A lobotomised goldfish. With boobs.

Resident Evil: Extinction
On DVD now

This film is really stupid. Really, really stupid. It’s stupefyingly stupid. Resident Evil: Extinction is the cinematic (and I use that term loosely) equivalent of a lobotomised goldfish. With boobs.

Somehow, when I first saw the trailers for it, I was somehow suckered into getting excited about it – zombies! In the desert! Milla Jovovovovovovovich chopping ‘em up! The schizophrenic gal out of Heroes! Awesome!

(Yes, I thought this despite the fact that the first two Resi films were shite)

Then I went to see the film. And it was bad.

The film opens with Milla driving around the desert (somehow the zombie virus has, uh, killed the world. It would have been far more entertaining if the world turned into one giant zombie. That Ms Jovovovovovovovich would then fight), when she runs into some hicks who decide, for some reason, to kidnap Milla and stick her in a cage with a badly-CGI’d zombie dog. Maybe they’d seen Ultraviolet.

Eventually, after somehow developing psychic powers (making her about as powerful as Jesus, if not more so) our intrepid heroine meets up with a CONVOY of retards, who drive trucks around and sometimes get attacked by zombie crow. And then decide to kill them with a flamethrower, which inevitably goes out of control, instead of, uh, hiding.

All seems well – they drive along, singing songs and spitting tobacco into buckets (or whatever truckers do) – but they don’t know that the sinister Umbrella company, who released the virus, and made Milla, are following them. I don’t know why. Apparently they want to take over the world – despite the fact that it consists mostly of zombies and sand. And traumatised teenagers who change their name to “K-Mart” because that’s where she was found by the convoy.

“K-Mart”? Really? If you had the chance to change your name, you wouldn’t change it to bloody K-Mart. You’d change it to “Dr Awesome MD” or “Professor Robocop”, or somethin. Not fucking K-Mart.

So, that’s all pretty on par with the absolute idiocy of the other two films.

Oh, but also, at one point the CONVOY come across a big old shipping container. And decide it’s a good idea to open it and look inside (I don’t even know where they’re driving to – or why). Guess what? There are zombies inside! Dropped by Umbrella! Christ knows why!

And someone gets snuck up on by a zombie. HOW THE HELL DOES A ZOMBIE SNEAK UP ON YOU? Basically, a zombie somehow manages to climb on top of the shipping container, tip-toes along, then jumps on some lady with her back to the container. What the hell, man?

And the only good character dies! That awesone black dude from the second film, who was driving around in a low-rider, running zombies over! I can’t even remeber how he dies. Maybe I just don’t want to admit he’s gone.

How can this film be so stupid? Really? It’s not hard to get the formula of zombies+girl in hot pants wrong, is it? Then again, when you get a film written by Paul WS Anderson (persumably for crayons), you can’t expect too much, eh? Expecting  ole’ WS to make a good film is like expecting a racoon to ski.

One night of sweaty, nerdy sex

Eagle Vs Shark
On DVD now

Eagle vs Shark is the first film from New Zealand I’ve seen that wasn’t directed by Peter Jackson (this is the first film from Kiwi comedian Taika Waititi, aka Taika Cohen). Despite the fact it comes from the Kiwi country, it feels pretty…well, American.

The plot revolves around Lily (Loren Horsley, Waititi’s real-life partner), an somewhat unattractive (mainly due to the mole above her top lip) young fast-food worker, who, for some reason, falls for the nerdy, socially awkward Jarrod (Jermaine Clement, one-half of “fourth most popular guitar-based digi-bongo acapella-rap-funk-comedy folk duo” Flight of the Conchords), who is also somewhat unattractive (mainly due to the mole above his top lip; but the overbite and badly-cut mullet don’t help either).

After one night of sweaty, nerdy sex at Jarrod’s “Dress as your favourite animal” party (he goes as an eagle, Lily as a shark – hence the film’s title), Jarrod seems to get cold feet, and the newly redundant Lily (she was fired, at random, after her name was drawn out of a hat) joins him as he drives to his home town to kill his high school nemesis.

And that’s the plot of Eagle Vs Shark in a nutshell. Which means I should probably now explain that bit about how the film seems like an American production, which I’m sure you’ve been waiting for with baited breath (or you forgot, since I rambled on for so long).

Basically, Eagle vs Shark is like a Kiwi version of Napoleon Dynamite – except, in this case, pretty much all of the principal characters are socially-awkward, badly-dressed weirdos. There’s even Dyanmite’s weird sense of, well, oldness – it’s obviously not a period piece (Jarrod makes reference to going to see the as-yet unmade Wolverine movie starring Hugh Jackman – so I guess it’s set in the future?), yet Jarrod’s genius computer-hacker friend seems to be using a PC from the early ’90s, and the “Fight Man” videogame Lily plays at Jarrod’s party seems to be a 16-bit Mortal Kombat knock-off.

Unfortunatley, the aformentioned awkwardness is also kind of distracting – while in Napoleon Dynamite this was remedied by the humour, the laughs are somewhat spaced out, which means you get prolonged periods of these characters who you just want to smack around the head and tell them to start acting…well, normal.

While it’s very funny in parts, Eagle vs Shark may be too awkward and derivative for it’s own good.

Hop, Skip, Jump

Jumper
In cinemas now

Y’know, despite eveyrthing, I had high hopes for Jumper; it was a good story, Samuel L Motherfuckin’ Jackson was being all badass, Billy Elliot actually looked cool, and Rachel Bilson took her clothes off – but I didn’t reckon on two men (if you could call them that); Doug Liman and Hayden Christensen.

Now, I wasn’t expecting much from the former, seeing as all I’d seen him in was the Star Wars sequels, ‘portraying’ Mannequin Skywalker. And he waas awful. Just, truly dreadful. “However!” my mind interruprted, “Ewan McGregor, Liam Neeson and Christopher Lee were shit in those films too, but you’ve seen them act well in other places!”

This was true. So maybe Hayden could actually act, right? It was just the negative influence of beardy Lucas, right? Right? 

No. No it was not. Hayden Christensen could not act his way out of an episode of Eastenders. He is utterly, irredeamably shit. He’s thenew Keanu Reeves.

Anyway, I should probably actually talk about the film now, which is basically about a kid from a ‘broken home’ (if your Dad asking you to mop up all the water that you flung around your house counts as a ‘broken home’) called David Rice (Captain Wooden), who finds he has the power to teleport. Then one day, Roland Cox (SAM-U-ELLLLLLLLL), who calls himself a ‘Paladin’, shows up to kick Hayden’s ass – and you sort of want him too, because he’s a smug bastard – teleporting into bank vaults, stealing stuff, hanging out on Big Ben.

This is where that Doug Liman fellow comes in. For about 20 minutes after this scene,the film turns into some rubbishy romance drama, with David wisking childhood sweetheart Millie (Rachel Bilson) to Rome, then making her break into the Colosseum with him.

It picks up again with the introduction of Griffin (Jamie Bell), a way more awesome ‘Jumper’, who you wish the film was really about, as he beats on some Paladins with a baseball bat. Then nothing happens for a while, then a lot of stuff happens in a short space of time, thennnnn; well, it ends.

Jumper, really, seems like a long trailer for a what should really have been a series of films – I’m all for shorter films, after snore-fests like the second two Pirates of the Carribean films, but this film is almost too short; this leaves no space for explanations, character development (I swear, they’re so one-dimensional you shouldn’t be able to see them when they turn sideways), or…well, anything.

Maybe it’s just because I had such high hopes, or because I hate Hayden Christensen and think he should of been replaced by Jamie Bell, or because Rachel Bilson spent too much of the film with her clothes on; either way, Jumper was, well, a little bit shite.

You Can’t Drink Just Six!

Cloverfield
In cinemas now

Before I entered the cinema to see Cloverfield, the JJ Abrams-viral-marketed-monster flick, a friend instructed me, via SMS, to text him my opinions of the film afterwards.
After I peeled my sweating body from the cheap Odeon seating, and prised my white knuckles from the arms, I managed summed up my opinions in about five words:

“HOLY SHIT THAT WAS AWESOME!”

I think I can safely say, without reprieve (well, until I go see No Country For Old Men, maybe), that Cloverfield may very well be the film of the year. And it’s only Feburary.
Let me explain, using poorly thought-out sentences and analogies. The reason Cloverfield has me spitting superlatives like a ten year old who’s just seen Bill And Ted’s Excellent Adventure for the first time is because it manages to do what many (make that most) Hollywood films fail to do – it just works.

The film’s gimmick, if you didn’t already know, is that it’s all filmed on a handheld camera – not Michael Bay-style Parkinsons-disease shaky-cam, but actually filmed by one of the protagonists, the endearingly dorky and awkward Hud (it’s like heads-up-display, see?)

This “gimmick”, while making a few (pansy) patrons get motion sickness, really is the crux of the film; it’s what invests you in the story, the characters, the events – this film immerses you more than you thought a monster movie could, or, some might argue, should.

Even events that would seem, well, stupid in other films (a skyscraper leaning on another? And they climb up it? WTF?) instead make you sweat like a paedophile in a schoolyard, and I was actually scared in parts – and I never get scared by films. Ever. I watch horror films to laugh, for God’s sake.

Actually, the last film that really scared me is The Blair Witch Project, which was filmed in a similar way to Cloverfield; so I guess, if you want to make your film scary, have it all shot on handheld (though apparently that didn’t really work for George Romero’s latest, Diary of the Dead). But also make sure to create characters the audience actually care about, have some of that Joss Whedon-esque witty dialogue, and don’t just make it retarded as hell (I’m looking at you, 1998 Godzilla).

Those looking for a b-movie, guys-in-rubber-suits kaiju film of destruction…well, you’ve sort of got it. But it’s that bit extra that Cloverfield adds which makes it special.