but that hasn't been exactly productive. What has been productive is my movie watching. Out of my now dwindling list of 100, I have managed to watch 26 in the first month. Not a bad considering all the crap I had to sit through. My latest slog took me through the wonderful worlds of The Shadow (1994), Resident Evil: Extinction (2007), Resident Evil: Afterlife (2010) and Crazy, Stupid, Love. (2011).The first, I actually watched a few days ago and was hoping to watch The Punisher: War Zone (2008) along with it. That way I'd have a theme via comic-book movies. Unfortunately the friend that actually owns it only has it on blu-ray and shockingly the Blockbuster down the street didn't have it. How can they not have it? Sure Punisher isn't that new and it wasn't that popular but it does have its audience. An audience who no doubt is stupid enough to shell out money to rent it from Blockbuster instead of downloading it on the internet for free. Oh well, at least I'll be spared the pairing of Ray Stevenson and Dominic West (I don't know those names either)
for the time being.The Shadow stars Alec Baldwin who looks rather odd as a younger man. Seeing him today on 30 Rock or only a few years ago in The Departed (2006) he looks distinguished and stern. Back in the mid-nineties he looked like a kid wearing his dad's work suits. The movie was released just as the Batman movies started to suck; the Schumacher years. It was at that time comic-book movies were seen by producers for their moneymaking potential yet they didn't quite know how to handle them. What resulted were films like Blade (1998), The Phantom (1996) and, of course The Shadow.
The Shadow is probably the best of the lot mainly because of its elaborate special effects. Mid-nineties CGI wasn't exactly creme de la creme but director Russell Mulcahy makes it all work to his advantage. Additionally, while the story is as predictable as a weak bladder, I liked the way the film jauntily moved from one cliche to the other with no pretension or attempt at irony. Of course there's a love story and...oh wait we've passed the place where the two are drawn to each other? On to another chase sequence involving the defusing of a bomb via green wire or red? Lock and load; It's that spirited!
I wish I could say the same for the Resident Evil franchise which has been limping to the bank for the past decade. I've noticed I usually give a franchise two movies to wow me. After that I kind of give up on it (See Twilight). Resident Evil was one such franchise. The first one (2002) was okay. It was slightly enjoyable but you could tell it was adapted from a video game in that everything that moved was to be shot at. The second Apocalypse (2004) was absolutely dreadful trying hopelessly to add a complex mythology that makes little sense when you think about it.But lets suppose a killer zombie virus concocted by a seemingly omnipresent corporation is released into the populous. Mind you this corporation has a huge personal army, unlimited funds to build massive underground laboratories with complex security grids, track people with satellites and has access to nuclear weapons. And suppose our hero, Alice is a ultra-hot cyborg/clone/whatever-the-hell (Milla Jovovich) who wants to take this corporation down. Well then you get crap Resident Evil: Extinction.
The film starts with a prologue about how because the T-Virus has infected everyone and
everything, most of the terrain in north America has been replaced with arid desert. Now why do we need to know that? All of the action in this installment takes place on the outskirts of Las Vegas, an area already surrounded by desert. With that in mind, that nugget of information seems unnecessary. Also unnecessary are the meatsacks. I say meatsacks because, lets face it, other than Alice, all other characters are zombie food.Now there are a lot of problems with this movie but the one that pissed me off the most was the inclusion of Mike Epps who provided "comic relief" in Apocalypse and now provides stupidity in Extinction. As with all zombie movies, once you're bitten you're pretty much dead and early on Mike Epps is a dead man. So instead of telling the small band of survivors "hey I'm chopped liver,
pull over, I'll walk from here," he keeps his wound secret until he turns at the most dramatically convenient time. Oh and another thing, our heroine has telekinetic abilities? What...when...explain movie! Repeating the word "T-Virus" doesn't tell me anything.The movie ends with our heroine finding multiple clones of herself and telling the main villain Wesker (Shawn Roberts) she's gunning for him next, which sets up the next movie. You'd think with a title like Afterlife it'd be more alive than what I saw. After a siege on the Corporation's Tokyo branch involving multiple Alices and Wesker the movie trails one of the Alices to Alaska then Los Angeles (neither of which look like deserts to me) as she and a partner look for Arcadia, a place free of infection. On the way they meet a few more meatsacks who have less characterization than the zombies.
I know I'm not the first to ask but which is the
real Alice? Which one are we following? In one early scene, Alice and Wesker crash a plane after Wesker injects her with something to make her human I guess. Okay, then how did she survive the crash? How did Wesker? How did she get to Tokyo then Alaska? How did the other survivors from the last movie make it from Las Vegas to Alaska in a helicopter. How can a two seat twin engine prop plane make it from remote Alaska to Los Angeles? Explain movie! I guess by the fourth installment its best not to ask questions.After watching three movies based on other mediums, I thought it was time to watch something original. Plus with 25 movies under my belt, I figured I would reward myself with something I thought was going to be good. So for my last movie in the slog I watched Crazy, Stupid, Love. (2011).
Thus far Crazy, Stupid Love. is my favorite. While a few moments were contrived, I enjoyed and sympathized with the characters so much that I ignored some of the zanier moments. In fact, I loved them all the more because of how they dealt with the situations. It was a movie where everyone seemed real, no one felt like an absolute villain or a starchy-clean good guy. Like love and life, everything was messy yet fun to watch. And wow, what a cast. In addition to Carrell, there was Julianne Moore, Ryan Gosling, Emma Stone, Kevin Bacon and Marisa Tomei; all in top form. The only time the movie lost me for the cynic that I am was at the end. Steve Carell is a talented actor and good at many things but he can't convince me that his impromptu speech-making is that all encompassing and syrupy sweet.So with 26 down I have 74 to go. Here's a quick list of all the movies I've seen in rough order of preference...
IN MEMORIUM
Crazy, Stupid, Love. (2011)
Bunraku (2011)
Treasure Planet (2002)
The Last Starfighter (1982)
Nightbreed (1990)
Trollhunter (2010)
The Hunger Games (2012)
Hackers (1995)
The Last Boy Scout (1991)
Hobo With a Shotgun (2011)
The Shadow (1995)
The Nines (2007)
Parent Trap (1961)
The Last Unicorn (1982)
Attack Force Z (1982)
The Lorax (2012)
Dead Snow (2009)
Shock Treatment (1981)
Dune (1984)
Resident Evil: Extinction (2007)
Resident Evil Afterlife (2010)
Paintball (2009)
Rock & Rule (1983)
Xanadu (1980)
The Twilight Saga: Eclipse (2010)
Why Did I Get Married Too? (2010)
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