Zombies are better off than capitalists

I've always been drawn to zombie movies, since I first saw George Romero's the Dead movies and the numerous interpretations of the genre particularly that of Max Brooks (World War Z), Alex Garland (28 Days Later & 28 Weeks Later) and Robert Kirkman (The Walking Dead).

I find it interesting because it reveals a side of humanity that puts into question highest boast of civility and order amidst chaos. It makes us put ourselves in the shoes of the characters and ask the same question of 'what will I do given the same circumstances?'

Zombie movies function as a mirror to our collective values and pretenses on matter of survival and being human. It dares to put us in the middle of the tension between living to fight another day in an eternity of living dead; asking us whether it is actually us the survivors who are the real walking dead for we are no longer different from the zombies who are driven by the primal urge to press on living at the expense of others lives.

It is on this theme of the zombie movie genre that I find Yeon Sang-ho's Train to Busan a welcomed contribution to themes advanced by the zombie genre. I find it special because it saliently functions as a Marxist social commentary to the conventions of class relations, that is more relatable than George Romero's take on the idea in his movie Land of the Dead.

Before Sunset: a linguistic deconstruction of love

Sometime during the early 1990s Richard Linklater, made a movie entitled Before Sunrise, that told this story about an American named Jesse and a French girl named Céline, who meet on a train and disembark in Vienna, where they spend the night walking around the city and over the course of one night, and lead to their revealing more about themselves than they normally would, fall in love and make love and the following day vowed to meet again after six months. The film’s ending leaves audience to decide for themselves whether Jesse and Céline will actually meet again in six months –a fine test of a person’s perception of romantic love.

I think this film is worth reviewing since beyond concepts of romance and youthful idealized depictions of love the movie Before Sunset speaks a great deal about the anxieties that I feel are also facing a lot of us who have been quickened by the reality that what is ‘ideal’ and ‘perfect’ are illusive concepts that we may never really be realized in this life. I would like to think that this perhaps is what makes the movie Before Sunset quite remarkable because it strips us of this romantic illusion of relationships that pop culture constantly bombards us with in the media. It shows relationships as complex interactions of people, circumstances and decisions that we have to live with.

Finding ‘life’ at the end of the Road...

The Road is a film based on Cormac McCarthy's 2006 Pulitzer award winning novel of the same name.

Watching the movie brings to light familiar feelings that are common to any believer who have dared to passionately ask the deepest answers to life's meaning in light of living a life of faith in a God who has revealed Himself in love through the person and work of the crucified and resurrected Christ.

Life at the End of the World

Peering into the end of the world takes you to a place that is very much like home. It takes you to places close to heart –it reintroduces you to familiar emotions of fear, uncertainty and longing.

Furthermore, at the end of the world there is nothing but the vague indecisiveness of the road –serving as a treacherous conduit into man’s journey into the unknown that lies beyond the end.

I find it hard to imagine myself doing the opposite if I were in the same shoes. Love is a powerful emotion, that’s why I could identify with the Father, (Viggo Mortensen) who behaves albeit inhumanely towards others in the midst of a dying planet plagued with extreme natural disasters, departed civilization, savage cannibals and memories of ‘good old days' in order to preserve the life of his Son, (Kodi Smit-McPhee).