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Review pending.

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I honestly try hard to like conventional romantic comedies. I really do. So few of them have anything to keep a guy interested, though. I hate sounding even to myself like a cynical male, but to filmmakers out there, let me say: “If you’re going to make a movie to get women into the seats, throw us guys a bone!” One way to do that is to use humor, and lots of it. Sprinkle it liberally throughout, like grated cheese on your Olive Garden entrée. Hell, toss in a random, pointless car chase or have a transformer explode. Anything.

All right, that’s out of my system. Let’s take a look at Safe Haven. Katie (Julianne Hough) is on the run from her abusive, alcoholic, police detective husband Tierney, played by David Lyons. Or is she? The details are sketchy as we see her flee her home covered in blood, change her appearance at the home of a friend, climb worriedly onto a bus and head south to warmer weather.

Stopping at random in a small coastal town in North Carolina, she charms her way into a job and a home out in the woods (it’s still not clear to me how she was able to purchase it), and settles into a life far from danger. Of course, as these things go, she’s not quite far enough. Tierney is on a single-minded mission to find his estranged lover at the cost of his dignity, his job and apparently his very life. In the meantime, Katie falls for, Alex (Josh Duhamel), the first guy she sees and romance blossoms. Mixed in with the main romance are a couple of side stories. There’s a plot thread regarding Alex’s young son coping with the death of his mother that’s tossed away before the end of the film. The daughter seems to have no problems with a one-parent family at all. There’s Katie’s friend up the road, also being escapist. From what, we’re never told. These are all symptoms of the infection that courses through this movie.

All of the characters are cardboard cutouts and fairly one-dimensional (e.g. the angry Police Chief, the inept local cops, the hapless and charming Mr. Mom, etc.) The story is laughably predictable in places and mostly covers well-trodden territory. I will say that there is one Big Plot Twist(tm) in the film that perceptive viewers will pick up on fairly quickly. The aftermath of my late realization led to me questioning the validity of the film in general, feeling it went one step way too far, rather than being enticed by what could be considered a clever plot device. I’d give more details but since it’s the only part of the movie that deviates from the norm, I’m loathe to divulge anything about it.

I’d stay away if you can, but your girlfriend or wife is definitely going to put this on her Must Watch list and for that, I’m sorry. Keep a stiff upper lip and try to figure out the twist before anyone else. The game will take the edge off what otherwise will be two hours of drudgery. Women, you’ll like this film much more than the guys. You’ll know it’s not the best romance you’ve seen, but it delicately plucks all the right heart strings and from that insidious parasite, you’re simply not immune.

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I will start this review by admitting that I like very few movies from this era of American cinema. I was born in 1969 and when I started to become a fan of the silver screen, movies like Casablanca were very old news indeed. A few later movies of the black-and-white era have struck a chord with me, like 12 Angry Men, but I think this film is one of the first from the 1940’s that kept me entertained the whole way through. To give a little better perspective, I all but loathed one of the most praised movies of all time, which came out the year before: Citizen Kane.

This review is based on a theater viewing I was able to take part in thanks to my fiancée who got us tickets on Valentine’s Day to a retro movie screening. The 4:3 aspect didn’t enhance the visuals much, but it still made the film larger than life. I will here point out the only misstep I noticed, which was about ten seconds of sloppy dialogue early in the movie when a “usual suspect” is being questioned by French police. Apart from that, I enjoyed every single frame of this film.

In most cases, I get turned off to early cinema because everything about the plot, cinematography and characters seems immediately dated. I guess I’m simply a slave to the modern world. Casablanca was able to do what good movies do: Remove me from the world I live in and put me in the world of unoccupied French Morocco during World War II. Bogart’s Mr. Rick is an impeccably portrayed enigma. He is surrounded by a legion of corrupt and charismatic people, all of whom have quick, dry wit and no delusions about their circumstances. There’s a magnificent extended cameo by Peter Lorre which can’t be ignored. Overall, however, I think Claude Rains steals the show as Captain Louis Renault.

By now almost everyone should know the story of the lost love between Rick and Ilsa, the fight to get Ilsa’s ultra-patriot husband Victor Laszlo out of occupied Europe and into America. Almost everyone should of course know the story of the highly coveted pianist, Sam, who steals the show within the show every night at Rick’s Café Americain. This includes those people who, like myself until yesterday, have not yet seen the film. I say that because I do not want to try to pin this review on plot points or scene descriptions or other contrivances that usually make one up. Instead let me just say that this film is tighly woven, quick moving, witty, passionate and exact; there are no loose ends and nothing goes to waste. It also contains all those classic lines you’ve heard from years of people talking about this movie since its release. In short, you don’t really need to know what it’s about, you simply need to know that if you haven’t seen it already, you should. And if you see it once, I’ll bet you’ll want to see it again.

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Every so often, a movie with a plot that has the germ of a good idea comes around. What makes a movie of this type for me is the ultimate execution of that good idea.

Movies about zombies have been around almost as long as the concept. Very few of them take the view that zombies can be thoughtful, introspective or compassionate. That’s the novel idea that comes to life, as it were, in Warm Bodies.

Trapped in his miserable undead existence,  R (Nicholas Hoult) wanders idly around a decaying airport wondering why he can’t die, staring blankly at his fellow plague victims and looking for that most zombie of delicacies, the brains of the living. At the movie’s outset, the premise, circumstances and narrative surrounding zombiedom are charming and funny. Doing what zombies do, they decide to shamble as a horde looking for human flesh. Encountering an armed cadre of the living rummaging through an 8-year-closed pharmacy looking for medicine, the horde attacks and decimates the group, but R decides he’d like a girlfriend and in the end saves Julie (Teresa Palmer). He takes her back to his airplane and tries to woo her in his hilariously quirky zombie way.

Right about here, the movie starts to break down. What began as a great idea with potential to give the movie a life of its own (please forgive the continuous references to life in a movie about the dead), quickly devolves into a series of clichés and overt feel-good symbolism. There’s a clumsy attempt at zombifying a classic scene from Romeo and Juliet, along with other over-the-top pop culture references that would give away too much of the story if I revealed them here.

The worst part happens at the end, though, when the novelty is completely thrown away in favor of producing a run-of-the-mill romantic comedy ending. All that I hoped this movie would turn out to be from its fine start was abandoned by the end, and the discerning movie viewer will be left with nothing of value to take away.

If you go to see this film, enjoy the brilliance of it while it lasts because the end simply leaves you flat.

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Review pending.