Resident Evil: Retribution
Film Review by Kam Williams
Enduring Franchise Finds Latex-Clad Heroine Fighting More Mutants
The Resident Evil film franchise is proving to be every bit as enduring as the hordes of flesh-eating zombies featured in its every episode. The movies are based on the popular series of high body-count computer games which has also spawned some comic books, graphic novels, cartoons, and a line of merchandise with action figures and more.
This fifth screen adaptation marks yet another collaboration between writer/director Paul W.S. Anderson and his wife, cover girl-turned-actress Milla Jovovich. She, of course, reprises her lead role as Alice, the pistol-packing protector of a planet once again threatened with extinction.
As usual, Anderson does his best to exploit his supermodel spouse's good looks, between keeping her clad in form-fitting latex for the duration of the adventure and seizing on any excuse to take a pause in the action for a lingering, extreme close-up of her flawless facial features. Otherwise, RE 5 offers formulaic zombie fighting fare, with Alice and an intrepid team of defenders (Michelle Rodriguez, Boris Kodjoe, Bingbing Li, et al) representing the last hope of humanity.
At the point of departure, our heroine, by way of voiceover, quickly recounts the back story of what's transpired in the prior installments. We learn that the trouble all started when an industrial accident triggered a viral outbreak which in turn led to the rise of the undead.
Today, the diabolical Umbrella Corporation is apparently again up to no good, and on the verge of unleashing an army of mind-controlled minions, including clones of our pretty protagonist. Over-plotted to the point of absurdity, there's no reason to try to follow RE 5's storyline.
For while Milla might be up to the challenge of executing the script, the same can't be said about her supporting cast's wooden delivery of every last line of dialogue. The worst in this regard is Hong Kong star Bingbing Li who is crippled by the English language making a disastrous Hollywood debut here. A visually-captivating fantasy for teenage males with raging hormones, the demo most apt to enjoy watching an invincible vixen in spandex waste wave after wave of mindless mutants.
Fair (1 star)
Rated R for partial nudity and pervasive graphic violence.
Running time: 95 minutes
Distributor: Screen Gems
To see a trailer for Resident Evil: Retribution, visit
Joseph Gordon-Levitt
The "Looper" Interview with Kam Williams
In the Loop!
Joseph Gordon-Levitt was born on February 17, 1981 in Los Angeles where he began acting at the age of 4 when he played the Scarecrow in a community theater production of The Wizard of Oz. He subsequently grew up in front of the camera, appearing in television commercials for Pop Tarts and Cocoa Puffs and on such shows as Family Ties, Murder She Wrote, L.A. Law, Roseanne and Dark Shadows.
Joseph first enjoyed widespread fame on TV playing Tommy Solomon on 3rd Rock from the Sun which led to his breakout role on the big screen in 10 Things I Hate about You. He has since blossomed from a teen heartthrob into a truly talented thespian with both big box-office and art house appeal.
That versatility is reflected in a resume with acting credits ranging from sleepers such as 500 Days of Summer, The Lookout, Brick and Uncertainty to bona fide blockbusters like The Dark Knight Rises, Inception, Premium Rush and Steven Spielberg's Lincoln, which is set to be released in November.
Here, Joseph talks about Looper, a mind-bending sci-fi thriller where he and Bruce Willis play the same character. The story revolves around a hit man who has no problem traveling 30 years into the future to murder for the mob until the day he is ordered to assassinate his future self.
Kam Williams: Hi Joseph, I'm honored to have this opportunity to interview you. I think of you as the best actor never to have been nominated for an Oscar.
Joseph Gordon-Levitt: Thanks, Kam. That's very kind of you.
KW: I love a lot of your artsy films that many people might have missed. Movies like 500 Days of Summer, Uncertainty and The Lookout.
JGL: Why, thank you!
KW: What interested you in doing Looper?
JGL: First of all, having a chance to work with Rian [director Rian Johnson] again. He's a dear friend of mine. We've known each other since making Brick [2005]. I also found the story incredibly intriguing, as well as the role.
IFC Midnight
Ashley Hinshaw and James Franco star in “About Cherry.”
About Cherry
Film Review by Kam Williams
Naive Runaway Turns Porn Star in Cautionary Tale of Survival
Angelina (Ashley Hinshaw) is a naïve, 18 year-old with a blossoming body but a horrible home situation. Between a predatory stepfather (Stephen Wiig) with a creepy agenda and an alcoholic mother (Lili Taylor) too inebriated to protect her, it's just a matter of time before the poor girl has to vacate the premises.
Unfortunately, she proceeds to follow a lot of bad advice, starting with her boyfriend's (Jonny Weston) pressure to pose naked for pay. Although initially hesitant, the clueless coed goes along with the idea, unaware that nude photo spreads are apparently the adult entertainment industry's equivalent of a gateway drug to utter depravity.
The next thing you now, she's dropping out of high school and running away from L.A. to San Francisco with a Platonic pal (Dev Patel) who worships her. They rent an apartment together, with him landing a legitimate job at a bookstore while she finds work at a seedy strip club.
Soon thereafter, Angelina not only starts dating a customer (James Franco) but is recruited to appear in X-rated movies by a very-reassuring, retired porn star (Heather Graham). She adopts a stage name, "Cherry," and takes to performing sex acts in front of the camera like a fish to water, gradually graduating from soft porn to ever-increasingly salacious fare.
Not surprisingly, this development takes a toll on her personal relationships, as both her new beau ("What you do is disgusting!") and secret admirer roommate ("I'm just a foreigner you keep around to run errands!") eventually express their displeasure. But that doesn't necessarily mean that the trajectory of Angelina/Cherry's life has to turn tragic, especially when there's an empathetic lipstick lesbian waiting in the wings on the set of her latest explicit adventure.
Directed by Stephen Elliott, About Cherry's optimistic arc might be explained by the fact that he co-wrote the script with Lorelei Lee, a popular porn star-turned-NYU college lecturer. Lorelei's literary imprimatur lends considerable credibility to this presumably semi-autobiographical soap opera, since it would otherwise be impossible to fathom how the picture's terminally-suggestible protagonist wasn't left devastated by such a self-destructive string of degrading choices.
Pollyanna does ‘Frisco!
Very Good (3 stars)
Rated R for sexuality, nudity, profanity and drug use.
Running time: 102 minutes
Distributor: IFC Films
To see a trailer for About Cherry, visit
The Words
Film Review by Kam Williams
Plagiarism Exacts Emotional Toll in Tale of Overwhelming Regret
The latest stop on Clayton Hammond's (Dennis Quaid) whirlwind book tour has the renowned author in New York City to promote his latest opus. It's a cautionary tale of overwhelming regret recounting the rise and fall of a presumably fictional character called Rory Jansen (Bradley Cooper).
At the story's point of departure, he's an aspiring novelist under pressure to find a day job after years of relying on handouts from his father (J.K. Simmons). The young man grudgingly capitulates by taking a lowly 9 to 5 gig in the mailroom of a leading literary agency.
The steady pay does enable Rory to save enough money to propose to his longtime girlfriend (Zoe Saldana) who has been patiently waiting to start a family. Soon enough, they're newlyweds and honeymooning in Paris where the grateful bride impulsively buys her hubby a weather-beaten briefcase lying around a dusty antique shop.
Upon returning to the States, Rory opens the valise and discovers that it isn't empty but contains a yellowed, handwritten manuscript by someone far more talented than he. However, instead of trying to locate the owner, he succumbs to the temptation to submit the novel to publishers under his own name.
And lo and behold, the book, "The Window Tears," becomes a runaway best-seller, thereby belatedly launching the literary career he'd always dreamed of. But because of the possibility of the real author's (Jeremy Irons) stepping forward to expose the fraud, Rory faces the prospect of having to spend his life looking over his shoulder.
Co-written and co-directed by Brian Klugman and Lee Sternthal, The Words is constructed as a series of flashbacks narrated by a visibly-haunted Hammond as he reads excerpts from his new book. It gradually becomes obvious that he is emotionally agonizing over the material on the pages as the tension mounts around whether what his audience is hearing might be autobiographical rather than fictional.
Unfortunately, the problems with this glacial-paced production are plentiful. First, it's hard to swallow the film's farfetched premise, and harder still to fathom how its protagonist has managed to maintain the charade for so long, especially given his guilty conscience and being confronted by the aggrieved party he's impersonated.
Secondly, neither of the parallel plotlines is particularly engaging, the only issue of interest being whether Hammond's new book constitutes a confession that his debut novel had been purloined. For this reason, the film's biggest flaw rests in its ultimately ending on a cliffhanger, and thereby failing to resolve if Rory Jansen is indeed a thinly-veiled version of the author.
That anticlimactic conclusion proves to be quite unsatisfying after an investment of what feels like an eternity awaiting the resolution of the specific question "Did he or didn't he?" The only thing worse than a movie without an ending, is a ninety-minute endurance test without an ending.
Fair (1 star)
Rated PG-13 for smoking, sensuality and brief profanity.
Running time: 96 minutes
Distributor: CBS Films
To see a trailer for The Words, visit
Lawless
Film Review by Kam Williams
Prohibition Era Crime Saga Revisits Real-Life Exploits of the Bootlegging Bondurant Brothers
It is Franklin County, Virginia during Prohibition, which is where we find the bootlegging Bondurant brothers, Jack (Shia LaBeouf), Forrest (Tom Hardy) and Howard (Jason Clarke), running a thriving moonshining business with the help of a pal with colorful name Cricket (Dane DeHaan). But the siblings' blissful existence starts to crumble the day Jack sees Floyd Banner (Gary Oldman), a coldblooded gangster from Chicago, shoot one of their competitors dead with a Tommy gun.
Not long thereafter, a crooked Federal Agent, Charlie Rakes (Guy Pearce) pays a little visit to the Bondurants' bar to demand a cut of their ill-gotten gains. But hot-headed Forrest isn't intimidated by the attempted shakedown. In fact, he threatens to kill the corrupt cop with a meat cleaver should the greedy creep ever set foot on the premises again.
Of course, that's not the last the lads see of either Rakes or Banner, which soon proves problematical given that the ruthless newcomers are armed to the teeth and will stop at nothing to get their way. That is the ominous premise which sets in motion the grisly goings-on which ensue in Lawless, a picture dedicated to an almost senseless celebration of gratuitous violence.
Directed by John Hillcoat (The Road), the movie was adapted from "The Wettest County in the World," a supposedly-factual, historical novel by Matt Bondurant (grandson of Jack). The picture opens with a warning that what you're about to witness is "based on a true story," a claim presumably intended to discourage the viewer from questioning the veracity of the screen version, too.
However, what's served up is basically a comical cross of Sam Peckinpah and Looney Tunes so farcical that the audience at the screening this critic attended shared a few hearty laughs at moments when none was intended. An over-the-top indulgence in sadism strictly recommended for folks with a stomach for gangster fare so gruesome as to border on the cartoonish.
Fair (1 star)
Rated R for profanity, sexuality, nudity and graphic violence.
Running time: 115 minutes
Distributor: The Weinstein Company
To see a trailer for Lawless, visit