What to Watch This Weekend: July 17, 2020

The Fun, Indie Road Trip: Easy Does It (Digital)

Easy Does It is a breath of fresh indie air. The film's cast of quirky, fun characters, entertaining story, style, and fantastic music fuels a wonderfully enjoyable road trip!  For more information, check out our review!

The Quirky, Colorful Japanese Dark Comedy: We Are Little Zombies (Digital)
We Are Little Zombies has a flashy, distinctive style and a dark comedy story fueled by youthful counterculture and a social media obsessed lesson.  It will not be for everyone, but it is a unique enough experience to make it worth checking out.  For more information, check out our review!

For The Hamilton or Hip Hop Lover: We Are Freestyle Love Supreme (Hulu)
We Are Freestyle Love Supreme is a beautiful documentary about friendship and love, with some amazing performances and lyrical feats to keep you entertained.  For more information, check out our review!

The Suspenseful Descent Into An Asylum: Into the Dark: The Current Occupant (Hulu)

Into the Dark: The Current Occupant takes a convincing cast deep into the depths of an insane asylum for a creepy, brutal stay with the potential president.  For more information, check out our review!

The Emotional Family Roller Coaster: Waves (Showtime)

Waves is simply a treat: an emotional roller coaster about a suburban black family with phenomenal acting, insightful writing, and a story that demonstrates the folly and boundless optimism of youth.  For more information, check out our review!

For The Gamer In Your Life: Guns Akimbo (Amazon)

Guns Akimbo is a thoroughly enjoyable video game-style movie with a ridiculously entertaining premise and plenty of video game effects and references to make sure you don’t say game over.  For more information, check out our review!

For The Action Fan: Mission Impossible: Fallout (Hulu)

Tom Cruise is still one of the greatest action stars and Mission Impossible: Fallout cements that. The movie is exciting, tense, and action filled, with some big explosions, insane sequences, and a plot that will keep you guessing.  

We Are Little Zombies Review: A Bright, Quirky, Youthful, Japanese Dark Comedy

Release date: July 10, 2020
Running time: 120 minutes
Starring: Keita Ninomiya, Mondo Okumura, Satoshi Mizuno

When four young orphans—Hikari, Ikuko, Ishi, and Takemura—first meet, their parents have all recently deceased.  However, strangely, none of them can shed a tear.  They are like zombies; devoid of all emotion.  With no family, no future, no dreams, and no way to move forward, the young teens decide to take some of the remnants of their former lives and start a band. Tragedy, comedy, music, social criticism, and teenage angst are all subsumed in this eccentric cinematic tsunami.  

Little Zombies has a style all its own that is present throughout but really comes through in the second half.  There are a lot of video game, and especially 16-bit RPG, inspired effects that give this film a youthful, distinctive style.  From the RPG-type video game sequences, to the video game effects, chip tune style music, and 16 bit sound effects, Little Zombies feels youthful and unique.  The young actors who make up the main band members do a great job in some pretty difficult roles.  They have to exhibit a range of emotion while maintaining a cool, uncaring exterior.  And they have to provide a lot of the dark comedy that makes this film so unique.  

The story of Little Zombies is hard to follow, but that might have been because there is so much going on.  Although the story focuses on two main band members, there are four separate band members with their own backstories interwoven that each get some time in the overall narrative.  There is also a dream aspect of the movie that sometimes makes it tough to tell what is dream and what is reality.  However, the story has plenty to say.  It speaks to expectations of youth, to today's social media obsessed culture, and to the manufactured nature of some popular media.  It also speaks to emotions and when to share them.  Some of the themes are dark, but they are handled with an avant garde, childish bravado that completely fits the young protagonists in this movie.  And for a movie about a band, I greatly enjoyed their songs.  Although they aren't the best I have heard, they are original and catchy.  I found myself humming the main tune in the days after watching Little Zombies.  

We Are Little Zombies has a flashy, distinctive style and a dark comedy story fueled by youthful counterculture and a social media obsessed lesson.  It will not be for everyone, but it is a unique enough experience to make it worth checking out. 

Watch it.

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