Principal Cast Brad Pitt -- Gerry Lane Mireille Enos -- Karin Lane Daniella Kertesz -- Segen James Badge Dale -- Captain Speke Ludi Boeken -- Jurgen Warmbrunn Matthew Fox -- Parajumper Ratings Ratings are based on Rick's four star system. One star - the commercials are more entertaining than the viewing. Two stars - watch if you have nothing better to do. Three stars - good solid entertainment. Four stars - you never dreamed viewing could be this good.

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I enjoyed World War Z a lot more than I expected. With four writers on board, two of them very good, the movie is a roughly equal mix of smart and stupid. The hero duct taping a thick magazine around his right arm to protect it from getting bitten is smart, and a reflection of the well known law of physics that there are very few problems that cannot be solved by a judicious application of duct tape. The hero not telling the people back at the UN that he has an idea for how to solve the zombie problem is unbelievably stupid.

How much you enjoy a movie has a lot to do with your expectations. I give Man of Steel and World War Z each three stars, but because I had much higher expectations for Man of Steel, I did not enjoy it nearly as much. On the other hand, a friend down at the local comics shop, Mountain Empire Comics, thought Man of Steel was the best superhero movie ever. I gather it was mainly a matter of how many skyscrapers were destroyed.

Like the script, the characters in World War Z are a mix of smart and stupid, but that's ok, because people really are like that. The Brad Pitt character is convincingly smart, but the people in Israel singing at the top of their lungs, even though they know zombies are attracted to sound, are also believable.

I liked the fact that, in World War Z, not everything that is foreshadowed comes to pass.

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Rick Norwood is a mathematician and writer whose small press publishing house, Manuscript Press, has published books by Hal Clement, R.A. Lafferty, and Hal Foster. He is also the editor of Comics Revue Monthly, which publishes such classic comic strips as Flash Gordon, Sky Masters, Modesty Blaise, Tarzan, Odd Bodkins, Casey Ruggles, The Phantom, Gasoline Alley, Krazy Kat, Alley Oop, Little Orphan Annie, Barnaby, Buz Sawyer, and Steve Canyon. Visit his web site at comicsrevue.com.