In most mysteries, the question of “how” is just as important as the “who.” We’ve all heard the jokes about the game Clue, where Colonel Mustard did “X” with “Y” in the Conservatory (or wherever), and most whodunit denouements only pay lip service to the killer. Instead, they spend an elaborate amount of time painting a portrait of the various events and interventions that lead to the crime in the first place. The “who” is just the icing on a criminal cake loaded with conjecture, coincidence, innuendo, and inconsistencies. Toss in a little dumb luck and the occasional element of entrapment, and the “how” instantly becomes the case. Everything within it ends up leading to identification, never the other way around.

In his book The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, the late author (and controversial journalist) Stieg Larsson explored the mechanics of “how” focusing on a disgraced investigative reporter, an angry young computer hacker, a sordid Swedish family legacy, and a 40 year old missing persons case. Offsetting each facet to focus on smaller points, as well as linking everything together in ways that seem surreal at first, the bestselling novel became the foundation for The Millennium Trilogy (named after the magazine that ‘hero’ Mikael Blomkvist publishes and writes for). Published posthumously, it showed Larsson as a regular rival to such well known mystery mavens as Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, and more recently, Thomas Harris.

There’s a big problem with trying to update The Crazies, George Romero’s anti-government screed from the early ‘70s, and it is not the legacy of the original man behind the lens. The king of the zombie genre, a name horror nerds adore more than a dream date with Vampira, may have created some classics in his day, but this ‘living dead’ retread, complete with similar scary beats, is not one of them. Nor is the core concept all that unwieldy. A town gone homicidally bonkers because of a failed military experiment should be easy fright flick pickings. We’ll even give in to the uninspired choice of ex-Disney demagogue Michael’s son Breck Eisner as our new production guide. While not horribly offensive, his limited oeuvre (Recon, Sahara) suggests someone still untried in the terror arena.

No, the biggest issue facing this otherwise effective little thriller is that someone has “been there/done that” before, and actually did it a whole lot better. That individual would be Danny Boyle, and his masterful non-zombie zombie film, 28 Days Later, is The (New) Crazies without all the middling mucking about. It’s practically the same storyline, except in its defense, the 2002 post-apocalyptic creepshow avoids all the meandering set-up and goes straight for the dread. With the Romero redux, we have to suffer through all the set-up before getting to the “good stuff” - what limited amount of same there is. When Sheriff David Dutton (a decent Timothy Olyphant) is forced to kill the town drunk during a little league game, it sets off a chain of events that sees the entire population of Midwestern nowheresville Ogden Marsh becoming unglued. Soon, fathers are setting their families on fire and morticians are sewing up the eyes and mouths…of the living!

As an idea, it wasn’t very original. Filmmakers had been updating Shakespeare since the Bard’s plays first appeared. Even as far back as their first staged productions, directors and theater companies have been meddling with the Masters’ hollowed words and characters. So when Troma chief Lloyd Kaufman pegged employee James Gunn to update the playwright’s classic tale of star crossed lovers, it wasn’t something wholly novel. Heck, West Side Story had done it in the ‘50s, and it was and still is considered a classic. As a notion, turning Romeo and Juliet into a punk rock pierced body part projection of the Manhattan Independent Film Company’s aesthetic, seemed quite normal. Besides, Kaufman long a proponent of cinema as art, saw the subject as a perfect realization of all his lofty ambitions - and he was right.

Over the previous 25 years, Troma had developed a myopic reputation as a gross-out gore enterprise. Thanks to Kaufman, its spokesman, president, and guiding creative force, the company had grown from the maker of mindless sex farces (The First Turn On, Squeeze Play) and distributor of genre/horror oriented fare (Mother’s Day) to a recognized industry icon. But with 1985’s The Toxic Avenger, Kaufman created a character that instantly connected with everyone, including outsider audiences. Utilizing the still in its infancy home theater marketplace to widen the fanbase, Troma was soon turning out product with provocative names like The Class of Nuke ‘Em High, Troma’s War, and Sgt. Kabukiman, N.Y.P.D. The formula for each film was strategically similar – find an outrageous situation, pile on the blood and female breasts, and deliver a clever combination of old fashioned exploitation and new fangled VCR fodder.

Last time anyone checked, The Bible didn’t state that the “geek” would inherit the Earth. Yet when it comes to comedy’s current cyclical nature, the dork is the new dreamboat, while the good looking loser is the lynchpin for every possible punchline. We have gone from jocks going gross-out to garner a laugh or two to feebs feeling marginalized by a society that embraces their smarts but balks at their bodies. While we are still striving to find a balance between the hotness and the guy/gal with the good personality hook-up, movies have always made the case for love conquering all—or at the very least, conquering romantic comedy expectations.

Such is the case with the innocuous if spry and sunny She’s Out of My League (new on Blu-ray from Paramount). Instead of the wimp washing out here - in this case, a mild mannered airport security worker named Kirk (Jay Baruchel) - he actually gets a chance at the girl - an incredibly sexy party planner named Molly (Alice Eve). What happens next both entertains and aggravates, the storyline so pie in the sky that bakers are getting vertigo. Yet what we eventually learn is that Ms. Maxim will embrace the socially stagnant when she discovers that they have much more heart (and a lot less headaches) to give.

Filmmakers are often praised for staying within a pristine, original aesthetic. Take Alfred Hitchcock, for example. His style was so definitive, so easy to identify and appreciate that he actually helped established the boundaries of the famed French “auteur theory”. Tim Burton is another name that rarely strays from his own unique goof Goth grandeur. Sometimes, directors excel when they leave their specific comfort zone. King of the blockbuster Steven Spielberg got little respect in the industry he helped build until he dropped the eye candy wonder and delved deep in the Holocaust with his pseudo-documentary designed Schindler’s List. But for the most part, today’s cinematic stalwarts are genre hoppers, moving from sci-fi to comedy to kids flicks with an abandon that suggests they’re more interested in working than establishing some explicit creative credentials.

Paul Greengrass is different. The British director, best known for his work on the fabulously successful Bourne films as well as the excellent 9/11 thriller United 93, only knows one approach. Call it “participatory bystander” or a “you are right there” POV, but his handheld camera conceits with their shaky, immersive elements, have been his signature since the beginning. For a while, many considered it to be groundbreaking, a way of combining the old world classicism of Hollywood action with a New Age need to be more interactive and video game savvy. Somewhere in the middle lies what Greengrass does best. But with his latest release, the pointless Iraq War film Green Zone, his visual entertainment earthquake begins to show some cracks. Even worse, the story it tells is so well known by the more learned members of the citizenry that it seems pointless to bring it all up again.