Zombieland (2009) - Reese/Wernick and Fleischer hit the post-modern bull's eye with undead escapade

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+ Best Zombie Movie of the Year

Four game stars look ready to create mayhem on this poster for Ruben Fleisher's Zombieland

A phobic, neurotic young man partners with a gun-crazed Texan in America, or Zombieland, after a zombie apocalypse has spread death and destruction everywhere, but the two are tricked by a pair of sisters.

The highly sarcastic, reference-laden kind of dialog that runs through Zombieland rarely works for movies, as it mostly gets tiring after a while, but somehow it does work here. Certain parts of Zombieland is likely to have made Zombie Godfather, New Yorker master filmmaker George A. Romero (Night of the Living Dead (1968)) proud, not least the section in the theme park.
SPOILER Best in this great zombie horror-road movie-romcom genre-mixer, however, are the scenes with Bill Murray (Groundhog Day (1993)), in what purports to be his Hollywood mansion, which reaches a level of post-modern brilliance that is wholly unexpected, hilarious and delightful. Zombieland also contains some amazingly cool slo-mo shots of zombie attacks, (cinematography by Michael Bonvillain (Wanderlust (2012))), and may or may not beat Shaun of the Dead (2004) as the great modern zombie horror-comedy, according to your taste. It's a fun neo-classic in my book.
Zombieland is written by Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick (Deadpool (2016)) and directed by feature-debuting, great Washingtonian filmmaker Ruben Fleischer (Superstore (2015-17)).

Related posts:

Ruben Fleischer: Gangster Squad (2013) or, Good Men vs. Bad Men!
2013 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III]
2013 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]  
2013 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]
30 Minutes or Less (2011) or, Idiots and Lesser Idiots

2009 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED IV]
2009 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III]
2009 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]
2009 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]  

Watch a 2-minute scene from the film here

Cost: 23.6 mil. $
Box office: 102.3 mil. $
= Big hit
[Zombieland premiered 25 September (Austin Fantastic Fest) and runs 87 minutes. Harrelson only took the part in the film on conditions, including that the set be 'environmentally conscious' and Fleischer not ingesting dairy products for a week. Shooting took place in Georgia and in Los Angeles from February - April 2009. The theme park section was mostly shot at Georgia's Wild Adventures Water and Theme Park, with 160 zombie performers in one scene. The film opened #1 to a 24.7 mil. $ first weekend in North America, where it stayed in the top 5 for another week (#2) and grossed 75.5 mil. $ (73.8 % of the total gross), becoming the top-grossing zombie film ever there, beating Dawn of the Dead (2004), - until Resident Evil: Afterlife (2010). The 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were the UK with 5.5 mil. $ (5.4 %) and Russia with 3.9 mil. $ (3.8 %). Roger Ebert gave the film a 3/4 star review, equal to a notch harder than this one. Home video sales of the film in North America alone totaled another 55.4 mil. $. If added to the theatrical gross, it would change the film's status to that of huge hit. Sequel talks began with the film's concluding production, and Harrelson talked enthusiastically of another film but later backed away from that stance. A TV-series pilot without the stars but with the writers was made for Amazon in 2013 and not picked up for serialization. The writers and Fleischer still seem intent on making a sequel (by 2017). Zombieland is certified fresh at 90 % with a 7.4 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Zombieland?

Gangster Squad (2013) or, Good Men vs. Bad Men!

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Los Angeles is ravaged by the Jewish gangster boss Mickey Cohen, but one good police chief wants to get rid of him, and he gets a pertinacious, tough cop to lead the group which is to crush Cohen.
Gangster Squad is highly stylized and handsomely produced, but cartoonish in its simplified representation of reality; good vs. bad.
Reality yields to action and gore in this forgettable, thoughtless, - but entertaining - shoot-em-up-movie. It is based on true events but takes so many liberties in its storytelling that it is more fiction than historical by any reasonable account.
Sean Penn (Mystic River (2003)) goes theatrical with his heavily make-up-created villain. Ryan Gosling (Drive (2011)) not so much plays a character as merely being a sex-steaming model for the film. The macho-picture that is Gangster Squad also mauls over one of its few female roles, Josh Brolin's wife in the movie (Mireille Enos), who only plays functional second banana to the inelegant, stomping picture.
It is directed by Ruben Fleischer (Zombieland (2009)), who had to reshoot a scene of a shooting at Grauman's Chinese Theater in Hollywood following the Aurora-shooting (during a screening of The Dark Knight Rises that killed 12 people and injured 58). The real-life massacre also changed the trailer and pushed back the release of Gangster Squad by around 6 months.
The squad that is the basis of Gangster Squad has also been the basis of another movie, Lee Tamahori's better Mulholland Falls (1996).
Since the relative flop of this and Fleischer's movie before it, 30 Minutes or Less (2011), he has reverted to TV gigs for the time being.


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Ruben Fleischer: 2013 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED V]
2013 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED IV]
2013 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III]
2013 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]  
2013 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]

30 Minutes or Less (2011) or, Idiots and Lesser Idiots

'Pulp' version of the Gangster Squad poster

 Watch the film's in-your-face trailer right here

Budget: 60 mil. $
Box office: 105.2 mil. $
= Minor flop

What do you think of Gangster Squad?

30 Minutes or Less (2011) or, Idiots and Lesser Idiots

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The stupid-looking cast of Ruben Fleischer's 30 Minutes or Less are on display on its explosion-lined poster

A pizza delivery guy with a talent for racing has a fallout with his best friend about boning his friend's sister many years ago. Meanwhile, two unemployed idiots, who are just waiting for the one's US marine major dad (who is also a lottery winner) to die, so he can inherit his approximately 1 million $, get the idea to get rid of the healthy geezer before his time to speed things up. A hitman will cost them 100,000 $, they learn, so to get that, they kidnap the pizza guy, strap a bomb to his chest and force him to rob a bank. - What could go wrong?

 
30 Minutes or Less is written by Michael Diliberti (Stop-Loss (2008, associate producer)) and Matthew Sullivan (The Comedy Garage (2011)) and directed by great Washingtonian filmmaker Ruben Fleischer (Zombieland (2009)). 

There are several problems with 30 Minutes or Less. One is its title, which is merely the motto of the pizza company, and doesn't really play any active part in the film. It is a bad sign, when movie-writers get their title from a pretty unrelated pizza motto.
Another problem is that the two groups of main characters should have been more different from each other. As it is, the two scheming idiots are really idiots, (one indication is that they are continually working on understanding how to use the 'that's what she said'-joke), and the two other guys, who I guess we should relate more to as audiences, (this would have been a good idea at least), are nevertheless also pretty idiotic. We don't get to know them, before they start arguing and fighting, and that continues pretty much throughout the film. It only lasts about 80 minutes, so there would have been plenty of room for at least 10-15 minutes of getting to know and like these characters, before they go clawing at each other. But no. None of that here.
Jesse Eisenberg (The Squid and the Whale (2005)) plays the pizza delivery guy, the protagonist of the film, but I didn't relate to him at all. SPOILER: The most important part of this character's development is that he decides to confront his falling in love with his best friend's sister after they had sex at graduation 8 years prior, and now decides to go for her. What important procrastination had taken his attention off from this for 8 years is never delved into. - Delivering pizzas, it seems. Eisenberg gets annoying a few times here by being brainy and stupid at the same time. Aziz Ansari (Parks and Recreation (2009-2013)) plays his best friend, and he is unfortunately not as funny as could have been hoped. Danny McBride (Pineapple Express (2008)) and Nick Swardson (Bolt (2008)) are the giant idiots, and they are funny most of the time. There's a good many laughable lines in 30 Minutes, and together with the cast which do what they can, they save the  poorly conceived film from total ruin. It ends very abruptly, confirming that it is a small, goofy, and somewhat confused potluck of a movie. It will appeal mostly to younger, male audiences.

 

Related posts:

Ruben Fleischer: Gangster Squad (2013) or, Good Men vs. Bad Men!
2013 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III]
2013 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]  
2013 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]
30 Minutes or Less (2011) or, Idiots and Lesser Idiots
2009 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III]
2009 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]
2009 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]   

Zombieland (2009) - Reese/Wernick and Fleischer hit the post-modern bull's eye with undead escapade

 

 

Watch a 3-minute clip from the movie here

Cost: 28 mil. $
Box office: 40.6 mil. $
= Big flop (returned 1.45 times its cost)

[30 Minutes or Less was released 11 August (Antilles and Aruba) and runs 83 minutes. Shooting took place from July - September 2010 in Michigan. The plot bears strong resemblance to the strange case of Brian Wells, a Pennsylvania pizza delivery guy who died from an explosive tied to his neck after robbing a bank in order to get funds to hire a hitman. The film opened #5, behind holdover hit Rise of the Planet of the Apes, fellow new releases The Help and Final Destination 5 and holdover hit The Smurfs, to a 13.3 mil. $ first weekend in North America, where it left the top 5 in its 2nd weekend and grossed 37 mil. $ (91.1 % of the total gross). The 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were Russia with 1.3 mil. $ (3.2 %) and the UK with 872k $ (2.2 %). Roger Ebert gave the film a 2/4 star review, translating to a notch under this one. Fleischer returned with Escape My Life (2012, TV-series) and theatrically with Gangster Squad (2013). Eisenberg returned in Why Stop Now? (2012); McBride in Good Vibes (2011, TV-series), The Roadie (2012, short) and theatrically in As I Lay Dying (2013). 30 Minutes or Less is rotten at 44 % with a 5.40/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

 

What do you think of 30 Minutes or Less?