The Ned and Daron Report: We Went to a Movie

A lot of people I've met think that the word jazz has something to do with music. In fact, so many people think so that it's almost becoming true. But it doesn't mean that. Not really. Here's an example of the word used in its more general, more correct context: "Me and Daron was playing some video games the other day when Nadauld came over. He stood there for a while saying a bunch of fake jazz to us about how he used to write some of the best cartridges for Coleco back in the 80's, then I cooked some lunch in the Hot Diggity Dogger while he wrestled Daron for forty minutes."

From the example you can see that the meaning of "jazz" is basically just "garbage." More precisely though, it means "nonsensical garbage that a person makes up on the spot for the sole purpose of making himself look cool." This explains how musical jazz got its name. This magazine is named fakejazz. As you can deduce from the example above, the term "fake jazz" roughly means "a bunch of lies a person tells to make himself look cool, but that fail to do so, and that instead end up making him look like a complete dork."

So, when we say "jazz" and more specifically "fake jazz" we don't actually have to be saying anything about music. But, when we first decided to start a magazine with that name, we decided to focus mostly on reviewing music, mainly because we couldn't think of any other endeavor that more perfectly resembles "fake jazz" as I've described it above. But fakejazz is not, nor has it ever been, specifically a music "zine," anymore than jazz has ever been specifically a form of music.

I wanted to explain all of this to you because now Daron and I want to tell you about the new movie Resident Evil, which was not a piece of music (although it had a lot of good music in it).

Resident Evil Pt. 1

I was so excited to go to Resident Evil that my two housemates and I decided to go right after work, at the earliest showing (5:45 PM). We knew it had to be good. Why wouldn't it since it stars Milla Jovovich and is based on a video game? What else could someone want from a film?

For those less familiar with movies and TV, Milla Jovovich is a professional fashion model and musician as well as an actress. Milla's first movie, 1991's Return to the Blue Lagoon, was a shockingly risqué action/incest-romance/drama with Corey Haim, which received rave reviews, and introduced Milla to the Hollywood elite. Soon flooded with scripts, Milla finally settled on 1992's hit action/comedy Kuffs with Christian Slater. Milla plays the pregnant girlfriend of a scrappy high school dropout who goes to California to work with his brother's security team (this is in a time when police don't exist anymore, and private security companies have taken the job). When his brother dies, the young man takes over the unit (to the chagrin of the employees)... but don't worry, it all works out in the end. Anyway, once again, she was slathered in compliments, praise, and scripts.

Though inundated with scripts on a daily basis, Milla has spent the last 9 years focusing more on her music and her modeling while looking for the perfect script to follow her amazing two picture run. We are lucky enough to be living in a time when she decided to make her third, best, and possibly final film, Resident Evil.

Resident Evil Pt. 2

Okay, it's true that since making Kuffs, Milla's done a few things besides just modeling and singing songs. She had roles in movies like The Fifth Element and Zoolander, and she's been going to 7-11 some as well. Once I wanted to get a Slurpee at the 7-11 near the Park LaBrea apartments in Los Angeles. When I went into the store, a young woman was coming out. I'm polite, so I held the door for her so that she wouldn't have to push it open with her butt. She had delicious snacks in both hands. She was Milla. After seeing Resident Evil, I now know that she was capable of physical feats of strength and skill much more difficult than simply opening a door with a hot dog in her hand, but more on that later. Suffice to say I was smashed in half by having seen the Ukranian born super beauty in person, and I felt like I'd made a friend for life. So, like Daron, I was excited to rush out early to see Resident Evil, not just because I thought it would be good, but also to once again be polite to my friend Milla.

Resident Evil Pt. 3

So anyway, just like the video game (I assume), the movie starts off by explaining that the Umbrella Corporation, ironically an umbrella corporation owning a lot of smaller companies like McDonalds, the Gap, Playgirl, Jolly Ranchers, etc., actually made most of its money from military and genetic testing, and that this genetic and military testing was done in its super secret underground labs. Oh, and that the security system and operating system for the super secret underground lab is not only artificial intelligence, but that it is also intense, cruel, and creepy (in one scene it enjoyed tempting a woman to slide her head out the elevator door, and then it tortured her by pretending that it was going to smash her head against the ceiling... then it really did smash her head against the ceiling and floor).

Anyway, while I think it is really important to have a creepy, secret, and totally "in your face" A.I. security system if you are going to be running a super secret underground military/genetic testing lab, I didn't really see the point in the system having to be so cruel.

Resident Evil Pt. 4

But sometimes we don't get to see all of the reasons for life's hardships, we just have to have faith that things happen for a purpose. For example, if your super secret artificial intelligence security system happened to decide that your death should be by elevator-induced decapitation instead of some other cause (like inhalation of poisonous gas or just the natural consequence of the zombifying super virus you'd already been exposed too, by the way) I'm sure you wouldn't spend a lot of time worrying about it. You'd probably just blow it off—"ha ha!" you might laugh to yourself. "That's just one of life's little mysteries!"

That's the way it was when I first met Milla, too. I was like, "Hey, how come she didn't ask me out, or at least ask if I wanted to share a bite of her jumbo cheddar-wurst?" I was pretty surprised and a little bit bewildered. Weird as it was, though, I didn't stew about it for very long. In fact, in the time it took for her super-jumbo black Cadillac Escalade to disappear around the corner, I'd completely forgotten about her unpredictable behavior. I was way too busy fantasizing about how great it would be to gnaw on her dead skull to waste any more time worrying about how I'd missed my chance for true love.

No, I'm just kidding. I didn't really think about eating Milla's dead flesh. I'm just trying to make a point about life, which is this: Sometimes discouraging things (like dying in an elevator or being rejected by Milla) happen that you just can't explain. And when they do, the best way to get over your disappointment is to stop thinking about the unlucky world and cruel fate and the malevolent will of God and the omnipotence of evil computers. Focus on what's inside your own heart, think about yourself and your own needs. Let your instincts take over. Your most basic, animal, brain stem instincts. So that basically just means eat a bunch of people.

Resident Evil Pt. 5

Whoa, it sounds like you and Milla almost were going steady. That would be great. Besides the obvious benefits of going steady with Milla (cuddling, holding hands, getting invited to movie premieres, and meeting Corey Haim), you could totally have her help you with acting tips. With someone like Milla helping me out, I bet that I could become the next Rutger Hauer or that guy on that TV show Tracker, who used to be that guy on that TV show The Highlander, who looks like that guy from Forever Knight, but isn't that guy, or maybe even Casper Van Dien (just kidding, he is too good looking).

If I could start going steady with Milla, then I would be sort of like that guy in Resident Evil who was in a pretend marriage with her so that they could live in a big house and protect the entrance to the secret labs... even though the whole time she was trying to bring down the Umbrella Corporation, and the whole time it was actually her faux beau who was causing all the death and mayhem in the secret labs, turning everyone into zombies and everything. AND, he just did that all for his own financial benefit. Never once did he think to do it for Milla's benefit. In fact, he even tries to hurt Milla. Why would someone do that? I would never do that. If I was married to Milla I would never plan on hurting her. I would mainly just be hanging out with her band and going to a lot of fashion shoots. I would probably have to quit my job since we would be traveling a lot, and I would probably be helping her out with stuff like tuning her guitar or playing the piano while she practiced singing, or helping her practice walking smoothly for an upcoming fashion show. One thing I would probably never do is kill a lot of people and make them turn into zombies.

Resident Evil Pt. 6

You wouldn't want to get Milla mad or sad at you because she's so amazing and one of a kind. She has a soul as intense and flaming as a laser diamond beam cutting through a thousand years of smoke from the burning of human remains, and it lives in a body as lithe as a spider and as deadly as an awesome spider. She can jump, she can turn around in mid-air, she can kick out her foot from her hip like a B-B out of a gun, boom. She can make air go whizzing around her hands, but it's not because the air is moving, it's because her hands are moving really fast, zoom zoom. Then she can pull herself up into tight crawlspaces and zip along in them like some kind of ultra sexy sewer rat, and she can kill... you. Or zombies. Yeah, she can kill zombies with her hands or with a gun or with her flying deadly feet. Forget about escaping from them, man, you won't.

One thing: Milla shows off many physical talents and capabilities between the ends of Resident Evil. Something she never does is sing a song. I don't think she even contributed a song to the soundtrack. Why not? The movie was pretty scary and got a bit heavy and intense from time to time what with all the killing and slicing up and chewing on of human bodies. I would have liked to see some kind of rousing, spirit-lifting choreographed zombie/human song and dance. I understand that writer/director/auteur Paul Anderson's goal was to create an ultra-realistic alternate universe of horror, but this is not an excuse. What? Are we living in the 60's? Is realism everything? Excuse me if I put on my "film critic" hat for a moment here, but it seems to me that Anderson missed out on a great opportunity to move away from the awesomenist film movement of the late 90's to create possibly the first true post-awesomenist film of all time. What the fa?

Resident Evil Pt. 7

I understand your desire to see a Milla/Zombie dance routine. There is no sugar or artificial sweetener in the whole world that could ever be that sweet (not even sugar). However, I feel that as great as he wanted to make Resident Evil, Paul Anderson wanted to avoid the pitfalls of some of his other movies. For example, in Magnolia when he had Tom Cruise, John C. Reilly, Julianne Moore, and Philip Seymour Hoffman, etc., all singing the same song at the same time, or in Mortal Kombat when Shang Tsung, Lord Rayden, Sub-Zero, and Johnny Cage were all line dancing to the Mortal Kombat theme song. Those two scenes are both so amazing that when Anderson tried to write their sequels they just had too much to live up to. I mean, what can beat line dancing karate fighters? Would you rather that Resident Evil only have one part (like Magnolia or Mortal Kombat), or would you rather that Anderson left some tricks up his sleeve so that he could make Resident Evil 2, the best movie known to man? Personally, I think it was a wise move on Anderson's part to leave the Zombie/Milla dance number for the second movie. I am imagining the dance moves he is going to use, in my mind, and they are so amazing. Anderson is nothing short of a genius.

Well anyway, Resident Evil totally "kicks it," and I totally can't wait for the sequel. It is supreme hard-rock-kickin' x 10. However, as much as I LOVE Resident Evil, I can't honestly say that it's the best movie I have see lately. That isn't it's own fault though, and there is no doubt in my mind that it is a great, great film. But, with competition like Crossroads, where Britney claims she's "touched one," and her friends ignore their problems to help her as backup singers, A Walk To Remember, where Mandy Moore is totally hott and is a totally righteous girl who helps a troubled teen to change his bad boy ways and helps him fall in love and marry her, and The Time Machine, where we learn all we need to know about the future and how in the future we can find true love in about one day as long as we can avoid the monkey men and the destruction of the moon... there have just been too many really great movies recently released to warrant it being called my #1 film. However, even though it isn't my #1 film, it is definitely my #1 Milla Jovovich video game film of 2002 so far.

Resident Evil Pt. 8

It's interesting observing Anderson's progression as a filmmaker. He really has two very distinct sides, and it's hard (for me) not to think and wonder about this schism while watching his movies. Let's compare a movie like Boogie Nights to something like Event Horizon. Clearly the themes are nearly identical—the main character, a natural outsider, leaves the normal world behind to journey far into the blackness of outer space or porn where his very survival depends on a small "family" of flawed people who share his profession (although they each have their own specialized duties within the group), in a series of compromises the line between good and evil is blurred but eventually the main character finds out who he really is and finds a home. But the way of presenting these two essentially identical stories is almost completely divergent. Event Horizon is an almost perfect example of awesomenism in film making, while Boogie Nights is something else entirely. To be honest I don't really know what it is. But I do know that eventually, in order to finally find success as a filmmaker and a human being, Anderson will have to merge the two sides of his personality and become whole. I hoped he would do it in Resident Evil. But since he didn't, all I can say is that I hope he'll do it soon, and if we're lucky maybe it will be in RE2.

Despite its small flaws, I liked Resident Evil a lot. Milla and her castmates did a great job killing and getting killed by the zombies, the music was totally humping, the editing was in my face, and there were giant CGI monsters (I usually prefer giant CGI devils in the movies, but these were okay.) All in all a top-notch, exciting flick, and I give it a 3/12.