FILM REVIEW OF ''RESIDENT EVIL: AFTERLIFE" (2010)

Spectacular 3-D visual effects, larger-than-life action situations, and audacious characters make the fifth entry in the “Resident Evil” franchise a lot of fun. Virtually everybody is referring to “Resident Evil: Afterlife” (*** out of ****) as the fourth entry. Basically, with some justification, each is ignoring director Makoto Kamiya’s “Resident Evil: Degeneration.” Mind you, “Resident Evil: Degeneration” was an animated epic without Alice as the chief protagonist, and it went straight-to-video when Sony released it back in 2008. As far as I’m considered, Sony scraped the bottom of the biohazard barrel with “Resident Evil: Degeneration.” Nothing about it was remotely memorable. Meanwhile, “Death Race” director Paul W.S. Anderson returns to the helm with the latest entry “Resident Evil: Afterlife.” For the record, Anderson directed the original “Resident Evil” (2002) and has penned all four of the live-action features as well as served as producer. “Resident Evil: Afterlife” qualifies as a crisp, invigorating, 97-minute actioneer never wears out its welcome. The digital 3-D prints are scintillating to see. When the butt-kicking heroic babe charges the camera and hurls those ninja throwing stars, you want to dodge them. Meaning, Sony Pictures produced the movie in 3-D. Lately, some studios have simply converted a 2-D movie into 3-D, and the movie looks terrible. This is not the case with “Resident Evil: Afterlife.”

This action-packed post-apocalyptic zombie flick unfolds in Tokyo. An outbreak of the T-virus devastates the capital city of Japan. By the time that practically everybody is dead, the Umbrella Corporation posts snipers to pick off wandering zombies. Without warning, the Umbrella snipers begin to die. Of course, Alice with her samurai sword is at work, and she brings multiple clones of herself armed with Heckler and Koch MP-5 submachine guns. Initially, she kills close to 500 soldiers at the Umbrella Corporation’s underground headquarters and targets the evil Umbrella Corporation Chairman Albert Wesker (Shawn Roberts of “Edge of Darkness”) who manages to escape in a twin-engine helicopter with wings. The real Alice sneaks aboard to kill him and he drains her of the mutant resources that the T-virus instilled in her. Basically, Alice goes back to being a mortal. Wesker, who has been infected by the virus, is struggling to control the effects of the T-virus, and he needs what has been rolling around in Alice’s system. Suddenly, the hover chopper jet that Wesker escaped in from the Tokyo Headquarters crashes on a mountainside. Miraculously, Alice survives. She sets off to find her friends, Claire Redfield (Ali Larter of “Final Destination”) and K-Mart (Spencer Locke of “Spanglish”), who flew off in helicopters to Alaska to find safety at a place called Arcadia. The catch is that Arcadia is a super tanker operated by the Umbrella Corporation. and they capture everybody who left the desert in the previous film “Resident Evil: Extinction.” The Umbrella henchmen slap a ruby red spider-like contraption onto their chests that robs them of their memory. Claire managed to escape, but K-Mart and over two thousand others were imprisoned to be used in more Umbrella experiments. Alice commandeers a propeller-driven plane, flies to Alaska and finds Claire. The ruby red spider like device on Claire’s chest has wiped out her memory, and Claire tries to kill Alice when they first met.

Together Alice and Claire wind up flying to Los Angeles. The city of Angels stands in cinders and only seven people have survived. They are holed up in a skyscraper prison, and zombies have laid siege to the building. Alice wings her way in and makes a cliffhanger landing on the prison roof. She almost overshoots the roof. By now, Claire has regained her memory. They meet a sleazy movie producer Bennett (Kim Coates of “Waterworld”), Bennett’s intern Kim Yong (newcomer Norman Yeung), basketball superstar Luther West (Boris Kodjoe of “Surrogates”), Angel Ortiz (Sergio Peris-Mencheta of “Love Ranch”), aspiring actress Crystal (Kacey Barnfield of “Popcorn”), and Wendell (Fulvio Cecere of “Watchmen”). Initially, they believe Alice and Claire have come to fly them to the nearby supertanker Arcadia. The supertanker is visible from the top of the prison, and they’ve heard the radio station about safety and food. Of course, Alice has to disappoint them. Nevertheless, Alice is intrigued about the ship. Claire meets her older brother Chris Redfield (Wentworth Miller of ABC-TV’s “Prison Break”) who has been mistaken for a killer and locked by Bennett and his people. Chris has a way that they can escape from the prison and make it to the coast where they can get transportation to the Arcadia. Eventually, the zombies break into the prison after a Goliath dragging a gigantic hammer smashes his way through the locked gates and comes after Alice. As our heroes struggle to escape from the zombies, they are whittled down by the opposition.

Ultimately, the flaw that afflicts “Resident Evil: Afterlife” and all the “Resident Evil” sequels is story. In the original "Resident Evil," the Umbrella Corporation manufactured viral weapons and an industrial spy broke into the corporation’s Raccoon City complex and unleashed it. Everybody died, but they did not remain dead. They came back from the dead as ravenous flesh eating zombies. Not only did the men and women come back as zombies, but also the laboratory animals and mutant laboratory experiments. Since “Resident Evil,” Alice (Milla Jovovich) has been destroying zombies as well as Umbrella executives who want to carry on business as usual. Anderson hasn’t altered that serviceable narrative very much. You can only do so much with zombies unless you are cult filmmaker George Romeo, and Romeo changed zombies in “Land of the Dead.” Nevertheless, aside from the deadly familiarity that the franchise suffers from, everything else in “Resident Evil: Afterlife” looks fantastic. Jovovich’s gravity-defying antics, the exotic settings, a variety of new zombies: burrowing zombies, zombies octopus-like mandibles, water zombies, and a gigantic zombie with a gargantuan axe, as well as glossy production values, George Washington quarters as Alice’s shotgun ammo, a high body count, and the thumping tomandandy soundtrack make this adaptation of the Capcom survival horror videogame a blast to watch.

FILM REVIEW OF ''30 DAYS OF NIGHT'' (2007)

The novelty of director David Slade's vampire movie "30 Days of Night" (*** out of ****)is its unique Alaskan setting. The opening titles reveal that Barrow is the northernmost town in the United States, with some 80 miles of road less wilderness separating it from its nearest neighbors. Moreover, once a month every year during the winter, the sun doesn't shine on Barrow. Anybody that knows anything about vampires knows that they only come out at night to prey. Cleverly, "30 Days of Night" exploits this bit of vampire lore for maximum impact, and the clueless citizens of Barrow line up like a buffet for these atheist bloodsuckers. Scenarists Steve Niles, Stuart Beattie, and Brian Nelson drew their blood-curdling screenplay for this ghoulish, often gruesome, exercise in nihilism from the 2004 graphic IDW novel series by Steve Niles and Ben Templesmith. Moviegoers who love their horror chillers basted in blood and gore will relish this taut tale of terror. Although the basic plot doesn't depart drastically from the standard vampire movie formula, the "30 Days" vampires differ from the Bela Lugosi/Christopher Lee variety. The "30 Days" vampires don't shape-shift into either wolves or bats. They dress in conventional clothes, bare jagged shark-like teeth rather than the dual canine fangs, and they feed on their victims like sharks rending flesh in a frenzy. Further, they defy gravity and bounce around like circus acrobats, and two of them boast enough strength to flip an SUV. They deploy their razor-sharp, talon-like fingernails to slash open gullets before they feast on the wounded. Finally, only the leader of these vampires can speak, and his accent is so thick and guttural that subtitles are necessary to translate his words.

As the last day of sunlight fades over Barrow, Alaska, North Slope Borough Sheriff Eben Oleson (Josh Hartnett of "Sin City") encounters 'strange' things. First, Eben and his deputy discover a pit of melted down cell phones. Second, they learn that vandals have destroyed a helicopter for no apparent reason. Third, a knife-wielding maniac has savagely slaughtered an entire kennel of sled-dogs. No, the dogs die off-screen, only the human die on screen. Meanwhile, Eben's estranged wife Stella (Melissa George of "Turistas") is scrambling to get out of Barrow before the airport shuts down. She works for the state fire marshal, and she's finishing up her inspection of the Barrow facility. While she is driving through the snow-swept landscape to the airport, a man steering a snow-plow collides with her when his brakes lock up. You'll chuckle at the folks who jump in their seats at this scene. Unhappily, Stella finds herself stranded in Barrow for 30 days with a man that she doesn't want to see.

Eben arrests an unkempt ruffian at the local diner, the Stranger (Ben Foster of "3:10 to Yuma"), for threatening the cashier. Suddenly, the lights go dark, the phones go dead, and the Internet goes down. The creepy Stranger warns Eben that bad things are in store for Barrow. Everywhere, blurry figures erupt from the shadows. They pounce without warning on the unsuspecting. They haul their victims out of sight in seconds as if sharks had seized them and dragged them underwater. Eben and Stella gather a small group of people, and they hide—Anne Frank style—in the attic of a boarded-up house while the vampires storm Barrow. Eventually, Eben learns the hard way about thetwo ways to slay these bloodsuckers. You can either lop their heads off with an axe or obliterate their noggins with a shotgun. Again, these vampires aren't the traditional variety. Similarly, "30 Days" doesn't qualify as a run-of-the-mill vampire movie.

Aside from one reference to Bela Lugosi, the "30 Days" characters know nothing about vampires. They never discuss the merits of wooden stakes over crosses or vials of holy water versus the use of garlic. Mirrors never play a part in any conversation. These animalistic vampires enter wherever they please without awaiting an invitation like the Bela Lugosi/Christopher Lee variety. These seemingly invincible fangsters follow their leader Marlow (Danny Huston of "The Kingdom") without question. The high point of "30 Days"--or low point depending on your opinion--occurs when our heroes scavenge for food and medical supplies in a supermarket. A little girl (newcomer Abbey-May Wakefield) with a five o'clock shadow of dried blood on her jowls and a devilish glint in her black eyes lurks on the premises. She spots the small band of survivors. Like a suicidal, banzai-screaming Japanese soldier, she attacks them with her shark teeth bared, screaming for their blood.

"Hard Candy" helmer David Slade takes his sinister subject matter pretty seriously. The R-rated violence is appropriately grim, sometimes even horrendous, with no shortage of blood spilled. The squeamish should avoid "30 Days." The performances are low-key, with Josh Harnett looking believably resilient for a change. Melissa George plays Stella with convincing grit. Slade shuns the use of comic relief to lighten things up when events turn truly nasty as the number of good guys dwindles during the 30 days of darkness. In many ways, Slade's horror opus resembles a B-western. The terrain is stark, rugged and inhospitable. The enigmatic night creatures invade Barrow, ostensibly from a ship anchored in the Arctic ice, and they behave like sadistic Apaches who want to annihilate everybody and destroy everything. In other words, they amount to memorable, menacing malefactors. The hero's strategy to defeat the fangsters is the last thing that you'd expect, but the showdown between Marlow and Eben looks straight out of a western. Although the story takes place in an Alaskan pipeline community, the filmmakers staged the mayhem on location in New Zealand. "30 Days of Night" ranks as an above-average, white-knuckled, full-fanged vampire epic that goes for the jugular.