This
weekend I embarked on Justified Season 3. Besides that I watched a couple of episodes on 30 Rock and 4 feature movies.
Least
noteworthy was Zyzzyx Road (John Penney - 2006). This is one
of those films that are not “alive”, but comes across as a theoretical construction.
The effort to make a smart thriller falls short and the result is ludicrous. Katherine
Heigl is supposed to be an underage hooker (fat chance!) and Tom Sizemore is an
uninspired villain.
By chance I
saw another movie featuring Katherine Heigl, One for the Money (Julie Anne
Robinson - 2012).
Winding down with a descent comedy and that was that for my part.
The Crazies
(Breck Eisner - 2010) is a remake of George Romero’s feature from 1973. I’m ashamed to say that I haven’t
seen the original so I can’t compare. Nothing new in this take on “living dead’s
taking over the world” but I was entertained by a well narrated story with Timothy
Olyphant in the lead.
The high
point of the weekend was a Larry Cohen film I had saved for a gloomy day; It'sAlive III: Island of the Alive (1987). I’m a big
fan of Larry Cohen’s jokoserious films. Horror or thriller, there is always a sarcastic
tone that subverts the genre expectations. His much used actor Michael Moriarty (The
stuff (1985), Q: The Winged Serpent (1982), A Return to Salem's Lot (1987) and all
the Alive films) is particularly well placed in this setting as he always expresses
a semi aggressive disdain that in itself makes the film worth watching. What Michael
Moriarty was for Cohen is comparable to what Martin Donovan was for Hal Hartley.
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