Cymbeline (4/10): One of the weakest adaptations of a Shakespeare play.

“On her left breast, a mole cinque-spotted, like the crimson drops I' the bottom of a cowslip.”

It’s been over 14 years since Director Michael Almereyda and Ethan Hawke collaborated together in the modern day adaptation of William Shakespeare’s classical play, Hamlet. The film was warmly received by critics despite not being the first time that a Shakespeare play was adapted to modern times without changing the original dialogue (Baz Luhrmann did the same with Romeo + Juliet in 1996). Once again Almereyda decides to leave the dialogue untouched and change the setting to modern times for the adaptation of Cymbeline. The King (Ed Harris) of a biker gangster group known as Britain is upset that his daughter, Imogen (Dakota Johnson) has fallen in love with his protege, Posthumous (Penn Badgley), who she secretly married. The two have sworn eternal love to each other, but the King’s second wife, the Queen (Milla Jovovich), has other plans for Imogen. She wants her to marry his son, Cloten (Anton Yeltsin) so they banish Posthumous from their group. Meanwhile the bikers have decided to stop paying tribute to the Roman Police Department and a war is about to breakout between the two groups. Posthumous has fled to his friend’s house where he ends up meeting Iachimo (Ethan Hawke) and tells him all about his lover’s chastity. Iachimo makes a bet with him claiming that he can seduce her and prove that she’s not as pure as he believes her to be. He meets Imogen and is unsuccessful in his approach, but Iachimo fools Posthumous into thinking he did sleep with his lover and that is where the plot begins to take several unexpected twists.

If the short synopsis of this film felt a bit convoluted, it’s because the film actually has a lot going on in the opening minutes where it’s trying to introduce the main characters in a very rushed way. The dialogue doesn’t help either if you’re not familiar with Shakespeare’s play because the delivery is extremely fast and new characters keep on coming from all over the place. It’s strange that I’m complaining about how fast everything comes at you, because the pacing does get quite tedious and I was thankful the film only runs a bit past the 95 minute mark. But that doesn’t mean that the adaptation isn’t a mess because it’s all over the place. One of the reasons why this adaptation didn’t work for me is that the tragicomedy plays out as pure tragedy here and the comedy element is missing from the film. There was no time to get to know any of the characters or their true intentions and it seemed the entire purpose of this film was being able to adapt the play in a modern setting without touching the dialogue. Something that Whedon accomplished much better in Much Ado About Nothing because he focused on the comedy more than on the action. It’s funny that I say this because I wasn’t even a fan of Whedon’s adaptation although I recognized its artistic value, but here there’s nothing that worked for me.

Shakespeare’s plays might be timeless, but that doesn’t mean that all of them can be adapted to film. Cymbeline seems to be one of those plays that don’t translate well to the big screen due to the convoluted plot. The performances in this film aren’t bad, and I like most of the actors here, but the problem for me was that the adaptation didn’t work at all. Not even John Leguizamo can redeem the film despite how well he’s played Shakespearean characters in the past (Romeo + Juliet). Ed Harris and Ethan Hawke are both extremely talented actors, but there was nothing they could do to engage me with the film.  I love Shakespeare’s plays and despite never having read this one, I still could see some of his trademarks in the characters and writing, but unfortunately I didn’t care for them in this adaptation.  

My Review: Resident Evil Retribution (4/10)

¨ My name is Alice, and this is my world. ¨

Resident Evil was in my opinion the best movie adapted from a videogame thanks in most part to Milla Jovovich. Almost all other films have failed to make the transition from videogame to film, but there was something special about seeing this heroin fighting off the undead. What began as a horror film eventually turned into a nonstop action film in the following sequels: Apocalypse, Extinction, Afterlife, and now in the fifth one Retribution. I enjoyed some of the previous sequels although to a much lesser degree than the original. I was just fascinated with Jovovich`s character, Alice, that I didn’t mind that Resident Evil was quickly turning into an action franchise. Finally in Retribution I realized it was just getting too old and mind numbing. I was really disappointed with this film, although my expectations were lowered by the previous sequels. I was hoping that since some of the characters from the original film would be back that the film would go back to the horror genre, but instead it was much more action packed than the rest with so many characters that I just lost interest in the film. My love for Alice diminished after the first 30 minutes of Retribution and I was hoping the film would end soon. The acting in this film is terrible (not that it wasn’t in the other sequels, but it is even worse here) and I really didn’t enjoy any of the characters. The plot was also very hard to follow at first and I feel that every time a new film starts they forget about everything that was left untold in the previous films. It`s as if they want these films to stand on their own, but they keep on raising questions and then never answer them.

Retribution picks up right where Afterlife ended with Alice (Milla Jovovich) and the few survivors from the apocalyptic world in the Arcadia ship being attacked by planes from the Umbrella Corporation with Jill Valentine (Sienna Guillory) commanding them. During the attack Alice manages to bring down one of the planes before jumping off the ship to the water. After she awakes we see her locked up somewhere in a clandestine Umbrella facility where she is continually interrogated by Valentine who is receiving orders from the Red Queen (a computer that controls the entire Umbrella system). Then all of a sudden there is a security breach and Alice is able to escape and finds she`s in Tokyo or some place similar. She is attacked by the virus infested people and manages to make her way back to the facility. Here she is helped by Ada Wong (Bingbing Li) who tells her she has been held captive by the Red Queen and that she has helped her escape. She also lets Alice know that she was still in the facility and that she just had entered a simulation of Tokyo created by the evil corporation to train their soldiers. Ada works for Alice`s enemy, Albert Wesker (Shawn Roberts) who claims to be helping her since he needs her help after having lost control of the corporation. Albert has also sent some other men to rescue her including Luther (Boris Kodjoe), Leon (Johann Urb), and Barry (Kevin Durand). Together they will have to find a way to survive the undead and escape the facility, although the Red Queen has some surprises along the way: Rain (Michelle Rodriguez) and One (Colin Salmon) have been cloned and also receive orders from the Queen.

Despite being introduced to some of the old characters, in Retribution the Redfield brothers and K-Mart are left out along with several other plot elements. The main problem I had with this Paul W.S. Anderson film was the over abundance of action and characters. It was just too much for me. The best part of the film happened in the beginning in a scene that reminded me a lot of the original and had me fooled it was returning to the horror genre. It was a scene involving Alice waking up in her suburban home along with her daughter Becky (Aryana Engineer) and her husband Todd (Oded Fehr). Everything seemed like it was back to normal until some zombies began invading their home. Those 5 minutes where the most suspenseful and intense moment of the film. I just wished the film would`ve stayed that way instead of returning to the action packed scenes with hardly any scares or dialogues. It was just one action scene after another and nothing new was added to this film. I was really disappointed with Retribution and it will probably be among my list of the worst movies of the year.

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My Review: The Three Musketeers (5/10)

¨All for one and one for all¨

Here comes another adaptation of Alexandre Dumas`s famous novel of the same name, this time directed by Paul W.S. Anderson (the guy responsible for bringing us the Resident Evil franchise game to the big screen). I have to admit I was a fan of the Resident Evil movies, but that is about the only films I enjoy coming from Anderson, and with The Three Musketeers that only makes my position even stronger. This film was totally massacred by Alex Litvak and Andrew Davies, the men responsible for adapting the screenplay. It`s really hard to bring such a famous novel to the big screen and most films have failed in doing so, but I have to admit this is one of the weakest efforts. Anderson really takes his work lightly here and tries to give us a modern version of the Three Musketeers, but despite all the special effects he does nothing to make these characters interesting. They are all entirely one dimensional with no exceptions. There are several talented actors in this film, but not even Christoph Waltz as the infamous Cardinal Richelieu seemed to fit the part. Being a musketeer is what every boy dreams of, but after watching this film my guess is that very few will feel like being Athos, Aramis, Porthos, or D`Artagnan because the film focused on the special effects, flying ships, explosions, rather than on the great characters that Dumas created in his novel. The Three Musketeers should focus on the characters, not on the special effects. Anderson tried to approach this novel in a much lighter way, but it didn`t work at all. The film felt empty, the characters had a huge void, and the best performances actually came from the villains than the heroes.    

Everyone who is familiar with Dumas`s novel or that has seen any of its numerous film adaptations knows the plot. We are first introduced to our main characters: the three musketeers; Athos (Matthew Macfadyen), Aramis (Luke Evans), and Porthos (Ray Stevenson) who serve as King Louis XIII (Freddie Fox) of France`s personal guards. However there seems to be no much more need for the three musketeers since Cardinal Richelieu (Christoph Waltz) has everything under control with his special guards who serve under the leadership of Rochefort (Mads Mikkelsen). The King is too young and naïve to control the country and the Cardinal wants to take advantage of that and take over the kingdom. The three musketeers spend most of their time getting drunk and starting fights with Richelieu`s guards. Their descent began a year ago when Athos was deceived by his lover Milady de Winter (Milla Jovovich) who stole some secret plans from them containing information on a powerful weapon, and gave them to the Duke of Buckingham (Orlando Bloom) so now England can have the advantage over France if a possible war ensues. This is exactly what Richelieu wants: to provoke a war so the people of France rely on a much stronger leader, himself. This is where D`Artagnan (Logan Lerman) enters the scene; the son of a former musketeer himself sets out to Paris in order to become one himself. Despite being hot headed and young, he inspires the rest of the musketeers with the values they have long lost: courage and fidelity to the King.  

A film about the Three Musketeers should focus on the characters, but this movie like most of its predecessors fails to do so. Logan Lerman, known for his work in Percy Jackson & the Olympians doesn’t have the charisma that his character, D`Artagnan needed. The three musketeers aren`t developed really well either as the movie decides to focus more on the special effects and the action rather than on the characters. One would also expect a lot more sword fighting in this movie, but there are actually more explosions and gunshots than anything else. The heroes aren`t done justice in this film and I was disappointed despite not expecting much from it either. I have to admit it`s always a difficult task to bring a highly loved novel to the big screen, and Anderson isn`t the right guy for the job as he is mostly known for focusing on the action rather than on the characters. The Three Musketeers isn’t a terrible film; it just doesn’t do the story justice. Some people may enjoy this light film since it is nonstop action, but it just wasn`t what I was expecting. There are some funny scenes however involving Orlando Bloom`s character and his discussions about fashion with King Louis. Those were the highlights of the film for me, and that is about it. I didn’t have a terrible time either, I just don`t think the three musketeers were made justice.

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My Review: Resident Evil Afterlife (6/10)

¨Five years ago... A virus escaped, and everybody died. ¨

It has been three years since the last Resident Evil movie came out. Afterlife is the fourth of the franchise and lives up to the expectations most fans of the series had although it isn`t as good as the first movie. This is my favorite franchise based on a video game and in my opinion the series has worked because of Milla Jovovich. She is great in her role as Alice and has become a huge action star. Paul W.S. Anderson directed the first film of the series and now he came back to direct the fourth one, although he has written the screenplay for all four films so he has been involved with the entire process. The effects are great and if you are a fan of the franchise I recommend you see this in 3D, but if you didn`t like the other films or aren`t familiar with them I wouldn`t recommend them since you might find yourself lost in the midst of the plot. I have to admit I never played the videogames or know anything about them so I can`t say how true to the game the story is, but considering all the videogames that have been turned into movies this is by far the best series. The thing I liked least about this movie was the opening 15 minutes in Tokyo, but I understand they served to connect the end of Resident Evil Extinction with Afterlife. After Tokyo the movie really picks up and I found myself engaged in the story. This is not a movie you will enjoy for the acting, dialogue, or intelligent script, but it is an action packed movie with cool visuals, good fight scenes, and a very hot Milla Jovovich doing what she does best: killing zombies.

The movie begins right where Resident Evil Extinction left us. Alice (Milla Jovovich) is trying to destroy the Umbrella Corporation using her newly discovered clones and goes deep inside Umbrella Head Quarters in Tokyo to kill Wesker (Shawn Roberts). After a faceoff with several soldiers, Wesker escapes in an aircraft and the base is destroyed. Alice`s clones have all been exterminated in the explosion, but she managed to get to the aircraft in time and just when she is about to kill Wesker he injects her with a serum that neutralizes the T-virus in her blood. She losses her superpowers and becomes human and thanks him for that right before they crash in the mountains. Alice survives and decides to go search for any survivors left in the apocalyptic world. She travels to Alaska in search of Arcadia where her friends had parted in the third film. Once in Alaska she finds the helicopter her friends where in, but there is no sign of survivors, the place is deserted. Right when she is about to lose hope she is attacked by Claire (Ali Larter) who has no memory of who she is because her memory has been erased by an Umbrella device. Alice frees her from the device and tries to help her get her memory back, while in the meantime they travel together on a two-man plane to Hollywood in search of more survivors. Here they find the city infected with zombies, but there are a few survivors in the rooftop of a prison cell. They make a forceful landing and meet some of the survivors who think she is here to rescue them. Luther (Boris Kodjoe), Crystal (Kasey Barnfield), Kim (Norman Yeung), and Wendell (Fulvio Cecere) are some of the survivors who tell Alice what Arcadia actually is and together they have to try to get there before the zombies find a way in the prison walls.

Wentworth Miller was a good addition in this film as he plays Chris Redfield, Claire`s brother, but due to her memory loss she can`t recognize him. Alice and Claire are back from the third film and they have a lot of screen time as usual. Miller and Kodjoe give good supporting male roles, but we all know that the Resident Evil franchise is about girls who can kick zombie butts. In the first film it was Jovovich with Michelle Rodriguez, then she teamed up with Sienna Guillory in the second one, and now in the third and fourth films Jovovich and Larter are the true stars of the film. There are some very memorable scenes with great Matrix like effects. The 3D visuals are cool, and I especially liked the scene where Alice and Claire battled the Axeman in the bathroom. This is a popcorn action movie and probably not for everyone. If you didn`t like the other Resident Evil movies then there is no reason why you should go see this, but if you liked those films then you will probably enjoy this one as well.

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My Review: The Fourth Kind (5/10)

¨An encounter in the first kind, that's when you see a UFO. The second kind is when you see evidence of it: crop circles, radiation. The third kind is when you make contact. But the fourth kind, there's nothing more frightening than the fourth. You see, that one is when they abduct you.¨

(5/10) This is probably one of the best lines of the movie because the rest of the dialogue is very poor, and the scares are few in this sci-fi thriller which is supposed to be based on true events. The film even has split screens showing actual ¨real¨ footage (similar to Paranormal Activity) from the events depicted in the movie, and combining them with the Hollywood production and set pieces on the other screen. So on one side you have Milla Jovovich playing a psychiatrist and then on the other you have a person claiming she is the real Abbey Tyler (which is the character Mila plays), and the scenes pretty much repeat itself on both sides. So both scenes seem to compete for your attention at the same time. The strange thing is that there is no information about this real person in any internet archives and Universal had to pay a fine for posting false claims that the film was based on these real life characters. There is no Abbey Tyler in the psychiatrist archives of Alaska so one can assume that all the information given in the movie is false (except the fact that there have been disappearances in the town of Nome, but nothing out of the ordinary). I guess director, Olatunde Osunsami, was trying to scare his audience by mixing these scenes, but it really didn`t work for me and I didn`t find the movie scary at all. The director is actually the person who is interviewing the ¨real¨ Abbey Tyler in the movie. The film doesn`t really answer any questions and you are left with a sense that something is missing. I expected so much more after viewing the trailers, but the entire film just felt like a 100 minute trailer because nothing is ever answered.

The Fourth Kind begins with Milla Jovovich talking to the camera and telling us that this film is based on true events that have occurred in the small town of Nome, Alaska where several people have disappeared and most cases haven`t been solved yet. She plays a psychologist named Abbey Tyler who has been studying several patients of hers who seem to share the same dream and sleeping disorders. They all dream that an owl is staring at them for hours, but something disturbing is happening to them while they dream and they can`t seem to remember what it is. This is where Dr. Tyler decides to hypnotize her patients and through these special sessions they discover new and hidden things from their dreams, but at the same time some terrible things begin to happen to her patients. Tyler, herself suffers from these dreams and has already lost her husband. Sheriff August (Will Patton) begins to suspect that Abbey is involved in all these strange occurrences and warns her not to continue hypnotizing her patients. But Abbey will do what it takes in order to find out what really happened to her husband. The night he was murdered, her daughter Ashley (Mia McKenna-Bruce) also lost her sight and her son Ronnie (Raphael Coleman) blames his mother for what has happened. Abel Campos (Elias Koteas) assists Dr. Tyler in these investigations and together they discover some disturbing things. The performances actually were pretty decent and they felt real, but the material wasn`t good enough. I enjoy Milla Jovovich much more in her kick-ass roles like in Resident Evil because she is much better making action films.

The story is told in non-linear fashion as we go back and forth while at the same time having several split screens where we see the actual ¨real¨ taped events in documentary form as the audio overlaps between these various scenes. The film begins with some promise, but it ends up becoming too repetitive as scene after scene we see more of the same events happening. It felt as though there was not enough material to make a two hour film so they had to repeat several shots in order to stretch the movie. I really don`t like these movies that rely too much on trying to scare the audience by saying that they are based on true events when actually most everything in the film is just made up. The Fourth kind went even a step too far by trying to add material that was supposed to be real footage but actually wasn`t. I didn`t find the film scary, but I have to admit it grabbed my attention at the beginning. The problem is that nothing is ever solved and we are left with the sense that something is missing. It is as if the director never was able to come up with a good ending so he decided to just finish the movie at any point. I don`t recommend this film although I know many people interested in UFO activity will certainly watch The Fourth Kind, although I doubt they will learn anything new from it.