REVIEW: Resident Evil: Degeneration (CGI animated movie)

Resident Evil: Degeneration is an action horror movie, part of the Resident Evil franchise.

This review includes slight spoilers.

Review:

I'm going to start this off by saying that I am not the target audience for this movie. My exposure to the Resident Evil franchise is almost solely limited to the live action movies. I've seen a small part of a Let's Play video of one of the games, something where Leon was the  playable character, and I once attempted to play one of the games and didn't even survive more that a few minutes (my first instinct was to try to shoot the zombie rather than avoid it like I was supposed to). I'm sure I missed out on a lot of backstory and world-building.

The movie begins at an airport. Claire Redfield's plane has landed, and she's waiting for her ride with a little girl named Rani when she spots Senator Ron Davis, a self-important guy who's easy to hate. Senator Davis is one of the stockholders of WilPharma, a controversial pharmaceutical company that Claire opposes. Anyway, they barely have a chance to say anything before a zombie attacks, a zombie-infested plane crashes into the airport, and the entire place dissolves into chaos. Luckily for Claire, Rani, and the senator, federal agent Leon S. Kennedy has been sent to the scene for reasons (terrorist threats), and he has time for a rescue mission. His team includes two members of the local Special Response Team, Angela and Greg, neither of whom have a clue what they're in for (even though Leon tells them).

Here's what I could be writing about...

I'm reaching new levels of pathetic - I can't seem to make myself write my posts! Or update my Shelfari bookshelf. Also, I managed to damage myself while sleeping and now can't turn my head all the way to the right - yesterday it hurt enough that I tearfully gobbled down arthritis-strength Tylenol just so that I could keep cataloging (we're about to get a 500-book shipment in, all at once, and I'm the only cataloger...), but today I'm doing a bit better and can laugh at how stupid the situation is.

So, since I can't offer anything else at the moment, I'll just write up a list of most of the stuff I'm procrastinating on writing about. As in, I haven't even written notes for myself. Crud. Well, I'll include some mini notes here.

• Foul Play by Janet Evanovich - A woman's job (as a TV clown entertaining children) is taken by a chicken. She gets blamed when the chicken goes missing, but, not to worry, a veterinarian who has fallen instantly in love with her is there to help her clear her name and figure out the true culprit. It's goofy romance - you've really got to be in the right mood to enjoy this sort of thing. I was in the mood for the romance, but not so much the mystery. Oooh, missing chicken, how mysteeerious...
• Slumdog Millionaire - It's amazing how much hype you can miss out on when you don't watch TV and only vaguely pay attention to news online, but even I heard about this movie. I just didn't want to pay $20 for it. So, when the local entertainment store had a "buy one clearance rental DVD, get a 2nd for $1" sale, I jumped on it. I liked the movie, but I felt the actual romance in it was lacking. The only thing I hated was the nearly unreadable subtitles. Also, I wanted to smack Jamal's brother.
• Naughty Neighbor by Janet Evanovich - A press secretary with an annoying (and sexy) neighbor finds her life turned upside down when said annoying neighbor's troubles start spilling over onto her. These troubles involve politicians and a missing pig. Notice a missing animal theme? The mystery is even more pathetic in this book than in Foul Play, but I found the romance more interesting. This is actually kind of embarrassing to admit, and, if I ever manage to make myself write a full post, you'll see why.
• Resident Evil: Degeneration - The Raccoon City tragedy is over, but that doesn't mean it's forgotten. After all, who could forget a bunch of zombies and other things even more horrific? Seeking revenge for the death of his family, a man lets the T-Virus loose, but things really start to suck when he becomes infected with the G-Virus. Actually, the outbreaks are pretty well-contained, so the horror is fairly small-scale. And kind of boring. With painful voice acting, despite the voice actors being veterans of many anime. The English voice actors - there's no Japanese language track. This was a horrible, horrible movie. I plan to sell it as soon as I've written a full post about it.
• Promises in Death by J.D. Robb - Coltraine, Morris's girlfriend and a fellow cop, is killed and it's up to Eve Dallas to bring her murderer to justice. It's not just any old case for her, not just the job - and I was thinking, "when is it ever just the job for Dallas?", but Robb made such a big deal about this I had to mention it. Robb tried to play with readers' emotions by bumping Coltraine up to "Morris's increasingly important girlfriend" status in the previous book, but I found I couldn't work up the kind of shock and sadness over her death that Robb was maybe going for. I did really like Dallas's new car though. I wonder how she'll wreck it?
• Serve It Cold by Ronnie Blackwell - One of my Podiobooks listening choices. It features several readers, but not quite enough people for me to always be able to tell the voices apart (especially when it comes to female characters). This one involves marijuana, nice New Orleans detail (not sure how accurate it is, but it all sounded good to me), a very fishy divorce case, some exhibitionists, art, and murder. I liked it, even though it was a bit too complicated for work time listening.
• 8810 by Nicholas Taylor - Another one of my Podiobooks listening choices. A guy gets a job in the auditing department of a big insurance company and must deal with the boringness of his job, his coworkers (some become his friends, others are just weird, and some fall somewhere in between), and the Dilbert-like idiocy that is just a part of corporate life. It's kind of like The Office, only it's not consistently funny. However, it's still well worth a listen. Plus, I love some of the Colorado details - the bit about Halloween in Colorado is absolutely perfect and absolutely true.
• Black Bird, vol. 1 by Kanoko Sakurakoji - Misao is horrified to discover that Kyo, her first love, is actually a tengu, a kind of demon, and that she has the dubious honor of being special - a demon who drinks her blood gains a long life, one who eats her flesh gains eternal youth, and one who makes her his bride will have a prosperous clan. Kyo wants her to be his bride and promises to protect her from all who would harm her, but Misao doesn't want him if he only wants her for what she can do for his clan. I don't know what the whole series will be like, but this volume was one big excuse for Misao to get hurt repeatedly, so that Kyo could heal her. By the way, he heals using licks and kisses. If you flip through it and think it has a lot of sex, that's because you're mistaking the healing scenes for sex scenes. I'm sure the similarity is intentional. It's not porn, but it's racy. I think it may become my guilty pleasure, at least until I tire of watching the many ways Misao can bleed all over the place.
• Fullmetal Alchemist, Season 1, Part 1 - I now own the whole series (minus the OVAs, which I might not be able to afford for some time - if I decide to pay it, the ALA membership fee will kill all my extra cash and then some this month). You have no idea how happy this makes me. I would list this series among my top 5 favorite anime. I've only ever seen it all in English dub, so it's a treat to see it in Japanese. Watching this while I'm watching Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood really brings home how fast the new series is speeding through things. On the one hand, I think that does a disservice to the characters and some of the heavier emotional stuff, but, on the other hand, the pacing of the original series could've been a tad faster.
• In Odd We Trust by Queenie Chan and Dean Koontz - I haven't quite figured out yet how much of the writing Koontz did versus Chan, but, regardless of who did how much, I wasn't impressed. This manga-inspired volume, which takes place before the events of Koontz's Odd Thomas, didn't communicate Odd's charm well. Plus, the story was very simplistic, and the art was wooden. I don't know what Chan's art is like in her other works, but, in this, the artwork as a whole needs to be more dynamic and there are basics, like perspective, that need work (Sherry's headband, or whatever you call it, really bothered me - you can always see the entire curve of it, even when her face is in profile).
• Skip Beat!, vol. 1 by Yoshiki Nakamura - ILLiad is down at my library and has been down for two weeks now, so, while I'm happy that I've started reading this manga, I can't wait until it's possible for me to request the next volume, because it seems like it might be a while before I can reach the point where the anime ended. I really like this series, but I have to admit that I prefer the anime so far - I just like the artwork in the anime better.

See how fantastically behind I am? Well, for now I'm just going to go do some neck stretches, but maybe I'll get a full post written tomorrow. Right.