28 Weeks Later
dir. Juan Carlos Fresnadillo
2007



"Mom! Dad! Don't touch it! It's evil"
- Kevin, Time Bandits

"They are us. They are the same animal, behaving less perfectly."
- Dr. Logan, Day of the Dead

"It happens sometimes. People just explode. Natural causes."
- Agent Rogers, Repo Man


One of the most horrifying moments in 28 Days Later comes late in the second act when the surviving humans of the rage virus epidemic (which all but wiped out the population of England in less than one lunar cycle) realize that the virus had not destroyed all humanity, but just the United Kingdom.

The horror comes with the realization that the rest of the planet will just as soon write off the UK as sneeze. "What would you do with a diseased little island?" laments an unifected soldier.

What, indeed. With a virus that could potentially destroy any populated area in less than a few weeks nicely contained and with few (if any) survivors to rescue, who in their right mind would ever set foot on this rocky little promontory ever again?

28 Weeks Later, enter the Americans. Well-meaning and ill-prepared, the American army begins a repatriation effort in London. Survivors and escapees from the original infection are slowly returned to their homes after a period of quarantine. Well, not quite...they are returned to a green zone on the Isle of Dogs while the military tidies up the rest of the city.

So, 15,000 restless refugees warehoused only a few kilometers away from a reservoir of the deadliest virus known to man and overseen by a skeleton crew of overworked foreigners? What, as the kids ask today, could possibly go wrong?

I don't imagine I need to spell it out: exposure, infection, epidemic, extreme military response.

Once the virus is free, the latter half of the film is an escape, a la Children of Men, with our main characters being two American soldiers, two children and a scientist who knows that the children represent a potential cure for rage.

The essential irony of all good zombie movies is that it is the other humans, not the dead or infected, that represent the greatest threat. George Romero is the master of this. There's simply no reason why society would collapse the way it does in the original Dawn of the Dead. The zombies are slow, stupid and uncoordinated. All people have to do is shoot them in the head and go about their business.

The existential horror of the zombie problem is summed up by the military commander in the first 28 movie: "what I've seen for the last four weeks is people killing people, which is the same thing I saw in the four weeks before that and the four weeks before that going back for my whole life."

This idea, by the way, was well-handled in Shaun of the Dead, which envisioned the living dead integrating into society as something like dangerous, high-functioning pets. This is the most realistic (in the sense of how we would all respond) scenario I've seen in one of these movies. For most of our history, humans have been surrounded by dangerous predators.

In 28 Days Later, the layering of the zombie problem is interesting and multi-faceted. Zombie infection is brought to the world (accidentally) by our hero, who along with his comrades releases an infected animal from captivity. As we follow him through the film, we cannot shake the reality that all the horror we see is his fault.

When our hero and his compatriots run across a sadistic military commander and his platoon (who is interested only in procuring females for his men like latter-day Sabine Women), we cannot help but wonder how many of us owe our existence to the rape of some ancient ancestor.

Zombie infections, in other words, don't bring out the best in people.

Similar themes are explored in 28 Weeks Later, but all too often they are abandoned in favor of a convenient zombie chase or firey explosion. In the end, none of the characters seems to bear much responsibility or manifest much horror. Added to which, the sequel brings little new (short of the hope of a cure) to the 28 Time Periods Later universe.

But, the lack of story advancement is more than made up for by the simply masterful directing and editing. Fresnadillo manages to remain true to the ever-askew vision of Danny Boyle while bringing his own (much more action oriented) sensibilities to bear.

Every shot in the original 28 Days Later was striking: multi-layered compositions, both in depth and height, high-angle predatory tracking shots and a wonderful, Magritte-like juxtaposition of light and dark and bleak and vibrant color made the original film one that you could literally just watch (sans sound) and enjoy.

Likewise, the sequel rips with tension and action. In Fresnadillo's hands, Boyle's camera moves like a bird in flight.

A third film (28 Months Later) is eagerly anticipated.

Two and a half stars, Infected Jason says, come here a minute...I want to whisper something to you.

Hot Fuzz
dir. Edgar Wright
2007

"Do you want a cigarette? We can take our time and both die of cancer."
- Martin Riggs to Jumper, Lethal Weapon

"In death, there are no accidents, no coincidences, no mishaps and no escapes."
- Bludworth, Final Destination

"Oh, you British are sooooo superior, aren't you?"
- Otto, A Fish Called Wanda

Simon Pegg IS Sargeant Nicholas Angel of the London police.

He's driven. He's by-the-book. He's effective. He's tenacious.

In other words, there's no room for him in London.

When his coworkers come to resent Angel's workaholic passion, he is transfered to a small, evidently crimeless, country town.

But, as JRR Tolkein once famously observed, British provincials can be a hinky lot.

A series of increasingly unlikely accidents, an ominous hooded figure stalking the night, a smug, villanious supermarket magnate with a cheshire grin and a singularly bad (BAD) night at the theater all conspire to rob Angel of the peaceful, tranquil country life he didn't really want anyway.

As with Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz walks a fine line between parody, comedy and sincere action. Like Shaun, it is a fun and compelling movie in its own right, peppered (more explicitly this time) with many references to its forebears.

PC Danny Butterman (Angel's partner whose incompetence is matched only by his good-hearted enthusiasm) learned everything he knows about police work by watching Die Hard, Bad Boys and Lethal Weapon.

Angel resists any comparison between what he does and the way police work is depicted in those films. At a traffic stop that could otherwise have ended in a car chase and/or gunfight, Angel manages to psychologically subdue his suspect with just a notebook and pen. When he attempts to impress upon his partner the power of these police tools, Danny shows him a flip book cartoon he drew in his notebook of a man's head being blown off.

Of course, as we enter the third act and (Bad Boys style) "the shit gets real," Angel proves himself to be just as well suited for high action as he is for paperwork.

In addition to lampooning, emulating and paying respect (sometimes in a single shot) to American action fare, Hot Fuzz also borrows and builds on the tradition of British "fish out of water" small-town crime stories (ie Straw Dogs, The Wicker Man) as well as modern TV police procedurals like CSI, and Prime Suspect.

In the age of Zucker and Zucker, parody was broad. The Airplane movies are wall to wall puns, one-liners and sight gags. While that works, it can be emotionally alienating. The characters cannot be taken seriously, so the humor hits at a gut "3 stooges" level.

Hot Fuzz manages to sit quietly with its characters without breaking the mood.

Movies like Shaun of the Dead, Grindhouse, Snakes on a Plane and now Hot Fuzz are to Airplane what the sensitive 21st century well-adjusted guy is to Austin Powers: they're still only interested in one thing, but they're not afraid to show a little soft vulnerability to get it...if that's what you're into, baby.

Three and a half stars, Jason Angel says yippe kay yay, motherfucker!

Colour Me Kubrick
dir Brian W. Cook
2007

"Funny how the colors of the real world only seem really real when you viddy them on film."
-Alex, A Clockwork Orange

"Everybody wants to make themselves out to be something more than they are, especially in the homosexual underworld."
- Willie O'Keefe, JFK

"Do you suppose Stanley Kubrick ever gets depressed?"
- Joe Gideon, All That Jazz

Alan Conway would have done well to invest in a Blockbuster card.

In the early 1990s, while Stanley Kubrick was working on Eyes Wide Shut, Conway hustled drinks and small loans by pretending to be the famous film director.

Writ large, this could be a magnificent scam, but Conway's cinematic pretense was paper thin at best. Unfamiliar with Kubrick's work, his accent, his look or his lifestyle, Conway might just as well have claimed to be the queen herself.

The choice of Kubrick makes an odd sort of sense. Conway craves attention and what better way to get it than to claim to be someone famous who no one really knows anything about. JD Salinger and Thomas Pynchon, beware.

It's an unremarkable story, but Color Me Kubrick is a remarkable film.

Shot in loving tribute to Kubrick by longtime assistant director Brian Cook, this little story about a sad little man so consumed with self-loathing that he'd rather be anyone, even someone totally alien, than face himself in the mirror is almost the perfect biopic for Stanley Kubrick, in that he is wholly absent from the story.

The film is filled with Kubrickian expressionism: from the "Bleu Danube" adult book and video store over which Conway resides to the long tracking shot of Conway bringing his dirty clothes to the laundry to the stiff, semi-formal dialogue delivered by supporting characters dressed in garish, 70s futuristic fashions.

Kubrick's great theme was human alienation. Alienation of humans from each other, from their past, from technology and, ultimately, from themselves.

The Discovery, with its bulging crew quarters and elongated flagellum-like tail delivers the human genetic code, in the form of Dave Bowman, to inseminate the ovarian Jupiter.

Driven to rage by the ghosts of the American past, Jack Torrance stalks the halls of the Overlook Hotel with murderous intent toward his wife and child.

Betrayed and abandoned by his "so-called droogs," Alex is left to the tender mercies of the state, which cannot decide whether torturing him themselves or leaving it to the other prisoners makes for better public policy.

Kubrick's characters often find themselves caught up in something larger than they are, in over their heads, helpless, as the gears and wheels of historical, technological and biological inevitabilty click and turn around them.

And this was Alan Conway, struggling against annihilation in the war room of the self.

Like a monolith in orbit, a ghost in a hotel bathroom, a secret drug administered to guide our understanding, Kubrick looms large in this film. He is never pictured, never heard from, plays no part in the story. But, as in his films, his presence is felt everywhere.

Like a good Kubrick protagonist, Conway doesn't stand a chance. Jupiter wins again.

Four stars, the Jason 9000 says he's sorry, but he just can't do that