WALL-E Spreading More Joy

Another Teen Critic falls for WALL-E (Pixar/Disney)

By Candace Kavanagh

For the past month I along with others have used the trailer of WALL-E to cheer us up. With his cute robot eyes and his cute incoherent voice he has cheered us up and made us feel a certain anticipation for the day the film would come out. I know I've been waiting to see WALL-E for a while and that feeling strengthened when I knew this movie was going to be tale of romance. But I didn't know what was going to happen in between. So I was mildly surprised when this movie offered a comment on our society.

Yes as WALL-E begins his journey to see the rest of the human race (that has escaped earth and it's toxic, unlivable environment), he notices that people have lost interest in anything that is not two inches in front of their faces. This results from their whole lives being controlled by computers. Every time someone needs to send a text or someone needs to play their video game, instead of being with an actual person and using their own hands, a computer does all teh work for them. It seems that we get closer to this reality all the time. When I got back home from watching the film I saw almost my whole family practicing this lifestyle right now. Now this theme may be slightly adult for a movie that was advertised as a robotic and romantic version of E.T., a movie that had no real social content.

But fortunately for all of us WALL-E lovers the cuteness of this movie is not smothered by its social satire. Instead WALL-E's ultra cute stunts, and the beautiful animation used during the film give the children in the audience something to drool over as adults begin to swallow the more serious comments on our society -- or just ignore them. Of course I spent my time enjoying WALL-E's sweetness and sincerity as he simply wishes to hold the girl robot and share with her something he hasn't been able to share with anyone before -- his favorite song in Hello Dolly.

So WALL-E (rated G for all audiences) is a great movie to watch with your kids or your friends. I might even call it a date movie. Just as long you don't mind watching a movie where you can't understand what most of the characters in the movie are saying. Kind of like watching an episode of Pokemon.

-- Candace Kavanagh just graduated from Mount Miguel High School. She spends her life absorbing celluloid images. She loves every type of film from so-called "chick flicks" such as My Fair Lady and Legally Blonde, to mind bending thrillers like Mulholland Drive and Hard Candy -- with every zombie movie, action flick, musical, and comedy in between.

War, Inc.

John Cusack, the star, co-writer and producer of War, Inc. (First Look)

If you ever wondered what might have happened to John Cusack's hit man from 1997's Grosse Pointe Blank, then check out War, Inc. (opening June 27 at Landmark's Hillcrest Cinemas). The character Cusack plays presents a possible fate for Martin Q. Blank, or at least a logical trajectory his killer could have taken. War, Inc., as with Grosse Pointe Blank, is also co-written by Cusack, co-stars his sister Joan as his assistant Marsha (she was Marcella in Grosse Pointe Blank), and boasts an appearance by Dan Aykroyd. But unlike Grosse Point Blank, which knew exactly what kind of dark comedy it wanted to be, War, Inc. is all over the map.

Zombie Strippers

Jenna Jameson (not yet dead) brings double-D dimensions to Zombie Strippers (Sony)

Naked women, undead hordes, Robert Englund and Friedrich Nietzsche all in one movie! I'd call Zombie Strippers (opening April 18 exclusively at Pacific Gaslamp Stadium Theaters, where you can still find George Romero's Diary of the Dead playing as a perfect second feature or warm up act) a guilty pleasure but I don't feel the slightest bit of guilt about enjoying it so much. I mean Zombie Strippers, what a brilliant idea. Director, writer, and cinematographer Jay Lee brings a whole new double-D dimension to the zombie genre - sex! With porn star Jenna Jameson as a zombie stripper, being undead has never been so cool or so sexy. Those lumbering, silent reanimated corpses have never been presented as sexy and honestly I never thought I'd want to see one of them naked but in Lee's hands, the idea works. [But if you are easily offended, I suggest you don't read on.]

NEW: Just added the audio from our Film Club discussion of Zombie Strippers. And just to be clear the Bush bashing I bring up is about George Bush but I didn't get to finish my comment.

Fido

You just can't keep a good zombie down. Scottish comedian Billy Connolly joins the ranks of the undead in the Canadian zom-com Fido (opening July 6 for a limited one-week run at Landmark's Ken Cinema). Essentially, it's the story of a boy and his doguhhh, I mean pet zombie.

The Best and Worst of 2006

South Korea's A Bitter Sweet Life

As 2006 comes to an end, it's time to reflect back on the films that came out during the year to sort out the best from the worst. First of all, in determining the best of the year there are always a few films that have quirky releases, and I never know whether it's fair to include them or not. But two films that played for only a day each at the San Diego Asian Film Festival deserve mention even if they never received a theatrical release here.

Hou Hsiao Hsien is quite simply one of the world's premier filmmakers. For Three Times, the Taiwanese director serves up three segments involving a romance and each set in a different time period but with the same pair of actors (the lovely Shu Qi and Chang Chen) performing the leads. Hou's film explores how the culture and social limitations of each era affect the relationships of the characters. The film is ravishing to look at, with Hou crafting a dazzling and deceptively complex work. A film of a very different nature but equally worth checking out is Kim Ji Woon's A Bittersweet Life from South Korea. With A Bittersweet Life Kim delivers an action film with a dark soul and aching vulnerability buried at its heart. If you can find either of these on DVD, check them out. They would make my Ten Best in any year.

George A. Romero’s Land of the Dead

Asia Argento's very much alive but not everyone is in Land of the Dead (Universal)

Zombies are making a cinematic comeback with recent films such as 28 Days Later, the Dawn of the Dead remake, and the brilliant zombie romantic comedy Shaun of the Dead. But this summer the man who made the seminal zombie film Night of the Living Dead returns to the screen. Land of the Dead (opens June 24 throughout San Diego) is George A. Romero's all-new chapter in his undead saga.

Shaun of the Dead/Interview with Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg

Simon Pegg and Nick Frost in Shaun of the Dead (Rogue Pictures)

The new British import film, Shaun of the Dead (opening September 23), sounds like something that was thought up in a pub after one too many pints. But the surprise of this self-described romantic comedy with zombies (that's a zom-rom-com) is that it's a clever homage to George Romero's original Dawn of the Dead. I spoke with Shaun's creators at the San Diego Comic-Con.

Buffalo Soldiers

Joaquin Phoenix stars in Buffalo Soldiers

"Where there is peace the warlike man attacks himself." This quote by Friedrich Nietsche opens Buffalo Soldiers (opening September 5 at Madstone Theaters), a film set on a U.S. army base just outside of Stuttgart, West Germany in 1989.

The Berlin Wall is about to fall and peace threatens to make life on base unbearably dull. As specialist Ray Elwood (Joaquin Phoenix) puts it, you've got all these highly trained soldiers with nothing to kill but time-and that's a potentially dangerous situation. Elwood kills time and fights boredom by running a lucrative black market. He sells everything from Mop ‘N' Glo to weapons, and then he'll cook heroin for the base's head of Military Police in his spare time. Elwood has the place wired and his kind but inept commander (Ed Harris) never suspects anything.

Three Kings

Ice Cube, George Clooney, and Mark Wahlberg in Three Kings

Three Kings (opening October 8) is an offbeat action adventure set in March of 1991 just as the United States was officially wrapping up Desert Storm in Iraq.

Three Kings gets off to a brilliant start. Shot in grainy, sun bleached sand tones, the first third of the movie darts around with frenetic energy and flippant humor. Writer-director David O. Russell introduces us to his quartet of main characters: Archie Gates (George Clooney), a career soldier with a penchant for insubordination; Troy Barlow (Mark Wahlberg), an idealistic new father who just wants to get back home; Chief Elgin (Ice Cube), a baggage handler from the Detroit Airport who puts his faith in God; and Conrad Vig (Spike Jones), a geeky redneck who desperately wants a war adventure that will lift him out of mediocrity back home. The four are brought together by a map that Troy finds wedged in the posterior of an Iraqi prisoner. The map supposedly reveals the location of Sadaam's stash of Kuwaiti gold boullion and the four men feel that it's theirs for the taking. But what starts as a mercenary mission turns into a humanitarian one as the soldiers come face to face with the Iraqi people and the complexity of their situation.

The film has a sharp satiric sting in the early scenes and Russell teases us with what could be a Catch 22 or M*A*S*H for the nineties--the kind of film that can point out the absurdities of war, politics and the military. But when the characters and the film discover their political consciousness, the film looses its pace, zing and edge. All of Russell's social and political observations are commendable but its a shame that he sacrificed the films innovative style and savage irony to become a politically correct commentary.

Despite these failings, Three Kings remains an entertaining and compelling film.