“Yesterday”– Movie Review

This week, I attended a New York Times ScreenTimes advance screening of the new romantic comedy, “Yesterday”, written by Richard Curtis and directed by Danny Boyle.

Synopsis

When a young man wakes up to a world where he is the only one who remembers The Beatles, can he become a music sensation?

Story

Jack (Patel) is a struggling musician.  Despite the fact that he’s been hoping to hook the brass ring of success for many years, his manager and childhood friend Ellie (Lily James) remains his biggest fan and supporter; while holding a job as a schoolteacher, she works hard to book every single performance she can grab for him, just so he’ll remain in his long-time pursuit of becoming a professional musician.  Even when Jack begins to lose faith in himself, Ellie is the one who keeps the faith in him.  Beyond being a good manager, she’s a good friend. 

When Jack thinks it’s time to pack it in, the planet earth experiences an unusual occurrence:  a worldwide blackout.  A variety of things occur when this happens, but one of them is the fact that Jack, while bicycling home, is accidentally hit by a bus and winds up being hospitalized.  After he is discharged from the hospital, he learns an unusual fact:  Jack is the only one in the world who remembers the musical group The Beatles.  Once he starts performing their songs, people believe he composed them all.  Thinking he’s written them all, they see him as a genius and soon he earns a recording contract which gains him great popularity.

As Jack heads out on the road to success, he meets such luminaries as popular music star Ed Sheeran and his manager Debra (Kate McKinnon), who sees him as the new Big Thing in the music industry.  Naturally, she gloms onto him once she realizes he’s a better songwriter than her current client, Sheeran, whom she virtually abandons in favor of Jack’s more promising career.  But as Jack’s success turns out of control, he realizes that he has turned into someone who he is not and this bothers him deeply.  Will he be able to bury these feelings and continue to pursue financial rewards or will his guilt force him to return to a world that is more in his control? 

Review

“Yesterday” is a pleasant, entertaining movie that the audience at this screening seemed to enjoy quite a bit; the film itself was enthusiastically applauded at the closing credits and when the filmmakers took the stage afterwards, they were warmly greeted with a standing ovation.  It is something of a hybrid genre: sci-fi/comedy (or sci-fi/romantic comedy – take your pick). One of the keys to enjoying “Yesterday” is buying its unlikely premise; if you are able to sufficiently suspend your disbelief for that, then it should wind up being a good deal of fun. Otherwise, it may very well wind up being a bit too hokey.  

The other key to whether or not you’ll like “Yesterday” is equally obvious:  both your knowledge and appreciation of The Beatles. Will younger people enjoy this movie, despite a limited experience of this world famous musical group?  It’s hard to say, but even if they have only a basic understanding of who The Beatles were and their impact on our culture, a younger audience might likely be able to latch onto the romantic comedy aspect of the film.  Of course, older folks – who don’t tend to go out to theaters quite as much – would have a deeper connection to this motion picture.  

Following the screening, there was a question and answer session with screenwriter Richard Curtis, director Danny Boyle and star Himesh Patel.  Curtis originally got the idea from another writer (who got a story credit on the movie). He was a big fan of The Beatles in his youth and it continued throughout the rest of his life.  Boyle contacted Curtis and asked if he had any material he should see; Curtis immediately sent him the script for “Yesterday” and Boyle wanted to make it into a film. Patel was informed about the casting and submitted an audition tape that included him singing a song by Coldplay and performing a monolog.  Ed Sheeran was not the original choice for the appearance in the motion picture; they first went to Chris Martin, who turned it down due to a scheduling conflict.  

“The Dead Don’t Die”– Movie Review

This week, I attended a New York Times Screentimes advance screening of the new comedy-horror, “The Dead Don’t Die”, starring Bill Murray and Adam Driver; written and directed by Jim Jarmusch. 

Synopsis

When a small town is overtaken by zombies, can its understaffed and inexperienced sheriff's office sufficiently defend its citizens?

 

Story

Things are usually pretty quiet in Centerville; as a result, Chief Cliff Robertson (Murray) pretty much has things under control, with the help of Officers Ronnie Peterson (Driver) and Mindy Morrison (Chloë Sevigny).  The town suddenly finds itself shrouded in strangeness when various odd behavior is noticed -- late sunsets, non-functioning cell phones and broken-up television and radio transmissions. Based on what’s being reported in the news lately, some people are of the belief that all of this is being caused by what’s referred to as “Polar Fracking” -- fracking occuring at the polar ice caps which have theoretically knocked the earth off its axis. 

Folks try not to make too much of this since they have their own lives to live -- until they don’t.  In the local cemetery, long-dead corpses suddenly arise from their graves and start trawling Centerville for victims -- in this case, these are not the brain-eating zombies that are familiar to many, but instead, zombies that consume human viscera and limbs.  It all starts when employees at the town’s diner are discovered murdered -- both of them eviscerated in a similar manner. Was this the work of a wild beast? A pack of beasts? The thought that it could’ve been zombies doesn’t even occur to Chief Robertson -- until, that is, he and his team start encountering the  roaming un-dead themselves.

Thanks to Officer Peterson’s familiarity with zombie lore, he explains to his team that the only way these beings can be neutralized is through decapitation.  So, armed with machetes, swords and shotguns to be aimed directly at a zombie head, Roberton and Peterson set out to rid the town of Centerville of this deadly scourge.  But the more they patrol the town, the more zombies they find. By the time they reach the cemetery, they find that the zombies have self-exhumed -- even those of the children, which were located in a separate area.  Seeing that they are now outnumbered, Robertson, Peterson and Morrison find that the hunters have now become the prey. Despite this, can they find a way to save the remaining town members?

 

Review

As a comedy-horror movie, “The Dead Don’t Die” is something of a genre hybrid.  Yet, it doesn’t altogether work as either. It is neither scary enough to be a horror movie nor is it quite funny enough to be a comedy.  Ironically, the reason why it is not scary enough to be a horror flick is due in large part to the comedy element; it is undercut by the fact that it doesn’t take itself terribly seriously.   Regarding being a comedy, there are certainly amusing moments, but precious little that could be characterized as laugh-out-loud funny. Many of the jokes are predictable and the humor isn’t terribly innovative; in some regards, the film is a little bit past its time as the zombie horror genre has already been parodied in a much more successful fashion (e.g., “Zombieland”, “Shaun Of The Dead”).

While “The Dead Don’t Die” isn’t a terrible movie, it is a bit disappointing when you consider all of the talent involved.  Judging from his past films, Jarmusch can be very funny when he’s not trying to make a comedy; here, however, he seems to be working a bit too hard.  At times, he almost appears to be trying to channel David Lynch-type weirdness. Additionally, without giving away too much, Jarmusch makes several attempts to derive humor from dialog that pierces the fourth wall, but most of it largely falls flat.  As entertaining as some of the performances may be when you see all of these famous names on screen together, it’s not nearly enough to elevate the rest of the motion picture (Tilda Swinton’s turn as a Scottish mortician is particularly memorable in its strangeness alone).