Tag: Milla Jovovich

Cinema Dispatch: Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City

~ Matt Vetrano ~ Leave a comment

Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City and all the images you see in this review are owned by Sony Pictures Releasing

Directed by Johannes Roberts

Say what you will about the Paul WS Anderson Resident Evil movies, they were popular, there were at least a few good entries in it, and Milla Jovovich carried them; an impressive feat as I believe she was the first woman to be the lead of a billion-dollar film franchise.  It was kind of the MCU before the MCU was really a thing; a series that came out almost every year and made a boatload of cash based on a property that most in the mainstream had dismissed as juvenile and (cheap?).  Now that Jovovich has finished her run as Alice and Anderson is stepping back to a producing role, it’s time to see if the franchise can be brought back to life so that Sony doesn’t have to rely on Spider-Man movies to stay profitable!  Does this capture the essence of the games in a way the Anderson films never quite did, or will we be begging him to come back to the series by the time someone does a Jill Sandwich joke? Let’s find out!!

Claire Redfield (Kaya Scodelario) left Raccoon City a long time ago and it’s the last place she ever wanted to return to, but she has some information from the INTER-WEB that is compelling her to return and see her brother.  Of course, since this is a more faithful adaptation, the whole thing is set in the nineties which means she can’t just text him to get out of the city; instead he has to hitch a ride there and show him a VHS tape of someone who claims that the Umbrella Corporation has poisoned the city’s water supply and that something big is going to happen very soon!  Her brother Chris (Robbie Amell) is not impressed and has to go to work on the dreariest and rainiest night imaginable which of course is also the night that all heck breaks loose in the city!  There are officers at the nearby Spencer Mansion who haven’t reported in so Chris, Jill Valentine (Hannah John-Kamen), Albert Wesker (Tom Hooper), and a guy who ISN’T Barry (Chad Rook) head there to find out what’s going on, which leaves the new guy Leon Kennedy (Avan Jogia) alone to watch the police station with the crotchety captain (Donald Logue).  It probably doesn’t come as a shock to you that both groups find zombies roaming around, and the city is put on lockdown by Umbrella soldiers who intend to keep this all a secret while one of their scientists (Neal McDonough) collects whatever research he can before extracting him and his family from this nightmare.  Will the Redfields and all their buddies find a way to escape the city that is slowly rotting away around them?  How does Umbrella plan to sweep this catastrophe under the rug, and is there someone among the survivors who knows more than they’re letting on?  They set the movie in the nineties, but can they truly recreate the feeling of playing the original game for the first time all over again?  Well not if they’re shooting this with HD cameras!

“It looks a lot smaller than I remember.” “That’s nostalgia goggles for you!”
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Cinema Dispatch: Hellboy

~ Matt Vetrano ~ Leave a comment

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Hellboy and all the images you see in this review are owned by Lionsgate

Directed by Neil Marshall

So… we’re NOT gonna get a Hellboy 3?  Okay, just wanted to make sure!  Well there’s certainly no reason to just STOP making Hellboy movies just because he’s not gonna make one, so let’s get ready to reboot!  I mean when you’ve got a setup as good as DUDE WHO LOOKS LIKE THE DEVIL PUNCHES MONSTERS, there’s no WAY you can go wrong even if you don’t have Del Toro helming it, right!?  Is this the next best thing to getting a conclusion to the previous Hellboy movies, or is this a sad remind of what could have been?  Let’s find out!!

Hellboy (David Harbour) is your average guy with a decent job and perhaps the beginings of a drinking problem.  Okay, he’s also a red demon with a giant arm and horns growing out of his head, but looks are only skin deep, and this guy is just like you and me on the inside; suffering silently in this living nightmare we call life while putting on a tough face to try and cope!  Hellboy’s latest reason to cope is that one his pals at the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense was turned into a vampire and Hellboy (most likely accidently) had to finish him off before he started ripping out other people’s throats.  Not a great way to start the work week if you ask me, but he must solider on as a crisis in London sends him to Europe where coincidentally a legendary monster known as Nimue the Blood Queen (Milla Jovovich) is being brought back to life so as to wreak unholy havoc on the world.  Well I don’t know about you, but that sounds like a job for Hellboy and his cast of wacky sidekicks including Alice (Sasha Lane) who can talk to ghosts and Ben (Daniel Dae Kim) who’s basically a living GI Joe action figure who seems to be harboring a secret of his own.  Can the BPRD and its leader Ian McShane) who also considers himself Hellboy’s father manage to stop The Blood Queen before it’s too late?  Can Hellboy focus on the task at hand when things continually get in his way and remind him of just how unwanted he is in the world of humans?  Can someone teach this boy how to comb his hair?  It just looks sloppy when you’re supposed to be at work!

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“You know we have a dress code.”     “Does it look like I care?”

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Cinema Dispatch: Resident Evil: The Final Chapter

~ Matt Vetrano ~ Leave a comment

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Resident Evil: The Final Chapter and all the images you see in this review are owned by Screen Gems

Directed by Paul WS Anderson

It has been quite a ride, hasn’t it?  I’ve always been a fan of Paul WS Anderson and his work, especially considering that he’s the only director other than Uwe Bowl who’s attempted to make more than one video game movie and is the one who ACTUALLY made it work.  People STILL say that we don’t have any good video game movies, but what they really mean is that there hasn’t been one that’s been critically acclaimed, and even THAT criterion is rather nebulous.  So what if Resident Evil or Mortal Kombat didn’t win Oscars?  Neither did Taxi Driver or Dr Strangelove!  It truly is the end of an era though considering how few franchises from the early years of the new millennium are still around, recent revivals like xXx non-withstanding, and there really isn’t anything like it to take its place now that it’s over.  Hell, this series DARED to be different from the source material which I can’t imagine ANY film getting away with now considering everything is about franchise management nowadays!  It’s kind of a sad day to see this series go, though it will be doubly so if this final chapter turns out to be a poor note to end things on.  Does Mr. Anderson manage to give us one hell of a sendoff to this beloved series, or has this franchise finally run out of steam right as it was about to reach the finish line?  Let’s find out!!

The movie begins with the world having ended for at least the second time and Alice (Milla Jovovich)  is all alone in the wastelands of what the world once was.  Of course, being the savior of all humanity that she is, someone eventually comes a-knocking for her to be the big hero once again.  This time, it’s… THE RED QUEEN!?  Yes!  The AI from the other films (played this time by Ever Gabo Anderson) that has been trying to kill her apparently wants to help her because Wesker (oh, spoiler alert: Wesker’s a bad guy again and is still played by Shawn Roberts) is just forty eight hours away from wiping out ALL of humanity and Alice has to stop him before then!  How?  Well apparently Umbrella developed an antidote for the T-Virus that no one bothered to mention up to this point and if she can release it into the world in time, all the zombies will die and humanity will be saved!  Of course, the antidote (along with Wesker) is all the way back in Raccoon City so she has to travel back there, go back to the secret underground Umbrella base, and punch as many zombies as possible in the process!  Can Alice save the world one last time before it’s too late, by which I mean the Resident Evil film rights expire?  What exactly brought upon this change of heart from the Red Queen, and could this all be one giant trap to finally destroy her one true enemy?  So wait, did she get her powers back or is she still human Alice?

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Practical?  Not really.   Awesome?  ABSOLUTELY!

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