If anyone is still interested in the Resident Evil movie franchise, then you’ll already know that there will be a fifth installment that will release on September 14th of 2012. Now it is indeed confirmed that not only will Milla Jovovich rejoin the cast (of course), but also Ali Larter(via Ali Larter Daily) and Sienna Guillory will indeed reprise their roles as ‘Claire Redfield’ and ‘Jill Valentine’ once again. That should be pretty interesting based on how the last movie Afterlife ended.
*Technically, Larter is still rumored, but Guillory and Jovovich are confirmed.
Also returning will be Jovovich’s husband and Director/Writer for Retribution,Paul W.S. Anderson. Now a lot of people think Paul W.S. Anderson is a terrible director and/or writer [Dr. Kronner – like me, I’m one of those people] and I can’t defend him by saying he’s great. But the guy definitely has a knack for making entertaining movies though. (Some might call that being mediocre) I enjoyed Death Race, Event Horizon, and the first Mortal Kombat movie when I was 11. Hell, I’ll even give him some credit for Soldier which was one of those ‘so bad it’s good’ films. Either way he can definitely keep delivering on Resident Evil movies which I honestly think have become stale by now. I couldn’t tell the difference between Afterlife and Extinction to tell you the truth and Retribution isn’t enough to get me to the theater. I’ll check it out on DVD but that’s about it.
Is there anything more awesome than a beautiful woman shooting a gun? Nope.
Also, there is no word on Wentworth Miller coming back as Chris Redfield respectively. It seems like there’s still time, but I don’t think the story will suffer much from his absence if he doesn’t return. And shut up, I know you’re laughing because I said “story” regarding a Resident Evil movie.
Attack the Block. Like Stomp the Yard? Verb the Noun!
“It’s inner city versus outer space.”
I’ve got to say I’m not sure about this one. Seeing as it is from the producers of Shaun of the Dead (which I love) and Scott Pilgrim Vs. the World (which I don’t hate) this flick could have some potential. Here’s the basic plot from IMDB:
A teen gang in South London defend their block from an alien invasion.
Sounds complicated. Here is the first of the 2 trailers.
As per usual, here is a movie of the times. Like Shaun of the Dead which was timed perfectly with at the beginning (you could argue was a catalyst toward) an entertainment zombie boom, Attack the Block is poised to ride the wave of movies that are focusing on Aliens invading, and kids coming together for the adventure (Super 8). However, the Alien invasion movies have not really been catching much steam like the zombie infestation.
To be honest, I never even thought of the possibility of rebooting the Short Circuit franchise. I didn’t think they had to anyways since the loveable and cute Wall-E garbage bot completely f–king ripped off the Johnny 5 image anyways.
Dubya Tee Eff? ? ?
I loved the two Short Circuit movies as a kid and always wanted my own Johnny 5 robot to follow me around and make funny quips and observations about our organic-lifestyles. Now when I watch the films I become a little nauseous seeing how ridiculous it all seems in this day and age, which is the case with a lot of movies and cartoons from our childhood.
So I suppose it’s time for a reboot even though the masses aren’t exactly clamoring at the gates for one. And who better to bring a self aware, kid friendly robot from the 80’s forcefully back into our lives than Tim Hill, the director of the recent kid hit “Hop“. Check out the snippet from Deadline below:
Dimension Films is making a deal with Tim Hill to direct its reboot of Short Circuit, the 1986 film about an experimental robot manufactured to be a weapon until a lightning strike fills it with intelligence. It runs away and befriends a fractured family, the military in hot pursuit. Hill directed the Illumination pic Hop and Fox’s Alvin and the Chipmunks.
Seriously let’s face it, Hill can absolutely mine the box office gold out of this one. He made $183 million worldwide for a movie about the Easter Bunny’s son who shits out jelly beans for Cthulu’s sake! I’m sure he can have Johnny five rolling along the street crapping batteries and kids will go nuts. I say go for it Mr. Hill, as long as there is an audience willing to pay then go for it. One request I have is to please not have Johnny 5 voiced by the increasingly annoying Russell Brand. In my opinion that guy’s ship has sailed past the point of tolerable to the falls of un-f**king-bearable. I can’t stand him. Sorry to all you Brand fans, but you can join him if you wish.
I actually have another request. I would emphatically request that in this reboot they bring back the Los Locos, the most politically correct, well spoken group of individuals you will ever see. Watch the video below for their mission statement.
People have to be on alien overload right now! Falling Skies on TNT, Cowboys and Aliens, Attack the Block, Skyline and Battle: LA are the most recent alien invasion movies to hit the screens. Out of all of those movies I truly only enjoyed Battle: LA. Attack the Block I have yet to see, but I’ve heard it is most excellent. I would say that the Darkest Hour was just another alien invasion flick but it does look to have it’s own identity in the form of the alien’s appearance.
Check out the trailer starring Emile Hirsch whom I haven’t since in a movie since the puke-fest that was Speed Racer:
Sure it’s another alien invasion flick, but the part that intrigues me is that the aliens are energy based lifeforms. How the hell do you fight something like that? It looked a little ridiculous with them having some sort of alien zapper guns, but I’m interested in seeing how humans could fight aliens that you can only see when they are around electronics.
Alien-Vision!
They actually reminded me of the phantoms in Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within in terms of detecting their presence. We’ll see if the movie is at least decent come December, but I’m not holding out much hope. I think it will still be better than the oft delayed Apollo 18.
Unfortunately, it’s not often anymore that I leave the theater feeling anything but disappointed. From Pirates 4 to Green Lantern to Cowboys & Aliens, I’ve handed MJR theaters more than my share of wasted income this summer. Tonight however, well – I haven’t been so pleasantly surprised by a movie in a long time. I love the original Planet of the Apes, but I thought the Tim Burton crapfest had killed any hopes for a series revival. That was until tonight, when I saw Rupert Wyatt‘s take on the rise of Caesar. Here is a movie that had everything going against it and still found a way to come out looking respectable. In a market severely over saturated with sequels, prequels, and remakes, they took a series that already had 5 movies, a TV show, a cartoon, and most recently – 2001’s universally panned remake – and they produced something not only watchable, but dare I say ‘Good’?
For those who don’t know, this is the story of Caesar. He is the chimp that would eventually lead his kind out of captivity and change the course of the Earth forever. Basically, he’s like the Spartacus of Apes, but smarter…and more important. The reason he is smarter is because his mother was used in a lab to test a new drug, which was meant to repair brain function in people with Alzheimer’s disease. Turns out that the drug not only repaired brain function, but actually improved it. So when ‘Bright Eyes’ gave birth to a baby chimp, she passed the cognitive ability onto her offspring.
Now I don’t want to write a synopsis or anything here, but there are a couple of things I’d like to comment on…
First, Andy Serkis. You might not know his name, but I bet you’re familiar with his work. He played ‘Gollum’ in The Lord of the Rings and will reprise that role in the upcoming The Hobbit movies. He was ‘Kong’ in King Kong, and now he is Caesar. This guy is – simply put – awesome. But for some reason, he seldom gets the credit he deserves. He does all the movements, expressions, and speaking, but because you don’t see his face people don’t appreciate what he does. So I just wanted to say that I do. I bring it up mainly though, because much like in LOTR, he stole the show. The rest of the cast was good enough, but there really wasn’t a scene with Caesar where he wasn’t the focal point, and Serkis couldn’t have done a better job.
Speaking of the rest of the cast, they are all recognizable to film and TV fans, much like the casts in earlier versions which boasted names like Mark Wahlberg, Tim Roth, Helena Bonham Carter, Michael Clarke Duncan, Paul Giamatti, Kris Kristofferson, Roddy McDowall, Ricardo Montalban, Sal Mineo, M. Emmet Walsh, John Randolph, and of course – Charlton Heston. And while it’s not what would be considered a cast that is guaranteed to put butts in the seats, it is a cast I liked.
In addition to Serkis, our other lead is one of my favorite actors working today – James Franco. He’s the adoptive father to ‘Caesar’. Playing Franco’s ailing father, fresh off a real career resurgence, thanks to Dexter is John Lithgow. Lithgow’s character is actually the catalyst for the drug’s development, as well as the one who inadvertently starts the ball rolling for the eventual ape uprising. Perhaps the next biggest name is also the actor who was probably most underused – Brian Cox. The love interest is Freida Pinto and as the A-Hole, fittingly so, is Harry Potter’s own Draco Malfoy. And last but not least, star of GB favorite Reaper – Tyler Labine.
They paid special attention the honoring the old movie, starting right away with the opening scene basically being a reverse of when Heston got captured back in ’68. There was smaller stuff like the orangutan being named ‘Maurice’, no doubt after Maurice Evans, the actor who played the orangutan ‘Dr. Zaius’, or Franco’s boss ‘Mr. Jacobs’ – named perhaps for producer Arthur P. Jacobs? Then you have Tom Felton’s character – ‘Dodge Landon’, a reference to the characters Dodge (Jeff Burton) and Landon (Robert Gunner), Heston’s fellow astronauts in the original Planet of the Apes. And most obvious of them is Caesar’s mother being named ‘Bright Eyes’ by the doctors, just as Zira calls Heston.
Aside from all the name play, they also pulled in perhaps the most well-known line ever spoken by Charlton Heston:
Now the second thing I wanted to talk about is something that I absolutely loved, and it’s spawned by the nods to the original. This marks perhaps the cheesiest part of the movie, HOWEVER, it set up something more, and you don’t see much today. It’s something you might not notice on DVD – total control of the crowd. In one instance they delivered maybe the cheesiest line in the movie, and then as the whole theater was laughing we are hit right away with an event that silenced half the crowd, and had the other half verbally gasp. It was awesome, it was a moment of mass realization where you’re one of a few hundred people in a room, and for just a second everyone is in awe. It’s like in Fight Club when Norton goes through the plane tickets and the light bulb clicks on in everyone’s head. I don’t want to ruin it, but if you see this in the theater, you’ll know what I’m talking about. It was obviously done on purpose and I loved it. It reminded me why I love the going to the theater despite the cell phones and talking teenagers.
They took one of the most iconic movies ever made and delivered a prequel that actually enhanced the story, rather than giving us a Phantom Menace and ruining it…
This movie delivered for me on every level, and if I had one complaint it’d be that over the course of the 8 years within the movie, no human characters appear to age, but I can look past that. I found this movie entertaining and well worth the price of admission. In fact, outside members of the SFPD, I don’t know who wouldn’t like this. You could argue that some of the cast was underused, but I liked that it focused on the apes instead, and it was an interesting parallel to the original, with Caesar experiencing a lot of what Taylor did.
Grizzly Bomb 