First up was a Romanian film called California Dreamin'. It was the story of an American Army communications unit that gets stranded in a small town whilst enroute to the conflict in Bosnia circa the late 90s. The starry eyed locals and the indifferent passers-through get up to all sorts of hijinks you can probably imagine for yourself, in the end the Americans leave the town in the throes of a civil war (metaphor, anyone?) and more or less worse off than they were before their idyllic existence was violated by the Americans. It was alright, just too erratic and poorly acted for my tastes.
The acting was definitely better in the second movie I saw, 'In the Valley of Elah,' which was also a story about American soldiers albeit with a much more somber perspective than the first film. The "Valley of Elah" was the setting for the biblical battle between David and Goliath, and our film's David is Tommy Lee Jones, the father of an Iraq War Veteran who was murdered by his colleagues shortly after returning from the war. The Goliath of the picture is the military infrastructure which attempts to thwart his investigation into the murder. It was really well acted and pretty touching, a bit slow at times maybe, and tho I'm no Iraq War fan even I at times thought it was a bit over-the-top anti-American (especially the final scene) but all in all it was the best film of the four.
Another film I'd heard good things about but hadn't been able to catch on the internet or at Yongsan was this one, 'Jessie James.' I liked it. Again, the acting was good, and again, parts of it were pretty moving, but it was a bit too in love with the idea of itself to be great. I really enjoy the whole "anti-Western" motif, tho, and what was so striking and memorable for me about this flick was how there were no heroes and no perfect characters - everyone had a dark side.
The last film I saw was the one I was most excited about, which possibly contributed to why it was such a disappointment for me. I love zombie movies. Love the hell outta them. Would marry them if I could. And George Romero is the king of zombie movies, and we're not talking about someone who's cred rides on what he did in the 70s (hello! Wes Craven), he's made good stuff lately. But this ain't good. The script is so awful, the lines are so flatly delivered, and the acting is so terrible that I just couldn't get into it. I'm willing to forgive quite a lot in a zombie movie (heck I even enjoyed one or two of the seemingly writer-less Resident Evil movies) but the problem with this movie was the writing was so upfront and so message-driven. Instead of killing fucking zombies in all sorts of gory ways the motley crew of 20 somethings and their surly whiskey swillin' philosophy professor scamper around the Pennsylvania countryside debating the nature of the media. "Is something real if it's not on TV?" "We live in an age where everything can be seen everywhere by everyone." "You have to keep filming or it doesn't exist." Blah blah blah. Shut. The. Fuck. Up. And. Kill. Some. Fucking. Zombies!
All in all tho, no regrets, I enjoyed the heck outta Jiff.
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