Jane Eyre

Just let the sad sink in.

"Even for me life had its gleams of sunshine.”"
Hello Friends, it is that time again! Today I am going to discuss one of my favorite pastimes. See sometimes in the summertime, I like to watch morose movies about English moors and brood about them. Okay, so I like to do it even when it isn't summer, but in this particular case it was summer. The nearby art cinema a town over was showing Jane Eyre, probably my favorite work of gothic fiction, and I had nothing to occupy me for the afternoon (a state so long past that I can't even remember how it felt). Obviously Jane Eyre has been adapted numerous times, but I'm talking about the 2011 film, direct by Cary Fukunaga, probably best known now for True Detective. This film starred Mia Wasikowska, whose name I will literally never spell right on the first try, as Jane Eyre, and Michael Fassbender as Rochester. I haven't been shy about my feelings for Wasikowska, and the types of characters she gravitates towards, but I'll make a rare exception for Bronte, and maybe Crimson Peak when it comes out. Not for another goddamned Alice in Wonderland movie though. Fuck that. Enough about her though, let's talk about Jane Eyre. I'll give you a brief intro if you haven't read it first, and we can go from there. Jane Eyre is a novel written by Chalotte Bronte, about an orphan who experiences a typically miserable and dreary childhood in the late 18th century, being sent to Lowood school for girls, which is bleak and awful, are you sensing a theme. She eventually leaves to become a governess at the home of the eccentric and secretive Mr. Rochester.

The Grand Budapest Hotel

Pink Hotel.

""

Hello everyone, and welcome back to the Tagline. The week is new, and at last we can almost see the ground, emerging from the hellish permafrost that I feel has engulfed us for an eternity. I know that February is the shortest month out of the year, but I swear it dragged on for months. Enough about that though, let's focus on what's going on inside of movie theaters specifically. today I will be talking the recent effort from that most...I don't know what word I'm searching for, but it falls somewhere between pretentious and whimsical, of directors, Wes Anderson. I am talking of course about The Grand Budapest Hotel, a film that was recently nominated for nine Oscars (four of which it won, although best picture eluded it). I wouldn't take it too hard though Wes, this is the same academy that last year nominated Gravity for best picture, which I feel the need to reiterate, I FUCKING HATE. I'm not sure this is a body you can trust, though I guess it's better than the AACTA, which actually AWARDED best picture to Gravity. That's awful, but don't worry, that's enough about that garbage. Instead we will talk about The Grand Budapest, a film starring Ralph Fiennes as Monsieur Gustave H, the concierge at the Grand Budapest. This story is a framing story, within another framing device, being a story that an author is telling, about a story he was told by the owner of the Grand Budapest to him in the 60s, about when the OWNER was a young lobby boy in the late 30s.

Veronica Mars

CAMERA ACTION

"She thought she was out."

I'm sure we've all thought that once or twice, but let's face it, you never really get out do you? That sure seems to be the case for Veronica Mars, and maybe fans of the show as well. How's it going folks welcome back to The Tagline. Today I'm going to be giving my thoughts and impressions of the recent Veronica Mars movie, which has a neat story behind it before I even get to the actual movie part. So let's talk about how a Veronica Mars movie even happened to begin with. If you aren't familiar, Veronica Mars was a show that ran for three seasons, from 2004 to 2007, about a teenage girl who becomes a private investigator in her rich meets poor hometown of Neptune, CA. If this sounds ridiculous... well it kind of is, but she's only sort of an actual PI, see she works for her dad, who actually IS a licensed private investigator, so that gives her the in to the biz (I don't know how much you know about it, but to be a private detective in most states you need to either have worked under another PI or have been a cop for a pretty substantial amount of time). After three seasons of struggling to keep themselves on the air despite flagging ratings, Veronica got the ax from the CW so they could fit in more reality TV (I'm not even making this up). Despite not having a huge viewer base, what Veronica did have was a really hardcore fan segment, and they were raring for more V Mars man. So Kristen Bell and director Rob Thomas (not the singer for Matchbox Twenty a different guy) started a kickstarter. Their goal was to raise more than 2 million dollars. Point in fact they ended up raising something closer to 6 million dollars (5,702,153 according to the page) which I think expresses in clear green numbers with dollar signs just how badly people wanted to see Kristen Bell being tough on crime like Scruff Mcgruff only much hotter (this sentence is like a runaway train I want to get off but I can't). Anyway that weirdness aside the point is thanks to fan support, the movie was made, and I got to see it.

Don Jon

WORDS CAPS STUFF

"There's more to life than a happy ending."

Hello and welcome back. Before I talk about today's movie, I want to briefly talk about another movie I watched, Kill Your Darlings. This movie was about Allen Ginsberg and his crew and while I didn't take issue with any of that (though admittedly I found the whole movie kind of generally uninteresting) the casting made the movie a really uncomfortable experience for me. What do I mean? Well Daniel Radcliffe is portraying Allen Ginsberg, and I just got really weirded out when Harry Potter started kissing men. Especially when the man was the kid who went crazy at the end of Chronicle (who I think is Harry Osborn in the upcoming Spiderman movie). I'm not super into watching dude make-outs to begin with, but I particularly don't want to watch Harry Potter make out with a two-time supervillain, doing some crazy drugs, and then manically jerking off. I don't want to see like... any of that happening. I know I know, he's not always Harry Potter... but really he's always Harry Potter. Also did I mention the movie was pretty boring? Basically when some gross sex act wasn't being performed (get a bj from a girl in the stacks while you lock eyes with your best friend and are also committing a book crime) people were being super pretentious about writing. I didn't end up making it through the whole movie, I just got to a point where I felt like there was no point in continuing.

She's very convincing in this role, almost TOO CONVINCING.

But that isn't the subject of today's post, which does admittedly have to do with a lot of sex, it's just a lot less weird and no one gets murdered at any point, and they didn't let Michael C. Hall in on the proceedings which was probably for the best. Don Jon represents the first directorial outing for Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who also wrote the screenplay. To add a third role, he also stars as the eponymous Don Jon. So more or less he everything'd this movie. Don Jon is a film about a guy, who would you guess it is named Jon, and his friends call him Don Jon, because he's so good at closing the deal with ladies inadeclub (I have a Sean Paul related speech impediment). Jon states early on that not much matters in life to him, except his boys, bangin' random ladies, his car, working out, his family, and of course, constantly watching internet porn on Pornhub. Yeah, that's right, its all about the pr0nzzzorrzzz or whatever I don't know. Anyway, Jon is doing great with that arrangement until he meets Barbara (Scarlett Johansson) who if you haven't been paying attention to the media is so attractive that it will melt your face off. Jon immediately compromises everything about himself to attempt to snare this lady, and eventually he succeeds.

How I Live Now

This looks way more badass than the
actual movie.

"Love will lead you home."

Though sometimes home might be a blasted out shell of its former self! Hello folks, welcome back to The Tagline. Today I'm going to talk about a movie where World War III takes place, but all we get to see is some dreary English blocks and forests. I'm going to talk about How I Live Now, a 2013 film based on a novel of the same name, released in 2004. Really though what movies now are NOT based on a novel? What do screenwriters actually do anymore? Do they even exist? That's something to think about for later, anyway let's get back to the moviebook. How I Live Now follows the life of Elizabeth "Daisy" during a time of civil unrest. For reasons never adequately explored, Daisy has come from the US to the UK, where she will be staying with her cousins for the summer. What is immediately apparent to the viewer is that Daisy's cousins are English rascals always getting into woodsy British hijinks. The other is that Daisy has some serious issues with hostility, and trying to exist in general. She spends time living at the backwoods home of her cousins, and being extremely anti-social, though the movie telegraphs via slow motion staring at each other that Daisy is going to be kissing cousins with her oldest, most handsome cousin. This also opens up the question of why are movies seemingly obsessed with family members making out all the time, I feel like that's coming up more than I'd care for. That comes later though, at first it's just Daisy not talking to anyone and maybe having an eating disorder, again not fully explored. Eventually Daisy gets pushed in a river and then she bonds with everyone because of that or at least that's how the movie makes it look.

Norwegian Wood

I think Japanese Wood is a more accurate name. For his boner.

"All that remains now is nostalgia."

Hello everyone, welcome to a new week full of spectacular cinema achievements, and also weird sex things. Okay if I'm being honest mostly weird sex things today, but that is absolutely NOT my fault! If you want to blame someone, blame Haruki Murakami, after all this was his doing! Today I'm going to talk about Norwegian Wood, a Japanese film based on a Murakami novel of the same name. This novel focuses on Toru Watanabe, a college-aged young man growing up in the 60s in Japan, and his relationships with the people around him, particularly two ladies, his troubled childhood friend Naoko, and a girl he meets named Midori. Naoko is portrayed by Rinko Kikuchi, who you probably saw in Pacific Rim as Mako. Here she plays an actual honest to god crazy person, and does a... very convincing job. She kind of alternates between calm quiet crazy and shrieking hysterical, so that is a fun experience. The movie specifically follows Toru as he makes his way in a listless daze through his life, attempting to figure out up from down and doing a kind of pisspoor job of it. A little bit more background on that though.

47 Ronin

They fit all the unimportant parts
of the movie onto one poster.

"Seize eternity."

At long last, as promised I will be talking about 47 Ronin today! This film, released on Christmas day, is an extremely fictionalized western take on an already heavily fictionalized series of event that make up one of Japan's most popular stories from the Genroku era, about a group of Ronin (masterless samurai) who seek revenge for the death of their master, who was forced to commit seppuku after attacking an official of the shogunate while in Edo Castle. The ronin planned carefully to slay this official, before then all committing seppuku themselves, as was demanded to satisfy honor. Granted, official records and most versions of the story don't involve witches, dragons, or demons, but the general story is there. This version of the story, like most fan fiction, inserts a totally bad ass OC who is a super fighter who was trained by demons and is all angsty and shit and also has a love story with the daughter of the Ronins' lord. Also this guy is white, because come on HOW COULD HE NOT BE LET'S GET REAL HERE. I'm seriously not kidding though there is a character in this movie that is all of those things and he is played by Keanu Reeves and his name is Kai.

Zack and Miri Make a Porno

Ah I see what they did there.

"What would you do to get out of debt?"

Would you have sex with Seth Rogan? Yeah me neither, I'd rather freeze to death in a ditch somewhere. Anyway hello and welcome back to the Tagline, where today I will be delving into the depths of despair and general grossness, when I review Zack and Miri Make a Porno. This film was Kevin Smith's attempt to capitalize on the success of movies like Knocked Up, which was okay I guess. Zack and Miri is about Zack (Seth Rogan) and Miri (Elizabeth Banks) two platonic friends and roomates who have really shitty jobs and generally despair inducing lives, who are trying to just pay rent and keep the power on through the winter, both endeavors that they fail at. After going to their high school reunion, and having weird and depressing encounters, Zack proposes that maybe shooting a porn wouldn't be the worst idea they ever had to make money, and really with the power off and them burning unpaid bills in a drum for heat, what more do they have to lose? Not much as it turns out.

Catching Fire

OH GOD SHE REALLY IS ON FIRE.

"Remember who the enemy is."

Welcome back, I hope you all had a good Thanksgiving if you live in the US and like to do that kind of thing. Otherwise I hope you had a nice Thursday I guess? As promised, today I will (belatedly) deliver my Thanksgiving gift of murder, though granted it is perhaps not as exciting because this installment doesn't involve the savage killing of small children. That's right, today I will be talking about the recently released Hunger Games: Catching Fire, sequel to 2012's Hunger Games film both of them adaptations of YA novels written by Suzanne Collins. To recap, see my review of the first Hunger Games here, go ahead, I'll wait for you, take your time. Okay, so after surviving the Hunger Games, Katniss and Peeta have to make a victory tour. The problem is that Katniss made a big show about how in love she was with Peeta, but they haven't exactly been honeymooning since they got back, and that makes President Snow (Donald Sutherland) really upset because they're his OTP, and he's hoping that if he ships them hard enough to Districts will stop rioting and he can prevent a revolution from toppling the Capitol (this revolution having been sparked by Katniss' defiant actions during her time in the Hunger Games arena). In an effort to remove what he sees as the root of his problems, Snow arranges a special 75th Hunger Games (which already would have been especially horrible as it was set to be the 3rd "Quarter Quell", special games every 25 years used to extra remind everyone of how whipped the capitol has them) where all the tributes will be the former victors of other Hunger Games. Katniss is understandably not thrilled at the prospect.

Anonymous

No probably not.

"Was Shakespeare a Fraud?"

Welcome to Thursday at The Tagline! Because I'm sure everyone else in the world is as interested in movies about conjectural British History during the Elizabethan Era, I thought today I would review Anonymous, which finally made its way to the top of my "Stuff I'll Watch Some Day" list over the weekend. Starring Rhys Ifans (He was Curt Connors in The Amazing Spider-Man) as Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford, who if you know your English history was notable as a patron of the arts during the reign of Elizabeth Tudor, and also was notable as a general fuck-up, who was born as heir to the second oldest and perhaps richest earldom in the kingdom, and died having lost his entire estate and fortune, over a long life of mishaps, intrigue, and failed ventures. The movie puts forth, as a number of people have since the late 1920s, that Shakespeare was not the author of his works. Instead, Oxfordian theorists suggest that Edward de Vere was the true author, and that for various political reasons he chose to remain anonymous. This historically real and factually tenuous theory is the central conceit in the movie, and Oxford's love of poetry and theater (which is a matter of historical record) at odds with the puritanical views of the ruthless Cecils (well they're played as the villains in the movie) serve to propel the tragic events of the plot forward. I beg everyone to forgive me, because I am incapable of divorcing my experience with this movie from both literary scholarship and English history (and really if you are aware of either I don't see how you could) and so this post may end up being a history lesson in addition to being about a movie. 

Drinking Buddies

This sums up the whole movie.

"A comedy about knowing when to say when."

Hey everyone, welcome back to The Tagline! I'm attempting to get through The Mortal Instruments, which I swear to god has to be like 70 hours long (that's how the first 40 minutes felt at least) so in the mean time I'll have to entertain us by talking about that not so good movie that I watched over the weekend. That movie was Drinking Buddies, a thrilling film with the tagline above, that I think was dubiously about any of those words. Starring Anna Kendrick (see her more relevant work here), Jake Johnson (his more relevant work here) Olivia Wilde (All over the place, here have Deadfall) and Ron Livingston (The guy from Office Space you know) as they drink lots of beer and carry on with their intensely mundane existences. It features drinking in a bar, making phone calls to potential clients, walking in the woods, and moving furniture. Yeah I can see you all practically falling off your chairs you're so into it. I'm gonna go into more detail though, so hold onto your hats kiddies.

Pitch Perfect

AW YEAH LOOK AT THOSE GLASSES.

"Get Pitch Slapped."

Hello everyone, and welcome back to The Tagline! It's another week and I have more movies, more rambling, maybe more anecdotal evidence that my life is an ever-changing landscape of humiliation and debasement. Okay, so there are DEFINITELY movies at the very least. Last week, people all around me reminded me that Anna Kendrick was having a birthday. Now for those of you who neither know nor care who Anna Kendrick is, well she is the leading lady in Pitch Perfect among other things. I know I shouldn't mention that she was a supporting character in the Twilight movies, but I'm going to, she did that, and now we all have to live with the repercussions of her actions. That being said, I was trying hard not to hold that against her when I went into this movie. Besides, she was also in Up in the Air, and that was a pretty good movie, something that Twilight movies wouldn't know anything about, on the grounds that they are all uniformly horrible. Well that's not true, each is awful in a special way but I'm getting off track here.

The Great Gatsby

Rich White People: The Movie

"Can't repeat the past? ...of course you can!"

Hello everyone, welcome back to The Tagline! Today I'm finally going to talk about the recent film adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's seminal American novel The Great Gatsby, a book which no doubt many of you last confronted in high school English class. If you are a little hazy on the details, I will give you a quick refresher course, sage as I am. The Great Gatsby is a story told from the the POV of Nick Carraway (Tobey Maguire, of Spiderman fame/infamy), a young man returned from WWI and a graduate of Yale who takes a job in New York as a bonds salesman. It is 1922, so things are really well... you know roarin'. Nick lives next to Jay Gatsby's (Leonardo DiCaprio portrays Mr. Gatsby.) ridiculously huge pleasure palace. Nick visits his cousin Daisy Buchanan (Carey Mulligan also here in Drive, who is tremendously rich and married to Tom (Joel Edgerton who did you know was a young Owen Lars in the Star Wars prequels), who is the reason she is so rich. After this encounter he is invited to one of Gatsby's wild parties, where after a surreal experience he meets the man himself. Gatsby for his part is totally obsessed with Daisy, whom he had a relationship with in 1917, and his whole wild party-throwing act is all part of his elaborate efforts to impress her, and to prove he's good enough to be with her. This of course sort of overlooking her marriage (granted her husband is cheating on her with the wife of a poor mechanic but still). Nick rather than being directly involved in all of this, has the misfortune of just sort of... being caught up with it. He get's to know someone he considers to be an extraordinary man, and then watches as he is laid low by fate, or his own hubris, or something.

 

Mirror Mirror

It was strangely challenging to find an
English poster for this movie.

"The Snow White legend comes alive."

Hello everyone, welcome to a new day at The Tagline! Today, since the Lone Ranger just came out, but I am too cheap to go see it because I anticipate it sucking ass, I thought I could revisit Armie Hammer's recent cinematic past (also his name... is that really his name?) by talking about Mirror Mirror. For those who recall, I reviewed the other recent movie about Snow White, Snow White and the Huntsman, when it was released but I never got around to seeing Mirror Mirror, which came out around the same time. While Snow White and The Huntsman favored a darker interpretation of the age old story, that was nonetheless ploddingly paced and unevenly acted, Mirror Mirror favors a more colorful aesthetic. Starring Lily Collins as Snow White (See her and her eyebrows here as well alongside Taylor "I can't act" Lautner) and Julia Roberts as the wicked queen who oppresses the kingdom, Mirror Mirror offers its own variation on the oft told story of Snow White. In this particular instance... well things are about the same as they are in other Snow Whites. A widower king is bewitched by a very nasty lady, who takes over after his convenient disappearance and treats the princess, Snow White, not so nicely, and eventually decides she has to die because she's in the way. In particular, Julia Roberts the evil queen plans to marry the handsome and rich prince of Valencia Alcott (that would be Armie Hammer) and to make sure there are no road blocks there she sends her lackey Brighton (Nathan Lane) to kill her in the woods. Naturally he doesn't and she takes up with a bunch of bandits who are actually dwarves (seven of them go figure) who teach her to sword fight and be sassy or what-have-you, and she resolves to retake the kingdom from Julia Roberts, who no surprise is not a great ruler, on account of she is a vain and evil witch (literally of course).

Much Ado About Nothing

A splendid second chance for my OTP.

"Shakespeare knows how to throw a party."

Welcome to the Tagline, as promised I found a movie that has nothing to do with teens or vampires. I went out to the local art cinema (I am lucky enough to live about ten minutes away from a pretty decent one) and saw Much Ado About Nothing, probably my favorite of Shakespeare's comedies, adapted and filmed on a micro-budget by Joss Whedon. The entire movie was shot inside Whedon's house, and the cast is a sort of Joss Whedon Alumni hall of fame. In case you have never read Much Ado About Nothing, or perhaps the last time you read it was when you were a freshman in high school here's a quick primer. Much Ado is primarily about two pairs of lovers. The younger pair are Claudio and Hero, who are very open and forward in their love, compared to Benedick and Beatrice, two witty individuals who rail frequently against love and marriage, and yet are very much in love with one another (though they refuse to admit it) In the midst of all this romance, Don John, brother of Don Pedro (who is the Prince of Aragon, and in the company of Claudio and Benedick) attempts to ruin the nuptial bliss of Claudio and Hero by dishonoring Hero, because Don John is basically a massive dickbag. In this Whedon adaptation, Benedick is portrayed by Alexis Denisof (who portrayed Wesley Wyndam Pryce first in Buffy The Vampire Slayer, and later in Angel) and Beatrice is portrayed by Amy Acker (who was romantically opposite Alexis Denisof in Angel as Winifred Burkle) Claudio is played by Fran Kranz (recently he starred in Whedon's Cabin in the Woods) and Hero is played by newcomer Jillian Morgese who previously was only an extra in a few movies (including the Avengers)

Beautiful Creatures

Jeremy Irons IS a beautiful creature
I suppose.

"Dark secrets will come to light."

Good morning, and welcome back to The Tagline! Today's feature presentation is Beautiful Creatures, a recent entry into that hyper-overexposed genre, supernatural teen romance based on a young adult novel. Just typing that sentence made me gag a little, see?! This particular entry stars Alden Ehrenreich (who incidentally had a supporting role in Stoker which I reviewed last week) as Ethan Wate, a boy growing up in a nowhere town in the deep south called Gatlin. Ethan dreams about a girl whose face he can't see, until one day Lena Duchannes (Alice Englert) moves to town. After the typical teenage butting of heads, Lena reveals that she's been dreaming about Ethan too, and also that she is some sort of immortal magic person (they call them casters in this series which just seems lazy) Lena has moved to Gatlin with her uncle, Macon Ravenwood (Jeremy Irons, and it pains me to say this is the best movie I've seen him in for a LONG time) because of her approaching 16th birthday. You see when girls of Lena's persuasion turn 16, they become either light or dark casters, and signs are pointing towards Lena going super duper dark, partly because of a curse, and also because of the interference of her mother Sarafine (who only ever appears in the possession of another woman, portrayed by Emma Thompson) and her cousin Ridley (Emmy Rossum, who I think I last saw ages ago in The Day After Tomorrow yuck, no wait it was Dragonball: Evolution...not better.). Ethan meanwhile, as a mortal, is caught in the middle of this supernatural confluence of events, and mostly, is determined to keep Lena from going bad.

The Host

RADIOACTIVE RADIOACTIVE.

"Love never dies."

Hey everyone, welcome to another spectacular week at The Tagline! Just for you guys, I went to the movies today and watched The Host, the movie adaptation of the only Stephanie Meyer novel yet to receive a movie adaptation. The Host takes place on an Earth that has been conquered by a race of aliens called souls, who are placed into human bodies and subsume their consciousness, taking over their host body, though often retaining memories. Melanie Stryder(portrayed by Saoirse Ronan, who you may have seen either in Hannah or The Lovely Bones) is a girl who is caught by the souls,  and implanted with one called Wanderer. Despite this, she continues to resist her alien parasite, and tricks her into seeking out Melanie's surviving family and her boyfriend Jared. Over time Melanie bonds with Wanderer, and other romantic stuff happens that who really cares about them answer not me. This is Stephanie Meyer at her finest, and now I will elucidate exactly in what ways this movie is just like the Twilight movies (though admittedly there is slightly more of a plot in The Host than in most of the Twilight novels).

Les Miserables

Can you hear the people sing?

"Fight. Dream. Hope. Love."

Hello all, welcome to a very sleepy edition of The Tagline. Tonight I'm going to talk about the recent adaptation of Les Miserables, which modeled itself after the musical rather than the novel (unlike the 1998 adaptation which was less musical) Starring Anne Hathaway as Fantine, Hugh Jackman as Jean Valjean, and (weirded out) Russel Crowe as Inspector Javert. For the uninitiated Les Mis focuses primarily on the trials of ex-convict Jean Valjean, as he attempts to redeem himself, having been driven low by circumstance. This tale takes place against the backdrop of 19th century France, and is as much a story about human circumstance at large and the trials of that nation as it is about the specific characters involved in the plot. As a quick rundown (hyper-simplified version of the plot) Fantine is a lady who works in a mill, to pay the scummy innkeepers extorting her in exchange for taking care of (see abusing) her daughter, who was born out of wedlock. Fantine loses her job at a factory when the foreman finds out about her daughter, so she has to resort to prostitution. Eventually she is picked up by Javert for assaulting some guy who was being an ass, but Jean Valjean (who is by then the wealthy mayor of the town thanks to changing his name and the help of a priest who essentially let Valjean rob him) intervenes and saves her, taking her to a hospital because she is dying from hooker diseases or something. Valjean agrees to bring her daughter to him, but before that he is forced to reveal his true identity, blah dee bloo but he escapes from jail anyway, and then takes care of Cosette, Fantine's daughter and.... okay the point is a whole ton of shit happens, if you want to hear the rest of this tale, watch the movie, read the book, watch the other movie with Liam Neeson, see a production of it... it is available to you.

Warm Bodies

Do you see the likeness? They just MUST be related.

"He's still dead but he's getting warmer."

Hey everybody, welcome to another exciting post from The Tagline! Having vented considerable spleen on Tuesday, I felt ready to again not be mad about everything I saw or heard. So I went out to the movies and saw Warm Bodies, as if to dare the movie to not make me angry. As a preface, I should talk about my feelings in relation to a lot of horror/monster related media. I think that, the best way to use monsters, like zombies, in a movie, is to figure out what about them scares us, and to really emphasize that. To me, sure it would be scary to get eaten alive by a zombie, but it would be scary to be eaten alive by a wolf too. In a movie, a guy getting eaten isn't really scary, it's just kind of gross to watch. Zombies become really scary when you play up the sense of being trapped either in the whole zombie filled world, or in a particular place, I'm getting off subject though. What I'm pretty sick of is everything being about moody dreamy vampires, conflicted broody werewolves, and zombies just trying to make it in the big city. That shit is so played out, that it almost exclusively fills me with rage and nausea. So I walked into the theater feeling really dubious about Warm Bodies, which is exactly about that last one I said. A zombie who eats brains, and then starts to feel feelings. Yet I did not hate it. I wonder why?