"Life" is an effective but derivative thriller in the mold of "Aliens" and "The Thing." A group of intrepid scientists stumbles across humanity's first contact with alien life. They are fascinated and overjoyed at the prospect of discovery, until the organism proves itself able to rapidly mutate into a larger, scarier form and starts eating faces. The crew is slowly picked off one by one, despite some ingenious attempts to fight the creature, with varying degrees of courageous sacrifices and boneheaded cowardice.
There's really nothing here we haven't seen before: snippets of the personal lives of each person, surprises as the tiny critter turns into a looming beast, chases down darkened passageways, gruesome deaths while another person watches, etc.
But director Daniel Espinosa and script men Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick find effective moments and genuine scares, a long with a large dollop of humanistic notes.
Jake Gyllenhaal plays the medical doctor and former military man who's set a new record with 479 days in space; Ryan Reynolds the cocky Ryan Reynolds-type pilot and needler-in-chief; Olga Dihovichnaya is the station's resolute Russian commander; Rebecca Ferguson is the scientist in charge of making the hard decisions about whether to contain the beast or protect themselves; Ariyon Bakare is the scientist who forms a weird bond with the monster, dubbed "Calvin"; and Hiroyuki Sanada is the engineer type whose baby is born while he's high in the sky.
Few mainstream movies are truly radical. After all, Hollywood is generally a risk-averse place. They make movies that assuage, not challenge conventions. They leave the wacky and threatening ideas to the indies and foreign films.
“Deadpool” is the exception to the rule. A super-hero flick based on a character few non-comics readers have probably even heard of, it’s violent, foul-mouthed and flippant. The protagonist is an unlikeable heel who talks directly to the audience, insults his enemies and makes no pretense at heroic deeds.
Ryan Reynolds – who previously played another iteration of the same character in (one of) the underwhelming Wolverine movies – is a charming cad as Wade Wilson, a mercenary who hurts or kills people for money. He makes no bones about his profession or status on the good/bad scale.
His happiness grows when he unexpectedly finds love with Vanessa (Morena Baccarin), a prostitute with a heart of diamonds. But then he is diagnosed with terminal cancer.
He accepts a longshot chance at a cure by accepting experimental treatment from a mysterious criminal group that promises to turn him into a super-hero. The process works, after incredible pain and suffering, giving him the ability to heal virtually any wound. But it also leaves him a scarred freak.
Redubbing himself Deadpool, he launches a crusade to kill the bad guy, fix his face and get the girl back. Needless to say, there are complications along the way. Opposing, then joining him on this quest are a pair of down-market X-Men. (Deadpool himself quips that they couldn’t afford any of the expensive ones.)
Shot on a $50 million budget – peanuts for super-hero CGI and stunts – “Deadpool” is a four-letter middle finger to the establishment. Rookie director Tim Miller and script guys Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick have fashioned a movie that’s a true rebel yell.
Extras are very good. These include two feature-length audio commentary tracks, one with Reynolds and the screenwriters, the other with director Miller and Deadpool co-creator Rob Liefeld; deleted and extended scenes with audio commentary by Miller; gag reel; photo galleries; and two making-of featurettes: “Deadpool’s Fun Sack” and “From Comics to Screen… to Screen.”
I think it was around the time that Deadpool farted into the face of an elderly black lady that I realized we weren’t dealing with a standard-issue superhero.
If that wasn’t the moment, then it arrived immediately after, when he needled her: “Hashtag: drive by!”
If “Guardians of the Galaxy” set the stage for comic book adaptations that were comedies first, action/adventure second, then “Deadpool” is the next step on the (d?)evolutionary scale: super heroes as gross-out laugh riots.
Golly, this movie is funny. And crude. And lewd. Even as I was watching it I thought to myself: “I can’t believe Marvel made this movie.” But I am very glad they did.
Things start with the opening credits, a freeze-frame journey of the camera around a scene of mayhem, a vehicle in mid-flight as Deadpool takes out some bad guys. As we pan and zoom around to reveal that Deadpool has his fingers poking a dude’s eyes out and the other hand giving another guy a wedgie, the credits mock themselves.
The film, we are informed, stars “a British villain,” “a CGI character” and “a moody teen,” amongst others, and was directed by “an overpaid tool.” A magazine flies by in the swirl, and it’s Ryan Reynolds’ “Sexiest Man Alive” cover of People.
Things continue as Deadpool repeatedly talks to the camera, reminding us that he’s a movie character. He breaks the fourth wall, then quips about breaking the fourth wall, then does a flashback where he again breaks the fourth wall. “That’s, like, 16 walls!” he brags.
The setup is that Wade Wilson (Reynolds) is a badboy mercenary, a smirking ex-Special Forces expert now accepting money to do bad things to people even worse than him. He catches the perfect girl, Vanessa (Morena Baccarin), who shares his puckish humor and love of exploring every sexual position available. (A montage shows many, and much.)
But then he gets terminal cancer, which sucks, and signs on to a shadowy group that promises to not only cure him, but give him super abilities. This they do – he can heal virtually any wound a la Wolverine -- except it also involves turning him into a scarred freak who looks like Freddie Krueger’s next of kin.
Dubbing himself Deadpool, he resolves to hunt down the dastardly villain who did this to him, Ajax (Ed Skrein), get him to do a face fix, kill him, and win the girl back.
If this doesn’t sound like noble proselytizing about great power coming with great responsibility, that’s because it isn’t. Deadpool explicitly rejects the idea of being a hero, happily kills anyone who gets in his way and drops one-liners while doing it.
Deadpool also criticizes his own movie as it’s playing out, simultaneously acting as protagonist and nitpicking fanboy.
For instance, he has a run-in with Colossus from the X-Men (voice of Stefan Kapičić) and a young trainee (Brianna Hildebrand), then later recruits them to help him. Rolling up to Xavier mansion, Deadpool takes note that despite being such a big place, he’s only ever seen these two members of the team.
“It’s almost like the studio couldn’t afford another X-Man!” he zings.
At a reported $50 million budget, “Deadpool” is indeed a down-market spawn of the Marvel franchise. I will say that director Tim Miller milks every dollar of that budget, resulting in a great-looking film without any obvious cut corners. OK, Colossus looks a little cut-rate, not to mention very different from his previous movie appearances.
I should mention that Reynolds previously played the same character in 2009’s “X-Men Origins: Wolverine,” but the filmmakers are doing a total reboot and hope you’ll completely forget about that iteration of Deadpool. (Don’t worry, guys, already done.)
Also turning up are T. J. Miller as Deadpool’s wiseacre best friend, who supports him but isn’t above betting on his demise; Gina Carano as Ajax’s burly enforcer; and Leslie Uggams as the aforementioned blind lady, who’s also Deadpool’s roommate at a ghetto rattrap.
(Hey, not every supe has Tony Stark money.)
Tim Miller was an interesting pick to direct, a first-timer who comes from a visual effects background. (His salary and tool-ishness are open to debate.) He certainly gives us plenty of eye candy and a brash tone. And screenwriters Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick, who previously brought comedy to the horror genre with “Zombieland,” crank the yuks dial up to 11 and then somehow manage to sustain it the rest of the way.
How hilarious is “Deadpool?” You’ll spend the entire time laughing, coming off a big laugh or cursing audience members for laughing so long you missed the next joke.
Welcome to the new age of super hero movies: funny, foulmouthed and farty.
There's always been a comedic element to zombie flicks, at least in their modern incarnation. George A. Romero had several moments of dark humor in 1968's seminal "Night of the Living Dead," and the laughs have shambled side-by-side with the flesh-eaters ever since.
If other movies have dipped a toe into humorous waters, then "Zombieland" dives head-first into comedy, with often uproarious results.
The set-up is similar to a hundred other films: The zombie apocalypse is upon us, and it's up to the few remaining humans to survive. Our foursome of heroes take the names of the cities they're from: Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg), a video game dweeb; Wichita and Little Rock (Emma Stone and Abigail Breslin), a pair of butt-kicking sisters; and Tallahassee (a hilarious Woody Harrelson), a redneck who was born to eradicate the undead.
The filmmakers seem to know and love every convention of the zombie genre, tweaking them for comic effect while still delivering a satisfying helping of gleeful violence. At one point, Tallahassee takes out a grocery store full of walkers with a banjo.
Whether you're horror fan or just want a good laugh, "Zombieland" offers plenty of biting humor. DVD extras cover a nice scope of material, though they're not as engrossing as you'd like.
Two making-of featurettes total about 30 minutes, but there's nothing really new other than the revelation the project was originally conceived as a television pilot. Seven deleted scenes are similarly underwhelming.
Better is the feature showing how the special effects were achieved, combining live action with layers of CGI.
I was glad to see a commentary track that actually has the participation of the stars: Harrelson and Eisenberg are joined by director Ruben Fleischer and screenwriters Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick.
The boys keep the banter flowing at a nice pace, although the constant complimenting each other gets to be a little much.
In addition to these, the Blu-ray version also comes with a "Beyond the Grave" picture-in-picture track with storyboards and animatics, plus a digital copy of the film.
Zombies have become a powerhouse franchise. Movies starring the walking dead, already popular for decades, have seen a resurgence, and zombie literature is on the rise with books like "World War Z" and even classic literary spoofs like "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies."
The next logical step was zombie comedy films. "Shaun of the Dead" got the ball rolling, but "Zombieland" immediately leaps to the front spot of an admittedly nascent genre.
Hip, ironic and often raucously funny, "Zombieland" will have you holding in your guts with laughter almost as often as the zombies try to rip the viscera out of their onscreen prey.
I mean, what other zombie flick would pair two of indie film's young rising stars, Jesse Eisenberg ("The Squid and the Whale") and Abigail Breslin ("Little Miss Sunshine"), both known for their shy, introspective roles, as post-apocalyptic ass-kickers?
Well, not quite: Eisenberg's still pretty dorky as Columbus, a lonely dweeb who spent most of his days playing "World of Warcraft" before the undead outbreak. He's come up with a list of rules for surviving what he calls Zombieland.
The first one is "Cardio" -- as in, maintain your ability to run fast. As the droll prologue narration notes to a scene of an obese guy getting run down and feasted upon, the fatties were the first to die.
Other rules include the "Double Tap," which instructs that even when you think a zombie is dead, put another bullet in its brain just to be sure. When the world is infested with creatures that want to eat you, now's not the time to get stingy with the ammunition.
Columbus soon happens upon a guy writing his own rules, which all boil down to kicking walking corpse butt in as many inventive ways as possible -- baseball bats, chainsaws, even a banjo. Tallahassee (all the characters go by the name of the city they're from) figures that everyone was put on earth to be really good at one thing, and his just happens to be killing zombies. It's Woody Harrelson's best roles in years.
This intrepid pair meets up with a pair of sisters, Wichita and Little Rock (Emma Stone and Breslin), who pull a con on them and steal their guns and ride. Soon enough, though, they've joined forces, with a love struck Columbus making plans to invade Kansas.
Director Ruben Fleisher, in addition to showing a good eye for the action scenes, keeps the tone goofy and light. Screenwriters Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick seem to have watched every zombie movie ever made, and joke around with the conventions while clearly reveling in them.
So when the boys stumble across a Hummer loaded up with assault weapons, Tallahassee shouts to the heavens, "Thank God for rednecks!"
The movie reaches its full stride of daffiness when the foursome arrives in Hollywood, and they decide to crash in a celebrity mansion, only to find the one belonging to Bill Murray still occupied by its owner. In a short but rich stretch of screen time, Murray plays "Ghostbusters" with his guests and even delivers an apology of sorts for those awful "Garfield" flicks. (Stick around after the end credits for some more fun.)
Based on "Zombieland," I'd say the undead comedy genre deserves to rise again.
