World War Z Movie Review

Is there a more apt metaphor right now for the way humanity is apparently destroying the planet and, in the process, itself than a worldwide zombie plague? The dead eyes, the mindless action based purely on need and instinct, and humanity eating itself alive without a care for the end result look a little like the way we plumb the planet for resources, always taking and never looking toward the future. World War Z is a bit more topical and on the nose than your average summer blockbuster – if you want to read it as something more than fodder for the masses, who flock to the tent pole action movies like the zombies glom to live flesh, but that’s maybe another reading altogether.

The Cabin in the Woods Movie Review

Joss Whedon has built a strong cult following around his projects that have a tendency to subvert genre conventions and put a new spin on familiar stories. His short-lived TV series “Firefly” and the follow-up film Serenity was a sci-fi space western. Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which most people forget was a movie before it was a popular TV show starring Sarah Michelle Gellar, took the dumb blonde caricature who is always the first to die in horror films and made her the hero, an ass-kicking, smart-talking, wooden stake-wielding defender of humanity. As co-writer along with Drew Goddard, who directs, and producer of The Cabin in the Woods, Whedon turns his attention to the slasher/horror/torture porn set of genres and sub-genres.