Posts tagged Film Reviews

The third installment of the resident evil film series see’s the survivors of the Raccoon city incident travelling across the Nevada desert in an effort to get to Alaska, supposedly the only place not to suffer from the infected. Alice has separated from the group and is travelling on her own, so as not to be a liability to her friends, eventually she meets up with them and attempts to bring down the umbrella corporation. This film again makes more links to the video game series introducing both Wesker and and Claire Redfield. This film isn’t as good as the second one, there are some very good action packed moments and the virus has spread to birds another new danger however, there are some really long dull parts of the film. It feels liked this film attempted to become more like the video games but failed immensely. They add in all these references and back story and it loses what the previous films succeeded in. The first two films were quite good zombie films but this film doesn’t even feel like a zombie film. Obviously there integral to the story but it doesn’t feel like a horror film, it probably doesn’t help that it’s set in a bright well lit desert. Ali Larter who plays Claire Redfield puts in a good performance amongst a lackluster cast. The scripting is a poor attempt compared to the previous films it just seems to lose it’s spark. 

It’s an okay film, it’s nothing special and probably the least memorable out of the three thus far. I wouldn’t recommend going out to watch this however, Asda is selling the box set of four films for a tenner which isn’t bad for four films. So I reckon that if you got a box set like that you might aswell watch all of them despite it being not as well written as the previous films. 

Resident Evil: Apocalypse opens with a recap of the events of the first film. Showing how the virus has spread from the underground hive facility to Raccoon City. The City is shut down after the virus is believed to no longer be containable and plans are made by the Umbrella corporation to nuke the city and remove all evidence of Umbrellas involvement in the outbreak. Dr Charles Ashford (Jared Harris) one of the scientists for the Umbrella corporation has access to a helicopter out of the city but refuses to leave unless his daughter is recovered. Ashford recruits Jill Valentine (Sienna Guillory), a few umbrella soldiers and Alice (Milla Jovovich) to rescue his daughter Angela (Sophie Vavasseur) from the local school in payment for evacuation out of the city. 

This film is an improvement on the first film, for starters the film doesn’t seem as long or dragged out. It involves you in the zombie action almost instantly. I know there was back story to cover in the first film, this film is essentially a zombie film and all people want from a zombie film is blood, gore and the walking dead. I mean there are some flaws with the film such as when the dead which have been buried possibly for years and years come back to life. It’s established that the zombies in this film are caused by the t-virus infection, yet how did these bodies buried for years get access to the virus? I suppose they just wanted a good graveyard scene and threw it in without any real thought. It’s nice that there introducing more references to the video games by introducing Jill Valentine a character from the games and introducing the nemesis. The film is an enjoyable watch and in many ways better than the first. Like I’ve said with the first film it’s probably best to view this as a zombie film rather than a video game adaptation. It’s just a shame that they have Alice as the front woman for the films because she’s not that great of a character. Anyway the films better than the first so I’d recommend giving it a watch. 

This film is shit. Seriously. I have no idea what anyone was thinking when they worked on this film. Erm I’m not even sure about the narrative with this film. It something about a pendant one gives you mind powers and the other moire body focused like strength. Anyway this evil guy Shuko (Robert Patrick) wants both the pendants unfortunately he only has one. Now if you check out the picture you can totally see where Jedward get their style from. Now this distracted me from the actual film. I found discussing Jedward and the hair was much more riveting than the actual film. I’m sure I’m not the only one thinking this. Anyway the guy wants the other half of the pendant to rule the world, I assume.

The other half of this pendant is with two brothers Billy and Jimmy Lee (Mark Dacascos & Scott Wolf) who clearly have two different mothers, possibly fathers can’t rule that out. The rest of the film then involves the two brothers trying to learn how to utilise the power of their pendent whilst keeping it safe from Shuko. Eventually the brothers get both of the two pendants and unite them so they receive the skills or powers from both pendants. Get these “jazzy” outfits and defeat Jedward-in-ten-years-time Shuko.

The narrative is really cheesy, everything about this film is cheesy, the lines are lamer then the stuff I come out with.

The graphics in this are surprisingly worse than those in Super Mario Bros film. There’s many scenes which depict video games and the graphics in those are a billion times worse then the graphics of games from 10 years before the film. Like how is that even possible, many their intentionally made to look horrible. Whatever the reasons may be it certainly wasn’t a good move.

Now the soundtrack of this film is again horrendous what on earth was up with the song choices for the end credits. It makes no sense, seriously its like having krusty the clown turn up in My Sisters Keeper. It’s wrong, just wrong. It just feels that everything that is involved in this film is just wrong. Nothing appears to go right with this film.

You’d have thought that with this film action would be well thought out. No no no! The punches blatantly don’t make contact. It almost like watching two people try and fight each other from opposite ends of the room.

Just I dunno I feel wrong for even telling people such a film exists. Hopefully I can use this as a warning to tell you to avoid this film. I remember spending half the film talking about Indiana Jones, for your information I was obviously watching this film with someone else not just talking to myself. So yeah go watch some Indiana Jones films there good, heck I would even recommend watching some Jedward videos above this film.

I can’t believe I just recommended Jedward *sigh*

Max Payne (John Moore, 2008) is the film of a detective whose hope of solving the case of his wife’s murder is slowly diminishing. When he is dragged into the case of another womans death links lead him back on the trail of his wife’s murder.

I surprisingly enjoyed this film. It’s not usually a genre of film I enjoy. Of course it turns out that the death of his wife is part of some big conspiracy cover-up. So the film is the journey of Max Payne (Mark Wahlberg) trying to unravel this cover up. Max Payne begins his journey when his wallet is found at the crime scene of a womans death and his ex-partner is found dead in his apartment. After much investigation Max notices a link between the deaths and the Pharmaceutical company Aesir. As it turns out Aesir was involved in manufacturing drugs for soldiers to overcome their anxiety in war. Unfortunately most the test subjects suffered severe hallucinations, with a very small minority becoming stronger soldiers. Towards the end of the film it turns out BB (Beau Bridges) an old friend was behind the death of Max’s wife and BB attempts to tie up all the loose ends leading him to attempt to murder Max Payne. A scene we are shown at the beginning of the movie but without the explanation. Max manages to allude death however to give him the strength to get revenge on BB he must take the drug Aesir was manufacturing for the soldiers. This leads Max through some painful hallucinations on his rampage to kill BB. The films ends with Max finally killing BB and finally at peace. One aspect I didn’t get, possibly because I’m not intelligent to realise, was when we see the stock rises of Aesir. I didn’t get it’s relevance or the reason for the looks between the characters when we see this information.

Some of the effects in this movie, essentially the hallucinations, are bit annoying like for me it disturbed the whole effect of the film, however, the textures and noir feel was quite effective. The casting was reasonable, it took a bit of imagination for some characters but I think the film as a whole made up for the under par cast.

The story of the film was actually really interesting and well executed. I’ve noticed with the past few film reviews, the narrative has fallen apart but this film is an exception. I’m not sure if others would agree with me but I quite enjoyed the film. It really surprised me. I went into the film expecting to hate it and some aspects were below average but the film was still a good watch. I would actually recommend this film but with some warnings such as don’t expect a brilliant cast. So I don’t have much else to say it’s been a really short review, hopefully next weeks will be longer.