The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor - not enough Jet Li!

The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor is sort of the third movie in the recent Mummy franchise. I say "sort of" because I'm not sure how you count the two Scorpion King movies. The first Scorpion King seemed to be the last we would hear of the Mummy franchise, but that was completely wrong (see my previous review of The Scorpion King 2).

In this movie we have the continuation of the adventures of Rick O'Connell (now with the nickname "Ricochet," which is so fucking clever I can't even stand it), his wife Evelyn, and their now adult son Alex. Unfortunately while Brendan Fraser did a great job playing essentially a more "shoot first and ask questions later" Indiana Jones knockoff in the first two movies, the third movie jumped straight to Crystal Skull territory. Therefore I dub this the fourth movie in the franchise, although Scorpion King is no Last Crusade.

What is it with action movies and how kids ruin everything? In The Mummy Returns, little Alex had some charm as a little smartass kid that knew some Egyptian stuff from his mom and had the spunk of his dad. In this movie he should be about twice that age, yet his smartassery has no real charm. Instead he comes off as a punk kid that actually does want to be Indiana Jones - except without doing the work of getting a Ph.D. (he is DOCTOR Jones, after all). Still, don't get me wrong, this movie is better than Crystal Skull. I think it's the whole "not crapping all over my childhood" thing that makes it better, or maybe the "this kid actually has a legitimate reason to be a cocky bastard," or perhaps the "at least they're still fighting mummies" part.

As for Rick and Evelyn, I must commend Rachel Weisz for opting out of this movie. In many ways there is nothing new for these characters at all - of course Rick happens to know the old colorful comerade from back in the day, but Evelyn doesn't really show off that much knowledge. Despite having been a librarian before, and presumably active in WWII (this movie takes place a few years after the war), she's now... writing romance novels? What? She knows enough crap to be a fucking professor of Egyptology and she's doing that? Meanwhile Brendan Fraser indulges in some flyfishing slapstick that really just isn't that funny. Of course, this is just to show how the two have retired, and how they are both unhappy with that retirement, but I mean, come ON.

All that aside, however, Jonathan (John Hannah) still manages to provide ACTUAL comedic relief, once he shows up on screen. Furthermore, once the O'Connells get to China and the mummy wakes up (although I'm not really sure if you can call the Emperor a mummy... but they do, repeatedly, anyway) then the good times are rolling. This movie has very solid special effects and CGI, which is characteristic of the first two Mummy movies and fortunately continued in this one. Once again there's some social friction between members of the family that usually results in yelling and arguing over guns, which is rather entertaining. Also, while she isn't the original, Maria Bello does a good job of taking over the role of Evelyn, staying true to the character and showing us the continued built-up confidence the character gained since the original film, where she was the damsel-in-distress. There's travel, races through the streets, and new enemies who want to awaken the mummy for their own personal gain who at least have a better reason for doing so than the ones in The Mummy Returns.

Alex also inexplicably gets a love interest, a chinese girl who was guarding the tomb of the dragon emperor to make sure no one woke him up. Much like in the first movie, despite having succeeded for thousands of years, the guardians are no match for O'Connell spunk (even if this is the junior version). Fortunately she knows how to defeat the dragon emperor once he IS awakened, which really helps our heroes out, as apparently this mummy has the power to turn into a crazy three-headed dragon.

And this is really the problem. While the movie is fun, has very good action sequences, comedy, and even some believable plot, romance, and character development, the makers failed in one major respect: they got one of the present-day gods of martial arts, and had him be a three-headed dragon and some sort of crazy were-beast. It's JET FUCKING LI. He could beat the crap out of a three-headed dragon with his bare hands. I don't mind if you want to do Imhotep-style sandstorms and crap, but we hardly get to see any Jet Li in this movie. Even worse, Michelle Yeoh, of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon badassery, is also in this, and she fights Jet Li, and their battle lasts for LESS THAN A MINUTE (I timed it). Furthermore this is the only real fight she has in the entire movie. It's like, let's hire some of the best martial artists out there, then have them do like two scenes! yaaaaaaaaaaay!

At least it was cool while it lasted

And look, I know you all know how the movie ends. The Mummy is defeated, Rick O'Connell wins, that's how these movies all end. I won't spoil the details, but seriously, Jet Li would only lose to Brendan Fraser if he were force-fed muscle relaxants and had both his arms tied behind his back. No offense to Brendan Fraser but, I mean, come the fuck on.

Despite all my ranting, this IS a fun movie. It's not as good as the first two by any means, but I still find it to be entertaining and rewatchable. However I can't in good conscience give this anything better than a "gouda-nuff" rating because of the severe lack of Jet Li kicking ass. Still, the plot is sound enough to have genuine interest in the characters and what will happen next, although it's not really edge-of-your-seat, and Michelle Yeoh at least gets to show off her acting skills. If you really want to see a Jet Li movie, this is not for you, but if you want to enjoy an action/adventure movie that has pretty special effects and fun explosions, complete with chase sequences and armies of the undead fighting each other, this is the movie for you.

Resident Evil Extinction: Mad Max for the next generation

Resident Evil: Extinction is the third movie in the Resident Evil series starring Milla Jovovich. When the movie starts it turns out that the T-virus has pretty much wiped out all life on earth including plants (why plants? do zombies eat plants? did the plants become zombies and eat each other?) leaving the entire world a barren, desertous wasteland. People travel around in vehicles that they have attached various scrap metal to in order to armor them, looking for places to get fuel and food. In other words, this movie is like Mad Max: The Road Warrior, if Mad Max were a hot chick with superstrength and telekinesis that fought zombies.

Yes that's right, I said telekinesis. In the first movie, Alice (Milla Jovovich) is just some chick that can fight really well. In the second movie, she's part of some sort of "Nemesis" project that gives her enhanced abilities by somehow making her part zombie through crazy genetic experimentation. How can you top part-zombie super strength and speed? Obviously by inexplicably giving her the power to lift motorcycles with her mind.

I've got machetes, bitches. Don't fuck with me.

Movies based on video games are notoriously bad. Most video games have just enough "story" to explain why you're shooting monsters, they're not well known for plots that translate well into film. Having never played Resident Evil I can't say much about how the movies compare to the game, however, unlike the first two Resident Evil movies, Apocalypse is one that can legitimately be classified as an action movie. The first one is mostly focused on horror, and the second is a mix of action and horror (and nonsense), but by the third movie no one is scared of reanimated hungry corpses any more, so everyone can just focus on shooting them in their rotting faces. And they do! Admittedly there is a lot of lag in this movie, with a couple of characters coming back from the second movie, and some women in the road-warrior-esque convoy that somehow have perfect hair and makeup despite living in a hellish zombie-infested wasteland, but when there actually IS action, it's some of the best.

There is Alice fighting zombies with her bare hands, chains, guns, and my personal favorite, machetes. The Umbrella corporation is still after her, so to up the zombie ante, they actually create EVEN FASTER, MORE AGGRESSIVE zombies. This makes sense, because in the first two movies, with the exception of the dog zombies and the crazy fucked up mutant zombies, the ravenous undead are pretty slow. The main danger is when they swarm you and trap you in tight spaces. But now regular zombies are able to run around at speeds comprable to living people, except they don't get tired or waste their time screaming, so they can actually catch people. And bite them. I'm not sure if the superzombies make more superzombies or not, though. They probably do.

Now I'm sure the real question weighing on people's mind is, "is Milla Jovovich naked in this movie too?" Boy is she ever! Not only do they take the zombies to the next level, they also take naked Jovovich to the extreme. How, you ask? Clones. That's right, Alice clones, ALL of whom start out their clone lives butt-naked. And that isn't a spoiler, you find that shit out in the first 15 minutes or so. Of course the clones aren't as good as the real thing, which is why Umbrella is trying to get their hands on the real Alice. Meanwhile Alice finds some notebook in a public restroom that has notes on how there's no infection somewhere and convinces the convoy to go there. So there's your plot for you.

What about other people? Well, the zombies get run over by cars, one guy drives a semi into a massive crowd of them and blows them up, we have snipers, shotguns, and plenty of "NYOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!" Also we have some kind of neat technology, which never goes amiss in an action movie. It's all pseudoscience, but they do us the favor of not trying to explain it, which always ruins the pseudoscience. There's also a little tribute to Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds," which is frankly just fucking awesome.

This movie does have long periods that are more suspense than flat-out action, a little too much "we have to really emphasize that they're after Alice," and some truly terrible dramatic dialogue. But as action movies go, if you like to see people kicking zombie ass, and you like Mad Max, you will probably get a kick out of this. You have to wait a while to see people being torn apart by crazed flesh-eating monsters en masse, but when it does happen, it's everything you could hope for. The bits in between aren't torturous, and the plot is cohesive enough if you don't think about it too much. Still it's not a movie I'd call "rewatchable," and while there are some memorable scenes, it's probably not something you'd want in your DVD collection unless you've got a real hard-on for Milla Jovovich.

The Scorpion King 2: rise of some guy who looks like a girl

The Scorpion King 2 is a "prequel" to The Scorpion King, which in turn is a spinoff of the "The Mummy" franchise. Despite my disappointment that in The Scorpion King the main character does not sell his soul to Anubis and become a horrifying monster like he supposedly did in The Mummy Returns, it's still a fun movie with The Rock trying to be the new Arnold Schwarzenegger (although he's still not as good at delivering one-liners as Arnie is). The Scorpion King 2, however, takes the original movie and craps all over it.

Compare and contrast.

• In The Scorpion King, we have an opening scene with the last three Akkadians - The Rock (Mathayus) and his brother among them. In the Scorpion King 2, Mathayus's brother eats it in like the first 20 minutes.
• In The Scorpion King, as it is sort of a "thousands of years ago" prequel for The Mummy Returns, there is a heavy influence of ancient Egyptian culture. After all, Mathayus is supposed to, at some point we don't get to fucking see ever, sell his soul to Anubis, Egyptian lord of the dead, and become a freaky half human/half scorpion monster. In the "prequel," although they say they are going to Egypt, they end up going to Crete instead (unless King Minos and the Labyrinth got magically transported to Egypt or something) and meet some goddess of the underworld named Astarte, who according to actual mythology is a precursor of Aphrodite, who never had anything to do with the underworld anyway. So why she's even down there is beyond me. I think they just decided there weren't enough women in the cast so they decided to make Anubis a hot chick. To be fair there IS an Astarte in Egyptian mythology, but so far as I can find out, her main power is breastfeeding.
• In the Scorpion King, Mathayus gets his crazy scorpion link because The Bad Guy poisons him with a scorpion and then when he survives he now has scorpion in his veins or something. Which means that anyone ever stung by a scorpion could turn into a giant half man/half scorpion monster. In the "prequel" the "younger Mathayus" gets attacked by the worst CGI scorpion ever and that's how it happens.

I could go on but you get my point. If discrepancies like this will bother you, then do not watch this movie. Also if you want any sort of mythological accuracy don't bother either (the Mac Guffin of this story is the "Sword of Damocles" which is actually not any sort of special magic weapon at all. Google it if you care.)

Also I think the young actor who plays Mathayus looks like a girl. He has full lips, flowing curly locks, thick lashes, no facial hair whatsoever, and he kinda walks like a girl too. I wasn't totally convinced until he finally took off his chest coverings and there were no boobs.

you're making me blush...

From the perspective of cheesy action movies, however, this film does put out. You have the scary magical bad guy (who is a terrible actor - wait til he gets his head tattooed, it looks like a bad combover), the witty sidekick (Greeks have English accents), the "I may be a girl but I can fight like a man" tomboy, and even for no reason whatsoever a Chinese guy. You get a trip to the underworld with some neat effects, although you can tell they couldn't afford any of the really good CGI. They also tend to overuse the slow-motion effect a bit.

But it starts with fighting, has crazy sword battles, some nice martial arts, pretty decent fight choreography, some chuckleworthy jokes, and expendable characters to die in interesting ways. The plot doesn't have huge, gaping plot holes in it (provided you don't compare it to The Scorpion King AT ALL) and with the exception of the bad guy, the acting isn't too bad. Also the main villain's crappy acting is pretty funny.

On the scale of cheesiness, this one is pretty damn high. It is predictable as hell, even the twists are predictable. The main villain is the kind that goes "no don't kill him yet I have this entire complicated plan" and then when it gets foiled he's all BUT HOW!? But if you want to see a movie that has some decent action scenes that do keep a fair pace, and enjoy laughing at terrible acting and stupid plot points, this is the movie for you. It does drag occasionally, especially in the underworld scene with Astarte goddess of whatever the crap, but you can just fastforward or go get a snack when she's doing her crazy weird voice thing. This movie is great for MST3K-style riffing as well, so grab some friends and drink whenever someone does a flying spinning kick.

CRANK: no plot, no problem!

Crank is an action movie that exists for only one purpose: to show Jason Statham being crazy and destroying everything in his path. The "plot," if you can call it that, is simple. Hitman Chev Chelios has been poisoned with some crap that is going to kill him, except that for some reason adrenaline keeps it from doing so. So Chelios has to keep his adrenaline flowing long enough to hunt down the assholes that poisoned him and kill them, since killing people is, after all, what he does best.

This is the most ridiculous drug ever, since with most poisons the faster your heart beats the worse off you are because it circulates it through your system, killing you faster. But who gives a shit! This is an action movie, and according to action movie physics, it doesn't matter what the reason is so long as it causes explosions. And while this movie doesn't have any major explosions, it does have a main character much like the Terminator: no matter what happens to him, he just won't fucking die.

That and high speed car chases. Jason Statham behind the wheel doing crazy things is his trademark, however, so that's not really surprising. What is fun to see is how he manages to keep his heart rate up after he gets his car stuck on an escalator in a shopping mall and has to take taxis. Not to mention experimenting with whatever drugs he can get his hands on, chugging energy drinks, and doing whatever random shit he can think of to keep himself on edge. Chelios freaking out on the various chemicals he puts into his body in an attempt to keep himself alive is totally fucking hilarious.

The movie has a bit of a problem with spazzy editing - although it's rated R, any scene with boobs is short and stuttering, while scenes with Jason Statham's manly butt are crisp and clear. I'm not quite sure why the director did that since most action movie fans are guys. But he does have the best girlfriend I've seen in an action movie: sure, she does freak out when she finds out that her boyfriend really IS a hitman, but she gets over it quickly and is more than willing to "help him out" if you know what I mean (wink wink nudge nudge). There's juuuust enough of her to give our main character a little bit of depth beyond just killing people, but not so much that you're sitting there going "why am I watching these two losers profess their love for each other, I want some motherfucking explosions already!" Not to mention that the two of them entertain a crowd, including a busload of Japanese schoolgirls.

This movie is fairly bloody and does involve some removal of body parts. They don't overdo the blood too much, in the sense that you're not sitting there going "no way does that skinny asshole have that much blood in him," which is nice to see, although I'm still wondering why Chelios wasn't a broken bloody mess at the end like Bruce Willis in Die Hard. Oh right, because Chelios is a crazy fucking machine on hallucinogens. And that is why we love him!

This movie has a good pace of action, action, comedy, action, comedy, action, action. If you like seeing a dude get shot point blank and then someone making a joke five seconds later, you'll probably dig it. Still, the plot, such as it is, only exists as an excuse for widespread destruction, violence, and insanity. There's really not too much method to Chelios's madness, so don't expect too much intellectual stuff. Just sit back and laugh as some crazy asshole kills, maims, and destroys everything in his path.

Favorite lines:
"I know you motherfuckers have epinephrine!"
"Don't talk to him like that! My boyfriend kills people!"
"You got a steel hard-on, don't you?" "Lemme check... CHECK!"

I feel so free...