Tag: Drama

Shit. I should have saved this movie for actual Christmas. Jeez. What is wrong with me? I blew it, clearly.

Happy Christmas is an indie movie, so of course it makes sense to come out on July 25th, which I guess is the “Christmas In July” day, but I don’t get that concept at all.

Either way, we are going to have a movie about Christmas now, damn it. I don’t care what holidays are nearby.

But I hope the baby is the main character. Like Santa. Santa is a baby right?

Jenny (Anna Kendrick) is just a girl, standing in front of her brother, asking for a home. She is having some troubles in her life, but she just needs a break from it all. Thankfully Kevin (Mark Webber) has room in his house for her to crash. His wife, Kelly (Melanie Lynskey) is a novelist, but right now she is taking a break to be a stay at home mom because they have a baby! Yay babies!

And yay Jenny in their house. That means automatic free babysitter. Kind of hard to accept free rent without helping out.

But just one night in, Jenny gets blackout drunk and embarrasses her good friend (Lena Dunham), requiring the help of her brother late at night to get her. Some reliable baby sitter, huh?

Well, these old coogies can’t seem to accept her young hip ways and she finds herself constantly disappointing them, despite trying her best. And hey! She wants to help Kelly get back on the writing thing.

But seriously. Can she just not fuck up once? Maybe by Christmas? Or will she just be fucking the babysitter? (Joe Swanberg)

She ate all of those pretzel bites the night before. What. A. Night.

Quintessential indie film. Some comedic moments, a lot more dramatic ones, everything really close to reality, very few actors, and overall, just okay.

I mean, there are truly fantastic indie movies out there. This year we were able to get Obvious Child and Locke. After watching this film I was left wondering “Is that it?”

I guess with their lower budget they just want to tell a simple story, but a lot of times I am not left wanting more just because it was such a great story and I am super invested in the characters. It is more me wondering why any of it even mattered?

Oooh, a group of people learned to accept each other by the end. And there was awkward moments. (Awkward moments are key to indie movies).

As I already said, Happy Christmas was okay, but borderline on boring and disliked. So a low 2, if you will. You can tell my indifference, as I couldn’t even write 500 words about this one.

I actually had the opportunity to watch The Signal in theaters when it came out. For free. There was a pre-screening one whole day before it came out to make you feel special and I had tickets to go. The only issue was it started four hours after I got off of work and I didn’t want to wait around for the random movie. Hell, even the director told me I should go see it.

But apathy took over, and even the random picture didn’t help.

The only thing that drove me to watching this movie at this point was having the time and nothing better to do. (Which is relative. I had less than 2 hours of time and nothing to do. Plenty of other movies I wanted to see above it).

How I picture the face of William Eubank when he found out I didn’t go.

MIT students come in all shapes and sizes. Like Nic (Brenton Thwaites) who has muscular dystrophy, (which chrome wants to auto correct to astrophysics…foreshadowing?!). He is helping take his girlfriend, Haley (Olivia Cooke) to school, along with his MIT friend Jonah (Beau Knapp). Those two are in trouble with MIT because a hacker named NOMAD hacked into MIT servers using their IPs or something, so MIT rightfully assumed it was them.

But outside of that, Nic wants to end the relationship, because long distance + deteriorating disease = not a good time.

While almost to California, they get strange signals in the middle of nowhere Nevada. In fact, they think it is Nomad. They kind of want to show them a piece of their mind.

Next thing they know, people start flying around, darkness, scares, loud noises. Boom. Waking up in a very white room with people wearing protective hazmat suits around them. And at the center of it all is Damon (Laurence Fishburne), who tells them they have been in contact with aliens and need to be studied. Well screw that. They aren’t lab rats. He wants to get out of there. Hopefully he feels less diseased and more powerful after that alien encounter.

Hopefully.

“Da fuq mate, don’t come near me with your ectoplasm.”

Sorry director who tweeted me. But I am glad I didn’t waste four or so hours of my life waiting to see this movie and then watching it. It had some unique moments in it, especially near the end. But the first 4/5 of the film just felt so weak and underwhelming. I can blame this solely on the actors involved too. I like Olivia Cooke in Bates Motel, but her character wasn’t given a lot to work with. It was mostly Nic with a lot of Damon and neither of them impressed me. They were pushing me towards sleep almost.

It is definitely unique, in a few ways. Lets not take away that aspect. And it is for sure Science Fiction. Some nice turns along the way and a lot of not nice ones.

It is hard to explain just what it bad about this, outside of just being super boring. The side romance plot was also weak, and the other best friend, he can just get out of this movie completely for all I care.

If you had to see a movie about signals, go see Contact.

Enemies are quite annoying. Everyone probably has a few. I know I have several, including: The Morlocks, Jafar, Tropical Flavored skittles. The list just goes on and on and on.

But what if your enemy was yourself? I have heard that if your enemy is yourself, it is often your worst enemy. That has got to suck. The film Enemy is actually based on that concept!

Actually, it is based on a novel, The Double. It is definitely not based on the movie The Double that came out this year, also dealing with doppelgangers, and it most certainly has nothing to do with the movie The Double from a few years ago.

Huh. Maybe The Double (2014 film) is a twisted doppelganger of The Double (Book) and it prevented Enemy from being a regular doppelganger of The Double (book). The Double (2014 film) stole Enemies identity!

My head hurts. Oooh beards!

Adam Bell (Jake Gyllenhaal) is your average regular college professor. He teaches about totalitarianism and dictators! A theme that may slightly be relevant to the movie. He lives with his girlfriend Mary (Melanie Laurent) and she thinks he is a cheating fool. He has been weird lately and keeping secrets and making secret phone calls.

Why? Because Adam has made a relevation. After watching a movie recommended by a coworker, he noticed a bellhop in the background. And that bellhop looked just like him. Turns out this Anthony Claire (Jake Gyllenhaal) has only been in a few pictures, all side who gives a shit roles, but by golly, he looks just like him. After a lot of sleuthing Adam is able to set up a meeting with Anthony.

Shit. Is. Bananas.

Well, when someone seems to be an exact replica of you with a different personality, who also knows where you live and who you interact with, it is pretty easy to get paranoid. Anthony himself has a pregnant wife (Sarah Gadon) and is in a committed relationship.

What can either of these gentlemen gain from this doppelmagic and more importantly, what can they lose?

It is hard to stalk someone when you don’t know which one is your husband.

Reading up on an analysis of the film and book after I watched the movie, there was apparently a lot that went over my head. Intellectual smart person stuff that might require reading or degrees in movie theory to get. And don’t worry, i am not letting that fact get affect my view. I just had a recurring “what the fuck, spiders?” thought going through my head throughout the movie. I’d say its a small enough part to get by.

Enemy is incredibly well acted and Jake G is showing off over the last few years a great side to himself. With this, Prisoners, End of Watch, I’d almost be willing to watch most anything with him as a main actor in it. Dude figured it out and it was good.

Enemy is not a quick movie and one that requires you to pay attention. It has a small number of important characters in it and really tries hard to drive the appropriate emotions through silence. However, the film is also really friggan yellow. And that just in general bugs the crap out of me. Over filtering.

I hope another film comes out with a similar plot to make more duplication jokes. Really.

Locke came out a few weeks ago but something about the title or the dvd cover just bugged me. Based on name and cover alone, I figured it was some sort of slow crime movie. Had to push it back. Too much energy to appreciate a slow crime movie.

The reason I finally decided to give it a shot is because I saw The Drop, and gosh darn it, Tom Hardy just keeps impressing me with the roles he has produced. He isn’t just some guy who can bulk up and do action scenes. He is an actor, so I want to see the man act.

Well, it turns out this movie is much better defined as drama. Not drama crime, not drama thriller, just straight up dramatics.

“Hell, I’d watch Tom Hardy just driving a car and talking on the phone.” – Locke’s director

Ivan Locke (Tom Hardy) is a construction foreman who lives and works about 90 minutes outside of London. It is late, another hard days of work, prepping for a huge cement pour job the next day. The biggest in all of England really. A lot of things can go wrong and he is one of the most qualified men to handle it.

You see, Ivan is a hard worker. He has been doing this job for a nearly a decade, he is reliable, a nice guy, a stand up citizen, someone who could do no wrong. His wife and son are waiting for him at home to watch a football match. But as he leaves work, he is heading for London, not for home.

You see, Ivan had a moment of weakness. Seven months ago he had a sexual relationship with a woman. It was incredibly uncharacteristic of him, but it happened. Even though he barely knows her, she is in London now undergoing a premature birth. So now he is trying to make things right. He is going to be with her and see the birth of his baby.

During this time, he had to email that he won’t be in at work tomorrow, one of the most important days. He has to call his wife and tell her of what is going on. He has to call the hospital as the woman is all alone and has no one else to talk to but him. And he has to help the work operation go off without a hitch with a lot of bosses getting mad at him.

The other characters are voiced by Olivia Colman, Ruth Wilson, Andrew Scott, Ben Daniels, and Tom Holland. But you know, we only get one face.

You will get no diversity in pictures from this movie. NONE.

At least from my point of view, Locke was everything that Cosmopolis wanted to be and more. Cosmopolis felt like a weird fantasy film thriller thing, with a lot of it taking place in a limo. It suffered from vagueness despite the good ending.

Locke takes out any vagueness and lays everything bare on the table in front of you, like one of those Nantaimori models.

Technically a type of bottle movie, but also a sort of one man show. Other movies like Buried or Brake feature one man as well, but those men are literally trapped in boxes versus Locke where he is trapped in a sort of moral quandary. The character Locke is very clear with his convictions and unwavering with his goals, and you can’t help to respect that despite his dickish act of betrayal.

It is hard to feel so attached to a character normally, but when truly watching this film you will feel like a silent passenger in the car with him. It is an extremely morally resonant film and one where you won’t necessarily know how to feel by the end.

Belle is one of those indie movies that makes a lot of noise early in the year, yet usually gets ignored when it comes time to award season.

Not saying this film is deserved awards or anything, that is just when it was released. A nice indie number that is indeed not about Beauty and the Beast, but instead, racism in the victorian era. Ah yes, the Victorian era, where women wore corsets and giant dresses all the time, and men wore…I guess mostly regular clothes. And wigs!

But this work of fiction, based on books, is also pseudo historically accurate. Namely the character Lord Mansfield was actually Chief Justice of England during the time of the movie and presided over several cases that are relevant to the plot. Sweet. But the rest is just guesstimated fluff. I love fluff!

Despite the picture, this is also not a retelling of Little Red Riding Hood.

Dido Belle (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) was born in the West Indies and she is a mulatto. Her mother was a local, but her father was of the English Royal Navy (Matthew Goode) and he has decided to claim her and take her to England. Because he is at sea all the damn time, he places her in the care of his uncle, Lord Mansfield (Tom Wilkinson) and his wife (Emily Watson), even though she is BLACK and they are distinguished members of society.

But they get over it, kind of, and raise her as an aristocrat with her cousin Elizabeth (Sarah Gadon). However, she is still slightly shunned by society and not able to play all the reindeer games. Like when it comes time for suitors, she is told she cannot interact with the other gentleman as none of them would find her desirable.

Also at the same time, Lord Mansfield is ruling on a case involving a ship who threw slaves overboard out of necessity to survive, running low on supplies. They echoed it as similar to throwing cargo overboard and want to collect the insurance on their haul. His ruling on this and the events surrounding it could change Britain forever and some people think that having Dido around might influence his decision.

We also have Sam Reid as a young freedom feeling lawyer, Tom Felton and James Norton as brother suitors of varying tastes, and Miranda Richardson and Penelope Wilton as…other people.

I guess I would conclude Belle is a good movie, just one that is pretty darn predictable. Oh sorry, I am concluding before I describe.

Yes, Belle is well acted and I felt good by the end. But a lot of the movie just felt like Victorian filler in the middle. The plot is literally finding suitors for a few ladies. Is this a Jane Austen novel in secret?

Which is my main complaint. Not that predictability is a necessarily a bad thing, but if I kind of know what to expect the entire movie and it follows the path pretty straightforwardly, what is the point? It should have a lot of stuff going on for it in the middle to really make up for that fact.

And it has a few unique events to be sure. Well acted, as I already said. Outfits are nice, message is nice. But I kind of just expected something more. The film itself was incredibly safe.

Of all the movies coming out this week, The Drop was the one I was most excited for (Outside of Atlas Shrugged: Who Is John Galt? but who knows when I will get to see that one!). Mostly because I didn’t have to see a trailer for it at all. Not a once. I got to go in mostly blind and just see what kind of story it would give me.

Exciting! All I knew was the main actors, setting, and some sort of thriller maybe.

So, to make sure no one gets to experience it like me, let me tell you about the plot and stuff!

It also features some guy who you might really want to see in movies before it is too late.

“Ain’t sayin’ no names or nuttin.”

Although they didn’t explicitly tell me the setting, I can almost guarantee this one takes place in Boston, in a drop bar. What is a drop bar? Well, a lot of illegal money changes hands in the city. Gambling, hookin’, drugs, you name it. Not the type of money you can just deposit without drawing questions from the tax man.

In order to keep the money safe, it is stored at a different bar every night, a huge network of them. Very few people know which bar will be before the day of and it is seemingly random. It helps prevent theft of that money and keeps the bars in check too.

This movie is about one of those bars, a drop of cash, and the people who work there. Namely, Bob (Tom Hardy) the kind and slightly slower bartender and his Cousin Marv (James Gandolfini), the owner/former owner.

It also features a neighborhood lady Nadia (Noomi Rapace), a kind of weird maybe ex (Matthias Schoenaerts), the mob (Michael Aronov), a detective on the case (John Ortiz) and a puppy. Yes, a damn puppy.

The puppy is of course secretly key to this whole damn thing.

This one was it. This is the last movie that James Gandolfini will ever appear in, as the only other thing with him in it not released is apparently a part in some never picked up pilot for Criminal Justice. And I think he went out on a good one. Enough Said was only okay, but The Drop? This is a good movie.

Speaking of actors in the movie we are talking about, what in the fuck Tom Hardy? His voice is so weird and unique in this movie. Once the opening narration started, I imagined it belonged to anyone but Tom’s character, but there you go. Whether it is accurate to the area, I don’t know (or give a fuck). It was interesting and it really seemed to work.

The story itself is a slow moving one and one that seems worth the wait. Arguably, the characters are all just so odd or weird on their own that even though it is not a comedy, the bizarness of the situation and accents kind of make it amusing. You know, in a darker or weird way.

Despite it wrapping up the story pretty nicely and being unique, I think I’d want some more of this setting. Fuck it. Give me a sequel.

But then again, in a year I might forget all about this movie. Hard to say. Yay Tom Hardy.

Studio Ghibli has made a lot of movies and most people would consider them to be a big deal. More importantly, their main director Hayao Miyazaki has created some of the best, most financially successful and well known anime movies to come out of Japan!

I have only seen a handful of their movies and only reviewed one before (The Secret World of Arrietty), so I am not an expert on the subject. But since it is the internet, expertness is just a click away.

Either way, The Wind Rises is now most known for being Miyazaki’s final film, finally ready to retire. This was released barely last year in 2013 for like a week to make the Academy Awards and then released for real barely in February. Needless to say, this is another one that took forever to see. But I guess they have no rush since it totally didn’t win Best Animated Picture. Sucks to not go out on a high note, Miyazaki.

Which is probably why he made a movie about objects that go so high.

“Wait a minute,” you might be stating quite boringly. “Does that tag on the bottom of the page after the review is over say Biography? This is an animated movie!” Why yes, person who reads the tags before the review. This is a pseudo biography of Jiro Horikoshi (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), an airplane engineer for Japan who designed some sweet planes before World War II. Yes, the war where Japan used planes to fuck up parts of America.

It starts with tiny Jiro who wants to one day be a fighter pilot. But with his poor vision, he realizes he would never be allowed to fly one. That is when he does research on plane manufacturers and begins to dream about Giovanni Battista Caproni (Stanley Tucci), an world renowned plane designer who tells him that making the planes is far more exciting than flying them. That planes should be beautiful creations and not war machines. He tells him that and oh so much more.

Well, with hard work and perseverance, Jiro becomes kind of awesome at planes and engineering. He gets accepted into a top program in the field and meets his sarcastic and always joyful friend Honjo (John Krasinski). He eventually gets a job with Mitsubishi where is boss Kurokawa (Martin Short) is a strict tiny man, but one who knows Jiro has what it takes.

Oh, Jiro was also involved in the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923. That is where he meets young Nahoko (Emily Blunt) who, wouldn’t you guess it, has some effect on him later in life too?

Other famous people are Mae Whitman who voices his younger sister, and William H. Macy, who is surely someone important because it is William H. Macy voicing them.

“Less pew pew pew and more zoom zoom zoom!” – Paraphrased movie quote

Given the majority of Miyazaki’s work dealing with fantasy and the bizarre, it is quite odd to find a movie that is set so firmly in reality. I mean, a biography? Set in Japan? The only strange things that really happen in the movie are when Jiro is dreaming, where anything goes anyways. I can’t tell you how factual the film is, but it seems to paint a realistic picture of society and of Jiro. Even the smaller details I appreciated, such as Jiro and Honjo smoking. A lot. Many smokes were had in designing and school, and they didn’t ignore that just because kids might watch it like Disney did with Saving Mr. Banks. He didn’t whitewash history despite Japan’s tendencies to do that (especially from that time period).

As always, the animation is also absolutely beautiful and showcases how great these types of films can be without CGI. Fucking talent right here.

It tells a story about love and reaching your goals, but I do feel like parts of the film tend to drag. I also decided as an experiment to watch it dubbed with the same English subtitles, because sometimes there are big differences. For the most part it kept with the same theme, but there was one scene where it mentioned someone had a kid in the subtitles and completely ignored it in the English dub version. There might have been more stark differences that I missed, but holy crap, did they get rid of a kid in the dubbed version? That’s like animation murder.

It is a fine movie on its own right, but The Wind Rises was clearly not the best animated movie of last year. It is a fine send off for an established director and I tip my fedora in his honor.

I had the unfortunate bad luck to miss Chef when it first hit theaters in May this year. I was living in a place that didn’t get too many limited releases, and once I moved to a place with them, it had already left most theaters, or was still an hour away. So it took a lot longer than I would have liked, but at least I beat the DVD release. Aka, getting to see it when it was hitting the cheater theater cycle.

The reason I really wanted to see it is that in a summer with so many giant block busters, the trailer made this one seem a lot more realistic and honest. It also helps that it secretly had a lot of actors I enjoyed, many of which who had starred in big block busters.

Not to mention I heard it was a movie about cooking, where they actually featured a lot of cooking. Not calling out any names or anything.

Hey! A kid too! This would appeal to the Disney crowd! That and the heavy cursing!

This is a movie about Carl Casper (Jon Favreau) who has been cooking food longer than some people have been alive. Hell, I have been writing reviews longer than some people have been alive. If anyone is younger than this website and reading it, congrats, you are very advanced for your age. He has been working at the same restaurant for awhile too, under the owner Riva (Dustin Hoffman). They have butt heads a lot recently, Carl wanting to constantly change the menu and experiment and Riva thinking that people come in expecting a certain taste. Carl wants to change the menu because famed LA food critic Ramsey Michel (Oliver Platt) is coming in to give them a new rating.

Well, when everything starts to not go as planned and Carl seems to get angry at everyone he needs a change of pace and stat. His ex wife (Sofia Vergara) keeps telling him he should start a food truck so he can be his own boss. He just has to borrow money from her ex husband before him (Robert Downey Jr.). Jeez. But hey, if he goes somewhere new, his old line cook Martin (John Leguizamo) promised to join him. And if the food truck can bring him closer to his son (Emjay Anthony), as the two have drifted over the years, then it is even better.

He just has to first figure out how to use the dang internet and that twitter thing, and figure out why everyone is so interested in his truck in the first place. Also a wild Scarlett Johansson and Bobby Cannavale appear, so they should be noted too.
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“What the fuck is the internet?“

Despite knowing a little bit about the movie, I still found this movie to be full of surprises. Some big names have pretty small roles in the movie and some of the character choices were surprising, even by the ending. But in the end, really, it is a movie about following your dreams, family, and food.

It actually took me a little bit to recognize Sofia Vergara in that her voice wasn’t completely exaggerated like it must be in Modern Family. Jon Favreau when he was wearing the bandanna looked like The Amazing Johnathan which was just weird. John Leguizamo I had to assume was actually Michael Pena because Leguizamo hasn’t been in anything great since…well, almost forever.

Speaking of food. This movie features a lot of food, a bit more varied early on pre-food truck, but darn it, they show a lot of food prep and more importantly people eating it. Which is important in this genre.

It was all decently funny and cute at the same time. There weren’t any hugely dramatic or crazy moments happening throughout, just an appropriate sequence events after the critic bundle early on. That was refreshing. A lot more comedies rely on outrageous antics to carry the plot, but this one keeps it relatively simple.

Overall, Chef is clearly the best cooking related movie of this year so far.

When I first started the two Nymphomaniac movies, I figured I would just watch them back to back, get all four hours done with and have a unique, if not disturbing, experience. After all, the original movie is 5.5 hours and was split into 2 two hour movies for practical reasons. A lot hit the floor.

But if you remember my Nymphomaniac Vol 1 review, you might recall that I just needed a break. I couldn’t do it right after the other. Just intense subject matter with a lot of themes on top of it.

I figured enough time had past though, possibly way too much time. Had to read an outline of part 1 before I watched Nymphomaniac Vol 2. Make sure I was in the right frame of mind and all, you know. But no matter how much prep I thought I had before delving back into this story, I certainly now know it could have never been enough.

I am reusing the same first picture too, damn it. We determined

The story continues right where it left off in part 1. But Joe (Charlotte Gainsbourg) is going down a much darker path now that she finds herself in relationship with Jerome (Shia LaBeouf). At least Seligman (Stellan Skarsgard) is still there to hear here story, not judge her, not get excited, and offer advice as to why people or she acted the way they did.

Darker path indeed. We have some hard stuff in here. Mostly due to her issues with her relationship with Jerome, she lost the good feeling down there and really wants it back. Sure she accidentally also had a kid. But responsibilities aren’t important. Getting that urge back is.

So she started to experience a lot of new things. Strangers of another language barriers and BDSM mostly. So much went down that it of course affected her parenting and lead her to support groups, and eventually using these skills she has learned through the years to help shake down people for cash.

But maybe there is a reason for all of this. Maybe things are going to start finally looking up.

Also still featuring Christian Slater, along with Willem Dafoe, Mia Goth and Jamie Bell.

This one was actually the safer of two potential images.

Just like my last review, let’s just say that this movie is hard movie to talk about. After all, a lot of this is about her experiences and it is a continuation. I don’t want to give things away, as I know most people who read this review wouldn’t have seen part 1, but since this is a continuation, part 1 knowledge is necessary.

I felt very uncomfortable during several scenes, but also found these darker plotlines a bit more interesting than the first volume. I am sure I gasped at more than one occasion, staring in disbelief at others. So much shocking material, but the movie itself isn’t just a shocker meant to put you on guard. There are deeper themes and elements going around to make sense of the chaos.

And shit. You know what? Life is hard, is the basic theme of the movie. No matter your position in life and circumstances, you will have faced hard experiences and hopefully you can over come them.

I think it ended on a strong, if not shocking final two hours, and am glad I didn’t leave super disappointed like Melancholia.

Yes! More movies in the supernatural rom com genre!

There hasn’t been a lot of these, I guess. Most of them are dramas more than comedies. Apparently that is where they think the money is at, teenage girls. But the comedy element? Outside of Warm Bodies (Warm Bodies), there haven’t been that many.

So sure, Life After Beth is giving us love and zombies again, a year later, but just like regular romantic comedies, as long as they are done in different and unique ways it shouldn’t be an issue.

You don’t need a beating heart to float on water!

Beth (Aubrey Plaza) is dead. You can’t change that. Freak accident. Her boyfriend at the time, Zach (Dane DeHaan) is taking it really badly. Yeah, sure, he lost the love of his life, but it ended badly too. They were fighting. He didn’t her what he really felt.

So yeah. That sucks. Trying to cope after a death is hard. He has even been hanging out with Beth’s parents (John C. Reilly, Molly Shannon) in the down time.

But then he sees Beth. Walking around. Seemingly normal.

What in the highest amounts of fucks? Was this some joke to get him out of their lives? A shitty way to break up with him?

Or, was she resurrected, like her parents believe? They don’t care. They were missing their little girl and are happy to have her back, regardless of any complications.

You know. Zombie things.

The parents of Zach are played by Cheryl Hines and Paul Reiser, he has a brother who is a cop played by Matthew Gray Gubler, and Anna Kendrick as an old friend and old fling.

Sometimes your flirt face is the same as your scare face.

While other supernatural movies may strive for extreme supernatural things going on, Life After Beth keeps it surprisingly realistic. Yes. Sure. Zombies happen. These zombies may have big strength, start to decay, don’t feel much pain, whatever. Normal zombie stereotypes.

But the emotions and reactions are surprisingly real feeling. The grief Zach feels over words not spoken. His reactions to her being alive, the many that occur. The parents, unsure of what to do about it. And ignoring the problems as things get worse and worse over time.

Life After Beth does a great job about moving on but in a unique way. Just because the dead are rising up and walking around doesn’t mean that life is over as we know it, right?