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Enlarge / Bill Murray, Chloë Sevigny, and Adam Driver star in Director Jim Jarmusch's deadpan take on the zombie genre, The Dead Don't Die. (credit: Focus Features)

With The Dead Don't Die, auteur director Jim Jarmusch puts his unique, deadpan stamp on this staple of the horror genre. As one might expect, Jarmusch's vision is more ironically cerebral than your typical zombie fare and a bit less viscerally horrifying—even when the aforementioned dead are chowing down on their victims' viscera. It's not a perfect film, but it's got Tilda Swinton brandishing a katana with deadly accuracy against the undead. What's not to love?

(Some spoilers below.)

Zombies might seem an odd choice of subject matter for this longtime darling of the Cannes Film Festival crowd. Jarmusch's career took off in 1984 with his first major film, Stranger Than Paradise. Shot entirely in black-and-white (a signature of the director's early work), the film won the Caméra D'Or at Cannes that year and established the director as a rising creative force in arthouse cinema.

LOS ANGELES—I have not seen or played enough of Final Fantasy VII Remake to confirm exactly how the game will play out when it launches on PlayStation 4 consoles in March 2020. What I can say so far, at least, is that I'm far from a Final Fantasy or JRPG apologist, and yet 1.5 hours with the game's E3 2019 debut has me absolutely excited.

Really, I'm shocked to admit that. Yet familiar elements, new combat, and incredible polish across the presentation and dialogue have me convinced that I'll be a day-one FFVIIR player, no matter how good, weird, or poor the final game turns out to be. Thus, I'm here to talk about why I feel that way—and what remains to be confirmed or explained about this ambitious, murky, "first in an undetermined series" return to Square Enix's glory days.

Weighing in for a legitimate brawl

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  Once more into the belly of Shinra Corporation. [credit: Square Enix ]

Square Enixr's Monday E3 press conference confirmed a few things about FFVIIR, from the refreshed visuals to the expanded story and its newly recorded, voice-acted dialogue. But first things first: how does it feel to play the darned thing?