2002’s “28 Days Later” was a landmark for the zombie movie genre, even if you could argue—as many did—that it wasn’t really a zombie movie. Instead of plodding, brain-lusting undead, director Danny Boyle’s flesh-eating hordes were more akin to rabies patients on blood-vomiting steroids, but the simple fact that they sprinted rather than staggered was a game-changer.

23 years later—and 18 years after 2007’s less celebrated sequel “28 Weeks Later”—Boyle and original screenwriter Alex Garland return to the franchise that helped to inspire a craze that birthed zombified riffs on everything from rom coms to Nazi horror movies to Jane Austen. The result feels a little late to the party, as the genre’s high point increasingly feels like a distant memory.

Following a brief prologue that shows the original outbreak through the eyes of a religious zealot and his young son Jimmy (Rocco Haynes), “28 Years Later” fast-forwards to find the whole of Great Britain quarantined in an effort to contain the Rage Virus. Just off the coast of Scotland, a group of survivors has put together a fledgling island community that’s still within the quarantine boundaries, though a shallow causeway gives them access to the mainland during low tide and protection from the “infected” at high tide.

Here is where we meet Spike (Alfie Williams) a 12-year-old island resident on the verge of manhood. His father Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) is eager to take him on his first hunting mission to the mainland, but back home his mother Isla (Jodie Comer) is suffering from some mysterious disease.

His first hunt is hardly a success, but Spike is troubled when his father plays up their adventure to the other islanders, and he’s even more troubled when he catches his father cheating with another woman on the island. Worst of all, Dad is evasive when during the mission Spike sees evidence of a man who was a traditional doctor before the outbreak, and might be able to help his mother.

It’s easy to see where things are going. Within no time, Spike takes off on mission of his own, with mother in tow. Thus, “28 Years Later” follows their dangerous journey to see if the ex-doctor can save his mother, hopefully before they are killed by the roving packs of infected who scavenge in the open wilderness.

“28 Years” feels like an accurate if bleak update on its predecessors, and is effective at world-building and creating constant tension in an otherwise beautiful landscape. The infected are not created equal; some are obese, docile scavengers, but the ones to really fear are the Alphas, who pair intimidating speed with resistance to the arrows islanders fire into their chests.

Those 28 years have also created a world that is extremely raw. The surviving infected are barely more than savages, mud-caked and naked, with only some fast cuts and shaky camerawork to keep the film from feeling like a documentary on a nudist colony. And even if the infected aren’t traditional zombies, “28 Years” is more than happy to up the ante on the traditional zombie gore, including one alpha’s signature move of decapitating his prey with spine still attached.

The result will be an unpleasant watch to all but the most dedicated viewers. For this critic (typically a zombie movie fan), “28 Years” felt like “too much” too often, particularly during a bizarre scene that explores whether the infected are still capable of giving birth.

But there are also issues that have less to do with personal taste, such as some illogical story leaps towards the third act of the film, and a preposterous tone change during a late scene that feels like it was pulled out of a completely different movie (and may have been meant to feel as much, since the end of the film feels a lot more interested in setting up future installments).

Altogether, between matters of personal taste and more objective criticisms, “28 Years Later” is a disappointment.

“28 Years Later” is rated R for generous amounts of violence and extreme gore, as well as frequent flashes of graphic (non-sexual) nudity and scattered profanity.

The post Boyle returns for excessive, flawed ’28 Years Later’ appeared first on Utah.Film.

The best movies often feel like experiences, and Alex Garland’s “Warfare” is such a film. The only question is whether you feel you can handle the ordeal.

Set in the Battle of Ramadi in 2006 during the Iraq War, “Warfare” was co-written and directed by veteran Ray Mendoza, who was present for the events of the film. The premise feels similar to 2001’s “Black Hawk Down” in its fundamental elements: when an operation goes bad, a group of American military personnel find themselves under siege in enemy territory, and must fight the good fight until rescue arrives.

In this case, the personnel are a platoon of Navy SEALs who occupy a residential home in Ramadi in order to surveil the activity of suspected Iraqi insurgents. Initially, the SEALs are only documenting the most fleeting of suspicious activity, but gradually the evidence accumulates, and after someone lobs a grenade into the SEAL’s position, it becomes clear that substantial forces are closing in for the kill.

An initial exchange prompts the SEALs to order an evacuation, but when the first rescue attempt goes tragically awry, the platoon is left marooned in the home against increasing odds.

Stripped to its rawest elements, “Warfare’s” plot belies its greatest strengths. From the early stages of the operation, Garland maintains and gradually increases an almost suffocating level of tension. “Warfare” doesn’t use any single-take tricks or other gimmicks, but limited cutaways to events outside the home give the audience the sense that you are in the middle of the situation with the platoon. In spite of the film’s comparatively short 95-minute run time, the experience feels as exhausting as if you had been there for hours.

The ensemble cast offers a full range of perspectives on the experience. Platoon leader Erik (Will Poulter) is shell-shocked by the initial exchange, and struggles to fulfill his duties as enemies converge. Sam (Joseph Quinn) and sniper Elliott (Cosmo Jarvis) are injured in the first failed rescue, and their fellow SEALs struggle to attend to them while simultaneously fighting off the attackers outside. Tommy (Kit Connor) is the wide-eyed rookie who got tossed into the deep end of the pool, and D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai fills the co-director’s role as Ray.

While never gratuitous, “Warfare” shows no hesitation in displaying the violent carnage of its subject. While mainly contained to Sam and especially Elliott’s injuries, the film sets out to demonstrate the full scope of the situation, and more sensitive audiences will struggle with the stark brutal realities of the battle.

“Warfare” also manages to offer a range of perspectives on the conflicted situation. Throughout the siege, an Iraqi family remains huddled in a bedroom, and you never forget that they will be left to pick up the literal pieces once the battle moves on.

But for all of its effective elements, nothing in the film stands out so much as its use of sound. Rarely has sound ever played such an important role in a movie. Where even the best war movies tend to be routine with their depictions of battles and explosions, supervising sound editors Ben Barker and Glenn Freemantle expertly use their palette to give audiences a sense of what the SEALs are hearing—or at times, what they aren’t hearing—in the middle of a battle.

The sum total is a unique and memorable war movie experience meant to give viewers an acute appreciation for what happens in the operations we only see filtered through news reports or lesser films. And to its credit, “Warfare” does its best to let the audience draw their own conclusions.

“Warfare” is rated R for bloody wartime violence and carnage, as well as persistent profanity.

The post Garland’s ‘Warfare’ offers an unflinching look at the Iraq War appeared first on Utah.Film.

When I saw the trailer for “Civil War” earlier this year, I wondered if it might be one of the worst movies of 2024. With the presidential election coming up, our extremely divisive culture was already set to be even more divisive than usual, and though the premise of a modern cinematic civil war certainly felt relevant, I couldn’t imagine anyone doing it without caving in to enormous bias. Coming from Hollywood, I fully expected it to be an eye-rolling anti-Trump screed.

I guess going in with low expectations is just par for the course in 2024.

Well, after reluctantly watching the film at full-blown IMAX treatment in Jordan Commons, I can report that Alex Garland’s “Civil War” isn’t nearly as awful as I expected it to be. In fact, I enjoyed elements of the film very much. It still shows its biases, though you can tell the filmmakers were trying to keep things ambiguous. I wouldn’t go so far as to say I was proven wrong, but I wouldn’t call “Civil War” a bad movie, either.

The premise is simple, mostly because we’re intentionally not given much to work with. At some point in the undetermined future, the United States of America is at war with a movement of secessionists led by the “Western Forces” of Texas and California. We have no information about what brought these two ideologically polar states together, or what finally triggered our nation’s second civil conflict.

Though the conflict is widespread, “Civil War” focuses on a group of journalists traveling from New York City to Washington DC, in the hopes of interviewing the embattled US President (played in fleeting clips by Nick Offerman). The group is led by a veteran war photographer named Lee (Kirsten Dunst), who is deflated to see that her attempts to portray the horrors of war in widespread countries has failed to keep it from coming home with her. She is joined by Joel (Wagner Moura), a colleague named Sammy (Stephen McKinley Henderson), and a young upstart photojournalist named Jessie (Cailee Spaeny), who idolizes Lee and schemes her way into the expedition.

The tension between Lee and Jessie guides much of the narrative as the group makes its way on a roundabout journey to the capital, encountering the aftermath of what must have been a few months of fighting. We see lots of wrecked cars and bodies that haven’t quite decomposed yet, and encounter tense standoffs with armed combatants who never quite reveal their loyalties.

What surprised me most about the film was its exploration of war photography, and the question of how a photojournalist maintains his or her humanity when photographing people enduring pain and suffering. Early in the journey, Jessie encounters a barn where two men have been strung up as prisoners, and though she fully intended to “get the shot,” she finds the experience too disturbing to remember to use the camera.

Scenes like that are one of “Civil War’s” better elements, adding real tension while portraying the disturbing sight of Americans torturing fellow Americans. “Civil War” also succeeds in the way the film both visualizes this disturbing world, and even injects occasional still frames of what the characters are photographing. One late scene sees the travelers pass through a forest fire in slow motion, offering a perfect blend of beautiful cinematography and haunting tone. It’s the element of “Civil War” I’ll remember best, though I don’t imagine that was Garland’s intent.

While the intended ambiguity is largely successful, and light years ahead of some recent ham-fisted attempts to address social issues, “Civil War” still offers clues to its political sympathies; for example, the primary danger in interviewing the president is that journalists are being shot on sight in the capitol, having been declared enemies of the state. Again, it isn’t near as transparent as one might expect, but a little more shuffling of the deck at the scripting stage might have helped.

In the end, “Civil War” deserves credit for its aspirations, and even more credit for the quality of what it gets on screen. People will likely come away from it with what they had going in, but it’s hard to think that wasn’t going to happen anyway.

“Civil War” is rated R for scattered profanity, violent images, and sequences of brutal war violence.

The post Ambiguous ‘Civil War’ explores a dark and dangerous US future appeared first on Utah.Film.