Z/Web

Author: George Romero

Director: George Romero

I’m a big fan of Romero and was looking forward to this. It didn’t quite measure up to his Dawn except instead of the mall being empty, it’s now full of people. Romero has put together a good story with interesting characters to found his movie and that’s what makes it work. It’s a lot of fun with a glimpse of social commentary, but not quite as innovative as his previous works. Still, it’s better than 99% of other zombie films, and pretty cool overall.

Director: Mike Nichols

Unusually frank film discussing sex and relationships. The plot’s a little too structured (forced) for my taste, but an interesting experiment. Basically we have two couples who, uh, interchange. The couples periodically switch who’s with who and it’s a fascinating view of relationships. Unfortunately, while the dialog is brilliant and characters are three-dimensional, we aren’t really given an understanding for why the different people do what they do. For example, people love or don’t love with minimal explanation — and it’s like the writer expects us to believe that the same way we believe fantasy elements in a fantasy film (i.e talking pigs in Babe). There were definitely uncomfortable scenes in this film — I didn’t appreciate some of the explictiness which felt over-the-top, like it was there just to shock or provoke me — but overall the story and some of thoughtful discussion was amazing and profound. Not for all tastes, but certainly provocative.