Zombieland

Director:
Ruben Fleischer

Writers:
Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick

Cast:
Woody Harrelson as Tallahassee
Jesse Eisenberg as Columbus
Emma Stone as Wichita
Abigail Breslin as Little Rock
Bill Murray as Himself

Released: 2009
Studio: Sony
Box Office: $47,603,512 (as of 10/11/09)

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 88%
IMDB Score: 8.4

Date Seen: October 6, 2009
Format: Theater

Zombie movies are typically not the kind of films I like to see. Boy, am I glad I decided to give this one a shot. I saw the trailer a while back and I thought it looked quite interesting. Then the positive reviews started pouring in, so I went to see it in the theater. Usually horror-comedies are not well received critically, and even when they are, they are not strong box-office draws. Zombieland is that rare critical and commercial success.

Jesse Eisenberg plays Columbus, a survivor who stays alive by adhering to strict set of rules. He meets up with Tallahassee and they set off in search of a Twinkie, possibly the last Twinkie in the whole world. In their search, they come across a set of sisters. But they are not typical sisters, they are con-women. They swindle the boys for their car and guns and set off. The boys catch up to them and they decide to stick together and head to Pacific Playland, an amusement park in LA that is supposedly free of zombies.

The main criticism for horror-comedies is that they are not funny enough nor scary enough. Zombieland plays much closer to the comedy side than the horror. Don’t get me wrong though, there is still plenty of violence and zombie gore. Just not any of the jump out from the dark, shocking kind of scary.

Jesse Eisenberg could play me in a movie about my life. He is one of my new favorite actors. My favorite part of the movie was whenever one of Columbus’s rules for survival was applied, it popped up on the screen in big bold letters that interacted with what was happening on the screen. Overall, the film was very funny, but the scene with Bill Murray was one of the funniest scenes I’ve seen in a while. My one gripe with the movie is that it is too short. With a running time of only 86 minutes, so much more could have been added to give the movie a slightly deeper plot.

Favorite Performance:
Jesse Eisenberg as Columbus

Favorite Quote:
Tallahassee: I’m not great at farewells, so uh… that’ll do, pig.

Grade:
B+

Recommendation:
If your not afraid gore, go see it.

Taxi Driver

Director:
Martin Scorsese

Writer:
Paul Schrader

Cast:
Robert DeNiro as Travis Bickle
Jodie Foster as Iris
Cybill Shepherd as Betsy

Released: 1976
Studio: Columbia
Box Office: $28,262,574

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 98%
IMDB Score: 8.6

Date Seen: September 21, 2009
Format: DVD

This was a hard movie for me to wrap my head around. Most films are made so that the watcher gets a sense of enjoyment out of it. I got no enjoyment from watching Taxi Driver. Martin Scorsese paints a bleak picture of a man consumed by loneliness.

Robert DeNiro plays Travis Bickle, a Vietnam veteran suffering from insomnia and looking for a job. He takes a job as a cabbie working the night shift. He travels through the city, going to places and picking up customers that the other cab drivers won’t. There are several shots of Bickle driving his taxi around the city past the pimps and prostitutes and drug dealers. His fellow drivers think that he needs some protection, so he buys several handguns that he starts to keep on him. He meets Betsy, a campaign worker for a senatorial candidiate, but after he takes her to a dirty movie on their first date, she rebukes him and this sets him off. He goes into a manic state and determines that he is going to kill the politician. I’m not going to give anymore of the plot away, but Bickle is the loneliest character I have ever seen in a motion picture. Everytime he tries to make a connection with somebody, they end up leaving him.

Scorsese’s masterful direction turns what is quite frankly a boring storyline into a suspenseful drama. I like how he develops Travis’s madness slowly over the course of the movie. It shows him alone in his apartment practicing pulling the guns out of their holsters and firing the empty guns at the TV.

I can’t deny that this is a very well made and complex film. I understand why the critics like it so well. I just didn’t enjoy it enough to recommend it to anyone else. I felt depressed when the movie was over.

Taxi Driver is listed as number 52 in AFI’s 100 Greatest Films.

Favorite Performance:
Robert DeNiro as Travis Bickle

Favorite Quote:
Travis Bickle: The days go on and on… they don’t end. All my life needed was a sense of someplace to go. I don’t believe that one should devote his life to morbid self-attention, I believe that one should become a person like other people.

Grade:
B+

Recommendation:
Don’t see it unless you want to watch a classic film or are in the mood to watch a depressing film.