Screenhead

It’s extraordinarily difficult to write a review of a movie like The Fourth Kind because it’s not really a movie so much as it is an agenda.

Clearly, someone desperately wants us to believe that what we’re seeing is actually really really REALLY REAL, and won’t be satisfied until, my guess is, we start pestering our Congress critters for answers.  I’m not sure.  Because I’ve never left a movie so utterly confused, and I’ve seen David Croenenburg movies.

This one follows Dr. Abigail Emily Tyler, who is played by Milla Jovovich, who actually TELLS us that’s what she’ll be doing in the beginning of the movie.  And we’ll be following her around as she conducts a sleep disorder study on the people of Nome, Alaska.  Now, Nome is downright infamous for being hard to reach, but apparently it’s also got a serious missing persons problem, and it’s somehow become the FBI travel destination of choice, garnering over two thousand official visits when neighbor Anchorage, who has something like seventy times the population, rates only about three hundred visits in that same time frame.

Now, it’s hard to tell at first glance just how much of this is real and how much of it so utterly fake as to be a complete pantload, because the movie is trying so very desperately hard to convince us that EVERYTHING WE SEE IS HAPPENING FOR REALS, YO, by virtue of running split screen so often I thought I was watching 24.  They’ll do two splits and three splits and four splits and four splits with rotating frames.  It got to the point where I wondered, is this a movie or a Final Cut Pro demo?  And they’ll run, almost ad nauseum, “real footage” alongside footage of the actors, to try and cement that belief.

I’ll freely admit that this is some creepy stuff–when that guy started levitating I got a little freaked out, and Abigail Tyler “herself” under hypnosis was a cold chill up my spine but do I believe this actually went down?  No.

See, one great line from the movie that manages to describe the movie in its entirety is where one of the “patients” is muttering that he’s okay, and “Dr. Tyler” swings in with “Are you trying to convince me or yourself?”  And that’s exactly what I thought of this movie.  Yes, okay, you’re going to RELENTLESSLY show me this “real footage” and insist, as loudly and vociferously as possible that it’s real, and frankly, I kind of doubt it.

Folks, this has allegedly been going on since the year 2000.  But somehow it took almost TEN YEARS for someone to exploit it?  Come ON.  We’re talking about a Hollywood scene so desperate that TWO GARFIELD MOVIES looked like a good idea but we’ve got allegedly actual footage of a woman shrieking that she’s god in SUMERIAN and NO ONE’S ran with that ball yet?

The Screenhead Ten Scale joins me in a dismissive back of hand “bah” to this creepy but horrendously disjointed fright fest and acknowledges that the idea is pretty scary but forces my suspension of disbelief engines to glow white hot and give off an ominous whining noise.  Thus, it hands this incredulous horror romp a five out of ten for being creepy yet not even vaguely credible.

Popularity: unranked [?]

Well, folks, it was really only a matter of time, and I do mean the above sincerely, because we’re going to need all the help we can get to ensure that Resident Evil 4: Afterlife doesn’t suck sour frog ass.

We can take some small comfort in the reported knowledge that both Milla Jovovich and Ali Larter will be reprising their previous roles as psychic Alice and Claire Redfield, and we can take some further consolation in the knowledge that we’re still going to be in the post-apocalyptic desert on this one ensuring us the best possible chance at full-on dystopia.

However, this being the Resident Evil movie leaves every chance that it’s going to suck, especially considering the lousy time we had with the first two, when it was still crystalline clear that the video game really had nothing to do with the movie except to provide a name for the script.

We’ll get to see how this all comes out when it hits theaters next August.

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Tired of killing zombies and monsters with machetes and telekinesis, Milla Jovovich is set to join Robert de Niro and Ed Norton on the cast of Stone, an upcoming thriller being developed by Nu Image.

She will play the wife of a convicted arsonist (Norton) who sets off on a cat-and-mouse game with his parole office (de Niro).

John Curran is directing from a script by Angus Maclachlan. Filming is already underway at Michigan.

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Breaking out of the Resident Evil mold, Milla Jovovich will star in Phoenix Pictures’ thriller Mile Zero which recently picked up Marcel Langenegger (Deception) as a director.

The story, written by Holly Brix, centers on a young woman attempting to clear her father’s name in a string of gruesome murders at an Alaskan oil refinery.

Attached to produce are Mike Medavoy, Arnie Messer, Brad Fischer and James Vanderbilt.

Jovovich has a similar film coming up: The Fourth Kind, which has her playing a government investigator probing 40 years of unexplained disappearances in a small town. It is yet to be released.

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If you had had enough of Resident Evil, you won’t be reading this post, but everybody likes watching a disaster in motion: the first script of Paul Anderson’s fourth installment in the videogame franchise has been submitted… and the second draft is now underway.

The filmmakers are currently trying to get Milla Jovovich to reprise her role as series protagonist; a director is also being sought before casting can get underway. Anderson, as with the other two sequels, won’t be helming this installment, though I must say, the first film he did was pretty decent.

As expected, the film will shift to Tokyo as well as visit Alaska. Its tone will be dark like the last sequel.

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Zombie slayer Milla Jovovich will star as an alcoholic ex-stripper in Keep Coming Back, a coming-of-age comedy that will mark the directorial debut of veteran actor William H. Macy.

The film will see a young man with a sheltered upbringing join an Alcoholics Anonymous group in order to be with the woman of his dreams – Jovovich. It also stars Macy himself and Steve Buscemi.

Keep Coming Back will be produced by Rachel Rothman, Tucker Tooley and Dan Keston based on a screenplay by Will Aldis. Shooting will start early next year.

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Reporting it as a rumor, Bloody Disgusting carries word that Milla Jovovich has been tapped to play Alyssa Barron in Clock Tower, the upcoming adaptation of the survival horror franchise from Capcom.

Jovovich is best known for her appearances in The Fifth Element and the Resident Evil franchise.

Shooting for the film is set to begin in Los Angeles this November. The rumor is yet to be confirmed, but damn, Jovovich would be fine as Barron.

The film will have Barron returning to the old Hamilton Inn where serial murderer “Scissor Man” was once hung. She will have to confront the dead killer and “trade in every luxury of her new life to make one last desperate bid for survival before her time is up.”

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The Resident Evil films have brought in tons of cash for the suits at Sony Pictures. And let’s not deny the fact that we all want to see Milla Jovovich kick ass! Keeping that in mind, Paul WS Anderson, in a recent chat, revealed that early talks for the fourth entry have begun and that “there’s a possibility it might happen.”

Resident Evil: Extinction, the third film in the series, has a $147 million worldwide gross, so a sequel is highly likely. The film also left the door open for another sequel, showing off a clone army of Alice ready to kick zombie (and Umbrella Corps) asses.

Anderson has so far scripted all three Resident Evil films. He is currently working on Death Race.

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Milla Jovovich is set to star in the thriller “The 4th Kind.”

The story is explained as a fact-based thriller involving an ongoing unsolved mystery in Alaska, where one town has seen an extraordinary number of unexplained disappearances during the past 40 years and there are accusations of a federal cover-up. Jovovich plays a woman investigating the disappearances in the town.

Popularity: 1% [?]