Weekend Update

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.