Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Land Of The Dead

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Posted by Don Anderson (Member # 397) on 06-26-2005, 03:07 AM:

Awesome comeback film from George Romero. What??? No Rubenstein in the credits!!! [Razz]

Nice to see a very small cameo of Tom Savani. I'm sure that there may have been more cameos, but I was too busy wiping the drool of my chin. Lots of gore, buckets of blood, and a chuckle here and there. Loved the opening credits, hell, the film was awesome. Oh ya, I already stated that. Good storyline, lovable characters, interesting soundtrack. Print was a little flat, low in contrast. Saw it in a lousy theatre, at least two feet cut off on each side of the screen, credits were running onto the masking. Although presented in DTS, the audio sucked in this venue. Highly recommend this film to any Romero fan or zombie freaks. Second Saturday evening showtime-Attendance 15 max. Surprised it got an R rating, lots of gore. But, I guess since the zombies are already dead, the MPAA didn't hit it with NC17.

Posted by Sam Graham (Member # 2889) on 06-26-2005, 04:36 PM:

CINEMA: Century 20 at Jordan Creek, West Des Moines, IA
AUDITORIUM: 12
PRESENTATION: Dolby Digital/THX
PRESENTATION PROBLEMS: Slightly out of focus
RATING: Two and one half stars (out of four)

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Zombies.

Okay...Was I the only one to be surprised to hear Romero was still alive...let alone making a modern zombie flick? Anyway, not bad. A little too "modern horror punch" in formula for my taste, but it was otherwise really gross and pretty funny at the same time...exactly as zombie movies should be.

Posted by John Anastasio (Member # 607) on 07-05-2005, 09:50 PM:

CINEMA: Towne Center, Hightstown
SCREEN #2
PRESENTATION: After I explained to the teenager that his aperture plate wasn't pushed in all the way, not too bad once the soundtrack was no longer visible on the wall. All the scope trailers were shown with the flat lens in place. Oy....
AUDIO: Had the Dolby Digital snipe up there, but the loud pop that accompanied the lab splice kinda gave away the optical SR playback.
This theater is strictly from hunger.

Overal reaction to the film...best blood and guts I've seen on the screen in a long time. My teenage male students will love it. I've outgrown this stuff, though. I just thought it was a commentary on the current political landscape. I liked the shot of the old Zenith radio from "Night of the Living Dead" at the beginning.

AUDIENCE: 4

Posted by Pravin Ratnam (Member # 1417) on 07-18-2005, 09:53 PM:

Good movie released at the wrong time of the year. If promoted well and released at the right time, it could have done closer to Dawn of the Dead remake type business than a Uwe Boll movie type business.

Asia Argento is as cute as always. Too bad they don;t show the bottom of her belly tattoo in this movie(something that is on fine display in some of her other movies).

Pretty decent if not so great zombie flick. Great eating scenes full of gore. Romero hasn't lost a zest for depicting those eating scenes even at his age.

Posted by Max Einhorn (Member # 3364) on 10-02-2005, 09:50 AM:

In 1985, the creator of the zombie genre, George A. Romero created Day of The
Dead. It was a film about a bunch of survivors who lived underground, protected from
the living dead who ruled the earth. It was another one of his “dead” films, a sequel to
Dawn of The Dead and his original zombie film, Night of The Living Dead. Day of The
Dead was nothing more than a careless gore-fest, and what could have been a
masterpiece like its two predecessors was just lots and lots of zombies and nothing else.
In his new film, Land of The Dead, Romero has definitely redeemed himself. In the new
film, the world is in ruins, the dead have risen from their graves and targeted the living as
their food supply (nothing new there). The remaining humans live in a protected
Pittsburgh, PA, or perhaps a trapped one. The city is protected by water on three sides,
and on the other side by a powerful electric fence. The wealthy live in a protected
skyscraper called Fiddler’s Green, while those who are not fortunate enough to afford
the apartments live in shantytowns or are homeless. Kaufman (Dennis Hopper) is the
richest man in town and reigns over everyone in the city, watching others do his bidding.
Meanwhile, the armies of the dead are changing and becoming more dangerous by the
day. They communicate with each other, organize, and have learned to use weapons in
ways to take down their living prey. Attempting to plan a new future, a group of
mercenaries hired by Kaufman, Riley (Simon Baker), and the daring Cholo (John
Leguizamo) earn their living by raiding abandoned supermarkets and liquor stores in
order to sell the stolen goods in Fiddler’s Green. Each mercenary has his own plan for
the future, and when Cholo is refused an apartment by Kaufman, he steals the two million
dollar anti-zombie tank known as “Dead Reckoning” and holds the city for ransom. In
the meantime, the zombie army is approaching and no longer sees the water as a
barrier…
If you have the stomach for the intense gore that this movie puts out, this is an
enjoyable horror movie, particularly compared to Hollywood junk like The Grudge
which can’t compete with this film. As the trailers for this movie say, “… one man made
us fear the night” and that man was George A. Romero. I wasn’t around when his
original masterpiece The Night of The Living Dead was released, but I did manage to see
it over the past year on DVD. Even by today’s standards that film could very well be the
scariest movie of all time. The Land of The Dead is good but not quite the masterpiece
that the original film was. However, its characters are more developed than those in the
original film, which concentrated more on the odd happenings than on character
development.
Land has only a running time of 93 minutes (I wished it was longer), but still manages
to please with a fine story line and memorable characters. This film is definitely better than
Day of the Dead, just as good as Dawn of the Dead and just a little shy of Night of the
Living Dead. This zombie trilogy ranks with Star Wars as a memorable movie saga.
With that, I say congratulations to Romero on another big success that, despite its gore,
maintains the old black humor and manages to get quite a few chuckles out of the
audience. If Romero decides to make a fourth film, I’ll be a anxious to see what he
comes up with next.
Rated R for pervasive strong violence and gore, language, brief sexuality, and some drug
use. Running time 93 minutes
MAXimum Warning!
This film is extremely graphic and is NOT a film to take children to. You have been
warned.