Resident Evil: Extinction (2007)

Today’s Horrorthon movie came as a request from Alex, who requested a movie from this series, but not a specific one.  I hadn’t yet gotten around to it until coworker Merg mentioned that she randomly decided to binge them all in the same day.  I decided to join her, but unfortunately for me, I only joined in when the movies in the series started getting bad.  But that also means that they get easier to make fun of, which is fortunate for me.  That series is Resident Evil, and the first one I watched in said series is the third one Resident Evil: Extinction, written by Paul W. S. Anderson, directed by Russell Mulcahy, and starring Milla Jovovich, Iain Glen, Ali Larter, Spencer Locke, Oded Fehr, Mike Epps, Ashanti, Jason O’Mara, and Madeline Carroll.

Alice (Jovovich) wakes up in a facility like the one from the first movie, and wanders the halls until she’s killed.  End of film.  Nah, just kidding, it’s a clone.  Get used to that in this series.  The real Alice is wandering the desert somewhere and Dr. Sam Isaacs (Glen) has been trying to perfect a clone of her, but needs the real deal to get it right.  Alice runs into a group of other survivors led by Claire Redfield (Larter) and Carlos Oliveira (Fehr) who are looking for a way up to Alaska to a place that is supposed to be safe.

One might be so inclined to call this movie garbage, but as I also rewatched the rest of the series, I feel like I need to hold on to that for later.  This is only the start of where they go downhill.  I feel like maybe they had gotten bored of making shitty zombie movies, so they decided to try to make shitty zombie Western with some Mad Max in there.  Because apparently zombies make the world a desert, I guess.  …Somehow…  At least for this movie.  I guess when zombies ate all the people, they started looking for vegetarian options and started eating the brains of trees.  But you really can’t go into even most zombie movies expecting them to make too much sense, and especially if they’re THESE zombie movies.

The look and visuals of these movies is pretty much what you expect.  Since they decided to go all desolate with it, it certainly doesn’t give you a terribly great landscape to look at.  Vegas might have been a good visual landscape, but they covered it in about 5% more dirt than the real Vegas and seemingly moved all the casinos of note into the same block.  The T-Virus is weird man.  It can do basically whatever it wants and ignore logic, just like writers on bad movies. 

Alice continues to get more and more overpowered in these movies.  I feel like in the first movie she was just a regular girl who was maybe really good at martial arts.  Like in this movie when she gets abducted by rednecks and one of them intends to flat out rape her in front of his family, she just kicks that dude in the face and kills him in one blow.  That would be much more impressive if she didn’t just decide to stop right there for some reason and relish in her sweet kick so that the other rednecks could knock her out.  At some point she also gained telekinesis.  I assume that happened in the previous movie because she didn’t seem terribly surprised that her motorcycle was hovering when she woke up, but I also wouldn’t put it past these movies to not sell that properly.  Mike Epps’ character annoyed me too because he was the classic zombie movie character that gets bit early on and just decides to keep it to himself.  To what end?!  You know damn well what’s going to happen and it’s not going away!  If you’re worried about them killing you, well that’s what’s going to happen when you turn anyway.  And you might kill some of your friends on your way out!  Just tell them and peace out or have someone kill you!  I also liked the character of Kmart – so named because she was found in a Staples – but I mostly only liked her because I enjoyed calling RC Willey by different retailer names.  Other than that, I had no thoughts about Pic ‘N Save.

So those are my thoughts on Resident Evil: Extinction.  It’s not a great movie, but the series has only yet begun to become terrible and this movie still manages to be fun enough that you can enjoy yourself while making fun of it.  It doesn’t make a lot of sense and the characters are mostly stupid, but things blow up and there are zombies.  It’s good enough.  Resident Evil: Extinction gets “Yeah, you’re the future alright” out of “It really is the end of the world.”

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Kick-Ass 2 (2013)

I Try to Have Fun.  Otherwise, What’s the Point?

Today’s movie was way more difficult to see than it should have been, and Friendboss Josh is to blame.  We had been trying to see this movie for nearly a month before we could finally find the time.  First he couldn’t go because of a “butt thing.”  I’m still not sure what he meant by that.  Was it a proctologist appointment or a sex thing?  Probably both.  Then his girlfriend, the Whitney Bird, lit the bathtub on fire.  Seems impossible, right?  I mean, the thing shoots water.  The next week he was abducted by aliens.  He called it a family reunion, but when I hear about a collection of Mexicans, I just assume.  The last week was my fault because I had a creative writing class to attend where I learned how to make up ridiculous stories to cover for your bad memory about past events and how they kept you from movies.  Then Friendboss Josh and I went to see Kick-Ass 2, based on a comic book by Mark Millar and John Romita, Jr., written and directed by Jeff Wadlow, and starring Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Chloë Grace Moretz, Jim Carrey, Lindy Booth, Clark Duke, Donald Faison, Steven Mackintosh, Monica Dolan, Robert Emms, Augustus Prew, John Leguizamo, Olga Kurkulina, Daniel Kaluuya, Tom Wu, Andy Nyman, Morris Chestnut, Claudia Lee, and Iain Glen.

After the events of the first film, Dave Lizewski has retired from his hero persona Kick-Ass (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), but quickly finds that regular life is not to his liking.  He decides to take up the mantle of Kick-Ass again, but this time he’s not going to rely on the fact that he can’t feel pain and actually get some training from the younger, but far better trained Mindy Macready, also known as Hit-Girl (Chloë Grace Moretz).  Elsewhere, Chris D’Amico (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) is still sore at Kick-Ass for killing his crime lord father in the first movie.  He reacts by dropping his hero persona, Red Mist, and instead becoming the first real-life villain, the Motherfucker.  When Hit-Girl’s guardian, Detective Marcus Williams (Morris Chestnut), finds out that she’s still fighting crime, he makes her promise him that she’ll stop, and will stop hanging out with Dave.  Lacking the help and training of Hit-Girl, Kick-Ass joins a hero team called Justice Forever, led by Colonel Stars and Stripes (Jim Carrey), and including Night-Bitch (Lindy Booth), Doctor Gravity (Donald Faison), Battle Guy (Clark Duke), Remembering Tommy (Steven Mackintosh and Monica Dolan), and Insect Man (Robert Emms), but continues to try to get Hit-Girl back to her calling while she’s trying to understand how to be a normal girl.  Oh yeah, and the Motherfucker is trying to kill them all.  They should worry about that too.

I was a really big fan of the first Kick-Ass movie.  Going into this one I was made nervous by how poor the reviews were for the sequel, but I found the movie much more enjoyable than the other critics.  Not as good as the first, and there were some problems, but it was still worth watching.  But I’m fond of the idea of real life heroes since I semi-constantly consider it myself, but soon find that my superpower is extreme laziness.  The story was nothing entirely special, but it was interesting.  There was the whole revenge plot that drove the movie, but also the real life scenarios of Hit-Girl trying to figure out being a regular kid.  Most of that seemed like it would be really insulting if I were a lady.  Especially the whole conversation in the bedroom with the other high school girls talking about how hot and bothered they get for some Beiber-esque gay boy (redundant?) they watch on TV.  And then it works on our hero, Hit-Girl!  I’m not saying this deduction about women isn’t accurate, but it does seem vaguely sexist.  And accurate.

The performances in the movie were well-realized.  I liked these actors in the first movie; how could I not like them again?  The answer: shut up!  I’m writing a review here!  This is not a discussion!  Aaron Taylor-Johnson did a great job as Kick-Ass.  He plays it very grounded in reality, as it should be played.  But he’s also a bit of an asshole.  I understand that Hit-Girl was badass and that you probably weren’t going to get much better or be able to save the day without her, but on another level you’re trying to convince a little girl to continue risking her life.  Also, he wasn’t really that bright.  You keep hearing stories about this villain the Motherfucker and all the bad things he’s doing, but you don’t even bother to go look at his Twitter feed or his Facebook page to see what he looks like and maybe piece together that he’s that kid you were friends with and then killed his father?  It’s been a while since I’ve seen the first movie, but I feel like you might have his street address.  Speaking of the Christopher Mintz-Plasse character, this motherfucker’s whining was really getting on my nerves in this movie.  Lots of people’s dads are killed by bazookas, but they don’t all need to whine through the whole movie like a petulant teenager … like the one you’re portraying in the movie…  It was just annoying, okay?!  Chloë Moretz remains quality as Hit-Girl in this movie, but it did bother me that she was not being Hit-Girl through most of the movie.  I understand the emotional reason for it, but I also wanted more of her kicking ass.  Even though one of her moments of ass-kicking was really gross (the moment with the Sick Stick for instance) and one of them was unrealistic for this type of movie (the “last resort” thing at the end).  Jim Carrey was very good in the movie, and I was also very happy to see John Leguizamo again.  I feel like I haven’t seen him in years.  I had no idea who Olga Kurkulina was before this movie, but she sure was scary in it as Mother Russia.  Her scene of laying waste to all those cops was epic.  And since we’re on the subject…

One other thing I noticed in this movie is that the cops were the absolute worst.  I dislike but understand that they decide to put a stop to all people wearing costumes, but it seemed like they only caught the ones doing good.  Worry about them second!  Even if you have the opportunity to catch one that’s trying to do good, instead go after the ones that just killed 20 of your guys on a residential street.  THEN worry about the good ones.  Even when they were trying to do good, the cops sucked at it.  Bad guys break into a funeral and lay waste to everyone and the cops (with guns) are so much more useless than the regular people with baseball bats, sticks, and purses filled with bricks.

Kick-Ass 2 might not have measured up to the first movie, but it certainly exceeded the critical response I have seen for it.  It’s a solid movie with a story that’s nothing too mind-blowing but is definitely good, some pretty great action when it happens, and some great performances.  I’d recommend seeing this movie in theaters, but you wouldn’t be hurting too much if you waited for a rental.  Kick-Ass 2 gets “This 15-year-old girl just owned your ass” out of “Robin wishes he was me.”

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Game of Thrones: Season Two (2012)

Any Man Dies With a Clean Sword, I’ll Rape His Fucking Corpse!

It stood to reason that I put out my review for Season Two of Game of Thrones a week away from my review for Season One since that is about the time it took me to finish both of them.  That may come as a bit of a spoiler to the eventual review of this season, but I don’t care.  I have a review to write and this is the thing that I’ve watched.  So let’s jump right into my review for Game of Thrones: Season 2, based on the novels by George R. R. Martin, and starring Peter Dinklage, Lena Headey, Maisie Williams, Sibel Kekilli, Michelle Fairley, Emilia Clarke, Aiden Gillen, Kit Harington, Alfie Allen, Jerome Flynn, Iain Glen, Charles Dance, Isaac Hempstead-Wright, Sophie Turner, Jack Gleeson, Stephen Dillane, Liam Cunningham, Richard Madden, John Bradley, Conleth Hill, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Gwendoline Christie, Rory McCann, and Carice van Houten.

Robb Stark (Richard Madden) continues his campaign against King Joffrey Baratheon (Jack Gleeson).  He sends Theon Greyjoy (Alfie Allen) to gain the support of his father, Balon (Patrick Malahide), and sends his mother Catelyn (Michelle Fairley) to seek help from Renly Baratheon (Gethin Anthony), who is fighting with his brother Stannis (Stephen Dillane) over who has claim on the throne.  Stannis has sex with the priestess Melisandre (Carice van Houten) when she promises to give him a son, which turns out to be a shadow creature that kills Renly, causing Catelyn to flee with Brienne of Tarth (Gwendoline Christie).  Robb tries to trade Jamie Lannister (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) for Sansa (Sophie Turner) and Arya (Maisie Williams) Stark.  And then Stannis sails against the King.  Also, Arya is posing as a boy while travelling back to Winterfell, gets taken hostage and taken into the house of Tywin Lannister (Charles Dance).  And, across the ocean, Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia Clarke) is trying to lead her people across a desert and they almost die before they finally reach the town of Qarth, where shit is also going down.

Here’s something crazy: the writers of this movie didn’t go on some crazy drug binge and decide to start ignoring the excellent material they were working with.  Seriously.  After two seasons of this show I’ve almost broken down and decided that I should check out these books.  And I hate reading!  But I’ll probably just wait until the DVD’s come out.  The second season was just as good as the first, and I refuse to decide which is better.  That’s not necessary for a review, right?  I would say that, in my opinion, this season didn’t have as much by way of emotionally impactful moments as the first season had.  Ned Stark was beheaded in front of his family in the first season.  This season didn’t have that.  It didn’t have Khal Drogo dying.  It had some great moments, but maybe I’m not thinking of them as much because the battle in episode nine was so epic it overshadowed the rest of them.  It was badass.  Disembowelments, ships exploding in green fire, and a feel of the battle of Helm’s Deep mixed with storming the beaches at Normandy.  The only part I took issue with was not really clearly understanding what happened to Dinklage at the end of it.  He seemed like he was fatally sliced in the face.  It didn’t really look like a fatal wound, but they tried to act like he might have died from it, probably for the cliffhanger.  But at first I thought they were going for one of those slow reveals where the top of his head slid off because the cut when all the way through his head.  There were other great moments in the story, like the tense part where Arya was trying to covertly serve drinks to Tywin Lannister and Petyr Baelish and not get recognized by Petyr.  There were also little parts that I didn’t care for.  The only one I can currently think of is the fact that episode five had two separate occasions where “You can’t avenge him when you’re dead” worked to convince people.

The performances are still fantastic.  They’re also the same people, so it’s not very surprising.  One thing I still find weird about Game of Thrones so far is that all I ever heard about the series before I started watching was how awesome Khaleesi was.  First off, her name isn’t Khaleesi like everyone made it seem like it was.  It’s Daenerys.  Emilia Clarke is sexy and great in the show, but she hasn’t made that much of an impact.  There was kind of a drought of her through most of this season, and the parts she was in weren’t always that interesting.  Wandering around a desert, then almost marrying a black man, then getting her pets kidnapped by the lead singer of REM, then they light that guy on fire and it’s the end of the world and he knows it.  But he feels fine.  She doesn’t even have much impact on the story in general, which is exemplified by the fact that she’s the only big character on the other side of the ocean.  The rest of the world in this show doesn’t even know she exists yet.  My favorite character in the series remains Maisie Williams as Arya.  I don’t know why, but I like this kid’s moxie.  And I like all the characters that are nice to her, like Tom Wlaschiha as Jaqen H’ghar.  I also think he reminds me of Gambit.  Plus he was the one that answered the question I kept asking early on: Why does no one realize Arya is a girl?  Why does no one say to Arya as she’s pretending to be a boy, “Little boy, you seem to be developing breasts.”  But then Jaqen and Tywin Lannister both figure it out, so maybe she just surrounded herself with stupid people.  I like Rory McCann as Sandor “The Hound” Clegane more in this season as well, mainly because of the part where he rescued Sansa from getting raped.  It was brutal and badass.  But later, I started thinking about how highly inconvenient it would be for a warrior like him to be afraid of fire when there would be so much of it in a typical battle in this time.  And the rescue situation started making me mad at Sophie Turner’s Sansa.  Why doesn’t she escape with The Hound?!  What kind of stupid Stockholm Syndrome is she developing that makes her stick around this castle?!  Lena Headey still brings it as Cersei Lannister in this season, but I liked her most when she was getting drunk during the big battle, and especially her line about a woman’s best weapon being between her legs.  They introduced two new characters in this season that I liked as well.  Natalie Dormer had one hell of a smokin’ hot body, but looked goofy wearing that waffle cone dress she wore (See picture below left).  And there was also Gwendoline Christie as Brienne of Tarth or, as I called her, Lady Tilda of Swinton (See picture below right).

Season Two of Game of Thrones was just as awesome as the first.  Not as emotionally substantial as the first, but it makes up for it with a fantastic battle in episode nine.  All of the performances are still top of the line.  Season Two became yet another overly expensive TV series I’ll have to buy on BluRay, and I recommend you all do the same.  Can’t wait for Season Three to hit the shelves.  Game of Thrones: Season Two gets “I much like my head.  I don’t want to see it removed just yet” out of “Those are brave men knocking at our door.  Let’s go kill them!”

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Game of Thrones: Season One (2011)

What Do We Say to the God of Death?

I have come to find recently that the quality of a show can be judged based on whether or not I have ever seen it.  Some of the shows I hear the most about  the quality of – your Walking Dead, your Breaking Bad, your Mad Mens – I have either never seen an episode or maybe only one or two.  But if I had never seen these TV shows how could I review them?  And if I hadn’t reviewed them, how would you all know if you like it or not?!  I have an obligation here.  I need to either let you people know if you can continue to love a show or if you need to burn your BluRays.  The first TV show I decided to take on was a show called Game of Thrones: Season 1, based on a series of novels by George R. R. Martin, and starring Sean Bean, Michelle Fairley, Richard Madden, Sophie Turner, Maisie Williams, Isaac Hempstead-Wright, Art Parkinson, Kit Harington, Alfie Allen, Mark Addy, Lena Headey, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Peter Dinklage, Jack Gleeson, Rory McCann, Aiden Gillen, Conleth Hill, Harry Lloyd, Emilia Clarke, Jason Momoa, and Iain Glen.

The Lord of Winterfell, Eddard “Ned” Stark (Sean Bean), is asked by his friend and king, Robert Baratheon (Mark Addy), to become his chief advisor.  Ned takes his daughters Sansa (Sophie Turner) and Arya (Maisie Williams), where Sansa is to marry the prince Joffrey Baratheon (Jack Gleeson), son of the Queen Cersei Lannister (Lena Headey).  Ned’s wife, Catelyn (Michelle Fairley), stays home with Bran (Isaac Hempstead-Wright), who is in a coma after he was pushed from a window by Cersei’s brother, Ser Jaime Lannister (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau), after he saw Cersei and Jaime having sex.  Incest-style!  Icky…  Across the Narrow Sea, Viserys Targaryen (Harry Lloyd) sells his sister, Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia Clarke) to the leader of the Dothraki warrior tribe, Khal Drogo (Jason Momoa), in hopes that the Dothraki will deliver him back to the throne he believes is his by right.  It may actually be his by right for all I know, because lots of people claim the throne belongs to them and it’s hard to keep up.

As it turns out, I was indeed and inexplicably avoiding the best shows on television.  This is a great show, and one that’s right up my alley.  I love the swords and sorcery, dungeon and dragons stuff.  That shit makes me wet.  You know what else does it for me?  Naked ladies.  This show’s got it all!  I liked this show so much that I bombed through the first two seasons as quickly as I could, watching during all of my free time.  Of course there was stuff that bugged me, but it seemed all intentional.  For instance, I don’t like when shows don’t work out exactly as I’d like them to for the people I like.  Of course, the show would be over pretty quickly if Ned and the Daenerys got married and lived happily ever after as king and queen in the first season.  The same goes for my strong desire to see Joffrey get what’s coming to him shortly after I first saw him.  He’s a driving force in the second season as well, but I still don’t think I’ve seen him get the comeuppance that he needs.  I also thought I was going to call some bullshit on the show when they suggested that Tyrion Lannister was the one that put the hit on Bran and sent the assassin using a knife that could so easily be tracked back to him, but the show was aware of that and Tyrion had been set up.  You win this round, Game of Thrones.  I still feel safe calling bullshit on the guy in the Night’s Watch for saying that Jon Snow was only fit to clean the armory because he was also pretty good at beating the shit out of all of his other trainees single handedly.  The only real problem I’ve had with the story is that I got attached to Syrio Forel, the sword instructor for Arya, because we don’t know what happened to him.  Of course, with how well this story’s been written so far, I wouldn’t be surprised if this was intentional too.

There’s not a whole lot to say about the production value of this show.  It’s fantastic.  Quite frankly, I’d call it impressive.  This is movie quality work going on in this TV show.  I remember a time when you could clearly tell the difference between TV and movies, but now it’s really blurred, especially when it comes to TV on HBO and channels of the like.  You get fantastic blood and guts in equal measure to some nice titties.  I cannot complain.

All of the performances are excellent in this show.  Sean Bean tears it up, even though his character’s name doesn’t seem to fit in the medieval setting.  Granted, his name is actually Eddard, but everyone calls him Ned.  Ned Stark seems like the first pass at naming Iron Man.  I was also a big fan of his daughters.  Sansa because she’s hot and Arya because of potential for future hotness.  Maisie Williams is far too young for hotness now, but she supplants it with tons of Moxie and I love her for it.  And Sophie Turner does a great job as Sansa, but I kept hating her for her behavior.  Even though I love animals, she deserved to get her dog killed for lying to the king and letting her sister get in trouble.  I just don’t understand her motivations.  That little shit Joffrey doesn’t deserve any kind of affection, even if you’re betrothed to him.  Is it just because he was in some of the Nolan Batman movies?  Look, I love him for that too, but the amount of asshole he is in this show overrides that.  I found myself having trouble for the first part of this season understanding why people liked Daenerys Targaryen.  Emilia Clarke does a great job at it, and is hotter than all get out, but I didn’t see anything special about her character at first.  It wasn’t until about halfway through the season that I started seeing what everyone was going on about.  That’s when she started getting badass.  When she gets her three new pets, I was cemented in a little more.  I also really dug Jason Momoa as Khal Drogo.  He was badass.  But, again, nothing good ever happens to the people I like.  I also understood pretty quickly why people talked up Peter Dinklage.  He was really the only likeable Lannister.

Definitely happy I started getting into Game of Thrones, and happy that I work with someone nice enough to be able to supply me with the first season like my friend Ashley.  And I’m also resentful for that douchebag roommate that forgot to bring his copy home with him so I could’ve gotten started early.  But I’ll probably have to resend that statement because he has season two.  Ah, I’m just kidding.  I already watched it all.  This show has a great, intricate story with lots of badasslery and intrigue, and enough tits and blood to go around, and an all-around great cast to realize it all with.  Season one is a must watch, and season two is even better, and you can check that review out whenever I get around to writing it.  Game of Thrones Season One gets “I’m good at killing fat boys.  I like killing fat boys” out of “Winter is coming.”

WATCH REVIEWS HERE!  YouTube  OTHER JOKES HERE!  Twitter  BE A FAN HERE!  Facebook  If you like these reviews so much, spread the word.  Keep me motivated!  Also, if you like them so much, why don’t you marry them?!