Zombie Compromise

WE ARE LITTLE ZOMBIES (A) - This debut feature is a modern masterpiece about the way we live -- or fail to live -- seen through the eyes of four sharp 13-year-olds. This visual roller coaster comes from music-video veteran and ad man Makoto Nagahisa, and he infuses this story of four mopey kids with color and energy and wordplay.

The main hero is Hikari (Keita Ninomiya), whose parents died in a bus crash while touring strawberry fields and who has always been emotionally stunted and unable to cry, turning to video games, which give this movie its "Scott Pilgrim"-style theme. Three others also lose their parents -- involving a gas explosion, suicide, and murder -- and these four orphans meet at the crematorium and decide to hang out at Hikari's house. However, Hikari's mean aunt, who claims custody of him, cramps their style, so they set out on their own and decide to form a bubblegum-punk band.

Little Zombies features Hikari on shaky vocals, Ishi (Satoshi Mizuno) on drums (including a wok rescued from the burnt remains of his family's restaurant), Yuki (Mondo Okumura) on bass, and Ikuko (Sena Nakajima), the only girl, on keyboards. They get discovered by an older teen in a junkyard, and they become instant pop idols, mainly from the catchiness of the title track and hummable lines like, "We are zombies but alive." They are, ironically, "totally emo," to the max. (At one point they get compared to the Shaggs, which is apt.)

The film is flooded with nihilistic utterings from these numb young teens in this "story of four unemotional people":

• "Reality is too stupid to cry over."
• "Everything that matters to me disappears."
• "Despair is uncool."
• "I've always been good at being invisible."
• "All parents are cheats."
• "I'm sad but not in pain."
• "Are you dead inside?"
• "Future, money, courage, love -- don't know what they are."
• "Punk sucks."
• "You let your emotions show. Watch it!"

Ikuko snaps photos on an old-fashioned disposable camera, but she never develops the film. To her, it's more about the performance art in the moment, a shield against nostalgia. "If I look at the photos, I'll have to remember," she says. "All we have is now."

Because the kids are rudderless, this two-hour journey turns into a road film, with the kids metaphorically searching for the sources of their damage and seeking out whatever video-game enemy they can vanquish in order to feel human again. Each kids is eminently likeable and watchable, with filled-in back stories and wounds we can identify with.

This is all thrown together my Nagahisa, a true mix-master. His visuals pop, but he's much more of an auteur than some run-of-the-mill video director with a short attention span. He is in full command from beginning to end. He tests different senses -- using sound and camera tricks to play with the ideas of Hikari's sight and hearing, as if subjecting him to a medical examination. Whereas Edgar Wright's "Scott Pilgrim" skewed more silly than straight, Naghisa plumbs true emotional depths, without sacrificing fun (like a baseball scene that devolves into an homage of the Monkees). (Here is a link to an interesting interview with the director.)

And it's the kids who deliver. Ninomiya, especially, as Hikari seems to be the John Lennon of this troupe, and his little shoulders are more than capable. From the striking opening scenes to the gorgeous ending, this is a story to be savored.

ZOMBIELAND: DOUBLE TAP (C-minus) - Hard to believe there was a time, in the post-"Shaun of the Dead" era when ironic wisecracking zom-coms were appealing. The original "Zombieland" was 11 years ago, and the sequel trickled out late last year, coasting on the first one's laurels. The core four zombie hunters return here -- Woody Harrelson, Emma Stone, Jesse Eisenberg and Abigail Breslin (the latter an afterthought here).  

This starts out with a tedious montage of CGI-abetted quality kills, most in slow motion, reminding us that the genre, at least a decade past its spoil date, has been reduced to pure pulp. The original director and writers return to beat the dead horse they shot the first time. Each actor doubles down on his/her character's quirks. Only occasionally does the script evoke a gut laugh.

A couple of ideas offer glimpses of a fresh take. Zooey Deutch shows up as a boy-crazy dumb blonde, and she stands out among the retreads with her valley-girl update for the millennial crowd. And an inspired scene introduces Luke Wilson and Thomas Middleton as doppelgangers for Harrelson and Eisenberg, respectively, and the on-screen twinning of the two neurotic freaks -- Eisenberg and Middleton -- is both a brilliant comedic marriage and a meta joke on itself. And yes, sadly, Bill Murray eventually shows up. And it all culminates in a truly sappy, almost Hollywood ending (if you can believe that), as if the stakes were no greater than a "Beach, Blanket, Bingo" romp.

BONUS TRACKS

A music video of the theme song of Little Zombies:

Our title track, from Shadowy Men on a Shadowy Planet: