Tag: Movies

My rating of Resident Evil: Afterlife: 3.5/5
Directed by: Paul WS Anderson
Cast: Milla Jovovich, Ali Larter, Shawn Roberts, Wentworth Miller, Boris Kodjoe
Studio: Sony Pictures

I cannot recall any movie trailer in recent history that got me as vexed as the one for Resident Evil: Afterlife did. Let’s all watch the trailer first before I explain why. Better still, watch a literal interpretation of the Resident Evil: Afterlife trailer. (I promise it’s going to be unlike any trailer you’ve ever seen.)

The trailer made a good first impression on me since it uses The Outsider by A Perfect Circle as its soundtrack – a track that I can keep on loop the whole day on iTunes and yet not feel the urge to hit the skip button. But then, the trailer shows this:

Resident Evil: Afterlife is the first film after Avatar to be filmed using the same Fusion 3D camera system created by James Cameron, but saying that front-and-centre in the trailer seemed to be a lame way of invoking his name in the hopes of pulling people in. After all, if, say, Uwe Boll got his hands on a camera previously-owned by Alfred Hitchcock at an auction then that doesn’t necessarily mean that Boll(ock)’s next movie will be ‘pure gold’ instead of merely ‘comedy gold’ (in a bad way).

(I realize this joke will be lost on readers who don’t know how terrible Uwe Boll is. Let’s just say that it would be an understatement if he’s called the world’s worst filmmaker.)

Moving on, I expected to be disappointed by the performance of zombie actors in this movie due to a scene in the trailer where Milla Jovovich jumps off a building. There are many scenes where Ms Jovovich jumps of a building in this movie, so I have provided an image for clarification.

Just look at that zombie. Look, I do understand that zombies aren’t supposed to be intelligent as they are essentially re-animated corpses. Still, that zombie stepping straight onto the ledge far away from food, i.e., Ms Jovovich actually is an unpardonable level of stupidity. All that the zombie had to do is head straight for the food, rather than take a course slightly off-target while not even looking at the food, i.e., Ms Jovovich.

The villain of the movie – Albert Wesker, played by Shawn Roberts (I initially thought the role was played by a now-fat Val Kilmer) – prefers to sit wearing sunglasses in a blindingly white room, as is the taste of villains when it comes to mood lighting in most Hollywood films.

Inexplicably, the villain then proceeds to take of his sunglasses and throws them directly towards the camera the James Cameron / Vince Pace Fusion Camera System (also known, as the trailer tells us, as “the world’s most advanced 3D technology “).

After having watched the movie, I can confirm to y’all that this is not criticism being taken out of context, but there really was no reason for the villain to throw his sunglasses at the camera at that point in the plot. Unless, that is, the villain was aware that he was being filmed with The World’s Most Advanced 3D Technology™ – in which case he would have realized it would make for a spectacular-yet-pointless effect when viewed with 3D glasses.

Lest you think I’m out to molest a movie based on nothing other than it’s trailer, let me assure you that I have watched it and thoroughly enjoyed the experience. Avatar‘s 3D jiggery-pokery was rooted in magnificent vistas, while Paul WS Anderson uses it creatively throughout RE:A to give a perception of depth – blades of grass near a landing strip, stones on a beach, a keyboard on desk. You must watch this in movie in 3D if you have to since this is real 3D – not a shitty post-production conversion as is the wont of many ‘3D’ movies these days – and it’s 3D done well, in enclosed environments.

Don’t go in expecting a cerebral flick; this is a zombie genre film after all. I promise you won’t be disappointed – not even by the ham-acting of the zombies.

From the grandiose ending of this movie (stick around for a while after the credits roll to see Jill Valentine again), it can be inferred Umbrella Corporation does not seem to be running out the backing of its shareholders any time soon, despite the fact that it’s a postapocalyptic world and all its shareholders are probably zombies. Since it seems Umbrella Corp has limitless finances, expect many more Resident Evil films in the future.

Mrs Paul Anderson isn’t going to be out of a job any time by any estimates.

My rating of Predators: 3 / 5
Directed by: Nimród Antal
Cast: Adrien Brody, Topher Grace, Alice Braga, Danny Trejo, Laurence Fishburne
Studio: 20th Century Fox

While the original Predator film starring Arnold Schwarzenegger is an epic, the same cannot be said about the terrible sequel and the subsequent clusterfuck of Alien vs Predator sequels that followed. So when I heard that Nimród Antal, the Hungarian director behind the 2007 horror film Vacancy, was going to direct this new sequel Predators, I expected the end-result to be better, at the very least, than the AvP series. (Vacancy is an under-rated thriller; the reason that I liked it is because it’s rare for a horror film these days to not go down the gore route and instead play on primal fears – the unheard and the unseen – throughout the movie. The only certifiably lame element of the movie is the setup made possible by ‘no cellphone coverage’.)

By the way, did you know that JCVD was supposed to be cast as the Predator in the original? He can knock out a rattlesnake with a single punch. What an awesome guy.

Predators is what Avatar would be on opposite day – big alien monsters kidnapping human beings, bringing them to their own planet…and then kicking the shit out of them. (There’s a sequence towards the being where the characters are chased by a multi-fanged warthog-like creature that looks very similar to a scene in Avatar.) What redeems the movie – as opposed to previous attempts such as AvP – is that the ensemble cast of human misfits parachuted into the movie (literally) share a team dynamic that doesn’t appear fake.

The climax pays homage to the original Predator – in the setting at night in the jungle, and in warfare tactics such as use of mud and fire to confuse the infra-red vision of Predators. For the first time, we also find evidence of rivalry among various Predator clans (identified in the movie as ‘Classic’, ‘Tracker’, ‘Falconer’, and ‘Berserker’) that results in a mano-a-mano showdown between two Predators.

John Debney pulls out a few tricks in the soundtrack, using instruments such as Tibetan long horns and ethnic percussion instruments to create deep, rumbling bass-filled exotic sounds that lend an other-worldly feel to environment. (Sadly, the full impact of this was ruined by the poor sound system that DT Star Cinemas Vasant Kunj has, which feel more like a cheap 2.0 channel desktop computer speaker rather than Dolby Surround. To add to my woes, the film projection was out-of-focus in the theatre and DT Star employees didn’t bother then I complained.)

If anything, what makes me give this movie a low(er) rating is that it feels a tad too short. Granted that you can’t do much with a simplistic premise, Nimród Antal salvages the franchise in a way that precious few could have achieved.