Classic Movie Review The Fifth Element

The Fifth Element (1997) 

Directed by Luc Besson

Written by Luc Besson, Robert Mark Kamen

Starring Bruce Willis, Milla Jovovich, Gary Oldman, Chris Tucker

Release Date May 7th, 1997 

I love the way Luc Besson views the universe. Besson sees the universe in bright bold colors. It’s the way I would like to view the universe. While my mind is often clouded by the often sad and tragic state of humanity, and especially man’s inhumanity to man, Besson manages to look beyond and see the beauty beyond our planet and into the stars.

The best example of how Luc Besson sees the universe, aside from his dazzling yet somewhat empty new film Valerian and the Planet of A Thousand Cities, is the 1997 film The Fifth Element, this week’s classic on the I Hate Critics movie review podcast.

The Fifth Element was well ahead of its time, a sci-fi movie filled with vibrant color, extraordinary costumes, and remarkable, often mind-blowing, special effects and production design.

If only that same vibrancy extended to the characters. You see, for as much as I am dazzled by the spectacle, the visual dynamism of Luc Besson and The Fifth Element, he’s not a director who is particularly interested in characters. Besson, though thoroughly detailed in costumes and set design and special effects, is not a director of actors.

Read my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review Resident Evil Afterlife 3D

Resident Evil Afterlife (2010) 

Directed by Paul W.S Anderson

Written by Paul W.S Anderson 

Starring Milla Jovovich, Ali Larter, Kim Coates, Wentworth Miller, Boris Kodjoe

Release Date September 10th, 2010 

Published September 10th, 2010 

The idea behind each of the “Resident Evil” films is watching Milla Jovovich in states of undress or in exceptionally tight fitting outfits. Jovovich is a walking fetish for director Paul W.S Anderson and a legion of geek fans who flock even to the shoddiest made films to see the object of their lust.

Now, Milla Jovavich in tight leather and in 3D threatens to make going to see “Resident Evil: Afterlife 3D” something akin to attending a porn film with greasy, glassy eyed geeks under giant coats ducking low so what they're doing cannot be seen. Sure, there are zombies and guns, but if you can’t figure the true interest of the “Resident Evil” creators and fans, consider yourself naïve but also kind of lucky. I wish I didn’t know.

In this 3rd or 4th or who the hell cares numbered sequel in the video game to movie franchise, Alice (Jovovich) is in Japan seeking the headquarters of the evil umbrella corporation. They are the ones who invented the T-Virus that has turned most of humanity into flesh eating zombies while turning Alice superhuman.

Yes, Alice is infected by the T Virus but something makes her immune and adaptive and superhuman, thus she is perfect to take on an entire army of faceless corporate mercenaries. Oh, but Alice is not alone, in a move that will no doubt please the geeks in most disturbing fashion, Alice has been cloned and several of her are on the attack in tight leather jumpsuits.

That's just the opening minutes, once we've been whittled down to just the original Alice, we get to the much more dull story of Alice's travel to Alaska seeking her former friends and the search for a place called Arcadia that claims to be a disease free paradise filled with survivors and supplies.

Soon, Alice is reunited with Claire (fellow fetish object Ali Larter) and though Claire has lost her memory, they soon are traveling to Los Angeles searching for Arcadia and more survivors. The few they find are hiding in a giant prison surrounded by the undead. Boris Kodjoe and Wentworth Miller lead a ragtag bunch of cannon fodder destined to die horribly for our amusement.

The best of the supporting cast is not one of the survivors but rather a reject from another movie, a zombie giant with an ax/hammer he intends to use to crush all non-zombies. Where did this freak come from? Why is he killing survivors and not crushing zombies? Who knows, he makes for a cool visual and a strong foe for Alice and that's all that matters.

Sadly, the zombie giant ax/hammer guy, who looks like he wandered over from the unmade sequel to Silent Hill, is not the big bad in Resident Evil Afterlife. He's barely a foe at all, dispatched in a single scene with barely a fight. I wasn't rooting for the bad guy but he was the most interesting looking thing in the film, not counting Ms. Jovovich, and the film definitely loses something after his scene ends.

Don't let me overstate, the giant ax/hammer zombie dude is certainly not enough to recommend the dull slog of zombie goofiness that is “Resident Evil Afterlife.” There is no doubt that Milla Jovavich is completely gorgeous and looks amazing but this type of puerile interest cannot sustain interest in a full length feature and is really better suited to the privacy of home viewing, even without the 3D.

Movie Review Resident Evil Apocalypse

Resident Evil Apocalypse (2004) 

Directed by Alexander Witt

Written by Paul W.S Andersn 

Starring Milla Jovovich, Sienna Guillory, Oded Fehr, Jared Harris, Mike Epps

Release Date September 10th, 2004

Published September 12th, 2004 

As bad as the first Resident Evil film was, written and directed by Paul W.S Anderson (ugh), could the sequel be any worse? Paul W.S Anderson stepping aside as director was a good first step, as is a script and story more faithful to its videogame source material. However first time director Alexander Witt, who's assistant director resume includes Speed 2, XXX and The Postman seems uninterested in improving on the original, unless you call being bigger, dumber and louder an improvement.

We begin where the last film left off. Our heroine Alice (Milla Jovovich) has just escaped from the Umbrella Corporation's evil underground lab The Hive, where she spent the previous night fighting the undead. Temporarily captured by Umbrella's evil scientists for a quick genetic upgrade, Alice finds herself in the chaotic remains of Racoon City, which has been overrun by zombies.

With most of the once peaceful town infected, and the evil Umbrella scientists having closed the only way out of town, Alice must team with the remaining survivors to fight the zombies and find a way out. With Alice are former cop Jill Valentine (Sienna Guillory), armed forces specialist Carlos Olivera (Oded Fehr), former pimp L.J (Mike Epps) and a small band of cannon fodder who are picked off in rather predictable fashion.

As the survivors battle the zombies, the chance to escape comes from a former Umbrella scientist Dr. Ashford (Jared Harris). The good doctor will get them a helicopter if they will go to the town’s only school and retrieve his young daughter Angie (Sophie Vasseur). Standing in their way are an assortment of zombie children and a return of those feral organs-on-the-outside Dobermans from the first film.

Let's start with some good things like star Milla Jovovich who, though she has limited range as an actress, is amazingly hot and has a terrific physical presence. She's agile and good with a gun and a believable action heroine. In a better action movie she could be quite effective, but in the midst of this film’s mindlessness she's reduced to repeating herself into tedium.

The supporting cast of Sienna Guillory, Oded Fehr and Mike Epps don't have much time to make an impression in between all of the explosions, zombie bites and gunfire. Epps at least has a couple of humorous moments that he is well suited to deliver. The film could have used a little more of Epps' humor but that would require a far better script.

We cannot be surprised that a script this witless and banal was written by the master of witless banality, Paul W.S Anderson. Every line of dialogue, every moment of exposition is just killing time till the next explosion of big, dumb, loud violence. This can work if you have the slightest bit of wit or sense of irony but Anderson has none. Director Alexander Witt doesn't have any either. His visuals consist of properly framing for the explosion and.... well, that's it.

This plot is at the very least more closely related to the popular video game, a fact that might appeal to fans of the game but is of little comfort to non-fans. Compared to the first film, this Resident Evil manages to be bigger, dumber and louder than the original and that is certainly not an improvement. On the bright side it's still a better video game based movie than Tomb Raider.

Movie Review: Ultraviolet

Ultraviolet (2006) 

Directed by Kurt Wimmer

Written by Kurt Wimmer

Starring Milla Jovovich, Cameron Bright, William Fichtner

Release Date March 3rd, 2006

Published March 6th, 2006

After the government uses genetics to create a race of super soldiers, a blood-borne virus is created and infects the population. Turning everyday Americans into vampire hybrids, the virus is kept under control by the same government scientists who created it through any means necessary. A war between the infected and non-infected is at hand after a weapon is created that allegedly kills all vampires. Hired to obtain the weapon is an infected female assassin named Violet (Milla Jovovich). Little does Violet know that the weapon is in the form of a small child whose blood was engineered to kill vampires.

Cameron Bright plays the kid, Six, a clone of the government's top scientist and bad guy Daxus (Nick Chinlund). He wants his clone back and the vampires dead. The vampires want the kid dead and the only thing standing between the warring factions is Violet, whose protective mothering instincts kick in at the worst possible moment. William Fichtner takes on the role of Violet's only ally, Garth, a scientist and weapon-maker who also nurses a long-suffering crush on Violet. Garth believes the kid could be the key to curing the vampires.

The plot of Ultraviolet is not exactly as clear-cut as my description might make it seem. The whole vampire virus thing is muddled and confusing, as if writer-director Kurt Wimmer could not decide if a virus or vampire would make a better story. Nick Chinlund, as the bad guy of the picture, has his motivation for his evil deeds shift with the wind. That might explain why Chinlund goes all-out chewing the scenery, he can't keep the plot straight so he acts every moment to the back of the room in hopes of distracting us from the confusion with pure bombast.

Milla Jovovich is an effective lead actress. The same action heroine chops she showed in the two Resident Evil pictures serve her well here but, like those failed efforts, Ultraviolet is never good enough to deserve her hard work. Sexy and dangerous, Jovovich gives a performance reminiscent of Uma Thurman in Kill Bill gone sci-fi. She is fluid and deadly with a samurai sword and swift with double-barreled weapons. The plot lets Jovovich down by not providing a compelling context for the action she so lithely and athletically brings to the screen.

Ultraviolet is a step backward for director Kurt Wimmer, whose Equilibrium was a brilliant, but little seen, sci-fi kung fu movie. Wimmer and his stunt people created a new form of martial arts for Equilibrium that they dubbed Gunkata. This combination of martial arts and heavy artillery is once again on display in Ultraviolet but seems tamed somehow.

Ultraviolet has an amped-up body count but is relatively bloodless. There are a number of bodies sliced and diced, but very little blood is shed. In what was ultimately a vain attempt at a teen-friendly rating, the film keeps the bodies piled high but the blood to a minimum in a strangely unsatisfying combination. With so much action and so many bodies falling, bloodlust is a natural reaction. It's a little disappointing to watch a samurai sword in action and never see its aftermath.

The biggest problem with Ultraviolet, however, may not be its confused plotting or wimpy violence but rather the visual components that were supposed to be the film's calling-card. Using the camera technology that only George Lucas had previously employed for his last three Star Wars pics, Ultraviolet lacks the crisp, vivid, textures of Star Wars and instead takes on the milky aesthetic of a bad video game.

Whether it was a lack of experience with the technology or some kind of post-production snafu, the look of Ultraviolet is often out of focus, to the point where I asked the projectionist if there was a problem with the print. There wasn't. The faces of the actors are over exposed causing shadows or trailing; the colors go from vivid to filmy, often within the same scene.

It now seems like no surprise that Ultraviolet was held frin critics until opening weekend--they did not want this information about the film's look getting out.

The one reliable draw of Ultraviolet is star Milla Jovovich, who is quickly becoming the action heroine that Angelina Jolie was supposed to become with the Lara Croft movies. Granted, Jovovich has yet to take the lead in a really good action movie, but she has shown the chops of an action hero in everything from her supporting role in The Fifth Element, to both of the Resident Evil disasters, and now Ultraviolet. Through hard work and, yes, a killer body, Jovovich has managed to place herself above the subpar material and help you forget that she was in some pretty bad movies.

After Equilibrium became a fanboy favorite on DVD, director Kurt Wimmer could write his own ticket for his follow-up and, while Ultraviolet is a failure, you have to respect the risks he takes. Using a technology that neither he nor cinematographer Glen MacPherson knew how to use properly, Wimmer took a risk to create a new look for Ultraviolet and failed spectacularly. You have to respect the attempt, it made for one killer trailer.

Ultraviolet is a disappointment on a number of levels. From failing to give proper life to Milla Jovovich's well-crafted hero to director Kurt Wimmer's squandered potential. However, both will be back and here's hoping they try again together. Ultraviolet may not be successful, but its failure showed the potential a pair of risk-takers like Wimmer and Jovovich have of doing something great in the future.

Movie Review Hellboy (2019)

Hellboy (2019) 

Directed by Neil Marshall

Written by Andrew Cosby

Starring David Harbour, Milla Jovovich, Ian McShane, Daniel Dae Kim, Thomas Haden Church 

Release Date April 12th, 2019 

Published April 11th, 2019

Do we really need a Hellboy reboot? No, no we do not. But, Hollywood does not appear to care for our opinion on this matter. Hellboy is a character that many people recognize and thus may pay money to see and regardless of the compromised state of the character and the story, his marketability is what truly matters. Hellboy has a Q-rating that rings a bell in marketing meetings among the right demographic of desirable young consumers. That’s why we have a new Hellboy.

Stranger Things breakout star, David Harbor, picks up the mantle of Hellboy, for this reboot. In this re-imaging of Hellboy, we join the story with our hero, already a member of the Paranormal Bureau of Investigation and working for his father, Professor Bloom (Ian McShane). Hellboy is out on a personal errand as we join his story, he’s traveled to Mexico to locate a friend and fellow agent who has gone missing in the world of Lucha Libre wrestling.

This is a clever and colorful way to start the movie but, sadly, it’s all downhill from here. Hellboy finds his friend and is forced to kill him when he becomes a demon bat. Before he dies, the friend warns Hellboy that the end of the world is coming. In a prologue to the story, we meet the Blood Queen (Milla Jovavich). The Blood Queen intended to bring monsters and demons out of the shadows and destroy humanity thousands of years ago before she was stopped by King Arthur and Merlin.

Now, The Blood Queen is about to make a comeback. Despite having been beheaded and having her body carved into several pieces and locked inside boxes, The Blood Queen is set to return and only Hellboy and his friends can stop her from destroying humanity. Aiding Hellboy are his long time friend Alice (Sasha Lane), a psychic with ever changing and growing powers, and Major Ben Daimio, an English secret agent who claims to hate monsters like Hellboy while harboring a monstrous secret of his own.

Together, reluctantly, they will battle The Blood Queen and several other deathly threats put forward by director Neil Marshall, a man with a known knack for quality monsters. Neil Marshall was the director of one of my favorite monster movies of recent memory, 2005’s The Descent. Where that remarkable talent has gone since then is anyone’s guess. Marshall followed up The Descent with a mediocre Mad Max knock off called Doomsday and has never again looked like the director who crafted The Descent.

Hellboy demonstrates some of the craft that Marshall was once known for but it is also lacking in many of the same ways that Marshall’s post-The Descent features are lacking. Much like Doomsday, which cribbed heavily from the worst tropes of the Mad Max movies, Hellboy feels overly familiar with an arc that is indistinguishable from any number of fantasy adventure or superhero-comic book movies. There is little to no invention in this story.

David Harbour cuts a giant figure as Hellboy but the choice to direct him as a larger, slower, version of Deadpool is perhaps the film's biggest failing. The R-Rating for Hellboy essentially gets second billing to Hellboy himself with the film using the freedom of the R-Rating to attempt to appeal to hardcore comic fans. Unfortunately, Hellboy lacks the skill and intelligence of the makers of Deadpool and there is simply no wit and not nearly enough style to the R-Rated violence in Hellboy as there was in Deadpool.

Hellboy doesn’t need an R-Rating. The violence that director Neil Marshall has employed that earns the film that rating never feels organic or necessary. The violence of Hellboy somehow fails to even induce shock and without that pinch of shock it comes off as merely gross. Hellboy comes off as childish and infantile in comparison to other R-Rated heroes such as Logan and Deadpool, and that’s saying something given the level of juvenile in Deadpool 2. In Deadpool, the hardcore violence is delivered with such style and humor that no matter what Deadpool the character does, the film feels mature. Hellboy never achieves anything similar.

Hellboy is a kid brother’s version of an R-Rated fantasy comic. It’s all flash and no style. It’s all blood and guts and no character or wit. Hellboy has all the pretension toward something edgy without ever actually becoming edgy or even controversial. Small kids might lose sleep over some of the gory images of Hellboy 2019, but anyone with fully developed sensibilities will find the film witless, charmless and infantile, especially when compared to other R-Rated comic book hero stories

Movie Review Resident Evil

Resident Evil (2002) 

Directed by Paul W.S Anderson

Written by Paul W.S Anderson 

Starring Milla Jovovich, Michelle Rodriguez, Eric Mabius, James Purefoy, 

Release Date March 15th, 2002 

Published March 15th, 2002 

I hate science fiction!

If it's not Star Wars or Star Trek: Next Generation, it's almost guaranteed I'm going to hate it. So you're probably wondering why I would subject myself to the Sci-fi schlock of Resident Evil. Maybe I'm a movie masochist. Or maybe I'm open-minded enough to see a film before I judge it. Or maybe I heard Milla Jovavich gets naked and I'm just a perv.

Resident Evil is the latest video game-to-movie adaptation, a combination that has yet to yield a solid effort. It's the oh so original story of an evil, futuristic corporation that develops evil biological weapons because they are a corporation and they are evil. After a break-in leads to a biological weapon being deployed in the evil corporation's evil underground lab, killing thousands of employees, the company's evil supercomputer locks down the facility. The company then sends in their crack security team to investigate. Well, investigate or just blow stuff up and die weird painful deaths, it's all in how you look at it.

That leaves our heroine Milla Jovavich to fight the evil supercomputer which is a combination of Hal from 2001 and the little girl from Poltergeist. She's not just fighting the computer though; there are also the zombified corpses of the evil corporation's former employees.

All of which makes Resident Evil a weird amalgamation of George Romero's Living Dead and every bad science fiction movie of the last 4 years from Hollow Man to Ghosts Of Mars. The most egregious are the direct lift from Ghosts of Mars. I kid you not, Resident Evil lifts an entire scene directly from Ghosts.

Milla Jovovich is a talented actress and she does all she can with the material she is given. The same goes for her co-star, Girlfight's Michele Rodriguez, who hits all the tough girl poses that in a better film might make her a viable choice for an action leading lady.

Resident Evil isn't the worst video game adaptation, that title still belongs to Super Mario Bros. and Tomb Raider. That's about the nicest thing I can say about Resident Evil.

Movie Review: A Perfect Getaway

A Perfect Getaway (2009) 

Directed by David Twohy

Written by David Twohy 

Starring Milla Jovovich, Timothy Olyphant, Marley Shelton, Chris Hemsworth, Steve Zahn

Release Date August 7th, 2009

Published August 7th, 2009

Beware the movie trailer/commercial that tells you of a 'heart-stopping' twist. Right then and there the marketing has spoiled the movie. Now the experience of the movie is waiting for the twist to happen or, in the case of the new thriller A Perfect Getaway, guessing the twist well before it happens. A Perfect Getaway isn't a great movie to begin with. Having the ending spoiled is merely the moldy cherry on top of a melted sundae.

Steve Zahn and Milla Jovovich star in A Perfect Getaway as Cliff and Cydney Anderson, newlyweds in Hawaii for their honeymoon. Having decided to hike to a secluded beach on a very remote part of Kauai they think they are in for some romantic alone time. Instead, they are quickly jolted out of their fantasies by two pairs of strangers. 

The first are a dangerous looking pair of hitchhikers, Kale and Cleo (Chris Hemsworth and Marley Shelton), who look fresh from a parole hearing. Then there are Nick and Gina (Timothy Olyphant and Kiele Sanchez). Nick is ex-special ops and unafraid of telling tales of murder and injury. Gina meanwhile, is a little too good with a knife and fearless. When Nick brings a dead goat back to the couple's shared campsite, Gina guts and cleans it, much to the disgust of both Cliff and Cydney.

Soon, news arrives that a murder has taken place. A newlywed couple has been murdered on the island that both of the newly arrived couples have just left and police suspect the killer are a man and a woman and that they may have jumped islands. Naturally, Cliff and Cydney come to suspect Nick and Gina are the killers. Ahh, but what of the Kale and Cleo, the nefarious looking couple?

Cliff is a screenwriter by trade and this leads to an inside baseball conversation between he and Nick that the movie thinks is exceptionally clever. Director David Twohey (Pitch Black, Chronicles of Riddick)  seems to think that by having his characters talk so openly about thriller clichés in mocking tones that that will excuse his movie from taking advantage of those clichés. The meta trick doesn't pay off, we can still see the wheels of the plot turning quite obviously.

Now, it's likely that I have seen too many movies and thus am more difficult to fool than those who don't see so many of the same movies over and over again. Indeed, I can see a less experienced audience taken in by A Perfect Getaway. Me, I wasn't fooled for a second. The clumsy plot fails to hide very particular details that are relatively easy to discern, especially if you aren't taken in by these characters and this dimwitted story. 

That said, A Perfect Getaway isn't without some charm. I did love the detailed stories that Nick tells about his many wild exploits. Timothy Olyphant oozes charismatic danger. He's just off kilter enough to keep you afraid of him but humorous and engaging enough to make you want to root for him, whether he's the killer or the one about to be killed. Steve Zahn and Milla Jovovich on the other hand? Ugh. Trying to bust out of their acting molds, she as a badass action heroine, he as a goofball comic relief sidekick, the pair desperately overplay the yuppie-ness of their characters. That may or may not be by design but that doesn't make it any less irritating.

So, what of this 'pulse pounding' twist? The film does everything it can to cheat around uber-aware audience members like me, even throwing out knowing dialogue about red-herrings, or as Olyphant mistakenly calls them 'red snappers'. The cheats are bothersome and rather than forcing call backs to earlier in the movie, as I am sure they are supposed to, they cause one to reconsider the whole movie and realize how much of a cheat the whole thing really is.

A Perfect Getaway needed to settle one aspect of the essential nature of its story and it could have succeeded in a modest way. Instead, the film cheats and hopes you won't notice. I did notice, repeatedly, and that combined with the irksome performances by Jovovich and Zahn make A Perfect Getaway a chore to endure.