Resident Evil: Extinction

There was something genuinely fun about the first Resident Evil movie. Paul W.S. Anderson was at the helm and doing what he does best make really mediocre movies. But the combination of Milla Jovavich and crack team of special forces going into a zombie filled den of evil was basically the culmination of my dreams as an 8 year old obsessed with monsters and badass special forces units. So sure a part of me realizes it wasn't the best executed of films and part of me is giggling with joy. Now Resident Evil: Apocalypse was pretty close to what I had expect of Resident Evil. Ludicrous, over the top, and Oded Fehr. I was pretty sure the series had peaked. A third film could not be nearly as bad as the second, it just wasn't possible.

Oh how wrong I was. Resident Evil: Extinction picks up apparently five years or so after the previous film. The T-Virus (that would be the zombie virus for lay people) has spread throughout the world and apparently also killed most plant life. A convoy of trucks led by Ali Larter and Oded Fehr is moving across country scavenging abandoned towns for canned food and gasoline ever wary of the zombie threat. Alice (Milla Jovavich) travels on her own, aware that the evil Umbrella Corporation (still one of the greatest names for a huge EVIL conglomerate I have ever come across) can track her if she stays put too long. Meanwhile a scientist is doing experiments on Alice clones as well as working on a injection that will make the zombies docile but instead makes them stronger and more aggressive. Eventually the scientist makes his play for Alice while she aids the convoy in getting to safety along the backdrop of the southwest and Vegas.

Yeah, the film is as ridiculous as that. Its also poorly acted and poorly written and in general the film just makes almost no sense. That being said, I did laugh. Alot. Not that the filmmakers intended for the viewer to laugh or likely were the other viewers in the theater happy that I was laughing. It was just so ludicrously bad I couldn't help but laugh. The whole philosophy of these films seems to be bigger is better. And why does every film have to end with the lead in to a new film that hasn't been made yet? It is my least favorite thing to do in a film. Still, it did kill an afternoon and it gave me some justifiable vitriol. Even zombie fans should probably stay away.

Good Luck Chuck

I hate Dane Cook. I don't think he is funny. Jessica Alba has no talent save her beauty (well maybe that isn't true but she certainly doesn't have acting talent). Romantic comedies are frequently cliched paint by number scripts with forced notions of love and romance followed by an obligatory and forced temporary break up. Given all this, you might be wondering what in the world would have compelled me to go see Good Luck Chuck.

And sadly I don't have a very satisfying answer to that question. Maybe its my near drug like dependency on movies such that even being at a bad movie still means I'm in a movie. Maybe my natural pessimistic disposition is offset by a deep rooted idealist theory that every movie no matter how bad it may look should at least be given the opportunity to prove that it is more. Maybe its just on a Sunday night when I'm too lazy to do anything else and my choices on television are a plethora of crap, I think maybe spending ten dollars on a bad movie isn't any worse.

For whatever perverse reason I did go see Good Luck Chuck and I know feel the need to let you all know just how bad it was. Chuck is a dentist (that's right I have trouble being convinced that Dane Cook could practice a medical profession as well). Chuck has intimacy issues and apparently a curse on him such that women who date him find their true love the next time they date. Egged on by his best friend played by Dan Fogler, who plays a creepy plastic surgeon obsessed with women's breasts and seems fairly misogynistic, Chuck begins to use his curse to his advantage by sleeping with numerous women.

But Chuck meets Jessica Alba and decides he likes her so much he could commit to her. Now of course he is worried about the curse and does what he can to remove it. And in a bizarre turn he becomes a creepy stalker type who somehow despite all that manages to win the girl back by the credits. For a movie that wants to be a sweet romantic comedy there seems to be a lot of very strong misogyny involved especially against women who are overweight. The fairly dreadful actors fumble through their fairly dreadful script and I was out of the theater and trying to think warm happy thoughts about good movies just after the credits started.

Eastern Promises

After a teenage girl is brought to the hospital and dies giving birth to a child, the hospital midwife Anna (Naomi Watts) taking into her possession the girl's diary attempts to track down some family for the new child. She gets her uncle (I've heard several make reference to it being her father, but it is not) to start translating the diary from Russian and follows a lead of a business card to a local restaurant. The restaurant is owned by Semyon (Armin Mueller-Stahl) who also happens to be a fairly powerful and ruthless Russian mob boss. As Naomi begins to understand what is going on she realizes she is in a very dangerous situation. She has also caught the eye for inexplicable reasons of Nikolai (Viggo Mortensen), a driver for Semyon and his son Kirill (Vincent Cassel). The film plays out as Nikolai aids Anna in small ways as she looks to uncover what happened to the girl who died.

Beyond anything else it seems this film is about Nikolai played brilliantly by Mortensen. He is understated and a layer of mystery surrounds him. How did he end up as a driver/body guard for Kirill? Why does he take so much interest in Anna? It is stated that a Russian mobster's story is written in tatoos, so what story do Nikolai's tatoos tell? We get some answers to these questions but not all the answers and maybe not even satisfactory answer and I love that aspect of this film. Yes he has a past but does any of that bear relevance on the moment at hand? Not really and so it isn't discussed.

The second amazing thing about the film is a fight sequence late in the film. Graphic and brutal and desperate and all done with Nikolai in the nude. And the point in all the graphicness and brutality is that it is shot in a specific way. It is not choreographed to hide bits of the male anatomy, in fact Nikolai is quite naked and at his most vulnerable and its all visible on screen.

And yet in the end I'm not sure how I feel about this film. Because there is a plot twist late in the film that I didn't much care for. It just made Nikolai slightly less interesting in my eyes and for me this film was made or broke on how interesting he is. Watts is so uninteresting in this film. Vincent Cassel is a bit over the top and Mueller-Stahl seems to be trying to evoke a monster under the guise of a charming restaurant owner but he just always comes off as vaguely creepy to me in every scene.

So in the end I like Viggo and what he does with this role. Some of the story telling elements aren't that interesting but in the end that doesn't detract to much from what works and so its worth seeing for that.

The Kingdom

Peter Berg is an odd duck to say the least. Just take a glance at his films and you will see that he directs films all over the map. Very Bad Things which I can't honestly remember very well except that I was not that happy with it when it was over (maybe it deserves a second viewing), came first. Then there was The Rundown, a movie so absurd that its opening sequence involved Arnold Schwarzenagger literally saying good luck as he symbolically passed the action movie star persona to Dwayne "the Rock" Johnson. Then there was Friday Night Lights a pretty standard cut from the mold underdog sports story. And now we have The Kingdom. What motivates a man to direct a black comedy followed by a by the numbers action film, then a sports underdog story and finally a police procedural set in the oddest of locales?

After a series of bombings in Saudi Arabia at an American living compound, a team of FBI agents led by Ronald Fleury (Jamie Foxx) heads to Saudi Arabia to investigate the crime. There the team must deal with the bureaucratic rules that forbid them to touch evidence and the loop holes they must jump through to get to their job. They are accompanied by a protective guard led by Faris Al Ghazi (Ashraf Barhom) who is sympathetic to their search for evidence but is restricted by his own duties. Eventually Fleury is able to get access to the evidence and Al Ghazi is made head of the investigation. The procedural part of the film shows the team finding evidence and tracking down leads until they find some involved parties. This then leads into the final act of the film, an intense firefight between Fleury's team and the terrorists.

Was it a perfect film? Not exactly. The film started with a slightly unnecessary prologue on the history of Saudi Arabia and its relationship to the United States and I didn't think much of Danny Huston's evil Attorney General. A large part of the film is devoted to the slowly building relationship between Fleury and Al Ghazi which was quite well done but when it got into the procedural aspect it was pretty dull and largely superficial. The film really gets going when the team's convoy is attacked and it leads to an intense firefight. Of course it may bend reality a bit at times as five people attack and overcome an entire building full of the terrorists and at times I wondered where they kept getting ammo for their weapons from. Still the violence is graphic but effective and you can't help but think the whole act was well done.

The film ends with some obligatory scenes, in my opinion a little heavy handed. There is some forced antagonism between Fleury and his team for Al Ghazi which I don't think was necessary. Overall though this was an entertaining enough film on a topic that is by no means an easy one to tackle.

Movie Idiot walks through a guide to the movies.

Usually every year I grab a copy of the Fall movie preview published by Entertainment Weekly. Sadly this year I missed my opportunity. But never fear faithful reader because I’ve seen a lot of trailers and I picked up a movie facts pamphlet at the theater, so let us see what is being offered (presumably by those willing to pay to have their movie pimped out in a movie facts pamphlet.

Across the Universe – I basically despise all musicals and truth be told I’m not exactly an ecstatic Beatles fan. So I honestly can’t tell you why I want to see this movie but I’ve watched the trailer several times and I’m filled with a desire to go see it.

American Gangster – Yes Denzel, Yes Russell Crowe in a stylized crime/police drama that I will no doubt see and likely enjoy but I’m not exactly waiting on pins and needles for this one.

Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford – A western (one of the two film genre’s my dad raised me on – the other being Tough As Nails Lone Cop gets the bad guy films i.e. Death Wish and Dirty Harry) and it stars Casey Affleck who is probably a better actor than his famous brother. Yeah, Brad Pitt is in it too but who cares. Mentioning the Afflecks remind me that Gone Baby Gone is coming out soon too, which intrigues me.

August Rush – Freddie Highmore, Robin Williams, Keri Russell, Jonathan Rhys Meyers and a preview that makes me nauseas from the melodrama. Pass.

Dan In Real Life – Steve Carrell is big right now. So are family style dramas along the lines of Little Miss Sunshine. Maybe I’ll rent it…maybe.

Feast of Love – This film preview actually made me gag more than August Rush.

Rendition – Topical? Yes. Can films be interesting introductions to dialogues of current events? Sure. Does this preview feel like a heavy handed leftist take on current politics? Yes. I think it has something to do with the way Meryl Streep plays the unforgiving politician.

We Own the Night – If this preview were trying any harder to evoke The Departed it would have just been a preview of the departed. It even has Mark Wahlberg. Still I’ll probably see it.

The Brave One

Get to know me even a little and you will figure out pretty quickly that I’ll pretty much see any movie. I’ll go see a movie I don’t expect to like (Nacho Libre). I’ll go see a movie I know I’ll hate (All three Saw films, and yes I’ll probably see the fourth film). I swore after seeing Hostel that if Hostel 2 was made that I would stay far away from it, but yeah I saw Hostel 2. But there are movies that I have never seen for a reason as simple as the fact that the preview did nothing more than made me shrug and say eh.

The Brave One was a preview that didn’t inspire anything. For one thing I saw the preview at the same time I saw a preview for the new Kevin Bacon film and suddenly I figured revenge films were this year’s Disaster flick (think Deep Impact/Armageddon). Plus Jodie Foster pretty much under whelmed me in her last outing. So in truth I had no plans to see it. Until someone let me know that student affairs office had arranged for any student to see a free movie at a local theater and this movie idiot can’t pass up free.

Jodie Foster is Erica Bain, a radio personality who tells anecdotal stories about New York. She’s in a loving relationship with Naveen Andrews. One night while walking their dog, they are attacked, Foster’s fiancé is killed and she is left emotionally scarred. Eventually in her struggle to cope with her trauma, she becomes a vigilante killer. I don’t feel like I’ve revealed anything here that the preview didn’t. In any event, it is quickly apparent that the film isn’t really about the killings. It really is about much more, post traumatic stress, the at times impotence of justice and so on.

At first the film felt a bit hard to get into. The characterization a bit weak especially the relationship but it grew on me. It isn’t unproblematic. There is a bizarre choice to contrast brutal violence with extreme intimacy early in the film which seemed to serve no purpose in my opinion. There is also an extreme leap between nearly agoraphobic traumatic shock to the stolid determination that a gun will keep her safe. But that being said once that is out of the way, the film settles into a bizarre mix of thriller, police procedural and analysis of bruised psyches.

Now the theater was filled with a few obnoxious patrons who were cheering the action sequences, which is an odd reaction to a film that seems to want to inspire discussion about the issues it raises. And yet will only resonate with these viewers as really fun action sequences. The debate might be superficial and bit forced but it definitely feels a bit heavy handed on that front and despite all that they still missed it. But that isn’t what really makes the movie, what makes the film is the relationship of its two main characters.

At its core are two superb performances by Foster and Terrence Howard as the cop who is investigating the vigilante murders. They form a bizarrely wounded friendship, discussing loss, crime and justice. There is one particularly powerful scene late in the movie at a diner. It involves revelations, call backs to earlier conversations and a very fantastic sense of finality. This leads into a fast paced finale that promises to make this go down as a fantastic film. And then.

I really, really wish there wasn’t an and then. But there is. Does a character do something one would never expect him/her to do? Unfortunately. Does the climax of the film seem to contradict the power of the aforementioned diner scene? Sadly, yes. If not for the ending to this movie, this very well might have been one of my top five favorites of the year, it may still make top ten but it is just so disappointing of an ending that I can almost not forgive it.

Still it’s a film definitely worth seeing, especially for that diner scene (can you tell I really liked the diner scene?). But maybe with my warning you don’t put much faith in a fantastic ending. Or maybe you walk out of the theater at just the right moment. You’ll know it when it happens and that is the time to run. Or maybe you stay and disagree with me but I wish it could have delivered a better ending.