Last movie watched...

[maryanddavid]

I thought Prometheus was a bit shite, but this has made me like it just a little bit!

Although just maybe the outrageously camp Engineers were always destined to unleash penis-monsters upon us. Maybe the whole thing is Ridley Scott's joke about God being gay- a big "fuck you" to the Church. All muscley, bald disco boys in tiny underpants. If that IS what Prometheus is all about, then I might just love it very much.

[Professor Bear]

SBT sure does see gayness in a lot of films that other people don't.

Resident Evil: Retribution is still fresh in my memory so it is unfair to call it The Worst Film I Have Ever Seen this soon, but that is my first impulse.
Predictable, illogical, devoid of empathy or human emotion, poorly acted, fake and obtrusive CGI monsters and backgrounds, and a nonsensical script so poor that it actually gives up on its audience with the first frame which plays the opening action scene backwards and then gives you a recap of all the previous films because it so heavily references them - or at least the ones from which they could get the actors back in to make a return appearance for two whole minutes, not that I blame Colin Salmon as he's made it clear by now that he'll play in anything and isn't proud and I respect that, I really do, because he appeared in every episode of that BBC shit Some Girls and actually made an effort even when he could see he was the only one doing so.  Colin's all right in my book, I like a man who'll do panto when he wants to eat, but the rest of the cast - fuck me.  There's this one bloke playing (I presume) the guy from Resident Evil 4 and he is actually less convincing than his PS2 counterpart - I know that reads like one of those obvious "the puppet was less wooden than Bill Paxton" jokes about the Thunderbirds movie, but here it is actually completely correct, the guy barely moves when he speaks and delivers his lines like English isn't his first langidge, it's almost fascinating in itself to watch.  There's another lass - blonde woman - who in one scene just about convinced me she was standing upright, she is godawful and I am convinced she and the other dude are there only so the lead is not the worst actor onscreen.
At some point in this film series, I think it is far to say it stopped being about the videogames, and then shortly after that it stopped being about zombies, and at some point in this film it stopped even being a film, it just turned into an illogical series of retreads of scenes from Aliens and Godzilla and Lord of the Rings that make no sense even in the context of the movie's own story, which would be fine in a videogame but here is just insulting.  There's something wrong when two hot chicks dressed in skintight outfits are throwing down and all I can think is "what is this shit?  Where is it going?  How did it get here?  Is there really a God?  Can he know love as we do?"  It's just noise.  Pointless, unconvincing noise whose only positive point is that is that it is so loud and relentless that it will drown out the conversations being held in the theater by its target audience.

Complete and utter shit that fails on every level, if you like this film for any reason other than to masturbate to one or more of the cast, you need to take a good hard look at yourself.

[SmallBlueThing]

I forget when i gave up on Resident Evil films- but it involved me wanting a movie about zombies, and instead getting a super-monster-zombie with built-in gun arm who looked like he'd accidentally strayed in from a later Hellraiser knock-off, walking through dry ice as Things Explode around him for precious little reason. Fuck that, i rightly thought.

As for wotserface, the lead woman- if ever there were an overrated piece of totty it's her. She has, numbered among her many faults, a bent face.

I'd imagine the target audience for these is several decades younger than me though, so it's a bit like slagging off 'Wolfblood' for not being 'The Howling' (except that Wolfblood is more fun than The Howling ever was).

As for the other- i have a very developed gaydar and a very strong appreciation of all things camp. You forget my oft-spoken wish to be a drag queen.

And more Prometheus campness: David (a 'perfect' man, like Michelangelo's one presumes), who buffs old men's feet and is pushed up against (cont)

[SmallBlueThing]

(cont) walls by a ball-breaking female commander in a catsuit, and then who, as she walks off, delivers a silent open-mouthed "ooh! Worthy of Kenneth himself.

SBT

[radiator]

I've said it before: Prometheus is a future camp classic.

[TordelBack]

In ALIEN they landed on windswept planet Hell- here, we find a planet mostly resembling Scotland in Spring.

Your point?

[Professor Bear]

I'd imagine the target audience for these is several decades younger than me though, so it's a bit like slagging off 'Wolfblood' for not being 'The Howling' (except that Wolfblood is more fun than The Howling ever was).

I like Wolfblood, but If I was going to slag it off, it would be for not being Teen Wolf (a high school teen drama about a werewolf that is based in a small white collar town) and for having really, really dodgy subtext like "Wild Wolfbloods" just being an analogue for Daily Mail-style thieving/kidnapping gyppos.  I also have some mild concern for the episode where the two kids spend a night on the moors together as wolves, as in the context of the show all their mates think they've been shagging, even though the viewer knows they've only been sniffing each other's bottoms.

Anyway, I don't think it's unreasonable to apply relative criticism to the Resident Evil films when they are so plainly and unapologetically derivative to the point they're now lifting scenes from other films without putting them into the context of the film you are currently watching.  I am pretty sure I would have found Retribution to be shite at any age, and I don't like the implication that just because you're 18 you can't tell when  movie has no redeeming value, if only because kids' entertainment is actually far more complex and insightful these days than it ever used to be.

[radiator]

I don't think it's unreasonable to apply relative criticism to the Resident Evil films when they are so plainly and unapologetically derivative to the point they're now lifting scenes from other films without putting them into the context of the film you are currently watching.

I've never seen a Resident Evil movie the whole way through, because why would I? But I saw the Red Letter Media review of the series, and as well as being hilarious, proved that those films are so, so much worse than I imagined they would be. Incompetently made, lazy and wildly derivative. It made the plot of the games look good. They showed the final fight from the fourth movie, and it's so pathetic - just one big slo mo fight, like a laughably inept Matrix parody, made a decade after people stopped copying The Matrix, and devoid of the context that made the Matrix fights make sense within the film. Apparently the fifth movie starts with a reversed fight scene, completely and shamelessly ripped off from the Dead Island trailer. It's like that Turkish Star Wars rip-off, minus the charm.

[Richmond Clements]

I watched one of the Resident Evil movies on tv a few months ago, and I literally had no idea what was happening from scene to scene in it.

[SmallBlueThing]

I would have put the target audience for Resident Evil movies at least four years younger than 18, prof. And at that age, they know shit-all about anything, but yes i take your point.

As i get older i really just know 90% of the time whether it's worth my while watching a movie. If im wrong, and i miss a gem- then, y'know, so what? It's only a movie, and they are the least of my pleasures. It's the reason i know i'll never see thw hobbit, or the dark knight rises, or (glimpses at the cinema as he walks past) Jack Reacher or Gangster Squad- whatever the hell they are.

SBT

[radiator]

I would have put the target audience for Resident Evil movies at least four years younger than 18, prof. And at that age, they know shit-all about anything

Disagree. I still love most of the films I loved at age 14 - teenage boys don't immediately go for lowest common denominator sludge just because it has pretty ladies and guns in it. I spotted a Resident Evil Blu Ray box set on my brother in law's shelf over christmas and he's much older than me. It's not age, it's a lack of taste and accepting safe mediocrity rather than taking a risk on something.

I've never really understood the attitude of people who sort of shrug and admit that Resident Evil/Underworld movies are shit, but continue to go and see them in the cinema regardless, because it's 'a bit of brainless fun'. If that's what you're after, I could name hundreds of brainless action movies that aren't turgid, lifeless shit that you could watch instead, you know.

[Jim_Campbell]

I've never really understood the attitude of people who sort of shrug and admit that Resident Evil/Underworld movies are shit, but continue to go and see them in the cinema regardless

Surely, it's just an extension of the same play-it-safe attitude that keeps McDonald's and its ilk in business? Yes, what you're going to get will be shit, but it will be just about palatable shit and, crucially, you know exactly what you're going to get.

Cheers

Jim

[radiator]

Meh - occasionally I really fancy a McDonalds. The food's unhealthy rather than low-quality.

If Resident Evil were a restaurant it'd be one of those Aberdeen Steakhouses. No one has anything nice to say about them, but they're inexplicably profitable and kept afloat because they seem to draw a crowd of gullible people from overseas.

[JamesC]

I've never really understood the attitude of people who sort of shrug and admit that Resident Evil/Underworld movies are shit, but continue to go and see them in the cinema regardless

Surely, it's just an extension of the same play-it-safe attitude that keeps McDonald's and its ilk in business? Yes, what you're going to get will be shit, but it will be just about palatable shit and, crucially, you know exactly what you're going to get.

Cheers

Jim

Apart from the fact that I really like Big Macs I think this is spot-on.

I've been to see plenty of shit films like Resident Evil at the pictures (and I've known that they would be shit) purely through compromise.

If the cinema was showing a Jennifer Anniston rom-com, Texas Chainsaw 3D and the latest Resident Evil almost all mixed-sex groups of youngsters would be in the Resident Evil screening.

[Daveycandlish]

Watching Revenge of the Sith for the first time since I saw at the cinema.

Fuck me, it's a clunker.