World War Z Review: Will you survive the zombie apocalypse?

Zombies are, quite ironically actually, everywhere these days. Whether it’s on TV with The Walking Dead, the British series In the Flesh or the cast of any reality TV show, they have taken over the airwaves in a lot of people’s lives. They have also made decent work of the movie theaters as well. With films like 28 Days Later and its sequel 28 Weeks Later, the Resident Evil series that just doesn’t seem to want to die, or spoofs like Shawn of the Dead and Zombie Strippers (yes, that movie actually exists, look it up). It doesn’t seem to matter whether it is slow zombies or fast zombies or zombies who dance on a stripper pole, people seem to like them despite ongoing talk of the coming zombie apocalypse.

Just as with vampires and werewolves and other supernatural creators of myth, zombies have their own mythology attached to them. Generally with zombies it’s that things in society have gotten out of hand and we need to rebuild what we are currently living in. So in that way, World War Z is just like any other zombie apocalypse story, things fall apart rather suddenly on a monumental scale and we get to watch it happen. What is different about World War Z is that it takes a really interesting approach to how things fall apart.

In following Brad Pitt’s character of Gerry Lane, a retired U.N. investigator, we get to see how a security conscious world deals with the tragic circumstances they find themselves in. The presumption of most zombie apocalypse movies is that everything goes under, every country in the world loses their governments and the entire system we have set up is destroyed. World War Z asks if that would actually happen. If a government is on constant alert for terrorist attacks and threats from foreign governments, would they actually be left unprepared for the zombie apocalypse?

As a result, World War Z is very different from traditional zombie movies. Just as I said in my review of Man of Steel however, that may not be something that people enjoy. It means that a lot of the things that long time zombie fans like about watching the zombie apocalypse don’t necessarily happen. If you are such a person, you may be left wanting by World War Z. You get some of what you want but not everything. Still, for a movie that so many people were nervous about given how much bad press it got for reshooting half of the movie and other problems, it works really well.

I enjoyed the movie and I am not traditionally a fan of zombie movies. It worked well and while some elements weren’t explored as much as I would have wanted them to like the relationship of Gerry Lane to his family, I still think it’s a movie worth seeing. They also made good use of 3D which many recent movies haven’t because they have been conversions. This is a movie that you might actually want to see in 3D.

Will you survive the zombie apocalypse? Maybe, but you will definitely survive a screening of World War Z and come away thinking it is a great experience.

The Informant Review: Would you hire The Informant? - Movie Reviews, Film Reviews, Movies, Films, Entertainment, Film Entertainment, TV, Television, TV Reviews, Television Reviews

Back in 2009, one of the first films that I went to see at the Toronto International Film Festival was The Informant, starring Matt Damon and Scott Bakula. I had never really checked out a film festival before and so the experience itself was rather strange. It’s interesting then that one of my first films at the festival was a pretty strange film itself. First and foremost is the fact that Matt Damon almost disappears into the role of Mark Whitacre as a bio-chemist at a middle-American corn producer known as ADM.

There are a number of actors who can’t really move beyond their fame. Actors like George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Robert DeNiro and Woody Harrelson are the kind of actors who I can only ever see as the actors they are and not the roles that they play. There are exceptions to that rule, for instance, Woody Harrelson in ‘Defendor’, Brad Pitt as Tyler Durden in ‘Fight Club’, and George Clooney as Everett McGill in ‘O Brother, Where Art Thou?’ Matt Damon on the other hand can sometimes be a bit of a wild card in the roles that he takes. Roles like ‘Dogma’ or ‘Ocean’s 11’, while incredible, are roles in which he seems to have been cast for the fact of his status as an actor whereas a role like Jason Bourne or Will Hunting, he finds a way to disappear into the role he is playing and you almost forget who he is.

I would put ‘The informant’ in the category of one where he disappears, the subtle way in which he portrays a nervous yet simple man who believes in doing the right thing despite his co-workers views of things and business practices is nothing short of brilliant. But the portrayal is not the only good thing about the film. As the story progresses, you start to realize that things are not entirely what they seem in the world Mark Whitacre inhabits. This begins a series of twists and turns to the plot that would normally be seen in a crime drama or a political thriller but feels right at home in this rather strange and quiet comedy.

Perhaps it’s the fact that so many of the characters seem genuine and honest in the way they deal with the situation at hand, the question of price fixing in the international markets of corn, that makes some of the eventual betrayals so damning and difficult to watch yet so very funny at the same time. The film ultimately becomes one in which there is no clear bad guy in all of it. Not because people haven’t done something wrong, but because you end up caring about the characters despite what they’ve done. None of the characters really seem underhanded or angry in what they do. Perhaps that’s why when things start to go wrong you don’t really see it coming.

So much about this movie is understated and unexpected. From the acting to the camera work and the storytelling, which I think is what makes it work so well. This isn’t a movie about clear lines between right and wrong, or good versus bad. It’s about people, and the way in which people go wrong in their pursuit of success.

Would you hire The Informant? I probably wouldn’t, but I would definitely hire the people who made the film.