The Crazies: definitely not bad, a little heavy on the jump scares, and waaaaaay better than you'd think you'd get from Michael Eisner's kid. (No, really.)
1. Breck Eisner--Michael Eisner's son, but I swear to God, don't let that deter you--has decided to make Iowa scenery porn. Iowa! I know! I have never, in my entire life, wanted to go to Iowa, let alone Iowa farm country, but now? Wouldn't mind taking a drive. As long as there's no government-sponsored accidental outbreaks of germ warfare, anyway. (Also pretty: missiles.)
2. It's not a zombie movie, okay? You hear "remake of a Romero movie", you think zombies, but no: George Romero has, in fact, made movies that have nothing to do with the living dead.
--okay, he made this one, shut up. Point is, it's more like 28 Days Later, if you want a template. (This has a teeny edge in terms of creepiness: in the early stages, most of the infected do horrible things with absolutely no expression. Like, "Ho hum, I think I'll set my house on fire with my wife and son inside. Oh, Sudoku! I haven't done this one yet.")
3. Timothy Olyphant is not actually aging, you guys. He's just--sort of leaner. Not in an unhealthy way. It's disturbing. Stop it, Timothy Olyphant! Age a little! Don't make it be like when I watch Tru Calling and freak the fuck out because no one ever ages on that show.
(Fun fact: Eliza Dushku, AJ Cook and Matt Bomer have not actually aged. They all just have different hair.)
Seriously, though, Olyphant does a really good job at what seems, on paper, to be a pretty thankless job: The Small-Town Sheriff With A Wife (In This Case, A Doctor). His dad never had to use his gun the entire time *he* was sheriff! Widows irrationally blame him and slap him at the funeral home! But he takes a thankless job and makes it work for him: you really feel for David, who's just trying to get his wife and get the fuck out of town. This guy is having a terrible couple of days, and it shows. I didn't see Deadwood, so someone else will have to tell me: is he always this good? Because now I really want to watch Justified when it starts on FX in a couple of weeks.
3a. As far as I can tell, Justified is Timothy Olyphant remaking Walking Tall in Kentucky, while dressed like Harry Dresden. I have no problem with any of these things.
4. The sheriff's wife is pregnant. This in no way stops her from kicking ass repeatedly. I approve of this.
5. Just before the 3/4 mark, Timothy Olyphant gets stabbed through the hand by a Crazy. He then slides his hand up to the hilt so he can grasp it and use it to stab someone in the neck. While it's still in his hand. You know who else would do that shit? Batman, that's who. Congratulations, Timothy Olyphant: you are now Batman.
6. Did I mention the Sheriff's (Pregnant) Wife (Who Is Also A Doctor), when discovering there are Crazies in a building with them, does not run and hide? Or rather, she does, but stops to get a butcher knife first, because fuck this shit? This is awesome.
7. Joe Anderson! (This one's mostly for![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
eatsscissors.) Joe Anderson is deadpan and awesome, and rocks a 70s porn 'stache like a champ, and is a fucking whiz-bang shot with a rifle slung over one arm. Like--seriously, that's porn for me. What? Don't judge me. No one needs me to start posting a little thing I like to call Times I Have Repeatedly Figured Out Very Simple Ways To Get Tim DeKay To Take His Shirt Off On White Collar.
(You're USA! Former home of USA Up All Night! This is not that fucking hard! ANYWAY.)
8. It's weird to say in this day and age, but the movie...doesn't go as far as the original does? When you get infected, you go crazy--obviously--but it's uniformly confined to murder. Granted, there are a lot of different kinds of murder, but dude, there is at least one thing in the original that is not murder that is fucking six times as creepy as anything in this movie.
9. If you know anything about the original movie, the "twist" in this one isn't so nuts, although they change it from a Vietnam parable to an accident involving germ warfare, which--I mean, it's effective. It's not surprising, but I do not go to these movies to be surprised, okay? Trust me, Awesome Doctor and Secretly Badass Sheriff were more than what I was expecting.
10. I don't love the ending? It's definitely not a cheat--I forgot until the drive home that they show you satellite imagery a couple times earlier in the film--but. I don't know. It's sort of the opposite problem I had with The Ruins: let one girl out who's definitely infected, or get ready to do allllll this shit over again to get rid of two people, neither of whom are infected? Eh. Like I said, IDK. I'm definitely not sorry I saw it, though, and I don't think you will be, either.
(Also, this weekend, it's this or Cop Out, so.)
1. Breck Eisner--Michael Eisner's son, but I swear to God, don't let that deter you--has decided to make Iowa scenery porn. Iowa! I know! I have never, in my entire life, wanted to go to Iowa, let alone Iowa farm country, but now? Wouldn't mind taking a drive. As long as there's no government-sponsored accidental outbreaks of germ warfare, anyway. (Also pretty: missiles.)
2. It's not a zombie movie, okay? You hear "remake of a Romero movie", you think zombies, but no: George Romero has, in fact, made movies that have nothing to do with the living dead.
--okay, he made this one, shut up. Point is, it's more like 28 Days Later, if you want a template. (This has a teeny edge in terms of creepiness: in the early stages, most of the infected do horrible things with absolutely no expression. Like, "Ho hum, I think I'll set my house on fire with my wife and son inside. Oh, Sudoku! I haven't done this one yet.")
3. Timothy Olyphant is not actually aging, you guys. He's just--sort of leaner. Not in an unhealthy way. It's disturbing. Stop it, Timothy Olyphant! Age a little! Don't make it be like when I watch Tru Calling and freak the fuck out because no one ever ages on that show.
(Fun fact: Eliza Dushku, AJ Cook and Matt Bomer have not actually aged. They all just have different hair.)
Seriously, though, Olyphant does a really good job at what seems, on paper, to be a pretty thankless job: The Small-Town Sheriff With A Wife (In This Case, A Doctor). His dad never had to use his gun the entire time *he* was sheriff! Widows irrationally blame him and slap him at the funeral home! But he takes a thankless job and makes it work for him: you really feel for David, who's just trying to get his wife and get the fuck out of town. This guy is having a terrible couple of days, and it shows. I didn't see Deadwood, so someone else will have to tell me: is he always this good? Because now I really want to watch Justified when it starts on FX in a couple of weeks.
3a. As far as I can tell, Justified is Timothy Olyphant remaking Walking Tall in Kentucky, while dressed like Harry Dresden. I have no problem with any of these things.
4. The sheriff's wife is pregnant. This in no way stops her from kicking ass repeatedly. I approve of this.
5. Just before the 3/4 mark, Timothy Olyphant gets stabbed through the hand by a Crazy. He then slides his hand up to the hilt so he can grasp it and use it to stab someone in the neck. While it's still in his hand. You know who else would do that shit? Batman, that's who. Congratulations, Timothy Olyphant: you are now Batman.
6. Did I mention the Sheriff's (Pregnant) Wife (Who Is Also A Doctor), when discovering there are Crazies in a building with them, does not run and hide? Or rather, she does, but stops to get a butcher knife first, because fuck this shit? This is awesome.
7. Joe Anderson! (This one's mostly for
eatsscissors.) Joe Anderson is deadpan and awesome, and rocks a 70s porn 'stache like a champ, and is a fucking whiz-bang shot with a rifle slung over one arm. Like--seriously, that's porn for me. What? Don't judge me. No one needs me to start posting a little thing I like to call Times I Have Repeatedly Figured Out Very Simple Ways To Get Tim DeKay To Take His Shirt Off On White Collar.(You're USA! Former home of USA Up All Night! This is not that fucking hard! ANYWAY.)
8. It's weird to say in this day and age, but the movie...doesn't go as far as the original does? When you get infected, you go crazy--obviously--but it's uniformly confined to murder. Granted, there are a lot of different kinds of murder, but dude, there is at least one thing in the original that is not murder that is fucking six times as creepy as anything in this movie.
9. If you know anything about the original movie, the "twist" in this one isn't so nuts, although they change it from a Vietnam parable to an accident involving germ warfare, which--I mean, it's effective. It's not surprising, but I do not go to these movies to be surprised, okay? Trust me, Awesome Doctor and Secretly Badass Sheriff were more than what I was expecting.
10. I don't love the ending? It's definitely not a cheat--I forgot until the drive home that they show you satellite imagery a couple times earlier in the film--but. I don't know. It's sort of the opposite problem I had with The Ruins: let one girl out who's definitely infected, or get ready to do allllll this shit over again to get rid of two people, neither of whom are infected? Eh. Like I said, IDK. I'm definitely not sorry I saw it, though, and I don't think you will be, either.
(Also, this weekend, it's this or Cop Out, so.)
Tags: