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Ishtar
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The Devils
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The Fortune
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-30-
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Betrayal
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Play It As It Lays
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The Outfit
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Alex in Wonderland
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The Legend of Lylah Clare
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In The Cool of the Day
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That Cold Day in the Park
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Thumb Trippin'
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Midas Run
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At Long Last Love
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Brewster McCloud
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Outcast of the Islands
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Run of the Arrow
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House of Secrets
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Saint Joan
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Macabre
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The Fiend Who Walked the West
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Five Gates to Hell
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The Chapman Report
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The Chalk Garden
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You're a Big Boy Now
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Last Summer
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Tropic of Cancer
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I Never Sang for My Father
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Sometimes a Great Notion
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Marriage of a Young Stockbroker
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Movie Movie
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Rich Kids
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When You Comin' Back Red Ryder?
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The Awakening
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Simon
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God's Angry Man
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Fast-Walking
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When the Wind Blows
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Housekeeping
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The Glass Menagerie
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Patty Hearst
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Drowning by Numbers
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Haunted Summer
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The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years
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City of Hope
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King of the Hill
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Dadetown
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SubUrbia
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Upcoming

March 5

Alice in Wonderland

Brooklyn's Finest

The Secret of Kells

March 12

The Exploding Girl

She's Out of My League

Stolen

SuicideGirls Must Die!

Tapes from the Script

March 17

Mid-August Lunch

Surrounded by Zombies

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The first message I read after landing this afternoon was from former Newsday film writer Lewis Beale, to wit: "Don't know if you're back, but you should check out Pontypool, a Canadian low budget zombie flick. It plays like a horror film written by a semiotician. Utterly unique."

N.Y. Times critic Stephen Holden wrote that "when one infected character is reduced to spouting gibberish as she suicidally hurls herself at [a] glass booth that has become a fortress against the zombie terror, the notion that we are all being driven mad by an incessant verbal deluge makes nasty comic sense."

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Posted by Jeffrey Wells on May 30, 2009 at 12:20 PM

comment #1

Edward says ...

Hard to tell from the trailer, but the zombie film has been done to death.

Posted by Edward at May 30, 2009 12:57 PM

comment #2

slutsky says ...

You should probably just pre-judge it based on its genre. Good call.

Posted by slutsky at May 30, 2009 1:36 PM

comment #3

BobMorton says ...

bruce mcdonald doing zombies should be at least interesting.

Posted by BobMorton at May 30, 2009 1:54 PM

comment #4

dangovich says ...

Good trailer. Doesn't reveal too much.

Posted by dangovich at May 30, 2009 2:30 PM

comment #5

berg says ...

caught it at SXSW and liked the general mood and genre manipulation that McDonald utilizes ... a thinking person's zombie film, not a lot of gore (except in one scene) but well built suspense ... there has got to be some Canadian talking points that I don't get

Posted by berg at May 30, 2009 2:34 PM

comment #6

LOTGA says ...

Pontypool is excellent. It does an amazing job of building suspense through description rather than showing.

Posted by LOTGA at May 30, 2009 2:38 PM

comment #7

lazarus says ...

Looks interesting, but that's the best title they could come up with? Not exactly something easy for the marketing department to work with, especially as it's one letter away from "Pantypool".

Posted by lazarus at May 30, 2009 2:41 PM

comment #8

LYT says ...

It has that title because it's based on a book.

Really great movie for the first 2/3, with a slightly weak finale. But overall very creative use of a tiny cast and essentially one location.

Posted by LYT at May 30, 2009 5:11 PM

comment #9

JD says ...

This is definitely second rate Bruce McDonald -- whereas 2007's The Tracey Fragments was pretty incredible -- but I think Jeff would like it. The star is totally Jeff Wells-esque.

Posted by JD at May 30, 2009 5:25 PM

comment #10

Krazy Eyes says ...

I'm kinda with Edward on this one. I don't really care how great Pontypool is . . . I just have *no* interest in seeing another zombie film. This genre was already done to death a couple years ago.

Posted by Krazy Eyes at May 30, 2009 5:34 PM

comment #11

Hallick says ...

"It has that title because it's based on a book."

A book titled "Pontypool Changes Everything", so it isn't like there was a slavish devotion to the purity of the name in the first place. Reducing it to just "Pontypool" is a lot less intriguing as titles go; and it makes it sound like its a movie about semi-employed dock workers somewhere in Wales (sorry, but some Canadian geography just isn't on the world stage here).

Not that the filmmakers should have gone with a dumb title WITH the word zombie in it, but this one is going to be giving me cognitive dissonance until I see it.

Posted by Hallick at May 30, 2009 8:23 PM

comment #12

bmcintire says ...

The bad title reminds me of another yet-to-be-released (terrible) horror movie - THE POUGHKEEPSIE TAPES. Other towns best not used in horror movie titles: Nantucket, Katmandu, Okoboji.

Posted by bmcintire at May 31, 2009 1:00 PM

comment #13

Edward says ...

As if Horror in Orange (my NJ hometown) would be good for a title?

Posted by Edward at May 31, 2009 6:14 PM

comment #14

DavidF says ...

I'm not saying it's not a bad name but in addition to being the title of the book, Pontypool is a place; it's a town in Toronto's cottage country. I presume the tale is set there.

Also, MacDonald's Hard Core Logo and Hwy. 61 are GREAT movies.

Posted by DavidF at June 1, 2009 8:31 AM

comment #15