Resident Evil: Apocalypse.

Review #2528: Resident Evil: Apocalypse. 

Cast:

Milla Jovovich (Alice), Sienna Guillory (Jill Valentine), Oded Fehr (Carlos Olivera), Thomas Kretschmann (Major Timothy Cain), Sophie Vavasseur (Angela "Angie" Ashford), Razaaq Adoti (Sgt. Peyton Wells), Jared Harris (Dr. Charles Ashford), Mike Epps (Lloyd Jefferson "L.J." Wade), Sandrine Holt (Terri Morales), Matthew G. Taylor (Nemesis), Zack Ward (Nicholai Ginovaef), and Iain Glen (Dr. Alexander Isaacs) Directed by Alexander Witt.

Review: 

Hey, remember Resident Evil (2002)? I...uh, sort of remember it? Well, okay, I'm just going to perform straight plagiarism by reminding myself that I saw the movie was the kind of movie you could probably watch while doing your taxes. No, it did not spur me to try out the games.* But people bought tickets to see it, so I imagine there were plenty of tax forms all brought up for fun amidst a "treasure trove" of violence and effects. Paul W. S. Anderson* enjoyed doing the first movie but had commitments to Alien vs. Predator (2004) that meant he could not direct the sequel, although he served as a screenwriter and co-producer. Various inspirations ranged from the third game to Escape from New York (1981) and The Omega Man (1971). This was the directorial debut for Alexander Witt, who had been working in film since the 1970s in a variety of roles such as camera assistant, commercial director and second unit work on films such as who had done second unit work on films such as Speed (1994); Witt has mostly stayed around in second unit work in the two decades since the release of the film. The series returned with Resident Evil: Extinction (2007).

It is a movie where someone makes an entrance by crashing through a stained-glass window on a motorcycle. Honestly, the enjoyment level is a smidge above the first film, mainly because at least it tries to aim for action that isn't confined to a lab. It finds new and exciting ways of being a hack spectacle that doesn't do anything new with its zombie creatures or its new ensemble for Jovovich to blankly encounter. Some movies can coast on characters basically being described as "job description" or "the chick with the neat shorts" or "the funny guy" even with a shelf life above, say, 93 minutes. This is not one of those movies, because even horror movies in small locales such as, say, Chopping Mall (1986) had enthusiasm in its mayhem. Here, it just feels like the equivalent of going to the supermarket without a list in mind only to suffer a stubbed foot in the store has no A/C before realizing that the jug of milk expires today*. Jovovich has done little to nothing to really further a character that is doing the exact same thing as before in teaming up with a ragtag bunch to survive but not really showing leadership besides "don't die". It isn't even worth trying to talk about Kretschmann as a "villain" because the general maneuvering of the film just feels so cookie-cutter and so bland that it doesn't even feel worthy to make fun of the reveal of "Nemesis" (I know it is related to the game, because otherwise I'm surprised they didn't call it something sillier like Vengeance Knight or Deadman). It just feels like a movie you put on to, wait for it, to do your taxes while it is on in the background. Two movies in and I barely feel like I really care much about the "T-virus" or "Raccoon City", but hey, gotta move forward to see slow-moving creatures by mowed down. For whatever reason, I guess the setup of the next film will be that in addition to going around doing action sequences of shooting, our hero now has psionic abilities. Oh, and I guess Umbrella is fine with her escaping as part of their plan (some plan, the next one is called "Extinction"). As a whole, if you were a fan of the first movie, maybe you'll be right at home with this one in terms of spectacle, but it just came off as hollow middle-of-the-road noise.

Overall, I give it 5 out of 10 stars.

Song of the day!

*It's funny, the only horror game I played from start to finish was The House of the Dead: Overkill.

*You might remember that Anderson eventually married Jovovich. Cool, did they ever make a movie together that was actually good?

*I was going to use a bad experience in say, accidentally bumping into someone who likes to gab endlessly in small-talk, but I realize some of you may have friends that actually take the time to do so. Self awareness, pal!

I Shot Andy Warhol.

Review #2519: I Shot Andy Warhol.

Cast: 

Lili Taylor (Valerie Solanas), Jared Harris (Andy Warhol), Stephen Dorff (Candy Darling), Martha Plimpton (Stevie), Lothaire Bluteau (Maurice Girodias), Anna Levine (Iris), Peter Friedman (Alan Burke), Tahnee Welch (Viva), Jamie Harrold (Jackie Curtis), Donovan Leitch (Gerard Malanga), Jim Lyons (Billy Name), Michael Imperioli (Ondine), and Reg Rogers (Paul Morrissey) Directed by Mary Harron (#1984 - American Psycho)

Review: 

"I was amazed, because, apart from saying that she shot him and she was crazy, nobody had ever talked about Valerie Solanas. So I had this idea for an anti-documentary. It was never going to be conventional. My thinking was, what if you took the most obscure person in this glamorous circle, and that most obscure, most despised pariah turned out to be the most interesting person of them all? What if you did a kind of reverse hagiography, where you take this person in the shadows and put them in the center? Now, how I was going to do that, I didn’t know. I just had this burning desire to make a film about her."

I suppose this is the best way to dip the toes into the world of Andy Warhol. Once upon a time, Mary Harron was in the punk scene and into The Velvet Underground, the rock band with a distinct influence within the underground scene that mixed right in with Warhol being their manager from 1966 to 1967. In college, Harron had written a piece about Warhol and his work for a university magazine and even spent time looking upon his movies. When she became a music writer, she was fortunate enough to have a brief interview with Warhol around his studio of The Factory (he subsequently died in 1987). A couple of years later, when working in television, she did research for a Warhol documentary and happened to come across the SCUM Manifesto (self-published in 1967 before becoming commercially published in 1968 through Maurice Girodias and his Olympia Press) in a store that interested her because for all the footage and interviews one knew of Warhol and the Factory, one name never really came up with Valerie Solanas. Her interest in doing a documentary happened to crisscross with Tom Kalin and Christine Vachon in doing something...as a film. Harron co-wrote the film with Daniel Minahan (with research by Diane Tucker along with having certain dialogue come from Jeremiah Newton's edited compilation The Letters and Diaries of Candy Darling) and the movie had funding from a variety of companies such as Killer Films and Goldwyn Films International. John Cale of the Underground wrote the music score for the film despite disagreements with Lou Reed. The movie made a bit of money and was enough of a hit with its screening at Sundance that the offer to do the script for American Psycho came right afterwards. The years that followed the release of the movie is fairly interesting. The movie was released by a company that soon went bankrupt and the rights were in murky limbo for a time to where it was barely available on DVD and it apparently was once only available online through a rip on YouTube. Solanas had crafted a play called Up Your Ass that she had given a copy to Warhol that was accidentally misplaced - in 1999, it was rediscovered and produced in 2000 in San Francisco by George Coates Performance Works*. Further information about Solanas came around with the 2014 biography Valerie Solanas: The Defiant Life of the Woman Who Wrote SCUM (and Shot Andy Warhol)*.

You might wonder what Solanas (a graduate of University of Maryland, College Park) has to offer in terms of a manifesto. Well, its opening declaration [with one word difference depending on the edition] states that women should "overthrow the government, eliminate the money system, institute complete automation and eliminate [destroy] the men" (incidentally, there are a few moments in black-and-white that depict stuff from the manifesto being read). She sold copies in bookstores and on the streets of Greenwich Village for $1 (unless you were a guy, then it was $2) and even appeared in one Warhol film with I, a Man (1967). One person associated with Warhol once stated that life around the sphere of Warhol ended up making them "all captives of Andy's magnetism and his outlaw culture". Amidst all of that, Solanas might as well be an imp to these self-obsessed people that can't quite get the recognition they believe they deserve,and Taylor carries the film to fascinating levels of curiosity. It isn't a lament of a "tortured genius" or just a "craven nut" but instead something that teeters in the irony that comes in so many contradictions that can be tragic along with being fascinating. There is a burning, acerbic spirit to her that you can't exactly shoo away as an irrational being because damn it, there are plenty of irrational people to go around anyway, even if most don't go around shooting people and getting their own spin of a bio-drama.  Harris pulls in well with shades of vulnerability and elusiveness (without being a caricature to poke with) that you can't easily grab upon beyond the obvious that might as well reflect how one views Warhol and his art, for better or worse.  The real Solanas spent time in a prison ward and periods of evaluation over her mental state (mainly the paranoid schizophrenia) before she essentially faded into obscurity by the late 1970s and died in San Francisco in 1988 at just the age of 52. Regardless of how one might view Solanas and her view of men (as represented by, say, this exchange here or this one), there is something quite fascinating about what Herron has captured here about someone who lived by their contradictions. As such, this is a worthwhile debut in its capture of a misfit that doesn't judge or defend but instead lets the images and words speak for themselves in entertaining fashion that is a strange little gem.

Overall, I give it 8 out of 10 stars.

Song of the day

*Apparently, Warhol was quoted in a book in the 1980s that he apparently glanced at the play and was more concerned with wondering if she was actually an undercover cop. By the way, that gunshot was brutal: he got shot in a way that had damage to his lungs, esophagus, liver, spleen, and stomach.

*For one thing, Solanas actually had children at a young age but had to give them away. 

*honestly, the fact that there was an anarchic group named "Up Against the Wall Motherfucker" in the 1960s shouldn't surprise me.

Igby Goes Down.

Review #1253: Igby Goes Down.

Cast: 
Kieran Culkin (Jason "Igby" Slocumb, Jr.), Claire Danes (Sookie Sapperstein), Jeff Goldblum (D.H. Banes), Amanda Peet (Rachel), Ryan Phillippe (Oliver "Ollie" Slocumb), Bill Pullman (Jason Slocumb, Sr.), Susan Sarandon (Mimi Slocumb), Bill Irwin (Lt. Ernest Smith), Jared Harris (Russel), and Celia Weston (Bunny) Written and Directed by Burr Steers.

Review: 
Call it writer's block, call it a logjam - this review took over a week to actually come to fruition, with two reviews sandwiched between UHF and this.

What is there to say about a film like this? It is an independent comedy drama that likely fits best to languish on a film shelf for years before you eventually get around to actually seeing if its worth it. The most annoying films to write about are the mediocre ones, where it isn't a terrible experience to sit through but it also isn't anything to really write home about either. In the long run, this mixed bag middles too much with its misanthrope main character for its first half while faced with more interesting supporting actors before its second half lands with a soft thud. There isn't a terrible performance in the bunch, nor is the film really that awful to sit through in the long run, but it sure takes its time in making itself seem worth a look, as if making a coming-of-age movie needed acidic foundations (in this case, a nutty rich family) to really make for entertainment. It feels like an interesting film when not faced with its silly misanthrope lead (or when he isn't being romanced / being assaulted by someone, like a therapist), but it really does seem at times more fitting for a novel than a film, albeit with a few chapters being tossed around. The best response one can have for the question of why should I care about what is going on is that it is meant to be sharply witty and observant, the kind of film that can picked and poked at the same way one could poke at The Catcher in the Rye, I suppose. This for a film that features a scene of someone who when told of how dirty he looks comes back to the family dinner table without clothes. When I really care about the movie is the parts around the main character - it needed more weird moments with people like Goldblum, Pullman, and Sarandon, who are each adept at garnering some humor along with showing the flip-side of life as an adult with some money - whether that involves hypocrisy or succumbing to pressures. I do at least appreciate Culkin for taking a role as ridiculous acidic as this one is and making an attempt to garner some humor. The same can be said for Danes and Peet, who clearly need more time on screen besides just being around the main character from time to time. Phillippe and Irwin provide small but useful moments. Sometimes a film can make you think about how you were growing up with all the changes that occur around you, whether through friends, family, or all of the above. Igby just happens to be on the fringes of adulthood - what better way to respond to it by skipping school, romantic moments, and plenty of loathing to go around. It sure wants to play cynical with its coming-of-age story - heck, why not go further? Fully drag its soap opera level of weird events to its natural conclusion - blather on for longer than 98 minutes and give these characters enough depth (and perhaps rope) to trap themselves within hypocrisy and what it means to be a human being - whatever that means. Go nuts and make this an attempt at garnering some real humor instead of trying to have it both ways with jokes and pathos. Of course one can't really take much of this that seriously, minus the parts involving Igby and his father (to a point); the time spent with him and his mother only really seems to come out in the second half rather than really drive the film home all the way. On the whole, this proves to be a frustrating film to sit through, where one can see the intentions from its director/writer Steers try to come out through a film that can't quite live up to making a clear resonating path. It becomes more depressing to see where the cast is and isn't used than the material itself, really. It may prove well for those who seek it out and have the right mindset for its tactics, but I just couldn't find this a clear enough winner to recommend it.

Overall, I give it 6 out of 10 stars.