by George Wolf
WORLD WAR Z
Fans of Max Brooks’s novel World War Z are less likely to be disappointed than baffled by Brad Pitt’s big screen adaptation. The film has about as much in common with Shakespeare as it has with Brooks’s wonderful, fictitious oral history of the zombie pandemic. Still, it’s not a bad flick. Not at all.
Pitt plays Gerry Lane, ex-UN investigator pulled back into active duty to determine the cause of – and ideally find a cure for – the zombie outbreak that is decimating the world population and will otherwise spell our ultimate doom.
Pitt, who produced as well, teams with director Marc Forster, a filmmaker better known for moody drama (Monster’s Ball, The Kite Runner) than zombie adventure, but he handles the task with aplomb.
The film opens briskly, establishes empathetic, realistic characters (assuming you can forgive one wholly unrealistic and insultingly idiotic decision Forster’s team of writers drummed up for Gerry’s wife), then throws episode after episode of chaos at you until you’re breathless. Not a bad way to piece together a zombie movie.
Of course, this is not exactly a zombie flick. It’s not a horror film at all. WWZ is an intelligently crafted international thriller and action movie that happens to include zombies. Between Pitt’s caring investigator and Forster’s ability to maintain heart pounding urgency for two full hours, they pull it off pretty well.
Surprises abound (especially if you’ve read the book), and though there are images here and there that recall one Z-flick or another (28 Days Later, in particular), on the whole, the film creates its own niche.
Though seeing the 3D version is not ultimately necessary, the added depth gives visceral impact to the many helicopter shots of chaos below, while providing quiet scenes a sense of “what’s around that corner?” dread.
Indeed, tension and dread counterbalance thrill effectively in a flick that keeps you guessing, jumping, and rooting for an intelligent and caring hero.
It’s certainly a more kind-hearted imagining of the apocalypse than the one Brooks offered, where nations turned on each other, the greedy and superficial partied on as though they were immune, and governments enacted gut-wrenching action to try to stem the outbreak. Pitt and Forster – and their team of writers – pull a lot of punches Brooks was happy to land. Their intent was clearly quite different, and the result worthwhile. I guess it’s just the title they liked.
THE BLING RING
My son has lived in L. A. for almost a year. It took him all of two weeks as a Southern California resident to report, “Everyone here is so phony.”
Imagine growing up in that environment, and you might start to understand the treatment that The Bling Ring gives to some clueless teenage criminals.
In the late 2000s, a group of five Cali teenagers began burglarizing the homes of celebrities they admired, including their favorite “fashion icons” such as Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan. All told, the gang swiped about three million in cash and property before the popo caught up with them.
Writer/director Sofia Coppola, who of course did grow up in this environment, establishes the setting with the ease you would expect. It is a Petri dish of vapidity, so lacking in substance that one teen seems genuinely proud of the depth of thought displayed in his stated ambition to “have my own lifestyle.”
The line that Coppola walks so effectively is one that allows her to keep both sympathy and judgement at arm’s length. The mistake would be to equate the frivolity of the story with a lack of substance in the film itself. Yes its light, but there’s ironic fun to be had, and a pair of fine performances to appreciate.
As Rebecca, the group’s ringleader, Katie Chang perfectly embodies the blinding narcissism of a young lady who simply cannot imagine anything wrong with always getting what she wants at any given moment.
And Emma Watson, taking a major step toward shedding her image as Hermione from Harry Potter, is fantastic as Nikki, who personifies her fame-obsessed culture by viewing a very public arrest as a springboard to running a major charity organization…”or perhaps a country.”
Though it marks a stylistic shift for Coppola, you can see how this crime story spoke to her. In films such as Lost in Translation and Somewhere, she examined fame introspectively. The kids in The Bling Ring got no time for that, but Coppola makes them oddly fascinating.
THE KINGS OF SUMMER
School’s out! With their freshman year behind them, Joe (Nick Robinson) and Patrick (Gabriel Basso) have just the long, suburban Cleveland summer at home with their folks to look forward to. So they split.
The Kings of Summer sidles up alongside Joe and Patrick as they abandon the parents who make them crazy, and strike it out on their own in the woods between the golf course and the Boston Market. There, in the house they build from refuse and port-a-potty doors, they will decide what it means to be men. It’s just the two best friends and nature – and the unsettling, under explained and under developed third wheel, Biaggio (Moisas Arias).
Sundance loved The Kings of Summer, and there is a lot to find appealing. Director Jordan Vogt-Roberts captures a leisurely magic in the forest, filling the screen with lovely images that visually underscore the boys’ emotional tumult in a way the script fails to.
Like all good coming of age dramedies, Summer serves up well meaning parents who just don’t understand. Nick Offerman (TV’s Parks and Recreation) excels as Joe’s deeply bitter single dad, and the two actors perform beautifully together. They mine scenes for the kind of tensions that develop only after a lifetime of familial strife.
Megan Mullally and Marc Evan Jackson are a riot as Patrick’s gleefully overprotective sires, but the script begins to show real cracks as the broad (and often very funny) parental comedy bumps up against the lush and delicate indie drama the boys are generating. The parents would fit in Better Off Dead, while the kids lean more Stand By Me – a stylistic mishmash the film never really overcomes.
The film boasts a good number of laugh out loud moments amid the tenderly wrought angst, but the humor masks deeper problems. Comic flashes serve to distract from weaknesses in the script, a fact most evident in the boys’ unusual cabinmate, Biaggio. Not a character at all, he’s a one-dimensional joke opportunity.
Vogt-Roberts keeps proceedings wholesome – a refreshing change for a coming of age indie – and every performance delivers. Kings of Summer offers a sweet, charming summer distraction. It just doesn’t do much more.
