Change Your Image
nickmorgan02
Reviews
iZombie (2015)
More bon mots tan dead mots
iZombie owes more to Clueless, Friends and Kick-Ass than Resident Evil or The Walking Dead - so if you are just here for the gore you've come to the wrong place. Yes there are brain eating 'Romero' zombies that shuffle around with a hunger for your frontal lobe - but there's also 'Team Z', a set of high functioning Zombies that need brains to remain - errrr - high functioning.
Liv Moore (geddit) is one such high functioning Zombie. Working in a coroner's office she finds that eating the brains of the recently deceased gives her flashbacks that help her to solve crimes.
The script is sparkling and fast moving, Rose McIver (Liv) gives great Zombie and she's supported by a crew of talented actors making the most of excellent scripts.
It's a joy to watch and really, really funny.
Chalet Girl (2011)
I wanted to hate this
I wanted to hate this, I really did. I'm on the sharp end of a divorce so going into a romantic comedy for me, well it's like a vegan booking an abattoir weekend.
I was strong-armed into a preview show under the notion that it was Cinderella on a Snowboard and to a certain extent this is correct, Kim (Felicity Jones) is a downtrodden burger-queen-teen with zero prospects trapped in a co-dependent rut with her culinary incompetent dad (Bill Bailey) and nursing grief for her mother - who died in a car crash.
In a series of unlikely twists Kim lands a job as a Chalet Girl with super-rich family in beautiful Austria, enter Prince Charming (lush Ed Westwick) who is – horror show – engaged to somebody he like – so completely – doesn't love.
While romance runs its roller-coaster course Kim learns to snowboard and finds she's gifted – well to a point – because the psychological scaring of her mum's death holds her back from winning the local boarding trophy – and a very useful cash prize.
While the set-up is pure Cinderella the execution is all Rocky.
As Kim was fighting the odds I found myself rooting for her: when she crashed in the snow I felt her pain and when she got up and faced her demons I felt her determination, god I even cried at one point – in a quiet manly way.
There are plenty of clichés: including a tart who – guess what – grows a heart, but despite all of that I just found myself going along with it. No, not just going along with it, but loving it.
The success is partly down to a script that punches well above its weight: the sharp banter runs like this:
Posh Richard (Bill Nighy): (pointing at a helicopter) You ever been in one of these things? Kim: (impressed but ultra-cool) Yeah, we have one at home. This one's pretty small actually. Posh Richard: Do we pay extra for irony? Kim: No, the irony's free, it's the sarcasm you're paying for. Ironically...
But the success is mostly down to Felicity Jones - she's hardly off screen and start-to-finish she oozes a hypnotic charm that wraps itself around you from go. Then there's the scenery too. The snow and chalet scenes are shot in Austria, in particular St Anton where 'The Museum' is used for exterior shots of the posh chalet – well, they are stunning.
Between the location, Felicity and even (strangely enough) Ed Westwick I left the cinema with my love for humanity and indeed the world in much better shape than when I went in.
I'm still being divorced of course, but after the film I feel slightly better about the process.