Wonder Woman (2017)

There’s been talk of a Wonder Woman feature-length movie for some time now.  I remember back when Guardians of the Galaxy was in theaters, someone joked about the constant delaying on DC’s part.  DC was constantly putting it off, saying that it wasn’t the right time for a female superhero.  Meanwhile, Marvel gave us a talking raccoon.  In fact, the talking raccoon’s movie’s sequel opened a month before Wonder Woman did this past Friday.  But I digress.

It should be noted that while I saw Man of Steel, I regrettably have not had the chance to see Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice yet, which I hope to rectify soon.  While I’m assuming that there were a few references that I missed, I don’t think that I suffered much for having missed it.  The movie opens at the Louvre, where Diana is receiving a package courtesy Wayne Industries.  In it is a photograph of Diana and several other people.  The rest of the movie is told in flashback, starting with Diana’s origins on Themyscira.

She’s a defiant girl.  Her mother, Queen Hippolyta, would rather her daughter study.  Diana would rather watch the other Amazon women fight, as that’s what Diana wants to do one day.  She knows who and what she is.  She’s been told the legends and the myths.  She does eventually get what she wants, but her mother worries about what Diana really is and what she may become.

Enter Steve Trevor.  He’s a spy operating for the British Government, which he admits to only because the women of Themyscira compel him to.  He has a very important book he has to get back to the British.  He’s denied this out of security concerns.  Diana takes him back anyway, only because she believes Ares, the god of war, is responsible for The Great War.  It’s what she was meant for.  It’s what she believes her people were meant for, although they choose to sit by.  Thus begins the story.

When Diana arrives in London in 1914, she finds opposition.  She and Steve know what has to be done.  However, just as the women of Themyscira seem to have no need for men, London of 1914 seems to have no use for women.  Thus, we get the culture class.  As you might have seen in the coming attraction, she can’t believe that women’s clothing won’t allow for fighting.  She’s not even allowed to follow Steve into a room of men discussing armistice.

She’s insistent on being taken to the front lines of the war so that she might slay Ares.  Steve is somewhat reluctant, but begins to see her worth when he sees her fight.  Steve is able to get two men, Steve and Sameer, to come with them to Germany.  There, they meet Chief, who can get them where they want to be.  They do get there and Diana does have her moment to do what she needs to do, even if it means finding out some truth that she doesn’t want to hear.

There is a lot of anticipation and hype surrounding the movie, and rightfully so.  I’ll admit to having watched the coming attractions a few times whenever I had the chance.  The movie doesn’t disappoint.  There are a number of fight scenes that don‘t feel forced.  It didn’t seem like they were there to show off the CGI or the main character.  They seemed natural parts of the story, but in an epic way.

For instance, the protagonists are able to liberate a town on their way to see the main antagonists.  And when I say protagonists, I mean Diana with some assistance from Steve, Sameer, Charlie and Chief.  This is where the aspect of Diana being a woman is handled more subtly than I would have expected.  There are doubts from the men, but she doesn’t bother with putting them in their place.  She lets her ability speak for her.

This is where I felt the movie was able to walk the line very well.  It does present the sexism of a female superhero without making it seem like we’re being preached to.  She’s made to dress the part of a woman in 1918 London, which she does, for a while.  There does come a time in the movie where Diana can’t do that any more.  She’s the hero.  Dressing the part only gets you so far in life.

My only complaint was the run time.  141 minutes is a little intimidating.  I don’t know that I would have cut anything.  The movie didn’t drag at all, but it’s still a long movie.  It’s just something to consider if you have somewhere to be afterwards.

IMDb page

Shaun of the Dead (2004)

Note:  This review was originally posted to my Epinions account.

WARNING: I give out a lot of details about the movie in this review. If you’re not into finding out major details about the movie, don’t read this until you’ve seen it. You’ve been warned!

If you saw a zombie moving down the street, what would you do? Do you think you would even know what to do? Shaun is just your average guy. He has a job in retail that he hates, but does anyway. He has two roommates, Ed and Pete, that are extremes. (Ed sits around all day playing video games while Pete likes to think of himself as the responsible one.)

There’s a zombie outbreak, but Shaun doesn’t take notice of it. It’s all over the news, but he somehow manages to tune it out. Zombies are walking down his street, but he doesn’t see them. Perhaps this is because things in his life aren’t going so well. His girlfriend, Liz, wants to go someplace special, but dumps Shaun when he wants to take her to the Winchester, which is where they always go. He also has to visit his mother, which means visiting his stepfather, who he doesn’t like.

Eventually, Shaun pauses on a channel long enough to listen to what’s going on. That’s when Ed notices a woman in the back yard. They realize that the Zombie epidemic has reached their house. The newscaster on TV tells Ed and Shaun about the zombies. To become infected, one is bitten, dies and comes back to life as a zombie. The man on TV mentions some of the early symptoms, which Pete seemed to have had. He also says that to ‘kill’ a zombie, one has to either decapitate said zombie or to cause brain damage.

Shaun and Ed grab blunt objects and try to figure out what they’re going to do. They decide to get Liz first, then to get Shaun’s mother. Things don’t go entirely as planned; Ed manages to crash their car while he’s waiting for Shaun to come out of Liz’s place. Shaun’s stepfather has been bitten, but he’s not showing signs yet. They take the stepfather’s car to the Winchester, which is easier said than done. Hopefully, they’ll be able to wait out the night.

The movie works on a lot of different levels. Sure, the whole zombie thing is ridiculous, but it’s a comedy. Comedies can get away with that sort of stuff. It’s never explained where the outbreak originated from. There are brief phrases about experiments, but nothing specific. The real focus is on Shaun and Ed, who simply want to survive until help can get there.

Shaun is very frustrated, yet is constantly thrust into a position of responsibility. Since his boss is out sick, he’s left in charge of the store. He’s the one that has to convince Ed to do something. He has to make reservations at a good restaurant, but fails to do so. Still, Shaun is the one to step up and take charge of the group, hoping to save everyone. As one of Liz’s roommates points out, Liz and her two roommates might have been safer if they had been left in her apartment.

This is not a movie for children, and I mean that in the most extreme way. You might even want to skip this paragraph if you’re squeamish. There are several scenes where zombies are eating corpses. There’s also another scene where someone has internal organs pulled out while he’s alive. There aren’t a lot of gross scenes, but those that are gross are very intense.

There are some funny scenes, too. Shaun and Ed want to use records as weapons. While two zombies approach, they discuss which records to throw at them. Most of the records don’t hit the zombies and those that do don’t seem to have any effect on them. Also, at the end of the movie, there are several shows involving zombies. (For instance, there’s a talk show featuring a woman married to a zombie.)

I thought that there was more comedy that horror, but there was a lot of tragedy in it. I think that Liz and Shaun are the only two main characters to make it through unaffected. I came into the movie expecting something that made fun of living-dead movies. Even the title is presumably a play on “Dawn of the Dead”. However, there was more to it than that. I really think that a lot of people can enjoy it, depending mostly on how much gore they have a tolerance for. 

IMDb page