What A Movie Weekend . . . Or, What Do The Wolverine, World War Z, Red 2, and Monsters University Have In Common?

This last weekend I binged on movies.  Matinee pricing is too good to pass up and I was stuck in town.  So I decided I'd check out some movies that were just opening, one that I wanted to see despite the objections of fan-boys and my own sense that the book was probably better, and one that earned its place on the strength of its predecessor. 

Let's start with World War Z.  We'll start there mostly because that's where I started.  First movie out of the gate.  Based on the cult-hit novel by Max Brooks (author of the Zombie Survival Handbook) which takes familiar zombie tropes and ponders what it would look like on a world-wide scale, told from multiple perspectives in documentary fashion.  Documentary in book form means something different from documentary in movie form.  In book form, it means "pertaining to documents."  It's usually just a compendium of documents which relate to the given topic.  On film it's a whole other beast and Michael Moore and Ken Burns tend to pop up a lot. 

The film version of World War Z is not documentary in any way.  It's an efficient, competent action film without anything to speak against it.  But it also doesn't have a lot going for it, either.  Brad Pitt does a fine job as some sort of UN gopher: hopping from hot spot to hot spot putting out fires.  We're never really told what he does, just that he's the best at it and it gives him an insider's look at mass panic.  The zombies are fast, which they were not in the book, but I don't think it matters.  We're given a glimpse of a world-spanning epidemic and the human response varies from garrison-states (literally) to nuclear bombs, to whole countries ripping out their teeth in a single day to prevent disease vectors. 

It was fun, but wasn't particularly compelling.  And if you really want the book, go read the book.  The movie is fine on its own.

Following that was The Wolverine.  It was okay.  Hero (and his abs) faces an existential crisis.  Has a call to adventure from a spunky Japanese girl with a sword called "The Separator" because it separates head from torso, or limb from torso or what have you.  She uses it to cut beer bottles in half.  Wolverine glances at it, decides his are better.  Anyway.  It's basically what you'd expect.  Some of the acting was spotty, but the movie as a whole was well plotted and well executed.  Of special note was the remarkable decision to look at the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki from the perspective of the Japanese people themselves, though it was necessarily downplayed in the movie.  One of the better X-Men movies I've seen recently.

Red 2 sucked.  It had moments of mediocrity, but I felt like it wanted to be Mr. and Mrs. Smith and simply failed.  Bruce Willis was Bruce Willis, and John Malkovich was the only reason to watch this movie.  He's Martin Freeman thirty years older.  With only a single action piece that was genuinely fun to watch, this movie was as tired as the actors struggling to muddle through a scene. 

Finally, let's talk about Monsters University.  What a great film.  It's easy to come to expect greatness from Pixar, but with news that Finding Nemo is getting a sequel (a movie that is a lesser candidate for a sequel I can't imagine) it seemed as if Pixar had mined its creativity to exhaustion.  This proved that fear absolutely unfounded.  Sequels are hard, prequels harder (ahem . . . George).  Monsters University handled that challenge with aplomb and heart.  In fact, I was never really a fan of the first Monsters Inc., but this one seemed all the better.  And with Nathan Fillion as a voice actor, what's not to love?

Remarkably, the movie ended on a note that I hadn't expected.  In fact, as the credits started to roll the three year-old boy behind me turned to him mother and asked "why?"  She offered him a great explanation which I'll try to keep spoiler free.  Basically, "Because that's how it happens sometimes."  And she was right, and I left the movie feeling as though Pixar really had something to say; as much as they had an interest in entertaining three and thirty year-olds, they wanted us to reflect on how life actually is.  And they succeeded. 

Of all the movies I saw this weekend, Monsters University was the only one I recommend you see.  It was simply fantastic.