28 Weeks Later (2007): What happens when Britain's most selfish family meets America's most undisciplined military forces? The most terrifying film I've seen since ... well, just since! To state the bleeding obvious, aren't the Brits writing some damn good SF at the moment, eh? They can keep their zombies, though, freaking horrifying, wrathful things. And so fast! The 'rage virus' certainly puts all those shuffling, dumb zombies of previous mythologies to shame. According to IMDB, the plot keywords include: Decapitation / Survival Horror / Rage / Infection / Horror. If that doesn't whet your appetite, let me add that there's a heck of a lot of running, a couple of convenient gaps in logic, & some unforgettable scenes of hell. Particularly any of the 'reunion' scenes. Holy moley. My only complaint: I wish Idris Elba, as the beleagured General Stone (formerly the beleagured ex-military man Vaughan Rice in BBC's Ultraviolet) had more screen time.

Zodiac (2007): Old-fashioned 70s story-telling meets an old-fashioned 70s story -- in all the right ways. Despite the frenzy of media attention in the case, the 'Zodiac' was a pretty lousy mass murderer, failing almost 50% of the time to actually kill his victims, & avoiding arrest more than once -- through sheer luck. When he did kill, though, his killings were messy & unrelentingly cruel. His victim list includes the marriage of a newspaper cartoonist (Jake Gyllenhaal) & the career of at least one cop (Mark Ruffalo). What this film shows is the chaos of the police hunt through the media glare and the hundreds of crazy phone calls from the public, the over-reliance on handwriting analysis as a science, and the confusion of jurisdictions. As well as the dangers of obsession. It's a long film & by the end you can identify with the exhaustion of the people consumed by the case.

Thirteen Days (2000): Filmed in real-time (surely), this is the long-winded story of how Kevin Costner became the Only White Man to Save the USA from Nuclear War. This is part of Costner's series of stories, including The Only White Man to Save the Future (WaterWorld), The Only White Man to Save the Native Americans (Dances with Wolves) and The Only White Man to Save Baseball (Field of Dreams). And let us not forget, of course, The Only White Man to Save Whitney Houston (Bodyguard). In Thirteen Days, Costner plays a special advisor to President Kennedy, and for some reason utterly obscure to the rules of story-telling, the film focuses not on Kennedy, but on Costner*. A visually unspectacular film, I found it more palatable to close my eyes and pretend it was a radio play. This was such a successful manoeuvre that I decided to extend my independence from the film and actually go to sleep. That, too, improved the experience. In fact, the only reason I know it's a film about a potential nuclear war is because my Movie-Going Buddy, in a show of fortitude, stayed awake through the whole thing & explained it to me later. Sounds like it could've been a good story. Short-sightedly, however, the story tellers fail to kill Costner.



*Costner did have a character name in this film, but that name is largely irrelevant. This is because when Costner's on film, he is playing the hero known as Costner -- The Only White Man to Save etc.