28 DAYS LATER... (2002)

28% action. 90% talking. 2% me yawning loudly.

Some caveman-looking dickneck wakes up in the hospital ("Day of the Triffids"-style), 28 days after an virus of "Rage" breaks out. Rage makes people act like it's 6 AM on Black Friday all the time! Dickneck crawls out of bed and wanders around for a long time. Finally some of the infected attack him, but he's saved by two other survivors. Stuff happens.  Most of it's talking.

I was not a fan of this movie. Fanboys seem to love it and rub their crotches furiously at the mere mention of it's holy name, but I found the entire thing to look low-budget and way too overstylized with the grainy film and the sped up frame rate when the infected were onscreen. I didn't hate the movie, just found it boring and average. It's not until the very end of the movie that there's an action scene that last for longer than just a few seconds. Everything up until that point was just some asshole twitching and screaming then getting killed. Hell, the remake of THE CRAZIES had more action!

There's really no reason explaining why I thought this movie was weak, but during this movie I never felt any of the claustrophobia or complete sense of isolation and doom like I did with the original DAWN OF THE DEAD or Brian Keene's "The Rising" books.

Worth watching, but it's nothing to write home about that's for sure. Moderate low-budget violence, some blood, GY!BE on the soundtrack, zero doom, zero tits, zero logic (if the infection is caused by bodily fluid transference then I'd damn sure be wearing safety glasses and a mouth cover at all times), happy music, people laughing, purposely grainy picture, towards the end there was glimpses of the violence I had wanted to see but even then it cut away too soon.

Part 2 - 28 Weeks Later (2007)

[Update 10/4/2021: Interesting item I discovered while looking for Exorcist newspaper ads.]

 Person middle of screen walking away on sidewalk.

 Human on left side throwing trash bag into dumpster.

 Cameraman extremely visible over to right.

 Dead body at lower left clearly breathing.

CYRANO DE BERGERAC (1990)

[Update 11/16/2021: Need to redo this review completely. Fix the screenshots also.]

Cyrano de Bergerac is a master sword fighter and poet who would gladly fight 100 men, but recoils in fear at the mere thought of expressing his secret love for the beautiful Roxane. Why? Because he has a giant nose and figures she will reject his love because he's so ugly. Cyrano is madly in love with Roxane so when she confides in him that she's attracted to a new soldier in Cyrano's military unit he wants to crush the guy, but instead he takes the cadet under his wing. Then when he sees the guy means well but an idiot.  Cyrano writes endless love letters to Roxane for him. Naturally, Roxane falls wildly in love with the young man, but how long and how far will this charade go?

CYRANO DE BERGERAC is a nice mixture of romance and action and even a little humor. The 137 minute run time flies by in a swirl of love filled wooing and sword swinging asskickery. The main attraction though is the portrayal of Cyrano by Gerard Depardieu.  He's a true pleasure to watch here. Every mannerism and gesture he does expresses something. Cyrano is a very loud and vibrant character, but yet Gerard still manages to capture the internal torment that Cyrano is going through and express it to the audience without us even realizing it.

The look of the film is also beautiful with impressive costumes and sets. My biggest complaint is the story wasn't as dark or heartbreaking as I had hoped. Also, I wasn't impressed by the Roxane character. I've never read the original story, but in this movie she didn't seem very well fleshed out. She was kinda a ditzy simpleton actually. That's just my opinion. Still it's a great movie, I just wish the Roxane character had given me more of a reason to be deserving of Cyrano's delicate prose. If you like romantic films then check it out!

KNOWING (2009)

MIT astrophysics professor Nicholas Cage discovers, via a numerical message found in his son's elementary school time capsule, that the Earth is fuuuuucked. So now, it's up to him to run around like an asshole screaming about the end of the world and save everybody's life. Well, I might have gotten a little ahead of myself. First, the filmmakers have to explain to the stupid audience that Cage is a godless sinner by having him drinking nonstop and trash talking religion while praising Science then have him change his mind when he sees the end is near. That's right, KNOWING is actually a heavy-handed Jesus movie...I think.  It might be a heavy-handed New Age hippie movie also...maybe. Honestly, I have no clue what's going on except that it's silly and fun to laugh at.

Silly story, zero tits, lots of CGI destruction, annoying kids you want to drop kick in the face, Cage freaking out and throwing stuff, mysterious humanoids, CGI moose on fire.  With the right sense of humor, KNOWING is a lot of fun to laugh at.