If you've read this blog at all, you know I'm a huge zombie fan. Of course it all started with Night of the Living Dead, zombie movies I mean, not my obsession. Although I do remember a childhood viewing of Night that freaked the hell out of me. My zombie fetish actually started with Return of the Living Dead, I must have watched it 20 times when I was younger, and it's still my all-time-favorite. It's the film that should be credited with the first "fast-zombies", not 28 Days Later, as everyone wrongly says.

But I should be talking about the old, lumbering, shoot-em-in-the-head zombies, that George A. Romero invented and made famous in Night, Dawn of the Dead, and Day of the Dead. Each of which, I've seen numerous times and love for different reasons. I love how Night sets up the new zombie invasion, we're just learning about and dealing with them for the first time. In Dawn, humanity is fighting and losing the war against the zombies. In Day, the zombies have won, and we're stuck with one of humanities last outcrops, trying to figure out a way to turn back the tide.

I saw Land of the Dead in theaters a few years back and wasn't totally impressed. Mostly because I didn't totally understand where the film fit into the series. Running across the film in the DVD discount bin, I couldn't pass up completing my collection. Watching it a second time, I actually appreciated the film much more. It's still nowhere near perfect, but it continues the story much better than I first believed, and Romero's idea of having the zombies learn and organize made sense. It's the next step in their evolution, and they're ending the war with the living for good.

Romero has never been a filmmaker that's impressed me with his style. He has a classic technique, letting story dictate the pace, the shots, and the look of the film. It's just enough to bring you into his messed-up-world. With Land of the Dead he really lets the actors carry the film, something which most horror films don't do, and they're mostly up to the challenge, offering up some fully realized characters. Simon Baker as Riley, wants to make a life outside of the city, away from the corruption that has overtaken what's left of society. John Leguizamo, as Cholo, is out for himself, always looking for a score, and wants to join the elite. Dennis Hopper, has some fun as the evil leader Kaufman, he gets a chance to chew some cheesy zombie dialog. The always entertaining Asia Argento, is a girl, who is simply trying to survive in this dog-eat-dog world.

I've always liked how Romero focuses on a few main characters among the world's chaos, it brings it to a much more personal level. With Land, he also focuses on a hero-zombie, the one that's smarter than the rest, that leads them into battle, that can figure out problems and seems to have feelings. It's a new wrinkle to the zombie genre; something he started with Bub in Day, but here you get a much better sense of where this world is headed. Although I enjoyed Land of the Dead more this time around, I'd still consider it the weakest entry into his zombie series. (I haven't seen Diary of the Dead yet.) But it's an interesting take on the genre, that probably won't be appreciated beyond anyone that enjoys zombie films. - Grade: C+ (Seen on 7/5/08)

I've been a fan of Albert Brooks since the early 90's. I saw Defending Your Life over and over again as a teenager, and to this day it remains one of my all time favorite comedies. In the years following I saw his earlier works, Lost in America and Modern Romance, both of which I think are brilliant films. His film that came after Defending Your Life, Mother is fairly uneven, but overall it's funny and worth seeing. His voice work in Finding Nemo is great, and he's always one of The Simpsons best guests. When Looking for Comedy came out in 2005, I was fairly excited, but the critics beat it too death before I got a chance to see it. After The Muse, which I thought was pretty terrible, I didn't want to rush into seeing another wreck from him and have my opinion lowered, so it took me three years to get around to it.

Unfortunately the critics were right. Looking for Comedy is a pretty lame film, there are only a few moments that I laughed at. I don't think the average American audience would find the film funny at all. I hope that he hasn't lost it as a filmmaker, there aren't many guys around that write, direct and star in their own films. The greatest of all-time, Woody Allen has moved behind the camera. Off the top of my head, I can't think of anyone else who's doing it besides Brooks and Edward Burns, who I've never been a real fan of.

In Looking for Comedy, Brooks plays a version of himself; big stretch. In the opening scene, one of the few funny ones in the film, Penny Marshall playing herself, is casting a film she's directing and looking for a Jimmy Stewart type. Brooks shows up to audition, has a brief chat with her and is shown the door, it's obvious he's not the right guy. He's been getting that a lot lately. Never the handsome-leading-man type, as he's getting older, he's losing out on more roles than ever. So when an opportunity comes through the government, for an assignment to go to India and find out what the Muslim culture finds funny, he's intrigued. His motivation is a Medal of Honor, his reluctance is in the 500 page report he has to write about it, but through his wife's encouragement, he decides to take the job.

Along for the ride are two government agents who are supposed to help him in his assignment. One is completely humorless, takes his job seriously and doesn't seem to want to help at all. The other is a fan of Brooks, and considers himself a bit of a comedian, but also isn't much help. Once in India, Brooks finds that almost nothing, except for an small, empty office has been set up. He finds himself interviewing the locals for someone who can assist him, but nobody gets what he's doing or seems qualified in the least. Until he meets Maya, she types quickly, has written a large report for college and has the motivation to understand Brooks' sense of humor. They start by doing man-in-the-street interviews, asking people what makes them laugh; after a couple of days, and only a half a page of answers, he decides to take another course.

Instead, he'll put on a comedy show, covering all sorts of comedy, from the low-brow to the intellectual, and whatever the audience laughs at, he'll fill his report with. It's one of the few inspired moments in the film, and the only one that provided a few deep laughs. But he's doing obscure jokes, that would fly over the average American's head, let alone his mostly Muslim and Hindu audience. He does a bit where he plays an incompetent ventriloquist, and then tries to do some improve, to involve the audience by asking them questions, then changes all the audiences answers because he can't find a joke with them. He does it so dryly, with so little showmanship, that it took me, an Albert Brooks fan, a couple of minutes to figure out that that was the joke. Unsurprisingly the audience doesn't laugh at all.

The film peaks at that moment. It continues on with Brooks traveling illegally into Pakistan to meet with a comedy troupe, where he does the same routine, with better results. Unknowingly, the Indian and Pakistan governments have been following him, and there's a slight subplot about him starting a bit of a cold war between the nations, that doesn't really pay off until the very end of the film, in the background. The whole film's like that.

It's almost like Brooks didn't want the audience to laugh at the film. He doesn't find any comedy in the Muslim world and he almost seems ashamed of his own funny business. I'm sure there's some deeper meaning that I'm missing, maybe about how we all need to find the funny within ourselves. Maybe now that he's older, he's getting more experimental, or the film could truly be a misfire, which I don't want to believe. Looking for Comedy has a few great moments, with a lot of boring ones in between, which drags the film down. With his next one, I'd like him to get back to his observational humor, maybe do something about getting older, where he's not necessarily playing himself, with a ton of insider jokes. I think only the biggest Albert Brooks' fans will appreciate this one, and then, only as one of his lesser films. - Grade: C-

There was a bit of expectation on my part for this film. While I lived in Seattle, I used to read The Stranger's Police Beat written by Charles Mudede on a weekly basis; in it he takes Seattle's weirdest police cases and turns them into an artistic forum, often appreciating the writing of the officer's reports. It's a very funny and surreal read. I heard about them making the film, and thought they could make a fantastic little film out of it; at least something the folks of Seattle could enjoy. When they had the star ride down my street one day, on the back truck-trailer, I was even more excited.

We left Seattle before the film was finished, and it had faded in my memory. It was sparked a bit, when I saw it was premiering at the Sundance Film Festival. But I didn't read anything about it after that, it didn't have any buzz about it, and again it faded. It took over three years to find its way to video, but when I saw it on Netflix, I immediately had to see it. I feel a connection with any Seattle filmmaker (since it's where I learned how to make films) and I wanted the best for director Robinson Devor; who also did the documentary Zoo which received a lot more attention, because it's a film about a guy getting killed by having sex with a horse, which I haven't seen it yet.

Unfortunately after watching Police Beat, I can understand why it's quickly fading into obscurity. It's beautifully filmed, I don't think I've ever seen Seattle better captured in a movie; they shot all over the city, finding hidden away locations, almost consciously keeping the Space Needle out of frame, because any Hollywood movie would exclusively feature it. But as a former Seattleite, the layout of the film often doesn't make sense; the main character of the film is a bike cop, who would probably have at most a few mile radius, but they have him riding all over the city, even down to the airport, a 30 minute car ride. So that kept pulling me out of the film.

But that's not the biggest problem with the film, and it won't be a problem for anyone besides people from Seattle. The problem is it's an almost inaccessible film. I believe that art is personal, the first person you create art for is yourself, if you're not pleasing yourself, you probably won't please anyone else. The makers of Police Beat, are probably very pleased with what they've created, and I'm happy for them; but it's a artistic-piece that is too personal. Film is a medium that demands an audience; which I'm sure there is, it's just very limited; basically you have to appreciate meditative experimental films.

There is no real plot to Police Beat; there's a bit of drive in the main character Z, who is constantly wondering what happened to his girlfriend who ran off on a camping trip with her ex-boyfriend. He has a constant internal monologue, in an African language with subtitles, obsessing about her and what she may be doing. He rides all over the city, dealing with different people and their problems; a few of them are funny or interesting, which relieves some of the boredom, but they left out a lot of the flavor from the original column. Z has a partner, who has a weird relationship with a junkie-hooker; which lands him in some trouble. But ulitimately the film goes nowhere, and at just over 90 minutes, it feels like a lifetime, moving at a glacial pace.

If you appreciate obscure artistic films, Police Beat is well enough made that I believe it will find a home somewhere. It simply wasn't for me, way too out there; on a completely different wavelength than my brain operates. That may be partially my fault, as this is nowhere near the movie I envisioned when I first heard about it. I wish Devor and Mudede the best of luck with their further projects, but I don't think I'm their audience. - Grade: D

I heard about this film at one of my favorite new websites Head Injury Theater, where Jared von Hindman reviews a lot of cheesy horror films, most of which I’ve seen or at least known of. But this one was different, I didn’t know a single thing about it, and I always appreciate that in a film. All I needed was to read the first couple of sentences claiming this to be a well made horror flick, and I stuck it in my Netflix queue. I stopped there because I like going into films without someone else’s opinion stuck in my head (don’t let that stop you reading), so all I knew was that it was an Irish film about killer-mutant cows.

What I wasn’t expecting was a really well made little thriller; that happens to propose the preposterous idea of killer cows. The film starts with a woman with her arm half-way up a cow’s hoo-ha, checking on the progress of the calf growing inside. Suddenly the vet pulls her hand out, it’s bleeding, and she claims that the thing bit her. The farmer standing-by says that’s a ridiculous notion, she must have stuck it on something else. What, though?

A few days pass and the cow starts to go into labor. The farmer and another guy, who’s been illegally camping out on his property, go to the aid of the cow, because the little bugger doesn’t want to come out. Once they violently yank the thing into the world, the farmer goes to clean out the calf’s mouth; bad idea. Soon he’s skulking away with nine and a half fingers. Besides the nasty bite, the farmer knows there is something wrong with this calf, it’s just not normal. When he goes to put it out of its misery, the mother cow goes nuts, trying to jump over the fence between them, breaking her neck in the process. Soon, the vet shows up and she offs the little biter, but more so, she wants to know the truth.

She begins an autopsy on the mother and starts to reveal the full truth to the farmer and the audience. Apparently, they’ve been doing some genetic modification, and obviously it has gone wrong. Inside the mother cow, she finds a couple more things that appear to be cow fetuses, only horribly mutated, looking more like some sort of alien-insect. When one of them jumps to life, she smashes them to death; save for one that has wiggled its way off the table. And that’s when the cow shit truly hits the fan.

While things have seemingly returned to normalcy, a new breed of life is secretly growing to deadly proportions. What follows is sort of like Alien on the farm; the thing continues to grow, feeding on the cows, hiding in the dark-dank barns, striking out at the few humans that are unfortunately stuck there, because the doctor who originally altered the cow has determined that it’s highly contagious. The dread of the situation is built nicely and surprisingly realistically; the terror is treated with full seriousness and is told in a way that you can buy into the ridiculousness of a mutated cow killing everyone.

I was very surprised by how much I enjoyed Isolation, but even more surprised by how the film was built to be truly scary, without a hint of irony; which is a real rarity these days. The film is very nicely acted, good performances all around, with John Lynch from the wonderful film The Secret of Roan Inish playing the farmer. The film features some great dark photography that adds to the mood. Writer/director Billy O'Brien has crafted a horror film for this new age of genetic modification, that all at once is entertaining, terrifying and a damnation against tampering with animal DNA.

I was a little biased the first time I saw this film. I met producer & star Kirk Fox at the Ashland Independent Film Festival, when my short film Lucky Shoes was playing there. He was an incredibly nice guy, we kept running into each other and he made sure to say hello each time. (And for some more name dropping.) I also got to briefly meet director and star Donal Logue a few years back when his film The Tao of Steve was playing at the Seattle Film Festival. So I felt like I had a bit of a personal connection to this film before I saw it, which I ended up really enjoying.

That said, I know that I would have liked Tennis, Anyone? even if I had never met either of these guys. It's a fun indie-comedy, with a good spirit, that reaches beyond the surface ideas to be something more. Donal Logue plays Danny Macklin, an actor on a somewhat successful TV show, not too far of a stretch as Donal used to star on the somewhat successful TV show Grounded For Life. While exaggerated, I'm sure that he used a few of his Hollywood stories for the film. He meets Gary Morgan, played by Kirk Fox, on the set of an indie-film that they're in together.

A while later, they run into each other at a party, and realize that they both have a major interest in tennis. Danny is an okay player, while Gary is a former professional, now a tennis-pro teaching kids how to play. They decide to team up together to play in a few celebrity tournaments and grow to be great friends. Jason Isaacs is hilarious as Danny's nemesis Johnny Green, he's a big time movie star who's old friends with Danny and can't help but rub it in his face every time they see each other; which happens a lot now that they're playing in tournaments together. Johnny gives Danny some terrible advice on how to advance his career, which starts an avalanche of terrible decisions, until finally Danny gets kicked in the face by a stripper and loses his TV show.

Tennis, Anyone?, while having a lot of behind-the-scenes Hollywood stuff, and even more tennis scenes, is ultimately about two men finding themselves. Gary being very good at tennis, really wants to be an actor, but unfortunately isn't very good at it. Danny has made it as an actor, but isn't happy with his lot in life, he has to lose just about everything before he understands who he really is, tennis helps center him. There's a touching scene near the end, when Gary's dad dies and the boys spend a moment honoring him, it's handled with the right mix of humor and melancholy.

The film hasn't had much attention, I didn't hear anything about after the festival, it's disappeared into animosity, I ran across it on IFC. Which is really a shame, it's a nicely made coming-of-age comedy, with some great performances from Donal Logue and Kirk Fox. There's also some fun cameos with Stephen Dorff as a country singer and Paul Rudd as a porn star. Donal Logue proves that he knows what he's doing behind the camera, while the film isn't a directing feast, he also doesn't make a lot of mistakes. If you like indie-comedies with some heart, you should give Tennis, Anyone? a chance.

Normally our family doesn't go anywhere near any of the animated Disney sequels. I've never watched one in it's entirety, but from the trailers and small peaks I've seen, they look completely awful. Total bastardizations of the classics that preceded them. So when we saw the trailer for the sequel to Lilo & Stitch on one of our 50 Disney DVDs, it actually looked like it was well animated, that they'd maybe put a smidgen of care into it. Always on the lookout for new animated films for our son, especially of the hand-drawn variety, I thought I'd give it a chance.

While not nearly as good as the original film, Stitch has a Glitch is a decent follow-up. The film takes up right where the last one left off. Stitch is living with his new family, Lilo and her big sister Nani, also moving in are the odd couple aliens Jumba and Pleakley. Everything has turned out okay and the family has moved on to a somewhat normal life. The big event in Lilo's life is a hula contest she wants to enter with Stitch's help. They get some inspiration from their idol, Elvis.

The problem comes when Stitch starts to go a little wacko. Back when Dr. Jumba was making him, Stitch didn't get fully charged up, he is now losing power, reverting to his core programming, with outbursts of destruction, which of course hit at the least opportune moments. Stitch, not wanting to hurt his new family, decides to leave the planet for the safety of everyone. The family tries to stop him, and the film comes to a surprisingly touching ending.

While the main story of Stitch going bad again is satisfying, the rest of the film feels like filler, nothing of note really happens. But the film runs a short 70 minutes, so there's not a ton to complain about. Thankfully all the original voices return, with the exception of Lilo, who is now played by I'm-everywhere-girl Dakota Fanning. I'm not sure why they decided to change, her famous voice is kind of distracting, but the little ones won't notice. If you liked the original film, Stitch has a Glitch is a worthy sequel. The truth came, when my son asked to watch it again the following morning, which means he liked it.

Going into Rize I really had no interest in the art of krumping. The sole reason I watched this film is for it's director David LaChapelle, who is my favorite photographer. His style wasn't very apparent in this film, it has a the same DV look that most of today's documentaries share. There is one scene, where he took a few of the dancers down to the L.A. river and set up his lights, that made it look a little more like his photographic style; but that's obviously not what he was going for with this film, he wanted to tell these kids story.

Despite not being into this high energy dancing at the beginning, I really began to appreciate the skill that goes into this crazy dance form. I'm sure I'd have a headache or throw out my back about 30 seconds into trying it for myself. But even more than appreciating their skills, I was glad to see this as an alternative for kids growing up in very tough situations, where gang life is an easy choice. I'm glad that there are people out there like Tommy the Clown, that dedicate their lives to helping kids and making their neighborhoods a better place to live. The world needs more people like this.

That said, I didn't think there was enough material here for a feature documentary; it could have been an amazing short, but wouldn't have got the same exposure. It's kind of a catch-22. I felt like the film kept telling the same story over and over. And they filled the other half with dancing footage. I liked seeing the history of the dance, meeting some of the main people involved, and I thought that it was interesting when they cut the footage against some traditional tribe dancing from Africa. But there was really only about 30 minutes of story, stretched into over 90.

If you're into krumping, I'm sure you've already seen Rize, and I'm glad that there is a film representing this new movement. But as an outsider, I began to get bored. If you're an outsider like me, and you can catch the first 30 minutes on cable somewhere, it's worth seeing that much of it, after that not much else is developed. It was interesting to see LaChapelle's work behind a movie camera, he shows some promise with this film, I'll be interested in seeing whatever he comes up with next.