Achoo! You're Dead!: Trying to Make Sense of "World War Z"

                So you’re going to tell me that the best way to not be infected by the zombie plague is to already be sick?   If you’re DNA strain is not “pure” then the zombies will simply pass you by?

                Not only does this make a whole lot less sense than zombies being able to run super fast, it also beckons the moral issue.  If the zombie apocalypse is coming (and I’m pretty certain some people out there really believe it is) then this movie is saying you should drink, smoke and have unprotected sex… unless you want the zombies to get you. 

                The few pieces that I have found wrong with the entire Hollywood theory are that first off, zombies are dumb.   Zombies aren’t going to be able to tell anymore good from bad than any other animal.  You want an example?  Zombies are going to be dumber than your dog.   You know, the dog that farts itself awake and eats its own poop.  Yeah… A zombie will probably get drunk off of your wasted ass, but not simply walk on by.  (Not really, zombies not being able to get drunk is another story)

                If that’s not doing it for you, if you still believe some sort of theory about zombies being smarter than that, then consider this.  Zombies eat brains, correct?  So imagine a zombie eating someone’s brain, biting into their head, much like an idiot would.  If there was a disease in it, the zombie would react as if the brain tasted bad, spit it out and move along.

                Oh yeah, and whatever happened to the whole kill shot in the head idea?  If you blow up their head, they die—a flesh wound won’t stop them.    So, no offense to anyone out there suffering with disease, but why would a zombie care if it has cancer or the black plague?   It’s a freaking zombie—it’s already dead!!

                This movie was fun to watch, sure, and I was interested to see how they’d get out of it but illness is just not the answer.   If you’re fighting the dead, you can’t really taunt them with things that, you know, hurry on death. 

                It’s like if something was attacking you that was immune to fire (or made of fire even) and your defense was to throw unlit matches at it.   It is that absurd.  

A Good Day to End Your Franchise: "A Good Day To Die Hard" Movie Review

                The fifth installment of the Die Hard series brings us… more of the same.  I’ve seen the third Die Hard film, With a Vengeance, the most out of any of them.  The fourth one, Live Free or Die Hard, I believe I’ve only seen once, but making another one of these is just like revisiting the same plot again.

                Okay, so maybe they have different characters from one to the next, but the point is still that they seem to be stuck in this world where the stories have already been told but someone still feels the need to tell more anyway.

                I imagine as being this great author having a series of books and then upon completing it saying, “No wait, there are more stories.  This one time we went out to lunch and the server got our order wrong!”  Who cares, right?

                So high speed chases, action, blah blah blah, Bruce Willis aka John McClane eventually bonds with his distant son.   And as I’m looking up Bruce Willis on IMDB for some idea as to why he might be reprising this character still, I can’t help but see his name attached to yet another Die Hard movie called “Die Hardest”.

                I don’t know if it’s worse that since 2012 Willis has been credited with such great movies as “Moonrise Kingdom”, “The Expendables 2”, “Looper”, “G.I. Joe: Retalliation”, “Red 2”, “Sin City 2”… I mean, “Fire with Fire” is on Netflix and I’ll probably watch it eventually.

                So which is worse:  Willis having all of these great roles and having to go back to the character he is best known for or the fact that I will most likely be watching the sixth installment as well?

“Silver Linings Playbook” Hits All the Right Stereotypes

                Throughout the history of film, mental health has never really been a taboo subject.   From “Greenberg” to “Bottle Rocket” some of my favorite movies involve people who are getting out of psychiatric hospitals. 

                However, “Silver Linings Playbook” takes that notion and turns it into, well, a Hollywood sort of fairytale.   The main character comes out of the hospital hoping to reconnect with his wife (Yes, they are still married) and instead ends up with someone who is seen as being equally insane as him.

                This presents us with two huge misconceptions right from the start:  1) People cannot reconcile when coming out of a mental hospital (So hey, why bother going in, right?  Stay untreated!) and 2) Crazy people belong with other crazy people, but only if they’re both medically diagnosed as being crazy.

                Another funny event occurred in this movie and I’m not sure how I feel about it except that as someone with intelligence it offends me and doesn’t pass as decent writing no matter what level you’re at. 

                When the main character, Pat, wants to get a letter to his wife, Nicky, he attempts to do so with the help of her friend Tiffany.  Tiffany only agrees to help him though if he enters a dance contest with her.   Yes, people, he has to practice and enter a dance contest with her.

                I know that the whole idea of this movie is supposed to be “people are crazy, so now they can be crazy together”, but a dance contest?  Really?  Apparently when people get out of mental hospitals they do crazy things (or so this movie would want you to believe)

                But wait, it gets worse from there.  Aside from the whole gambling problem his father has and how that’s exploited and treated like it’s okay, let’s look into the fact that Tiffany never gave Nicky the letter that Pat wrote and instead wrote back pretending to be his wife.

                So what did this movie teach us?  If you’re a slut with a mental disorder and dead husband, there is still hope for you to find someone yet.  All you have to do is deceive them into a dance contest, lie to them under the guise of their wife and then, you know, hope it all works out like in this movie.

                Only this is Hollywood, so in real life, the character of Pat probably would have had a breakdown and beaten Tiffany to death for lying about something like his marriage, which he seemed to value so much throughout the movie up until that one point where he was just so nonchalant about it.

                I don’t know what delusional world you have to live in to appreciate this film, but I do not want to go there.   I can suspend my disbelief for a lot of things, but this movie just left me outraged by its inaccuracies.