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With every release of the Resident Evil series, we have come to expect one thing, and one thing only. Balls-out zombie ass-kicking by Milla Jovovich.

Forget story. Forget character development. Park your brain at home, and watch Milla Jovovich as Alice move from point A to point B whilst dispatching zombies with athletic grace and parading the tightest outfits ever made (probably something to do with aero-dynamics of zombie killing).

The “story” of Resident Evil: Retribution picks up where Afterlife left off, with Alice and a bunch of survivors on the Arcadia, facing a brain-washed Jill Valentine and an army of Umbrella Corp minions’ impending aerial attack.

After a very cool slo-mo reverse action sequence and an alternate reality-clone scenario, we find out that original Alice had been captured by Umbrella in that attack, and is being housed in a remote testing facility underwater in Russia. She breaks out of her cell with the help of Albert Wesker and Ada Wong, who reveals that the Red Queen had fully taken control of Umbrella and bent on destroying what’s left of humanity.

Wesker, realising that he is also considered “what’s left of humanity”, wisely defects to Team Alice and now wants to play good.

The underground facility is a sprawling testing ground for infection rates, and houses several replicas of towns such as Racoon City, New York, Tokyo and Moscow (thereby ensuring the cast gets to go on a paid holiday to said locales). Alice and Ada now needs to move to the different locales to rendezvous with an extraction team before escaping.

This sets the action in motion, allowing various action set-pieces in the different locations (and enabling the tagline “Evil goes Global”)

This sequel features an upgrade of the zombies to “intelligent” zombies able to drive vehicles and operate machine guns. While i’m not keen on super-powered Alice and hyper-intelligent zombies (which is why I thought the 3rd movie Extinction to be the worst in the series thus far) , the ending frame teasing the possible finale does seem pretty awesome and promising.

After 5 movies spanning 10 years, its good to see Milla still kicking ass and looking good.

Rating: 7/10 (Actually 6, but +1 for bringing back the hospital paper-towel outfit)

Umbrella Corp sure has a titillating fashion sense

Director Steven Soderbergh likes to shine a light on a myriad of weird subjects. Some might even say he likes to tell stories of the underdogs of society. Look at his slate of films:

• Erin Brockovich, a nobody who fights her way against an evil corporation regarding contaminated water.
• Ocean’s Eleven, a ragtag group of low-life criminals who band together for that one, big, heist.
• The Informant, a corporate whistle-blower who may or may not be bi-polar.
• Contagion, a fledgling virus nicknamed MEV-1 trying to punch above its own weight in order to impress the big boys AIDS and Cancer.

And now we have Magic Mike, a ragtag group of male strippers, each with his own motivations for joining the trade.

I can’t hear you over the definition of my biceps!

Mike Lane is a 30 year old stripper with a plan. His other day jobs include construction, roofing and car detailing, squirelling away money till he has enough to start his own custom furniture gig. He’s the star of the show, with Dallas (Matthew McConaughey) the owner of the strip club, and Ken (Matt Bomer), Tarzan (Kevin Nash, aka WWE’s Diesel), Tito(Adam Rodriguez) and Big Dick Richie (Joe Manganiello) rounding out up as the rest of the crew.

During one of his construction gigs, Mike bumps into 19 year old slacker Adam (Alex-Number-4-Pettyfer), who dropped out of college and is living with his sister Brooke. He decides to bring Adam into the stripping industry, and after a hasty introduction on stage due to an unforeseen emergency, Adam is quickly taken into the fold, and nicknamed The Kid.

They dance. They strip. They make easy creasy money. They have outrageous drugged out sex.

Its a dream come true for a 19 year old with a raging boner. Actually, its a dream come true for any man any age.

Yet, Mike is left wanting. Somehow, he forms a bond (He’s probably really, really lonely) with Brooke (Cody Horn) after learning that his regular booty call Joanna (hot hot Olivia Munn) is actually engaged to someone with an actual job.

The film charts both The Kid’s initiation into the stripper lifestyle, as well as Mike’s growing dissatisfaction with the stripper lifestyle, and a yearning for a normal life (I know.. that guy is WEIRD).

Its funny, its moving, its also got the moves. Lots of hot bodies on display for the girls, and for the boys, there’s always Olivia Munn’s tits. That alone is worth the admission price.

Rating: 7/10

Channing Matthew Tatum AKA Chan Crawford 

If you didn’t already know, the film Magic Mike is actually loosely based on Channing Tatum’s early experiences as a 19 year old stripper in Tampa.

Yeap, he really was a stripper before he became an MTV background dancer before he became a lead dancer/actor in Step Up before he became bigshot producer/actor in Magic Mike based on his early experiences as a stripper.

Now, how many people can say that?

Channing Tatum: Not just a pretty face.

Oh, just so you know, he also knows kung fu.

And this is his stripper photo from way back when.

I’m doing this now so i can make a movie about doing this in the future and laugh about it and collect. Big time.

Weird thing. Of all the stripper shows i’ve seen, I like the ones featuring male strippers like The Full Monty and Magic Mike. I wonder what that says about me.

Also, if you watch Magic Mike backwards, its actually a movie about a touching and life-defining moment when Channing Tatum decides to dump his girlfriend and a proper career prospect, go into the stripping business, and live happily ever after.

Remakes of classic movies are here to stay. Sometimes, they are better than the original. Not this time.

The original Total Recall (adapted from the Philip K. Dick short story “We can remember it for you wholesale”), although made in 1990, had the balls to give us Mars. The 2012 remake instead gives us post apocalyptic Britain vs The Colony (Australia).

The overall plot is very similar. Douglas Quaid, an ordinary worker on Earth/Colony, has recurring dreams of an exciting life and a mysterious woman. Discontented (even with a wife like Sharon Stone / Kate Beckinsale. Seriously Quaid??) with life, he decides to go to Rekall for implanted memories of being a superspy.

However, just before the procedure begins, the rekall personnel realises that his memory had already previously been tainted with, and he really was a super secret agent with extraordinary kungfu that until then hadn’t been discovered.

Off he goes on the run and on the road to discovering who he really is.

The 1990 version was really fun. And they really ran with it. Mars, mutants, prostitute with 3 boobs, Sharon Stone.

The 2012 version, sadly, other than Kate Beckinsale, had little to go for it. Even the highly anticipated scene with the prostitute with 3 boobs was a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment. It was essentially chase scene after chase scene in a heavily CGI-ed future that didn’t really impress.

Wait, what? In the future, we still haven’t solved flooding issues?

It all felt very Minority Report-ish, which in 2002, was pretty awesome. But this is 2012.

Fun Fact: Minority Report, incidentally, was also based on a short story by Philip K. Dick, and was in fact, initally meant to be adapted as the sequel to the 1990 Totall Recall. 

The only part of the film I felt surprised by, was the scene in which Quaid smuggled himself into the United Federation of Britain’s immigration department, in one of the original’s most iconic moments. So I shall not spoil it here.

The endless chase scenes and overall less ambitious film-making makes this an inferior remake. And it certainly doesn’t help build confidence for the other remakes to come, and yes, there are many.

Rating: 4/10

Now that the real most anticipated film of 2012 is out (sorry avengers), and the complete story of the Batman according to Christopher Nolan is told, what else is there to look forward to, in 2012?

The short answer is “nothing”.

The long answer is that perhaps, one day, another whitekknight will rise up in defiance and challenge Nolan’s throne to making the grittiest superhero movies ever. But not today, and I think, not soon. But let’s get down to the review, shall we?

In The Dark Knight Rises, we’re dropped into Gotham exactly 8 years to the day where we left off, which had since been christened Harvey Dent Day. Batman hasn’t been seen since that day, and Bruce Wayne had become a reclusive creep, holed up in his home (still) moping about the loss of Rachel Dawes. (the Maggie Gyllenhaal version, not the Katie Holmes version)

The streets were cleaned up, and all seems fair at Gotham. Until the arrival of Bane and his diabolical plan to take it down.

Once more, Bruce is called upon to don his cowl and cape and save the day. New characters to this sequel include Joseph Gordon-Levitt as rookie cop John Blake, Tom Hardy as Bane, Anne Hathaway as Selina Kyle and Marion Cotillard as Miranda Tate.

This last installment is ambitious in many aspects, often taking the action and spectacle to a whole new level, while also trying to tie in all the story threads from Batman Begins and The Dark Knight to form one big, epic narrative.

Can anyone get me a haircut like that? Anyone?

There are many wonderfully glorious set-pieces filmed in imax, and a lot of the action such as the opening scene and the football field scenes are truly magnificent. We witness the journey of Bruce Wayne / Batman come full circle, and gape at the physical threat of Bane.

However, the film is not without some weaknesses. My main gripe would be Bane’s voice, which was unintelligible at first, and later on just sounded disjointed. The fact that his face was mostly masked also means he has to do most of his acting using only body language and his eyes, which takes away a lot of the emotions of certain scenes. This is where many people compared it to the performance of Heath Ledger’s Joker, and where it was sorely missed.

But all in, I really enjoyed the film, plot holes notwithstanding. Oh, and Anne Hathaway did an amazing job with her role as Selina Kyle!

Rating: 8/10

Spoiler Alert

The following paragraphs discuss the ending of the film, so for those of you not wanting to be spoiled, this is your chance to stop reading.

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Many people have said that its way too early in the game for a Spiderman reboot. Afterall, it was only 10 years ago that we had Sam Raimi’s Spiderman, and only 2007 that we had Spiderman 3.

Still%rC I’m glad Sony Pictures went with the reboot instead of Spiderman 4 with more of Tobey Maguire’s wide-eyed stares and wimpy voice that’s supposed to come off as nerdy and vulnerable but in reality is just reflective of his entire acting range. And then there’s Kirsten. Maybe its just down to Sam Raimi’s penchant for over-acting. But for me, the chemistry between Tobey and Kirsten was just non-existent

So yes, Andrew Garfield, Emma Stone and Marc Webb brought a much needed breath of fresh air into one of the most beloved superheroes of all time.

Marc Webb, who’s only other notable work was (500) Days of Summer, seem%d a weird choice at first. But he turned out to be a good choice, especially in the more tender moments in the film between Peter Parker and Gwen Stacey. Yes. Before Mary Jane, there was Gwen Stacey.

Other than Gwen Stacey and the antagonist being the lizard, most of the other plotpoints are pretty standard spiderman origins fare. Peter’s parents gave him away at a young age under the care of Uncle Ben and Aunt May as they seek to protect him from dangers he couldn’t have understood then.

He lives with Uncle Ben and Aunt May, while harboring deeply hidden abandonment issues. When he finds out that his father used to work with Dr Curt Connors at Oscorp, he sneaks in to find out more.

Spider bites | Powers grow | Uncle Ben dies | Revenge | Power vs Responsibility

Same story, but with a wise-cracking Spidey this time. A more suave Peter Parker. An infinitely hotter love interest.

Sounds like a good upgrade to me!

Oh, and who can withhold a sigh of “awwwww” when you find out that onscreen lovebirds Peter and Gwen made way for the real life romance of Andrew and Emma?

Rating: 7/10

In an interview on the daily show, Andrew Garfield told Jon Stewart that wearing the spidey suit was so uncomfortable, frustrating and vulnerable (cos its literally just him, inside) that one day, he and a photographer just took off and did an impromptu shoot of a “Day in the life of Spiderman”.

aaaaaaaaaaah…

Cute

And Emma. Oh. Emma.

She reminds me of a what-if scenario: What if Lindsay Lohan hadn’t gone bad?

Yet another film by Tim Burton, starring his wife Helena Bonham Carter and Johnny Depp in make-up. I think he has inadvertently painted himself into a corner, making fantastical films with outlandish costumes, make-up and over-the-top acting.

Some say it’s his style. I say he’s a one-trick pony.

Johnny Depp is Barnabus Collins, a wealthy playboy in 1772. He has a fling with one of his servants, Angelique Bouchard (Eva Green) and then dumps her. Unbeknownst to him, she is a witch, and promptly proceeds to kill his parents, hypnotizes his lover to jump off a cliff, and curses him to be a vampire before burying him alive in a chained coffin.

Rescued 200 years later during a construction excavation, he kills the construction crew, drinks their blood and proceeds to return to his old manor.

Cue fish-out-of-water jokes and Depp looking awkwardly at new technology such as cars and television. With eye shadow.

Yeah, its Edward Scissorhands all over again.

Unfortunately, Angelique Bouchard, being the bitch witch that she is, has also survived the past 200 years, and is now the most powerful person in town. So its up to Barnabus and his ragtag bunch of family to stop her.

The best part of ‘Dark Shadows’ is really Eva Green’s portrayal of Angelique Bouchard. At once delightfully evil and wickedly sexy, her performance was what made the show a little better than it really should be.

Plus, no one says ‘no’ to Eva Green, witch or not.

Ratings: 5/10