Resident Evil: Welcome to Racoon City Review

Not sure what is more surprising: releasing a horror movie Thanksgiving weekend (instead of the more appropriate October last month) or the movie's quality itself. Dubbed a "reboot" of the film series of six prior entries, it utilizes its visibly low-budget of a reported twenty five million on recreating numerous set pieces from the video game franchise all this is based on, relying on suspense instead of overblown action sequences like the pictures before it. To middling overall results, but hey, I had a blast, and when at the movies, that is all one could ever want.

The plot is a weird hybrid of the first two video games, changing a few moments here and there but maintaining the same basic mythology laid out by its digital forerunners. Did I care that the truck driver, who as fans may remember tips his tanker and explodes, meets his grisly demise by a dog rather than some person at a gas station? Nope, didn't care, diehards beware and be-damned.

Anyway, all the fan-favorites are here, Jill (Hannah John-Kamen), Claire (Kaya Scodelario), Leon (Avan Jogia), Chris (Robbie Amell), among others, new and old, as they battle their way through a zombie outbreak in the soon-to-be ghost town Racoon City. The dual plots, adapting both basic settings of each game, allows for twice the nostalgic bang for your buck; one moment, you see the iconic Spencer Mansion entrance from RE1 and the next you see that slimy Licker scaling the ceiling from RE2. Most major beats are touched upon allowing for a trip down memory lane in just under two hours. Does it have a point? No, especially since you really can just play the games themselves, but writer/director Johannes Roberts clearly loves the games, it shows, and he wants us to watch his playthrough.

But just being faithful doesn't qualify three stars, so what's going on? Why is the rating so high? It's the little things, the parts that showcase that the filmmakers know how to make a film, not just adapt a popular piece of pop culture. It was these neat touches that were fun as a viewer regardless of the material.

The sound design was spot-on, not afraid to be completely silent save for the faint undead screams coming from each end of the theater. Even when a character (or portrayal of a character) I didn't care for was onscreen, there was noticeable tension was I never quite knew what direction the zombie was going to jump out from next. And it's efficient pacing leaves us with seldom a dull moment- even when its just basically somebody shooting at those boring, lumbering zombies, it's often spiced up with gimmicks like a completely black screen, our only illumination being the gunshots of a desperate would-be survivor.

There's another thing that stuck with me as I watched "Resident Evil: Welcome to Racoon City," and that was the timeliness of the story. Vaccines, outbreaks, lockdowns, corrupt businesses, gun violence- it all felt "real" despite being a movie based on a 90's video game. I doubt that was the intention, but it should have been.

8-Bit Christmas Review

For all the Christmas movies, from made-for-TV "rom-coms" to theatrical releases, there's not telling if it'll become a perennial favorite. HBO Max's original "8-Bit Christmas," which plays like "A Christmas Story" but set in the 80's and trades a BB gun for a Nintendo Entertainment System, has a lot going for it, including some unexpectedly good performances, but occasionally undermines its own homey feel with cheap bodily function (or disfunction) jokes that probably look better in commercials, and can't quite justify the existence of the mild but various political incorrectness. A boy wearing "girls" boots is such a "then" problem that has nothing, absolutely nothing to do with video games.

Now I'll generally laugh at anything as long as somethings funny, but here, it isn't funny. But hey, it was the 80's, a simpler yet probably not any "better" time.

Anyway, the recycled plot... Jake Doyle, played by the plucky Winslow Fegley, wants a Nintendo, badly. Getting one for Christmas means the world to him, and what follows is an hour and a half of him trying and failing to persuade his parents, win one in a wreath-selling contest and trying to buy one during a school trip. Told as a series of flashbacks by adult Jake (Neil Patrick Harris), who's celebrating the season with his own kid who wants her own cellphone, there isn't any substantial parable between his own child wanting and hers except to instigate the whole movie.

But that's OK- the lack of any greater purpose gives the production a small, intimate feeling that I much prefer over last years similarly direct-to-streaming kids movie, the way overstuffed "The Christmas Chronicles 2" on Netflix. 

There is also refreshing absence of an arbitrary villain or any real reason for being outside of the obligatory "meaning of Christmas:" this is a movie about a child who wants a gift on December 25th. That's it. Is it an original? Absolutely not, but like "A Christmas Story" it so brazenly copies, it takes its time, showing the boredom kids experience, the exaggeration that only the youth can imagine and the world-ending realities of obligations like chores. There are many scenes of this, but I wanted even more.

The bulk of the action takes place in the indeterminate "late 80's," where Jake's annoying younger sister Annie (Sophia Reid-Gantzert) is on her own mission to get another dated hot-item, a redhead Cabbage Patch Kid. (With freckles!) They form a loose alliance to help each other get what they want under the tree, but they're still brother and sister and they don't always like each other. Their kidding rivalry is without a doubt the best part of the film, making me nostalgic for my own childhood relationship with my siblings, how you can go from hating each other to being friends. At one point, after he loses all hope of getting his NES, she passes the TV remote to him, as a signal that she understood his silly would-be trauma. I did too.

There are some more curious relics of a less complicated era, like when their parents (June Diane Raphael and Steve Zahn) leave the kids unsupervised in the toy store at the mall towns away. They don't add much to the overall product, but they do aid in cementing the whole "back when I was a kid" feeling. 

I would be remiss not to mention the sudden tonal shift, when the narrative becomes depressing without warning, which is jarring considering the rest of the picture is so aggressively low-stakes. It feels shoehorned into the plot purely to emphasize the spirit of the holidays, as if the producers realized that "8-Bit Christmas" is ultimately a feature-length advertisement of festive commercialization.

Red Notice Review

With a cast including Dwayne Johnson, Gal Gadot, and Ryan Reynolds, Netflix's would-be blockbuster "Red Notice" has all the grandiose excess of an actual blockbuster, but it lacks the heart, chemistry, and purpose to be anything but a way to spend a lazy afternoon. There's nothing inherently wrong with that, but jeez, look at that all-star cast! There is no reason for the flick to be as downright unspectacular as it is, but here we are.

The plot, which is both complicated and basic, has us following FBI agent John Hartley (Johnson) working alongside "the most prolific art thief in the world" Nolan Booth, played by Reynolds (or is he the second most; it doesn't matter) to get to Cleopatra's three eggs ahead of The Bishop (Gadot), the other "most prolific art thief in the world." People get arrested, characters escape, folks are double-crossed, while we deal with outlandish twists involving Nazis (Nazis!) moments of tomb-raiding and heists, all the good stuff, nestled safely within the span of about two hours. But the parts far exceed its sum, as the general template exists as such: exposition happens, action happens, and then its onto the next location. 

And that's fine! James Bond movies do it all the time, but again, look at the cast! And that's only the three billed on the movie poster! Where things crumble on the most simple entertainment level is the spectacle, which is surprisingly perfunctory. This is a very expensive piece of media, yet aside from an opening chase in a Rome art exhibit, the CGI is so obvious that you wonder why The Rock even bothers working out, computers could just digitally add outrageous muscle mass. Bond's best flicks feature some of the most exciting scenes, things that haven't been done before or done with such grace or on such scale or with so much forward momentum. "Red Notice" just sorta has some very famous (and even more expensive) people doing things in front of a camera and greenscreen in a variety of places.

And these should be exotic, exciting places, from Rome to Argentina and others, but it amounts to one of three possible realities: a nice building, a decrepit building, or outside. The international escapades serve as nothing but to change the backdrop to see more of what just happened in last country: pedantic banter between our odd couple of male heroes. Both Reynolds and Johnson can be funny guys, and aside from a few bits involving their "on again, off again" bromance, their quips just sort of come out of their mouths and sit there. Gadot gets even less to work with, as if her contract only allowed her to walk around like a sex object, even during hand-to-hand fisticuffs.

The Egyptian plot device means obligatory shots of desert, which called to mine the goofy exploits in 1999's "The Mummy," which is far better, Booth's and Hartley's daddy issues and the whole Nazi (Nazi!!) involvement riffed on "Indiana Jones," which is far, far better, only it's not smart enough to acknowledge that "The Mummy" copies "Indiana Jones, "which in turn copies James Bond. 

In all honesty, though, perhaps is most reminiscent of 1994's sublime "True Lies" with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jamie Lee Curtis, which also lifted from Ian Fleming's franchise but with the promise of humor, the time's biggest stars, the most breathtaking sequences, and it mostly delivered. "Red Notice" should be returned to sender, repackaged and they can try again.

Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin Review

A Paramount+ original, "Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin" is the sort of low-grade sequel they used dump directly to VHS, only it's 2021 and the solution is now streaming. It's worth noting how I have not seen any of the prior films in the series, but that didn't seem to matter, the formula was apparent within the first ten minutes: people with far too many cameras go somewhere they shouldn't, and record when they should leave.

I'm not entirely saying that this isn't effective film, because with the right state of mind, I'm sure there is some audience for this. I imagine they're the sort who would watch with a group of friends, preferably inebriated with the lights out. Like that, it is a decent popcorn muncher, but only when you can watch others shriek at the numerous "jump scares" dotted throughout its ninety eight minute runtime. For me personally, the picture failed at the most basic levels, never giving me a character to care about, who instead do dumb things over and over again while providing only the most spartan reasons for all the dumbness. Oh, a spooky secret chasm? Well, better grab my camcorder and make sure I get the best possible angle. Who writes this stuff?! According to Wikipedia, that would be Christopher Landon. Shame on him.

We follow Margot, played by Emily Bader, an orphan who recently found out she not only has one relative (Samuel, played by Henry Ayres-Brown), but a whole family. And they're Amish, so why not make a documentary? Alongside cameraman Chris (Roland Buck III) and.... driver(?) Dale (Dan Lippert), they drive through the snowy lone road to Samuel's parents farm, who initially toss them out. Then plot happens and they end up as guests at their homestead with Margot keen on figuring out why she was abandoned in the first place. Does the family know something she wonders? Probably, otherwise this movie character wouldn't wonder it.

More plot happens, and well, does any of this at all matter? It would enter spoiler territory, and for a first-time watcher, that would have to be the only appeal the franchise has to offer, to go in blind so that when things go "boo" you can scream with a mouthful of popcorn. I didn't have popcorn, but the scent of fake buttery goodness would have elevated the mood. It would at least give me something to jostle around the couch had I been spooked, but then I realized that when the "found footage" camera suddenly stopped moving, and people went "shhhh," I just needed to silently count to "five" in my head and something would either A) go "boo" or B) not go "boo."

Once you figure that out, "Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin" has absolutely no chance at suckering you in to its world of would-be horror tomfoolery.

What am I supposed to say here? I wasn't scared, I wasn't interested, and as the humdrum story unveiled a new key piece of the story, it only got more and more nonsensical. It assumes you believe in, or can suspend your own disbelief, the supernatural, and I wasn't having any of its dreck. Perhaps I just didn't let myself have a good time, you might be asking, but then why would I watch it? Just to write mean things about it online? All I know is, I sunk deep between the cushions wondering to myself "... is this all life has to offer?"

Halloween Kills Review

While watching "Halloween Kills," the sequel to 2018's solid "Halloween" reboot/sequel/remake/whatever, it's obvious there's another one on the way. That's the case of course, since it's been announced, so what we're left with is the awkward middle child of the trilogy. Where as the first film was a taunt little thriller, the second is poorly staged, hammily acted, overwritten and generally boring, with absolutely nothing to say except to showcase the special effects department's gory killings.

There is this clunky tone throughout it, unable to be either scary or funny, so the blood-soaked images just sit there, and there are a lot of them. The 1978 original is rather well known for its absence of actual onscreen violence, something thrown away for most of the sequels, but "Halloween Kills" is another beast entirely, resembling those Rob Zombie remakes nobody talks about more so than anything in John Carpenter's original.

The plot is just an excuse for Michael Myers to show up and slice up dozens of random people, the random old couple down the block to folks in the angry mob set up by Tommy Doyle (Anthony Michael Hall), who was one of the babysat kids in the franchise's first entry. Why the hell is Doyle (or Mr. Hall, for that matter) even here is beyond me; there is this weird obsession with retconning "Halloween Kills" with the previous pictures, so far as resurrecting Donald Pleasence as Dr. Loomis with fancy special effects in an unexpected flashback scene. It's great to see the late veteran actor back in the series he gave so much thematic weight to, but for what? It spits on his grave to see him brought back for this trash.

Jamie Lee Curtis is here too, once again playing Laurie Strode, who's stuck in Haddonfield Hospital after stab wounds in the climax of the first film. (First as in the first in the sequel trilogy, not the first film. Gosh why is a slasher flick so complicated!?) She's in the thankless position of spending her screen time going from the gurney to the lobby, spouting gibberish like "evil never dies" and all that nonsense. It's the same old hat that we've heard for the last forty plus years, and frankly I'm sick of it.

As for the actual kills in the title, they're nasty for sure, including one where you literally see the eyeballs pop out of some poor schmuck's head, but aside from having no point except to exploit the act of cruelty, there is a curious lack of tension. The shape just wanders around, and there is no build up or suspense to when he will or will not jump out and yell "boo" with his knife. No one scene filled me with dread, not one performance made me think that they weren't just some actor reading a script, and most unfortunate of all, not once did I get filled with terror.

Character still do dumb things like split up to investigate the murder's childhood home, walk away from a seemingly "dead" Myers (twice!); sure, it's a horror movie, but this should have been a smart horror movie.

"Halloween Kills" gets so bogged down with its own mythology that you just end up playing "spot the reference." Angry mob like in 1988's Halloween 4? Check. Laurie in the hospital ala 1981's Halloween 2? Check. The list goes on, on and on, and the more I saw the more I realized they weren't just cute little callbacks but filmmakers straight up out of new ideas.

There's Someone Inside Your House Review

Somewhere between the charismatic cast and intriguing story, Netflix's latest slasher film "There's Somebody Inside Your House" holds a wonderful film. But it's not what we end up getting. Bogged down by a lack of subtly and reliance on genre tropes, it's fine for a mindless evening on the couch, but it's frustrating to be genuinely intrigued by a premise only to be left with scrapes left over from other, better films.

For a film entitled "There's Someone Inside Your House," it does open inside somebodies house with someone else inside it, but once a knife slices their ankles, the film quickly disregards its name and becomes a standard teen slasher flick. The twist? The now dead individual had a secret. In a better movie, this would have helped provided dramatic heft to the commonly cliched cinematic category, but then it happens to another person, and then another. 

Their secrets range from self-inflicting like pill-popping to physical abuse of others, but since we never really spend any time with the victims, their mystery is about the only backstory we get. Hard to care about that popular girl getting stalked when all we know is that she's a white supremacist and quite literally, we only just learned that just before the bloodshed.

You see the problem? Our main heroine Makani, played by Sydney Park, fares far better thanks to being given something to work with, and a relatively strong performance. She's got a lot of secrets actually, ranging from her forbidden love with the school's bad boy Oliver (Théodore Pellerin) to something much darker. We see brief flashes of her primary private past throughout the runtime, and although I appreciated being asked to try and piece together what happened, I wasn't totally satisfied with what she actually had to say.

Her outcast group of friends are sadly lame, some defined only by their hobby. Take Darby, played by Jesse LaTourette, who's only character development involves loving NASA (and donuts, in a throwaway line). I won't spoil whether or not our would-be astronaut lives to the end credits, but I can confirm that we never make it to space.

We watch as teenager after teenager holds a phone only to try and run instead of calling the police, or dial the police but then hang up, as we the audience groan at the onscreen stupidity. Yes I know that this is a slasher film, but if you're going to settle on being yet another dumb horror film, at least make it distinct. Where's the creative deaths? The excessive nudity? Where's the exploitation?! "There's Someone Inside Your House" doesn't know it's own idiocy, or know any better.

No Time to Die Review

There is no way "No Time to Die," the latest in the James Bond saga, can be completely satisfying; not only does it mark Daniel Craig's (allegedly) final time playing the double O, it was also delayed for over a year due to the pandemic. That is a lot of baggage to handle, and for some, it'll be the first time they step into an actual theater, and for what? Big explosions that seem just as big as they did the last time.

That's not to say it's in anyway a bad movie- it spruces up the franchise's well-worn formula with a few modifications, just as any entry would. Just that those expectations are far too grand to be surpassed by something so competent. "Competent" would otherwise be completely suitable had this been released in another time, but alas here we are, the world's first "3D" (conversion) Bond is also the first "face-mask required at this establishment" Bond.

The plot is needlessly complicated, the runtime is excessive, and our hero continues to be a great shot while a myriad of henchmen can't seem to hit his bulky frame, yet it's all classic "Bond." He finds himself surrounded by beautiful beaches (this time in Italy), beautiful women (including but not limited to a fresh CIA agent played by Ana de Armas, who trades stoicism for quirkiness with refreshing results), and some very bad men (mostly Rami Malek as the facially-scarred Safin, the primary villain, and a few others who I won't spoil). Yet even with a megalomaniac on the loose, we still find time to swing by and visit an old nemesis (Christopher Waltz as Blofeld), drink a few dry martinis, kill some people, kiss others, drink some more, get scolded by M (Ralph Fiennes), get thanked by M, among a whole lot of other pitstops. It's cinema comfort food on the big screen (and I saw it on a very big screen).

These are all the ingredients in James Bond stew, and I recalled wonderful moments of earlier moments in the series between its general familiarity and callbacks. I sunk into my reclining leather chair with warmth despite the constant blowing of hopefully filtered air-conditioned air, it's a great feeling to be lost in a different place in one's life.

But I don't think that's the point of this very expensive moving picture show. When I snapped out of it and paid attention, what I saw happening was never thrilling enough, funny enough, entertaining enough. The only thing that this Bond "era" does differently is provide an overarching story, with finishing up what happened in Craig's four former flicks, but that doesn't make him any more interesting. More vulnerable sure, but it's been over a decade and I'm sorry, I just can't keep all the silly little plotlines in line. Does that make me a bad "007 fan?" Maybe, but it doesn't make me a bad "No Time to Die" viewer.

James Bond baddies always have some ridiculous plot to take over the world, destroy the world, or make a lot of money indirectly ruining the world, and this one's no different: a deadly nanobot fog capable of targeting specific DNA, from a person to an entire nationality. It's ironic that a picture delayed by the covid-19 virus would be about, well, what is effectively a super-virus. This element gives the film a relative sense of realism, a breath of fresh air from all the musty nuclear weapon plots of past pictures, but then you realize that in the same movie, on two separate occasions, two different characters get shot multiple times only to get up and walk around.

But I'm getting carried away because none of this really matters. I'm not about to sit here and write why I think one film is better than another or why one actor is a better representation of the literary spy than someone else. "No Time to Die" is a James Bond picture, and that's what matters.