In brand crazy Hollywood “Ready Player One,” the new sci fi film from Steven Spielberg, is an everything-old-is-new-again hybrid. Based on the novel of the same name from author Ernest Cline it’s not a reboot or reimagining of a comic book or old film. It’s an original story that may appeal to folks who say the movies only recycle ideas. At the same time it’s stuffed to the gills with enough pop culture icons to warm the hearts of any nostalgic moviegoer.
It’s 2045 and the world is a mess. Cities are a hodgepodge of dystopian horrors, overcrowded, polluted and corrupt. For the people, whatever joy can be mined from the desolate, depressing life comes from immersing themselves in a virtual reality world called OASIS (Ontologically Anthropocentric Sensory Immersive Simulation). “Except for eating, sleeping and bathroom breaks,” says Wade Watts (Tye Sheridan), “everyone does everything in the OASIS.” Based on 1980s movies, pop culture and videogames, it’s a technological escape from the all-too-real societal ills that make life miserable. “These days reality,” Wade says, “is a bummer.”
When OASIS creator James Halliday (Mark Rylance) died he created a way for Watts and his on-line Gunter pals—egg hunters—to find a way out of their IRL problems. The creator left behind an Easter Egg—if you don’t know that an Easter Egg is a hidden game message or image, give up now—amongst the game’s familiar pop culture characters. Whoever finds the three keys that unlock the Easter Egg will inherit the OASIS empire. Money, power, the whole nine yards. Watts, who lives in a vertical trailer park called The Stacks in Columbus, Ohio, along with his digital team the High Five, work to navigate the game and change their lives. In a race against time, they must beat the Sixers, an army of gamers employed by evil corporation Innovative Online Industries, in a war for control of the future.
Think your kids spend too much time playing video games? Get a load of Wade, Art3mis (Olivia Cooke), Aech (Lena Waithe), Daito (Win Morisaki) and Shoto (Philip Zhao). This crowd are best friends, although for most of the movie they have never met on terra ferma. They spend all their time on line, forming friendships, falling in love and eventually fighting for their real life lives.
“Ready Player One” takes off like a rocket. There’s a lot of set-up and Spielberg finds a way to impart information and keep it lively. He fills the screen with an industrial view of the future, contrasting Wade’s dour real life with his vivid on line adventures, visually developing the push and pull between reality and virtual reality that fuels the film’s story. A wild car race, featuring Freddy Krueger, King Kong and the Batmobile, establishes the OASIS in a way that the minutes of exposition surrounding it never could. It also establishes the film’s love of spectacle over story.
Spielberg dives deep into the VR world, intoxicated by the endless possibilities of mixing-and-matching pop culture iconography with an adventure story. When Wade says, “The limit of reality is your own imagination,” he could very well be talking to the director. The result is a frenetic film that is fun for a while but the whimsy soon gets bogged down with feverish detail. It’s a little too long, there’s too much exposition, too many twists for a story that can be boiled down to the notion that we should spend more time in the real world.
A tribute to “The Shining” is often quite fun and there are moments of levity but it isn’t about anything other than the adventure. The commentary on our own virtual lives are never expanded upon. Of a spark of on-line love between Art3mis and Wade, who hadn’t yet met outside OASIS, Art3mis says, “You only see what I want you to see. You don’t know me.” It’s a good starting point for a conversation about what happens when avatars become real people but instead we get more exposition.
“Ready Player One” is pure escapism that begs the question, Will there ever be a video game movie that really works? The function of storytelling is vastly different between videogames and film and yet filmmakers try for a amalgam, the best of both worlds. What we usually end up with is what Steven Spielberg finds in his treatment of “Ready Player One,” a film that honours the spirit of the games at the expense of great storytelling.
Movies like World War Z, Zombie Women of Satan and this weekend’s comedy-horror Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse — the story of three Scouts who must bond to save their town from a zombie outbreak — owe a debt of gratitude to Night of the Living Dead. In 1968, the story of story of people trapped in a rural Pennsylvania farmhouse trying to survive an attack by reanimated ghouls dragged a bloody new horror genre into the marketplace.
For better (see Re-Animator) and for worse (see Zombie Nightmare) the movie Rex Reed called “a classic” has spawned almost five decades of brain eating and head explosions, but according to the film’s co-author John Russo, the origin of the idea was anything but sinister.
“Sometime in the winter of 1966 George Romero and I were having lunch with Richard Ricci,” says Russo, then a co-partner with Romero and Russell Streiner (who has the film’s most famous line, “They’re coming to get you, Barbara!”) in The Latent Image, a commercial television production house.
“George and I were complaining about the fickleness of our commercial clients. Richard said, ‘So why don’t you do something about it?’ I thought about it and said, ‘We oughtta be able to make something better than the crap we see on Chiller Theater.’
“George right away got excited, slammed the table with his big hand, sending bottles and glasses flying, and yelled, ‘We’re gonna make a movie!’”
The two batted around several ideas. One, titled Monster Flick, was a horror comedy about teenage aliens, while another focused on flesh eating aliens.
“But we quickly discovered that we could not afford all the necessary special effects,” he says, so the writing continued.
“We’d go to work late at night in separate offices, at separate typewriters,” says Russo. “I said right away that our story should start in a cemetery because folks found cemeteries spooky. I was working on a script that started in a cemetery and involved aliens coming to earth in search of human flesh. But George took a break at Christmas time and came back with half of a story that started in a cemetery, and was in essence what became the first half of Night of the Living Dead. There were all the proper twists and turns and a lot of excitement, but George never said who the attackers were or why they were attacking.
“I said, ‘I like this, George, but who are these attackers? You never say.’ And he said he didn’t know. So I said, ‘It seems to me they could be dead people. But why are they attacking? What are they after?’ Again, he said he didn’t know. So I said, ‘Why don’t we use my flesh-eating idea?’ And he agreed. “So that’s how the modern flesh-eating zombies were born!”
These days it doesn’t take a lot of braaaaaaaaaaaaaaaains to see the legacy of Night of the Living Dead. The ghoulish story is considered a classic, has spawned comedies like the box office hit Zombieland and hit television shows like The Walking Dead.
“We were absolutely dedicated toward making a movie that was true to its premise and the motivations of its characters, from start to finish,” says Russo, adding, “[the movie] struck a primal chord in everybody, perhaps because of the atavistic memory of our species as easy prey for wild beasts, which we were for most of human history. We all carry the deep-seated fear of being devoured.”
“Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse” is rated R for zombie violence and gore, sexual material, graphic nudity, and language throughout. That means no one under 17 years of age will be admitted. I think the film might better serve its audience by not admitting anyone over the age of 17 because I’m not sure anyone much past Grade 11 will enjoy the movie’s mix of burps, blood and bursting bras.
When the zombie apocalypse hit their small California town Scouts and best friends Ben (Tye Sheridan), Carter (Logan Miller) and Augie (Joey Morgan) were in the woods on a camping trip. Untouched by the biological hazard that turns almost everyone in town into bloodthirsty brain eaters, they must mobilize, and use their Scout training—knowledge of knots, decision-making and other scoutcraft skills—to locate and rescue Kendall (Halston Sage), Carter’s sister and the girl of Ben’s dreams. Aided by a gun-toting cocktail waitress (Sarah Dumont) the boys follow the letter of the Scout Law—“to help other people at all times, to keep myself physically strong, mentally awake, and morally straight.”—to battle the zombies.
OK, they’re not always morally straight, but that’s the kind of movie this is. These boys don’t miss the chance to ogle a naked zombie or sneak into a strip club.
Imagine a “The Walking Dead” with post puberty boys and pre puberty jokes (the movie’s best gag comes in the form of a zombie wearing a YOLO t-shirt.). It’s a mash-up of high-school comedies and horror that doesn’t spare the fake plasma.
It works not because it’s the best zombie comedy ever—I’d nominate “Zombieland” or “Shaun of the Dead”—or that it has the grossest kills but because it has likeable characters. The guys are typical teens placed in an extraordinary situation. They rise to the challenge of vanquishing the undead and do so while learning about acceptance and responsibility. I’m not going to say it’s a message movie—it most definitely isn’t, but under the gallons of gore is an undeniable sweetness you usually don’t find in movies that feature disembowelments and exploding heads.
I’m not sure that Lord Baden-Powell would approve of “Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse” but for the right audience it should be a good Halloween matinee.
This slow moving Mississippi river-set movie features infidelity, murder and theft, but at its heart it isn’t really about any of those things.
Not Really. Instead it’s a story about the things we do for love.
When two fourteen-year-old boys (Tye Sheridan and Jacob Lofland, who plays the excellently named Neckbone) discover a charismatic stranger named Mud (Matthew McConaughey) living on a remote island they get drawn into a dubious scheme to reunite the loner with his true love Juniper (Reese Witherspoon).
Methodical and moody director Jeff “Take Shelter” Nichols takes his time telling “Mud’s” coming-of-age story. The film’s pacing echoes the sleepy lifestyle of its rural setting, which some viewers might find too slow—especially amid the crash-boom-bang of summer blockbuster season—but the moody approach allows the story to explore the gritty moodiness of the titular character and the confusion of a young boy who believes that love trumps all.
The performances of the leads—McConaughey and child actor Tye Sheridan—are stellar and quietly effective.
McConaughey does take his shirt off, but this time around it’s part of his unique backstory and not an excuse for Kate Hudson (who is nowhere to be seen here) to widen her eyes and giggle at his abs. It’s another compelling performance—following “Bernie,” “The paperboy” and “Killer Joe”—that continues his acting rehabilitation after years of romantic comedy purgatory.
Also effective in supporting roles are Sam Shepard as a sharp shooting river rat and Michael Shannon who plays it remarkably straight here after a series of edgy performances in films like “The Runaways” and “Premium Rush.”
“Mud” is a small film about epic subjects—true love, loyalty and the nature of friendship—that has a much clearer world view than its title might suggest.
