I can honestly say I have no idea what happened in Resident Evil: Afterlife. there was one point, about twenty minutes in where I lost the plot almost completely.

Of course, who cares? I watch these movies because I've played all of these games from end to end religiously for a couple of decades. All they need to do is show me characters and monsters from the game and toss in an Umbrella logo every once in a while and I'm happy.

Sometimes, I'm easy to please.

After having seen all three films several times now, I think I'm zeroing in on The Two Towers as my favorite. The action is massive in a way that Fellowship lacks and it doesn't have any of the weird additions like the scrubbing bubbles army of the dead in the Return of the King.

Ask me again in five years, of course.

Koji Yakusho in 13 ASSASSINS, a Magnet Release. Photo courtesy of Magnet Releasing.

You know what? 13 Assassins is probably the most straightforward film I've seen from Takashi Miike. I haven't seen everything he's done, so there might be something out there I'm missing that feels 100% like a normal human movie; but based on my limited sample I think this is the one. This is especially true since I know the genre he's working in so well. It's still a ridiculously violent, over-the-top exercise in watered steel and bloodshed. It's just that's common for the genre. He's not really pushing any boundaries here in terms of violence.

And you know what? That's fine.
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I thought I was prepared for House.

NO ONE IS PREPARED FOR HOUSE.

Seriously. This movie is a real treat. Watch the trailer and you might think you've got it figured out. You don't. It's bother weirder than you think it will be and, honestly, better. With films as bizarre as this one, it's almost okay if the only thing they offer is batshit insanity. House goes a bit beyond the insanity, to the point where I was watching for something other than the next bizarro effect. I mean, it's not Memento, but there's enough of a story to string the weirdness along nicely.

Look at the trailer and then grab the Criterion disc.

I had high hopes that The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest, the film, would be better than The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest, the book.

It wasn't, really.

My problem with the book is that it was way too slow to get started. The payoff was fun, but it was only 1/7th of the book. The rest wasn't exactly thrilling. I hoped that the movie would compact the 6/7 boring bits and heighten the impact of he 1/7th of the cool bits. It didn't really. It was similarly paced and structured as the book- plodding for the first couple of hours, then really great for the finale. The problem with that happening here is that the finale was about 15 minutes. So it's basically 2 hours of whatever for a truncated courtroom section where all the fun happens.

*meh*