WORLD WAR Z

Brad Pitt in one of the film's few quiet moments

WORLD WAR Z (2013). Director: Marc Foster.

"You can't make a dead person sick."

Gerry Lane (Brad Pitt) and his family suddenly find themselves in the midst of chaos when a plague breaks out in their city -- indeed, around the world --  driving people crazy and making them violently attack others. These people turn out to be zombies, reanimated after death by a virus. UN representative Thierry Umutoni (Fana Mokoena) gets Lane out, but he learns that his family can not stay in their safe refuge unless he agrees to accompany a biologist, hoping to create a vaccine, to the spot where the virus originated to look for clues. Lane later winds up in Israel, were the undead pile atop one another in a grotesque exhibition so they can launch themselves over a wall to get at the living people on the other side. [Unlike the dead in Night of the Living Dead, these zombies movie very quickly]. Lane saves the life of a young female Israeli soldier named Segen (Daniella Kertesz), and both wind up on a plane when the passengers become infected. They wind up at a research center in England where Lane thinks he's come up with a novel way of protecting people against the zombies. Despite some arresting passages -- such as the wall sequence in Israel and the outbreak on the plane -- World War Z can't quite overcome the fact that it's just another apocalyptic zombie movie [like 28 Days Later] with over-familiar ideas. Based on a novel, it still owes a lot to Richard Matheson's I Am Legend. However, it is generally fast-paced, creepy, well-acted, and often quite exciting. [Gore geeks must have been quite disappointed that despite the gruesome tone the movie does not indulge in much graphic bloodiness.] Humanism is in short supply -- there's little talk of compassion for the dead victims nor scenes where a living person sees a dead one that they loved -- and the ending is kind of flat. Foster also directed one of the worst James Bond movies, Quantum of Solace.

Verdict: More zombies that you can shake a stick at. **1/2.

QUANTUM OF SOLACE

QUANTUM OF SOLACE (2008). Director: Marc Foster.

Following the events of Casino Royale (2006), James Bond (an excellent Daniel Craig) is assigned to find out what's up with an organization named Quantum that has assassins in high places. [While in a sense it's admirable that there are references to past events as there were in Fleming's novels, it's also a bit pointless as few people will remember what happened in the previous film and others in the audience may not have even seen Casino Royale.) The action shifts from Italy to Austria to Bolivia, as Bond battles various people bent on his destruction and encounters a Bolivian agent named Camille (Olga Kurylenko), who's out to get revenge on the deposed dictator who murdered her family. Judi Dench is back as "M" and she adds a touch of class to the proceedings. One scene takes place during a performance of Puccini's Tosca that features a pretty forgettable Scarpia. Although there's a glimmer of some of the old style glamour and excitement in the film -- a dive from a plane in mid-air is especially exciting -- the movie is a big comedown after the excellent Casino Royale. The main villain, Dominic Greene (Mathieu Almaric), is colorless, hardly a dynamic match for 007. The women, while attractive, are not the kind of eye-popping beauties of the past. And sometimes the editing is too frenetic, very busy but not well put together, so that at times you don't even know what's happening to whom. It's great that Bond is no longer a cartoon figure, however, but Quantum of Solace is simply too ordinary. Mediocre theme song, too.

Verdict: Not enough solace in this. **1/2.