I had a go at a video review today. My full review of Life After Beth is here but why not try giving this a listen and enjoy the bits from the trailer as well as my monotonous voice trying to sound more interesting! Enjoy!
Showing posts with label dane dehaan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label dane dehaan. Show all posts
Thursday, 2 October 2014
Wednesday, 1 October 2014
Life After Beth Review
Shaun of the Dead has a lot to answer for. Ten years ago, the
guys behind Spaced invented a new genre hybrid that got everyone excited: the
rom-zom-com. Since then, filmmakers with less brains and far less affection for
the zombie genre, have attempted to make their own mash-ups of Romantic
Comedies with Zombies. Most notable (and frustrating) was Warm Bodies that had
Nicholas Hoult as a zombie who did thinking, as evidenced by his wry comedic
voiceover.
Now comes Life After Beth, a film that features a zombie who
looks like Aubrey Plaza, talks just fine and doesn’t even realise she is dead
for much of the movie. Zach’s (Dane DeHaan) girlfriend Beth (Plaza) is out
hiking alone when she is bitten supposedly by a snake. Zach bonds with Beth’s
grief stricken parents until one day he realises they are avoiding him.
Suspecting something is up, Zach peeks in the window’s of Beth’s home to find
she is alive and well and being kept indoors by her protective parents.
But despite appearances, Beth isn’t alive after all. She has
returned from the grave and is actually slowly decomposing into the kind of
zombie that genre fans know and love. Zach and Beth were having relationship problems
before her apparent death but now their renewed love soon descends into a whole
new level of complications as Beth begins to rot, both physically and mentally.
First up, zombies should never, ever talk. They shouldn’t
think, have voiceovers relaying their thoughts, or have coherent chats with the
living. They are dead. Brain dead pure and simple. Even when godfather of the
zombie genre, George A. Romero started having one of his monsters utter the odd
word in Day of the Dead, things took a turn for the decidedly less horrifying. Like
Warm Bodies before it, Life After Beth then is far more for the rom-com crowd
than for horror fans. It is not, as with Shaun of the Dead, a zombie movie that
just had a boy and a girl with some comedic relationship troubles in it.
Instead it is a romantic comedy where the girl happens to be slowly turning
into a zombie.
Everyone who has ever seen a zombie movie will know that people
get bitten and then slowly or speedily die from the wound. They then return from
death as zombies. So why does Beth rise from the grave like she never died and
then slowly deteriorate into a zombie after her death? It’s like writer and
director Jeff Baena either hasn’t seen a zombie movie or simply doesn’t care
about the rules. However, those who after romantic comedy may not care either.
What is even more frustrating though is that Aubrey Plaza is
easily the best thing in the film, especially when towards the end, she starts
to go full zombie. Watching her staring, chewing, thrashing and stumbling is
far more fun than anything in the majority of the rest of the film, so why it
takes her so long to get this way is a mystery. The sight of her stumbling along
with a cooker strapped to her back, smooth jazz playing from a stereo around
her neck (don’t ask) is pretty much worth the price of admission alone.
The rest of the film cannot hope to live up to Plaza’s
performance in the final act. Despite the cast including Dane de Haan, John C. Reilly, Paul Reiser and Anna Kendrick, who is completely wasted in just a pair of pointless scenes,
the story simply shuffles along with very few big laughs and certainly no real
scares. Perhaps it has something mildly amusing to say about love and
relationships as the young lovers’ passion turns to resentment, but mostly Life
After Beth falls flat on its face.
While it’s fun seeing Plaza fly into rages, her mood
violently swinging as she decomposes, oddly for a film where a zombie spends
the majority of the film seeming far too alive and well, Life After Beth is
sadly lifeless.
See it:
- For Aubrey Plaza’s performance when she turns full zombie.
- If you want to see what it’s like to have a girlfriend with really terrifying mood swings.
More Reviews from I Love That Film
Wednesday, 29 January 2014
Daddy issues: The Place Beyond the Pines and Mud
I'm working my way through the big films of 2013 that I missed and I started with a pair of films about fathers and father figures; The Place Beyond the Pines and Mud.
The Place Beyond the Pines is Derek Cianfrance's follow up to Blue Valentine and his second collaboration with Ryan Gosling. It has a very strange and surprising structure with the film being divided into three very clear acts but with each one following a new character. Firstly there is Ryan Gosling's Luke, a stunt motor cycle rider who turns to robbing banks when he discovers he has a son with an old lover of his played by Eva Mendes. Luke is a fascinatingly flawed character who seems determined to do the right thing by doing the wrong thing. He wants to use his skills to provide for his son but Mendes is coping fine and also has a new man who is clearly perfectly capable of looking after the child.
The scenes where Luke has to ride away from the banks and evade the cops are thrillingly shot, giving a real sense of the speed and the danger. It is only when Bradley Cooper's cop Avery shows up that things get really sticky and the film starts to follow him instead. Shot in an altercation with Luke, Cooper's character is as morally dubious as the bank robber he is chasing. His rise from cop to District Attorney is questionable, even if he does bring down corrupt cops like Ray Liotta's Deluca.
The final act of the film skips forward to when both Luke and Avery's little boys are now teens. Cooper's son AJ is a bad influence on Gosling's boy Jason and though the pair do not know their father's histories together, their relationship is at first fun but soon turns nastier. Dane DeHaan is superb in these scenes as the sins of the fathers come back to haunt the sons. The Place Beyond the Pines threatens to descend into vigilante style revenge silliness but then pulls back and emerges as something far smarter and ultimately affecting. Powered by a trio of excellent performances, some kinetic cinematography in the early scenes and an odd yet sometimes unforgettable score from Mike Patton, The Place Beyond the Pines is a fascinating film about the way our fathers fuck us up in their own ways.
Mud, on the other hand, follows two young boys from the start to the finish. Ellis and Neckbone encounter a fugitive on an island in the Mississippi River and agree to keep him a secret and help him communicate with the love of his life who he cannot visit on the mainland. Calling himself Mud and played by Matthew McConaughey, this fugitive is evading the law and vigilantes who are out for revenge. He wants to fix a boat on the island but needs the two boys' help in getting parts and also getting his love Juniper (Reese Witherspoon) to come with him.
Newcomers Tye Sheridan and Jacob Lofland as Ellis and Neckbone carry the entire film on their shoulders and are absolutely superb. Ably supported by Sam Shepard, Sarah Paulson and McConaughey; the boys deliver completely convincing performances as they get some harsh lessons about love and life. Tye Sheridan in particular is fantastic in scenes with his stern but fair father and when learning the hard way that love is never easy.
Mud is a simple tale, well told. Its female characters leave a lot to be desired with women appearing to be the cause of so much male strife. Neither Juniper nor Ellis' mother come across very well, while the men appear to be wiser and worn down by their women folk. Unlike The Place Beyond the Pines, Mud does descend into vigilante style revenge silliness. It climaxes with a brilliant little shoot out that is tense and if a little too conveniently plotted, still very convincing. The coming of age stuff works best and perhaps didn't need the extra excitement of snake bites and shoot outs but Mud manages to stay believable in no small part due to a cast full of fine performances.
More reviews at I Love That Film:
The Place Beyond the Pines is Derek Cianfrance's follow up to Blue Valentine and his second collaboration with Ryan Gosling. It has a very strange and surprising structure with the film being divided into three very clear acts but with each one following a new character. Firstly there is Ryan Gosling's Luke, a stunt motor cycle rider who turns to robbing banks when he discovers he has a son with an old lover of his played by Eva Mendes. Luke is a fascinatingly flawed character who seems determined to do the right thing by doing the wrong thing. He wants to use his skills to provide for his son but Mendes is coping fine and also has a new man who is clearly perfectly capable of looking after the child.
The scenes where Luke has to ride away from the banks and evade the cops are thrillingly shot, giving a real sense of the speed and the danger. It is only when Bradley Cooper's cop Avery shows up that things get really sticky and the film starts to follow him instead. Shot in an altercation with Luke, Cooper's character is as morally dubious as the bank robber he is chasing. His rise from cop to District Attorney is questionable, even if he does bring down corrupt cops like Ray Liotta's Deluca.
The final act of the film skips forward to when both Luke and Avery's little boys are now teens. Cooper's son AJ is a bad influence on Gosling's boy Jason and though the pair do not know their father's histories together, their relationship is at first fun but soon turns nastier. Dane DeHaan is superb in these scenes as the sins of the fathers come back to haunt the sons. The Place Beyond the Pines threatens to descend into vigilante style revenge silliness but then pulls back and emerges as something far smarter and ultimately affecting. Powered by a trio of excellent performances, some kinetic cinematography in the early scenes and an odd yet sometimes unforgettable score from Mike Patton, The Place Beyond the Pines is a fascinating film about the way our fathers fuck us up in their own ways.
Mud, on the other hand, follows two young boys from the start to the finish. Ellis and Neckbone encounter a fugitive on an island in the Mississippi River and agree to keep him a secret and help him communicate with the love of his life who he cannot visit on the mainland. Calling himself Mud and played by Matthew McConaughey, this fugitive is evading the law and vigilantes who are out for revenge. He wants to fix a boat on the island but needs the two boys' help in getting parts and also getting his love Juniper (Reese Witherspoon) to come with him.
Newcomers Tye Sheridan and Jacob Lofland as Ellis and Neckbone carry the entire film on their shoulders and are absolutely superb. Ably supported by Sam Shepard, Sarah Paulson and McConaughey; the boys deliver completely convincing performances as they get some harsh lessons about love and life. Tye Sheridan in particular is fantastic in scenes with his stern but fair father and when learning the hard way that love is never easy.
Mud is a simple tale, well told. Its female characters leave a lot to be desired with women appearing to be the cause of so much male strife. Neither Juniper nor Ellis' mother come across very well, while the men appear to be wiser and worn down by their women folk. Unlike The Place Beyond the Pines, Mud does descend into vigilante style revenge silliness. It climaxes with a brilliant little shoot out that is tense and if a little too conveniently plotted, still very convincing. The coming of age stuff works best and perhaps didn't need the extra excitement of snake bites and shoot outs but Mud manages to stay believable in no small part due to a cast full of fine performances.
More reviews at I Love That Film:
The Wolf of Wall Street
Out of the Furnace
Philomena
Dallas Buyers Club
12 Years A Slave
American Hustle
All is Lost
The Railway Man
Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom
Captain Phillips
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