Tuesday, October 28, 2014

Resident Evil: Afterlife/ I Am Legend/ District 9

Jun. 12: I saw this movie on Jan. 10, 2014 and I’m writing my review for it now.  I used to write movie reviews for the Golden Vanguard.  Their website, Facebook page, and one of the founder’s email isn’t working.  I did find an email that did work, so I sent an email to him.  I haven’t written a review in over a year.  I had to check a word count on my old review to see how long it’s supposed to be.  The last one was about 250 words.

Resident Evil: Afterlife: Well here’s my movie review.   I saw the first Resident Evil in 2005 with my friend Leslie when she came over to my house.  I saw the second one Apocalypse on TV.

Resident Evil: Afterlife movie review

By Tracy Au

For people who aren’t familiar with the Resident Evil franchise, it’s about Alice (Milla Jovovich) who fights zombies and wants to destroy the Umbrella Corporation who is responsible for it.  Alice hunts down the bad guy Albert Wesker (Shawn Roberts) and there is an epic fight scene and shoot out in the beginning.

It leads to Alice in the Arctic and she finds her friend Claire (Ali Larter).  They fly to LA and land on a prison where there are survivors.  They are NBA player Luther (Boris Kodjoe), a movie producer Bennett (Kim Coates), his intern Kim (Norman Yeung), an aspiring actress Crystal (Kacey Barnfield) among them.  There is prison cell for Chris (Wentworth Miller) and he says he’s a soldier.  The zombies were everywhere so the inmates were released to fight the zombies.  However, he was jumped and is now locked up here.

The others don’t trust him.  He says he knows a way out of the prison and onto Arcadia which is safe ship on the sea.  He will tell them the way out when he’s released.

The situation proves challenging when the plane that Alice and Claire flew in can only take two people at a time, and can only make one trip.  The zombies are coming and the prison can’t keep them safe for much longer so must they escape.

I would describe this movie as mediocre and pointless.  I watched it for the horror and action.  There are scary surprises and action, but it seems like this movie was made to make money first, and tell a story second.

I Am Legend: I saw this movie on Jul. 9, 2013.

I Am Legend movie review

By Tracy Au

This is a movie based on a book by Richard Matheson.  It’s about a man named Robert Neville (Will Smith) who lives with his German Shepherd Sam in a post- apocalyptic New York City.  The city is overrun by zombies or known as the Infected.  It’s very scary because it’s realistic how a disease can wipe out humanity and turn humans into creatures that lose all their senses and become raging monsters.

The majority of the movie is Robert by himself as he scavenges over people’s things and broadcast himself on the radio to find other survivors.  I was skeptical at first if Smith can carry most of the movie himself and not interact with too many people.  Can this movie still be entertaining?  Yes.  There are flashbacks of Robert interacting with his wife Zoe (Salli Richardson-Whitfield) and his daughter Marley (Willow Smith) as they escape the city that has recently experience the outbreak.

Isolation and desperation are everywhere as Robert struggles to find the cure to reverse the effects.  He works tirelessly everyday in his lab by testing on animals and other humans.  He struggles to live a normal life by talking to mannequins.

Fellow survivors do appear, played by Alice Braga and Charlie Tahan.  There is a very scary, dangerous, and suspenseful action sequence at the end.  It was an unpredictable, well- written, solid movie.  I recommend you all watch it.

Jun. 14 Death Race: I saw this movie on Jun. 2, 2013.

In the future, prisoners race to death on TV for entertainment.  It reminded me of the movie Gamer and The Fast and the Furious.  It’s about a man named Jensen (Jason Statham) who is framed for murdering his wife.  He is thrown into prison and is separated from his baby daughter. 

He is forced to race by the prison warden Hennessey (Joan Allen) because he used to race back in the day.  If he wins 5 races, he will be released from prison.  Jensen has a team to help with his car played by Coach (Ian McShane), Lists (Fred Koehler) and his navigator Case (Natalie Martinez).

There is 45 minutes of set up and 1 hour and 15 minutes of the race.  The dialogue isn’t very strong, but then again you don’t watch this movie for the dialogue.  There is a good story as Jensen tries to figure out who killed his wife and why he was framed for the murder.

There is lots of tension in prison as Jensen has to face off inmates like Machine Gun Joe (Tyrese Gibson.)  This is an exciting, dark, gritty, and violent action movie.  There are explosions, and intense obstacles that leads to gruesome deaths.  It’s filled with creative and aggressive driving.  If you like action movies, you’ll enjoy this.  

District 9: I saw this movie on May 9, 2014.

I thought this was going to be an action movie with massive shoot outs, explosions, and death.  There was that, but there was actually a very strong story with characters that you can connect with.

This movie looks like a very smart and realistic documentary.  In Johannesburg, South Africa, a big space ship hovers over it in 1982.  The aliens look like prawns and live in a military ghetto called District 9.  Wikus (Sharlto Copley) is a government agent who works at MNU, Multi National United and he is to enforce that all the aliens move to another part of the city.

Wikus goes in there and tells the aliens they will be moving them.  He then gets infected with a black liquid.  He slowly becomes an alien and becomes a science experiment.  He
will be killed and have his organs harvested to be studied.  Wikus fights for his life and escapes to District 9.  He calls his wife Tania (Vanessa Haywood), but the relationship can not be saved.

He becomes an ally to the alien Christopher (Jason Cope) and his young son who are trying to get back home.  There is a cure for Wikus’s condition on the ship.  First, they must get that black liquid that is in MNU’s lab.

There is a lot of suspense, action, and drama, especially in the exciting finale.  This movie actually has heart to it and you feel for the characters.

Jul. 17 The Den: I got this media release email sent to me:

“After receiving a grant for her graduate thesis, Elizabeth Benton (Melanie Papalia) logs onto a video-chat site known as THE DEN, on a mission to explore the habits of its users. During one of her random video-chats, Elizabeth watches in horror as a teenage girl is gruesomely murdered in front of her webcam.  While the police dismiss it as a viral prank, Elizabeth believes what she saw is real and takes it upon herself to find the truth. Her life quickly spirals out of control as she gets pulled deeper into the darkest recesses of the internet. And eventually, Elizabeth finds herself trapped in a twisted game in which she and her loved ones are targeted for the same grisly fate as the first victim.”

Here’s the trailer:


Scream Queen B: I was reading the Edmonton Journal business section.  They have “Capital Ideas” about Edmonton entrepreneurs and their tips on how they run their business:

Scream Queen of the B Scene is written by Lindsey McNeill, actor-writer-director and former radio journalist. Capitalizing on her characteristic wit and unfortunate potty mouth, she gives an honest account of working in a male-dominated industry and how to embrace your inner B to get shit done.

Her feature film "Truckstop Bloodsuckers" is available on BiteTV.”


The Golden Vanguard: It’s been 2 months and one of the editors finally emailed me back from the Golden Vanguard.  He’s ending the website because of life changes and he’s really too busy.  That’s fine.  I still have my blog to post my movie reviews among other topics.

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