Ten Hunks from "Resident Evil: Apocalypse."

As part of our "coronavirus staying home film festival," we're watching a lot of zombie movies, and Bob the purist insisted that we watch the sequel to 2002's Resident Evil: Resident Evil: Apocalypse (2004).

Have mercy!  If there ever was a movie made with the absolute certainty that no one would be in the audience except for 15-year old straight boys!

Remember Hot Girl, who stormed half-naked into the underground research facility to try to get the antidote to the mutating virus that was zombifying everyone?  She failed, so now everyone in Raccoon City (giggle)is mutating into zombies.

1. Evil Corporation representative Timothy Cain (Thomas Kretschman) is trying to evacuate VIPs, especially  "Not without my doh-tah" Dr. Ashford, who invented the virus in the first place.

Meanwhile the local police are having trouble dealing with the zombified citizens.  Crack shot Boobs stops by to shoot zombies and suggest evaucating the city.

Literally: you see her boobs floating down the hallway, then her legs, and finally her face. And in every future shot, she will be boobs first, legs second, face third.

2. Boobs leads everyone to the only bridge out of town, where she runs into her former partner Peyton (Razaaq Adolfi).

He's one of these guys.  He's always being upstaged by close-ups of Boobs' boobs, so I can't be sure which.

3. Peyton, Boobs, and half-naked Reporter take refuge in a weird church with no religious symbols of any kind except candles, which are all lit even though no one has been there in hours.  They encounter hysterical civilian Mack (Geoffrey Pounsett), who is quickly gulped down by a mutated monster.

Pity -- my favorite of all the characters, and he's gulped down instantly.

Eventually Hot Girl joins them; she's been busy running down the street naked and slowly putting on an evening gown, just the thing to fight a zombie apocalypse!

4. The city has been sealed, so everyone who didn't get out is stuck with the zombies and monsters. Plus Evil Corporation plans to drop a nuclear bomb on it.

 "Not without my doh-tah" Dr. Ashford contacts a trapped STAR(evil corporation's private soldier),  Carlos (Oded Fehr).

5, And Nicolai (Zach Ward), and offers them safe passage out of the city if they find his Doh-Tah.

He makes the same offer to Hot Girl, Boobs, and company.

The two groups eventually merge.

Doh-Tah goes to Raccoon City (har-har) Junior High, although it is clearly a private school, and a city that size must have several junior highs.

Hot Girl, Boobs, and company use a tracking device to locate her.  Then they run into:

6. Nemesis (Matthew G. Taylor, top photo, in Incredible Hulk make-up), a monster built from Hot Girl's old boyfriend Matt.  Evil Corporation thinks that this would be a good time to test him out, so they program him to kill all STARS but spare civilians.










7. LJ. (Omar Epps, left), a  comic relief "What up?" black guy, is driving through town, wondering "what up?"

He is accosted by the boobs of half-naked strippers.  Then he hooks up with some trapped STARS.

Nemesis approaches and fires his guns everywhere, hitting all of the STARS but somehow missing L.J., whom he deems "a civilian non-combatant").

L.J. joins Hot Girl, Boobs, Doh-Tah, and the rest.

Nemesis goes after Hot Girl, but he refuses to kill his ex-girlfriend.

A bunch of people get killed.  I forget who.

8. You think the movie is over, but it's not.  Three weeks later, Hot Girl is naked again, in an incubation tank.  She is released and given a towel by Evil Scientist (who I think is played by Aaron Abrams).  He asks "What do you remember?"  She says "I remember everything" and proceeds to kill everyone in the lab, while using one hand to keep her towel on. 




















9.  She runs outside, where the alive-and-well Carlos, Boobs, L.J., and Doh-Tah whisk her into a limo and ask "Are you all right?"

Another Evil Scientist (Iain Glen) tells us that he planned the whole thing.

Wait -- was this just a cyberspace training exercise.  Is Raccoon City (har-har) alive and well too?

10.  Oh, right, I needed another. Well...um...how about Frank Chiesurin as Some Guy.  The male roles aren't important, anyway.  Resident Evil: Apocalypse is all about the boobs.

Ten "Resident Evil" Hunks and How They Die

As part of our "stay inside" film festival, I have seen Resident Evil (2002) the first of a heavily-panned movie series based on a video game.   Well, I haven't actually seen it.  I sat through it, bored senseless, taking quizzes about "Which Sex and the City character are you?" on Facebook.

I miss the days when movies actually contained dialogue.  What do scripts look like now?  Zombies attack. Someone says "We have to get out of here!"  They rush through a door.  More zombies attack.

In Raccoon City (stupidest name ever!), there's a huge underground research facility called the Hive -- dozens of floors with impossibly high ceilings.  There, hundreds of geneticists are working on an evil corporation's  top secret projects.

They have colors instead of names: Dr.Blue, Dr. Brown, Dr. Black/  Can you think of hundreds of colors? "Dr. Avocado, Dr.Puce, Dr. Cool Mint."

Then a virus escapes, so the Red Queen, the sentient security system who talks like a young British girl, kills everyone

Cut to gratuitous male-gaze nudity, as Hot Girl awakens in the bathtub in an empty mansion.  Eventually she puts on a revealing dress instead.

She and The Guy from Ugly Betty both have amnesia, so commandos break in and explain: they belong to the Hive's security force, and have to go into the facility for some reason.  On the way, they meet The Guy from Altered Carbon, also an amnesiac.

Why do some of them have amnesia, and others do not? No idea.

They go in and fight the dead people, who have turned into zombies, as well as the animal experiments, which have turned into shape-shifting monsters withno skin. Plus the Red Queen wants to kill them so they don't infect the outside world.

The Guy from Ugly Betty is looking for his sister, not his girlfriend, which is a nice touch.  But I'm sure it's just so he can eventually knock boots with Hot Girl.

Fight, fight, fight, predator monster from Alien, bullets traveling in slow motion,  "But I shot him!  How can he still be alive?", the gang killed one by one.

They try to get an anti-virus, but the Red Queen doesn't want them to have it,

Fight fight fight, they all die except Hot Girl and The Guy.  Then representatives of the evil corporation show up, take The Guy away, strap Hot Girl to a table, and die. She awakens later to find all of Raccoon City -- sorry, that name is just so ridiculous that I have to laugh everytime I hear it.   Anyway, you know what she finds.

So let's get on to the beefcake.  You deserve some.

1. Eric Mabius, The Guy from Ugly Betty (top photo) as Matt, an anti-corporate activist working under cover as a Raccoon City cop.  He survives long enough to be captured and dragged off by evil corporate types, maybe to re-appear in the sequel.

2. James Purefoy, The Guy from Altered Carbon (second photo) as Spence. He's actually a security operative at the Hive who tried to steal the virus and sell it to an evil company as a weapon of mass destruction.  He gets eaten by a monster, and turns into a monster himself.

3. Martin Crewes (third photo) as Chad, a computer technician who dies when a monster kicks him out of the train that leads from the mansion to the Hive.

4. Colin Salmon (left) as Shade, who gets sliced to pieces by a laser.

5, Ryan McCluskey as Mr Grey, a nebbish corporate suit who gets coffee splashed on him before the Red Queen traps him in an elevator for an extended death scene.

6. Oscar Pearce as Mr. Green.  I don't remember how he dies.

7.-9. Dr.s Blue, Brown, and White (Joseph May, left, Robert Tannion, and Stephen Billington), technicians who are killed when the Red Queen uses the sprinkler system to flood their lab.  Apparently it's water-tight.

10. Pasquale Aleardi as J.D. Salinas, the commander of the Hive security team.  He gets eaten by a zombie.

My favorite: Ryan McCluskey.  He looks like he'd be fun on a date.

"Undone": If I See One More Chicken-Peck Kiss....

"Stunning!"  "Entrancing" "You've never seen anything quite like this!"  "A masterpiece!"

Reviews like this usually mean "it's about heterosexual romance."

So I resist Amazon Prime's animated series Undone,even though the premise sounds interesting: After an accident, a young woman gets the ability to change reality.

But I get the spiel every single time I go on the Amazon website, "Watch this!  It's the most compelling television ever!  It's the greatst work of art of all time!  Shakespeare pales in comparison!  On your deathbed, you will recall this tv series as the most wonderful experience of your life!"

The curiosity gets the better of me.  I cautiously tune in.

Scene 1: Alma (Rosa Salazar) is driving through a big city, crying, her eye shadow running.  The animation is so realistic that we could easily be looking at real people; why even bother to animate it?

Suddenly she sees the world dissolving into blackness.  Then she's hit by a truck, spins out, and crashes into a telephone pole.

Scene 2:  Doing her daily routine, Alma narrates that she's "bored with living."  Every day she wakss up next to the same person, eats the same breakfast, works at the same job, and then compares two cans of beans at the supermarket.

If you don't like your boyfriend, your cereal, or your job, just get new ones and stop whining.

Scene 3: Alma is complaining to her sister about how "everything is pointless."  Sis just got engaged to Reed Hollingsworth (stupid made-up rich person's name!).  Alma doesn't like him because his parents are rude and racist (big deal -- so are mine).  She also disapproves of Sis getting married while their Dad is dead. So...never?

Scene 4: Alma goes home to her hot boyfriend (Siddharth Dhanajay, top photo) and kisses him like a chicken. Peck, peck, peck, peck, peck!  Nauseating!  Then they swallow each other's faces.  She discusses how she doesn't want to get married or settle down.  Then they peck, peck, peck some more. Disgusting!  Fast forward...

Scene 5: Morning routine, then off to her job at the daycare center for meaningless interactions with the kids and Hot Coworker (Daveed Diggs, left).  I have to admit, this is boring, Could Hot Coworker at least take his shirt off?.

Scene 6: Morning routine, then to Mom's house to prepare for Sister's engagement dinner.  Tbey discuss Dad's death, 20 years ago, and how Alma never knew that he smoked!.

It's been 20 years, and Alma still disapproves of her sister getting married? Get on with your life, already!

Scene 7: Fancy restaurant where Boyfriend works as a waiter who gets paged.  Alma is upset that Mom is hiding horrible secrets, like Dad smoking, so Boyfriend tells about his mother's abusive first husband.  In other words, "Stop whining!"

They discuss their relationship, then chicken-peck-kiss.  I swear, one more chicken peck and I am turning this off, blog post or not.

Scene 8:  The engagement dinner.  Mom criticizes Alma and kisses Boyfriend (finally, a name!  Sam!).  Reed (Kevin Bigley, left) discusses how much he loves Sister (another name!  Becca!).  Alma sneers.

When are we going to get to the changing reality? You know, the interesting stuff?

Scene 9: Morning routine.  Alma asks "Do you ever feel like you're in a play, and everyone is just playing a role?"

Yep, that's classic solipsism.  Everybody gets it when they're around 16. You're 28 -- get over it.

Scene 10:  At an empty dive bar, Alma tells Becca that she broke up with Sam because she's afraid that she's going to become schizophrenic. Becca thinks she realized that Sam wasn't good enough for her.  The hot bartender flirtts with them.

Scene 11: At Alma's house.  Apparently they have invited Hot Bartender home for a three-way.  While he and Becca kiss,Alma throws up in the bathroom.

I don't get it, but at least Hot Bartender shows us his chest.

Scene 12:  Church.  Hot Priest (Tyler Posey) is talking about something boring.

Becca blames Alma for the hookup last night: "You wanted to destroy something because it wasn't yours! You're broken!!  You don't even know all the things that are wrong with you!"

Um...just tell your finacee=.  Maybe he'd like a three way with the Hot Bartender, too.  Heterosexuals make things so complicated!.

Scene 13: The accident from Scene 1, only this time Alma sees her dead father congealing out of the ooze,

Beefcake:  two guys with their shirts off.

Other interesting sights: No.

Gay characters: No.

Chicken-Peck Kisses: 15.

Whining:  Incessant.

Heterosexism:  Oh Lord, take me now!