Well, it's Labor Day and with it we officially celebrate (or curse wildly while throwing things around the room in rage) the end of the summer season.  The lazy days are over as we prepare for another year of toil and depression.  Labor Day also marks the end of the summer movie season and what a season it was.  One long, crappy run of failed action movies, boring romantic comedies, one ground-breaking flick about dreams, another fantastic story about toys and a little of something of everything else in between. 

This summer movie season was less than spectacular, but not without its winners.  Similarly, The Rotten Watch had an up and down summer.  There were some clear victories and some stunning losses, but overall it was a good run.  Before we recap the summer that was, let's take a look at what this rotten week has to offer.

Resident Evil: Afterlife On the Rotten Watch we talk a lot about trends. One great way to predict critical consensus for a movie is to look at how directors, actors, or in the case of Resident Evil: Afterlife, other movies in the franchise have performed along the way. For the newest addition to the story of Alice and the Umbrella Corporation, the past hasn't been any great shakes. Resident Evil started the run with a 34%. Then we got Resident Evil: Apocalypse (21%) and Resident Evil: Extinction (22%). That is probably all of the information we need to make an accurate prediction on how the newest movie in the series will perform. But that's not all we do here. We explore deeper. Consider this article that discusses the biggest winner and losers from this year's Comic Con (guess which one Resident Evil was and then scroll down three quarters of the article). My favorite part is when they describe a scene from the movie as "laughably bad." So things aren't looking great for this new installment. But then let's dig a little deeper into the potential suckitude of Afterlife. As of this article posting, Sony had no plans to pre-screen the film for the press. What does that mean you ask? Typically it means the movie is so epically terrible that the studio doesn't want anyone with access to any sort of reader base seeing the movie before it hits the theaters. Sony Pictures (who own Screen Gems) most likely knows they've got a dud on their hands. This, my friends, is a pretty bad sign. And finally, let's take a look at the director too, because this guy is so bad he deserves at least a mention (or a paragraph). Paul W.S. Anderson is one of those directors who, what's the word I'm looking for? Oh yeah, sucks. This guy has such an epically bad critical track record that I wonder how he sleeps at night. My guess is he just dreams of new bad movies to direct. Consider his latest films Death Race (41%), AVP - Alien Vs. Predator (22%) and Soldier (10%). And throw in the the first Resident Evil movie I mentioned before and you have a resume that reads like a second grader wrote it for you. Afterlife will make its money though. These films are always good for crushing the box office (close to $400 million worldwide for the whole series, yikes), but we pretty much know what we're getting with this new flick. The Rotten Watch for Resident Evil: Afterlife is 18%.

Poll Where do you think Resident Evil: Afterlife will end up on the Tomatometer? 90 - 100 % 80 - 89 % 70 - 79 % 60 - 69 % 50 - 59 % 40 - 49 % 30 - 39 % 20 - 29 % 10 - 19 % 0 - 9 %   Results

Recapping the Summer

The Rotten Watch looked at thirty-eight movies this summer and for the most part these films fell in line with our predictions.  Of the thirty-eight, seventeen I predicted within ten percent. That, my friends, is other-worldly.  Some of the closest calls were Inception (Predicted: 92 Actual: 87), Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World (Predicted: 77 Actual: 81), Lottery Ticket (Predicted: 37 Actual: 32), Last Exorcism (Predicted: 68 Actual: 69), Splice (Predicted: 72 Actual: 74), and last week's Machete ((Predicted: 71 Actual: 73).  There were others in the "very freaking close" range like Toy Story and Vampires Suck but it really didn't take a genius to figure out those two movies would land on the complete opposite ends of the respective scale.  Scoring almost half the movies within ten percent has this writer feeling pretty damn good. That said,  it leaves just enough room for improvement that I'll still be able to get my inflated head through standard doorways.

Additionally, of the thirty-eight flicks, I had another eight within twenty percent.  These were mostly in the - I Had The Right Idea, But Just Expected Too Much - category like Despicable Me ((Predicted: 93 Actual: 79), Ramona and Beezus (Predicted: 55 Actual: 74), Knight and Day (Predicted: 66 Actual: 53) and Takers (Predicted: 39 Actual: 26).

And finally we had the clear epic failures.  The disaster losses were few and far between, but nevertheless still go on my resume.  These were the movies where I just missed badly, thinking they would be good and clearly sucked, or vice versa.  There are four of these of note.  In the case of Charlie St. Cloud (Predicted: 53 Actual: 27) and Eat, Pray, Love (Predicted: 73 Actual 38) I just let the trailers sway me too much and didn't see some of the writing on the wall that they'd have critics panning the crap out of them.  Conversely, Twilight (Predicted: 23 Actual: 52) was actually my biggest surprise considering it vastly outperformed any other movies in the franchise which is a decidedly rare feat.   And finally, Piranhas: 3D (Predicted: 18 Actual 75) is my biggest loss in the history of the column. Oops. 

It was a pretty ho-hum summer for movies, but a good one for the Rotten Watch.  I'm looking forward to getting into the fall season starting next week when we get animated wolves, Emma Stone as a modern day Hester Prynne, M Knight trapping people in an elevator and Ben Affleck robbing banks.  It's going to be a Rotten Week!