A Life Less Ordinary

I like Danny Boyle, even if I didn't especially like the previous Danny Boyle directed entry in this big thingy. I like him because he's not afraid of doing all sorts of crazy things, whether or not they fit within his comfort zone. He made his name with Trainspotting, the premier movie about heroin enthusiasts. He won his Oscar for making an uplifting tale about an Indian kid winning a quiz show, which I haven't seen yet. He tried a zombie film, he's tried science fiction, and he's tried this, whatever this is.

The movie is about love. Love between a mismatched couple forced together by the whims of a cruel god, and his completely insane angels Holly Hunter and Delroy Lindo. The man in the couple is Ewan McGregor, an awful novelist who is also a janitor. The woman is Cameron Diaz, spoiled socialite who is more than a touch insane. McGregor is replaced by a robot, Diaz shoots a prospective husband in the face, and they come together to defraud her father out of millions, and the angels bring them together with the power of violence and robbery. Ah love, what a thing.

This movie was a notorious flop, but I enjoyed it. This is odd, because the characters actually aren't very likable. Diaz is impulsive and immature, McGregor is the world's worst kidnapper, and a weak and ineffectual person. Together, they are a whiny couple that is constantly bickering and disagreeing with each other. Diaz helps McGregor become a better kidnapper, but kind of a worse person, and her character doesn't develop at all.

So yes, there are flaws, big glaring flashing neon signs flaws, but I liked it. I liked it because it's funny. Sure, the characters aren't particularly likable, but they belong together, two extremely unlikable characters together to not sully up the lives of anyone else. Truly, they do belong together.

I also appreciated the pure power of Boyle's filmmaking. You're tricked into caring about what happens because of the ridiculously pretty cinematography, the fantastic soundtrack, and the often clever editing. He can make you temporarily forget about how technically unlikable everyone is, just by making the events become suddenly entertaining. If anyone else tried this script, it would have been terrible - B. Monkey, for example, is actually surprisingly similar plot-wise, but is utter shit.

I won't pretend that it's a great movie. Certainly, it failing should not have been unexpected. But, honestly? I was entertained for two hours. I laughed at some of the clever lines and some of the clever slapstick, I enjoyed some of the clever filmmaking, and I was genuinely entertained by the events taking place. More importantly, it seemed like everyone was having fun with the film, and fun with their characters. A bad script, perhaps, but I honestly am glad I watched.

Bless you Danny Boyle, I look forward to the next one of your movies I get to see, even if I didn't like your zombie picture.

28 Days Later

The other evening, I had a dream. It was a sequence from a zombie movie, a man trying to get into a van and people inside the van trying to help him, with zombies swarming the vehicle. The camera was mostly confined within the vehicle, except at the very beginning and the very end of the sequence (yes, I have dreams that look like movies, and I'm not in them), and the man never did get into the van, as the driver had to speed off when the window was broken and the door never opened. I took this as a sign that I should watch a zombie film. Luckily, sitting right there on my coffee table was 28 Days Later.

This movie SHOULD start with Cillian Murphy, waking up from a coma and noticing that he's all alone in a hospital. As he wanders around the hospital and London, he notices that he's all alone there as well, which is mysterious and somewhat menacing. You know there's something wrong, it's freaking London, that town's always busy. Eventually, he discovers when he goes to a church that everyone's either dead or a zomb..er "infected". He finds a couple people, and learns what happened while he was sleeping, and it didn't involve Sandra Bullock at all! Eventually, they get to an army base commanded by Doctor Who himself, Christopher Ecclestone, and learn that people are just as dangerous as zombies.

I said SHOULD, so obviously it doesn't open exactly like that, instead the first scene has to do with angry monkeys affected by a virus made out of RAGE, and some hippies release them and kills us all! It's stupid, partly because it's a RAGE infection, which doesn't make any bloody sense. Can't it just be a virus? Why does it need to be a stupid RAGE virus? And why do we need to know? We shouldn't find out until Murphy stumbles upon the first characters, and they should infer that it's a virus, by how it's spread.

Let's take Shaun of the Dead, which did this better. In that movie, there's no explanation of what causes the zombies. The zombies are there, nobody knows why, and they just want to eat some brains. It's menacing because the explanation isn't obvious. And that's a comedy.

Shaun of the Dead also did the action better. The encounters with the zombinfected don't have very much tension, the actors and zombies might as well be separated by a gigantic wall given how little they are in the same frame. They never seemed like a threat, and really that's the most important part of any monster movie.

Most of all, the movie is sloppy. Characters fall in love because they're the main characters, not because of particularly compatible personalities. Characters die because the script needs them to, the most flagrant example late in the film when there doesn't seem to be really any reason for the most likable character in the film to go down. Lots of time is spent wandering around, and there are lengthy sections where there is no indication that there are even any zombies at all.

So it is not lightly that I say that the climax is intense, exciting, well made and even makes a sophisticated point about the nature of man. The fight between the three different sides is as intense and tension filled as you may have hoped the previous hour and a half was. We learn more about the characters through an action sequence than the entire film beforehand, plus we're treated to a badass song and someone getting their eyes poked out.

The music is another huge plus for this film, I absolutely adore the soundtrack. It's exciting, it's tense, it's tender, it's everything the movie needs at any given moment, and sometimes makes a sequence seem much better than it actually is. I could listen to this soundtrack all on its own, it's that good.

Alas, some good music, and a great ending, do not a great film make. I keep going back to Shaun of the Dead, which did the whole zombie thing right. It makes me appreciate just how good a director Edgar Wright is, since he made a tension filled film with exciting action, and it's a comedic take on the genre. Here, we've got a serious version, and it's not as good at that.

But if I get to make my zombie movie that I just dreamed up the other morning, I'll totally show them both.