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A hipster, deadpan war movie focused in the small delights of life does sound very interesting indeed

tenia wrote: Wed May 15, 2019 8:14 am I keep wondering why zombie movies HAVE to come with social or political subtexts or high concepts when it fail so often to live up to it. Why can't they simply be mindless horrific and/or funny entertainment ?

tenia wrote: Wed May 15, 2019 5:14 pm I should have phrased it differently and got lost in translation : I wonder why some are still trying to make zombie movies with subtexts while the utmost majority fail to live up.
I did like Busan, though it felt a bit overlong.

kubelkind wrote: Wed May 15, 2019 5:36 pm Wonder if the "zombie-movies-with political-subtexts" genre starts not with Romero but with Jacques Tourneur's 1943 "I Walked With A Zombie", which can be easily read as a critique of colonialism. Looks like Bertrand Bonello's forthcoming "Zombi Child" may be more along those lines.

swo17 wrote: Tue May 14, 2019 10:20 pm

domino harvey wrote: Tue May 14, 2019 10:09 pm

an asshole farmer (Steve Buscemi sporting a “Make America White Again” hat

This description from the other review makes that sound a little better:

At the diner, Steve Buscemi shows up as a farmer in a cap that reads “Keep America White Again,” and the fact that he’s buddies with the guy seated next to him at the counter, played by Danny Glover, is one of Jarmusch’s feel-good corkscrew liberal jokes.

kubelkind wrote: Wed May 15, 2019 5:36 pm Wonder if the "zombie-movies-with political-subtexts" genre starts not with Romero but with Jacques Tourneur's 1943 "I Walked With A Zombie", which can be easily read as a critique of colonialism. Looks like Bertrand Bonello's forthcoming "Zombi Child" may be more along those lines.

Lost Highway wrote: Wed May 15, 2019 5:56 pm Beautiful as the film is, it wasn’t nearly as influential on the genre as the Romero films were (the Val Lewton approach in general was). The Romero zombie as a brain dead, man eating ghoul in whose wake comes the apocalypse is a distinctly different monster from the far more benign zombies of Haitian folklore which populated the screen before.

Shrew wrote: Wed May 15, 2019 2:31 pm

A hipster, deadpan war movie focused in the small delights of life does sound very interesting indeed

Maybe the problem with The Dead Don't Die is that it's the first Jim Jarmusch film to feel elderly and shouty. It's the aging hippie ranting about how disengaged this new generation is, using modern examples in bad faith and tedious as a consequence almost immediately. It's the patronizing old guy who doesn't realize that everything he's saying was already said more eloquently by the very things he's attacking in his arch, superior way--the dude telling the woman about this book he's read and ignoring her constant protestations that she's the author of said book. Oh man, is it bad.

knives wrote: Thu May 16, 2019 5:06 pm Correct. For Romero I believe it was only ever mentioned in Dawn.

Finch wrote: Wed Jun 12, 2019 5:56 pm a half star out of four from Walter Chaw

Maybe the problem with The Dead Don't Die is that it's the first Jim Jarmusch film to feel elderly and shouty. It's the aging hippie ranting about how disengaged this new generation is, using modern examples in bad faith and tedious as a consequence almost immediately. It's the patronizing old guy who doesn't realize that everything he's saying was already said more eloquently by the very things he's attacking in his arch, superior way--the dude telling the woman about this book he's read and ignoring her constant protestations that she's the author of said book. Oh man, is it bad.

RIP Film wrote: Sat Jun 15, 2019 1:15 pm Haven’t seen it, but based on reactions i’m beginning to wonder how meta this movie is. As if the all-star cast and dopey script/pacing, waiting for the laugh moments, is some sort of commentary on the state of entertainment... Watching celebrities screw around while the world burns. At the very least it sounds interesting even as a detour for Jarmusch, who i’m willing to give the benefit of a doubt until I see it for myself.

Lost Highway wrote: Sat Jun 15, 2019 1:27 pm

RIP Film wrote: Sat Jun 15, 2019 1:15 pm Haven’t seen it, but based on reactions i’m beginning to wonder how meta this movie is. As if the all-star cast and dopey script/pacing, waiting for the laugh moments, is some sort of commentary on the state of entertainment... Watching celebrities screw around while the world burns. At the very least it sounds interesting even as a detour for Jarmusch, who i’m willing to give the benefit of a doubt until I see it for myself.

The criticisms of the film may not be valid because it’s flaws are on purpose due to some assumed meta aspect and everybody has been too dumb to understand that. Did I get that right ?

How and why was this such a difficult shoot?

It took us a very long time to finance it, and we never got the complete budget that we said the film would require. Focus Features were great to us. They gave us total autonomy in every way and totally trusted us, but they were not able to give us what we said the full budget would be. So we went over budget, and in the end, it was exactly the budget we said it would be. And we had very limited time due to the actors’ schedules and the weather. It rained every day. I’ve always tried to use limitations, to look at them as strengths. All the driving shots with people in car interiors are all on a stage — which makes it slightly artificial, which I like. I got walking pneumonia halfway through and had to keep shooting 15 hours a day with blankets and coats, and it was 95 [degrees], you know? I broke my toe; I had to keep working. It was like the Book of Job.

(...) the hat that Steve Buscemi’s character wears, which has a slogan, “Keep America White Again.” That’s a little out of my normal … I’m not really into being didactic. But at the same time, [by showing] this kind of racist sloganeering, we’re reflecting something that is concerning. I didn’t want to hide from it.