Cinema Extreme #2 - Suicide Club (2002)

Director: Shion Sono Stars: Ryo Ishibashi, Masatoshi Nagashe, Mai Hosho

Review:

I have doubts to put this movie in the list of Cinema Extreme, as despite how thought provocative it is, it does not receive much ban from release. However the notorious opening scene does shocking and stunning enough to the point of anti-humanity, and I rate this as lying on the boundary of extreme cinema.

Girls ready to jump off onto the railroad.

The opening scene shows a mass suicide of 54 school girls. They were chatting happily on a train platform, and when the train comes they held hands and jumped to the railway together. This scene is powerful not for its gore factor, which we have seen something much exceeded, but the whole idea. Cute school girls kill themselves happily, under some teenage adorable background music. It sparkles all sorts of questions. Do they think suicide is hip? Do they think being death is much more happier than they already are?

Well what else could have happened?

Next we see people committed suicide all around Japan. People hung themselves together, stab himself in the neck, stuck her head into a burning oven, and chop up her own hands while preparing dinner. The police were on investigating but could have any leads except for a bag appearing in the scenes that contained human skins of the suicide victims stitched together.

Aghhh!!!The lights are ON!!! Wait....what?

It does builds up suspense and keeps us want to understand the whole affair. Why? Who is behind all these, and why stitch the skins together and give it to the police? The answer is quite obvious since every victim we saw them listen to a song from a teenage girl group. You know there is connection but what and why? Why do some teenage girl pop group want people commit suicide? The people receives call from a stranger, who is coughing, and claims he/she knows the truth and predict the next suicide event. And all that leads to big disappointment.

I thought all hope was lost when the movie suggests it is these punk rock dummies were whose behind.

It turns out the prediction was incorrect, and why is he/she coughing is never explained. A girl, whose boyfriend is a big fan of the pop group and a suicide victim, found out that the poster of the girl group contained a stupid sublimal message of suicide, by a stupid way of decoding it. She meet the girl group in their concert location, and the kids asked "Are you connected to yourself?" "You are connected to your boyfriend even if you died." "Why are you still living?" Ummm.....why not? So this is why they commit suicide? They are connected to themselves? What the fuck does that even mean?

No. I come to kick ass and chew bubble gum, and I'm all out of bubble gum.

I rather the reason goes unexplained, and in that case we make up our own reasons. Japan is the country that the suicide count topped the world, and there is a whole million of reasons for that. But this is not one of them. This is just confusing and stupid. Nobody aint kill themselve because a bunch of little kids asked them about question of life. What do the little kids know. Fuck off.

Some scenes stretches too long when there is nothing actually happening, like the police went to the train station platform to prevent mass suicide as predicted by the stranger on the phone. Nobody really jumped on the railway and we wasted about 15 minutes of screen time.

I would not put this movie in the "Good movie" catergory, but then, extreme movies tend to be bad. There is no consistent character and once the character was nearly established he dies and the narration was handed off to a character we barely know. Also I wasnt much scared since I know the movie title is Suicide Club. They commit suicides, and would not hurt me even if all of them dies.

Theatre of the Dead #11 - Resident Evil (2002)

Director: Paul W.S. Anderson Stars: Milla Jovovich, Michelle Rodriguez

Review:


Resident Evil (2002) actually came out before 28 Days Later, but I do not consider that it is this film which revived the zombie genre. It just could not be.

Resident Evil is a survival horror video game first release on the Playstation, and spawned many sequels. Not being an extreme hardcore fan, I am still able to tell this movie adaptation is nothing like the game.

Naked Milla Jovovich is so memoriable in The Fifth Element (1997), they think she have to be naked here.

The movies opens telling us Umbrella is a super-power corporate that deals with military weaponry. A testube breaks and whole office were shut down by a fire-drill, which release poison gases to kill them. Later we see Milla Jovovich wakes up naked in a bathroom, and cant remember nothing. Gamers of the first game may think, so she is gonna explore the place, which is a mason, like in the first game. Nope. She met a self-claimed police officer outside, and a bunch of special forces arrive, and took them down to the lab, in which the mason is just a cover for an entrance. So 90% of the story went on in the underground lab, and the mason is just for show.

The A.I. killing the special forces with lazers. It killed several guys with a single beam and the leader with this.
Why not just the net beams at the first place?
Even better, why didnt you gas them like the others, especially after they take off their masks?

I am not a movie-watcher that usually nitpick plotholes, but I just could not stand this movie. Okay so the mason was a cover for a secret entrance to a highly confidently labratory? Why would you build such a big mason out of nowhere in jungle to cover it up? Why wouldnt you build something that nobody would be willing to visit, like a small wooden house or a public toilet maybe? The special forces found that the map was different, in which a place the map showing should be a dinning hall, turns out to be a place to store monsters. "Maybe Umbrella kept secret from you." Ok. So why they send the special forces down which they can just look and see for themselves? The supercomputer A.I. for the defense apparent enjoy playing pranks and watch people feeling they have a chance before kill them. The laser scene was always mentioned, but in the opening of the movie, when the women stuck halfway at the door of the lift, the computer could kill her moving the lift to the ground. But no. She stops right before the women hit the floor, then move up the lift so the ceiling could kill the women.

Why stop there? You were gonna kill her anyways. Why stop there and go up again?

And the most incomprehensible plot point is that, why does Spence break the T-virus in the lab? He wanted to steal the virus samples for himself. Just take it and leave and everything would be just fine. But he had to throw it to the table and broke it intentionally, just to activiate the security. Brilliant.

So this movie has nothing to do with the game. The game relies on solving mysteries and discovery, but this movie tells us right in the beginning that Umbrella is behind all this. So much for the mystery. When I first saw it I thought Millia Jovovich is Jill or Claire, but no, she is Alice. Who the hell is Alice!? None of the characters were from the game. One character dies and the Michelle Rodriguez character, who fond of him apparently, feels very sad and could not let go. The sorrow music sets in and I could not feel anything. Hell I cant even remember his name.

Day of the Dead reference at the end of the movie.

Also another bad horror movie omen: rock music during action scenes. It is not cool. It's just loud noises and means nothing. Stop putting rock music over anything. I have seen a video on Youtube which put rock music over Pokemon videos. It is stupid and not cool. It's just not.

Resident Evil movie also spawned many sequels, and like any other movies series it shunk deeper and deeper in stupidity. Comparing it to Silent Hill, the Silent Hill movie is superior in so many levels that it does resemble the game in some way. This one? It is just not Resident Evil.

Theatre of the Dead #9 - 28 Days Later... (2002)

Director: Danny Boyle Stars: Cillian Murphy

Review:

Correct me if I am wrong, but throughout most of the 90s I have not seen and could not find any significant zombie movie. In 2002, the zombie genre was revived by the movie 28 Days Later.

The movie opens with a group of animal rights activist attempts to free some monkeys that were used in scientific experiments. "No! You dont understand! They are infected!" "With what?" "Rage..." Actually it is a virus, that it is highly contagious, that if any blood of the infected gets into you through any orifice, it would turn you into one of them. One of the activist opens the cage, and gets bitten. Several seconds later she gets up and bite the others, and the story actually starts 28 days later of this event.

Jim on an empty street.

Our protagonist, Jim, woke up from a coma in a abandoned hospital. He wandered around and meet the zombies, but saved by two guys with molotov cocktails. They saw some lights outside a flat on a resident building, which supposedly there is no electricity. They met a father and a girl, who have a radio. Despite radio station has been shut down, there is a broadcast about the salvation of the infection by the military. Without water supply, they decided to go visit the source of the broadcast.

Up until 28 Days Later, the virus theory had not been proposed on a movie before, which I'll take it as an inspiration from the video game Resident Evil. However from this point on, there is virtually no development on the cause of zombies, and we took it for granted. Virus theory is the most scientifically possible explaination but there is no more imagination and originality, resulting in many repetitive zombie movies to come. The zombies are also more or less the same. They can run, which adds to a lot of intensity to the chase scenes, in which the Romero zombies actually you can just dodge them.

We watch the zombies closing in with the shadows.

The main theme of this movie is solitary. The scene that Jims woke up alone in the hospital, wandered around in streets which normally would be occupied by hundreds of people, adds to the mood of solitary. When they meet the father and girl, they treated them as guests with alcohol that they had been saving. They were also desperate to see other people, since they could not stand with the loneliness. They drove off on an empty highway, but they were much mild tampered since they have each other. These all surrounds the main theme, and brings a more artistic style to the zombie genre which it have not been done before.

Maltesers?

Despite I myself enjoyed this movie, some people called it a bullshit movie and counted the top 5 bullshit moment in the movie. I do agree that this movie is full of bullshit. The biggest problem with me is the military. In my opinion the movie should have ended right before they reach the military base, and the plot with the military was so stupid it ruined the whole thing. It turns out that the military sends out broadcast to attract people to them for pussies. Yes I am serious. These nymphomaniacs could not stand 28 days without pussies.

Also when Jim turns against them, he suddenly became a super-human that can takes out a group of well trained and armed troopers, with his bare hands, and before that we see him crying for his companion to wait for him. Another bullshit I do agree is that the movies contains embedded advertisements everywhere. When will the manager understand that we consumer will not buy a chocolate because a character in a movie eats it?

From this point on the zombie genre came back full force, but in quantity not in quality. 28 Days Later may have been the most decent zombie movie in recent times, and ironically it is the first to bring the whole genre back, which means it's all downhill from here.