Monster Hunter

Just a couple of video game characters come to life.

(2020) Horror Action (Screen Gems) Milla Jovovich, Tony Jaa, Ron Perlman, Tip “T.I.” Harris, Diego Boneta, Meagan Good, Josh Helman, Jin Au-Yeung, Hirona Yamazaki, Jannik Schümann, Nanda Costa, Nic Rasenti, Clyde Berning, Paul Hampshire, Schelaine Bennett, Bart Fouche, Pope Jerrod, Aaron Beelner, Onur Besen, Adrian Muñoz. Directed by Paul W.S. Anderson

Video games are video games and movies are movies, and these are two worlds that have a very hard time co-existing. Video games based on movies tend to be awful, and movies based on video games tend to be the same. That’s because movies demand attention, patience and passivity, whereas video games demand participation, interaction and hand-eye co-ordination. The are meant for completely different audiences and require completely different disciplines to appreciate. Successful crossovers are rare indeed.

Which makes Anderson something of a national treasure because he has shown with the Resident Evil franchise that he can make entertaining movies out of a beloved game franchise. Capcom, the makers of the Resident Evil game, can be excused for turning to him to bring their second-most popular franchise to the big screen.

Lt. Natalie Artemis (Jovovich) leads the elite Alpha Team of U.S. Army Rangers into the desert to search for the slightly-less elite Bravo Team which has mysteriously disappeared. Quicker than you can say “plot device,” a mysterious portal (accompanied by an impressive CGI lightning storm) somehow transports the team into a parallel world, one inhabited by strange, vicious – and hungry – monsters. As they are attacked by the horned and deadly Black Diablos, they quickly realize that their arsenal isn’t nearly enough to take down the giant creatures and as they run for the comparative safety of the rocks, they discover to their horror that the safety is an illusion as the rocks are inhabited by giant spider-like things. The team is decimated, leaving only Artemis alive and that only because she is rescued by the Hunter (Jaa), whom we first met in the pre-credits sequence that is perhaps the most impressive moment in the film.

The two form an uneasy alliance, trying to survive in a world for which the word “hostile” doesn’t even begin to describe. They are eventually picked up by a sand galleon, a kind of floating pirate ship captained by the Admiral (Perlman) who delivers a fair amount of exposition, and explains that both their worlds are in danger and they must head to the Dark Tower in Mordor…no, that’s not quite right. But it’s a dark tower nevertheless.

This is the kind of role that is right in the wheelhouse for Jovovich and she dutifully knocks it out of the park. Her chemistry with Jaa is surprisingly strong, considering that the two characters speak different languages. I would have wished that Jaa got more opportunities to show off his martial arts skills, which are considerable, but he makes the most of the opportunities he does get.

Perlman is always a welcome sight in any film, even if he is wearing a giggle-inducing wig that they probably had to pay him a bundle to wear with a straight face. Fortunately, it is the monsters that are the stars here. Fans of the game will recognize them and we get a good idea of their scale here throughout. We get a few more in the third act of the film, including the Meowscular Chef (who is, as advertised, absolutely ripped) but the filmmakers have the luxury of several hundred to choose from through the seven (and counting) main games and the plethora of spin-offs.

Do you need to know something about the franchise to enjoy the movie? That is always the question in video game adaptations. Like most adaptations, fans will find it easier to understand than non-fans, and in this case, I think it’s almost imperative you have at least a general knowledge of the game to follow the plot.  Fans, though, might find it a bit too simplistic for their tastes; it is, after all, like starting at the beginning of the first game for the first time. That may not be of interest to gamers in general.

Don’t get me wrong; you don’t have to be a fan of the game to enjoy the ride here. The monsters are as I said incredible, Jovovich and Jaa make a great team and if you can get past the mid-movie exposition dump that helps catch you up (if you know nothing about the game) but unfortunately causes the movie to come to a screeching halt, you should be pretty much okay. This isn’t horror that is essential, nor is it one of the better cinematic adaptations of a video game out there, but it is nonetheless a decent enough one and worth a look if you’re looking for a bit of fun, visceral and essentially mindless entertainment.

REASONS TO SEE: The monsters are mega-impressive.
REASONS TO AVOID: A muddled plot that isn’t easy to follow without some knowledge of the game.
FAMILY VALUES: There is plenty of violence, creature-induced terror and some profanity.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: This is the seventh movie based on a video game that Jovovich has appeared in, six of them with her husband Paul W.S. Anderson involved as writer and/or director.
BEYOND THE THEATERS: Amazon, AMC On Demand, AppleTV, DirecTV, Google Play, Microsoft, Spectrum, Starz, Vudu, YouTube
CRITICAL MASS: As of 10/30/2021: Rotten Tomatoes: 45% positive reviews; Metacritic: 47/100.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: Pitch Black
FINAL RATING: 6.5/10
NEXT: Six Days of Darkness Concludes with a Classic!

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The Rookies (Su Ren Te Gong)

Toto, we’re not in Racoon City anymore.

(2019) Action Comedy (Shout!) Talu Wang, Sandrine Pinna, Milla Jovovich, David Lee McInnis, Meitong Liu, Timmy Xu, Suet Lam, Kwok-Kwan Chan, Zhan Xiao, Nuo Lu, Kathy Chow, Paul Allica, Bernadett Ostorhazi, David Rayden, Mekael Turner, Kyle Paul, Pierre Bourdaud, Barret Coates, Temur Mahrnisavilli, Isaac Fernandez, Franz Rugamer, Bjorn Freiberg, Timea Saghy. Directed by Alan Yuen

 

You’ve probably seen this one before; a billionaire decides to unleash a world-ending catastrophe being opposed by a dedicated spy of undeniable physical skills. Then again, saving the world isn’t what it used to be.

In this hot mess by veteran Hong Kong action director Alan Yuen, social media extreme sports star Zhao Feng (Wang) literally drops in on a meeting of criminal gangs who are delivering the gas to the billionaire in exchange for the (wait for it…you guessed it…(wait for it)…Holy Grail. Indiana Jones would be rolling in his grave if he had one. Graham Chapman certainly is.

Feng is rescued from the gun-toting baddies by Bruce (Jovovich), a stone-faced agent for the Order of the Phantom Knighthood (I’m not making this up) and who now recruits Feng into the Order to help them steal the Grail from its current resting place in the collection of a Hungarian squidillionaire and keep it safe while protecting the world from the crazed Iron Fist (McInnis) who frequently talks to his dead wife’s eyeball, which he keeps preserved in a jar. Doesn’t everybody?

Feng is joined in his quest by a ragtag team of other novices; Miao Yan (Pinna), a cop with anger management issues, Ding Shan (Xu), a somewhat eccentric genius and crackpot inventor, and LV (Liu), an unemployed doctor who worships Ding and cheerfully tests his dangerous inventions. Feng’s own exaggerated ego may come back to haunt the team as they race against time and the odds to save the planet. Can these rookies succeed where seasoned pros have failed?

Like many Hong Kong action films dating back to the 80s and 90s, there is an absurdist streak that is rampant in the film, something that Hong Kong audiences tend to accept a bit better than their American counterparts. However, Yuen takes it to new heights (or depths) in this case with sight gags that fall flat and quips that lose something in translation. And speaking of translation, the distributors elected to dub this rather than subtitle it which is not always a good idea. Unfortunately, some of the signs and titles go untranslated which is frustrating to those who don’t read Mandarin, and we get the sense that the translation may not be all its cracked up to be.

But most folks watch these sorts of films for the action sequences and those are in general right on the money. Feng may be an insufferable boob whose face you may want to punch ten minutes into the movie, but Wang (or his stunt double) is a pretty able action star which does take some of the sting out. Jovovoich, ever the consummate pro, does what she can here until her character is sidelined way too early in the movie and she is more or less out of the picture from then on.

The CGI tends to be pretty weak here, but from what I can tell Chinese audiences tend to be a lot less discriminating in that regard, so take that for what it’s worth. There is some entertainment value here, but American big-budget action fans are likely to find this primitive, dumb and unsatisfying, but those who have already embraced Hong Kong action films for the delights that they are may find this a worthwhile investment of their time.

REASONS TO SEE: Some nifty action sequences.
REASONS TO AVOID: The lowbrow humor wears on you as the film goes along.
FAMILY VALUES: There is plenty of profanity, sexuality and nudity, adult themes and drug use.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: The movie was released in China in 2019, but did mediocre business which may account for it not getting a Stateside release until now.
BEYOND THE THEATERS: Amazon, Fandango Now, Google Play, Redbox, Vudu, YouTube
CRITICAL MASS: As of 4/25/2021: Rotten Tomatoes: 23% positive reviews; Metacritic: No score yet.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: My Spy
FINAL RATING: 6/10
NEXT: Slalom

Shock and Awe

You can tell they’re journalists by their rumpled clothes.

(2017) True Life Drama (Vertical) Woody Harrelson, James Marsden, Rob Reiner, Tommy Lee Jones, Jessica Biel, Milla Jovovich, Richard Schiff, Luke Tennie, Terence Rosemore, Margo Moorer, Michael Harding, Kate Butler, Luke White, Gabe White, Bowen Hoover, Caroline Fourmy, Teri Wyble, Al Sapienza, Steve Coulter, Gretchen Koerner. Directed by Rob Reiner

 

We live in a world where the press is often vilified for having an anti-American agenda – by the President. We live in a world where good journalism is often – if you’ll excuse the expression – trumped by potential profit. We also live in a world where we have been at war in Afghanistan and Iraq for nearly 20 years, the longest period we have ever been in a sustained conflict.

It seemed like a good idea at the time, though. America had just endured the horror of 9/11 and the people were eager to make someone pay. Afghanistan was a good candidate since they had given bin-Laden and Al Qaeda shelter, but then the rumors that George Bush, Dick Cheyney and Donald Rumsfeld were planning on invading Iraq as well took a lot of people by surprise. “Oh, but Weapons of Mass Destruction,” said the White House and everyone believed it, even though there was little or no evidence that they existed.

Not everyone believed; reporters for the Washington bureau of the Knight-Ridder newspaper chain (for whom I once toiled although by 2001 I had been gone for five years) Warren Strobel (Marsden) and Jonathan Landay (Harrelson) were mystified at the media’s simple acceptance of the government’s claims without even basic fact checking, and began to dive deeper into those claims. What they found was disturbing to say the least, but nobody wanted to hear it; many of the papers in the Knight-Ridder chain refused to print the articles the men wrote, preferring to accept New York Times reporter Judith Miller and her pro-government assertions, for which she and the Times would later apologize – and which effectively ended Miller’s career as a respected journalist.

Clearly the film takes its cues from All the President’s Men, certainly the high end of crusading journalist movies. Reiner, who has made his share of politically charged movies (A Few Good Men and LBJ among them) doesn’t really instill the film with a lot of passion; perhaps it’s that he had to pull double duty as an actor when Alec Baldwin pulled out of the film literally a day before shooting started (it was a scheduling thing) but the movie is curiously low-energy.

Perhaps part of the film’s problem is that despite an excellent cast and a story that deserves to be told, it didn’t end well. The war, as we all know, happened and continues to happen to this day; thousands of American lives lost, literally more than a million Iraqi citizens dead, trillions of dollars spent and, well, here we still are. I suppose Strobel and Landay have the satisfaction of having been right but they weren’t able to convince anybody as we got our first taste of politics as entertainment. The media’s failure here only added to the distrust of the Fourth Estate which of course Trump and his cronies are exploiting and which have helped America into the mess it’s in now. Yes, I’m recommending the film – it’s a cautionary tale worth listening to, and it’s well-acted for the most part – but it’s a downer. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

REASONS TO SEE: The cast is extraordinary. Has a documentary-like feel, in a good way.
REASONS TO AVOID: A little heavy on the journalistic aphorisms.
FAMILY VALUES: There is some profanity and sexual references.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: This is the fourth time Jones and Harrelson have appeared in the same film together, most notably in Natural Born Killers.
BEYOND THE THEATERS: Amazon, AppleTV, Fandango Now, Google Play, Starz, Vudu, YouTube
CRITICAL MASS: As of 11/27/19: Rotten Tomatoes: 29% positive reviews: Metacritic: 47/100.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: Spotlight
FINAL RATING: 7/10
NEXT: Hamlet in the Golden Vale

New Releases for the Week of Aptil 12, 2019

HELLBOY

(Summit) David Harbour, Milla Jovovich, Ian McShane, Sasha Lane, Daniel Dae Kim, Penelope Mitchell, Sophie Okonedo, Thomas Haden Church. Directed by Neil Marshall

Hellboy, the cigar-chomping half-demon entity and operative for the Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense, must go up against Nimue, a resurrected sorceress with a grudge. She seeks to avenge a past betrayal; he seeks to stop her without bringing about the end of days.

See the trailer, video featurettes, clips, interviews and B-roll video here
For more on the movie this is the website
Genre: Action/Adventure
Now Playing: Wide Release
Rating: R (for strong bloody violence and gore throughout, and language)

After

(Aviron) Josephine Langford, Hero Fiennes Tiffin, Selma Blair, Jennifer Beals. Based on the Anna Todd bestseller, After follows the dutiful, lawyer and well-behaved Tessa as she enters her first semester of college. Unusual for her age in that she has a clear idea of who she is and what her goals are in life, she meets a brooding, handsome young rebel who throws her carefully planned life and future into absolute chaos.

See the trailer, clips, interviews and B-roll video here
For more on the movie this is the website  
Genre: Romance
Now Playing: Wide Release
Rating: PG-13 (for sexual content and college partying)

Little

(Universal) Regina Hall, Issa Rae, Marsai Martin, Tone Bell. A young woman feels the stresses of adult life getting to her to the point she can’t stand it anymore. She longs to relive her carefree childhood days and this being the movies, it comes to pass. Think of this as the anti-Big.

See the trailer, video featurettes and a clip here
For more on the movie this is the website  
Genre: Comedy
Now Playing: Wide Release
Rating: PG=13 (for some suggestive content)

Master Z: Ip Man Legacy

(Well Go USA) Jin Zhang, Dave Bautista, Michelle Yeoh, Tony Jaa. After suffering defeat at the hands of Ip Man in a martial arts battle, Cheung Tin Chi turns his back on fighting to raise his young son and run a small store. However, he’s reluctantly drawn back when the hotheaded brother of a gang leader has a run-in with him.

See the trailer here
For more on the movie this is the website  
Genre: Martial Arts
Now Playing: Regal Waterford Lakes
Rating: NR

Mia and the White Lion

(Ledafilms) Daniah de Villiers, Mėlanie Laurent, Langley Kirkwood, Ryan McLennan. 10-year-old Mia’s life is turned upside down when her family decides to move from London to manage a lion farm in South Africa. Mia is heartbroken to leave everything she knows but develops a close friendship with a rare white lion cub. As the cub grows to full maturity, Mia uncovers a family secret. Distraught, she decides to run away with her white lion on a desperate journey to find somewhere her friend can live in peace and freedom.

See the trailer here
For more on the movie this is the website  
Genre: Family
Now Playing: AMC Altamonte Mall, Cobb Plaza Cinema, Regal Oviedo Marketplace, Regal Pointe Orlando, Regal Waterford Lakes, Rialto Spanish Springs Square
Rating: PG (for thematic elements, peril and some language)

Missing Link

(Annapurna/United Artists) Starring the voices of Hugh Jackman, Zach Galifianakis, Zoe Saldana, Emma Thompson. The latest from the inventive animation house Laika, an anthropological wonder who lives in the Pacific Northwest longs to find others of his kind in the fabled valley of Shangri-La and recruits a famous adventurer to take him there.

See the trailer, clips, interviews, a video featurette and B-roll video here
For more on the movie this is the website  
Genre: Animated Feature
Now Playing: Wide Release
Rating: PG (for action/peril and some mild rude humor)

ALSO OPENING IN ORLANDO/DAYTONA:

Acres & Acres
American Warfighter
Chitralahari
Diane
Los Domirriqueños 2
Madhura Raja
Mary Magdalene
Noah: Sight and Sound

ALSO OPENING IN MIAMI/FT. LAUDERDALE:

Chitralahari
Diane
Ferrante Fever
Los Domirriqueños 2
Madhura Raja
Manje Bistre 2
Mary Magdalene
Noah: Sight and Sound
Penguin Highway
Sherdil
The Sower

ALSO OPENING IN TAMPA/ST. PETERSBURG:

A Dark Place
Chitralahari
Diane
Gangs of Madras
Kavacha
Los Domirriqueños 2
Madhura Raja
Noah: Sight and Sound

ALSO OPENING IN JACKSONVILLE/ST. AUGUSTINE:

Chitralahari
Madhura Raja
Noah: Sight and Sound
Transit

SCHEDULED FOR REVIEW:

Hellboy
Master Z: The Ip Man Legacy

FILM FESTIVALS TAKING PLACE IN FLORIDA:

Florida Film Festival, Maitland/Winter Park FL
Sarasota Film Festival, Sarasota FL

See Know Evil

New York attitude personified.

(2018) Documentary (Made to Measure) Davide Sorrenti, Milla Jovovich, Jamie King, Francesa Sorrenti, Chris Brenner, Richard Paradiscio, Mario Sorrenti, Alex Burns, Long Nguyen, David Lipman, Vanina Sorrenti, Justin Salguero, Mutale Kanyanta, Lola Schnabel, Anthony Ray, Steve Sutton, Shaun Regreto, Havana Laffitte, Danielle Zainich, Jade Barreau, Victoria Bartlett.  Directed by Charlie Curran

Some may remember the “heroin chic” fashion photography of the 90s. The ones where Kate Moss, Jamie King and other painfully thin looking models were made to look sunken-eyed and despondent, often photographed in grimy, dingy places that could well double as shooting galleries, often with vacant stares and other facial expressions associated with heroin use.

One photographer who was known for pioneering this style was Davide Sorrenti. A street-tough New York City kid (by way of Italy where he was born), he ran with the SKE crew tagging, smoking joints and skateboarding. While he took great pains to look gangsta-tough, his image was often sabotaged by his sweet nature. Like his older brother Mario, he discovered photography was something he had a talent for as well as a love for.

Although he would eventually make a living as a fashion photographer, he himself preferred a documentary-style realism that would inform his style in his chosen vocation. Starting out taking candid pictures of his crew, he moved on to taking pictures of models and the pretty girls he seemed to attract like moths to a flame.

In fact, many of his friends from that era characterize him as a shining personality whose charm endeared him to nearly everyone he met but he had a secret; he had been born with beta thalassemia, a blood disease that is terminal. He wasn’t expected to make it out of infancy but he beat the odds and grew up to be a young man. In doing so, he went through his life knowing that his time was more limited than others and that what he wanted to do with his life he needed to do immediately. It gave him a joie de vivre that was at once attractive and dangerous.
His mother blames King, his girlfriend at the time, for his eventual heroin addiction. Heroin became an “in” drug largely due to the grunge movement in music but also from edgy and dark independent films like Trainspotting and My Own Private Idaho. Ad campaigns for brands like Calvin Klein and magazines like Ray Gun and Interview further seemed to glamorize the drug.

Davide eventually died at age 20 although not from a drug overdose – renal failure was the culprit. While autopsy results were unclear as to the role both his disease and his drug use played in his death, because he was such a high profile member of the style he was rightly or wrongly the poster child for the backlash against it. President Bill Clinton at the time spoke out against it and the fashion industry as a whole turned their backs on the style and went back to using more traditional models and photographic styles in promoting fashion once again.

Curran’s documentary doesn’t pull any punches; it doesn’t shy away from the drug use aspect of his life nor does it excuse it. While much of the focus is on Sorrenti’s fight against his disease and the toll it took on the young boy, it also celebrates his courage in overcoming it to a degree. There seems to be two schools of thought from those who knew him; that his success came in spite of his illness, and those who believed that his success came because of it. That Sorrenti went to bed every night hooked up to a transfuser in order to survive day to day tells you the kind of life he led. The movie is anything but hagiographic though – Davide is depicted as occasionally being grumpy or out of sorts and who an blame him.

The problem with the movie is it’s devotion to a 90’s-like style, with random clips and images bombarding the screen in between home movies of Davide and talking head interviews of those who knew him or of him. The practice becomes annoying and then irritating as it is used constantly throughout the movie. It detracts from the story unfolding in front of you and seems to contradict the anti-drug message that his mom Francesca seems to be trying to send.

Davide had a lot of swagger – he had to in order to get where he did – which might be off-putting to some. He also had a whole lot of New York street kid in him from the white rap fashion to the antipathy for authority. His life was all too short and was always intended to be but perhaps the knowledge of his mortality helped him blaze all the brighter. While rightly or wrongly his contributions to heroin chic have made him something of a controversial figure, if you look at the images carefully as a whole he really seemed to be more interested in capturing what was real rather than what was manufactured. It wasn’t always pretty but at least it had the virtue of being honest.

REASONS TO GO: The portrait of Sorrenti is well-balanced.
REASONS TO STAY: The use of random images is overdone and annoying.
FAMILY VALUES: There is profanity as well as drug references.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT:  The Sorrenti family became known as “the Corleones of fashion photography” because so many of them became important in the industry.
CRITICAL MASS: As of 11/20/18: Rotten Tomatoes: No score yet. Metacritic: No score yet.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: Larger than Life: The Kevyn Aucoin Story
FINAL RATING: 6/10
NEXT: Trust Machine: The Story of Blockchain

New Releases for the Week of January 27, 2017

RESIDENT EVIL: THE FINAL CHAPTER

(Screen Gems) Milla Jovovich, Ali Larter, Iain Glen, Shawn Roberts, Eoin Macken, Fraser James, Ruby Rose, William Levy, Cobalt, Ever Anderson. Directed by Paul W.S. Anderson

Alice has survived years of the Umbrella Corporation’s apocalyptic mutagenic plague. Done being on the defense she is going to take the war to them – to where it all began more than a decade ago. Alice is coming to Raccoon City and the Umbrella Corp’s headquarters and God help you if you’re an executive because she’s not going to forgive and forget.

See the trailer here.
For more on the movie this is the website.
Release Formats: Standard, 3D, IMAX 3D
Genre: Horror Action
Now Playing: Wide Release
Rating: R (for sequences of violence throughout)

A Dog’s Purpose

(Universal) Dennis Quaid, Josh Gad (voice), Peggy Lipton, Britt Robertson. A dog finds meaning through his various reincarnations in this Lasse Hallström adaptation of a beloved bestseller. The movie has come under fire from PETA after TMZ released a video purporting to show a dog being forced into the water when he was clearly not willing to go. That video has since been shown to have been highly edited and contained footage using a CGI dog. PETA is calling for a boycott of the movie; I’m calling for a boycott of PETA by making a point of going to see this more than once.

See the trailer and a featurette here.
For more on the movie this is the website.
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Family
Now Playing: Wide Release
Rating: R (for sexual material, language, nudity and some drug use)

The Eagle Huntress

(Sony Classics) Daisy Ridley (narrator), Aisholpan Nurgaiv, Rys Nurgaiv. A young girl in rural Mongolia strives to do something no other woman has done in 2,000 years – become an Eagle Hunter, a traditionally male role of training and utilizing an eagle to hunt down game, which in the harsh winters of Mongolia can be the difference between survival and starvation. She goes to the annual Golden Eagle festival to take on 70 male hunters in an attempt to prove herself not just for herself but for all Mongolian women desiring to break out of the strictures their male-dominated society has enforced on them.

See the trailer, clips and a featurette here.
For more on the movie this is the website.
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Documentary
Now Playing: Regal Winter Park Village
Rating: NR

Gold

(Weinstein) Matthew McConaughey, Edgar Ramirez, Bryce Dallas Howard, Corey Stoll. A modern day prospector with a touch of gold fever hasn’t had much luck in finding his own mother lode. He searches the forests of Indonesia, certain that the path to wealth and happiness lies in finding a massive gold deposit there. When he finds it, he discovers that keeping his wealth is a lot harder than finding it and that the boardrooms of Wall Street are far more dangerous than the jungles of Indonesia.

See the trailer and a clip here.
For more on the movie this is the website.
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: True Life Drama
Now Playing: Wide Release
Rating: R (for language throughout and some sexuality/nudity)

Resident Evil: Retribution

Go ask Alice.

(2012) Horror Action (Screen Gems) Milla Jovovich, Michelle Rodriguez, Sienna Guillory, Kevin Durand, Shawn Roberts, Colin Salmon, Johann Urb, Boris Kodjoe, Li Bingbing, Aryana Engineer, Robin Kasyanov, Ofilio Portillo, Oded Fehr, Megan Charpentier, Mika Nakashima, Ray Olubowale, Toshio Oki, Takato Yamashito, Ali Larter. Directed by Paul W.S. Anderson

Some fights you can’t run away from. Sooner or later you have to take the fight to your enemy because otherwise you’ll be running until you’re caught and/or killed. Sometimes those fights will cost you more than you know.

After the events of Resident Evil: Afterlife Alice (Jovovich) has been taken prisoner by the evil Umbrella Corporation and is being interrogated by former ally turned enemy (thanks to a parasite buried in her chest) Jill Valentine (Guillory). She escapes with the help of Ada Wong (Bingbing) who is one of the chief operatives of Albert Wesker (Roberts), the evil head of the Umbrella Corporation. However, he is no longer in charge; the computer program Red Queen, activated after the fall of The Hive has taken over and is at war with humanity – and she is winning.

Alice and Ada are in an Umbrella cloning facility where several environments were created to work out different scenarios to T-Virus infection protocols. Wesker sends in a strike team to retrieve Alice and Ada and also Becky (Engineer), a cloned little girl who operated as a daughter to a cloned Alice in a Raccoon City scenario. Make sense? Don’t sweat it.

Anyway the strike team along with Alice and Ada are up against hordes of mutants, Jill Valentine as well as clones of Rain Ocampo (Rodriguez) and Carlos Olivera (Fehr). They will have to fight their way through simulations of Moscow, Tokyo and Raccoon City. The now-fully human Alice will have to rely on her wits and her indomitable will to survive in order to get out of the base alive and once they do, a final battle on the surface awaits in which friend becomes foe, foe becomes friend and the world prepares for a last stand in the most unlikely of places.

The thing that has made this series so spectacular is not just the videogame franchise it’s based on but on Milla Jovovich’s interpretation of Alice. Jovovich, because of her appearances in a lot of sci-fi, horror and action movies, is sometimes underrated as an actress (much like Kate Beckinsale is) but she really has a great deal of screen presence and the focus is entirely on her, which gives the filmmakers smart points. Then again, Anderson is married to her so he probably knows her abilities better than any other.

The movie is like a non-stop chase scene, beginning with the spectacular opening sequence in which Alice’s capture is done in reverse sequence going back to the final moments of Afterlife. It’s imaginative, far more so than one would have expected from a franchise that’s supposed to play to a less-discerning crowd. While the sequence following that opening which consists of cloned Alice, cloned Carlos and Becky playing house is a bit confusing, the rest of the movie takes off at warp speed. Non-stop battles between humans with a seemingly inexhaustible supply of ammo and increasingly grotesque mutants will more than satisfy the entertainment quotient.

The Resident Evil film series has been the only successful franchise (or standalone film for that matter) to capture the nature of the videogame that inspired it. While it doesn’t compare to playing the game and having that interactive element that is missing in a film, it is as close as film is going to come to that element simply because of the frenetic pacing and touches that less attentive directors might miss. One gets a sense that Anderson plays a lot of videogames.

I’m not sure how much farther they can take this franchise. There are after all only so many ways you can go here until it starts to get repetitive and it is absolute death for a franchise such as this to repeat itself – even the Friday the 13^th franchise fell into that trap. They do seem to be leading to a climactic battle and the next movie, scheduled for release on September 12, 2014 may be the climax of the series. If so, they’ll have a fairly high bar set for them in order to make the series go out with a bang, which I sure hope it does rather than the fizzle that it could easily go out with.

WHY RENT THIS: Mindless fun. Jovovich has made the role of Alice iconic in horror films.

WHY RENT SOMETHING ELSE: Kind of been there, done that.

FAMILY VALUES:  Lots and lots and lots of violence. And I mean lots.

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Jovovich is the only actor to appear in every Resident Evil film to date.

NOTABLE HOME VIDEO EXTRAS: Along with outtakes, there’s a nifty interactive database that allows viewers to explore the world of the franchise through bios, video clips and more. There’s also a look at Nakashima, the lead Japanese zombie and a reunion of cast members from previous installments in the series.

BOX OFFICE PERFORMANCE: $240.2M on a $65M production budget.

COMPARISON SHOPPING: Silent Hill

FINAL RATING: 6.5/10

NEXT: Six Days of Darkness 2013 concludes!

The Three Musketeers (2011)

Resident Evil goes to 17th Century France

(2011) Adventure (Summit) Logan Lerman, Milla Jovovich, Matthew Macfadyen, Ray Stevenson, Luke Evans, Mads Mikkelsen, Christoph Waltz, Orlando Bloom, Juno Temple, Gabriella Wilde, Freddie Fox, James Corden, Til Schweiger, Helen George. Directed by Paul W.S. Anderson

Sometimes, when all else fails, you can rely on the classics. Even if all else around you is crap, the classics can always be relied upon to be entertaining. At least that’s the common perception.

It is the 17th century and France is in turmoil. The teenage Louis XIII (Fox) is controlled essentially by the manipulative Cardinal Richelieu (Waltz) and the King’s own Musketeers have been rendered less potent. The three greatest Musketeers – Athos (Macfadyen), Porthos (Stevenson) and Aramis (Evans) are bored and frustrated at sitting on the sideline. Athos is in a particular funk after being betrayed by his lover Milady de Winter (Jovovich) when they had stolen the plans for an airship from Leonardo Da Vinci’s vault in Venice. After retrieving the plans, she’d drugged their wine and handed the plans over to Lord Buckingham (Bloom) of England.

A year has passed since then and a young Gascoigne named D’Artagnan (Lerman), the son of a former Musketeer, has journeyed to Paris to become a Musketeer himself. Along the way he fell afoul of Rochefort (Mikkelsen), captain of the Cardinal’s guard and supposedly the best swordsman in Europe who rather than duel the hot headed youngster just shoots him. His life is spared by Milady, who is also journeying to Paris.

In Paris D’Artagnan affronts all three of the Musketeers, challenging to duels at different times which all three of them unknowingly accept. However, his first duel is interrupted by the arrival of the Cardinal’s guard who wish to arrest the four of them for dueling in the streets. However the four fight alongside, winning the day despite a vast numerical disadvantage. This is witnessed by Constance (Wilde), handmaiden to the Queen (Temple). Despite D’Artagnan’s best efforts at flirting with Constance, he is rebuffed.

The three realize that D’Artagnan is an able ally and meant to be one of them, so they bring him to their home where their manservant Planchet  (Corden) waits on them cheerfully despite the constant complaining. They wind up being summoned to the palace where the King and Queen, impressed by their victory, reward them which infuriates the Cardinal who wanted them punished.

In the meantime, the nefarious Richelieu has hatched a scheme in which love letters in Buckingham’s own hand are planted in the Queen’s boudoir. Milady also steels a diamond necklace given to her as a gift by the King. Richelieu prevails upon the King to throw a ball after the King discovers the letters, and ask the Queen to wear the gift for him. If she doesn’t have them, it will mean the Queen’s having an affair and she would have to be executed and England declared war upon.

It is up to the Musketeers to retrieve the necklace from Buckingham’s own vault and to bring the culprits to justice, but it’s a nearly impossible task. Can the Musketeers avert a catastrophic war that would drag nearly the entire continent into it?

This isn’t your mom and dad’s version of The Three Musketeers (and there have been more than forty of them). For one thing, while it’s been a long time since I read the Alexandre Dumas classic, I’m pretty sure I don’t remember airships in it. Or Gatling guns. Or Matrix-style bullet dodging.

There is much more CGI than this kind of movie really needs to have. I can understand CG attempts to make the sets look more opulent, or more like 17th century France, but Da Vinci-esque airships, hidden vaults and storage rooms? It seems kind of unnecessary to me.

Unnecessary in that this is one of the best adventure tales ever written and despite all the different versions of it, it still stands up today. The best version is the 1948 film with Gene Kelly (of all people!) as D’Artagnan, but my all-time fave is the 1973 version with Michael York as D’Artagnan. It was produced by the Salkinds who would go on to make Superman: The Movie and other classics of 70s cinema.

One of the requirements for a good Three Musketeers movie is not chocolate nougat, but a good D’Artagnan. The successful ones do; even the unsuccessful ones have at least a passable D’Artagnan. This one has the latter. Lerman, who is best known here for Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief (in which I described him as bland) is a bit better here, but he still lacks the charisma D’Artagnan needs. Lerman has got the looks though and the long hair…ladies will and do swoon.

I was particularly impressed by Macfadyen who has been a career supporting actor, but he really shows some impressive screen presence here and with the right role could do some real damage as a lead actor on a franchise film. Let’s hope he gets the chance.

The movie has some nice casting touches (Waltz is terrific as Richelieu although we don’t get to see enough of him – when we do we get a good idea of his devious nature) and a few huh moments (Milla Jovovich seems to be channeling her inner Alice from the Resident Evil franchise which wouldn’t be a bad thing but it is distracting when she’s wearing petticoats). All in all the acting is solid and the CGI is seamless. I’m told the 3D effects are nice in places as well, although of late I’ve become as anti-3D as Roger Ebert.

This is a movie that I really wanted to see succeed. Anderson has proven a fine action director on the Resident Evil films and while I agree that there are always new ways to come at the Dumas source material, this way was too full of anachronisms and logical gaps to really fully capture my heart. However, it is entertaining even if it’s attempts at being grand fall a bit short.

REASONS TO GO: Nice special effects and some fine swordplay. Macfadyen makes a fine Athos.

REASONS TO STAY: Takes a lot of liberties with the story. Doesn’t have the wit of the 1973/1974 versions.

FAMILY VALUES: There is quite a bit of swordplay, a few things blowing up real good and some musket shooting. All in a day’s work for a musketeer.

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Waltz has the same birthday (October 4) as Charlton Heston, who also played Cardinal Richelieu in the 1973/1974 versions of the Dumas classic.

HOME OR THEATER: Very much a big screen epic extravaganza.

FINAL RATING: 6/10

TOMORROW: Conviction

New Releases for the Week of October 21, 2011

THE THREE MUSKETEERS

(Summit) Logan Lerman, Milla Jovovich, Matthew Macfadyen, Ray Stevenson, Luke Evans, Mads Mikkelsen, Gabriella Wilde, Juno Temple, Orlando Bloom, Christoph Waltz. Directed by Paul W.S. Anderson

A hot-headed young man joins forces with three rogue Musketeers to take on the evil Cardinal Richelieu, the sensual assassin Milady DeWinter and Lord Buckingham, prime minister of their sworn enemies Great Britain and prevent a cataclysmic war. There have been screen versions of this Alexandre Dumas classic for decades (my favorite being the Alexander and Ilya Salkind version in the 70s) but this is the first to come out in 3D.

See the trailer, clips and featurettes here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard, 3D

Genre: Adventure

Rating: PG-13 (for sequences of adventure action violence)

Johnny English Reborn

(Universal) Rowan Atkinson, Gillian Anderson, Dominic West, Rosamund Pike. There is a plot afoot to assassinate a world leader and cause global chaos and only one man can stop it – superspy Johnny English. The trouble is that English is nowhere to be found, and once he finally is located, is woefully out of practice. That’s no matter; what Johnny English does requires no skill or practice whatsoever.

See the trailer and promos here.

For more on the movie this is the website

Release formats: Standard

Genre: Spy Spoof

Rating: PG (for mild action violence, rude humor, some language and brief sensuality)

Margin Call

(Roadside Attractions) Zachary Quinto, Kevin Spacey, Jeremy Irons, Paul Bettany. On a single day during the height of the 2008 financial meltdown, the key players at a financial firm cope with the implications of a scandal at their own company that might shutter its doors forever. They will need to wrestle with decisions both moral and ethical that will not only weigh their jobs in the balance but also their very souls.

See the trailer and a clip here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard

Genre: Drama

Rating: R (for language)

The Mighty Macs

(Freestyle Releasing) Carla Gugino, David Boreanaz, Marley Shelton, Ellen Burstyn. In 1971, a small Catholic women’s college caught the imagination of the sports world when a hard-edged head coach and a spunky nun helped mold the team into a national championship run that defied the odds. They would become a team for the ages.

See the trailer here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard

Genre: True Sports Drama

Rating: G

Paranormal Activity 3

(Paramount) Katie Featherston, Sprague Grayden, Lauren Bittner, Chloe Csengery. This is the prequel to the enormously popular found footage horror series. It depicts, in the 80s, how the supernatural forces that beset Katie and Kristi came into their lives as young girls.

See the trailer and clips here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard

Genre: Supernatural Horror

Rating: R (for some violence, language, brief sexuality and drug use)

The Way

(ARC Entertainment) Martin Sheen, Emilio Estevez, Deborah Kara Unger, Yorick van Wangingen. An American doctor travels to the Pyrenees to recover the remains of his estranged son, killed in a storm while making a pilgrimage along the Way of St. James. In tribute to his son and also as a means to understand him better, he decides to complete the journey his son wanted to make. This was directed by Estevez and filmed along the actual Camino de Santiago in France and Spain.

See the trailer and a clip here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard

Genre: Spiritual Drama

Rating: NR

Stone

Milla Jovovich gets steamy with Robert De Niro in hopes it might win her an Oscar.

(2010) Thriller (Overture) Robert De Niro, Edward Norton, Milla Jovovich, Frances Conroy, Rachel Loiselle, Peter Lewis, Sandra Love Aldridge, Enver Gjokaj, Pepper Binkley, Sarab Kamoo, Dave Hendricks, Rory Mallon. Directed by John Curran

Some of us go through life as blunt objects. We’re cudgels, beating people over the head until they realize what we’re trying to get across. Others of us are sharp objects. We’re scalpels, sliding in unnoticed and making changes in the minds of others sometimes without them even knowing it.

Jack Mabrey (De Niro) is a cudgel. He is a parole officer at a Michigan prison, close to retirement and welcoming not having to deal with the lowlifes and scumbags that he is forced to release back into society. Then again, Jack is no saint either; when his wife threatened to leave him some years back, he counter-threatened her by dangling their baby out the window and promising to drop it three stories onto the pavement. Mrs. Mabrey (Conroy) decided to stay, finding solace in religion which Jack seems to accept; he listens to religious programming on the radio.

His last case is to be Gerald Creeson (Norton) who goes by the nickname of Stone. All corn rows and badass talk, Stone wants to be paroled in the worst way. He’s quite a manipulator, not above using his very hot and sexy schoolteacher wife Lucetta (Jovovich) to seduce Jack. And Jack, for all his Christian values and professional ethics, isn’t above being seduced.

The questions become who is playing who in this scenario. How far is Lucetta willing to go to get her husband out of prison? Is Stone aware of what she’s doing or she the one pulling the strings? Is Jack more aware of what’s happening than he lets on?

This is not your typical drama – it’s not a procedural on the parole system, for one. It’s almost Southern gothic despite its Michigan setting and it’s a script that doesn’t assume the people who are watching the movie are drooling idiots. No wonder it bombed at the box office.

In fact, sometimes the movie is a bit too smart for its own good; you’re constantly left wondering who’s doing what to who and what’s really going on and at some point after all that build-up you want an answer to those questions that will be impressive – and when you don’t get one, you kind of feel let down.

You won’t be let down by the acting here. De Niro is a powerful presence and while this isn’t Jake La Motta or Vito Corleone, he imbues Mabry with a kind of brutal gravitas. It’s the kind of work only De Niro can do, and when he is on his game as he is here, you can see why he’s one of the best that ever was.

Norton is also one of the best actors out there and he has an entirely different role, one which shows his versatility. He is white ghetto trash; a rap-listening corn-rowed trickster who gets off on making people dance to his tune. It’s a powerful performance, as different as night and day as De Niro’s but equally as impressive.

What is surprising is Jovovich who isn’t ordinarily thought of as the same caliber of actress as the two male leads but she holds her own. Her character is vivacious, charming, calculating, cunning, sweet, sexy and devious all at once. It’s a marvelous character which makes you look at your local schoolmarm with different eyes.

Where the film falls down is surprisingly on one of its strengths; it’s intelligence. You are given so many scenarios and so many questions that your head can’t really wrap around them all. While repeated viewings might solve this problem, this really isn’t a movie I’d want to see repeatedly. Also, I had trouble with the relationship between Stone and Lucetta; it needed to be spelled out a bit better.

Usually I don’t have an issue with smart films, but you can’t be smart for no other reason than to be smart. There has to be some rhyme and reason and if it isn’t there, you’re going to give your audience a headache. You don’t want your viewers first impulse to be to grab the Excedrin; that’s a bad thing. Still, there are some elements that are gripping and seeing De Niro and Norton at their best is surely worth considering.

WHY RENT THIS: De Niro, Norton and Jovovich all contribute strong performances.

WHY RENT SOMETHING ELSE: Cerebral plot overthinks things. Some of the characterizations don’t ring true.

FAMILY VALUES: There’s quite a bit of sexuality, a little violence and a whole lot of cussing.

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: The filming location for the prison scenes, the Prison of Southern Michigan, was once the largest walled prison in the world.

NOTABLE DVD EXTRAS: None listed.

BOX OFFICE PERFORMANCE: $9.5M on a $22M production budget; the movie was a financial failure.

FINAL RATING: 5/10

TOMORROW: The Cell