Warning: Minor spoilers to follow (in italics)….

The credits were rolling when I turned to my friend dotsara and she said, “I don’t ever want to see that movie again.” This surprised me because 1) I thought I Am Legend was actually pretty good and 2) because when she got to the end of her sentence, her voice cracked. She was crying. But I understood why. This movie about being the last man on earth was very stressful and at the end of it you just wanted a release from the never-ending onslaught of cannibalistic night seekers, loneliness and even more loneliness. Ugh! Too much tension!

I didn’t cry at the end, at least not right at the end…. But I did cry a couple of times during…and almost after the movie during lunch, all because of that damn Will Smith. He is a pretty good actor! When it comes down to it, forget Men in Black, Independence Day or The Fresh Prince of Bel Air. Underestimating him will just catch you unawares.

Here, he demonstrated the subtleties of character that a person in his position would display. And that really surprised me. Because how do you emote what it feels like to be the last person on earth when everyone you care about is gone and every night for three years you have to evade these creatures who just want to eat you? What sort of reference point do you pull from?

Anyway, the two parts that made me cry were when Will (playing virologist/soldier/last man on earth Robert Neville) had to pull an Old Yeller move on the only friend he had left in the world, his dog Sam, because she got infected, and then when he cracked under the weight of that ensuing loneliness and pleaded with a mannequin to please just say hello to him. Awww. I’m tearing up now just thinking about it. OK, you had to be there. But you could feel his deep-seated grief just by watching his face.

One of the great things about this movie is that it gave the audience credit for being able to figure things out for ourselves. Surprising for a blockbuster with explosions, CGI special effects and, I have to say it, Will Smith. Instead of spelling it out for us through some convenient flashbacks or some character dialog, though, a lot of it had to be culled from Will’s reactions, the post-apocalyptic scenery and the one flashback.

By doing so, you left the movie theater haunted by what you saw; still thinking about it and replaying certain parts in your head to figure it out. I love that! Make sure to see this movie with a friend so that you have someone to talk to about it after. And you will want to talk about it as therapy.

Another thing I liked about it was that the zombies were in fact CGI. Something that would normally bug me. But for some reason that made those guys bearable to watch as opposed to real actors portraying the dead as in 28 Days Later or Dawn of the Dead. Of course I’m just saying this because I’m wussing out and real actors would have been too scary for me to watch. These computer-generated zombies weren’t as chilling as Romero’s dead but they were still disturbing enough to behold.

That one scene when Will ran into a dark building looking for his dog and just ended up running into a hive of the night seekers was bone chilling. The darkness, the one light to show the way, his erratic breathing and then seeing a bunch of them just standing around facing each other… can anyone tell me what they were doing? They were just standing around and at this point I was plugging my ears and hiding behind my hair so I couldn’t really tell what was going on. I thought maybe they were eating the dog but turned out that wasn’t it.

While this may not be a classic for the ages or a textbook example of what is great cinema, this is a helluva an entertaining way to pass the time when you’re stuck at your childhood home during the holidays.

Fans of previous versions of the story may not be crazy about it but I, fan of zombie movies and nightmarer of post-apocalyptic worlds, just loved it. And although Dotsara may never watch it again, I think I’ll just have to make my bf see it with me next.

PS: Click here for NY Times’ fascinating Anatomy of a Scene about the opening sequence of the movie.

*Sorta spoiler to follow*

Public sex in the middle of crowded Chinatown, bike jacking a motorcycle cop, taking on a bar full of big black guys, driving through an indoor mall pursued by cops–don’t stop cuz you’ll die. Don’t think either because then you won’t enjoy the ride.

Crank is Speed except instead of the hero thwarting a bomb on a bus, hitman Chev Chelios (Jason Statham) is trying to prevent his heart from stopping. It’s an interesting premise but I’m not going to even pretend to examine plot lines or character development or bring up its political incorrectness because to do so would take away my enjoyment of this film.

See for yourself, check your sensitivities at the theater door and chalk this movie up to a guilty pleasure like that reality show you don’t even admit to your best friend to watching. Except I don’t feel as guilty about liking this movie.

Yes, I laughed during the scenes when guys got their heads blown off and many innocent people got caught in the crossfire. Watching Jason Statham kick a cab driver out of his cab and yell “Al Qaeda! Al Qaeda!” to a group of people who then attacked the poor driver? Fuh-nny! OK, yes, I’m going to hell.

Crank had many moments like that. Enough isms to offend everyone. And things were just so ridiculously violent that you couldn’t help but guffaw. OMG, so bloody. I could tell it got pretty graphic as I hid behind my hair and listened to the audience “Oof!” and “Ouch!” and I emerged to find a character splattered with brains. I am thankful to the editor of the film for pausing in the one scene where Chev is about to chop some guy’s hand off with a meat cleaver. Nice heads-up for the squeamish.

Anyway, I like Jason Statham, action hero. He has an Everyman quality that bulky guys like Arnold or Vin Diesel lack. Sure, he has that thick English accent but he doesn’t talk all that much and he’s hot in a seething kind of way. Also, Amy Smart’s one-dimensional character and her circumstances are a funny take on the typical girl an action hero has to drag around. I’ll leave it at that.

This film is great for mindless instant gratification, when you just want to go to the movies and not think about the environment or learn to see your world differently. Great for a summer night out with friends or, groan, a date movie. Then afterwards go to your local dive bar to drink some beer and throw some darts, just don’t discuss the movie.

Walk actors in the roles of rock ‘n’ roll pioneers Elvis Presley, Roy Orbison, and Jerry Lee Lewis and Waylon Jennings join Joaquin Phoenix (far left, as Cash) at Sun Studio.

Truth be told, I don’t know much about Johnny Cash and I actually wanted to see Walk the Line more for the “Oscar-worthy” performances of Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon. Yes, initially, buzz about the movie peaked my interest more than the man whose life it was about. I heard how Cash’s daughter, Roseanne, walked out of a screening five times (yeah, drama queen) because she disagreed with the movie’s portrayal of her mother, Johnny’s first wife. And I heard how Joaquin checked himself into rehab because portraying a drug addict made him realize that he never wants to go down that road.

But in the end, when it came down to it, I really enjoyed this movie and walked out of the theater with a genuine respect for the man in black and his music.

Yes, the movie was almost three hours long, three hours that seem longer because of the huge span of time the story covers. But at the same time, it jumped from landmark moment to landmark moment in its effort to cover everything in the three-decade-plus period: childhood tragedy to first marriage to period of success and debauchery to falling in love with another woman to drug addiction to rehab…and so forth.

There were lulls but it didn’t drone on, and it helped that Joaquin and Reese have compelling screen presence. Well, they did for me. Can’t speak for the guy sitting next to me who fell asleep a quarter of the movie in.

And the stars sang every note in the movie impressively, both displaying such stage charisma as well–Reese with her scrappy humor and Joaquin with Cash-like, “guitar-as-gun-toting” moves.

Some of the highlights were when Cash went on tour with June Carter, Jerry Lee Lewis and even Elvis Presley. (Presley is apparently the rat bastard who turned Cash onto drugs.) Also, watching the depiction of Johnny’s famous 1968 concert at Folsom Prison, where his journey comes back around full circle, was electric.

To put it plainly,Walk the Line wasn’t as epically boring as Ray but it wasn’t as good as What’s Love Got to Do With It.

For those into ratings, Rottentomatoes.com gave it a So Fresh 81% out of 100.