Troy (2004) was reviewed brilliantly by Scoopy. He goes into great detail about how the plot never claimed to be about a specific book or portion thereof by Homer, and was in fact a synthesis of all Homeric legends. No argument from me. He praises what so many critics condemned, an attempt to temper the story with logic and real human emotions, for instance:

Nobody went to Troy to rescue Helen. Her husband wanted to off the bitch for betraying him, and his brother had always wanted to kick the shit out of the Trojans. The soldiers went where they were ordered to go.

The seers guessed wrong every time.

Nudity was very scarce, especially for an R rated film. We have buns from Diane Kruger, side of hip from Rose Byrne, and buns from one unknown, a breast from another.

Scoops conclusion bears repeating.

"Based on this description, this is a C. It's an OK movie, but you have to love this kind of spectacle to sit through this 163 minute movie and enjoy the entire experience. If aren't predisposed to like that kind of entertainment, the human side of the story is insufficient and sometimes implausible."

I do not like "This kind of spectacle." It was not good history, it was not faithful to the literature, and the dialogue was just plain terrible. Yes, it is a C. If this is your kind of film, it hits all of its marks eventually. I will not be rewatching it this lifetime.

Resident Evil: Apocalypse  (2004):

The first question you have to ask yourself is, "why did they make a sequel to a movie with an average review of one star out of four?"

Good question.

Here's what I wrote about the previous Resident Evil movie:

"If the people who liked the movie said it was brain-dead unoriginal nonsense, you can imagine what the others said. And you can deduce that you will not like it unless you believe that frenetic action, cool sets, and loud noises are enough to make up for incoherence, stupidity, and unoriginality."
 

You think that was too negative? Turns out I was Mr. Charitable. Here's what Tuna wrote about the previous Resident Evil movie:

"Scoopy liked this one rather more than I did. As it was clearly not required of the script to make sense, they had room for infinite creativity, but managed none. To me, it is a slickly made piece of junk. It made me yearn for something much more exciting, like watching my hard drive defrag"
 

So why a sequel? Well, money of course. I guess maybe they thought this was the time of destiny for zombie movies. After all 2003-2004 has been the golden age of zombie flicks. Before that, I can't remember ever liking any movie featuring people who used to be dead. It used to be a fundamental principle of the film universe: Scoopy's Unity of the Undead, aka Unity 17, aka The Captain Corelli rule. "A resurrection is an indication of a bad movie, whether it involves Jesus, zombies, or people presumed dead. There has never been a good movie with more than one resurrection."  This principle includes movies with Jesus, movies in which a character presumed dead is actually alive, or movies with zombies or vampires.  From the original Dracula to George Romero's movies to Captain Corelli's Mandolin and the Jesus Chainsaw Massacre, resurrections may have brought life to characters, but they have brought certain death to movie quality. That was basically until 2003 came along and turned the universe on its ear.  Scoopy's Unity of the Undead is now dead itself, merely a former law, cast aside as Einstein cast aside the Newtonian world, overthrown in the last year or so by a few decent zombie movies knit together in a tight chronological pattern: Dawn of the Dead, Shawn of the Dead, 28 Days Later.

Yeah, maybe it was pre-ordained by fate that zombie movies should turn the corner in 2003-2004, but Resident Evil: Apocalypse was a notable exception.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think Roger Ebert liked this movie any more than I did:

"The movie is an utterly meaningless waste of time. There was no reason to produce it, except to make money, and there is no reason to see it, except to spend money. It is a dead zone, a film without interest, wit, imagination or even entertaining violence and special effects."

OK, maybe I was wrong. He did seem to enjoy it. Ebert also zoomed in wittily on the quintessential logical fallacy of the film.

"In a scene where several characters are fighting zombies inside a church, the renegade scientist comes to the rescue by crashing her motorcycle through a stained-glass window and landing in the middle of the fight. This inspires the question: How did she know what was on the other side of the window? Was she crashing through the stained glass on spec?"

Roger was not significantly more negative than the other reviewers in America. So maybe they liked it in England? Nah. In fact, the critical reviews in the U.K. are just about the worst I've seen since I started keeping track of such things. The only film in the same league is the earlier Resident Evil movie.

Yet, astoundingly, thanks to some hype and the fact that no top movies opened opposite it, Resident Evil: Apocalypse briefly took the #1 spot in America with an opening weekend of $23 million.

Whenever the critics and the mass audiences disagree, I almost invariably find myself on the side of the general public. Not this time. This film deserved every bit of the critical savaging, and worse. The box office success is absolutely amazing, because this flick is not just sorta bad, it's an abomination. Watching this movie is exactly the same as watching the screen when other people are playing video games. The MPAA title screen says it is rated "R for non-stop violence." I've never seen them use that verbiage before, but they have a point. The film basically consists of people stalking shadows through dark alleys and corridors, followed by zombies grunting and growling outside of locked doors, followed by armed guys blowing away mass quantities of zombies with automatic weapons. Then we see lots of fires and explosions. Then we see guys looking at computer screens with numbers changing rapidly, possibly to see their scores and how many "lives" they have remaining.

As you might guess, the IMDB scores are skewed toward ... well, toward people who find it entertaining to watch others play video games. Here's the breakdown by age:

The film must set a record for one thing: greatest zombie variety. There are regular old-fashioned movie zombies that just mill around the streets mumbling and hanging their arms loose, but there are also super-powered zombies, and kung-fu zombies, and zombies with long tongues, and zombies who are heavily armed, and zombies who rise from their graves, and zombie pets, and topless zombie hookers, and I don't know what all. I think there were even good guy zombies. I think there may even have been some musical Caribbean zombies singing Apo-calypso songs.

"Daylight come and me wan' go tomb".

 Suffice it to say that we are faced with an astoundingly and confusingly rich variety of zombies.

"Fat zombies, skinny zombies, zombies who climb on rocks.

Tough zombies, sissy zombies, even zombies with chicken pox."

I don't know whether they all love Armour Hot Dogs, but we truly have a Zombie for All Seasons.

Other than that record-setting variety of zombie types, this film has just about nothing going for it.

... unless you like to see Milla Jovovich naked.

... and topless zombie hookers.

Hey, now that I think about it ... those are not a bad couple of reasons to watch a movie.

Oh, to tell you the truth, it doesn't really bother me that such a woeful movie was such a success. There are a lot of different movie audiences out there, and this one was very successful at finding its target consumers and delivering what they wanted. Only one thing bothers me. If this sucker makes a healthy profit (which it probably will, after all the revenue streams flow out), it will; spawn more video games and we can look forward to at least one more theatrical movie sequel. If that one does well, even more games and movies. Even if the next film does not do well, it will spawn some straight-to-vid sequels. That's a lot more of these to look forward to. That may not bother most of you, because you can simply avoid them, but if they have nudity, I'll have to watch them sumbitches!

• Milla (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6)

• Topless zombie hookers

Various short, zipped .wmv vids:

• I love this short vid of Maria Sharapova reaching down to make a stroke at Wimbledon.

• Sissy Spacek in Raggedy Man. I think this was her last nude scene. There is not much to see, but it is rarely capped.

• Christina Applegate in Anchorman's deleted scenes, coming very close to exposing a breast.

Other Crap:

Other Crap archives. May also include newer material than the links above, since it's sorta in real time.

Click here to submit a URL for Other Crap

MOVIE REVIEWS:

Here are the latest movie reviews available at scoopy.com.

• The yellow asterisks indicate that I wrote the review, and am deluded into thinking it includes humor.
• If there is a white asterisk, it means that there isn't any significant humor, but I inexplicably determined there might be something else of interest.
• A blue asterisk indicates the review is written by Tuna (or Junior or Brainscan, or somebody else besides me)
• If there is no asterisk, I wrote it, but am too ashamed to admit it.

If you have your own site or blog, sign up today and earn some extra cash in 2005 by promoting the Fun House!

Cristina Michaus
(1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8)

Iran Castillo
(1, 2, 3, 4)

Isaura Espinoza
(1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17)

Comments by Vejiita.
The movie is about a boy that comes to the city and enlists in the army, but he finds out the army is not helping people at all. After being shot by his own captain, he goes back to the city where he meets a writer. When the writer sees the boy help a woman, he writes in the paper about this misterious guy who is helping the poor people and he becomes a legend, kind like The Zorro.

After that, and with the help of the writer, he forms a band of renegades. However, after a bad incident with 2 men, he ends up recruiting only women. Cristina Michaus plays the woman he helps first, Isaura Espinoza plays his aunt (yes he sleeps with his aunt), Ivonne Montero plays a girl who wants El Tigre so she joins his band, Anilu Pardo plays a woman who help El Tigre went he came back to the city and Iran Castillo is his love interest.

Scoops...
First up, a quick bit of fact checking.

Subject: Tereza Brettschneidrova from "EuroTrip".
They spelled Tereza's name wrong in the Eurotrip credits. She is either Tereza Brettschneiderova or Tereza Brettschneidrova. She is a hefmag Czechmate (Czech Republic edition, July 2003), has at least one hardcore photoshoot circulating on the internet, and had a role in Vin Diesel's "xXx" which was removed entirely from the movie after she mouthed off to him.

Here are few links with more info about the Chech babe.