October 14th: World War Z (2013, Hulu Plus)

Like I said, I don't have an aversion towards zombie movies, I absolutely love a good undead flick.  What I don't like is when a zombie movie spends the first forty minutes just talking about pancakes.

It's when the pancakes show up thats when you really start to have fun.

All kidding aside about pancakes, I'd managed to never see this movie before tonight.  Don't ask me how, it's been on Netflix since the dawn of the internet and I LOVE zombie movies.  28 Days Later and the remake of Dawn of the Dead are two of my most beloved films.  I just couldn't get into seeing this one because it seems more like a Brad Pitt epic than a zombie film.  Honestly, it's like both.

The film does a great job telling its story, setting it up and depicting the end of society.  It's been done in so many different films, but it's rarely shown with such subtlety or granduer.  Most movies tend to focus very narrowly, this is wide.  Once one Monsiour Pitt finds himself aboard a US aircraft carrier, we learn that he gave up work with the UN to make pancakes.  When asked to help the government try to stop the virus, he's all like "fuck that shit: pancakes."  And then he became a pancake chef in San Antonio.  No, I'm kidding.  He actually goes to Korea to try and find patient zero.

It's a globe trotting adventure of epic proportions with Brat Pitt's Gerry Lane almost seeming like the James Bond of zombie movies.  I think I just came up with Bond 25.

The zombies in this movie are unlike zombies in other movies, the closest fascimile would be 28 Days Later.  The zombies in this movie seem to be more intelligent and driven than any I've seen depicted in films before.  The first time I saw a zombie jump onto and hold onto the landing skid of a helicopter, I was like "holy shit!"

World War Z gives us a very different take on the zombie idea.  There's still zombies, it's still apocolyptic and head shots are the best way to kill them; but this movie is about trying to find a cure.  This movie is about how trying the outbreak is on the world, it's a refreshing take on the genre.  I actually really enjoyed this film for all of its pancakes, even though I'm more of a waffle person.  My one gripe, though, is that in mass, the zombies were wildly unreleastic and almost to the point of uncanny valley.