Hollywood has little clue what to do with Jackie Chan. Their ideas boil down to: a) pair him with a wacky black guy, and b) surround him with special effects. The first one works; the second one never will. There’s no point in hiring the world’s most renowned kung-fu acrobatic clown and dressing him up with lots of wires and CGI; if you’re going to do that, you might as well get, say, Tim Kazurinsky.

In the FX-laden crapfest The Medallion, Chan is a Hong Kong security specialist named Eddie, working with American Interpol agents to track down Julian Sands, obsessed with getting this medallion from a mystical Asian boy. It ends up in Chan’s nimble hands, but he gets killed in the process, but yet is revived by its supernatural powers. So now he can jump real high and fly like Superman. It’s lazy and uninspired, not to mention inane and embarrassing, like the montage of him dancing to “Twist and Shout.”

Normally, bad Chan scripts can be made bearable by the ad-libbing of a crazy partner. But Lee Evans is no Chris Tucker or Owen Wilson. As a most unlikely love interest is Claire Forlani, so bad you’ll be praying for the relative grace and panache of The Tuxedo’s Jennifer Love Hewitt. Not even the outtakes that play during the end credits are any good, although it is worth noting that it contains the third instance of Chan being interrupted by a cell phone (first spotted in the bloopers for Rush Hour 2 and Shanghai Knights).

But that’s about all worth noting for this film, Chan’s absolute worst since breaking through on these shores in ’96. Even as a big Chan fan, I can safely say to avoid The Medallion at all costs. —Rod Lott

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“You know what the problem with Hollywood is?” asks John Travolta at the beginning of Swordfish. “They make shit. Unremarkable, unbelievable shit.” The same could apply to this slick, brainless action-porn from Joel Silver and Dominic Sena (Gone in 60 Seconds) that manages to be merely mildly entertaining.

X-Men’s Hugh Jackman is the true star, playing a world-renowned hacker fresh off serving an 18-month prison term for his electronic crimes. Despite orders never to touch a computer again, he is drafted by slimy rich guy Travolta into cracking a few codes in exchange for money he can use to reunited with his estranged daughter. It’s a move he’ll soon regret, as the FBI is soon on his ass, while Travolta reveals himself to be a deluded terrorist wishing to embezzle $9 billion from secret DEA accounts with Jackman’s expertise.

For every good scene in Swordfish, there’s a terrible one. The opening city-block explosion shown in some sort of 360˚ bullet-time is a stunner; paradoxically, having Jackman forced to infiltrate a Department of Defense at gunpoint in 60 seconds while he’s receiving a blowjob is a howler.

Halle Berry’s bared breasts are nice; the montage of Jackman unconvincingly hacking away is not. Don Cheadle livens up every scene he’s in; Travolta — in another laughably miscast role — kills every one he’s in. It’s almost like the film is its own love/hate relationship. Seeing a school bus airlifted by a helicopter in the finale is absurd, but hey, ‘splosions a-plenty, amIright? —Rod Lott

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After being absent from the Resident Evil franchise director’s chair since the 2002 original, Paul W.S. Anderson returned for the fourth, Resident Evil: Afterlife, the first in 3-D. It’s a definite improvement over Apocalypse and Extinction, but still well below the sheer coolness factor of the first.

One problem is that Anderson has overestimated viewers’ previous knowledge of the franchise mythos. I’ve tried to wipe my mind of the awfulness that was Extinction, so while I was wowed at Afterlife‘s opening sequence of numerous Milla Jovoviches — Jovovi? — laying waste to the Umbrella Corporation’s underground Tokyo headquarters, I was lost as to why and how she had all these clones.

The film is more of the same, with Alice (Jovovich) defying gravity and kicking ass, saving friends from the occasional threat of zombies with mouths that open to reveal vagina dentata thingies. Here, she reunites with her Extinction pals, including lithe Ali Larter, hiding atop a big tower. Wentworth Miller is there in a cage, which is kinda funny considering he spent four years breaking out of them on TV’s Prison Break. (You’re right, it’s not funny.) There’s also Asian Guy, Sleazy Producer, Bald Tuffie, Hot Brunette, Not Scout Taylor-Compton and Evil Sunglasses Guy Who Shops at Big & Tall & Matrixy.

And don’t forget the zombie Dobermans! It’s weird how everyone in this movie responds to being shot at the same way: doing a backflip. It’s so predictable, that I’d just fake a straight shot and then aim high. Then the series would be over. I was excited that sexy Sienna Guillory was returning as Jill Valentine from Apocalypse, but she gets one scene, and it’s buried in the end credits. Oh, well, Resident Evil: Whatever 5 Will Be Called, perhaps. —Rod Lott

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No one makes low-budget genre fare better than producer Roger Corman. Be it sea creatures in rubber suits or slimy alien rapist worms, Corman can (and usually does) deliver the goods. But what happens when he tries to, you know, get serious? What happens when he tries to make an “issue” movie? If Fire on the Amazon is any indication, I’d love to see his version of An Inconvenient Truth.

Yep, Fire on the Amazon is a movie about the devastation of the rainforests and one man’s fight to stop it. Of course, when that man happens to be the ridiculously coiffed Craig Sheffer, looking like he came straight from a grunge-era Playgirl photo shoot, the results will be nothing more than ineffectually comedic. He’s a nosy “photojournalist,” but I’d like to see his press credentials and, no, your blog doesn’t count, Craig.

If following this clown around Bolivia weren’t enough — and believe me, it is — Amazon also happens to be one of the earliest films to star Sandra Bullock, and, true to Corman form, she has a sex scene. While this may be a cream-dream come true for her fans, director Luis Llosa brings the same clinically erotic eye to lovemaking that he did with Sylvester Stallone, Sharon Stone and a bathroom floor in The Specialist. (I’m actually worried that Llosa has never been with a woman. We should all pitch in and get him a hooker!)

Does the rainforest get saved? No, of course not. But Bullock does get many long-winded speeches about displaced native peoples that actually made me almost want to do something. Almost. So I guess it was successful in that respect. —Louis Fowler

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Oh, man, where to begin? Martin and Michael McNamara are twins and founders of the real-life Twin Dragons Kung Fu Club. Despite looking like a godforsaken mix of Yanni, Chuck Norris, Robert Reed, Kenny Loggins, Geraldo Rivera and that guy who played Matt Houston, they decided they needed to be in the movies. But because there’s no market for goofy-looking Canadian boneheads who do karate, they had to make their own. One of them is Twin Dragon Encounter — a too-close Encounter of the unkind.

The brothers basically play themselves (which makes me feel sorry for anyone who has to live and/or interact with them) and they’re quite full of themselves, as an opening credit crawl informs us that they are “the country’s most renowned martial artists,” yet every Canadian I’ve asked has never heard of them. Cue the pure-‘80s hair-rock theme song (“Fight for Your Right to Fight,” by one Billy Butt) and montage of shirtless men exercising and hitting each other playfully like kittens.

After this brutal, near-endless workout, the brothers pack their identical vans to go “on holiday” with their nondescript rail-thin girlfriends, whom they delight in kicking around and putting down at every opportunity. Following several insufferable driving sequences, they finally arrive at “Twin Island,” the boys’ own slice o’ paradise on the lake. At the dock, however, they’re immediately menaced by a gang of “weekend warriors,” whom they take down in a ridiculous slow-motion fight.

These bad guys — led by a cigar-chomping near-albino with huge facial pores and a Mohawk — vow revenge and spend the weekend plotting to harass the McNamaras, who are too busy sawing and chopping firewood in the middle of summer and ignoring their beards to notice. But when the bad guys bust in their cabin and take the girls, the twins plot revenge. One has to question their motives, as when they enter their dishelveled cabin, the first thing they say is a panicked “Our poster’s gone!” Girls schmirls!

These McNamara boys fail cinematically, so I wouldn’t hesitate for a second to watch anything they produce. —Rod Lott

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