My Review: Warm Bodies (8/10)

¨You miss him…like a boyfriend…you miss your boyfriend? ¨

Jonathan Levine surprised me a couple of years ago with 50/50 and now he tries his luck on a very different genre in Warm Bodies. With the success of The Walking Dead television series the zombie genre is probably as popular as ever, but Levine does something different by turning things around. Instead of having us run away from the incoming brain eating zombies, he puts us inside their heads as we get to see things through a zombie´s point of view. The main character´s name is R and he is a zombie. We get to experience everything he is thinking as he narrates the film. This is probably what makes this film so fun and entertaining because we get to see this misunderstood zombie grunt and walk around so slowly while his mind processes things so quickly. Zombieland had already broken the predictability of the zombie genre by making fun of the premise, but Warm Bodies takes a different turn in that it makes the zombie one of the protagonists. These zombie eating villains might have a heart after all and we get to experience it in this romantic comedy. Nicholas Hoult, who is also the star of Jack the Giant Slayer, plays the leading zombie in a very funny way using a lot of physical comedy. The fact that he is given some very clever lines also helps this film. The screenplay was adapted by Levine himself from Isaac Marion´s novel and it is very loosely based on the Rome and Juliet story (the balcony scene pays homage to that Shakespearean play). Teresa Palmer plays his human love interest with whom she shares great chemistry. She is very talented and the two make this film work thanks to some very funny moments and a touch of romance. Warm Bodies is really well paced and has a little bit of everything, combining comedy with romance and action. It is probably my favorite film of the year so far.

In a near future zombies are now in the top of the food chain, and humans have been reduced to live inside closed walls. R (Nicholas Hoult) is a zombie living inside an airport with a bunch of other zombies. He seems to be a little tired of his daily routines which involve walking slowly around the airport, spending some time sitting around with his best friend M (Rob Corddry) just grunting at each other, and eventually going out to find something to eat. They have to eat, although they do feel guilty about it. R claims that eating a human brain is what makes them feel alive again as they can access the memories of that person. It is as close to feeling alive as they can ever get. One day they encounter a group of humans who are out looking for pharmaceutics. Julie (Teresa Palmer) is one of the members of the expedition along with her boyfriend, Perry (Dave Franco), and friend Nora (Analeigh Tipton). R ends up eating Perry and gets access to his memories. He ends up falling in love with Julie and decides to protect her from other zombies by spreading some blood over her face and asking her to remain still. R takes her to an abandoned plane inside the airport which he uses as his personal room full of items he collects including some records. R is a different kind of zombie, but this new connection he feels for Julie has made him feel more alive than ever. Not only R begins to feel alive again, but some of the other zombies seem to slowly be recovering their humanity. The problem is that Julie´s father, Grigio (John Malkovich), is the general behind the closed walls that is determined to exterminate all the zombies and they are running out of time.  

The film is perfectly well paced with some memorably funny and clever moments. The film is funny, romantic, and lots of fun. Levine seems to know his craft and he uses this well known genre as a sort of parable to how through all the new technology we seem to be living as zombies and losing real human connections with each other. This film reminds us of the power of human connection, but that is just one point that Levine tries to get across without seeming to preachy. The film has some very funny performances and some great moments as well. This isn’t a perfect film, and I probably enjoyed Zombieland a little more, but it definitely is a new spin on the zombie genre and it really worked for me. I have to give this movie a lot of credit for being so original and taking us inside the rotten mind of a brain eating zombie. Levine once again takes a huge risk here, but it really pays off nicely. One would never expect to be rooting for a lead character like this but you can´t help but sympathize for this guy. I had a great time with Warm Bodies!

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My Review: Love and Honor (5/10)

¨Military fly free.¨

Love and Honor is yet another lame attempt at trying to make a chick flick appealing to men by adding some action, which in this case happened to be the Vietnam War. The only problem is that the action scenes only take place during the beginning of the film and the rest of the story is a plain formulaic chick flick which happens to star young good looking actors in order to appeal to its audience. Love and Honor isn’t anything we haven’t seen before in hundreds of other rom-coms and in everyday TV series. This film is Danny Mooney´s directorial debut after having worked mostly as an actor in the industry. The script which is hard to believe wasn’t adapted from a Nicholas Spark novel, was written by Jim Burnstein and Garrett K. Schiff, but one has to assume that they were deeply inspired by him when coming up with this story. One of the main issues I had with the film (apart from the cheesy scripts and characters) was that it never felt to me that we were in 1969. The production design team never managed to transport us into that world, like other great films have done so (more recently Argo). I can see why some people might enjoy this film, especially girls, considering it is a chick flick and has some likeable young actors, but artistically it has little value. There are plenty of other great independent rom-coms that are worth checking out instead of this.

The story takes place in 1969 as we follow a group of American soldiers in Vietnam trying to survive the war. Mickey (Liam Hemsworth) is in charge of the radio equipment, while Joiner (Austin Stowell) has a special talent for recognizing explosive wires hidden throughout the place. He is the main reason why everyone is still alive, but there is a motivation for his attention to detail. Joiner is in love with Jane (Aimee Teegarden) and all he can think of is surviving along with his friends in order to return home safely and marry the girl of his dreams. Right before the soldiers are given a week off duty, Joiner gets a letter from Jane claiming she wants to break up with him. In order to win her back, Joiner decides to sneak back to Michigan during their week off. Mickey, an uncompromising young soldier, decides to help Joiner and make sure he returns without being caught. Thus the two soldiers arrive in Michigan and catch up with Jane, who is calling herself Juniper now and involved in an anti-war movement along with several other teens. Joiner wins her love back when Mickey claims they have disserted the war in protest, and ends up falling for one of Juniper´s friends, Candace (Teresa Palmer). The two men experience the surreal counter culture of the Vietnam War back home, and at the same time end up falling in love while the entire world has their eyes on men´s first voyage to the moon.

Whenever you don’t have a solid script it’s hard for the performances to be strong and credible. Liam Hemsworth and Teresa Palmer are very good looking actors and shared some chemistry, but the entire premise was so cheesy that it was hard to believe their story. Love and Honor ends up being yet another romantic melodrama that never explores the true value of the two words in the title. Aimee Teegarden and Austin Stowell served only as the back story for the main one, but they too lacked chemistry. As much as the producers wanted to appeal to a male audience, I think this film will only seduce young girls. It doesn’t do much for a male audience and it is just another formulaic cliché film that does nothing to break from the boundaries of the genre.

  

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My Review: I am Number Four (5/10)

¨You can go wherever you want. See whatever you want to but, um, a place is only as good as the people you know in it.¨

D.J. Caruso isn`t one of my favorite directors, although I did enjoy Disturbia quite a bit, but that`s probably his only film I actually liked. His latest film, I am Number Four, was actually a lot better than I expected. I really had very low hopes for this movie after watching the trailer, but I was surprised that it wasn`t as terrible as I thought it would be. It was entertaining at some points and I enjoyed the performance from the young lead actors, but I was disappointed with the second half of the film that tried too hard to establish the franchise for the future instead of giving this movie a little more closure. I´m guessing that thanks to the open ending I am Number Four will end up incomplete along with the likes of Jumper and The Golden Compass since the film didn`t do very well in the box office to be able to build a big enough fan base for the sequels. It’s actually pretty sad because the beginning of the film looked very promising, but it suddenly became too big and ended up being messy. The film is based on the novel written by Jobie Hughes and James Frey, and the screenplay was adapted by Alfred Gough, Miles Milar, and Marti Noxon (the team that brought us several TV series like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Smallville, and the Spider Man 2 film). I`m not familiar with the novel so I can`t say how faithful the screenplay is to the novel, but I can say that the screenplay isn`t one of the strong points of the film.

In I am Number Four Alex Pettyfer (who recently starred opposite Vanessa Hudgens in Beastly, but is better known for his lead role as Alex Rider in Stormbreaker) plays an alien who was only one of the nine survivors from his planet after a group of Mogadorians destroyed all life there. These nine children have escaped and are hiding on Earth among humans because they look like ordinary human beings despite having supernatural powers. Each child has a guardian who looks out for them. The movie begins with the murder of alien number three. Alex is number four; so he is next since the Mogadorians (led by the Commander played by Kevin Durand) have to kill them in numerical order for some reason (which is never explained). Number Four`s cover has been blown, so his guardian, Henri (Timothy Olyphant: Hitman, The Crazies) decides to give him a new identity as John Smith and move to a small town in Ohio called Paradise. Here, John decides to attend a local High School and continue his life as normal keeping a low profile while hiding from the Mogadorians who are looking for him. He tells everyone in school that he just moved in from New Mexico with his dad (Henri). He will have to adapt to the bullies in school, although he makes friends with a nerd named Sam (Callan McAuliffe) and falls in love with Sarah (Dianna Agron of Glee fame), another student who has a passion for photography. As the Mogadorians close in on John he is not willing on running away again since he is really in love with Sarah so he decides to stay in Paradise.

Teresa Palmer (Sorcerer`s Apprentice and Bedtime Stories) also has an important role in this film, although she appears more near the end and was probably supposed to be a co-lead character in the next films of the franchise. This Sci-Fi thriller begins very well setting up interesting characters, but halfway through the movie the plot becomes messy and the final fight scenes are far from memorable. The movie ends up being very cliché and follows the same formula almost every teen action film does these days. The plot is familiar (you have the bullies from school, the romantic triangle after the hot blonde who used to date jocks ends up being sweet and nice, the hero discovering his new found powers, the ¨I will love you forever¨ speech, and so on). I am Number Four is not a bad movie, it had me entertained for the most part, but it just misses the mark at the end by trying to be larger than it actually is. It won`t be on one of my worst movies lists, but it is just an average film that I will have forgotten all about after a week. The most memorable thing about this movie for me will be the performances from Alex Pettyfer and Dianna Agron. Too bad the film didn`t have a final resolution because I don`t think they will be making a sequel after the poor box office results.

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