Video Game Movies: Checkpoint!

I am halfway through my massive Video Game movie watch-a-thon! While I burn my way through the rest, here's my thoughts on every movie so far!

• Super Mario Bros: The Great Mission To Rescue Princess Peach (1986) - A charming old school anime, with a surprising amount of consistency with current lore considering they had only made Mario 1 & Lost Levels at the time
• Super Mario Bros (1993) - It could have served as a perfectly fine kid-friendly cyberpunk adventure, but the Mario references feel tacked on and so tonally off, it drags the whole thing down
• Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie (1994) - I just can’t knock this, it’s too awesome. Sure the plot is messy and characters are 2 dimensional caricatures, but it hardly matters. It’s superbly animated and atmospheric with some amazing fights and set pieces. It’s just a great action film.
• Double Dragon (1994) - It's goofy and camp, but I can't help but find it fun. Plus excellent set design, environments and explosions.
• Street Fighter (1994) - A mostly dull and sanitised action film that obsessively pro-military and anti-diplomacy. Its Team America without the irony. Its only saving grace is some corny gags (mostly Zangief) and of course Raul Julia's final movie performance is an utter joy to watch.
• Mortal Kombat: The Journey Begins (1995) - Clearly a super cheap tie in for the movie
• Mortal Kombat (1995) - The first sincere attempt at an adaptation that treats it’s source material more seriously. This adds a welcome sincerity, with some fun fights, but struggles with a slower pace, some ropey vfx and a PG take on the violent franchise.
• Sonic The Hedgehog OVA (1996) - A very early version of an animated and fully voiced Sonic. The plot doesn’t make any sense and the dialogue is corny but it’s still fun with some awesome action and incredible music.
• Mortal Kombat: Annihilation (1997) - A bloated mess. They tried to up the ante by having more characters and fights, but at the cost of story, stakes and gravitas. 
• Tekken: The Motion Picture (1998) - A totally confusing story with flat characters. There was real potential here but with its mild gore, ensemble of characters and multiple fights, it lacks all impact and worst of all - its boring.
• Wing Commander (1999) - A star wars no one cares about. It’s more content overloading you with deep lore explained to you with a heavy hand and never actually show you, creating such an emotional disconnect, it’s impossible to know or even care about actual stakes. We don’t even meet the villains until the last half hour of the movie and even then it’s just to be laser-gun-fodder. Matthew Lillard’s charm is the only saving grace.
• Pokemon: The First Movie (1999) - On the one hand I can see this being a tough watch if you know nothing at all about Pokemon, as it does little to explain to newcomers, at times feeling more like a feature length episode of the TV show. On the other hand, there's a bold display of emotion here and it's unafraid to use it. When Pokemon fight it doesn't feel fun, it feels sad, and it does not let up. Sure, the revival tears part is a bit goofy, but the build up to it feels heavy and compelling like a tragedy, which makes for a delightful surprise
• Pokémon: The Movie 2000 (2000) - Sadly a big drop from the heights of the first movie. A lot of waffle about being a chosen one and only you can do it, but it all amounts to “get to island and get ball” with no real challenge of character. Team Rocket have a better arc than anything else and even that’s played for laughs. Despite some cool visuals, it’s just a waste of time.
• Digimon: The Movie (2000) - A total mish-mash of other Digimon short films thrown together and hacked apart to be one movie. There's a saying in writing: If you want to turn a dog into a cat, you can cut its ears, change its face, rearrange its whole body, but you will still not have cat. Just a fucked up dog. This movie is a fucked up dog.
• Pokémon 3: The Movie (2001) - An improvement over the second film with a much more interesting premise but doesn’t reach the impactful emotional heights of the first. It seemed too afraid to push the premise to more compelling limits, settling for a fine and safe middleground. 
• Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001) - A perfect casting choice and a nice variety of locations and set pieces, with action, suspense and a cool 2000s attitude. But it takes so long to get going, it's easy to tune out. A lot of time is dedicated to explaining its story and it still doesn't fully make sense. Fun in places but it's a slog to get to them.
• Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (2001) - I can appreciate the technological breakthrough of vfx for the time, even if nowerdays it looks like a PS4 cutscene, but even then it adds literally nothing other than soulless and wooden characters. Especially for such a spiritually heavy film, the performances lack the emotion to carry it. Ultimately it boils down to a mix of technobabble and spirit-waffle with no engaging hook.
• Pokémon 4Ever (2002) - It still doesn’t do much to be anything other than an extended TV episode, but at least does a better job introducing Pokemon if you come into this new. There’s efforts made to express the magic and majesty of Pokemon, including an attempt to add emotional weight absent since the first film, but it all feels a bit too artificial.
• Resident Evil (2002) - Half a gripping and suspenseful zombie horror, and half a high-octane and sometimes ridiculous action flick which undercuts the tension. The escalating stakes of the Resident Evil formula suits a movie perfectly, and the result is a lot of fun!
• Lara Croft: Tomb Raider – The Cradle of Life (2003) - It manages to cut to the chase much sooner for a generally more exciting movie, but Lara just seems able to move from moment to moment with such ease, from pole vaulting onto a helicopter to skydiving off a skyscraper, its hard to really feel like she's ever in real peril.
• House Of The Dead (2003) - Baffling. A corny zombie action film is forgivable in an irony-watch kinda way, but has some absurd direction choices like gimmicky wipes, bullet time spins and clips from the arcade shooter constantly worked into the film itself which ruins any suspension of disbelief. This might have worked in the 80s or 90s, but for 2003 this is just baffling.
• Resident Evil: Apocalypse (2004) - While the first film undercut its elements of suspension with action beats that were at least fun and silly, this is all the action beats with none of the suspension, and only really fleeting moments of the "fun and silly" elements. A competent film, with a clear mission, but doesn't improve upon the first movie.
• Alone In The Dark (2005) - Tries to mix together making a horror movie with an action movie with Tomb Raider style ancient artifact type guff, but doesn’t succeed at any of them. There’s a constant failure to build tension or gradually escalate the situation, with stuff happening at random times. Plus, no matter how much they tried to overexplain the plot, I still didn’t understand and therefore care what the hell was going on.
• Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children (2005) - I'm sure this is an epilogue that pleases the fans, but as a standalone piece it's very hard to follow (although I got the general jist). When it isn't dull moping around, its completely over the top fights. Brandon Sanderson once proposed the Laws Of Magic, which amongst other things suggests that limitations makes magic greater. And here, given they can literally flip in the air, jump off motorbikes and slice up buildings, it felt limitless and therefore I felt nothing.
• Doom (2005) - It's a pretty fun action romp once it finally gets going, but it's largely bland and by-the-numbers, with little to make it stand out against any other zombie action movie. I mean, it's literally about monsters in space and it felt like a lesser Resident Evil rather than Alien.
• Bloodrayne (2006) - The story of a half-human/half-vampire sworn to kill her father just fumbles along, dull and without any emotion. Character arcs just seem to happen either off screen or we’re told about it afterwards. It’s like the film is too impatient to let the characters feel anything before we’re onto the next confusing sword fight or senseless set-piece. 
• Silent Hill (2006) - Visually, this is amazing. It manages to conjure a mysterious and horrifying atmosphere, keeping you in constant state of unease. But as with most horrors, the more it’s explained the less scary it is, and it all ultimately boils down to vague occult stuff vs gore which begins to overstay its welcome. However, overall, this is a creepy treat!
• DOA: Dead or Alive (2006) - Taking multiple pages out of the Charlie's Angels book, this is a totally daffy martial arts + babes movie that can be fun in the moments they don't take giant leaps in logic. They didn't try to be smart, but I kinda wished they did.
• Resident Evil: Extinction (2007) - Whilst it had a few really cool moments, the story felt as barren as the desert it was set in. Took too long to finally get going, Alice is too OP and it squandered opportunities for more interesting set pieces within its own setting. 
• Elf Bowling (2007) - Why does this movie exist?
• Postal (2007) - Attempts at political satire just come across as witless, tasteless, and immensely boring. It has nothing to offer other than shock value which has aged incredibly poorly, but somehow this is still one of Uwe Boll's better movies.
• Hitman (2007) - An average spy action thriller. Nothing new or special, and it's played way too dry to be much fun, but overall its fine.