It was fun to finally be able to hop on the bandwagon after the last film, but this is where I hop right back off again, as Anderson tries to reclaim the two Resident Evil films he didn’t direct—Apocalypse and Extinction—and only manages to prove that they were bad ideas to begin with.

The Final Chapter begins the way every Resident Evil sequel has, by failing to deliver on the previous film’s cliffhanger, and rewriting fundamental aspects of continuity on…

I won’t be hopping on board the “Paul W.S. Anderson is a visionary auteur” bandwagon anytime soon, but yeah, I’m starting to see where people are coming from on that.

In what I now recognize as a pattern that continues across every Resident Evil so far, the only things I ed from my previous viewing of Afterlife were the beginning and the ending. As a storyteller, Anderson is all setup: he’s great at intriguing opening acts and cliffhangers, but incapable…

There’s a real risk of giving this entry in the Resident Evil series a bit too much credit due to diminished expectations, particularly as part of a series rewatch. “At least it isn’t Apocalypse” isn’t exactly a high bar to clear.

Extinction is definitely better than Apocalypse. It’s also the best Russell Mulcahy film I’ve seen by far. I’d skipped this entry previously, mostly because of Apocalypse, but partly because I’ve never liked anything Mulcahy directed that isn’t a literal—rather…

Having recently belabored the scene in Underworld: Awakening where Kate Beckinsale scavenges supplies from an army surplus store in a dystopian near-future, I couldn’t help but notice that Fremlin’s Surplus and More in Raccoon City has a much better selection, even in the early stages of the apocalypse. Beckinsale had to make do with a plain gray wool trench coat, but Milla Jovovich manages to snag a pair of boot-cut hip-hugger jeans and a spaghetti-strap crop top in her size…

So I paid to see this movie theatrically six times back in 2002? I think most of those were in the discount second-run theater, back when Manhattan still had one, but still. It’s a zombie actioner where the most effective bits don’t have any zombies (or much action), and most of the good stuff is heavily front-loaded. The first 15 minutes (and the final few scenes), however, are great fun, and suggest a much better movie than the intervening hour-plus…