Pompeii - 2014

"Pompeii" - 2014
Dir. by Paul. W.S. Anderson - 1 hr. 45 min.

Official Trailer #2

by Clayton Hollifield

First, a question:

Yeah.  Yeah, I kind of do.  I'm not even sure I saw a trailer for "Pompeii," but if I did, it was probably all about the mountain blowing up, hence the title.  I didn't know anyone who was in it (I mean, I recognized people as I was going along, but going in...), didn't know who had directed it, just knew that the mountain was going to blow up.  And that was good enough for me, at least in terms of catching a spectacle movie at the three dollar theatre.  So I was pleasantly surprised to get not only a disaster-porn film, but a gladiator movie, too!

Milo (adult version - Kit Harington) is a little kid who sees his entire Celt clan wiped out by Roman swords, but escapes the massacre by playing dead.  He tries to survive on his own, but eventually is caught and enslaved, where he grows up to be a very fierce warrior, and is eventually pressed into service as a gladiator by Graecus (Joe Pingue), where he will have to face Atticus (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje), who is one win away from being lawfully granted his freedom.  But first, Milo proves that the way to a woman's heart is through her horses, and the forbidden romance between Milo and Cassia (Emily Browning) begins simmering.  Following everyone's arrival in Pompeii for a proper spectacle (Atticus' fight), the man who killed Milo's clan rolls into town, Senator Corvus (Kiefer Sutherland), and starts throwing his weight around.  And, ominously, the mountain periodically rumbles in the background.

I don't think I'm spoiling anything by saying that entire appeal to this film is that you're going to get to see the historical city of Pompeii get it's ass kicked by a volcano.  And that pretty much lived up to what you'd hope.  As it turns out, the director was Paul W.S. Anderson, who's responsible for the "Resident Evil" movies, which means the CGI and action material is going to be handled well, even if the story isn't going to add much more to the mix.  And there's tons of action.  Gladiator battles, horse chases (the next best thing to a car chase), several different natural disasters, even that silly handshake thing where two guys grab each other's forearm.  It all adds up to a lot of meaningless fun, which is all you can hope for.

The story itself is probably entirely fictional (I'm not going to look it up, it doesn't matter either way), and there's some political intrigue as Corvus basically blackmails everyone in sight into doing whatever he wants them to, and Sutherland's fun as a bad guy.  He's still kind of a caricature (I mean, come on), but he doesn't err in the usual way bad guys in historical films usually do, in being overly stylish.  He's more like a barely civilized thug who's learned that he can get what he wants through coercion than through brute force.  The best thing I can say about Kit Harington is that he kind of looks like Orlando Bloom, but he's appropriately bland in his role.  And the plot comes together neatly, which is fine, because we're all just waiting to see what happens when the volcano kicks Pompeii's ass, which it does spectacularly.

I can't really say that "Pompeii" aimed very high; clearly this is a movie that wants to have the beautiful girl fall for the rogue in defiance of the dickish authority figure, an then everything goes sideways!  And it completely succeeds at that.  It's a story that's been told before (and it'll be told again), but it's a fun ride with great effects.  There's nothing wrong with any of that.  See it on as big of a screen as possible, kick back with some treats and don't worry about the nutritional value of any of it.

2.5 / 5 - Theatre

Resident Evil: Apocalypse - 2004

"Resident Evil: Apocalypse" - 2004
Dir. by Alexander Witt - 1 hr. 34 min.

Official Trailer

by Clayton Hollifield

Stage two: escape the city.  Now, I don't hold it against a film that's based on a video game franchise that it plays out like a video game.  That's actually a positive, all things considered.  But if the first "Resident Evil's" objective was to escape The Hive, "Resident Evil: Apocalypse's" objective is to escape the city.  Unfortunately, this is a much less interesting level than the first.

"RE:A" overlaps with the end of the first film (even recycling some footage).  At the end of the first installment, Alice (Milla Jovovich) wakes in a lab, hooked up to wires, and stumbles out of a hospital to find Hell on Earth.  To begin, we rewind a little bit, and discover that the T-Virus (a virus that reanimates dead tissue, which means yes, zombies) had not been contained within The Hive.  Once loose in Raccoon City, we get zombies roaming a reproducing by putting their mouths on whatever they can.  The Umbrella Corporation acts quickly, sealing off the city in an attempt to contain the effects of the T-Virus to the city.  This leaves both the infected and the uninfected trapped.  There is a way out for a few people though.  The Umbrella Corporation botched an early extraction of a scientist's daughter, and he strikes a deal with whomever he can to get her out of the city in exchange for passage out of the doomed city.

While the first film had the claustrophobic underground setting to tease tension out of, "RE:A" comes off like a shitty 1980s low-budget horror film.  On what looks like a studio back-out, zombified Raccoon City denizens shuffle and shamble around cars that are on fire and broken storefronts.  There are the big special-effect monsters, which kind of look like syphilitic cock-monsters with embedded eyes, and they must of course die.  The school where the scientist's daughter is hunkered down in isn't nearly as good of a locale for terror as The Hive was, but at least the film had the good sense to bring the meat dogs back for another go-around.  There's the evil Umbrella Corporation employee with a weird accent (Thomas Kretschmann), the good scientist with a weird accent (Jared Harris), the S.T.A.R.S. infantryman with a weird accent (Oded Fehr); it seems like half the lines delivered in this film were done so by people who might not speak English as a first language.  But that, along with the meat dogs, is appealing.

There are huge problems with the film, mainly that it's so predictable.  Of course the reporter chick has to die, because she's so annoying.  Nemesis, one of the aforementioned cock-monsters (and has his origins in the first installment), has to die because he's so ugly.  The evil Umbrella Corp employee has to die because he's such a dick about everything.  And beyond that, there are basic, unaddressed points within the story itself.  First off, why would anyone live in a walled city?  Surely The Umbrella Corporation didn't erect a wall around Raccoon City upon discovering that the T-Virus hadn't been contained.  There are scenes shown in the city itself where it appears to be your average suburban community.  Wouldn't you be a little curious as to why there were already walls built around the entire city?  And secondly, the outfit worn by one of the main female characters, Jill Valentine (Sienna Guillory).  If you were in a city overrun by zombies, where an errant scratch or bite could mean your fate, how you choose to dress?  Personally, I'd favor something like a Ghostbusters outfit, but Ms. Valentine went with a tube top, mini-skirt, and boots (just in case you might confuse her for a hooker).  That's an awfully generous amount of flesh to bare in that scenario, but somehow she survives the film.

This is just a poor film at every turn.  Milla Jovovich's role seems to be minimized in favor of Sienna Guillory's, and that's not to anyone's benefit.  Mike Epps shows up to do what Mike Epps does, which is mostly talk loudly and deliver bad dialogue.  The setting isn't interesting, the story isn't interesting, the monsters (save for the meat dogs) aren't interesting, the film isn't interesting.  Arguably, this film would have been better on a shoe-string budget and with all the money for CG effects instead earmarked for cheesy prosthetics and matte paintings; at least that would have yielded an "I can't believe they actually cobbled together a finished film" sense of bewildered amusement that those sort of films can offer.

1 / 5 - DVD

Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows - 2011

"Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows" - 2011
Dir. by Guy Ritchie - 2 hrs. 9 min.

Official Trailer

by Clayton Hollifield

There's something to be said for a well-done, fun franchise movie.  You can do so much worse at the multiplex to go see a couple of big stars do a big budget period movie.  As long as each installment delivers enough to have you smiling on your way out of the theatre, it doesn't need to be revolutionary or ground-breaking.  Every couple of years, you get to visit a character that you like again.  That's a fair bargain.

I don't really need to get into who Sherlock Holmes is, unless you're some kind of genius, Sherlock.  The characters are essentially the same as last time around, except Dr. Watson (Jude Law) is on the verge of getting married.  Holmes (Robert Downey, Jr.) doesn't look very positively on that development, but he's willing to stand by his friend.  Before that, Holmes interjects into a criminal plot being executed by Irene Adler (Rachel McAdams), at the behest of Moriarty (Jared Harris).  Irene is quickly written out of the film, and Moriarty refuses Holmes' request to leave Watson out of whatever mischief might pass between the two.  There is a stag party for Watson, shoddily organised by Holmes, where we are introduced to Mycroft (Stephen Fry), Sherlock's older brother.  Later, Holmes is forced to interject during Watson's honeymoon, as Moriarty proves that he's not interested in leaving Watson out of the equation.  From there, the larger mystery is a battle of wits between Holmes and Moriarty, sometimes literally, sometimes via physical confrontation, sometimes metaphorically.

I'm of two minds about Guy Ritchie's stamp on the Sherlock Holmes movies.  It's easy to see his visual flair and the trademark of his smaller budget films' story-lines: twisting heist plots with a large cast of real men who show a penchant for oneupmanship.  Even if it's coached in turn of the 20th century British language and mannerisms, Ritchie's Holmes is swaggering alpha male driven to success almost maniacally, and fueled by exotic substances to keep his motor running.  It's different than "Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels" or "RocknRolla" only on the surface.  But as much fun as those movies are, he seems very comfortable making this sort of big-time franchise film.  I wouldn't doom a director to make low-budget swear-a-thons for his entire career, so I suppose as much fun as those early films are, they'll always be available to go back and watch while Ritchie continues on this path.  Besides, it's not as if the Sherlock films are bad or anything.

I have some sympathy for people who worship the source material; a lifetime of reading comic books has put me in that category for more than my share of films.  I've never read a Sherlock Holmes novel, which is probably the best way to go into any given movie.  I couldn't tell you whether this was based on anything in particular, and I don't care to find out.  When someone is setting out to make any movie, the goal should be to make the best film possible.  So while I have no idea if there was a book partially set in a munitions factory, what shows up on screen is an excellent action sequence that goes from a violent direct, face-to-face confrontation between Holmes and Moriarty to a batch of rebels fleeing what seems like an army with that same munitions factory at disposal.  The actual fleeing is captured by very good editing and camera-work, and special effects that really do heighten the tension of the scene.  For a couple of minutes, we're taken from a crime version of a chess game into a war film, and it works.

And in a general sense, the film works.  It's better than the initial "Sherlock" film; it's still fun watching Downey, Jr. simultaneously border insanity and outsmart everyone, there's plenty of cleverness to the proceedings, and what's not clever can be pretty funny.  There's even a gag near the end that almost demands a repeat viewing (I, for one, am going to have to re-watch that scene at the minimum to see if there are shortcuts or if it's a matter of misdirection leading the viewer to not catch on earlier).  I'd have a hard time imagining that this will be anyone's favorite movie, but it's not supposed to be.  It's fun, it's a good sequel, and I'd show up for a third installment, should it come.

3 / 5 - Theatre