Weekend Double Feature: Danny Boyle Films

Welcome to the Fancast Weekend Double Feature! Free movies, free fun, and you’ve got the best seat in the house - your house. Sit back, relax and take in some truly killer films.

This week, we’re celebrating the films of Danny Boyle, in honor of the release of his latest work Slumdog Millionaire, which you definitely need to see if you get the chance. If you’re waffling, read this interview with him and see if his enthusiasm for the project doesn’t rub off on you a bit.

Boyle is the man who gave us movies as diverse as Shallow Grave, Trainspotting, The Beach, Millions and Sunshine, which goes to show that when Boyle sets out to make a film, it’s going to be different from anything he’s done before. The two movies we’re presenting are no exceptions: the romantic crime caper adventure A Life Less Ordinary, starring Cameron Diaz and Ewan McGregor; and his reinvention of the zombie movie with 28 Days Later, starring Cillian Murphy and Brendan Gleeson.

But first, you can check out the hottest Coming Attractions making their way to a theater near you!

NOW PLAYING:

A Life Less Ordinary

In the time after she made her first jaw-dropping splash in 1994’s The Mask and before her make-you-famous crusty-haired role in 1998’s There’s Something About Mary, Cameron Diaz joined Boyle and his Trainspotting crew to make this crazy and certainly extraordinary fantasy dark-comic romance. The premise is thus: Holly Hunter and Delroy Lindo are O’Reilly and Jackson, two angels charged with making the unlikely pair of spoiled rich Celine (Diaz) and poor Robert (Ewan McGregor), the janitor at her father’s (Ian Holm) company. The time-honored movie tradition of putting two attractive strangers into life-threatening jeopardy to force them to form a bond is their plan, which is aided by the fact that Robert’s desperation after being fired, dumped and evicted leads him to kidnap Celine for ransom. When the two go on the lam with their plan to split that ransom, the angels get themselves hired on as bounty hunters to continually put them in the kind of danger that will force those bandits together for good. Or at least long enough to make God happy.

******

28 Days Later

Imagine waking up from a month-long coma after taking a nasty spill on your bicycle, only to find that you are alone in the hospital. Alone on your street. Alone in your entire city. That’s what happens to Jim (Cillian Murphy), and that’s only the beginning of his nightmare. When he finally meets other human beings, Frank (Brendan Gleeson) and Selena (Naomie Harris), their struggle to figure out how to carry on in the wasteland that Britain has become takes them to dark and frightening places.

Before he was the Scarecrow in Batman Begins, Cillian Murphy suffered through Boyle’s new-school zombie apocalypse, which reinvigorated the genre with his depiction of fast and strong creatures that were technically still alive rather than the slow-moving shambling undead of George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead (which is also free in its entirety on Fancast, by the way). Romero himself says he got the idea for creating zombies from the Richard Matheson novel I Am Legend, which is why there’s an eerie similarity between Will Smith’s recent star turn and Boyle’s terrifying and disturbing work that preceded it. Watch this movie and see if you don’t find yourself imagining what you would do in Jim’s place.

MORE MOVIES:

See what’s on tap in theaters this weekend nationwide and in selected cities - including Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire. Check out this new interview with Boyle telling you all you need to know about his inspiration for the film and his philosophy on movies in general.

To purchase tickets, visit Fandango.

And for more free movies on Fancast, click here.