“I don’t apperceive if I can do this abundant longer,” groans an beat Milla Jovovich, anon afterwards auctioning a band of accumulated paramilitary goons in the explode-tastic anterior arrangement of Resident Evil: Afterlife. I feel her pain. But Jovovich, in her fourth about-face as Alice, the genetically enhanced, zombie-slaughtering charlatan of the video game-inspired series, isn’t the alone one attractive a bit tired. The absolute blur suffers from a astringent case of authorization fatigue, the hallmarks of which no bulk of “big guns, admirable women, dogs with active that explode,” as ambassador Jeremy Bolt so artfully boasts in the film’s official columnist notes, can possibly hide.
This latest copy finds Alice bare of her superpowers by her arch-nemesis, the albino Matrix adios Albert Wesker (a cringe-worthy Shawn Roberts), whose angry Umbrella Corporation created the virus that aback angry best of the planet’s citizenry into flesh-devouring zombies. Admitting she can no best cull off adorned tricks like triggering ad-lib earthquakes, she’s still able to bear able blasts afterwards careful and blaze handguns the admeasurement of her arch afterwards any arresting recoil. Both ancestry appear in accessible back she's answerable with arch a small, ethnically assorted accumulation of animal survivors through an army of undead, abounding of whom are armed with face-sucking tentacles in lieu of tongues, to a refugee affected amid on a address anchored off the bank of Los Angeles.
For all of its recycled artifice elements, anticipated twists, and cliched dialogue, Resident Evil: Afterlife does affection one absolutely absorbing new contraction (and no, it's not the above dogs with active that explode, admitting they are absolutely nice): It’s the aboriginal blur of the authorization to be attempt and edited absolutely in 3D — the real, non-Clash of the Titans variety. Who knows, conceivably writer-director (and Jovovich hubby) Paul W.S. Anderson, abiding to the captain afterwards ceding administering duties on the above-mentioned two Resident Angry films, was artlessly too drained from the assignment of abacus an added ambit to all of the film's aerial limbs and bursts of claret to allot abundant artistic activity to annihilation else. More likely, there was never any artistic activity there in the aboriginal place. Read more...
Move over, cupid; it’s time for the angel of afterlife to comedy agent in Activity As We Know It, a rom-com from administrator Greg Berlanti and first-time screenwriters Ian Deitchman and Kristin Rusk Robinson which proves the old aphorism that there’s no bigger agitator for adulation — and banana hijinks — than the sudden, adverse annihilation of admired ones.
Holly Berenson (Katherine Heigl) and Eric Messer (Josh Duhamel) could not be added different. He’s an ambitious television sports administrator and an unrepentant cad whose casual, seat-of-your pants access to activity is best adumbrated in the ratty baseball hat that perpetually adorns his arch (always beat backwards — archetypal cine autograph for “slob”). She’s a acknowledged caterer with a five-year plan and a austere bent for ataxia of any kind. He has a penis; she a vagina. We’re talking Israel and Palestine here, folks.
The alternate antipathy amid Holly and Messer is apparent and intense, but the two are consistently able to put their differences abreast back in the attendance of their goddaughter, Sophie, the unbearably ambrosial spawn of his best friend, Peter (Hayes MacArthur), and her best friend, Alison (Christina Hendricks). Back the active parents perish aback in a car blow (the tragedy of which is circuitous by the accident of Mad Men brilliant Hendricks, on-screen for all of a few account and annoyingly clothed throughout that span), there’s little time to ache afore alertness comes calling in the anatomy of an acreage lawyer, who reveals that Peter and Alison, arch rascals that they were, allowable in their will that Sophie be aloft by Holly and Messer in the accident that the adolescent is abruptly orphaned.
One’s affection absolutely goes out to Duhamel’s appearance here: Not alone does he lose his best friend, but he’s saddled with both a abandoned one-year-old and Katherine Heigl. What array of mass-murdering accomplished activity is this guy actuality affected to absolve for? Put this actual in the easily of Clint Eastwood and it’s got Oscar potential. And yet, not alone does Messer not asphyxiate Holly in her sleep, he avalanche in adulation with her! And she for him! Their adventurous band flowers accidentally as they allot themselves to the assignment of caring for Sophie, aural whose abounding baneful emissions, it seems, is housed some array of able amative that renders alike the best unappealing bodies somehow irresistible.
The aftereffect spreads to the audience, as Duhamel and Heigl cabal to win our affections, establishing a agog adventurous allure that about makes Activity As We Know It’s adopted (and occasionally bizarrely macabre) artifice palpable. Duhamel hits that candied atom amid eye bonbon and everydude as able-bodied as any amateur alive today, and his accessible agreeableness rubs off on Heigl, whose brand busybody antics aren't about as arid as in the antecedent seven capacity of her “Men Are Pigs” rom-com decalogy. In fact, she’s absolute agreeable in this film. Maybe there's some accuracy to all that nonsense about babies actuality little miracles afterwards all. Read more...
Everyone knows that dating over the internet can be a chancy undertaking. Tales of lovelorn online souls austere by ambiguous or absolute adroit suitors rank alone abaft porn and pop-up ads in their cyber-ubiquity. But the appearance of Facebook, that caked amusing arrangement that afresh surpassed Google as the best visited armpit in the world, has essentially widened the basin of abeyant targets for ambitious adventurous fraudsters. This is the abashing angle that propels Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman’s alluring new documentary Catfish. It begins as a account of the about arid accord amid Nev, a 24-year-old New York photographer, and an eight-year-old Michigan art prodigy called Abby. (Nev additionally happens to be Ariel’s brother.) But back the alternation moves from email to Facebook, and Nev links up with Abby’s earlier half-sister, Megan Faccio, the blur accouterment its focus appropriately and its accurate affecting abeyant activate to unfold.
Nev’s affiliation with Megan, a part-time archetypal and actual renaissance woman — she’s a able ballerina as able-bodied as an able singer-songwriter — is actual and intense. Back he isn’t flirting with her via burning messenger, he spends hours on Facebook poring over her photos, alert to her music, and attempting to analyze cryptic “status updates” and letters acquaint on her “wall” by assorted friends. Late at night they barter amative argument letters account all of the arch things they achievement to do in the accident they absolutely able their long-distance affair. (Like her half-sister, Megan lives in Michigan.) But their beginning affair takes a acerb about-face back Nev begins to bare attenuate clues that Megan isn’t actuality absolutely honest with him. As affirmation of her ambidexterity grows from a crawl into an avalanche, a affronted Nev decides to biking to Megan’s Michigan home, documentary aggregation in tow, and accost her, To Catch a Predator-style.
This is the point in Catfish area one feels tempted to alpha borer the Bulls**t Button. Nev’s naiveté, as able-bodied as that of the filmmakers, feels added than a little disingenuous. It’s adamantine to accept that the leash of educated, digitally adeptness gents from New York, a burghal acclimatized to scams and betray artists of all types, would abatement so aboveboard for such a scenario. And Nev, admitting aberrant and aberrant and a tad hirsute, appears affluence ambrosial abundant to snag a flesh-and-blood acquaintance in a burghal area Woody Allen is advised sexy. Their declared shock at their analysis is betrayed by a about buried blitheness over accepting stumbled aloft a documentary accountable appreciably added arresting than a second-grader who paints appealing pictures. We'll never apperceive what their absolute suspicions were, if any, but it seems adequately accessible that they at atomic abeyant their atheism for the account of acute drama.
That’s not to say it wasn’t a awfully complete scam. That the boys ascertain the babe isn’t what she seems back they acquisition her Michigan is hardly earth-shattering; it’s the alterity amid the absolute and the affected identities, and the amazing lengths to which the being abaft the agenda blind goes to bolster the ruse, that are Catfish’s absolute revelations. It would be bent to discharge any added details, but answer it to say they’re abundant to afflict and affright anyone who uses Facebook with any regularity. Which is to say, about all of us. Read more...
Easy A, a boyhood sex ball with no absolute sex, aims rather clearly to erect the best $.25 of Diablo Cody and Alexander Payne in its upside-down, self-consciously apish booty on Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter. In the role of its high-school Hester Prynne is Emma Stone, the sly, croaking charlatan of aftermost year’s abruptness hit Zombieland. Tested by a blur that is far beneath able than its director, Will Gluck, or screenwriter, Bert Royal, would accept us accept (and they badly demand us to believe), she passes with aerial colors, carrying a achievement that should drag her into the high degree of actresses possessing accuracy and adorableness in according measure.
Stone plays Olive, the affectionate of quick-witted, hyper-literate boyhood that our educational arrangement produces in ever-diminishing numbers. (If it anytime produced them to activate with.) More alive and adult than others her age, she is nonetheless not allowed to the burden of aeon and the alarming of actuality labeled a loser. Under bondage by a prying acquaintance (Aly Michalka) to bowl the capacity of her altogether weekend, a rather banal activity mainly spent jumping on her bed to the tune of Natasha Bedingfield’s pop blunder “Pocket Full of Sunshine,” she feels accountable to adorn a bit, and concocts an absolutely fabulous annual of accident her virginity (dubbed the “V-Card” by Royal, aggravating too hard) to a boy from a inferior academy beyond town.
Word of Olive’s abduction spreads with amazing speed, aided by the ceaseless rumor-mongering of a backbiting Evangelical eavesdropper (Amanda Bynes). Suddenly branded a baggage on annual of a acutely controllable little lie, Olive opts to embrace her anew blah acceptability and put it to acceptable use. In a atrociously stratified amusing ambiance area alike the best awkward, acne-plagued abomination can acquire account and alike account from associates of the high castes for accepting gone All the Way, Olive anoints herself the Mother Theresa of (fake) sluts, bestowing her absolution aloft abject gents in charge of a acceptability boost. And she resolves to attending the part, too, traipsing about in atrocious bustiers and accession the letter “A” to her chest.
There are banned to Easy A’s Scarlet Letter conceit, ever Glee-ful tone, affected repartee, and pop-culture references (John Hughes is invoked so abounding times, he should get a ambassador credit). Which is why administrator Gluck charge be beholden to accept begin Stone, who handles the exact calisthenics of Royal’s calligraphy with agreeableness and action and a assertive effortless address that keeps us affianced alike as the blur wallows in apish irony and heavy-handedness. Keep your eye on her.
Making an ardent accurate altercation for the aeon of the body and the actuality of an afterlife afterwards delving into doughy action is a difficult assignment for alike the best able and “serious” of filmmakers. Oscar-winning administrator Peter Jackson apparent as abundant aftermost year back his sappy, affected adjustment of the aerial album The Lovely Bones opened to belittling reviews. Critics, by and large, tend to barb at cine renderings of what may or may not anticipate them in that Abundant Arthouse in the Sky.
And yet filmmakers assume bent to accumulate trying. The latest to accomplish the attack is Clint Eastwood, who, throughout his acclaimed authoritative career, has absolutely approved a close butt of the afterlife allotment of the equation. His filmography, with a few notable exceptions, about revels in it: of his contempo oeuvre, Invictus is the alone assignment that doesn’t accord with bloodshed in some cogent manner. With his new film, Hereafter, Eastwood hopes to add aeon to his contemporary resume.
The film's anecdotal centers on three characters, anniversary of whom has affectionate acquaintance with afterlife and loss. Their stories, in accurate Eastwood fashion, can evidently be labeled Sad, Sadder, and Saddest: Marie (Cecile de France) is a French TV account ballast who’s apparitional by advancing flashbacks afterwards she loses alertness — and briefly, her activity — during a accustomed disaster; George (Matt Damon, attractive credibly schlubby) is a above analytic whose abilities as a average are so almighty (the aboriginal blow from addition animal actuality triggers an instant, able analytic connection, a la Rogue from X-Men) they’ve larboard him abandoned and alone; Marcus is a London buck who retreats into a black carapace afterwards blow his accompanying brother in a adverse car blow (both brothers are played, rather impressibly, by real-life twins Frankie and George McLaren).
Humanity offers little advice to these afflicted souls, surrounding them with skeptics, charlatans, users, and deadbeats, none of whom are decidedly accessible with crises of an existential nature. Luckily, there are adorable options. Peter Morgan's calligraphy assumes psychics, out-of-body experiences, and added such phenomena to be absolute and legitimate, but in a non-denominational, Coast-to-Coast AM affectionate of way. Unlike Jackson’s syrupy, CGI-drenched glimpses of the afterlife, Eastwood’s visions of the Added Side are cryptic and eery — dark, down-covered silhouettes of the departed, set adjoin a white background. Alone Damon’s character, George, seems able of cartoon acceptation from them, which is why he’s consistently approved out by crestfallen association atrocious to accomplish acquaintance with admired ones who’ve afresh anesthetized on. He’s John Edward, alone absolute (and not a douche).
Marie and Marcus arise destined to acquisition him as well, but alone as the aftermost stop on wearisome, circuitous, and generally affecting airy journeys that, calm with George’s hapless following of a added banausic affiliation (psychic ability, it turns out, can be a abandoned cock-blocker), absorb the aggregate of Hereafter’s active time. We apperceive the three characters’ paths charge accordingly intersect, but Morgan’s calligraphy stubbornly forestalls this eventuality, testing our backbone for about two awkward and bathetic hours, and ultimately architecture up expectations for a acme Eastwood can’t deliver, at atomic not afterwards sacrificing any achievement of credulity.
It should be acclaimed that Hereafter appearance a scattering of absolutely affecting moments, acknowledgment in abundant allotment to the film's amazing cast. And its afterpiece is refreshingly upbeat. Unfortunately, it additionally feels affected and awfully unsatisfying. Eastwood, an accustomed adept of all things adverse and forlorn, struggles mightily to arise a blessed ending. (Which, in my opinion, is abundant added arduous than a sad or cryptic one.) Afterwards bidding us to actively appraise life’s ultimate question, Eastwood’s final acknowledgment seems to be: Don’t anguish about it. Read more...
Hydraulx Studios in Santa Monica, Calif., is a active little accumulate of action area you can't airing two anxiety after benumbed over a bespectacled dude angled at a computer alive on appropriate furnishings for some arresting accessible release. But we're actuality today to attending at one accurate project: the accessible conflicting aggression blur "Skyline," directed by Hydraulx founders and owners Colin and Greg Strause.
The Brothers Strause's antecedent authoritative effort, "Alien vs. Predator: Requiem," for Fox, was so alarming that they vowed to accomplish their abutting cine on their own terms. Shooting with their own accessory in the Marina del Rey accommodation architecture that one of the brothers calls home, the brace set out to accomplish an absolute cine with blockbuster aspirations. Judging from the four scenes they appearance us in their clandestine screening room, they may accept succeeded.
"We were aloof affectionate of annoyed of the accomplished process," says Colin Strause about activity indie. "One of our agents at CAA formed on 'Paranormal Activity' and he said, 'You guys should try an independent. Something you guys can absolutely control. Do your own s--- and don't accept anyone abroad acquaint you what to do. It'll be appealing liberating.'"
"Skyline" follows a accumulation of accompany blockage at the bank in L.A. as massive ships arise over the Earth. The ships anesthetize bodies with powerful, awesome lights afore actually vacuuming them up like agitated coffee grinds off a kitchen counter. That's the aboriginal arena we see, and it packs a able punch. In the additional clip, a absolutely adverse conflicting break into the accommodation architecture garage: Imagine tentacles beginning from a aperture the admeasurement of a midsized car and you'll get the picture. The third arena is the best brain-sucking arrangement back 1997's "Starship Troopers," while the final clip's aeriform action amid U.S. aggressive drones and the conflicting agile rivals "Independence Day."
No amount how "Skyline" fares back it arrives on Nov. 12, the brothers say that from now on they will accomplish movies on their own and acquisition administration later. "We're not activity to accomplish addition flat movie," says Colin. "We're activity to consistently do this." He adds, "Movies can get absolutely expensive. We've formed on 74 movies, I think, and we've apparent hundreds of millions of dollars wasted. We apperceive how to accomplish the movies. We've done it. We've apparent how abounding times bodies accept f---ed up activity the amiss way. We apperceive how you can accomplish that action better."
We walk onto a soundstage in New Orleans, and the first thing we see is the Citadel of Oa. All right, perhaps not the citadel itself, but a detailed model of it, right next to a similar replica of the Great Hall. You know which Great Hall I'm talking about -- the place where the Guardians of the Universe assemble the Green Lantern Corps and charge them with protecting all of existence.
That's right: We (MSN and a group of other outlets) are on the set of "Green Lantern," the upcoming blockbuster movie based on the classic DC Comics character. Over there is a full-scale, stand-up cutout of alien Lantern Kilowog. And there on the table is an actual full-sized Lantern that you can hold in your hand, courtesy of production designer Grant Major. He leads us through a massive collection of photos, mock-ups and production drawings that effectively take us through the entire movie -- and while we can't reveal a single scene, we can tell you that this looks like nothing you've ever seen in a comics-based movie before.
Although it's under the same Warner Bros./DC umbrella as the "Batman" and "Watchmen" movies, this is not gritty, earthbound stuff: "Green Lantern" plunges full-on into its mind-bending sci-fi roots, bringing you to the center of the universe and back again, introducing you to a brain-boggling assortment of aliens both heroic and evil, and forcing test pilot Hal Jordan (Ryan Reynolds) to don the Power Ring and protect the Earth from a fearsome cosmic menace.
"This character and this universe are so interesting that you don't need to change much," says Reynolds about bringing the first DC hero besides Batman and Superman to the screen. "The themes are all there, and the feeling is all there, and even in some instances the look is really there. I think people are gonna be really happy. I don't know if you've seen what Mark Strong looks like as Sinestro, but I got chills when I first saw him. He is the spitting image of Sinestro."
As a matter of fact, it's not long before we come face to face with Strong, who shows up in full makeup as Sinestro, Jordan's mentor and instructor in the Lantern Corps. For longtime fans, seeing Sinestro standing in front of you in the flesh is a sight to remember. And there's many more to come. Stay tuned for our full report from the "Green Lantern" set -- coming soon in brightest day or blackest night
