This week, I picked up a film I wasn’t planning to watch, but was finally in the mood for it. In addition to Zombieland, we have reviews of Prizzi’s Honor, The Killing, Shampoo and this week’s episode of Glee.

So, here is what I watched this weekend:

THE KILLING

In his 48-year career in the film industry, Stanley Kubrick only made thirteen feature films. Each one tackled a genre a different genre and he excelled at each from horror (The Shining) to science fiction (2001: A Space Odyssey) to political satire (Dr. Strangelove). While not all of his films are masterpieces, a staggering number were. So, going into The Killing, one of only five films of his I had not yet seen, I did expect a bit more than I got.

The Killing was his third feature film made only five years into his career. His style wasn’t quite solidified and the stilted dialogue makes it a difficult film to appreciate. The story surrounds the perfect heist carried out to steal money from the horse track. But something always goes wrong and when one of the inside men on the caper tells his listless and big mouthed wife, perfection becomes a pipe dream and no matter how well laid the plan, something always goes wrong.

Sterling Hayden is very good in the film, not Kubrick’s best performance, but one of his better ones. He plays the heist organizer who methodically executes the plan, but cannot expect the one small issue that could stop his get away cold. The rest of the cast perform their dialogue as if they were trapped in some 1940s crime caper. Their words are clipped, precise and frequently mechanical and while I could see the potential for the film to be a mockery of those cliched flicks, it still feels like one of them even though the end and the build up are a bit out of expectations. However, watching the earlier films of a legendary director gives you a better appreciation of where he came from and although not the perfect film he would later make, it is still a very strong feature that keeps you interested even when you start to see certain events coming.

PRIZZI’S HONOR

Jack Nicholson, William Hickey and Anjelica Huston received Oscar nominations for their work in John Huston’s penultimate feature two years prior to his death. Prizzi’s Honor is an entertaining genre film that shows how films centered on big crime families don’t have to be the grand expositions that many came to expect following the highly successful Godfather films. The film is almost intimate in the way it portrays the Prizzi family as one built on tradition, but not devoted to the constant annihilation of those who stand in their way. There are several killings in the film and the most graphic is saved for the end, but none of them are the centerpieces of the story.

Nicholson plays Charley Partanna, the adoptive son of the head of the Prizzi family played by Hickey. While at a family wedding, he catches sight of a beautiful woman in lavender, Irene Walker (Kathleen Turner), whom he goes to great lengths to locate and eventually marry. The problem is, she’s more dangerous than he knows, as he discovers she is not only an killer for hire, but also a thief. While reconciling his feelings for her and folding her into the family, the animosity between him and his jilted ex-girlfriend Maerose Prizzi (Anjelica Huston) who also happens to be the Don’s granddaughter. And after confiding in her his concerns and frustrations about Irene, she begins scheming to try and get the two of them eliminated.

The performances are all quite outstanding from Nicholson, Huston, Hickey and Turner down to Robert Loggia, John Randolph and Lee Richardson. There are few illogical elements to the plot allowing the audience to become emotionally invested with the characters in ways that many mafia flicks have difficulty. John Huston’s confidence as a director after a productive forty-year career guides the film to success. His daughter Anjelica gives the film’s best performance. From her first scene with Nicholson at the wedding, where she’s an obvious emotional wreck is perfectly orchestrated. From there, her cleverness, emotional vindictiveness and ability to understand and utilize the family’s strict code of honor enable her to avenge the honor she has felt had been trampled while symbolically representing the entire family’s tarnished honor and the desire to put everything right again.

ZOMBIELAND

You don’t often associate zombie films with romantic comedies, but Ruben Fleischer’s humorous tale is far more entertaining than I expected. A disease has spread across the United States turning once proud and capable citizens into flesh-starved zombies. A hypochondriac has narrowly avoided a number of potential deaths thanks to his list of survival rules that form the backbone of the story.

The hypochondriac is played by Jesse Eisenberg, an up-and-coming actor in the Michael Cera class of actors, a spindly, even-toned social outcast who ends up being a type of savior. It’s a common projection of many young filmmakers’ youthful insecurities and an attempt to embrace the geek countercultural movement that has permeated modern American cinema and pushed the bounds of filmmaking in frequently excellent ways. Zombieland‘s use of such a hero plays into more humorous elements of the film. None of the performances are exactly exceptional, but Eisenberg as well as Woody Harrelson, Emma Stone and Abigail Breslin all create sympathetic and interesting characters that spread genre stereotypes beyond their common definitions.

The first act of the film revolves around Stone and Breslin conniving their way into Harrelson and Eisenberg’s ride and stash of zombie-smashing weapons. As the masculine duo are constantly one-upped by the women, the gender reversals don’t feel exploitative. The cross-country adventure takes the four to a California theme park that the Breslin feels sure is zombie free and will be a place where they can all settle down. Her safety is big sister Stone’s only concern even when she begins falling for lovable loser Eisenberg. Harrelson’s crazy zombie-butt-kicking emotional isolationist provides a good deal of heart for the film despite being an overly aggressive person.

It may not appeal to many outside the zombie fanbase, but should easily appeal to the younger generation who don’t mind relationship comedies that take unique and interesting twists but aren’t predicated on some falsified sense of beauty and brawn that seems to dominate a lot of teen dramas in the last two decades.

SHAMPOO

A Hollywood stylist wants to start his own salon but is having trouble securing a loan. When one of his married clients with whom he is obviously sleeping suggests to her husband that he invest in the endeavor, a chain of events begins that threatens to expose his delicate and intricate web of sexual dalliances.

Warren Beatty was near the peak of his sexuality when he took on the role of George Roundy, the hairdressing gigolo at the center of this Hal Ashby farce. By his side and assisting him along the way are his actress girlfriend Jill (Goldie Hawn), the investment banker Lester (Jack Warden), Lester’s wife and George client Felicia (Lee Grant), and Lester’s mistress Jackie (Julie Christie). All three women have been in his bed and being caught with any of them would risk his future.

Beatty wasn’t the only one at the top of his sexual game, Christie was ravishing and delivers the film’s second best performance (after Beatty’s). Warden and Hawn are also wonderful, but Lee Grant is a virtual non-entity. Even when she’s on screen, you almost forget she’s there, which makes for a big head scratcher when she of the entire cast was singled out as an Oscar winner.

Perhaps the comedy of the 1970s wasn’t as ribald and laugh-out-loud funny as much of what would come after it in the post-sexual revolution, but I found only a handful of genuinely amusing, most notably the scene at the Nixon campaign party where Christie lets the liquor get the best of her and decides she wants George right then and there. And even the romantic entanglements don’t seem to drive the narrative beyond commonality. I felt little concern for the ultimate climax of the film and, for a movie about sexual encounters, I would expect a better bit of foreplay.

Glee, episode “Britney/Brittany”

The show that re-invented young adult television has fallen on hard times. Perhaps it’s the constant desire to do theme shows, but this Britney Spears-driven episode lacks a lot of the spark that made the first season so addictively entertaining. We have been forced now for two episodes to watch Will Schuester’s character develop at the expense of the kids in the glee club and even though Artie, Finn and Rachel have each had prominent storylines, the rest of the characters we’ve enjoyed watching, Kurt, Quinn, Mercedes and Puck have been sideshow attractions. Even Brittany, the lovably ditsy cheerleader, whose fear of Britney Spears and whose surprising resemblance are a key element of the current episode only gets so much to do in the show before blending back into the woodwork.

While I still have hope that the show will return to its quality of the past season, one can’t help but wonder how much longer we can go on with these simpering theme programs. This is the third one that has focused on a popular pop idol (the first two were Madonna and Lady Gaga) and the whole “be who you are regardless of what others say about it” sermon is getting a bit tiring. Matter of fact, there’s only so much of this type of theme that can permeate the show before it becomes one so-so episode after another.