Aim for the Head
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

We are in the midst of a worldwide zombie renaissance. The dead are springing back to life at a record clip, and feasting ever so violently on an unsuspecting public. It is a splendid time to be a moviegoer.
The British have had a lot of the fun, and with “Shaun of the Dead,” two-man team Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg have produced a fantastic horror comedy. This is a movie in love with the genre, dripping with references from horror movies’ past, and filled with enough cartoonish ultra violence to satisfy even the Film Threat crowd.
The film follows a weekend in which ambitionless, sad sack Shaun (Mr. Pegg, who wrote the film with his director, Mr. Wright) goes through great lengths to save his girlfriend Liz (Kate Ashfield) and other loved ones from zombies ransacking London. His weapon of choice is a blunt cricket bat, although in one funny scene, he considers which parts of his record collection he can throw at them (he chucks the “Batman” soundtrack but holds onto a Dire Straits album).
This is a clever, fun, social satire, an instant cult classic that doesn’t forget to include a few scares and a healthy dose of in-jokes.
About 30 minutes in, Shaun, with his slovenly roommate Ed nearby, speaks to his mother over the phone. Zombies have begun to run wild, and Shaun is understandably concerned for his mother’s well-being. He tells her that he’s going to come pick her up, and when she rebuffs him, saying she doesn’t want to cause a fuss, Ed grabs the phone and shouts to her, “We’re coming to get you, Barbara!”
George Romero must be smiling. I know I am.
***
There are individual scenes in “The Last Shot” that are quite funny. Several, in fact. But as a whole the film is incomplete. The quirky caper, based (loosely, I suspect) on a true story, stars Alec Baldwin as FBI agent Joe Devine. Joe hopes to make it in D.C. or New York one day, but he is assigned by his FBI director brother (Ray Liotta) to monitor mob activity in Providence, R.I. Soon, Joe starts investigating Tommy Sanz (Tony Shalhoub), the estranged second cousin of John Gotti.
Tommy, it appears, holds much sway over the local teamsters, and takes bribes from movie producers to allow them to use non-union workers. This gives Joe an idea for a sting operation: He’ll pretend to be a movie producer, complete with script, cast, and director; bribe Sanz to free him of the teamsters; then nab him on racketeering charges.
With some new expertise, thanks to a few meetings with an eccentric producer (an uncredited Joan Cusack, providing the film’s funniest moments) Joe meets Steven Schats (Matthew Broderick), a dog groomer and theatre usher who dreams of being a filmmaker. Steven shows Joe his script for “Arizona,” the story of a dying woman searching for Indian caves in the Grand Canyon state. Joe agrees to produce “Arizona,” but insists, to Steven’s dismay, they shoot it in Rhode Island.
Writer/director Jeff Nathanson is a good screenwriter (he wrote “Catch Me if You Can,” and the “Rush Hour” movies) and a promising filmmaker, but this movie seems as though it was probably funnier on the page than on the screen. Messrs. Broderick and Baldwin share some painfully unfunny moments (A scene where the two burst into a spontaneous duet of “Short People” falls completely flat). Ms. Cusack and Mr. Shalhoub steal the show.
This is one to rent, or watch on an airplane.
***
Ernest “Che” Guevara is a romantic figure-his violence conveniently forgotten, his face a universal symbol of rebellion. But Walter Salles’s “The Motorcycle Diaries” deals not with Mr. Guevara (Gael Garcia Bernal) as either a hero or a villain. Instead, it takes in a 12,425 km journey he took with childhood friend Alberto Granado (Rodrigo De la Serna) when he was 23. The trip, which took them throughout Latin America, is recreated through a lushly photographed series of terrifically acted and expertly written vignettes.
Accompanied by a powerful score by Gustavo Santaolalla, this superior road movie opens as medical students Guevara and Granado acquire a rusty, broken-down motorcycle that they never quite get the hang of driving. (When the motorcycle is finally ditched, there is a sense of relief, as we know they won’t be crashing it again). But the main point of Mr. Salles’s film is to portray Guevara’s awakening sense of social injustice, as it is shown in his diaries, on which the movie is based. Guevara is shaken by his witnessing of exploited workers and a divided continent, and this journey shaped him, for better or worse.
Ultimately, “The Motorcycle Diaries” works because Messrs. Bernal and De la Serna both deliver powerful performances, and give what might have been a “message” movie a true emotional core.