It's A Funny Month

April is a funny month, or so Ad insists. It's true though, not funny in a good way all the time, most of the time funny in a cynical shitty way. So many break-ups over the last month between various friends and their partners that it's just not funny, as well as a few get-togethers that just seemed strange at first. Still, we're all coping, so it can't have been that bad.

April has been a really odd month in terms of just not really doing anything. We've got this rubbish three week final term after the easter holidays, which always annoys me. It shouldn't be 11-12-3, it should be 9-8-8, so that we don't end up being morons for the final section of our year, because that's what happens.

Mind you, Iron Man 2 did just come out, so I'm a ridiculously happy man. My review of that will be coming soon, I assure you. In the mean time:

THE CRAZIES.

Haven't seen the 70's Romero original, but I can't say as I was surprised at the plot when I heard that this was originally a Romero movie. It's basically a zombie film. Various friends of mine were insisting that it isn't a zombie film because the 'Crazies', those infected with the bizarre experimental weapon that gets dropped on gree-grass/white-picket-fence/small-town US of A, they have some cognitive willpower. Mainly they think of interesting ways to kill people rather than just eat their brains.

However, that's not the technical definition of a zombie and I've had this debate with Dave many, many, many times. Zombies are people devoid of willpower. These infected display cunning, certainly, but they are after one thing and one thing only. To inflict pain and kill. They are devoid of everything else. So yes, they're not technically dead, they're not stupid... but they are zombies in the technical definition of the word.

That said, this movie was FUN.

There's nothing ground-breaking about it, there's no real message other than 'Don't Trust The Government', a message that people stopped caring about roughly thirty-eight seconds after they first heard it. There's very little character development and the acting was wooden in most places.

But this movie was FUN.

Like, really, really FUN.

Any film that thinks Pitchforking people bound to hospital beds is a good idea is alright in my book. The town's on fire, people are running and screaming and carving each other up, there's some seriously tense moments (mainly towards the end, the Gas Station sequence) and the National Guard are scared shiteless.

I do agree with my friends that the military were introduced too early for the story, there could have been some more development before that, but other than that the story was pretty solid. Not in any way original or powerful, but solid enough. It's not a good piece of cinema, but it's a fun watch.

Give it a go.

(Next time: SHUTTER ISLAND)