Justice League (2017)

Even before I actually started reading comic books on a regular basis, I loved DC Comics. I grew up watching DC's characters in cartoons, TV shows, and movies, and I've always held them very close to my heart even if I hadn't always been familiar with their origins on the printed page. So when I'd heard that Warner Bros. was going to borrow an idea from Marvel Studios and create a shared cinematic universe featuring DC's heroes and villains, I was excited... until I actually saw the movies.

As good as Wonder Woman might have been, the utter awfulness of Man of Steel, Batman v Superman, and Suicide Squad really dampened any sort of excitement I had for what's been named "the DC Extended Universe." But regardless, I was still drawn to Justice League. I mean, how could I not go see it? And while it's certainly a very, very flawed movie, I still enjoyed it for what it was.

Thousands of years ago, Earth was invaded by the warlord Steppenwolf (Ciarán Hinds) and the armies of the dystopian planet of Apokolips. He was ultimately repelled by the combined efforts of humanity, the gods of Olympus, the Amazons, the people of the mythical undersea kingdom of Atlantis, and members of the Green Lantern Corps. Steppenwolf's weapons, three powerful artifacts known as "Mother Boxes," were separated and hidden away.

Fast forward to the present day. Humanity has become more bitter and cynical than ever before in the wake of Superman's death. It is this despair that reactivates the long-dormant Mother Boxes and draws Steppenwolf back to Earth to search for them. Realizing the high likelihood that he might succeed in doing so, Batman (Ben Affleck) and Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot) begin putting together their own team of super-powered individuals to fight him. Their recruits:

• Arthur Curry (Jason Momoa), the half-human heir to the throne of Atlantis
• Barry Allen (Ezra Miller), a nerdy college student who uses his ability to move at superhuman speed to operate as a vigilante known as "The Flash"
• Victor Stone (Ray Fisher), a former college football star whose body was rebuilt with cybernetic enhancements via a Mother Box after a near-fatal accident

And while the team puts up a good fight against Steppenwolf in their first encounter with him, Batman decides that they need a little extra something to bring to their next battle: a resurrected Superman (Henry Cavill). It's a risky plan, one that might not even work, but it might be their only hope.

I entered Justice League with a fair bit of trepidation for a number of reasons. One was the movie's shaky production, which I'll get into later. There's also the fact that DC's movies don't exactly have the best track record lately. Not only have the movies building to Justice League been lousy (with the exception of Wonder Woman), but they've also felt like they're just there to be there, with

When Marvel started their initial build from Iron Man to The Avengers, the majority of the major players got their own individual movies (or plenty of significant screen time if they weren't flying solo) so that the audience would know who they were and connect to them. They took the time to build their universe and mapped out everything, sometimes even years in advance. Each successive movie plants at least some tiny little seed to be expanded upon in later installments, whether we notice it at first or not. And considering that their continued use of that formula has made them billions of dollars at the worldwide box office, I'd be willing to bet that they won't be changing it up much in the future.

DC, on the other hand, hasn't really done any of that. It's really evident that they only had the idea to do a shared universe was something they came up after the success of Man of Steel instead of something they'd planned all along. Their movies seem disjointed, disconnected, none of them remotely feeling like they should or could be taking place in the same world. Yeah, Batman and Flash might've made cameos in Suicide Squad, but the build to Justice League comes across like trying to put together a puzzle with none of the right pieces.

I don't really believe I'm exaggerating when I say I think they've been rushing to get to a movie starring the Justice League but didn't care how they got there. Rather than have a concise game plan from the start, DC has just thrown whatever they could at a wall and ran with whatever they believed would stick. And it's honestly hard to make a connection to these characters when the movie hasn't earned it. Man of Steel and Batman v Superman were the kind of movies you'd have expected to be made by some 16-year-old edgelord who thinks the idea of clearly defined good guys and bad guys is stupid and that idealism is for chumps, while Suicide Squad is basically what you'd get if Guardians of the Galaxy was made inside of a Spencer's Gifts with characters who weren't as developed or likable. Wonder Woman was a fantastic way to let us get to know the character after she showed up in Batman v Superman, but that still leaves us with the rest. Could Warner Bros. and DC not been a bit more patient? Would it have killed them to establish as many major players as they could' before approaching the Justice League?

It wouldn't have hurt anybody if they'd waited another year or two to make this movie. Give the audience something to establish this Flash and show us what sets him apart from the Flash that Grant Gustin plays on that show on The CW. Give the audience something to show that Aquaman is more than just the "lol he talks to fish" jokes that have been told about him for years. Do something, anything, to show us why Cyborg belongs in the Justice League and that he's more than just "that one Teen Titan that says 'booyah.'" (I'm of the opinion that they also should've gone with the Martian Manhunter or one of the Green Lanterns instead of Cyborg, but that's just me.) I'm not saying give them their own solo movies right out of the gate; Marvel's Black Widow and Hawkeye haven't had their own solo movies and I still couldn't imagine the Avengers without them. I'd have just appreciated a little something from the newcomers other than "oh yeah, these guys are here now, we'll fill in the details later if we get the time."

The movie's rocky production did it no favors either. While Zack Snyder is credited as the movie's sole director, he left the movie during post-production to deal with his daughter's tragic suicide. Joss Whedon, who Warner Bros. had previously brought on to rewrite Chris Terrio's script, was tagged with completing the movie. This included not just finishing post-production, but doing extensive reshoots too. You can definitely see Whedon's influence on the final product, especially in the dialogue and in the movie's sense of humor. It doesn't feel anything like the dark, morose movies that Snyder made. Elements of Snyder's typical style are still here, but they're toned down, almost as if Whedon was trying to reign in what he couldn't completely change.

The bad part is that with Whedon taking over only a few months ago, the final product feels rushed. There's the dodgy CGI, for starters. Steppenwolf looks like absolute crap, as does most of the final battle against Steppenwolf and his Parademons. And the less said about the hysterically atrocious work they did removing the mustache Henry Cavill had to grow for Mission: Impossible – Fallout, the better. One also gets the feeling that quite a lot of the movie was left on the cutting room floor to keep the movie at a two-hour running time. Maybe that's where all of Flash, Aquaman, and Cyborg's backstories went?

The movie also suffers from having a ridiculously weak villain. I'd never even heard of Steppenwolf prior to seeing the movie. And the character as he's presented here isn't much. He just doesn't seem like the kind of character that would need the entire Justice League to take him down. Maybe Warner Bros. mandated that they had to save Darkseid for a potential sequel? He probably wouldn't have been half as awesome as the one in the comics, or the one Michael Ironside voiced in the various DC cartoons developed by Bruce Timm and Paul Dini during the latter half of the '90s and early '00s. But still, I'd have loved to have seen Darkseid.

I'll say this much, though: the majority of the cast is great, so the movie at least has that going for it. Ray Fisher is forgettable as Cyborg and Ezra Miller is honestly kinda annoying as the Flash. But everybody else is great. Ben Affleck once again makes a better Batman than people thought he'd be when he was first hired for the role. I spoke of solo movies earlier, and I'd really like to see one starring Affleck's Batman.

Jason Momoa, meanwhile, is a total badass in his first outing as Aquaman. He gives off a vibe of being the coolest guy in the room, and easily makes one forget all the corny jokes about Aquaman being lame. I also thought that Gal Gadot was once again fabulous as Wonder Woman. She plays the role with a ton of heart and conviction, and again reaffirms my belief that they couldn't have hired a better actress for the role.

And then there's Henry Cavill, who finally gets to play the Superman I always dreamed he could be here. Despite how poorly Zack Snyder wrote the character in the past, Cavill has always shown a ton of potential that he could be a fantastic Superman with the right material. And there's some strong glimpses of it here, even if Cavill doesn't have a whole lot of screen time compared to the rest of the cast. Seeing him save the day by laying in a few punches to Steppenwolf before dropping everything to save some civilians in peril, all while Danny Elfman's brief interpretation of John Williams' classic Superman theme from 1978 plays? Oh yeah, I want to see more of that Superman!

A Justice League movie could've happened back in 2007, believe it or not. Mad Max creator George Miller was hired to direct what would've been called Justice League: Mortal, along with a cast. But it was canceled due to a combination of budgetary woes and the Writer's Guild strike. Ten years later, the Justice League have finally hit the big screen and the results are... okay, I guess. It's not a particularly bad movie, but it also isn't that great either. It's one of those movies that's just kinda there. It's at least the second-best entry in the DC Expanded Universe, though that's damning it with faint praise. Could've been worse, though; I could've been stuck watching Batman v Superman again.

Final Rating:**½

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016)

Some of the most heated debates you'll ever see begin with a single question: "Who'd win in a fight?" Pick any two popular fictional characters, and the idea of them doing battle is enough to send any geek's imagination running wild. We'll even occasionally end up with these arguments bearing fruit, with movies like King Kong vs. Godzilla and Freddy vs. Jason hitting theaters and wars between the Alien and the Predator sprawling across comic books, video games, and two movies. But other than James T. Kirk versus Jean-Luc Picard, the one argument I've seen the most is who would win between DC's legendary superheroes, Superman and Batman. It's a battle that's actually happened in the past, most famously in the pages of Frank Miller's seminal comic book The Dark Knight Returns, but never on the scale of the newly released flick Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. But I should have taken the movie's Rotten Tomatoes score (as of this writing, it sits at 30% and will probably drop lower) as a warning, because I don't know if I could have been more disappointed with it.

Eighteen months have passed since the city of Metropolis was left devastated by General Zod and his band of rebel Kryptonians. And while his intervention on that fateful day and his acts of selfless heroism since then have led many to trust Superman (Henry Cavill) as a benevolent force, there are those who are convinced otherwise. Among the doubters is billionaire industrialist Bruce Wayne (Ben Affleck), who witnessed firsthand the death and destruction caused by Superman's battle with Zod and is now fearful of the day that he might switch from savior to conqueror. He's bound and determined to prevent this, using the expertise and equipment he's acquired as the masked vigilante "Batman" to develop a means to neutralize Superman should the need ever arise.

Wayne's paranoia is surpassed, however, by that of Lex Luthor (Jesse Eisenberg), an eccentric businessman who has grown obsessed with proving that Superman is far from the altruistic hero that appears to be. Luthor begins secretly orchestrating ways to sully his enemy's good name and shift the public's perception of him, while using his vast wealth and political connections to get access to the top-secret laboratory built around the wreckage of Zod's ship and find answers to all of his darkest questions about our superpowered visitor from another world. But his primary goal: to subtly stir the tensions between Superman and Batman and manipulate them into a fight, a clash of titans that that he hopes will end with Superman either dead or exposed as the villain Luthor believes him to be.

I wanted to like this movie. I honestly did. I went in thinking to myself, "There's no way it can be that bad." But I was wrong, dead wrong. Batman v Superman is a bloated mess of a movie that tries to accomplish way too much in the time its given yet never really does any of it right. It's painfully obvious that they're trying to play catch-up with the Marvel Cinematic Universe yet missed every single thing that Marvel Studios did well so wildly that it's almost like they were doing it on purpose. The movie practically assaults the audience with all of its failed potential and wasted efforts. Between that, the inconsistent writing, and the oppressively dark tone, Batman v Superman is an absolute chore to get through.

Zack Snyder returns to direct the movie after helming Man of Steel, and I'm not one hundred percent convinced that Warner Bros. was wise to bring him back. Snyder has always been accused of preferring style over substance, a criticism that is none more accurate when applied to Batman v Superman. There's absolutely nothing worthwhile about the movie beyond what's on the surface, and what is on the surface isn't very appealing. The movie's dark, downright bleak tone makes it really depressing to watch, as if the entire project was one big experiment Snyder was conducting in an attempt to discover the antithesis of fun. It's like he was actively trying to make a movie that was utterly devoid of any sort of happiness or glee, instead preferring to make a movie so gloomy and joyless that it makes me simultaneously sad and angry that this was the best Snyder felt that he could do.

It's also relentlessly dull until the climactic fight scenes, because it feels like Snyder and the writers are trying to cram so many things into the movie that nothing really ends up happening. And the fight scenes... oh dear, the fight scenes! By the end, it felt like Snyder was beating me over the head with a pipe while trying to make me go deaf and blind at the same time. It's one giant terrible mixture of cacophonic light and sound, an all-out assault on the senses that stops being entertaining and becomes annoying halfway through.

And then there's the piss-poor script credited to Chris Terrio and David S. Goyer. It feels like Terrio and Goyer just cobbled together pieces from other, better stories without trying to make any sort of coherent narrative out of it all. It feels bloated, trying to cram numerous movies worth of material into one 150-minute project just because the Justice League movie starts filming this summer and they've got to hurry up and get all this stuff out of the way now while they still have a chance. There's just so much going on that it does not allow for any sort of narrative flow at all. The story bounces around like it's trapped inside a pinball machine, with no chance to make any sort of sense of it or to give the audience a chance to care. You'd think that a movie that is ostensibly a sequel to Man of Steel would be more concerned with just being that. But instead we have to clumsily introduce Wonder Woman, shoehorn in cameos from Aquaman, Cyborg, and the Flash, and give Batman the lion's share of the movie's focus.

And honestly, none of it ever goes anywhere. It's setting up for movies down the road without worrying about taking care of itself. Instead of being a self-contained movie where Superman fights Batman, it's basically giving you an entire franchise worth of Cliff's Notes just so Snyder and Warner Bros. can skip straight to the Justice League movie with as minimal effort as possible, and then give all of the characters that aren't Batman or Superman their own movies after the fact. It's a classic case of trying to put the cart before the horse. Rather than treat this movie with love and care, they just slap everything together in a great big rush and shove it out into theaters without really caring how good or bad it is because the Marvel Cinematic Universe has made nearly ten billion dollars combined at the worldwide box office and they want some of that action too. But rather than develop a world a world of heroes and villains and build towards Justice League as the natural payoff towards all of their hard work, it's like they've convinced themselves that people would rather just see all of the characters lumped onto the screen together and have a bunch of monotonous action scenes thrown at them without things like story or character development or good acting getting in the way.

And how about that acting, huh? One almost gets the feeling that even the majority cast realized how awful the movie was going to be and couldn't bother to even half-ass it. The rest were so hampered by the lousy material that even if they'd given their absolute best, they'd have barely made it out intact. Granted, there are a couple of good performances, but the majority of the cast is just disappointing at best. Among the good is Ben Affleck, who is a strong Batman. When his casting was first announced back in 2013, it drew an absolute ridiculous amount of criticism. How dare they hire the guy that played Daredevil? But now that the movie has been released, Affleck shows that he's a lot better in the role than anyone could have anticipated. He approaches the role with a grizzled, jaded demeanor that really suits the character. Affleck's Batman is haunted by years of emotional grief, his fight to protect Gotham City having taken a toll on him. We're only privy to bits and pieces of it ― the broken-down state of Wayne Manor, a desecrated Robin costume kept as a memorial in the Batcave ― but Affleck manages to convey so much through his actions, his facial expressions, his tone of voice. This Batman has been through absolute hell, and it's Affleck who shows us that.

I also really enjoyed Gal Godot as Wonder Woman. She isn't really given a lot to do until the finale (and Wonder Woman is completely irrelevant to the plot, to be honest), but Godot absolutely nails the role. Godot's Wonder Woman is a strong, charismatic heroine, just as she should be. Once she leaps into battle, you can't take your eyes off her. She commands your attention with a ferocity that makes one curious as to why it took so long for Warner Bros. to work Wonder Woman into a movie. But word is that they're making one as we speak with the intention of it coming out next year, which I'm actually excited for because I can't wait to see Godot actually have something to do as the character.

And while the movie does boast those good performances and some decent ones among lesser members of the supporting cast (Jeremy Irons, Laurence Fishburne, and Diane Lane are all fantastic, by the way), they're outweighed by the bad and the ridiculous. Henry Cavill, for starters, certainly looks the part. But the way his character is presented, he's stuck playing a whiny, emo bitch. This is not the big blue Boy Scout we all know and love; it's instead an emotionally conflicted wuss that feels more pathetic than heroic. I get the reasoning behind writing Superman that way, as I'm sure Snyder & Co. felt they were giving him more depth that way. But what's wrong with the traditional depiction? Regardless, Cavill seems to be trying hard, which I appreciate, but he just can't overcome how poorly written the script is. He's not playing a character to believe in, but to pity. And that is no Superman that I want any part of.

And why is Amy Adams even here again? She's dull as dishwater, having absolutely none of the likability, charisma, or spunk that made Lois such a beloved part of the Superman mythos. It doesn't help matters that Adams and Cavill have zero chemistry whatsoever either, but that's more the fault of the casting director than Adams herself. She is a talented actress, don't get me wrong, but Adams honestly doesn't feel like she was the right person for this role. One wouldn't be surprised if the only reason she was playing Lois at all is because someone wanted a multiple-time Oscar nominee in the role.

Speaking of roles that are woefully miscast, Jesse Eisenberg sucks. This has to be one of the absolute worst performances I've seen in quite a while. He's an annoying doofus that does nothing but inspire anger and frustration every time you see him. Eisenberg is painfully inconsistent, wandering all over the place throughout the movie, hitting all points of the map sometimes within a span of a few moments. This isn't Lex Luthor at all, but a schizophrenic hipster instead. Had Superman just torn his head off and punted it into orbit, I'd have been perfectly fine with that just so I didn't have to see Jesse Eisenberg in this movie anymore.

As I said earlier, the whole thing makes me think that Warner Bros. saw Disney raking in cash hand over fist with the Avengers and went into full-blown panic mode. And in doing so, they entrusted the franchise to a director who has made it abundantly clear that he has doesn't have a single clue as to what makes these characters so wonderful. Zack Snyder has given us the cinematic equivalent of all those crappy comic books from the '90s, the ones full of violent, brooding antiheroes because being "darker and edgier" was what they thought was cool, as if all the bright, shiny, happy stuff that had come before it had somehow suddenly become lame. I've loved the heroes of DC Comics since I was a little kid, but Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice makes me want to rethink that. Watching this movie hurts. It hurts a lot. If this is how the road to a shared cinematic universe starring DC's characters gets started, then I should probably just stick with the Avengers.

Final Rating: *½

300 (2007)

Ask a million diehard comic book fans about their opinion of Frank Miller, and you'll probably get a million different answers. But there's one thing about him that I'm sure most people can agree on: whether it's good or bad, Miller's work is most certainly a stylish, gritty type of thing.

Miller's work has brought the comic industry a lot of both good and bad comics, but he definitely has his own unique method of approaching material. It can be seen in his Sin City books (as well as its cinematic adaptation) and his work on Daredevil and Batman, and was put to use when Miller entered Hollywood to direct The Spirit. It even goes beyond Miller's superhero and noir stories, as evidenced by 300.

Published by Dark Horse Comics in 1998, the five-issue miniseries written and illustrated by Miller presented us a fictional retelling of the events leading up to the Battle of Thermopylae. And although it drew some criticisms for various reasons, 300 still sold tremendously well and won three Eisner Awards.

It proved popular enough that Warner Bros. Pictures eventually picked up the film rights and released a cinematic adaptation of 300 in 2007. With Zack Snyder — fresh off making his directorial debut with his remake of George Romero's classic Dawn of the Dead — helming the project, 300 was an enormous financial success despite professional critics being divided in regards to it. And as much as I enjoy comic book movies, I can't believe I've actually gone seven years without ever having seen 300. So with the sequel on its way, I might as well go ahead and check it out, right?

The movie takes us to the year 480 BC and the Greek city-state of Sparta, a kingdom of fierce, proud warriors. As part of the continuing conflicts between Persia and Greece, a Persian messenger arrives at Sparta's gates requesting they submit and give their obedience to Xerxes (Rodrigo Santoro), the god-king of Persia. Sparta's King Leonidas (Gerard Butler) not only refuses, but is so offended that he dropkicks the messenger and his entire entourage into a pit to hammer his response home.

Although they know Xerxes will surely retaliate, the upcoming religious festival of Carnea prevents the Spartan council from approving Leonidas's plan to lead their full military into battle. Despite this, Leonidas still assembles a band of three hundred soldiers, deeming them his personal bodyguards to get around the council's regulations. His plan is to force the Persians through the narrow coastal passage of Thermopylae, where Leonidas and his tiny group of warriors fully intend to stand tall in the face of an overwhelming opposition.

This wasn't the first time the Battle of Thermopylae had been depicted in film, the tale having previously been told via the 1962 epic The 300 Spartans. It was that movie that inspired Frank Miller to write the 300 comic book in the first place. And with 300, the story is taken deeply into the realm of historical fantasy. It's a testosterone-fueled, over-the-top action flick that, like most of the movies from its director, favors style over substance. And oh my, what style it is.

Though only his second movie, 300 is very much a Zack Snyder movie. Much of the style he's become known for is on display here, with the slow motion and stylized violence that have become Snyder's hallmarks put to good use here. And with 300, he seems to have drawn a little inspiration from what Robert Rodriguez did with Sin City two years prior. Both movies are based on Frank Miller's comic books, both are over-stylized efforts with unique visuals, and chroma-keyed effects, and a faithful approach to the source material.

And while 300 movies slowly at times, it always feels like it's building towards something. And that something is the movie's fight sequences. Snyder directs these moments wonderfully, each of them having a ferocity and excitement that makes the slower moments worth sitting through. The battles are the movie's highlights, the biggest reasons to see 300, more so than the "this is Sparta!" line that was an Internet meme back in 2007 because they're honestly the best parts of the movie.

And while I've never actually had the opportunity to read Miller's book, so I can't actually compare the script to the story he wrote, the writers do a decent enough job. There's truthfully not much of a story, just setups for each battle, but writers Snyder, Kurt Johnstad, and Michael B. Gordon do craft a tale that make the Spartans a team of warriors to be respected. The one serious drawback to it is the dialogue, which comes off as kinda hokey at times. But since much of it is befitting of 300's comic origins, it's forgivable.

But last but certainly not least is the cast, all of whom are actually really good. Rodrigo Santoro casts an intimidating presence as Xerxes despite not needing to do a whole lot, while Dominic West doesn't have many scenes, but he's very good in them. His character is a two-faced sleazebag that spends the whole movie undermining Leonidas's campaign, a role that West plays perfectly.

Lena Headey, meanwhile, plays Queen Gorgo splendidly. She plays the Spartan queen as something of a mirror image of Gerard Butler's Leonidas, giving Gorgo with a nobility that has a nobility that has a warrior's spirit beneath it. But 300 belongs to Gerard Butler, who grabs the movie and runs with it. Butler has appeared in over a dozen movies since 300, but he's never matched what he does here. His brings a fire and bravery to Leonidas, a passionate, larger than life performance that is honestly just as much a highlight as the battle sequences.

300 is not a great movie, nor is it even the best one of Zack Snyder's résumé. But it's certainly a fun movie. It's one of those movies that are exactly what you need if you want a movie that'll give you a shot of adrenaline. The movie is one of the manliest flicks I've ever seen, probably the closest Hollywood's gotten to replicating the awe and spectacle of Conan the Barbarian in the new millennium (and that's counting Marcus Nispel's Conan movie in 2011). Did I think 300 was all that I'd heard it was cracked up to be? No. But I did enjoy it, and sometimes, isn't that really all that matters?

Final Rating: ***

Man of Steel (2013)

Seventy-five years ago, two cartoonists from Cleveland wrote and drew a story for a new comic book called Action Comics. Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster surely could not have known back in 1938 that their story's protagonist would become a major cultural icon. Decked out in blue tights and a red cape, the character helped put superheroes on the map and changed the face of American comic books. Needless to say, that character is the one and only Superman.

Superman has become so popular over the years that he's transcended comics. He actually has a whole host of fans who've never even touched a comic book, let alone read one. I'd say it's primarily due to his presence in other media. There's a ton of Superman cartoons, Superman TV shows, and perhaps most famously, a number of live-action Superman movies. However, the quality of those movies has been... well, mixed, to say the least. Richard Donner's 1978 movie and its sequel are classics, some of the best superhero movies of all time. But much like what happened when Joel Schumacher took over the Batman franchise from Tim Burton, the third and fourth movies underperformed and effectively ended the franchise. Even Bryan Singer's Superman Returns wasn't enough to resurrect it.

That's where Christopher Nolan comes in. After concluding his epic "Dark Knight Saga" last year, he was brought in by Warner Bros. Studios to help reinvigorate Superman much in the way he did Batman. With Nolan assuming the role of producer and Watchmen director Zack Snyder at the helm, Superman is getting his much-ballyhooed (and at this point much-needed) cinematic reboot in the form of Man of Steel. So let's dig in, shall we?

The distant planet Krypton is in dire straits. Jor-El (Russell Crowe), the planet's greatest scientific mind, has discovered evidence of an impending environmental catastrophe that will destroy the planet sooner rather than later. But his attempts to warn the Kryptonian high council are ruined when the planet's military leader, the megalomaniacal General Zod (Michael Shannon), seizes the opportunity to stage a coup and plunge Krypton into civil war. In the midst of the chaos and with precious time remaining before the end of the world, Jor-El straps his infant son Kal-El into a rocket and launches him to the relative safety of Earth.

Baby Kal-El's ship lands near Smallville, Kansas, where he's found by Jonathan (Kevin Costner) and Martha Kent (Diane Lane). The Kents adopt him and raise him as their own, naming him Clark. But try as they might to keep his alien heritage a secret, it becomes harder when he starts developing superpowers during his adolescence. Naturally, that's a weird time to not only find out you have super-strength and X-ray vision, but that you're not even human. It's because of that that the adult Clark Kent (Henry Cavill) doesn't feel like he fits in.

Clark roams the country doing odd jobs, never allowing himself to stay in one area for long as he searches to find his place in the world. But the values and sense of justice that the Kents raised him with always come to the forefront, as Clark routinely finds himself performing good deeds and using his powers to save others from disaster. He tries keeping his identity a secret, but it proves harder than he thinks after an encounter with Lois Lane (Amy Adams), an intrepid reporter investigating an ancient Kryptonian spacecraft found buried in the Arctic.

He tries dissuading her from publicly exposing him, but an even bigger threat soon presents itself. General Zod and his army have escaped the interstellar prison they were left in just as Krypton exploded and followed the ancient spacecraft's signal back to Earth. Believing Clark to be the key to reviving Krypton and their dwindling race, Zod has no qualms with destroying all of Earth to get what he wants. Clark is left faced with the quandary of choosing his heritage or protecting his home.

Judging by the reactions I've seen online, Man of Steel has been a very divisive movie. There have been just as many people singing its praises as there have been people who disliked it. But I'm among the seemingly less-vocal band of moviegoers that thought the movie was somewhere in between. There was quite a bit that I enjoyed, elements that were fun, entertaining, and engaging. But there were also those parts I felt held the movie back from achieving its full potential, thus leaving me disappointed as well.

With Zack Snyder in charge as director, you're pretty much guaranteed that, if anything, the movie's going to be insanely stylish. All of his movies are like that, and Man of Steel is no different. And personally, I thought Snyder's work was great. He keeps the movie rolling at a brisk pace, with even the slower moments never feeling like they're dragging or wasting their time. And he really ups his game during the movie's third act, which sees Superman battle Zod's forces in Smallville and Metropolis. These sequences are very exciting and cool, but the downside is that there's so much carnage on the screen that by the end, it makes you feel burned out. It's like a Michael Bay movie on steroids.

And while Snyder obviously gets what makes Superman such an iconic character and tries crafting an epic tone for the movie, one gets the feeling that some of the cynicism he brought to Watchmen has bled over into this project. The movie comes off a lot darker than I'd expect out of Superman. That sort of thing might work for Batman, but Superman is a character that's all about hope and bringing out the best in people. That idea was paid some lip service and occasionally seems to want to break through, but there's also a feeling that because of Batman's popularity and Christopher Nolan's presence, the movie has to be this so-called "realistic" superhero tale similar to Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy. Does Superman have to be realistic? What's wrong with a little happy-go-lucky fantasy?

I also thought that some parts of the script serve as a stumbling block as well. Writer David S. Goyer is no stranger to superhero movies and to his credit, a lot of his script for Man of Steel isn't bad. Like Snyder, he obviously gets Superman is having a fun time putting his own spin on him, Goyer builds the characters in a way that you become invested in them, but the real problem is that the character development stops dead about halfway through, just as it's getting somewhere. As the third act begins and Superman goes to war with Zod's army, the movie becomes Zack Snyder's attempt to destroy as many buildings as possible before the movie ends. I wanted to see more development because I've seen proof that you don't have to sacrifice characters for action (and vice versa). You can have your cake and eat it too sometimes.

Even the movie's 3D effects are disappointing at times. It's another casualty of a mediocre post-production conversion, with only a few scenes having any sort of real depth. While these moments are admittedly really cool, there are not quite enough of them to justify paying the extra surcharge. If you're not a big fan of 3D, don't feel compelled to see it in that format. You don't need to if you don't want to.

But if there's one element of the movie that I thought was one hundred percent awesome, it's the cast. The actors and actresses are all great in their own ways. Amy Adams isn't given as much to do as I'd hoped, but I still thought she played Lois Lane well. I can also say the same thing for Diane Lane, who is charming and sweet in her role as Superman's human mother, while Antje Traue makes for a damn good villain as Zod's chief lieutenant.

And while Kevin Costner is fine as Jonathan Kent, I liked Russell Crowe a bit more. He brings a stoic wisdom to Jor-El, and you can see just how much his character believes in what he's doing. His Jor-El takes it obvious he loves his son and believes in him, which really gives the character a huge boost.

I also liked Michael Shannon, who abandoned the theatricality Terrence Stamp brought to the role in Superman II and made General Zod his own. He gets a little hammy at times (like the "I will find him!" scene that's in the ads), but Shannon still makes Zod a threatening, sometimes scary villain.

But if Shannon had big shoes to fill as he played the character made famous by another actor, Henry Cavill has even bigger shoes. Cavill doesn't have the same dry humor that made Christopher Reeve so captivating to watch, but then his Superman isn't the same as Reeve's either. Cavill plays the role well, bringing a certain seriousness to it. He does a respectable job conveying how unsure he is with his place in the world, while simultaneously having a compulsion to help people no matter what. Cavill does his absolute best as Superman, and if he had a better script to work with, this probably could have been the better portrayals of the character.

I unfortunately didn't think Man of Steel was all that was hoping it would be. I didn't think it was terrible and I don't regret having seen it. I actually enjoyed some parts, but it's just that the enjoyable parts are weighed down by disappointment. There's talk that the movie is supposed to be the start of the DC Comics equivalent of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and if that's the case, things are off to a rocky start. But to its credit, Man of Steel did leave me wanting to see where a sequel would go, so I guess it succeeded in that aspect. As it stands, though, the movie is okay at best. It's just another run of the mill summer blockbuster where smashing stuff rules above all. Is it so hard to do something more than that?

Final Rating: ***

Sucker Punch (2011)

I've only seen two of Zack Snyder's past directorial efforts, but I can say that I did enjoy them very much. And I'm surely not the only one, as Warner Bros. recently pegged him to helm their upcoming relaunch of the Superman film franchise. But all the affection I may have for his remake of George Romero's Dawn of the Dead and his adaptation of Watchmen, I have about as much sheer hatred for his newest movie, Sucker Punch. I'm utterly flabbergasted as just how awful Sucker Punch is. It's a movie where not only does style drastically outweigh substance, but the style isn't that great to begin with. But let's get this review over with so I can hurry up and pretend I've never seen the movie.

Sucker Punch follows a young woman nicknamed "Baby Doll" (Emily Browning), whose abusive stepfather killed her mother in an attempt to claim her fortune. But he's incensed to discover that he's been left out of the will. In a rage, he attacks Baby Doll and her sister, a scuffle that ends with Baby Doll accidentally shooting and killing her sister. The stepfather has Baby Doll institutionalized to make sure she never speaks out about what he's done, going as far as to bribe an orderly into forging documents to have her lobotomized.

In the four days it will take for the surgeon to arrive and perform the lobotomy, Baby Doll retreats into a fantasy world to escape her hellish reality. In this fantasy world, Baby Doll is an orphaned dancer who's been sold to a mob-controlled burlesque club that makes most of its money through drugs and prostitution. Baby Doll is quickly befriended by some of the club's other dancers, in particular Rocket (Jena Malone) and her older sister Sweet Pea (Abbie Cornish), Blondie (Vanessa Hudgens), and Amber (Jamie Chung), but she makes it no secret that she'd rather be anywhere else on the face of the planet.

When she herself has to dance, Baby Doll can't bring herself to even move. But when her dance instructor (Carla Gugino) tells her that it's a matter of life or death, she doesn't have much of a choice. So as she dances, she imagines herself and her newfound friends in battle, fighting giant gun-toting samurais, the German army's steam-powered reanimated corpses during World War I, and things even crazier than that. Using these fantasies to guide her, she becomes the best dancer in the club.

In her over-the-top fantasies, Baby Doll meets a wise old man (Scott Glenn), who tells her that freedom will be hers if she can collect a series of items: a map, a lighter, a knife, a key, and a final item that will make itself known when the time is right. And if there's an opportunaty for her to escape, she's damn well going to try. Her plan: distract all the men in the club with her dance skills while Rocket, Sweet Pea, Blondie, and Amber gather the items for her. They'll have to be quick about it, as the club's sleazy owner (Oscar Isaac) has arranged for Baby Doll's virginity to be sold to someone calling himself "the high roller" in four days.

Sucker Punch is a weird entry into the realm of bad movies. It's painfully obvious that it had the potential to be a great, truly unique experience. You can tell from the first frame of the movie that it could have been an awesome adventure. But the movie is bogged down by an uneven pace, poor storytelling caused by a weak narrative, forgettable acting, and a feeling of overall stupidity that plagues the whole movie. It had so much potential for excellence, yet the only thing Sucker Punch accomplishes is pushing one's patience to the breaking point. If you can make it all the way through to the end of the closing credits without growing angry or frustrated at Sucker Punch's idiocy, then you are a far stronger person than I.

Zack Snyder broke into the industry with his Dawn of the Dead remake, and the three movies he directed after that — 300, Watchmen, and the animated Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole — were adaptations of comic books and children's literature. Sucker Punch marks his first attempt at making an original movie, and from a directorial standpoint, the results were mixed.

Unfortunately, he doesn't bring much to the table outside of some slick visuals. And even then, Snyder goes overboard with them. Nothing about the movie ever feels real, never once convincing the viewer that they're looking at anything more than computer-generated special effects. You can't take any of this nonsense seriously if it doesn't try to make itself believable. In something like Sin City, you know you're seeing a ton of CGI, but the substance behind the style was strong enough to make it effective. But Snyder's efforts to make some kind of groundbreaking, thought-provoking piece of cinema are for naught, because not one second of it works. He gets incredibly close with the prologue, which I'll admit I thought was very captivating. It's actually a very beautifully-done sequence that belies just how bad the rest of the movie is. But the rest of the movie is so bad that it makes me resent the things I actually liked.

Snyder doesn't help things by crafting the movie in such a way that it very quickly wears out its welcome. Scenes that have little to no point go on for way too long, and some scenes make their point and still keep going anyway. The movie itself doesn't seem to know when to stop, as we get a pretentious monologue after the movie has already faded to black. There's no need for this movie to be two hours long, as there's a ton of stuff here and there that could have been trimmed or shortened. What frightens me is that I've heard there were quite a few scenes and some whole subplots cut from the movie, which may be restored into a "director's cut" for the DVD and Blu-ray release in a few months. I dread the idea of Sucker Punch being any longer, but here's hoping that reintroducing these scenes will help the movie flow better, because the version playing theatrically right now is a complete mess.

A lot of the reason it's that way is not only because of Snyder's direction, but the lackluster script as well. Written by Snyder and Steve Shibuya, the script is, quite frankly, lacking in a lot of departments. The story is not only worthless but told badly to boot, the dialogue is banal, and the characters are forgettable. That whole "dream within a dream" aspect made the movie feel uneven, as if it kept moving in all kinds of different directions without knowing where it wanted to go. I felt like I was watching Inception and Girl Interrupted at the same time after having taken twice my body weight in LSD. Precious little of it makes any sense even after you factor in the "dream within a dream" thing. Add in that there's only one, maybe two likable characters in the entire movie, and you end up with a script that translates into a movie that's more irritating than provocative.

Last but not least is the cast, who are about as far from memorable as you can get. Despite being the star, Emily Browning is flat and uninspiring. She's just kinda there, which is exactly the opposite of what I felt they were going for with the character. I thought the rest of the cast was too forgettable to even mention, with a few exceptions. One is Abbie Cornish, whose performance I just plain didn't like. Not only is her character one of the hardest to like, but Cornish's performance is one of the worst. But at least she made an impression, which is more than I can say for the rest of the cast. I will say, though, that I enjoyed what Jena Malone and Oscar Isaac brought to the table. Their performances are buried beneath a mountain of mediocrity, but they at least manage to contribute a little something good.

When I walked out of the theater after seeing Sucker Punch yesterday, I was actually angered by how bad it was. But after spending a day reflecting on it, I'm actually more disappointed than anything else. I wanted Sucker Punch to be a kick-ass ride, but it totally let me down. It fails as an action movie, it fails as a psychological drama, and it fails as a piece of female empowerment. If anything, the movie's title is fitting. I went in expecting a good movie and totally got sucker punched.

Final Rating: *½

Watchmen (2009)

"Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?"
("Who watches the watchmen?")
—Juvenal, Satire 6.346–348

For the longest time, comic books were considered solely kids stuff, an unsophisticated form of entertainment with no relevance to those who had put away childish things. But as the world began edging ever closer to the twenty-first century, things started changing. Books like Frank Miller's Sin City and The Dark Knight Returns, Neil Gaiman's Sandman, and Garth Ennis's Preacher helped to expand comics beyond their regular audiences, and they all have Watchmen to thank.

Written by Alan Moore, illustrated by Dave Gibbons, and published by DC Comics, Watchmen was first foisted upon the world as a twelve-issue series that began in 1986. The series was compiled into a single tome soon after its conclusion, and quickly earned recognition as a benchmark in the comic book industry. Moore and Gibbons's acclaimed murder mystery is, at the time of this writing, the only comic book to have both won a Hugo Award and earn an inclusion in Time's list of the greatest English-language novels published since 1923.

Rumors of a cinematic adaptation surfaced not too long after the beginning of Watchmen's initial monthly publication, but the project languished in developmental hell for over twenty years before any real progress was made. The movie finally entered production at the end of 2007 and saw its theatrical release four months ago, much to the anticipation of devoted comic book readers around the world. But does the Watchmen movie live up to the seminal comic book that serves as its inspiration?

Welcome to the year 1985, a world where Richard Nixon is still in office after successfully repealing the 22nd Amendment, America won the war in Vietnam before making the country the 51st state, and tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union are so high that nuclear war is literally weeks away. But none of that is of any concern to Rorschach (Jackie Earle Haley), a masked vigilante who operates in open defiance of legislation that outlawed costumed crimefighters and forced those fancying themselves as "superheroes" into retirement.

While investigating the murder of Edward Blake (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), Rorschach discovers that he was secretly "The Comedian," a ruthless, cynical superhero still active as an employee of the government. While Blake's exploits had made him many enemies in the world of politics over the years, Rorschach believes that his death may be part of a broad conspiracy to eliminate various members of what once was the superhero community.

And as it turns out, mounting evidence seems to prove him right. An assassin makes a failed attempt to kill Adrian Veidt (Matthew Goode), an influential and popular entrepreneur once known as "Ozymandias, the world's smartest man." Jon Osterman (Billy Crudup) — whose vast godlike abilities have made him "Doctor Manhattan," the linchpin of the American military's success — exiles himself to Mars after allegations surface that he may be to blame for the terminal cancer that has stricken many of his former associates over the years. Rorschach himself is framed for the murder of an old foe and thrown in prison.

These incidents draw the attention of Daniel Dreiberg (Patrick Wilson), a former masked hero who was once the closest thing Rorschach had to a friend. Dreiberg connects the dots and realizes that Rorschach's so-called "mask killer" may somehow be connected to the impending war between America and the Soviet Union. It isn't long before he and Doctor Manhattan's former lover, Laurie Jupiter (Malin Ackerman), find themselves being pulled back into their superhero identities of "Nite Owl" and "Silk Spectre" in their efforts to discover the root of this conspiracy.

Many people have labeled Watchmen as one of the most important comic books ever published. When something earns a description like "the Citizen Kane of comics," you know going in that it'll be pretty big. Watchmen's influence can be felt in numerous properties both in and out of comics. Its fingerprints can even be seen in the family-friendly Disney/Pixar collaboration The Incredibles, as well as in elements of the NBC television series Heroes. But a cinematic adaptation of the book had long been considered impossible, as it was believed that the book was so complex that a movie would never work.

The idea of a Watchmen movie bounced around from studio to studio, from director to director and writer to writer. Even after the movie was actually filmed and began its marketing campaign, its North American release date was threatened by a nasty legal battle between 20th Century Fox and Warner Bros. over the proper ownership of the movie's distribution rights. But after all that time, we finally arrived upon the film that we're discussing currently. And while there are some glaring differences between the comics and this adaptation, I believe that Zack Snyder and company made the best Watchmen movie they possibly could.

The trailers and posters for Watchmen referred to Snyder as a "visionary director." I don't know if I'd go as far as to call him a visionary, but I will agree that he's a guy who knows what kind of movie he wants to make. His two prior efforts — the Dawn of the Dead remake and 300 — were ultra-flashy affairs that, at the very least, were ultimately more style than substance. And while I don't think Snyder was the first person anyone would have thought of when it came to directing a Watchmen movie, he brings his unique style to the movie and actually does a better job than I would have expected. Though he doesn't gravitate towards a completely literal translation like what Robert Rodriguez did with Sin City, Snyder still manages to create a visually compelling movie that looks and feels just like the world depicted in the comics.

He and cinematographer Larry Fong treat each shot as if they were works of art, and although Snyder is guilty of a few excesses (the violence being almost too violent and the over-gratuitous Nite Owl/Silk Spectre sex scene, for example), he has ultimately fashioned a movie that he should be proud of. I should also compliment the movie's fantastic score, composed by Tyler Bates. I've liked the music that Bates has done for other movies, and Watchmen is no exception. His music here is quite effective, improving each scene by helping define the mood. I also thought that some of Bates's music sounds like the scores from Blade Runner and The Princess Bride. Maybe it's just me, but I thought it really worked well.

Next on the list is the screenplay. It's credited to David Hayter and Alex Tse, though I'm not sure how much of their work survived the last-minute rewrites by Snyder, Robert Orci, and Alex Kurtzman. Either way, the script is good. It was expected that some elements of the comics would have to be altered, condensed, or outright eliminated, as that happens in pretty much every time a book is adapted into a movie. But I think the writers succeeded without jeopardizing the story's integrity.

There's been a lot of talk among fans, however, about the ending. For the movie, Snyder has changed the villain's master plan from what it was in the comics to something that sets one of the heroes up to be a patsy. A lot of the diehard fans have complained that losing the most obvious element of the original ending is bordering on blasphemy, that the movie would need every single solitary detail about the comic's ending in order to work. But if you ask me, I thought the movie's ending worked fine. Complaining about it would be failing to see the forest for the trees. At the end of the movie, things end up falling into the same places as they did in the comic. So while the little details may have changed, the big picture stays the same.

Last but not least is the cast, the majority of whom I thought did fine work. Patrick Wilson is fantastic as the hopelessly dorky yet quite amiable Daniel Dreiberg. The character is a meek man who only feels strong when he's in his Nite Owl persona, and I felt that Wilson really nailed him, showing all the flaws and imperfections that you'd expect from the character.

However, I found Malin Ackerman to be a bit on the dull side, but that's more to blame on the character than on her acting ability. The problem with Ackerman's character is that Laurie never really seems to stand out. Even in the comics, Laurie ends up being overshadowed by every other character. She's not exactly one of the more memorable characters, and ultimately, Ackerman doesn't really contribute a very memorable performance. To her credit, though, she does remain consistent.

And then there's Matthew Goode. The casting of Goode was a bit controversial among the super-devoted fans prior to the movie's release, since quite a few of them didn't feel he was the right person for the role. But personally, I thought Goode did a great job. Though his switching back and forth between American and German accents depending on the scene can be distracting at times, I thought Goode was effective in portraying Adrian Veidt as the smug narcissist that he is in the comics. He really works well in the role, so in my opinion, hiring him was the right move.

I'll also admit that I was impressed with Billy Crudup as Doctor Manhattan. In other movies, his performance might get lost in the sea of CGI that comprises the visual aspect of the character. But Crudup's work manages to shine through, and he puts forth a respectable performance. He believably conveys the alienation of Doctor Manhattan, a character whose mere existence puts him in the unenviable position of being outside humanity looking in. Crudup's performance might seem cold, perhaps distant, but that only serves the character better.

But perhaps the best performances come from Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Jackie Earle Haley. Their work is so good that you don't see actors playing roles, you just see the characters. Though he only really shows up in flashbacks, Morgan is awesome as the thoroughly amoral Comedian. The character rapes and kills without feeling any sort of remorse, even seeming to enjoy himself at times. Morgan handles this well, playing the role with a certain self-assured cockiness that suits the character perfectly.

And what can I say about Jackie Earle Haley? He knocks it completely out of the park. Rorschach is arguably the most popular Watchmen character, and he makes a seamless transition from the comics to live action. Haley plays Rorschach as menacing as he is in the comic. His performance is riveting, and whenever he's onscreen, you can't look away. Haley practically steals the movie, and if you need one reason to see Watchmen, it should be Haley's performance.

As I said, I'd once heard the Watchmen comic book be described as being to comics what Citizen Kane was to movies. That makes sense to me. Like Citizen Kane, Watchmen's innovations completely changed the industry's landscape. But in regards to the Watchmen movie, I find myself agreeing with Geoff Boucher of the Los Angeles Times. Boucher wrote in his critique of Watchmen that it is, in essence, the superhero movie genre's answer to Fight Club. When David Fincher's adaptation of Chuck Palahniuk's novel was released to theaters in 1999, it was an incredibly polarizing movie. Individual reaction to it was either at one extreme or the other; people either really loved it, or they really hated it. Some got the point, others missed it entirely. It's still like that ten years later. And judging by the reactions to the Watchmen movie, it's in the same boat as Fight Club. Like Fight Club, some will argue that Watchmen is a violent, excessive, and ultimately hollow movie with nothing to say, while others will argue that that the detractors don't "get it."

People unfamiliar with the comic book just weren't ready for a superhero movie like this, though as someone who loves the Watchmen that's on the printed page, I can't say that I was disappointed with the one that's on film. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go try and subtract my intrinsic field. Wish me luck!

Final Rating: ****

Dawn of the Dead (2004)

Remakes are tricky things, especially when the source material is held in a high regard. Such is the case with the remake of George Romero's 1978 zombie flick Dawn of the Dead. Considered one of horror's all-time classics, the idea of Hollywood remaking Dawn of the Dead really struck a nerve with fans of the original. But why? Remakes aren't always bad. David Cronenberg's remake of The Fly is far better than the original, John Carpenter made a great remake of The Thing From Another World, and the remakes of Invasion of the Body Snatchers (the first remake, anyway) and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre were pretty darn good as well. So how did Zack Snyder's remake of Dawn of the Dead pan out? Read on.

Our story begins with Ana (Sarah Polley), who is arriving at her suburban Wisconsin home after a long day of work at the local hospital. She's immediately greeted by Vivian (Hannah Lochner), the young girl who lives next door. Vivian proudly shows Ana a new trick she learned with her roller skates, and Ana heads inside to her husband Luis (Justin Louis). They two have an intimate evening, completely missing an urgent special report on TV. The next morning at dawn, Ana and Luis awaken to find a blood-soaked Vivian at their bedroom door. When Luis attempts to check on her, we discover that Vivian is no longer the cute little girl we saw earlier. Turns out she's now a blood-thirsty zombie!

She takes a hunk out of Luis's neck, which ends up killing and resurrecting him as a zombie as well. The freaked-out Ana leaps out the bathroom window and dashes for her car, but she discovers that something foul is afoot in suburbia. The chaos in her house has been multiplied by a million for the rest of the neighborhood, as zombies slowly start to take out their neighbors. Ana gets into her car and drives off with no real destination, but when a carjacker tries to pull her out of the car, she loses control and goes right into a tree. As the opening credits roll, we discover that the zombie attacks have become a worldwide epidemic, and nobody knows just how or why it happened.

What we assume is a few hours later, Ana wakes up and crawls out of her car, only to get a shotgun barrel pointed right into her face. The shotgun belongs to Kenneth (Ving Rhames), a local cop. She convinces him that she's still human, and Kenneth decides to bring her along with him. The pair soon runs into three more survivors: Best Buy employee Michael (Jake Weber), gangbanger Andre (Mekhi Phifer), and Andre's very pregnant Russian girlfriend Luda (Inna Korobkina). The five band together and head for the nearest shelter, a gigantic shopping mall. They're soon confronted by C.J. (Michael Kelly), Terry (Kevin Zegers), and Bart (Michael Barry), a trio of mall security guards who've claimed the place for their own. The guards don't trust their new visitors, but decide to let them stay.

The group heads to the roof to see what they're up against, and discover Andy (Bruce Bohne), the proprietor of the gun shop across the street, who communicates with those at the mall via a dry-erase board. The next day, the mall group expands by seven when a truck full of survivors arrives at the mall's loading dock. Joining our group are the sarcastic Steve (Ty Burrell), Frank (Matt Frewer) and his daughter Nicole (Lindy Booth), the gorgeous model Monica (Kim Poirier), truck driver Norma (Jayne Eastwood), gay church organist Glen (R.D. Reid), and a sick fat woman whose name we never learn (Ermes Blarasin). As the group thins out, those remaining inside the mall decide they need to escape if they plan on survival. But with the mob of zombies outside growing into the thousands, how will they?

Having seen both the original and the remake, I can't help but compare them. The original Dawn of the Dead serves as a satirical jab at consumerism, while the remake is just about a group of people in a mall surrounded by an army of zombies. George Romero used Dawn '78 to find resemblances in mindless zombies and mall shoppers, but the mall in Dawn '04 is simply a neat place for some zombie action. The remake is certainly more polished and better looking than the original, yet it has less to say when taken for deeper than face value.

There's also a big difference in the zombies seen in Dawn '78 and their counterparts in Dawn '04. The zombies in Dawn '78 are covered in blue-gray greasepaint, and stumble around like sleepwalkers. Their 2004 brethren are very different. It's like the zombie legion saw 28 Days Later and decided to do that, but forgot the "zombies" in 28 Days Later were still living people that were infected with a "rage" virus. While running zombies are much more exciting and scary, we have to forget about that whole thing about death. Usually, corpses have to worry about things like rigor mortis, but not these zombies. I guess being a zombie means rigor mortis is no problem.

The large cast was also a problem. Movies like Dawn '78 and 28 Days Later benefited from having only a handful of characters to follow. Yet with Dawn '04, the cast expands to the point where we just don't care about most of them (especially Kim Poirier's character, who barely has any screen time at all). Many of the characters might as well have "zombie food" stamped on their foreheads. However, we do have interest in some of the characters. While the subplot of Luda's pregnancy isn't properly fleshed out, it does give us a reason to care about her and Andre. And even though what looks to be a budding romance between Ana and Michael is a dumb subplot (if a gang of undead cannibals just ate your families and they're waiting outside to eat you, would you be playing the field?), it allows us to care about both characters. We even grow to enjoy the medium-distance friendship between Kenneth and Andy.

Another problem I have with Dawn '04 is how goofy some things in the flick are. One of the three security guards spends a lot of the movie doing his best impersonation of Captain Rhodes from Day of the Dead. He spends his time barking orders and waving his gun around, but by the end of the movie, he's one of the good guys. No explanation given, he just goes from being a jerk to being everybody's friend. I was also disappointed with the final payoff of the pregnancy subplot. It had the chance to be the creepiest, most unsettling part of the movie, but just before it got good, it's over. And let's not forget the idiot girl who jeopardizes everything because the stray dog she found the day before ran across the street.

However, not everything about the movie is bad. Ty Burrell and Ving Rhames are both great, while Sarah Polley did a good job with what she was given, and Mekhi Phifer turned in a good performance and gave his role some needed depth, despite his limited screen time. Director Zach Snyder did a great job behind the camera, and while his wild camera moves during action scenes could have gotten nauseating after so much, it proved to be effective. I also really enjoyed the scenes spliced into the end credits, which gave us a kind-of epilogue to the movie. The score by Tyler Bates is really fitting in its gloominess, and the music selections are out of this world. Two versions of "Down With The Sickness" (Disturbed's version and a "lounge" cover by Richard Cheese), the Johnny Cash song mentioned earlier, and Jim Carroll's punk-ish "People Who Died" make the non-score soundtrack a lot of fun.

I also really enjoyed the cameos from Dawn '78 cast members, with Tom Savini as a sheriff, Scott Reiniger as a soldier, and Ken Foree as a televangelist who reprises Dawn '78's most memorable line (which is also the tagline for both movies). I also got a chuckle out of the clothing store named "Gaylen Ross," an obvious reference to the original Dawn's lead actress. Overall, I'll give the Dawn of the Dead remake three and a half stars. Even though it was lacking in some places, I'm pleased with the effort.

Final Rating: ***½