Netflix Nuggets

 Today was a day of clerical work for my job. I am on Spring Break right now, so that meant sitting on the floor in my family room and sorting and grading papers. This is usually the time I put Columbo on and let them play until I finish my work. Today, however, I chose to catch up on some movies. I do love them movie marathons when I go for them.

Today's choices are three films lurking in the Netflix Horror section. I decided to go for a theme, so I chose to go zombie. I am not too sure why, as the genre is on such an overkill right now I was almost destined to dislike each one of these.

First up was Re-Kill (2015). This one has been on the top of the Netflix banner for a while now and they seem to have been pushing it. So this one was destined to be one I was going to watch. I liked the premise enough, so what the heck?

The premise is this in a nutshell: Five years after the zombie outbreak there are special police forced assigned to take down zombies. These units are called the R-Division. I guess that is Re-kill Division. We get to tag along as part of a documentary film crew to experience the life of the police/soldiers/people in the R Division. Which means this is a documentary, shown from the cameraman's view style movie. Shaky-cam is all over the place. 

The absolute best way to describe this movie is to call it Starship Troopers (right down to co-ed showers) by way of Blair Witch Project. We get to our movie by means of entering into the TV in the house of a little girl. Basically imagine yourself watching an episode of Cops, but with zombies. This means you get the commercials included. Commercials for safe-zone housing, pills to take daily to lessen your chance of infection if you are bit, and commercials for sex due to the world needing re-population. 

Re-Kill is a decent enough movie, but it did wear on me with all of the darkness and shaky camera. I didn't really like any of the characters too much, so my emotional attachment was fairly light. I would recommend it if you have nothing else to watch but want to see zombies in a little bit of a different style. The commercials are almost worth the time. Aside from the grammatical and spelling errors I did notice in the commercials. 

Next up was Stalled (2013). How do you make a zombie film more claustrophobic than Night of the Living Dead? Have the whole thing take place in a bathroom stall! That is pretty much the whole premise of this British film. A hapless janitor gets trapped in the women's bathroom during a Christmas party as the zombie apocalypse happens. Eventually another person (a lady) also gets trapped in the stalls and they spend the whole movie avoiding the zombies outside their door while chatting with each other. The movie does a decent job giving us enough humor to keep us interested. We never see the female character's face, but the way the film makers show her conversation bits is very well done. She becomes quite a likable character, even if all we have is her voice and a very simple vision of her. 

I should mention that when the movie started I was wondering if the movie would be silent. We go a long time before we have any dialogue at all, and then when we do have some it is the pointless chat of two women in the bathroom. But for a good amount of time we spend without any dialogue at all. I was almost a little saddened when we did start to get dialogue. 

My favorite of the three zombie flicks today was the last one I watched. Kill Zombie! (2012, original title Zombibi). This is basically Netherland's answer to Shaun of the Dead. A zombie horror/comedy film that centers around two friends (brothers, actually) trying to rescue the girl. There is more to it than that, but that is the basic premise. The two brothers are accompanied with two gang member that they are in jail with, one of the police officers that is in the station during the outbreak, and another prisoner. 

OK, here it is a little more clear. Two brothers get arrested for getting in a fight at a party. The two guys and them are all arrested. While in jail a Russian space center crashed into the building one of the brothers works in. This unleashes the zombie apocalypse. Our prisoners, however, have no idea this has happened, due to being in jail and being asleep. 

The next day they awaken to find the jail cell door open. So they escape. As they do they find the world destroyed and they encounter the zombies. From there they are saved by the female police officer in the poster and the trek to save a co-worker/love interest starts up. 

No, Kill Zombie! is not new territory. No, there are no ground breaking effects (in fact the blood is CGI, so that is a big negative). No, it is not dark and gloomy and scary. 

What Kill Zombie! does do is give us some great characters. Every single one of the traveling team we love (OK, one of them we only like, but he turns bad). The interplay between them all is great, especially the two brothers, and then the "loser" brother and his relationship with the gang members. The movie carries a lot of fun with it. 

An added bit that works extremely well are the news bits. We are brought up to speed of the apocalypse with a news anchor who interjects from time to time. These bits are wonderfully wacky and rather twisted at times. I could possibly see some people finding them pointless, but if you are in line with the comedy aspect of the movie these bits are just added fun. 

All three of these movies are worth a little bit of time. None of them were regrets. But I would say to go in reverse order of what I have here. Kill Zombie! is a definite view. Stalled is one that is worth it just for the unique style of it. Re-Kill is worth it if you enjoy the others movies that obviously helped to inspire this one. All three movies, oddly enough, rely on CGI blood splatter. 

A Minor Gem Found in a Stone

I went to the in-law's house for Easter. My father-in-law subscribes to Rolling Stone, a magazine I really don't like. I liked it back when it was still a giant publication, even if it was 90% ads. I still marvel at how small it has become. Not only did the over-all size change, but it has also lost the majority of its pages. 

I also have to admit here that my under-ground mindset probably adds to some of my disliking of Rolling Stone. Whereas when R.S. came out it was a cool magazine, through the years it became cool to be against R.S. Mainly because the music R.S. backs is crap. Seemingly the big label versions of cooler bands. I kind of see it like pushing The Black Crowes instead of The Quireboys. Both similar, but one more true to a style than the other. The safer one, however, gets the cover, the other gets ignored. Rolling Stone was once a daring magazine to expose the unknown, but it became just another music industry ad page.

Now, here is where I become a little hypocritical, but hang in there for a few seconds. 

The issue I picked up to peruse at the in-laws had an interview that caught my eye. It was an interview with Phil Collins. Now, what made this actually interesting was that they threw 10 or so big songs from the post-Gabriel Genesis and Phil's solo offerings at Phil. He then spoke about them honestly. In fact, brutally honest. 

Phil is an odd thing these days. No self-respecting Progressive Rock fan liked Phil back in the 80s, or even the 90s. Oh, sure, no self-respecting Rock fan did either, but we Prog fans had good reason, or so we thought. He was the guy that destroyed the mighty Genesis. He was the guy that removed the artistic integrity of the once great Genesis, and replaced it with sap. Never mind that he was also on two wonderful non-Gabriel releases (A Trick of the Tale and Wind and Wuthering), and one Hackett-less release that still sounds like the old Genesis and is far better than many give credit to ( . . . And Then There Were Three). 

But now Phil is gaining our respect. Even the proggies started to accept Phil a few years ago. Now the rest of the world is starting to like the guy again. Phil confronts our hatred in the interview. He points out that he understands the hatred, he was the guy up front, and he was everywhere. But he also points out that the first hit, "Follow You, Follow Me" was not written by him. 

Phil dives into a decent amount of songs and speaks honestly. We find out how he feels after all these years, some of the comments we are familiar with ("In The Air Tonight" has been discussed plenty of times), but some are a little surprising. He is not a fan of "Sussusudio" or the album it came from, No Jacket Required. He says he wasn't being himself. When I recently listened to it (having not heard it since the 80s) I was shocked by how much 80s damage there was to it. It sounds nothing like the releases he had put out before it. I have often wondered if artists from the 70s who recorded in the 80s and fell victim to the 80s excesses heard their 80s material and thought "Why?" Phil confirms that he did. 

A few other things that made me happy are the fact that he still loves his Tarzan work, a work that I felt was his best since the pre-Duke Genesis. That was a guy exploring and being experimental, you know, like Genesis did. It was also just wonderful Pop, like Genesis had dreams of being (which is why they were such huge Beatles fans). 

I also appreciate his honesty on the whole talk about Against All Odds. Stating that it was a time when somebody just basically handed him a lot of money. They needed a single, he had one done, he handed over the tune and they handed over the money. Then there was the comment about what he liked about the movie. A certain attribute of star Rachel Ward's. 

The whole interview/music dissection is a wonderful piece. The only problem is it is too short. Again, in the pre-shrunk era of R.S. this would probably have been a super in-depth and fascinating piece. As is, it is still a great piece, but I can only imagine what it would have been like had it been done before R.S. became a tiny little pamphlet. 

Run - Black Crouch (2011)

So how do you feel about roller coasters? How about an roller coaster that does not give you any time to catch your breath, or when you do get those slower moments there is something gnawing at the back of your skull to not trust this roller coaster?
This is kind of what reading Blake Crouch's 2011 book Run is like. It is a book that once it starts it just never really lets up. My copy of it (obviously an ebook, as the picture shows) didn't even have any chapters. I can't remember where I got this version. Back when I got my first Kindle Amazon was giving away a bunch of Blake Crouch books. I might have got it then. But at the same time when I first got my Kindle I fell in with a bad crowd who were trading books. All I do know is that the lack of chapters really kills you when you use those as your "time for bed" cues.
The story involves a family who has gone through some rough times as of late suddenly having to pull together for survival. Something happens in the world where certain groups of people suddenly become intent on killing everybody else. I am not so sure I want to mention what, even though it won't really ruin the story. But basically you either become the hunted or a hunter. The story then becomes a race for the Canadian border, as our family believes there is refuge there. Why? Not so sure, but that is where we are racing for.
The story works, even with a paper thin plot. It is basically a character study and a constant race. We care about the family and hope for the best. Thanks to the pacing of the book we also get worn down when the family gets worn down. There are some hard to believe moments in the book, but we accept them as we accept the whole situation.
My copy of the book does have issues. These are either due to modern day lack of an editor types of errors (oddly worded sentences, poor grammar, that type of thing that is common place in publishing over the past 15+ years), or due to this actually being a "booted" book and poorly transferred to ebook form. I tend to believe this is one of the Crouch Amazon books I got, as it does have the interview in the back of the book.
This was my first introduction to Crouch, aside from the wonderfully wacky multi-author effort Draculas. I will be dipping into his other books fur sure, as this was an enjoyable read. However, beware of one thing. This book completely lacks any form of humor. It is deathly serious and grim from page one, and this does make it a tough read at times. There are no real bright spots or anything to help remove the misery that is everywhere. Yet, oddly enough, it ended exactly how I had hoped it would.

Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016)

So the family and I went to see the latest Batman and Superman (and Wonder Woman and I guess Cyborg, Flash and Aquaman) outing last night. I had all intentions of not going to see it on opening weekend, as the movie honestly did not interest me too much. I'm a Marvel fan and only like to dabble in DC from time to time, but it is not what I would run to see. But, my son wanted to go on opening night (he is a DC fan to a degree) and my wife was heading out of town for the weekend so we decided to go right away. Luckily we could only get tickets to the latest showing, which worked out well considering this is a very slow moving and fairly boring film. 

The film takes a very long time to get moving. Then there is a wonderful action sequence, aside from the massive amount of Bat-killing, which turns out to be a very confusing nightmare. But then after that sequence we move back to the boring angry Bruce Wayne and Clark Kent material. 

It is hard to believe that in a 2 hour and 33 minute movie things can feel rushed, but this one does have rushed moments. I have no idea how we got to the Luthor party, but suddenly we are finding out Bats is invited and for some reason Kent is also. One never gets the idea, by the way, that people don't know who Superman is. It seems like everybody knows, they just wish to play dumb. 

Is it well made? Yes, wonderfully acted and filmed. Affleck is good, better than a massive Affleck disliker like me would have expected. He carries the role well, if not a little too angry about everything. I read another reviewer who stated that for being so angry about Superman accidentally killing people, Batman sure does his own share of accidental and purposeful killing. This is a brutal killing machine of a Batman. 

Lucky for us we do get a little backstory on Bruce losing his parents. That was something that was helpful, as I am sure most people have not heard that story before. With any luck Civil War will clear up confusion on what happened to Spidey's Uncle Ben.

Caville is still a good Superman, the script just nothing to actually make him a likable Superman. From what I can tell, he loves Lois Lane and his mom, and expects the rest of us to bow down and worship him. He spends all of his Superman time walking around in his suit looking like a ruler, and at times like a scary demon guy with red blazing eyes that show the veins around the sockets. He really does look creepy. One really does get the idea that Snyder is not a huge fan of Superman. 

Gal Gadot is good as Wonder Woman, while she is Wonder Woman. When she is Diana Prince she just shows up in fancy dresses as some form of burglar. I don't even think she gets her name mentioned until she is running off a plane towards the end. 

This wasn't a bad movie. It was a decent movie, and that makes it that much worse in one's mind. Kind of like how Age of Ultron isn't as bad as it seems. We have seen lesser movies be so great, accomplish so much, that when one with characters such as Batman and Superman achieves only middling success it hurts that much more. The film doesn't have to be a complete love letter to the fanboys, but it should draw from and respect what has made these characters timeless and iconic. These characters are ingrained into our culture, they have endured and continue to be loved by all. To carry an attitude of "this isn't for the fanboys, it is for everybody else" is excluding the aspects of the character that created the character, that created the fanboy, that created the lasting appeal. 

So while this is not a bad movie, it is not the movie that these characters deserve.