in this review are owned by Sony Pictures Releasing

Directed by Danny Boyle

I don’t know how controversial of an opinion this is, but I’ve never been a fan of the 28 films. That’s not to say they’re bad, but I simply didn’t find them all that memorable; especially the second one, of which the train scene at the beginning is the only piece that’s stuck in my memory. I was shocked to see how many very famous people were in that movie and how little impression they must have left on me, but they were also movies I watched before I started this whole film critic thing, so maybe I just never saw them in the right frame of mind. Perhaps that changes today, as Danny Boyle’s Faustian bargain with this franchise has demanded another entry nearly three decades after the first one. Will this be another well regarded entry for the Zombie genre, or has time made this series more decrepit than the walking dead themselves? Let’s find out!!

Twenty-eight years after the initial outbreak, which would be twenty-seven years, eleven months and two days since Jim woke up and twenty-seven years and four months since Don proved himself to be the crappiest dad ever, the world has adopted a lock-and-leave policy with the entire British Isle and has left survivors to fend for themselves in self-sustaining communities while making sure none of the zombies even think about taking a dip in the English Channel via a constant patrol of warships. One such survivor is Spike (Alfie Williams) who, in accordance with post-apocalypse tradition, is now a man at the age of twelve and is ready to shoot zombies to death with bows and arrows. He takes his first journey from his protected island community to the mainland and manages to survive with the help of his dad (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), but let’s just say that experience was rather mixed for poor Spike, and with rumors of a doctor being the one to start the conspicuous fires he saw out on the hills, he decides that there’s more important things to do than just scraping by with his dopey dad. Wrapping up all the supplies and courage, this twelve-year-old can muster; he sneaks his sick mother (Jodie Comer) onto the mainland in hopes of finding a cure for her illness through this mysterious doctor everyone else seems so afraid of. Will Spike be able to keep himself and his mother alive through the zombie hoards, especially with the terrifying Alpha Zombies roaming the countryside? Who else is holed up on this island, and will they help Spike on his quest to find the doctor, or be an even worse nightmare than the zombies themselves? Seems like this wasn’t the best thought out plan, but then again, what else did this kid have to look forward to anyway? Another forty years of unseasoned beets and scavenged cans of baked beans?

“Seriously, mom! Why did you let me do this?”     “ME!? You’re the one who dragged me out of bed while I was still catatonic!”
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Cinema Dispatch: Barbenheimer

When it comes to two movies releasing on the same day the narrative is usually that of a fight to see which one will top the box office, and yet this whole Barbenheimer deal has been one of mutual appreciation which seems to have worked out well for both movies as they had strong opening weekends on the back of solid word of mouth and the novelty of this double-feature. Was this quirk of good timing the perfect way to energize two great movies, or will the memes be more fondly remembered than the movies they were celebrating? Let’s find out!!

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Barbie

Barbie and all the images you see in this review are owned by Warner Bros Pictures

Directed by Greta Gerwig

In the land of Barbies, where all Barbies are named Barbie and all Kens are named Ken, we follow Stereotypical Barbie (Margot Robbie) who is leading her stereotypical Barbie life of fun, empowerment, and dance parties! That is until she starts having some strange thoughts that put her out of step with the rest of Barbie land and she has no choice but to go on a journey to the Real World to find the little girl playing with her that’s giving her all these bad vibes. Not wanting to be left out as he usually is, Ken (Ryan Gosling) manages to tag along on this journey and has his own quest of self-discovery that could perhaps impede Barbie from finishing her own!

Starting things off with sunshine and sparkles, we dive into the bright pastels and infectious optimism of Hollywood’s latest attempt to cynically turn brands into cinematic universes! Well, that’s a little unfair as the movie takes a fair number of risks in creating such a uniquely faithful adaptation; not to any specific work in the Barbie canon, but to the idea of Barbie as a brand itself. What could have easily been an insufferable exercise in cheerleading a doll line manages to have more than enough wit and creativity to rise above its baggage. Of course, it can’t truly be a subversive work given that it’s made with the explicit endorsement of Mattel, but Gerwig and Robbie were still given a surprising amount of room to tell an unconventional and mature story within this pink and plastic world. What I most appreciated was the utter absurdity of it all as it revels in its own dream logic to tell its story; never getting so abstract as to be indecipherable, but never letting unnecessary plot details grind the pacing to a halt or hold it back from telling a funny joke. It’s the kind of storytelling that works for a high-concept fantasy like this where at any moment we could pull back to find the whole plot being elaborately staged by a group of young girls at a sleepover, and if you aren’t going to make a Barbie movie a fanciful journey then why bother making it in the first place? There does seem to be a missed opportunity, however, as they don’t go the extra mile to make this a musical which, to me, would have catapulted it to the camp classic it’s clearly aiming to be. The movie has songs, singing, and even some dancing for good measure, but there’s only one musical number for a movie that is otherwise so bombastic, and on top of that it’s done by the Kens instead of the Barbies which leads us to the other issue I have with the film. Perhaps this is where the gender divide is the most obvious, but when all was said and done I found myself thinking more about the Kens than the Barbies; especially when it comes to Ryan Gosling and Margot Robbie. Robbie is great in the role and she carries this movie from start to finish, but Gosling is a riot throughout and I found his arc to be the more interesting of the two. Barbie doesn’t really have much that she needs when the movie begins and the conflict she has to resolve is thrust upon her by circumstances outside of her control. It’s through the disruption of her routine that she does eventually realize what has been missing, but there’s not much to distinguish her as a Barbie of note compared to every other Barbie in Barbie Land. Ken on the other hand begins the movie with angst and flaws that inform his actions throughout the movie, and where the script ends up taking him is fascinating and utterly hilarious even if it’s the primary obstacle that our true protagonist has to overcome. Again, this may be my own biases talking here, but Robbie just didn’t come across as the most interesting character in her own movie and my favorite moments are things that happened around her instead of anything with her specifically. For me, the movie feels a little pulled back at points which are all the more noticeable given how extra the rest of the movie is, so while it doesn’t quite hit cult classic status as many were hoping for it to, it does end up being a great time at the movie and one that I can happily recommend to everyone with an appetite for something sweet.

4 out of 5
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Cinema Dispatch: Dunkirk

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Dunkirk and all the images you see in this review are owned by Warner Bros

Directed by Christopher Nolan

I never got around to seeing Interstellar despite having the blu ray somewhere around here, so my last Christopher Nolan film was The Dark Knight Rises (a film that I’m not particularly fond off) which came even longer ago than Green Lantern.  We’ve had an entire DCCU build up in the dude’s wake since I’ve last seen one his movies, and he’s coming back to theaters with the most classic of prestige genres; the World War II epic!  Hey, it worked for Spielberg!  Twice in fact!  Even if I wasn’t a huge fan of his last Batman movie (and from what I hear, most people were rather put off by Interstellar), I’m still glad to see this guy continue to make films, and while it’s a bit of cliché now for RESPECTABLE film makers to make a film about how much Nazis suck, I’m sure the guy is more than capable of putting his own spin on it that will make the movie a standout of the year!  Does Nolan return with a decisive victory, or is this a tortuous war of attrition?  Let’s find out!!

So the movie is about the Dunkirk Evacuation where a whole bunch of Allied soldiers were trying to escape from France as it was slowly being overtaken by the Nazis.  Their only hope is to get a whole bunch of boats to France, load them all up, and ferry them across the English Channel to safety, but of course it’s not as easy as that considering how many submarines and airplanes the Nazis have in the area.  Things get so desperate that Churchill eventually calls for English citizens with boats to become volunteers and try to make the dangerous trek across the Channel to pick up however many soldiers they can carry; hoping the Nazis will ignore them for being civilian ships.  In the movie, we’ve got Tommy (Fionn Whitehead) on the beach with everyone else waiting for the boats, Mr Dawson (Mark Rylance) as one of the boaters taking his yacht along with his son and a local boy (Tom Glynn-Carney and Barry Keoghan) to help the war effort, and a Royal Air Force pilot (Tom Hardy) doing what he can to keep the skies clear despite being rather low on fuel.  Will our heroes manage to make it out of this evacuation alive?  Does Christopher Nolan manage to capture the magnitude of this historical event through his spectacular technical chops?  If they needed a ride so badly, why didn’t they just call Uber!?  Wait, do they have Uber for boats yet?

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“Does anybody know any good knock-knock jokes?”     “Knock Knock.”     “Who’s there?”     “Shut up.”

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Cinema Dispatch: Free Fire

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Free Fire and all the images you see in this review are owned by StudioCanal UK

Directed by Ben Wheatley

I honestly don’t get excited to see movies all that often.  For one, I’m gonna see the damn movies whether or not they’re any good, and on top of that the only movies that seem to get a big marketing push nowadays are big franchise pictures like the MCU, the DCCU, and even The Fast and the Furious.  This movie however was the exception to that rule as I caught the trailer a few times and fell in love with the concept right away.  A real time gun fight set in the seventies with Sharlto Freaking Copley in it!?  Damn!  That’s almost too good to even show up in my local theater, which… spoiler alert: it didn’t and I had to drive to the one forty minutes away.  See, while everyone was gushing over The Nice Guys last year, it just didn’t quite do it for me as much as it did for everyone else, and this seems like the kind of thing that was not only going for that kind of look and feel but was much more in my wheelhouse as far as the overall tone and the central conceit.  Needless to say that this has been a long day coming and I’m hoping for the best while bracing myself for… well not the WORST as the trailers showed way too much promise for THAT to be the case, but at the very least I hope it’s better than mediocre.  Does this manage to live up to my rarely lifted expectations, or am I doomed to be disappointed by a film that showed a whole lot of promise?  Let’s find out!!

The movie begins with essentially two groups of colorful people in the gaudiest seventies fashion meeting in a warehouse to broker a gun deal.  One side is led by Chris (Cillian Murphy) and a few Irish gangsters (Michael Smiley, Sam Riley, and Enzo Cilenti) while the other side is led by Vernon (Sharlto Copley) and his associates (Babou Ceesay, Jack Reynor, and Noah Taylor).  In the middle are Justine and Ord (Brie Larson and Armie Hammer) who seem to have brokered the deal between the two sides and therefore probably have the most investment in everything going smoothly.  Of course, we wouldn’t have a movie if everything was hunky dory, and eventually bullets start flying after a few altercations and outburst from some of the less professional individuals on each side.  That’s it.  The rest of the movie is watching to see who gets killed next as they trade bullets and yell insults at each other for the next eighty minutes, and it’s pretty damn awesome!  Does anyone manage to make it out of this factory alive?  Was there a more sinister plot in play than anyone on either side realized before they started shooting at each other?  Can we please get Sharlto Copley a Marvel movie or something!?  He’s like the new Nicolas Cage and I want to see him in everything!!

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“If you see some motherfucking producer carrying a script around for another Wicker Man remake, you blow his bloody head up!”

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