Last movie seen — Page 200

Resident Evil Retribution (2012).

I was around a pals house and he was playing Resident Evil 6 and asked me if I had seen the latest film.

Not so much a guilty pleasure as an exercise in rubbernecking I had seen all the others up to that point with the same pal so I braced myself for more of the same.

The premise was more interesting this time with an underground maze of simulated environments (the test ground for the various BOWs Umbrella used to sell before the world went splerrrp!).

It's a bit like The Crystal Maze with zombies.

Milla Jovovich is getting on a bit so almost all the action is in the slow motion video collage style so successfully lambasted by RLM.

Alice wakes up again (she always does so nothing new there) imprisoned in the said facility wearing a dishcloth mysteriously attached to her rude bits.

Her arch enemy Wesker sends game favorite Ada Wong to rescue her and she travels through the zones collecting enough crystals to attempt to win a mountaineering weekend in the Cairngorms...sorry.

The film riffs Aliens shamelessly and dares to shoehorn a terrible depiction of Leon Kennedy and an even worse depiction Barry Burton.

This reveals everything that is wrong with this increasingly cheap looking film series.

It's basically a filmed unconvincing video game cosplay party helmed by a precocious girl child.

The way children play is replicated in the scripting of these films.

Right I will go over here and hide behind this wall and the baddy will walk over here, and you, you and you will pop out and distract him and I will save you all.

When the last shot of the film is in the trailers it's time to give up.

**********SPOILERS*****************************************

If the underground bunker was perfectly balanced and could churn out humans over and over why destroy it and escape to a surface world overrun by virus monsters?

Wouldn't it have made better sense to purge the red queen from the base and use it as a 'rebel base' and repopulate the planet with the offspring of the clones?

Why does my brain even make room for such ideas?

It was one case where the obvious twist ending would have been more cool.

If Alice had always been in the bunker and that the events of the previous films had all been a simulation it would have provided a much cleaner slate to set up a sequel than the mess this film ends with.

*******************End of spoilers*****************************

This series needs a send off and a reboot as a series of genuinely scary adaptations of the games (which these films have never resembled). 

Alice needs to grow up.

Balls nowhere to be seen.

The Wild World of Batwoman (1966)

I saw this movie VIA Mystery Science Theater 3000, so I don't know if I'm giving a fair evaluation. Regardless, though, it was obviously shitty and probably would have been even more boring than it was had there been no juvenile commentary to make it bearable.

3/10

3 Dev Adam AKA 3 Giant Men AKA Captain America and Santo vs. Spider-Man

I never thought any movie featuring something like this



could be so boring. Incomprehendible? Yes. Stupid? Definately! But not boring. Still, it is the best Turkish film I've seen so far - not that that's saying very much.

4/10

A Better Tomorrow I and II

After having re-watched The Killer for the first time in about 5 years I decided to give these a spin. I owned part II on VHS back in the day so I have more nostalgia for it, and it's also much more entertaining because it's the first real "John Woo Film" and has some pretty great action. The first film I have only seen once or twice and it's really something: it's not much of an action film. It's more of a crime drama, with some pretty good acting and directing, with operatic flourishes of violence that give it a slightly comic-book edge. That's on full display in the much hackier--though in some ways more entertaining, in that over-the-top 80s way--sequel, but the original film is a pretty important landmark in Hong Kong action cinema and it's easy to see why. Much like it's American counterpart, Terminator, it's an action film that doesn't quite think of itself as an action film but an honest drama with lots of shooting and chases.

I should also say that I really, really miss the days when John Woo was taken seriously as a filmmaker. Even on Face/Off there was still a reverance for him.

The Da Vinci Code (2006) 6/10 - Not a bad film, but kind of boring. A hell of a lot less interesting than the book. Hanks is definitely a disappointment.

Notorious (1946) 9.5/10 - Another outstanding Hitchcock film. Weird to see Cary Grant in this type of role, but it still works. Everything here works. Great film.

The Town (2010) 9/10 - I remember sitting in the theater, seeing "directed by Ben Affleck" and thinking "that guy's got talent!" One of the best thrillers in recent memory. Especially love its Boston/Charlestown setting, being from MA. A lot of good stuff in here. I'm still not sold on the ending. 

Argo (2012) 10/10 - Watched this in preparation for its win tonight. When I first saw it I gave it a 9.5. Now I'm wondering where the hell that .5 went. This movie is amazing from start to finish. Love everything about it. 

Moth3r said:

captainsolo said:

Why has the thread gone italic crazy?

Because bkev broke the page.

Fixed.

Ted Haggard says :

Jeremiah 48:39

Face/Off was the dumbest rocks-for-brains thing ever.

doubleofive said:

 

TV's Frink said:

Face/Off was the dumbest rocks-for-brains thing ever.

You didn't like Nic Cage playing John Travolta play Nic Cage playing John Travolta playing Nic Cage, and visa versa?

 

Yo dawg...

captainsolo said:

zombie84 said:

A Better Tomorrow I and II

After having re-watched The Killer for the first time in about 5 years I decided to give these a spin. I owned part II on VHS back in the day so I have more nostalgia for it, and it's also much more entertaining because it's the first real "John Woo Film" and has some pretty great action. The first film I have only seen once or twice and it's really something: it's not much of an action film. It's more of a crime drama, with some pretty good acting and directing, with operatic flourishes of violence that give it a slightly comic-book edge. That's on full display in the much hackier--though in some ways more entertaining, in that over-the-top 80s way--sequel, but the original film is a pretty important landmark in Hong Kong action cinema and it's easy to see why. Much like it's American counterpart, Terminator, it's an action film that doesn't quite think of itself as an action film but an honest drama with lots of shooting and chases.

Very well said and accurately sums up these two films. I can't help but love them both. And the fried rice which is like my family. ;)

 

It's funny, because the VHS I had of part II was (obviously) dubbed, when I got the DVD I wanted to check out the original language but I think I realized that it was over-dubbed as well, so the acting wasn't all that better. Maybe for nostalgia of all else I ended up watching the english dub as usual, but then when it got to the scene where the guy throws the fried rice I wondered how the NYC scenes were in the actual original cantonese track. The dude was unintentionally (I think?) hilarious in the english dub, but in the cantonese original it was so absurdly over the top and cartoonish I literally spit my drink out when I heard it. He sounds like Bebop from Ninja Turtles! It's like they got some voice actor from english anime dubs, which is maybe what they did.

zombie84 said:

I should also say that I really, really miss the days when John Woo was taken seriously as a filmmaker. Even on Face/Off there was still a reverance for him.

I hated hated hated Face/Off before I knew who Woo was. I loathed MI:2 and wondered, who exactly is this guy who can make all this fantastic stylization in terrible scripts? Then came everything prior, and I realized...oh dear god can someone please get poor Mr. Woo back to Hong Kong immediately??

To be fair I haven't seen the film since the one time I saw it when I was 14 or so when it was new, but I remember being impressed by it, and so were reviewers--my grade 8 teacher even mentioned what a good film it was. Cage and Travolta actually commanded respect back then, and remember this was before the Matrix, so seeing wire use and slow motion action scenes was a lot more impressive and impactful, even if the script was a bit absurd. I think that scene where the kid is listening to Somewhere Over the Rainbow as the highrise gets torn apart in a massive gunfight is as inspired as anything Woo has done. Now, Broken Arrow--there is a turkey if I ever saw one. I don't know how the guy got Face/Off based on that, at least Face/Off had a few moments, even if it hasn't aged well.

zombie84 said:

even if the script was a bit absurd

A bit?  A BIT?

...

THEY

SWITCHED

FACES

!!!

Oh, the premise is downright comic. But you know the premise going in, even though face transplants are (now) a real thing, there is no way you can justify fool-proof face switching to the point where the people's family members can't tell. But the characters and dialogue and everything are okay, sometimes it got a little weird like when John Travolta is hitting on his supposed daughter, but if you accept the fact that it's part comic books it's not a deal breaker. All John Woo films are like that, right down to The Killer and Hard Boiled, which aren't nearly as absurd as that but are clearly and intentionally unrealistic to the nth degree. Maybe sometimes Face/Off seems like it takes itself a bit seriously, but in my memory when you step back and take it all in, does it really ever? His Hong Kong films have more of a poetic quality, which I took seriously as a 13 year old having his world turned upside down watching The Killer when few people knew John Woo or Chow Yun Fat, but as an adult that poetry is more like comic book poetry, which is sort of how I remember Face/Off being like. It wasn't the story, it was the presentation. But who knows, I haven't seen it since around 1998 or something like that.