The Watch:
I went into this expecting a pretty terrible movie. I wasn’t sure how (based on the previews) Ben Stiller and his backup cast of rude comedians were going to last for an hour and a half walking around the neighborhood being clumsy and stupid. But the movie took a turn for the better relatively quickly. It’s not what you thought it was about, trust me. I will keep it a secret even throughout this review and only say that I was pleasantly surprised with the plot. It’s a much more entertaining experience if you don’t look up what the movie is actually about.
Yes, it was still stupid, riddled with Vince Vaughn’s usual machine gun wit and Jonah Hill’s rude and lewd shtick. Richard Ayoade was a pleasant counterbalance with his British accent and uberpolite delivery of vulgar lines. I am looking forward to seeing the next movie he does; he was quite enjoyable.
I think the main complaint I have is the attempt to lace the movie with a serious subplot about Ben Stiller’s character being sterile. It’s just..strange and seems not to fit. They’re spending a lot of time talking about dicks and balls, as expected, and the serious edge was odd to me.
Overall, at least worth renting for kicks.
Resident Evil: Retribution:
This is on about the same level as the other Resident Evil movies. Silly one-liners, lots of zombies and assorted mutations, and evil corporation blablabla. If you were entertained by the others, you’ll like this one fine. I enjoyed the addition of Leon, the main character in the video game franchise, and Ada Wong. The costumes were awesome and the large zombie creature they used was well-animated and pretty freakish. I also loved the SOUNDS they used for the guns – I’m not sure what they did, but it felt so satisfying whenever she shot a zombie. I think they used a more video game-type effect for these and I think that was an excellent move. Unrealistic, maybe..but better. Why resort to realism when people are flying around the air like Olympic gymnasts killing the crap out of some zombies? Exactly.
Overall…the usual.
Total Recall:
This COULD have been an amazing remake. Could have, but didn’t quite stand up.
The action scenes were great. The combat between Kate Beckinsale and Jessica Biel was fabulous and sexy, and Kate Beckinsale does a fantastic job as a villain. I loved the effects and how things were visually. There were some gravity reversal combat scenes that absolutely destroyed. So far so good.
But WHY did they make so many changes to the plot? Okay, it takes place on Earth instead of Mars. I can wrap my head around that. Fine. But I don’t think they THOUGHT about it other than making a cool tunnel allowing people to travel through the core of the Earth to the other side. Very cool. Further than that? Brian Cranston is always great but his character has flimsy motives. For some reason, he wants to kill all of the citizens in the ghettos of the city and replace them with robots….making sense yet? It never does. He also seems to show up everywhere instead of sending cronies. This guy is the freaking big bad guy in charge..and he shows up for invasions with his robots!
Also disappointing was the transformation of the movie from science fiction to post apocalyptic, sort-of not-really science fiction. They completely removed mutants and the concept thereof, which kills of a large part of the plot, including the removal of Matthias himself housing a little alien being on his chest. No more aliens, no more mutants. Matthias is on screen for what may be a total of 3 minutes and then dies. Did I care when he did? No…his death brought zero consequence to the movie’s plot, unlike in the first Total Recall. He died and I forgot he died 5 minutes later as I watched the main characters jump around on weird 3D elevators. Cool, but the plot keeps falling into these weird holes that wouldn’t have been there if they hadn’t tried to so drastically change it from the first movie. Oh, and they left the three-breasted woman as a type of homage. BUT THE HOMAGE MAKES NO SENSE BECAUSE THERE ARE NO MUTANTS IN THIS VERSION. So how does she have three breasts? Did she just get a third one put there? What the hell.
Colin Farrell does an alright job. It’s not quite as fantastic as when you see Arnold running around like a bull in a china shop killing people and freaking out, though. I don’t know that anyone could match that.
Overall, as a standalone movie, passable. As a remake, meh. I wasn’t as impressed as I should have been. Disappointed.