Shaun of the Dead (2004)

Film: Shaun of the Dead
Release: 2004, theatrical
Starring: Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Kate Ashfield
Directed by: Edgar Wright
Next in the series: Hot Fuzz
IMDB page: Link opens in a new window
Description: Shaun is an aimless middle class man who decides to turn his life around and get back his girlfriend, unfortunately the very same day a zombie plague breaks out in his small british hometown.

Hans' thoughts:

Perhaps the most unexpected combination of genres ever, Shaun of the Dead is a romantic comedy that just happens to take place during the zombie apocalypse. Kickstarting what would later be known as "The Cornetto Trilogy", Shaun of the Dead represents the best of modern British comedy, as well as a love letter to perhaps the goriest genre of all: The Zombie movies. 

To start off, Shaun of the Dead is "very British". Presenting drama in it's stories without taking it too seriously and being absolutely drenched in the kind of sarcasm and dry wit yet bizarre situations that British comedy has become known for internationally. If you're a fan of "britcoms" ala Black Books, Keeping up Appearances or Red Dwarf, chances are there is something for you in this movie. Simon Pegg does an excellent job as the duty-full but still childish Shaun who struggles to keep his priorities straight, this is only helped by the somewhat opposite of Nick Frost as the best friend who's been living on his couch, smoking weed for the last three years. Of course, a concept can be as good as it wants to be but nothing will work if the frame for the movie, the zombies, aren't done well and I'm happy to report that as far as zombie movies go. These are very classic zombies. Do not expect anything as bleak as a "serious" zombie movie though as the tone of the movie is pretty lighthearted and these zombies aren't all that gory. This is partially because the zombies haven't been dead for very long, which is a great detail. Normally in Zombie movies, the zombies will look incredibly gory and rotted away even after a few hours of being "turned". There are none-to few "running" zombies as well, and the concept of others being turned after a bite is kept around. Making the zombie origin story very simple would be considered a weak point in any other film but because it isn't the forefront of the movie at all, it makes a pass.

No, the "meat" of the story is very much a late coming of age story for Shaun. Here he is, too old for anything, being a middle-manager in a store where he has to take sarcasm from ambitious people much younger than himself and unable to break his daily routine of meeting up with the same old gang and going to the same old bar. His girlfriend is tired of him not being able to take the next step and make a serious commitment, or as other people would say "To grow the f... up". The focus on the romantic comedy element rather than the zombie lot is what makes this movie so approachable, I've been able to show this movie to people who don't even have a passing interest in horror and still seeing them laugh. 

If you normally just watch comedies and you want to get into the Halloween spirit, this could very well be the right choice for oyu. It has spooky elements without being scary, plus it has a easy-to-understand plot and some of the best comedic writing this side of the year 2000.

Harry Potter & The Prisoner of Azkaban (2004)

This was actually the least awful poster

Film: Harry Potter & The Prisoner of Azkaban
Release: 2004, theatrical
Starring: Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, Rupert Grint
Directed by: Alfonso Cuarón
Previous in the series: Harry Potter & The Chamber of Secrets
Next in the series: Harry Potter & The Goblet of Fire
IMDB page: Link opens in a new window
Description: After running away from home in the time leading up to his 3rd semester at Hogwarts, Harry Potter learns that a convicted felon named Sirius Black has escaped the wizard prison known as Azkaban and is looking for him.

Hans' thoughts:

This one marked the change of a few things for the Harry Potter cinematic series. First off, It starts the era of mood-change. Having left the directors chair, Chris Columbus left a significant gap that other director had a hard time filling out for a while. The series not getting a returning director till the release of Order of The Phoenix, the director in question being David Yates. However, I'm getting ahead of myself. This is the work of Alfonso Cuarón, a man who's work both before and after this movie is not particularly well-known. Not going to hold that against him though. The mood of this movie is a lot more haunting than the former movies. While Chamber of Secrets did delve into the potential for horror the franchise has, it was still firmly grounded in the action-adventure genre. This one not so much. The theme of the story is very much fear and helplessness, and the creators sure managed to drive that point home. The story features the scariest Harry Potter creation yet, The Dementors. Faceless hooded creatures that live off of fear and makes you relive the darkest moment of your life. This is dark stuff, and it fits the surrounding environment very much. The color scheme of the movie has also changed a lot. Whereas the former movies had a lot of warmth, most of Hogwarts being dimly lit by torches, this movie has a lot of cold colors. Grey and white are very much dominant in this movie. It actually got to a point where it got a little too much, they could have loosened up on the darkness just a little bit.

Bookwise, this story is my favorite of the lot. Partly because it's one of the few books that actually kind of ignores Voldemort. Whereas the villain in the two former stories was the Dark Lord himself in some form or another, this one actually just tells a story about how bad everything can turn up when you let your life be ruled by fear. This story also by far has the best twist, and the most mystery surrounding the main villain. We never actually get to see the Prisoner of Azkaban till the final part of the final act, everything up until then being foreshadowing. Some of the foreshadowing being better than other I should note - if you know the story already some of the foreshadowing actually gets a bit tedious. Speaking of tediousness, while the comedy of the book was the best of the series this movie just kind of falls flat. Now don't get me wrong, you will most likely laugh at one or two jokes, but the best part of the book is the physical comedy - which the movie seems to ignore completely save for a single moment. A moment that the movie was kinda forced to show, due to the plot. I'm not saying they should have engaged it completely as it wouldn't match the tone but really, it would have been nice with just something to lighten up the mood sometimes.

As for the sets, did they lose the old ones? Hogwarts looks a lot different this time around, some locations having completely changed from where they were in the previous movie. The most obvious being the entrance to the Gryffindor quarters. They moved a whole corridor, did they think the audience wouldn't notice? Speaking of goof-offs, when we first meet Ron and Hermione this time around, Harry walks through a corridor where we clearly see Crookshanks (a cat) chasing Scabbers (a rat) in the opposite direction. However, when the camera pans to the end of the corridor following Harry, Ron and Hermione is at the end of a staircase each holding their respective pet. This could have been fixed by just making the cat and rat run in the same direction Harry was facing, so Ron and Hermione holding them would've been plausible. There's also a few things we get explained in a single line of dialogue in the book, that they apparently decided to ignore in the movie - such as why Remus Lupin knows about the Marauder's Map. We're just kinda meant to assume on that point.

My gripes aside, it's a perfectly serviceable movie. When the movie came out and I saw it as a kid, I remember absolutely hating it. However, after I've become older and rewatched it for this review. I kinda liked it. It did a lot better job tail-ending a lot of stuff it set up, and when they actually bothered with showing us magic it looked pretty plausible. So color me pleasantly surprised.

Garfield The Movie (2004)

Film: Garfield The Movie
Release: 2004, theatrical
Starring: Bill Murray, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Breckin Meyer
Directed by: Peter Hewitt
Next in the series: Garfield 2 - A Tail of Two Kitties
IMDB page: Link opens in a new window
Description: Garfield the cat lives with his owner Jon Arbuckle on a dead-end street. Garfield being a walking ego, lives in total luxury until Jon is talked into adopting a dog by the vet he has a crush on.

 Hans' thoughts:

Of all the properties to make a movie about, Garfield is a very weird choice. Well-known for the newspaper strip of the same name, Garfield is a about a fat house cat that tortures those around him to feed his own greed. He likes lasagna, he loves to watch TV and he embodies cats as well as their owners pretty well. I can see why some might think that the humor of Garfield might translate well to the big screen, but as a live-action movie? Eh..

Okay let's get the casting out of the way first. As far as Garfield himself goes, Bill Murray is pretty much the perfect choice as the sarcastic cat. Murray's own comedic career is based very much in being a sarcastic, self-centered jerk on screen and that goes very much hand in hand with Garfield. The rest of the casting is pretty weird, the most questionable choice being Jennifer Love Hewitt as Liz the vet. In the comic strip, she's just as sarcastic as Garfield but in this movie she's played very much as the one-note love interest for Breckin Meyer's way too socially capable Jon. No seriously, in the comics Jon is supposed to be this wacky, socially awkward loser but in the movie he just seems like.. some guy. He's just way too successful in this movie.

The movie is filled with weird choices like this, such as making Garfield the only entirely computer generated character. The other talking animals in this movie are just real animals with weird looking computer effects pasted on top. I realise that making every single animal computer animated would have been expensive and that making Garfield just a normal-looking cat wouldn't have lent itself well to the visual gags - but really, I'm questioning the purpose of making the movie live-action at all as it stands.

This mix-up of CGI and real animals was just way too distracting

As for the plot, well it stays sort of true to the comic strip. We get a new origin story for Odie, we get Garfield just wasting time in front of the TV and we get a lot of familiar characters thrown in. There are new characters here, but they're not really imposing that much on the regulars. In actuality, even the main villain barely gets screentime. Speaking of the main villain, could they have tried any harder to make the perfect opposite of Garfield? He's a bald guy with an inferiority complex that's allergic to cats and hates lasagna. It's like the black smurf's from the Smurf comics that's evil and nasty because, well, the story tells them to.

As far as a Garfield the Cat story goes, I suppose you could have gone with a worse plot. I just really think they should have considered just making it an animated feature instead and stuck with it. The cgi cat certainly looks like Garfield, but it just looks so out of place in a live-action feature where it's the only cgi animal around. In the Scooby-Doo movie, the only animal aside from the random passing bird in the far away horizon was Scooby himself. It sort of worked because there were no real animals on screen to compare it to. The jokes in this movie are also really hit and miss, while Garfield himself gets the occasional one-liner there's not really much to salvage in it.

This movie would only serve well on services like Netflix or Hulu. Maybe a rental at best. If you're curious, sure. Give it a try. I just personally think you're better off watching the 80's TV-show Garfield & Friends instead. That or just reading the comic strip. As it stands, this movie is just downright bland.

Blade: Trinity (2004)

Film: Blade: Trinity
Release: 2004, theatrical
Starring: Wesley Snipes, Jessica Biel, Ryan Reynolds
Directed by: David S. Goyer
Previous in the series: Blade II
IMDB page: Link opens in a new window
Description: After Blade is set up to murder a human being, he has to ally himself with another group of vampire hunters called The Nightstalkers.

Hans' thoughts:

If Blade II was a perfect example of how to do a sequel, this is a perfect example of how not to. The balance is gone, the movie focuses way too heavy on the comic relief (played by Ryan Reynolds) which would be fine if Reynolds was actually funny. He just isn't. The villains this time around is also pretty darn stupid. Not that this series has ever had that great of a villain cast but this time around they go way too heavy on the cheese factor. The only saving grace is the presence of Dominic Purcell. Unfortunately, what would could have been a very cool and bad ass villain ends up being the most stiff and boring version of Dracula I've ever witnessed, with the movie trying to play heavily on him as a warrior. He ends up being a poor version of The Scorpion King. Thing is, if you're going to use something as iconic as Count Dracula for you vampire movie, you better either be pretty darn unique and actually pull it off, or play it completely like audiences are used to. This time they tried the former and it just doesn't work. All in all, Blade Trinity ends up being a really weak movie, ruining entirely the groundwork set up by the second installment.

Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (2004)

Film: Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy
Release: 2004, theatrical
Starring: Will Ferrel, Christina Applegate, Steve Carell
Directed by: Adam McKay
IMDB Page: Link opens in a new window 
Description: Ron Burgundy's news team is the most successful team in the city of San Diego, one day however all conventions are broken when a woman joins the station.

Hans' thoughts:

This is one the movies I quote the most, the movie is filled to the brink with so many one-liners and memorable moments that it is indeed at the top of the mountain when it comes to comedy. It's a doozy however, because while so much more could have been done with the concept of the story the characters are all so memorable that you just kinda forget the lameness of the actual plot. Because yes, the plot is very cliché, and the story could have had a message mixed in with the comedy but you quickly forget that because you're laughing at the utter bizarre level of stupidity from Steve Carell's character, Brick. If this movie was ever to gain a spin-off, Brick would most likely be the character to get it. The other characters get their funny moments too, though I have to say that while most characters get a lot to do humor-wise, Paul Rudd is just sorta.. there. That said, the movie would definitely be worse off without him. This is also a movie with a lot of celebrities playing throw away roles, like Jack Black, Danny Trejo or Ben Stiller each being characters with only one or two lines only appearing once in the movie. The movie is just loaded with big name actors like that, indicating to me at least that this movie was a "play time project", as in a movie where actors and their friends just do a movie for the fun of it. Kind of like how The Blues Brothers is also loaded with cameos. This movie is one I've found myself revisiting again and again and I'll be sure to do so again in the future.