No, I meant the awful follow-up to Romero's otherwise solid first few movies. Saluting, talking, gun-firing zombies? Please. The attempts at provoking thought were also done much better (and more subtly) in the immediate predecessor. Having four survivors the audience might give a **** about is also preferable to the angry military cliche vs the frustrated scientist cliche.
I did like the first scare and a few of the zombie kills, but this was otherwise pure disappointment.
Wow, though I do not know you and I'm in no way making a character judgment I'd have to say I disagree with some of your tastes Navigator (though I also love Portal so that is redeeming
).
Day of the Dead (which I just watched today) is a great film, probably George A Romero's third best in my opinion. I think there's only so much you can do with Zombies and with his first few movies, I think Romero added something substantial to the sub genre or changed it slightly. For example while Night introduced the zombie lore and sort of brought Romero into his own with the craft of filmmaking, Dawn has a BRILLIANT theme/motif of co existing with the undead. Eventually the downtrodden and confined main characters start trying to live peacefully for as long as they can on the other sides of the stores within the same mall as the zombies. The zombies are also portrayed in a very fragile human way, as being from every walk of life (i.e. the Hare Krishnah Zombie). Eventually, human kind foils itself with the biker gang, and proves to be much worse than the zombies and the zombies become almost heroic figures of salvation ala soddom and gamorrah as they destroy the biker gang and the main character manages to escape.
You see a similar theme going on in Day of the Dead where the Bub zombie has been captured and partially domesticated. He feels for the loss of the professor and takes out his agression in a poetically just way by killing the black-hearted military commander. Both of these are really unique types of isolation in the midst of a zombie outbreak as well, from a shopping mall to an underground bunker with it's own unique trapping system (the lassos and the cages). I'd urge you to give it a second look and check out some of the more sublte and effective shots, such as when the black guy punchs out the military leader, thinks about finishing him off and then looks over at his dead companion and laments the loss of human life, and thinks about how little of it is left. The fragility of human kind is a major theme in these.
And yet Romero himself says that there is a lot of over-reading people do in these films, but lingering on the dead body of the scientist and the shots of Bub the zombie giving the salute and the focus on the value of life, or the futile clinging to life can't be totally unintentional. One of the times I spoke with Mr. Romero he remarked that a lot of people thought that he was making a bold statement with African American protagonists in 2 of his zombie films, not the case he said. It was totally an afterthought and unintentional. Also, his films were not intended as a statement about war or humanity destroying itself (being made in the Nam era some of them). They were just him and his friends going out and having a good time. And you can see his craft continuing to develop through his films. Romero said Dawn was his favorite, seeing the larger themes and thanks to the fantastic "Goblin" soundtrack I can't help but agree.
"Well they're dead they're all messed up"
The second film we disagree on is the Adjustment Bureau, which I thought dealt with romance on screen in a really believable way. It's not often you see a movie that's not a "love story" primarily with larger science fiction themes that makes the love so charming and belivable. I also felt the supernatural elements in Adjustment Bureau were explained just the right amount and I wasn't left wondering about the physics of the world like I was with Source Code.
...I could see an early teen with their brain switched off finding enjoyment in this movie...but even then it's a bit of a stretch. The only thing this movie has going for it is unintentional laughs and some decent action scenes. But it's all highlighted by boring love crap, horrible dialoge, some poorly explained plot points, and really rough editting/scene transitions. I could go on, but what's the point...
