Resident Evil: Afterlife (2010)

So, I haven’t seen movies 2 and 3 of the franchise, but I figured I probably wasn’t missing huge plot points given the nature of the films. I could always say that I just want to see all the Paul W. S. Anderson iterations.

Afterlife starts off with lots of Paul Anderson’s visual flair, which I happen to quite like (Three Musketeers notwithstanding). It’s all quite silly, but looks quite cool. The problem is this only lasts for about five minutes, the film soon degenerates into a derivative action zombie thriller with some fancy tech.

Resident Evil (2002)

Resident Evil isn’t the first film based on a computer game, and in 2002 is wouldn’t be the last; not least because of the various sequels of this particular franchise.  Tomb Raider (2001) had its merits, though the sequel Cradle of Life (2003) didn’t.  I seem to remember the only good thing about Doom (2005) was the first person shooter moment that Karl Urban has, which is really what Doom was all about anyway.  In this illustrious company Resident Evil doesn’t exactly stand out, but it also doesn’t fall into the mire of awful adaptations (I’m looking at you Streetfighter).

The setup to the film works really well.  Umbrella is a huge corporation that owns so many products that 90% of homes contain something made by them; additionally they have huge lobbying clout.  So, Unilever or Nestle then.  Of course the real work of Umbrella is military hardware, illegal and morally questionable genetic research.  So, Dow, Monsanto or any Western government then.  Sorry, I’ll stop being so political.  Essentially, the idea of an ethically suspect multinational is just as relevant today as it was in 2002.

The Three Musketeers (2011)

There is absolutely nothing to recommend this film at all. There is none of Paul W. S. Anderson's sometimes visual flair, no interesting characters (Mads Mikkelsen's Rochefort and James Corden's Planchet are possible exceptions), nothing exciting happens and the story is just two episodes of Dogtanian stuck together (with a shoehorned in Fistful of Dollars joke) with everybody speaking in their own accents. Even Christoph Waltz' performance is flat.

Real rubbish.