Diary of the Dead.

Michael Joshua Rowin, writing in the L Magazine, finds Diary of the Dead to be "by far the most self-reflexive, stylistically experimental and politically undisguised of the Dead series. Two colleagues cited it as a moral answer to the unscrupulous first-person video gimmick of 9/11 thrill ride Cloverfield, but Diary might also be an awkwardly conscious consideration of media representation and the ethics of the camera Cloverfield brings to light in its blissfully unconscious way. Not that I mind a zombie movie with a brain (heh heh), [George] Romero's been doing that all along, but Diary is too often lead-footed and heavy handed, more preach than screech, even if critical."

Updated through 2/20.

"Romero has not grown narcissistic or solipsistic; American society has," writes Peter Keough in the Boston Phoenix. "Despite the talky patches, Romero has risen again, and his Living Dead proves a concept too prophetic to die."

"[A]s smartly staged, and even emotionally tender as it often is, Romero's latest, with its central and oft-repeated mistrust of the 'new information age,' also can't help but seem a little like the product of aged paranoia - like your pissed-off grandpa, a little preachy and slightly doddering," writes Michael Koresky at indieWIRE.

Cheryl Eddy talks with Romero and writes in the San Francisco Bay Guardian: "Romero's smart enough to zero in on a particular problem - Internet-age information overload! - and incorporate it in a story that manages to implicate the viewer at the same time."

More interviews: Noel Murray (AV Club and Mark Olsen (Los Angeles Times).

Earlier: Reviews from Toronto and Sundance.

Updates, 2/14: For Filmmaker, Nick Dawson talks with Romero "about his going back to low budget filmmaking, the problem with Hollywood, and Meryl Streep being called yesterday's pizza."

"[B]esides an examination of us-against-them and us-against-us politics and a trenchant commentary on the it's-okay-to-torture-under-the-'right'-circumstances mentality that's been foisted on the American public, Diary is one of the most revealing and fascinating critiques of image-making since Michael Powell's Peeping Tom," writes Premiere's Glenn Kenny. "Its execution is far more consistently accomplished and convincing than that of [Brian] De Palma's [Redacted]. And it still manages to deliver eye-popping and gut-spilling galore. It's an ingenious, energetic, angry and extremely plugged-in piece - nice to see from a director who turned 67 this year."

"Among the many nuggets of Strangeloveian satire George A Romero's Diary of the Dead mines from its evergreen zombie mayhem, the deftest of them touch on everything from terrorism fears to illegal immigration," notes Scott Foundas in the LA Weekly. "Indeed, as one radio commentator sagely observes on the film's soundtrack, these zombies are crossing a border that no 700-mile fence can secure."

"If Romero feels any guilt over his own 40-year celebration of gore, it's hard to tell: Diary of the Dead features some of the most hilariously gross images since Dawn of the Dead," notes JR Jones in the Chicago Reader.

"Romero's legendary skill at weaving social commentary seems forced and a little hypocritical," writes Neil Morris in the Independent Weekly.

"Despite his apparent secularism, Romero's work has developed a spiritual streak," notes Eric Kohn in the New York Press.

At SF360, Dennis Harvey offers "a chronological reel through highlights to date from the man who's scared the bejeesus out of us for four decades."

Updates, 2/15: "If this sounds a little like Cloverfield it is, superficially, though Diary is a lot cheaper-looking, generally smarter-sounding and a whole lot funnier," writes Manohla Dargis in the New York Times.

"[T]here's a big difference between making a kick-ass zombie movie with a trenchant sociopolitical subtext, and making a dreary, didactic film about the ethics and politics of journalism and non-fiction filmmaking that just happens to have some zombies in it," writes Nathan Rabin at the AV Club. "With his latest undead opus..., Romero set out to make the first kind of film, but ended up making the second."

"You may not believe in zombies, but the unnamed dread in the air of Diary of the Dead is recognizably believable, because we live with it now." Jim Emerson explains in the Chicago Sun-Times.

"[T]he movie suffers from the same malaise Romero diagnoses in society," argues Carina Chocano in the Los Angeles Times. "It's just too mediated to be scary, despite its zeal for gore."

"Yes, as image-cannibalizing media consumers, we are all zombies, but I'd settle for smaller helpings of purportedly up-to-the-minute critique," writes Nicolas Rapold. Also in the New York Sun, Steve Dollar argues that "the horror genre is quietly experiencing a resurgence of its low-budget, high-anxiety, 1970s vitality."

A list from Leonard Pierce at ScreenGrab: "Take Five: Romero Alive!"

Online viewing tip. Kevin Sites: "How to Make a Zombie for $50 or less." Thanks, Jerry!

Updates, 2/17: "Read enough think pieces anointing you the Swift of the grindhouse and maybe you gild Land of the Dead's well-constructed allegorical lily with Dennis Hopper's conspicuously Rumsfeldian pronouncements," writes Mark Asch for Stop Smiling. "Diary, aside from its po-mo book reports, features blunter-than-ever critiques of American ugliness, fascists-in-fatigues and pot-shooting rednecks lumbering, zombielike, into the flow of the narrative for their close-ups."

James Rocchi talks with Romero for Cinematical.

Update, 2/20: Aaron Hillis talks with Romero for IFC News.

Posted by dwhudson at February 13, 2008 2:37 PM