best mediocre film of the year - 2007 [movies]

resident evil: extinction

a perfect storm of 'meh'.

sometimes i feel like i'm one of those pretentious douchebags that rant on and on about "outsider art" and how brilliant the crazed scribbling of some brain dead psycho drawn on a toilet seat are and all the insightful things it says about our society. sometimes i feel like that, except substitute brain dead psychos with coked-out movie industry hacks. some of you may remember my dissertation on michael bay's masterpiece "bad boys II", some of you may not. anyway, consider this part of an ongoing investigation into the enigma that is hollywood filmmaking.

don't ask me why i do it to myself, but i've given every resident evil movie to come out so far a fair chance. partly because of the potential, but also because at the very least i can be secure in the knowledge that mila will be lookin' fine and possibly gettin' naked. that said, i've never actually been able to make it through an entire film in the series. they're just so bad i have to turn them off within 30-45 mins.

recently i legally obtained a copy of the latest, resident evil: extinction. based on the trailers, this installment looked like a fairly big departure for the franchise, so i thought "hmm...maybe this time they'll finally get it right". well, having sat down and watched it (yes, the whole thing!) i can say that yes, they finally have gotten it right. the fact that i didn't shut it off 30 mins in is probably the biggest indicator that the film is light years ahead of its predecessors, but on top of that, i was actually pretty entertained by the movie. believe me, i'm just as surprised as you are.

i'm not saying its a great movie because its pretty mediocre, but for all its hackiness, it also does a lot of things well. most noticeably, the directing in this one is pretty strong. i've never heard of russel mulcahy, looking at his imdb it seems that he's done mostly TV and music videos, but the guy is pretty smart. i say this for a few reasons. first, the film is very video gamey, but its all pretty subtle and doesn't get in the way of it being a movie. little flourishes that evoke the video game experience are sprinkled throughout, so that if you've played any kind of action/adventure game before you'll notice them and smirk, but if you haven't it would just blend seamlessly into the film. second, we're all aware of the fact that mila jovovich, for all her beauty, is a pitiful actress - same goes with the rest of the cast (which includes academy award winners ashanti, ali larter and mike epps), but the thing is, whoever this dude is, russel mulcahy, is obviously aware of this as well and fully compensates for it. nobody is given the opportunity to suck. it really is astounding to watch. they either die or get distracted or the camera cuts away from them before they get a chance to unleash a lethal dose of their own individual brands of suckitude. if you'd walked up to me on the street 3 weeks ago and told me i would not only sit through, but also be vaguely entertained by a movie starring mila jovovich, ashanti, ali larter and mike epps, i probably would have said something pretty humorous about how stupid your face was (or something along those lines...its hard to say for sure). i guess it just goes to show how strange and wonderful this world can be at times.

but wait, before you get all amped up and franticly download this movie with hopes high, let me make a disclaimer. the story itself (which was penned by paul w.s. anderson, the genius behind the first resident evil and other classics like AvP) is a total hack job. its basically 'day of the dead' verbatim, except its post apocalyptic and slightly more sci-fi. think george romero meets stephen king and you've pretty much got it. nothing original at all going on here. nothing at all. BUT, i'm not a snob, i don't think everything has to be ground breaking, its more important that it does what its trying to do right than doing it first. this film does it right...ish. there haven't been a whole lot of post-apocalyptic movies made in recent years, so we haven't really had the chance to see all those sprawling desolate landscapes in high definition with all the bells and whistles that new technology affords. first thing you notice about RE:E is that its pretty to look at. the camera work and aesthetics of the film do a good job at immersing you in the environment. the costumes are spot on. total anime ripoffs, but spot on, nonetheless.

sometimes you want to sit down and watch a really mindblowing movie that wows you and reinvigorates your love for the medium. this isn't that film. but other times you just want to sit down and meditate on something familiar, yet strangely beautiful in its mediocrity. well, maybe you don't, but i certainly do. i'm one of the few people out there in the world that understands that the movie industry is not about producing art, its about producing product that will produce money. at every step of the process, filmmakers are told "nope, you can't do that", "can't show that", "can't say that", "gotta simplify that", etc. i'm not delusional, i know that every movie i see is the product of 100 or so muddling hands, each of which has stripped away a little more of the movies original incarnation. its a sad reality, but it IS the reality. there just isn't much of a market for masterpieces these days. but to my weird, crazy, pretentious artfag brain, sometimes this debilitating meddling, censoring and restricting comes together to create something worth stepping back and admiring for what it is. and that, folks, is why i dub resident evil: extinction the best mediocre movie of the year. see it for yourselves. open your mind and don't be a stuck up cunt. you might just be slightly entertained like i was.