*Spoilers*

Whether you find 28 Days Later to be frightening will probably depend on your level of tolerance for these sorts of movies. I love zombie movies but am easily frightened, so 28 Days Later definitely scared me on several levels. However, I can see how many people would consider this to be less of a scary horror movie and more of a suspense movie. Either way, I think the film works well.

The film opens at a research facility where a group of well-meaning but ill-fated students are breaking in to free the laboratory animal test subjects. The animals are infected with a “Rage Virus” that makes them, well, the Rage virus basically turns you into a very fast, very angry zombie – an unthinking, unfeeling automaton purely motivated by a thirst to eat and kill everything not infected. Unlike the usual zombie set-up, the infected humans don’t seem to be *undead* per se, and would presumably bleed to death under the right circumstances, but they don’t really seem to be totally human either, given that they don’t seem to suffer from some of the same limitations as humans and they (apparently) aren’t driven to attack one another.

The ill-fated students are, of course, infected by the test animals, and the virus immediately spreads throughout England with frightening speed. We black out and join our hero (Murphy) who is waking up from a coma that began prior to the outbreak. He stumbles bewildered through the now-silent streets, almost seeming to sleep-walk through the surreal quiet. And when he finally learns what has happened, that everyone he has ever known and loved is either dead or infected, his sense of loss is palpable. This terrible dilemma – would it have been better to live through the crisis as it unfolded or to just be hit with the finality of it after the fact? – haunts him and his companions as they scramble, terrified, through the streets hoping for a safe place, with food, with water, with some semblance of normalcy.

When the few survivors tune into an automated radio message promising a cure for the infection, they are forced to make a choice. Their supplies are rapidly dwindling, but they are for the moment safe. They have no guarantee that the automated message isn’t a hoax or a false promise. Do they sacrifice their current safety for hope? And also, do they sacrifice themselves for each other in the name of family and friendship or is it truly “every man for himself” in this bleak world?

The car journey to the radio message has an almost dream-like quality. Although they are in danger, the survivors are still overwhelmed by the beauty of the countryside and the simple pleasures of a preserved tin of peaches. The dream can’t last, however, and when they are picked up and taken to safety by a group of soldiers being led by a rapidly-descending-into-madness commander, they are shocked to learn that the soldiers plan to “survive” the infection by holing up in their fortress and raping any women and children they can find in order to perpetuate the species and generally pass the time. And here we are presented with new dilemmas, not the least of which is whether a human foe can be more frightening and dangerous than a zombie foe.

Although this is clearly not a “typical” zombie movie, I feel that it deserves notice for the daring new approach taken by the film makers, particularly the dreamy, dazed feeling of the post-coma scenes and car journey scenes. Particularly thought-provoking is the question of self-preservation versus group-responsibility, and I appreciate that no easy answers are thrown out here. And the treatment of morality within a post-apocalyptic world is handled superbly, with the understanding that humans can lose their humanity easily enough without needing any “Rage Virus” to facilitate their descent. 28 Days Later may not be your average horror flick, but it is definitely worth a look.

This movie provides closed captions for the hearing impaired.

Than again, the Black & White ‘His girl Friday’ is truly a classic that still has the side splitting gold to hurt me every time I watch it!

Whatever happened to John Landis, the man who is responsible for such gems as Animal House (1978), The Blues Brothers (1980), An American Werewolf in London (1981), Thriller (1983), Coming to America (1988)? He is desperately needed now when the situation with the comedies in Hollywood could be described as tragically horrible or horrifyingly tragic. Now when I think of it, even his less successful Spies Like Us (1985) and Three Amigos! (1986) were very funny and enjoyable. Landis has also directed nine episodes of the cult TV show, the first Sex and City, Dream On, and believe me, Dream On was fabulous. Of all mentioned films, Trading Places is one of the best, at least for me. I can’t count how many times I’ve seen this funny and clever comedy. Trading Places tells the story of two men who were far from each other in any possible way as yes and no – one Harvard graduate, a successful snobbish commodity broker, the financial wizard with bright future in front of him, and great present that included a stunning fiancée, membership in a prestigious exclusive club, and even a butler, a true English gentleman. The other – a black street hustler, a small time drug dealer from the wrong site of the town. What could possibly bring them together and even make them partners out for revenge? You may say the fate or you may say, boredom and intrigues of two very rich, very arrogant, very shameless men – Brothers Randolph and Mortimer Duke (Ralph Bellamy, Don Ameche), the founders and owners of Philadelphia commodity stock Exchange who liked to make bets to prove their points about nature versus nurture theory and enjoyed watching how other people’s reputations, happiness and even lives crumbles in front of them. The brothers were curious to find out what is primary, the environment or heredity in forming a human? What would happen if take a successful, well off man, ruin his reputation and throw him on the street and substitute him with a streetwise petty criminal? How would they adjust and what would they do to survive such unexpected turn of fortune? Well, it sounds rather dramatic but the movie is a masterpiece of comedy. It is not just good; it is timeless comedy that does not show a trace of growing outdated. It is based not only on the comic situations but on the changing characters, their communication, getting together and creating the team that would make revenge sweet, smart, and totally satisfying. The acting of two major players, Dan Aycroyd and Eddie Murphy is marvelous. Santa episode is among the funniest yet poignant I’ve seen. Just to think of Aycroyd, hiding behind a dirty Santa beard and growling like an angry animal over the smoked salmon that he stole from the Christmas party at his former company and hid on his chest made me laugh hysterically. There is also Jamie Lee Curtis with the legs growing from her ears, beautiful smile, and heart of gold. And she is topless in one of the scenes, too, which only adds to the movie’s pleasures. There is the craziest New Year Party on the train that involves drunken James Belucci, a melancholic lovelorn gorilla, the coldblooded villain Clarence Beeks (Paul Gleason) who would become the object of unbearable desire of above mentioned gorilla, and two baggage handlers, marveling over how human the “gorilla” appears, and sending two gorillas to Africa in one cell. And there is incredible Denholm Elliott, the loyal butler Coleman to both Louis Winthorpe III (Dan Aykroyd) and Billy Ray Valentine (Eddie Murphy). To top it all, there is the greatest (I am sure of it) scene of betting on future trading on the commodities trading floor that involves short-selling orange juice futures and turning an enormous profit for some characters and equally enormous loss for the others. For the life of mine, I can’t get the idea but I enjoy the scene tremendously every time I watch this classic. Highly recommended.

The film is effectively broken into two parts. In the first, our brave survivor discovers the truth about the plague and finds a few hearty souls who have also avoided the zombie mobs. He returns home in an effort to try to find out what happened to his family. Like many great films in this genre, there is the classic scene of the survivors strolling through the grocery store (packed with food, but devoid of customers) selecting a wide range of delicacies. The first half of this movie is extremely well done, the atmosphere and the tension are perfect, an all time classic in the post-holocaust/zombie film genre. In the second part of the film, the small band of survivors departs London following a radio signal purportedly broadcast by the Army. The film really loses its way at this point. The commanding officer of the small army unit is crazy and the plot degenerates into a fairly ordinary chase/evasion story where the heroes are trying to avoid both the soldiers and the zombies. The latter half of the film has none of the atmosphere or pathos of the first half.

One interesting fact that struck me about this film is that had it been set in the US, the lone survivors would have quickly armed themselves to the teeth with shotguns, hunting rifles, and perhaps even AR-15s. This film is a great argument against gun control: if there is ever a zombie infestation, we’ll need to be armed to deal with it! Don’t take away our guns!

Seriously, this is a decent post-apocalyptic film that is undone by a poor and unimaginative ending. Definitely worth a look by anyone with interest in the zombie genre, but not uniquely outstanding.

After the outbreak we meet Jim (Cillian Murphy aka Scarecrow from Batman Begins) who wakes up completely naked (why completely naked I don’t know) in a hospital room and it seems he’s just been through some surgery. After calling for help, Jim comes to realize he’s the last person alive on Earth. Ok not really, but it really does seem like it at first. They did a great job of showing deserted cities and roads and making it seem like he is legend (see what I did there?!). After some walking, he comes across a church filled with what seems to be a mass suicide. This was definitely a scene I cant forget mainly due to when he says `Hello?’ and two infected look up at him really quickly and just stare. CREEPY. Plus lets not forget the priest. As he runs away he comes across a couple of uninfected who help him out. Together they try to survive and come across a radio signal broadcasting help and safety. Together they try to make it to this so called safety.

Some might consider the movie a little slow, but I enjoyed the pacing because I really did start to connect with Jim and some of the others. Watching it the first I thought there could’ve been a bit more action scenes, but after my second sitting, I believe I was wrong. I actually enjoyed just about every minute of it. Also the video quality is not great. Not horrible by no means either, but just not great.

The special edition I watched had 3 alternate endings. The first 2 were really dumb and could’ve been easily just ONE alternate ending. The third though was really good actually. But you have to sit through a story board and not live action scenes, but I promise you it was still good. It basically picks up where the military comes in, but there is no military. Instead they head to a hospital with their little rag tag group and try to save one of their own since the person has been infected. They are told that to cure the person, you have to take out all of his blood and replace it. But this was the problem the director (Danny Boyle) had. How the heck do you clean out all of the blood when one drop could infect you. It was funny to hear how Danny says it though. Nice idea though.

In the end I would say to definitely give this movie a shot, especially if you are a zombie fan (even though they aren’t zombies) or an `end of the world movie’ fan.

P.S. – Anyone read `The Walking Dead’? Great, great, great read for us zombie lovers. I always wanted to see a movie for this series, but considering how in depth it’s become, I’d much rather see a TV series for it. Like on HBO so we could see the gore. Plus I love how the story starts off in my home town back in Georgia. To cool!

However, the movie was decent if you can get past the graininess. I would watch the movie again, but buy as regular DVD (which is still overkill for the quality of the grainy film)