Showing posts with label Milla Jovovich. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Milla Jovovich. Show all posts

Tuesday, January 08, 2008

DVD: Resident Evil: Extinction

Resident Evil: Extinction stars Milla Jovovich, Oded Fehr, Ali Larter, Iain Glen and is directed by Russell Mulcahy and written by Paul W.S. Anderson (who wrote the first two).

Resident Evil: Extinction is the third movie in this trilogy based on the popular video game by Capcom. The first movie they tried to contain/experiment with the Virus, the second the virus broke out and they tried to escape the Apocalypse. Now this this newest addition to the Resident Evil series they are to avoid Extinction.

Extinction has everyone that is actually living always on the run. The world is now a complete wasteland, food and gas are scarce. From the beginning we learn that The Umbrella Corp. has a working underground facility working on a cure stop the T-virus, they are using clones of Alice to find the cure. The doctor in charged Dr. Isaac's (Iain Glen) has been working with dozens of clones of Alice trying to make the Zombies less violent.

Alice (Milla Jovovich) is staking the land by herself, so that the Umbrella Corp. can't follow her, when she reaches a abandoned gas station she finds a journal saying that their is a place were its virus free but its in Alaska. Later Alice joins up with some of her old friends Carlos Olivera (Oded Fehr) and L.J. (Mike Epps) and meets with Claire Redfield (Ali Larter) who has set up this party of unaffected human to travel safely from spot to spot. Alice tells them of the place up in Alaska. They decide to take the chance and go, but first they must restock up with supplies. The closest place to do that is Las Vegas.

Waiting for them is some of the Umbrella Corp. Scientist including Dr. Isaac's as they set a trap to capture Alice who they thought before had died. So what starts is for Alice to finish the battle between herself and the Umbrella Corp. once and for all.

Again we see another Resident Evil movie. While I thought that since Apocalypse was getting a little bit better than the first one, maybe Extinction would follow that trend and be better than the second movie. While some parts, most the action seem to be fun and exciting I thought that the movie as a whole was a down grade from what we saw from Apocalypse.

One thing that they changed with the third movies was the type of zombies. Towards the end they used a newer breed of zombies that Dr. Isaac's had made by giving them some of Alice's blood, thinking it was a cure. This make the zombies more quicker and able to think. Which makes anything better from the zombies from the first and second films.

One main issue I had with this movie was with, what the hell happened to the character Jill Valentine and Angie, they gave us nothing. Not even a small notice to what had happened with the characters. I was really pissed off. Another thing was what the hell was up with all the force power Alice was using. The whole movie was turning into a movie with Alice and she can bend time and move crap with her mind, give me a break.

Most likely, this Resident Evil series will continue, maybe not with Milla Jovovich but I think they will continue this. Throughout Extinction I was rolling my eyes at how stupid things were getting as this series is continuing. Extinction is a Skip.

DVD

Resident Evil: Extinction DVD's special features include the following; Deleted Scenes; Sneak Peek at "Resident Evil: Degeneration" - The first Resident Evil CGI feature film!; Filmmakers' Commentary with Director Russell Mulcahy, Writer/Producer Pual W. S. Anderson and Producer Jeremy Bolt; Making-Of Featurettes: -Alice Vision Pre-production; The Big Bang: Shooting Resident Evil: Extinction; Bigger, Faster Stronger: The Undead Evolve; Vegas Visual Effects: Miniatures.-

I thought that the DVD is a really decent set of features on the Resident Evil: Extinction DVD. The one thing I was really excited about after I finished watching it was the Sneak Peak of the first feature film of a CGI Resident Evil movie called Degeneration, in my opinion I think this for me could bring the series back to what I think it should be at, I swear that guy is Leon from Resident Evil 4, I can't wait. Everything else for me was just so-so, not bad but then again not that good either. I would say Resident Evil: Extinction is at least a Rent.

Monday, January 07, 2008

DVD: Resident Evil (Resurrected Edition)

Resident Evil

Resident Evil stars Milla Jovovich, Michelle Rodriguez, Eric Mabius and James Purefoy and is written and directed by Paul W.S. Anderson.

Resident Evil is based on the popular video game of the same named. A virus known as the T-Virus is unleashed in an underground research facility, The Hive (property of the Umbrella corporation), which is localed right under Raccoon City. When the T-Virus is unleashed the underground's security mainframe, Red Queen puts the place on lock down. So a group of commandos and soldiers travel down to clear up what has happened down in the Hive. The only way to the Hive is through a house which is guarded by Alice (Milla Jovovich), but she was effected by some nerve gas that is part of the defense of the Hive, that makes her forget who she is for a short period. Alice along with another person who was at the house Matt Addison (Eric Mabius) travel down to the Hive. While traveling down to the Hive through the train they find Spencer Parks (James Purefoy) who was with Alice on protecting the house, and he too was effected by the defense gas.

As they get to the Hive they make there way to the Red Queen and shut her down. When they do that it unlocks all the doors and turns off all security measures. Without knowing the group who now only consists of Alice, Spencer Parks, Matt Addison, Chad Kaplan (Martin Crewes) and Rain Ocampo (played by Michelle Rodriguez) has let out the people who have been infected with the T-Virus, turning them into Zombies.

Let me start off say I have always enjoyed all of the Resident Evil video games, Capcom really does a great job on making scary moments and throughout the games your constantly tensed. The movie on the other hand, I though it could have been better, It was not scary, the acting was so-so, the graphic was in my opinion OK, nothing great though.

Maybe it was the writing but I thought the whole thing was laughably bad, the actors seemed to me that they put no thought of emotion, they seemed bored and just said what was written without feeling. Really dull. I guess you would have to say that the story too was for me not that exciting, nothing really grabbed me and did not let go.

One beef I have with these monster movie is that Zombie at some extend are crapping "bad guys" in movies. One thing that I really hate about the Zombie cliche is that they aways walks slowly and the victim running ALWAYS trips and looks back and eventually gets killed. Now one who gave them a good change was the movie 28 Days Later and its sequel 28 Weeks Later, the Zombies in this movies where running, they were smarter. Those were much more exciting.

Overall Resident Evil is a very forgetful movie you could watch it once and then maybe days later it would be forgotten. I would have to say that Resident Evil is a Skip.

Resident Evil: Apocalypse

The sequel to the first Resident Evil, Resident Evil: Apocalypse stars Milla Jovovich, Sienna Guillory, Oded Fehr and Thomas Kretschmann and is written by Paul W.S. Anderson and directed by Alexander Witt.

The sequel to the 2002 Resident Evil movie based on the Capcom zombie game starts off right where the first let off. The T-Virus has come up to the surface and is starting to spread through Raccoon City.While the Umbrella Corp. has been evacuating the city, one of the first priorities was a scientist Dr. Ashford (Jared Harris) who created the T-Virus. He says we would not go without his child Angie (Sophie Vavasseur) but as she is on her way out of the city her car gets in an accident. As The Umbrella Corp. is getting all civilians out of the city, the Virus makes its way to the gate so they decide to shut off to everyone there.

One of the people left in Raccoon City is Jill Valentine (Sienna Guillory) along with her friend Peyton Wells (Razaaq Adoti) and a news reporter Terri Morales (Sandrine Holt). They stick together and shack up in a church, where they are attacked by three monsters and are saved by Alice (Milla Jovovich). Alice help these three survive. Dr. Ashford learn about his daughter and finds out that she when to go and hide at her junior school. So he contacts the four Alice, Terri, Jill and a bitten Peyton and has them rescue his daughter for a trip out of the city before the Umbrella Corp. explodes a bomb in the heart of Raccoon City. He also gets a ex Umbrella soldier Carlos Oliveira (Oded Fehr) to help the others.

The man who is in charged of the evacuation and is some how connected to Alice's past, Major Cain (played by Thomas Kretschmann) he unleashes the Umbrella Corporation experiment from the Nemesis program (Which they mentioned towards the end of the first movie). The experiment is named Nemesis, a destruction force that can destroy anything in his way. Cain wants to try to match Nemesis against Alice.

As positive I must say I like Resident Evil: Apocalypse must better than the first. I though it was doing much better, story-wise but still disappointed with the overall movie. Most of the same issues I had with the first movie are still present here.

The newest cast members Sienna Guillory who plays Jill Valentine which is the character from the video game original Resident Evil and Oded Fehr playing Carlos Oliveira who is from the Resident Evil 3: Nemesis game. They were a pretty good addition to the movie, I do like Oded Fehr from the Mummy movies I thought hes a really good actor.

While it seems to me it seems that with this sequel the series is turning to a more action rather than horror type of movie. I really liked this one better because it uses more from the video game. But overall I would say this sequel is a Skip.

DVD

The DVD of this Resurrected Edition has both the first and the second of the Resident Evil movies from the series. Aside from the two movie the features include The Evolution of resident Evil: Bridge to Extinction, Exclusive Sneak Peek Scene from Resident Evil: Extinction, Diary of an Apocalypse, Zombie Dog POV Test, Undead boot camp, Stuntman Set Tour, Memory Retention Training Quiz, Evil Archives: 5 Photo Galleries.

The DVD here is really simple, If you don't have or seen the first two, this is the DVD to get. But if you do have it then there is not much here for you except a 5 minutes bridge to the third feature film. The Resurrected Edition of Resident Evil is a Rent.

Tuesday, August 21, 2007

DVD: Dummy

Before The Pianist, the film in which Adrien Brody won an Academy Award for his performance. He stared in Dummy as Steven, a nearly 30 year old still living with his parents. When Steven gets fired from his office job he goes through a unemployment counselor named Lorena (played by Vera Farmiga) to help him find work as a ventriloquist something that he as be always fond of. After a couple of mishaps including a restraining order he finds the courage to ask Lorena out with the help of Steven's best friend Fangora who is played by Milla Jovovich. Steven's sister Heidi played by Illeana Douglas who too is living with the parents is a wedding planner who is having trouble finding a band to play Klezmer music for the wedding. Fangora then learns to speak Hebrew just show she can get this music gig for her band.

The story of the Dummy was good I liked the story of an 30 year old still living with the parents and is a very shy person who wants to follow his dreams. Dummy does has a good story with a good bit of humor in it. I was really impressed that Adrien Brody did all of the Ventriloquist all by him self and that takes talent.

Adrien Brody does a great job as Steven, a loser that still lives with his parents and his sister and he decides to take up ventriloquism. Brody does this very well he's very believable. Another one I like was Milla Jovovich everything with her and her mother was really funny. The rest of the cast are good too from the parents who are played by Jessica Walter who is from the Televison show Arrested Development and Rob Leibman to the obessed boyfriend of the sister played by Jared Harris.

Nothing really set me off of ththis film I enjoyed every minute of this film. From the acting to the story and even to the writing everything in this was good. I Highly Recommended Dummy.

DVD Features

Dummy is presented in 1.85:1 Widescreen and is enhanced for widescreen televisions. With audio of English 5.1 Dolby Digital Surround, and 2.0 Dolby Stereo. Also with Sapnish subtitles. Extras Include:
  • Picture-in-Picture Ventriloquist Commentary by Jeff Dunham.
  • Dummies 101: Learning the Ventriloquist Dream.
  • Trailer Gallery.
  • Deleted/Altered Scenes.
  • "What Type of Dummy Are You?" Game.
  • Ventriloquism: A History of Dummies.
  • Ventriloquist Lessons.

The DVD of Dummy is a pretty solid DVD with its extras and the films. The Ventriloquist extras are pretty cool and the lessons are interesting. Overall the DVD is a good for any DVD/movie fan and this DVD comes Highly Recommended.