Change Your Image
fortey
This all ended in 1989 when I killed Boxcar with a sharpened spoon during a disagreement over some yogurt covered raisins.
Afterwards I took up needlepoint and made a decent living selling crocheted panties to retirees.
Lately I've taken up drug abuse and alcoholism.
Ratings
Most Recently Rated
Reviews
X-Men: The Last Stand (2006)
Blah
Everyone knows this was a weak movie. But why? Why so weak? I have some ideas...
Behold the end of the film, when the utterly useless character Angel, who was put in the movie for no conceivable reason, shows up to save his father. He flies in as his dad is dumped off a roof. Flies in wearing a dress shirt and a jacket. With his wings out.
The X universe has hundreds of characters to choose from in terms of new mutants for a movie. In X3 we get 3 emo kids, one who can hop around fast and sense powers that is supposed to be Callisto, one who turns into a porcupine, and a transsexual who claps.
Juggernaut.
Juggernaut.
Every action scene featuring Dr. Frasier Crane fighting people with gymnastics.
Cyclops and his inexplicable death. We don't know how it happened, or really even why. We do know it had no point other than to ensure making X4 would be close to impossible.
Prof. X reveals how devastatingly powerful Phoenix is, something that was apparently of no importance in the first 2 movies, sees she has escaped and immediately turns saucy, giving lip to Wolverine. Because maybe it was his fault..that the repressed super powerful mutant got angry.
I'm a category 3 mutant. Ooh, I'm a level 4. Wait, what? Pyro, I know you can shoot fireballs and all..but could you pose like you're on Broadway while you do it? Thanks.
Juggernaut.
Do you think fans would like to see a Sentinel? Probably... let's put the head of one in a quick and lame Danger Room scene.
If you can control the weather, probably an awesome way to fight someone is by rising into the air then spinning towards them.
The awesome power of the Phoenix can reduce dozens of people and vehicles to atoms in mere seconds. However, it can only remove Wolverine's clothes and a a bit of skin on his chest and arms. His pants and hair will remain untouched.
Magneto, a domestic terrorist and multiple murderer, who caused untold millions in destruction and waged war on the US itself, who created Al Qaeda type videos to be played on Fox news, is playing chess alone in the park.
Juggernaut.
The list goes on. And on and on. In the end, one this is clear. Brett Ratner put this whole franchise in its grave for good.
Creepshow 3 (2006)
Judgement Day is Upon Us
This movie is a herald of the end times, I'm sure. I can't account for how else well over 100 people involved in the execution of this movie got together and not a single one of them set the film negatives aflame to save the rest of the world from experiencing it. There's no justifiable reason for such heinous and callous disregard for the DVD viewing public.
For a good portion of this movie, which somehow hypnotized me, like crap dangling from a string methodically waving back and forth, I was expecting the joke to finally be revealed and then feel comfortable laughing because I finally got it. Alas, there is nothing to get. As near as I can figure no one made this movie as a joke. This was seriously what they intended as a finished product. The mind boggles.
The film opens with a cartoon about Little Red Riding Hood making hot dogs out of dogs. At least, that's what it looked like. Why? How the hell should I know? It has nothing to do with the rest of the movie beyond someone's awful attempt to randomly insert hot dogs in as many scenes as possible.
Then, to get things started with a bang, what is actually the worst of all 5 stories begins the movie. That means nothing to you right now, but try to look at it this way. Say you got shot 5 times in the gut. Pick the worst one. That's the equivalent of how this works. There is no good story, but there are bad ones. And "Alice" was clearly the worst, as not only does it suffer from some of the worst acting ever smeared on celluloid, it also (as a treat for viewers) makes less sense than a drunk with a speech impediment trying to sing the score of the HMS Pinafore backwards in Swahili. The story barely manages to come close to proper structure at any time, events occur without any attempt at an explanation and then are interrupted by new events with even less explanation. If anyone at all liked this story, they should be banished. Banished to some abandoned oil platform and forced to live the rest of their lives in solitude so as not to infect the gene pool. Perhaps the producers of this film could join them, but that's it.
The remaining stories all suffer the same substandard acting, even going so far as to recycle the same terrible actors from the first story, something to cause the bile to rise in any sane viewer, especially after the idiotic gun scene in Alice.
Some brain trust pooled their collective intellectual resources and tried to link the stories together, possibly figuring that the lack of sense in any individual story could be made stronger with haphazard links between them all. Aside from the fact their timelines suffer due to no one in editing taking the time to pay attention to what happens when, this serves to pad on several minutes of extraneous crap to a movie that is already built sky high on a majestic mountain of crap as it is. No one really needed to know that the hooker left the building from the 2nd story and crossed paths with the guys from the 4th story, then met the guy who shows up in the 5th story who couldn't make less sense as a character if he had a tiara made of tiny pink elephants on his head that told dirty limericks.
For those with the fortitude, it might be fun to try to watch this movie and some Uwe Boll opus like House of the Dead back to back, just to see if the human mind is capable not only of experiencing such an abundance of poor film making but discerning which one sucks more. I suspect, like being exposed to a noxious odour for too long, your mind will simply not allow it and the two films will merge into one long, awful experience in your subconscious that your brain will try to convince you was not real anyway and just the product of some bad meat you ate.
Just don't watch this movie. Don't do it. It won't take you any place good. It's bad. Bad bad bad.
30 Days of Night (2007)
Not bad, not great
30 Days gets a lot of hype for reinvigorating the vampire genre. People who aren't clever may even use the term "new blood" because they feel it is a cute pun. Whatever. In a nutshell, the movie is pretty decent for a modern day horror flick as it's not a Saw knock off, a teen horror or a Japanese remake. Kudos for that. It does have drawbacks that stop it from being exceptionally good, however.
To start with, the entire concept of the movie seems cool if you just at first hear it. A town that is bathed in night for en entire month gets hit by vampires. Yes indeed, what a concept. Except it's 2007 and if vampires have been surviving just fine for this long, who cares? Are those extra few hours of night every day, in a town with 150 people in it, that important? Seriously? Wouldn't this have worked just as well if the sun still came up? With communications down and vehicles out, where the heck were those people gonna go? Which brings me to another point... why is the town so isolated if it's night? I manage to do stuff at night all the time. Why can't planes still fly? Or trains, or any other thing? Wouldn't life have to continue as normal, wouldn't these people have adapted to that?
The vamps attempt to cover the tracks at the end by burning the town. Convenient exposition tells us it's so when people show up again, they think it was just a tragic accident. Call me crazy but decapitated corpses laying all about a burned down town and an oil pipeline that was smashed to pieces look slightly suspicious. Maybe covering their tracks isn't a huge deal, but unless the most Neanderthal investigative team came to check it out, someone might have noticed it was more than an accident.
30 days. Obviously this is a key point in the film. That's a long haul. I never read the graphic novels to appreciate if the fact that this is an entire month is significant, but it sure isn't significant in the movie. This could be 3 days for all the difference it seems to make. We're never really shown that the length of time has taken any toll whatsoever on the characters involved. They must be sleeping terribly, they're not bathing, and, realistically, it should be freezing cold in every single building, but for the most part they just seem slightly inconvenienced. Two things indicate a passage of time in the movie - scruffy beards and the odd slugline at the bottom of the screen letting us know time has passed. It's really inconsequential.
The movie is also a little longer than it needs to be, insofar as it repeats the same theme a lot. Run and hide and run and hide and run and hide and every so often the number of living people dips a little lower until just a handful are left. And at the same time, we're tossed really random things that get explained very poorly. Like the little girl vampire at the general store. She speaks English, unlike the vamps who raid the town, yet no one else seems to know who she is. Where the heck did she come from? And speaking of little girls, what's with the little girl at the end of the film that Melissa George saves? At first I assumed she was bait like the previous girl we see in the film, only this one is followed by a single vamp who makes no effort to come after the survivors. But..why?
This isn't really a plot issue, but I found myself confused by bald vampires. I could have sworn that bald vampire was killed like 3 times.
The UV lamp scene has to be mentioned, if for no other reason than I almost slapped my head in frustration about it. He runs to granny's house, turns on the generator, hold sup a UV lamp and burns one vamp. Then, surprise, they cut the power. But he runs out the back door and gets away because none of them thought to actually move with any speed or cover that back door while he was in there. It seemed like the vampires were intentionally throwing the game in that scene.
Again, having not read the books, maybe there's a little more story, but honestly the whole in medias res thing with the vampires was bizarre. We never learn where they came from, other than apparently somewhere in Europe, if I had to guess, or much about their little human harbinger who sets up the town for their arrival. All in all, he's a convenient plot device that is quickly dispatched so we need not worry about him any further.
Finally, the end of the movie was just a little bit ridiculous. To me at least. I mean really...he injects himself with vampire blood so he came duke it out with the poor man's Vincent D'onofrio with a faceful of really bad teeth, then he sits and watches the sunrise. Oh, poetry.
Now, aside from all those slams against the movie, it's probably still worth watching if you're down for some impressive gore tossed at you here and there, and some interesting ambiance.
Ghost Rider (2007)
Yet More Nic Cage Fun
We should all know the plot of the movie by now. Forget that. Instead, let's appreciate some hidden gems this movie had to offer.
- The Devil can wander the Earth at will. He can take your soul and make you a fire-headed demon bounty hunter. He can cure cancer and then have you die in a motorcycle accident. What he cannot do is take a piece of paper out of the handle of a shovel that belongs to the Ghost Rider he made himself.
- Despite any preconceived notions you may have about Hell and the potential for many millions of burning souls therein, apparently the real power lies in some little backwater town. Those souls are extra juicy or some such and they will lead to all manner of badness. Need specifics? Well, you can't have them. The movie doesn't offer any so you'll just have to trust that for some reason, apparently, it would be bad if the Devil got like 1,000 souls from this little town that slaughtered itself, never mind the bajillion other souls that would have conceivably made their way into his hands over the course of human history. I don't wanna split hairs but I think the most heinous thing that ever happened in human history was not some middle of nowhere crap town offing itself.
-Nicolas Cage can stand and point like no other. In fact, throughout this movie he will take up the awkward and curiously head-scratch inducing pose of standing and pointing at others many, many times.
-Young Johnny Blaze and his girl defy the very nature of reality as we understand it. How so, you ask? Well, they inexplicably were both 18 together, yet Nicolas Cage ends up aging far faster than Eva Mendes when they're adults. Cage is actually only about 10 years older, but thanks to genetics he looks about 20 years older. Good casting, guys! Pat yourselves on the back.
- I'm Roxanne Simpson, on scene.
- For those who loved The Wicker Man (and who didn't?) you'll be pleased with the prison scene in this film, in which Nic Cage is back in fightin' form, swinging wildly at the group of thugs who want to molest him, or whatever. Watch out thugs, he's flaming! - This movie shows real love by the filmmakers. What kind of love? Love for the same lame special effect. In this case, it's a morph applied over an actor's face. It happens to almost every single key character in the film, in fact. From the obvious Ghost Rider, we also get to experience it with the Caretaker, Mephistopheles, Blackheart and his 3 useless as all get out, totally unoriginal and laughably pathetic cronies. They all morph back and forth from regular joe to some toothy character and back.
- You may not be aware, but the son of the Devil is an effeminate Goth boy.
- You may also not be aware that the Devil is about as menacing as an insurance salesman.
- Nicolas Cage's hair will most likely distract you in every scene. Lately it seems like they try to give him a new, awkward hair piece in every movie int he hopes that one day they'll stumble on an appealing look, but they missed the mark a little here. It resembles the back of an angry badger, prickled up and ready to strike at any moment.
- When Ghost Rider first uses his flamey montage power on a random street thug, we're treated to what may be the most bizarre scene ever in a film, in which a chunky goth girl describes Ghost Rider for the camera. Like something out of a poor sitcom, devoid of laugh track so you know you weren't wrong in thinking it wasn't funny, that one moment stands head and shoulders above all others in the movie as a triumph of awkward, bizarre choices that were made in the making of this movie. Why does it exist? We don't know. Is it...light? Funny? Did someone write this and laugh? Does God hate me? Such questions will plague you for a good 10 minutes after watching the film, after which you'll just stop caring.
I could go on, but many other aspects were already covered. I will, however, give a superfluous nod to the stab wound vs gun shot debacle. Why that happens, no one can explain I'm sure. But it's just more icing on this very, very bad cake.
Zoom (2006)
Seriously?
The one thing that stuck with me long after watching this movie was the realization that my first impression of Chevy Chase was wrong. When he first appears on screen I was positive he was covered in make up. But as time wore on it became clear that's actually what his head looks like these days. Good Lord...
The current state of Chevy Chase's head is actually the most interesting aspect of this movie. The rest of the movie is celluloid child abuse and by that I mean you really need to rethink your parenting skills if you willingly subject your kids to this. It indicates you hate them and punish them severely or you have a desire to warp their minds with absolute crap.
Children's movies have a lot of apologists out there. People who will toss out "it's a kid's movie, what were you expecting?" or some equally weak line that makes it seem like stories should treat kids like complete idiots and be poorly structure from the beginning, because what do kids know? They're probably stupid enough to buy it.
Maybe I was an overly sarcastic child, but I know I would have ripped this movie a new one back in the day, too. It's garbage heaped on garbage.
Why does Courtney Cox have pratfalls? Just because Laurel and Hardy haven't done a lot of work lately, there's no need for Courtney Cox to steal their shtick. Nor is there need for her to deliver some of the worst lines in filmed history, but whatever. The writer of this film is a demon that needs to be exorcised by a force far greater than me.
What abominably forgetful and unobservant, near-sighted beast edited this thing? Never have I seen such heinous editing in all my life. Montage after montage is tossed at you and in no way do the events portrayed therein reflect the story that exists when the montage stops. It makes no sense at all. You have Tim Allen, just as talentless and unfunny as ever, being crabby and pathetic as the would-be teacher to these kids, then a montage starts and everyone looks like they're having the time of their life, then the montage ends and someone whines about how Tim Allen still isn't doing his job and the kids need him and blah blah. All until the next montage starts when everything seems happy again.
But wait, there's more. Smash Mouth? Are you joking? Who thought, in 2006, that a band no one has cared about in 5 years would be good for a soundtrack? A band that has to accompany every single one of the numerous, pointless montages. And to keep things consistent, all the rest of the songs in the movie are also outdated. But...why? Did they get a deal on a NOW CD or something? Why did they cast a kid who isn't fat as a fat kid and then stuff a pillow down his shirt? Why can I see the boom mic? Didn't anyone at all care about how this movie looked? Why do casting directors always look to Tim Allen when they have a horribly unfunny children's movie to make? I get that he's not funny so it stays in the theme but I can't help but think maybe they didn't intentionally set out to make the movie unfunny.
When Rip Torn says "I speak Greek not Geek" I could almost see all the 4 year olds around the world rolling their eyes as one.
I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest the entire end of this movie was improv. It's the only explanation I can think of for why it's so terrible. The entire awful, nonsensical movie builds up to this ending with this super villain whose powers are inexplicably nullified by Tim Allen in an absolutely idiotic body stocking and helmet running around him really fast. Then everything is cool again.
In a nutshell, this is a perfect movie if you want to punish your children for some nameless crime, or if you're just an unloving kind of person. For any other reason, I can't imagine anyone needs to watch this. Ever.
The Grudge 2 (2006)
About as Dumb as Eating Lead Paint
This movie's preposterous. Straight up. This is what happens when a team of people come together to make money and they don't care what the audience thinks. They don't care if you're comatose, as long as someone paid for the movie to be seen and they get their cut.
These American translation of Japanese horror movies tend to always suck, so it's not a surprise that this is no good. What is surprising is the stunning level of suck this movie achieves. So much suck, in fact, they needed to add in several stories at once just to make it suck more.
My biggest problem with movies like this is the absolutely random, totally lacking in sense and just head scratching action of the ghosts or monsters or whatever it is that's supposed to be scaring us. Are we supposed to believe that when you die and come back as a malevolent spirit it's not so much that you want to kill people, it's that you want to be a jerk who does a lot of curious and atmospheric stupidity first? Why? Why do you do that, ghosts? Why do you lurk in the background and show up only in reflections and make creepy sounds for no reason? If you want to kill someone, why wait a few days? And why were there rules in the first movie about being in the house but no rules in the second movie? Why does it just kill willy nilly now? Why why why? And how many times and ways does this ghost need to grab someone from behind through their hair? It happens over and over. It's like a broken record or an unfunny joke someone insists on telling over and over, getting worse and worse with each telling.
Also a delight is ghostly walking. Thanks to the Grudge, the Grudge 2, the Ring, the Ring 2, Pulse and I don't know how many others, I'm confident the afterlife is peopled entirely with pale, long haired spirits that have the jimmy legs and can't hold themselves straight when they walk. Here's a tip for future filmmakers; it's not scary. It's stupid. It's stupid because everyone does it. If all your ghost has going for it is that it's a jerk with pale skin and bug eyes who can show up in inexplicable places, like say popping out of your TV or a photograph or a hoodie or your washing machine, your ghost sucks. It's like there's a contest on to see who can make the most unoriginal movie that people still pay to see. I wouldn't be surprised to see a movie released in 2008 that uses the exact same script as this one, just to see if anybody notices.
If you haven't seen this movie but are interested in seeing it, you actually have seen it. You've seen it in every other uncreative piece of garbage horror movie someone crapped out in the last decade. So I just saved you 85 minutes, go for a walk or something, it'll serve you much better.
Haute tension (2003)
When Tired Ideas Go Bad
This will contain spoilers not just for this movie, but Fight Club too.
To this film's credit it has some decent atmosphere and once in a while lives up to its title. However, everything that is wrong here far outweighs the good.
On a simplistic level, the language is ridiculous here. Boy-like Marie and her horse-faced friend Alex are off in the country and dubbed horribly into English. But only sometimes. Randomly, some of the movie is in French, which I guess is to give the impression some people really are French and some aren't? Or not. I have no idea, but it doesn't matter. By the time you hear Marie yell "Alex" for the millionth time you'll probably wish the whole thing was dubbed.
The people in the film may as well be replaced with robots that have processors working on about 64K of programming for all the diversity they're showing. I guess they have human emotions, probably, but only insofar as I assume that about everyone human. In this movie, everyone picked 2 emotions out of a sack and had to stick with them for the whole movie.
I have heard people call this movie brilliant and perhaps they did so with a straight face. I have also heard the director valiantly try to explain every one of the incalculable plot holes in the movie. And his explanation works with one caveat. Foe those not in the know, this movie gives us a rehash of a familiar idea, a multiple personality disorder. When the twist is revealed anyone with an ounce of sense will start to question how on Earth it's even remotely possible. And honestly it isn't unless you accept the director's explanation - the whole story is being told as the nut job killer would have told it, so everything makes sense in the nutball killer's head.
Well, guess what? That's dirty pool. Ever read a story where at the end it was all a dream? That's just as lame as what the director did here. If the whole story must be filtered through the insane killer's perspective, and it must be or it doesn't make any sense and can't make any sense, then what's the point of the whole story? There's no ground for it to be structured on, why should I even believe that any character in the movie is real? How can I know what the pick and choose to be real? The only sensible answer is that the stuff that makes sense is real and everything that doesn't make sense is from the killer's whacked perspective. That's also a horribly stupid answer and it's bad story telling. The story couldn't work logically so they made it illogical.
The director also thought he was being clever giving subtle clues that maybe Marie was a little nutty herself and that's great, but it's not clever when the killer is introduced as clearly a totally separate entity. You can't have it both ways. At least in Fight Club you never see anyone speak to both Brad Pitt and Ed Norton at any one time, they are never together with extra people and recognized as separate entities and when the flashbacks show they're the same it makes sense. In High Tension's flashbacks, they avoid the non-sensical moments, like the car chase, like Alex getting the knife, like the entire scene at the gas station, none of which work in the one person scenario unless we accept the director's weak explanation that it's all the killer's perspective.
And if it is all the killer's perspective, why not have a chorus line of dancing goats? We can't trust anything we're seeing anyway, so who cares? In a nutshell, that single flaw is why the movie can't work at all. In an all or nothing reality scenario, High Tension gives you nothing and that's the only way it can make sense.
Possibly worse yet is the fact that this movie may as well be 100 other movies. Cut out the failed attempt at a plot twist and what do you have? Every slasher movie I've ever seen. There's nothing new here and certainly nothing scary with scenes that are obviously inspired by earlier films and nothing but gore to keep it afloat. Well I can mix my own corn syrup and red food coloring at home, thanks, and I don;t have to read subtitles half the time to do it.
The movie tried and it failed. If the director needs to constantly try to explain himself, he failed. The story should work on its own merits and this movie doesn't. It's only worth watching if you want to see how to totally butcher a twist ending into something that makes no sense at all.
Rinne (2005)
Can shrug be a rating?
This movie seemed to be bathed in mediocrity trying hard to be something more. The curious use of late 70's era horror music in a number of scenes was rather distracting, I thought as it rather sucked back in the day as well. Worse, this movie works on a twist and twists can have inherent issues. Movies like the Sixth Sense or The Usual Suspects have effective twists as, for the average viewer, they're not easy to see coming but still logically make sense. Other movies leave you hanging though, by either making the twist some manner of illogical impossibility or giving it away far too soon. For me, this film spilled the goods far too early.
The moment the second girl with memories of the hotel is introduced, you're left to ponder if the little girl was reincarnated twice or if the main character in this film is, in fact, the killer. And you can't ponder that for long because it doesn't make sense. Obviously she's the killer.
The isn't the only issue, mind you. The fact that this is a film about reincarnation is a head scratcher since the reincarnated spirits exist as people now...but also as spirits still. And they're jerk spirits. Ghost stories always bug me a little if I think too hard about what possible motivation the ghosts have for acting like jerks all the time, but it takes the cake in this movie. They work as a group to inexplicably kidnap and/or marginally possess the people they already are? I'm not sure what's happening there, to be honest.
If they wanted to punish the spirit of their killer, that's fine, but why kill damn near a dozen innocent people in the process? Of course, then there's the whole issue of the curious morality of the story anyway. The killer is reincarnated so now this poor girl has to be tortured in a nuthouse for the rest of her life. Well, that's what you get for being born I guess. Kind of a flat ending if you ask me.
Overall, not a great movie, but it has some good ambiance.
Neon Rider (1989)
Neon Riding is as fun as it sounds
This show really is Canada, isn't it? Not just Canada, it's our gritty underbelly. I remember my days as a scamp of a criminal in the mean streets of downtown Sarnia. Oh, there were days when I'd stay out well past 8PM with no regard for the streetlights being on. I'd prowl the streets and sometimes spit if no one were around. That's right, spit! On the street! And, from time to time, I'd be heard to utter a vulgarity of a nature even harsher than what is about to follow - "crap." That's right, I know a few words worse than crap, and dang it, I would say them. As a free spirited Canadian punk, I even enjoyed it. Though later I felt awfully guilty and would steal some money to give to a charitable cause.
Now, what has this to do with Winston Rekert and his Neon Riding School? Just this - I related to this show. I longed for this show to be real. Deep inside my rebel heart, I wanted to know that the cure to all my ills lay in a man in need of a haircut and his shabby farm full of hooligans. How my intestines clenched with joyous exuberance every time another youth on the fringe was saved from damnation after shoveling manure (or dung, if you will) for an hour. "Let me shovel your manure, Winston!" I would shout from my stained recliner. But alas, Winston never heard my cries.
Still, just knowing that shoveling manure was a fix for juvenile delinquency and various other hokey things was enough to turn my life around. I sought out rats at first, then a stray siamese cat and every day I dutifully picked up their manure and threw it away in a mostly sanitary fashion. And sure enough, by year's end, I no longer wanted to spit, to cuss, to play Jacks for nickles or steal the pants from hobos. I was changed. I became a pizza boy, married my third grade teacher and started my own quail farm. Life is good now.
So today, I tell you this, Neon Rider can save you too. Sit. Sit my friend and watch. Open your heart to a shovel full of manure and a new outlook on life. Bless you, Winston Rekert. Bless you. And never once question how this dumbed down view of real life problems that repeated itself over and over in a simplistic, formulaic fashion isn't still on.
The Wicker Man (2006)
Nic Cage comedies rule
This was pretty much a horrible film, but that is neither here nor there. This movie demands to be watched for having some of the most earnest, unintentional, hilarious comedy I have ever seen. I can only assume the jokes were unintentional, but whatever the case I was rolling. Allow me to share some highlights.
- Nic Cage, at home, disturbed, moody and medicated, gets a mysterious letter from his ex written with some amazing calligraphy. And then a phone call. He answers "Hello?" but there is silence...and then...and then...wait for it...dial tone! Nic lunges away from the phone as though the devil himself were giving him a wet willy. Lord, that dial tone is frightening.
- Nic discovers a burnt doll in a grave. But...how'd it get burned? How'd it get burned? How'ditgetburned? HOW'DITGETBURNED?!?!?!?!?! -Desperately searching for Ellen Burstyn, Nic Cage ransacks her home. As you might expect of Ellen Burstyn, she has a room where a one eyed old man covered in creepy bumps and bee stings sits shirtless in a bed.
-But wait! It's not just one eyed old men. It's naked girls covered in bees. For some reason.
-Dressed in a full body bear costume, Nicolas Cage (filmed in a nice long shot) runs straight up a hill while the entire population of the island watches, and punches out some random woman. And he's dressed as a bear.
- Fed up with the island's insanity, and fresh from punching out a woman (not the aforementioned woman on a hill) Nic is attacked by Leelee Sobieski. After a brief scuffle, it becomes clear what Nic Cage must do. He must kung-fu kick her right into a wall.
-The children of the island are little liars. You little liars. And your teacher is the biggest liar of all. And who the hell put a bird in that desk? Why would you do something sick like that???? -Killing Nicolas Cage will not bring back your goddamn honey harvest.
-Nic Cage hates it when you smash his legs. Or whatever you do to them off screen. He hates is so bad he'll scream about it long and hard.
-Man, there are a lot of beekeepers on this island.
-When Nic Cage gets bored on a dock, then sees a body under the dock, he will channel the same kung-fu he uses to beat down Leelee Sobieski and do some manner of US Olympic gymnastics team flip right into the water.
-Little girls chanting "phallic symbol phallic symbol" is so funny,even Nic Cage, possibly struggling to believe he's in this movie, will laugh at it.
-For no reason that will ever be explained, upon arriving on the island, the first thing someone does is steal Nic Cage's self-help "Everything's OK" book on tape.
-Nic Cage will steal your bicycle at gunpoint if he has to. So you better step away from the bike.
-Nic Cage is not above screaming the word "bitches" repeatedly. Because he knows you'll get the message soon enough. Probably.
In short, this movie is like a Mel Brook's production of old. This is comedy gold. Love it. Love it!!
Gamera 3: Jashin kakusei (1998)
Rubber Monsters Should Always Be Like This
I've noticed there are some people who obviously take Godzilla-esquire movies far too seriously. Basically if you refer to them as kaiju and you're not Japanese, you're in too deep. But I digress. I am not one of those people. I just watched Gamera and Godzilla as a kid and they cracked me up.
That said, this movie is clearly the best of either Gamera or Godzilla for one good reason: collateral damage. Some mad genius hatched a story that actually tried to present a giant rubber monster movie in a real world context. There are scenes when fireballs engulf whole city blocks and the tiny, fleeing Japanese citizens are blown away in a storm of chaos. The insane contrast between what is obviously a man in an ungainly, ridiculous turtle costume and thousands of innocent civilians being slaughtered as a result of that giant rubber turtle accidentally crushing a gas main as he levels a few city blocks is, to put it poetically, friggin' great.
There's ambition here. The screenwriter and the director of this movie should be proud of themselves for not flinching despite how obviously ludicrous this movie should have been. It's a flying turtle. A giant one. But dammit, the story is compelling.
Transformers (2007)
Michael Bay Still Sucks
I enjoyed Transformers, I suppose, but at the same time can't help but feel somewhat dumber after watching it. That's the same feeling you get after any Michael Bay movie, however. The robots more or less look cool, except for the mouths which was some foolish stylistic choice which was already proved a non-issue with movies like Spiderman where we know the movie can play without seeing the character's face, nevermind needing to see a giant robot's lips when he talks. But whatever.
On the upside, much action chicanery abounds. Stuff blows up and there's giant robots. Huzzah! On the downside, I'm not sure anything in the movie really makes sense if you even try to ponder it. Since it's a movie based on a cartoon based on toys, I let that slide and still give it a 7 out of 10. But really, why was part of Megatron's plan to take over all the machines on Earth if he showed up 12,000 years ago? How many machines were hanging around back then? And when did Megatron learn English? Did he have a wi-fi connection in the ice there? Were Scorpinox and Starscream just sort of ignored at the end of the film because, despite what they said, they fully intended to make sequels or were those just loose ends no one considered because Michael Bay is a poor filmmaker? I put money on both being true.
The magic box that turns any machine into a fully armed robot probably sounded good at the time, but...what? I mean really, what? All of that is easily overlooked of course. What isn't easily overlooked is the dialogue. Because even when I was wincing, I could still hear it. I think it's entirely possible that every line that comes out of Optimus Prime's little metal mouth is the stupidest line ever. This makes for an interesting paradox of logic, as he has more than one line and, logically, they can't all be the stupidest line ever. But somehow they are. I wish this movie had a script editor who wasn't a 7 year old with head trauma. That would have really improved things.
That said, maybe in the sequel the robots won't be so cheeseball when they talk and perhaps the Decepticons will have some manner of personalities. It's kind of sad that a modern filmmaker can get away with not including that in a multi-million dollar film with the promise of maybe getting it in a sequel, but meh. What ya gonna do?
Pulse (2006)
They played this on my short bus
And boy did I still not like it...
When I see Wes Craven's name stuck on something, I'm generally expecting to develop a nagging groin pain and some intestinal cramping, it's what Craven does. I recall at one point thinking he's made a good movie in the past, but to be honest, I can't remember what it was anymore. He only produces this, not that it changes anything.
Like every horror movie that was released by a studio in the last decade, not only did this movie suck, blow and lick, it just didn't make a lot of sense. Have a seat and I'll run you through some of the awesomeness.
As a recurring chunk of the movie, these otherworldly, pasty, ghostly dudes keep popping up to suck the faces off whoever happens to be around. Which I guess is fine, but why are they such jerks? First, are they even ghosts or some kind of extra dimensional high frequency wi-fi demons? I don't know, but meh, I'll get over that and still wonder...why are they jerks? Why do you throw wet laundry out of the machine first...then leap out all contortionist-like and suck the will to live out of Christina Milian? Or why toss books around in that dank, dank, DANK library to get the attention of that foolish kid at the beginning? Speaking of dank, why couldn't the production team get a swear jar together or something to pool funds for a couple of 60 watt bulbs? The 40's they used throughout the entire movie really weren't helping me out much. I thought my brain might be giving up on me or my retinas were detaching in an effort to seek stimulation elsewhere.
I enjoyed the way the director so slyly gave us shot after shot after shot...after shot, of people using cell phones and PDA's and laptops. Oh no, we're a society so reliant on this technology and even when with others we distance ourselves from them with this technological over-saturation. Whatever could it all mean?? It's so friggin subtle!
I'm all for idiotic story telling, but the moment you put on a big sandwich board sign that says "Hey, I'm an idiot and I don't know what's going on," your story suffers a little bit. Such was the case with red tape, accompanied by the note to the effect of "this stops them, I don't know why." Dude, I dunno why either. And since it's a significant plot point, maybe someone could work on a why. All I got was a sketchy character introduced in the last 15 minutes who guesses about it blocking frequencies. Which makes even less sense. Jerk ghost/demon/pale kids have a frequency that doesn't mesh with red tape? What the hell does that even mean? I want to grab every character in this movie and shake them until they get whiplash.
I'm gonna be honest, I was a little tired by the end of this, so maybe I lost some of the monumental meaning or whatever. But what the hell was that? Come on! Let's download this virus and get...system overload? Yeah, I get that warning on my PC all the time. Then the system reboots and the ghosts come back and even though we already decided nothing was going to happen thus making the last like 45 minutes of this movie pointless we tried anyway and look, nothing happened so let's run away but I'm gonna keep my stupid cell phone and we're just gonna stop the truck in the middle of nowhere and have a nap!!! A NAP?? Oh yes, then a voice over monologue about the end of the world.
Wait, what? No seriously...what?
BloodRayne (2005)
Old Timey Mullets? Yes sir!
Writing a negative review of an Uwe Boll film is not unlike buying shoelaces for your sandals. It's pointless and very unnecessary. However, it also opens the door for much hilarity laced with vitriol, of which I am a fan. As per usual, I'll try to avoid finer plot details in favor of some highlights that made me smile.
First and foremost is Michael Madsen, who deserves some kind of award for being bad on a number of levels. I imagine if I was near him he would both smell and feel bad, since he looks and sounds so horrible. Alas I'm not volunteering to taste. He looks greasy and frightening.
Madsen has a splendid Middle Ages mullet that I couldn't stop staring at for much of the movie. Thankfully he never says anything important or believable at any moment, so it's okay to be distracted. Maybe even preferable, since his acting in this movie has less feeling than a comatose quadriplegic's foot after he slept on it funny. During some scenes you're just waiting for the unchewed Valiums to dribble out the side of his mouth on a tiny river of sleep spit.
Not to be outdone by his poor skills with speaking and looking awake, he ventures into an "action" role, which demands the use of quotation marks as it really doesn't reflect Webster's definition of action in any way. More of a logy, ambling, oafish, drunken bear with muscle cramps trying to dance ballet.
In Madsen's meager defense, mind you, is the action at large. Sweet Mary Sunshine can Uwe Boll make anything and everything look absolutely ridiculous. Never have I seen so many horribly plotted fight scenes with actors who look like they've just picked up the plastic swords in their hands for the first time. And never have I seen so many shots of the most mind-boggling, low-budget, sorry-ass wannabe gore slapped right in the middle of fights with long, lingering shots that actually pause the action so you can stop to appreciate just how fake it all looks.
Also worth nothing is Michelle Rodriguez's stunning accent (is that the Queen of England? Nope, it's MRod!), Ben Kingsley's henchman who gets his hair cut at the same joint that did Vanilla Ice back in the day (and most likely went to the same acting school) and Meatloaf in what might be the most pointless/god-forsaken role in film history.
Boll didn't let anyone down with this movie, it's as bad as all his others and then some. Admittedly, I think he makes movies this bad on purpose in order to gain more publicity than he otherwise would with just an average movie, but that doesn't matter. Uwe Boll can make movies that are worse than having your genitals burnt with cigars, and that's impressive.
The One: Making a Music Star (2006)
Saints be praised, we're saved!
The One is a very aptly name show, mostly because it comes close to being the only network shows on in prime time that barely more than one person is watching.
When I first heard of The One, I thought to myself "Weee!! Another sing-song show! We don't have enough of those!" and then proceeded to strap on my helmet and run about my home hitting my head on blunt objects and sharp corners. Because in all honesty, the constant, year round pain and suffering inflicted by having only one or two "talent" based reality shows running just isn't enough. We needed another one. And not just any one - "THE" One. The one with slightly less attractive contestants with slightly less talent. The one with slightly less of a point, though it's hard to imagine a scenario in which that's possible. The one with pointless footage of the contestants when they're not performing included. Because I care what Johnny Sings-a-lot does in his off hours! I really do! Now, you may be thinking "Hey! On the entire continent of North America less than 4 million people watched the first episode. Doesn't that mean this show sucks?" Well, to that I say less than 4 million people in North America have syphilis, so sometimes low numbers bring good news now don't they?. Think about it.
In the end, The One may be horribly unoriginal, a show that even the airing network couldn't be bothered to promote because they too realize how absolutely worthless it is, but it's still not syphilis! Yay!
Evil Breed: The Legend of Samhain (2003)
Sweet Fancy Moses
Justifications for what happened to his movie in terms of distributors and secondary directors, drunks and receptionists doing script rewrites aside, let's just take this movie as it's offered, without extraneous explanations.
This movie is God awful. Straight up craptastic. Rather than rehash what may serve as a plot, I'll run a highlight reel of some curious points that made me scratch my head.
A class (of 5) take a field trip for a history class to the middle of friggin' nowhere Ireland. These students may be Canadian or American, it's difficult to tell. That it was filmed in a Canadian forest rather than Ireland is rather obvious as well. One student seems to know nothing about history and is basically the "dumb jock" character from a number of kick ass 80's movie, except when he channels Randy from Scream. One character may be Chris Klein's stunt double. He has a girlfriend who probably gets killed, but it's never really established if that is true. One character is sullen and removed from her peers...just...cuz... and then there's a blonde girl. Yay blonde girl.
Ireland has a population of 2. They're cousins. Gary, who is clearly the same age or younger than the rest of the cast, is called "sir" more than once. He's very ominous and wears a knit cap. His cousin is a roughed up porn star with the worst Irish accent to befoul film in my lifetime and most likely beyond.
Picturesque Ireland features many Canadian forests and swampy areas and 2 ducks which appear more than once in cut scenes.
The producers got a discount on volume fake entrails. Good for them.
Unbeknownst to me, horribly inbred freaks have access to brand spanking new hunting knives. Perhaps there's some kind of outdoorsman outlet nearby with a blind and deaf clerk working the register.
Also unbeknownst to me, if you inbreed for roughly 600 years, as the story leads us to believe happened, you end up being somewhat lumpy, yet amazingly spry and fairly strong. Genetics are a wonderful game of craps.
There may or may not be more than one freak in this film. Reference is made to "them" and we see shadows, yet only one odd looking dude is seen ever. And when one odd looking dude is finally killed, apparently all danger is passed. I'm running with my initial assumption that no one thought to outfit a second man in full make up, thus they just used the one. That's what it looks like on screen, anyway.
Richard Grieco should be ashamed.
Also of note, aside from those shiny new knives, the inbred freaks have access to some posh leather gear, as once Richard Grieco cuts his bonds, there are fresh ones ready for the next sucker who gets tied up...who also then escapes, because the chains give you enough slack to just undo them, making one wonder why they even bother tying anyone up.
A dead body in a shack will be maggot-ridden after what I would guess is about 2 hours has passed. Said dead body will also have glasses on, when no characters wore them. Curious.
Jenna Jameson appears for no reason from stage left, chats for 2 minutes, vanishes stage left. In the middle of a giant forest. That's not unusual, as Gary can also pop out of nowhere, which is also known as whatever exists in TV land off the screen.
Ms. Jameson dies sadly and somehow her clothes vanish like my hopes that this movie wouldn't suck wind.
I offer a special nod to the "Breeder" character, the poor girl who has been used by the freaks for months (or maybe years) for breeding purposes. The poor girl who still has eye shadow on and emotes on camera with all the passion and conviction of a stuffed chihuahua.
The ending of this movie was clearly tacked on by a drunk or someone with a fierce mental disability that has been cultivated and encouraged with excessive gasoline drinking over the years.
Apparently this wasn't just random crap I found on the movie network late at night, apparently people have heard of and even followed this movie through it's production. How sad for you all. I have nothing more to say. May God have mercy on us all.
Desperation (2006)
Mmm, lame
This is not the worst thing I have ever seen. Worst thing I have ever seen would be a dubious title at best, and extremely hard to achieve, as I have seen so many terrible things. Nonetheless, Desperation is bad. In fact, one might say it is "crap" which is the technical, literary term for it. But this is Stephen King, Mick Garris and a made-for-TV movie, so literary terms are not needed. Instead I will call it garbage.
For anyone who's read Stephen King (that would be anyone who buys books in supermarkets, anyone who gets bored on long commutes and reads the novels they find in bus station bathrooms and anyone who needed to read a book for an 8th grade English assignment), you should be well aware of King's style. That is to say one 50-100 page story padded out by 400 pages on nonsensical ramblings. Desperation (incidentally the very last King book I ever read) is the pinnacle of that model. It is a 20 page story padded by perhaps 800 pages of nonsense.
This model of story telling (also seen in the Tommyknockers and IT) works well in novel form, as surely your attention span will not be long enough to hold all those fine, nonsensical details. However, in a 3 hour made for TV movie you can't help but notice that what you're watching is really lame. I won't offer spoilers because frankly the story meanders so much you can't really spoil it at all.
Mick Garris, who might not be able to direct children across an empty country road, may have messed this movie up even more than King did in writing it. King at least has a history of horrible, horrible....horrible film adaptations of his works, which themselves are just mediocre to begin with. Garris ( the man responsible for the most boring episode of Masters of Horror ever, a handful of other boring King movies, Psycho 4 and Critters 2) simply can't direct. No, thats untrue. He just can't do it well. He's like Gregory Dark or Uwe Boll. He's just sad.
Mix these elements together and you get a dull story put poorly to screen. But there's more! Bad acting! It's fun to watch a movie come together so poorly that a scene with Charles Durning, Matt Frewer, Stephen Weber and Tom Skerrit can actually unfold in a way that makes you wince at the ham fisted delivery of dialogue that sounds like it's coming from a poorly rehearsed high school play. Sure, they all sound like veteran actors normally, but here they have nothing to work with. Here they make you reach for the remote to see what's on Animal Planet.
Some might argue that my review is biased, clearly I don't like King, clearly this film has merit. To them I say, describe the ending of Desperation to anyone. But do it fairly and honestly. If they don't think the movie sucks, then stop wasting their time, they have to get their 8th grade English assignment done.
Honey, We're Killing the Kids (2006)
Life Altering Awesomeness
Truly the Learning Channel has finally lived up to its lofty title. Admittedly, I have learned how to trade homes with my neighbors and do some redecorating thanks to 75% of the shows on this channel, despite the fact that my neighbors continually call the police on me when I break in and rearrange their bedrooms, but that's beside the point. Finally, thanks to Honey, We're Killing the Kids, I have opened my eyes.
As a young lad, I used to eat little more than bacon and motor oil and as a result I too grew into a bit of an unwashed, bespectacled ne'er-do-well with a penchant for porno, crooked teeth, a rather cheesish funk that clung to me like a baby koala to its mother, and a wall eye. If only this magnificent TLC technology was available to my parents! And if only my parents hadn't sold me to a traveling band of acrobats! Had my parents not sold me and been caring and seen this show and gotten us on the show, I can barely fathom the changes it would have wrought. Doubtlessly, after 3 weeks of eating soy protein and beans I would probably be Brad Pitt right now. And I don't mean I would look like Brad Pitt, I just assume I would be him. And why not, it seems as though TLC possesses reality altering futuristic technology. Or just lame crap. But I hope it's reality altering futuristic technology.
In short, "Honey, We're Killing the Kids" is informative and not remotely ridiculous in any way, shape or form and should not be equated with the televised equivalent of massive head trauma brought on by an alcohol induced sense of invincibility that leads one to try to crack walnuts on the pavement with one's own skull.
Bless you, The Learning Channel, for providing quality, non-sensationalized programming that increases the intelligence of all who watch and does not make me wish someone would insert a Braun hand blender into one of my head cavities and whip my brain into the right consistency to appreciate something so absolutely pathetic and devoid of soul. You rock!
Cumstains 3 (2004)
Good Clean Fun
While inferior to part 2 (but what film could ever top part 2?) Cum Stains 3 still delivers the goods, though occasionally overshoots its mark.
The harrowing back story of a young girl, new to the big city, with a minor dental abnormality that causes her to drool profusely, discovering love and excitement is one that is nearly universal to anyone who enjoys fellatio with strangers.
Fantastic story aside, the movie does have its faults. For instance, the villainous character Ejacula seemed unbelievable and without motivation. Additionally, the lack of decent set pieces, ATM scenes, thigh bruising and flaming genitals was also a sore spot, but these can be overlooked.
Overall, well worth your Church group's hard earned cash for a Sunday morning of squirty fun.
Busty Anal Adventures (2001)
BreathTaking
I remember once sitting with grandpa on the porch, sipping lemonade and shooting at the mailman with a pellet gun and wondering if there was anything in the world more perfect. And there was. And it was this movie.
BAA (as I like to call it) takes hold of you from the opening scene and won't let go. Like Citizen Kane before it, or The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas, BAA captures humanity at its most real, most gritty, and most well-lubed for safety. From behind. Deep and from behind. And it plunges you in right along with it. Bring a raincoat! (har har!) Though some scenes seem a little forced, the punishing narrative, deeply rooted in various actresses, is gripping. Gripping to the point that it causes swelling.
Overall, BAA is a feel good movie that opens up new backdoorways in film-making and story telling in ways previously only seen in Robert Munsch books. I would recommend this movie for anyone who enjoys solid story telling or buggery.
The Book of Daniel (2006)
Trying Too Hard
I sat through the premiere with a shrug and was impressed only by the desperation that the writing exudes. I couldn't care less about the would-be controversial subject matter of the show. What stunned me was how they heaped it on. The producers left realism behind and instead tried to see how many "shocking" and "clever" plot devices they could cram into one show. Let's see what I can remember...
The Bishop's wife who has Alzheimer's and says uncomfortable and awkward things! The minister addicted to pain killers! His pot selling daughter! His gay son (whom he loves)! His man-slut visible minority son! Lesbian in-law! Sassy, older minister woman who inadvertently gets addicted to pain meds! Thieiving in the family (from the church)! And assorted other "quirky" bits of story telling that you're just as apt to find on Grey's Anatomy, Desperate Housewives, Six Feet Under or any other show that makes itself unique by being like a half dozen other shows that are so brilliant and unusual.
It takes more than simply quirky story ideas and forced controversial subject matter to make a show good, I'm afraid. I found this show rather dull simply because it bit off more than it could chew. It had to be over the top and that's so clear from the way it was structured. Every character has to have some hook, some catch. A minister isn't enough, he has to use drugs. A son isn't enough, he has to be gay and that has to define his character (which, ironically, the character mentions as something he doesn't want to define him), he can't have a daughter, she has to be a problem child of some kind.
The world isn't Leave it to Beaver and that's fine, but the world is not a circus of one over-the-top situation after another. Most of the "shock" in this series is played off the central character's roles as clergy. It's a one-trick pony and it's not all that interesting.
Some people were clearly duped by the forced and intentionally antagonistic story lines however and are generating oodles of free publicity for the show by making it seem like the Devil himself stars in it. If only the Fundamentalists had a clue...sigh. Mayhaps this show will live longer than I anticipated. If it does, I hope the stories gain some more depth than the shock and awe they're spewing out so far. It could end up being good, who knows?
The Ring Two (2005)
The Ring 2 Made Me Swear At My TV
The one sentence review of this movie is that it sucks. Pretty straight up. But no one likes the criticism "sucks." They want reasons. Allow me.
CGI deer. A whole whack of them. A whole whack of unexplained CGI deer. One wonders if they couldn't find horses to continue the story from the first movie so they figured fake deer was the way to go for part 2. And just to try to make it seem like it wasn't 100% lame and irrelevant they toss in antlers at the Morgan homestead. Oh, well then, it all makes sense now. Or not.
Did anyone even listen to what Samara's birth mother said? She tried to kill her baby cuz the kid told her to in her head. Just like Rachel's son told her to in her head. To get rid of the thing inside her. So the "thing" in Aiden isn't even Samara, it's just some damn nameless thing the writer's never explain beyond a casual line about some watery world beyond that possessed Samara as a baby. OK....whatever...
Samara wants a mommy. You know what I want? Some friggin Vicodine to slip me into a drug induced coma so I can wipe the memory of that lame as lame plot contrivance out of my head. But wait, it gets worse... she wants to watch TV with her mom. That's about it.
Excuse me, I need to go yank some of my hair out.
This thing from some nether world that can make things happen with the power of its mind gets killed in a well, comes back from the dead through VHS tapes and murders people within 7 days of witnessing said tapes then inexplicably possesses a living boy.....cuz she wants to watch TV with her mom? Who the hell wrote that? What drooling, mittens-pinned-to-his-coat, Scooby-Doo-lunch-box-carrying, lazy-eyed, fat-necked, Lysol-huffing, ice-cream-smeared-on-his-face, laughing at the antics of Uncle Joey on Full House idiot wrote that? That is one of the dumbest things I have ever seen in my life.
Does she want to kill millions? Does she want to inflict suffering on mankind? Eat the living? Make a race of obedient slaves? Reign in darkness? No, she wants to watch friggin cartoons from the 50's and eat sammiches with ma on the sofa. The mind reels at the absolute idiocy.
So, to reiterate, this movie sucks. Do yourself a favour and stay away. If you hated the first one, this one will make you wish you were stricken blind by burning embers before you put the DVD in. If you liked the first one, this will make you mourn for a half decent story and a film that doesn't induce bile production. And if you saw this one and liked it we clearly can't be friends. I'm sorry, I'm sure you're a nice person though.
Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle (2004)
Fiendishly Brilliant
I feel for Harold and Kumar the film. The name, the director, the commercials, surely they lead so many people think this was just another "Dude, Where's my Car." I know for a fact people who may be named Erica avoid this film for no good reason whatsoever when it could be a life-altering experience for anyone who gives it a chance. Life altering I say!
So what's all the fuss, you ask? Indeed. The fuss is this: it's Doogie Howser spouting profanity, it's the comedic exposition of the pursuit of dreams big or small, it's toilet and drug humor, it's a cheetah and it's the dude from Law and Order SVU all creepy-like. This movie is damn near spiritual, I ain't lying.
Don't let the label of "stupid comedy" keep you away. Truth be told there's actually a layer of substance in here. And even if there wasn't, honestly, what's wrong with stupid comedies? You got better things to do? Probably not.
Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle (2003)
Did you know we have personal demons?
It's quite true. There are times in our lives when we think awful things or worse, do them, and the cosmos punishes us by sending a foul, unwholesome beast of unspeakable horror to torment us for the rest of our days. Call it a living, waking hell. Now, it starts out small. Your socks go missing. Maybe a pair of underwear. You misplace your keys. You stub your toe. You eat bad tuna and get violent diarrhea. You 'accidentally' set your hair on fire. But in truth, it's our own, personal, evil little demon causing these troubles.
Now, somewhere in my past (maybe a past life, who knows) I did something horrifying. What was it? I can't say. I don't recall any atrocities but surely there was one, for the universe threw so much energy into my tormentor demon that it grew. It grew and festered and suddenly it was no longer a shadow, but a real physical thing. A monster that others could see. This foul beast rose up and called itself McG and went about on a master plan to do the foulest thing to me that it could imagine. It directed Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle.
My punishment is an incoherent mish mash of random and ungratifying T&A, somebody's mom in a bikini (they call her Demi Moore around these parts), utterly preposterous action sequences not the least of which involves the Even Stevens Boy on dirt bikes and a shoot out that defies not only physics but common decency and my sense of shame. But did it defy my tormentor's shame? Surely not.
If not for Uwe Boll's House of the Dead, I would be positive that Charlie's Angels Full Throttle would be the sulphurous, fire laden afterlife in which I would be tortured eternally. Alas, it is merely McG's way of saying to me "Hey Fortey...I'm utterly incompetent, wanna go watch an Offspring video? I like bright colors!! Where are my mittens?!"
In closing, I must go soap my eyeballs to remove the layer of milky ooze my body set up as defence against witnessing another minute of this film and I assure you, your time would be better spent inspecting your dog for ring worm than watching this movie.
Mortal Kombat: Annihilation (1997)
So, it's Brian Thompson, ancient kung fu god
I warn you, this might not only contain spoilers, but atrocious facts that could cause various sphincters throughout your body to tighten uncomfortably.
I guess that's all we need to say about Mortal Kombat's fabtastic sequel. It's that big guy with the impressive jaw who people kept trying to stab in the back on the neck on the X-Files...and he's in quasi Mad-Max football apocalypse gear. And he's a kung fu demon..or something. I was never really sure what the gist of the villains in mortal kombat was.
But wait, there's more. Kung fu villain can destroy the world in like a week unless a handful of poor actors engage him in....a rousing game of Kerplunk. It's a sad fact this couldn't have made the movie worse and it could be argued that the action would have been better. But I digress.
No, it's mortal kombat these sad sacks must engage in. The K means it's serious, none of that sissy C combat us losers engage in with the mailman, no sir.
Who sets up the rules for such a competition, we can only guess. Personally, I don't see the logic in "let's fight to the death or you all die" but hey, I'm not a sugar addict video game designer who needs to be able to fit the plot of his game on the back of a business card.
Who steps up to face the villainous X-Files clone? James Remar! Woot!
Wait, who's James Remar? What, are you kidding? He's the guy who's almost as good as Christopher Lambert. Go ahead, read that again. He's Dolph Lundgren to Christopher Lambert's Schwartzenegger. Ike to his Tina. Lance Bass to his Justin Timberlake. Craig Kilborn to his Conan O'Brien. David Spade to his Chris Farley. Fox to his any network with class. You get the idea.
But Remar as the Japanese god of thunder or lightning or white men isn't alone...no sir, he has B grade actors aplenty. Like..this one guy. And some woman. And a different woman. And a black man with silly metal arms. I mean..silly metal arms? When's the last time you saw a movie bursting at the seams with men wielding silly metal arms? Probably not lately.
Keep an eye out for the villainous talking donkey, that guy's a hoot.
I have to say, my favorite part of the film is that final climactic battle when the production team must have said something along the lines of "wow, we drank all that tequila? I hope it doesn't ruin the movie" and then leapt into the wild and zany world of computer animated monsters. I tell ya, when Liu Kang turns into a completely untextured, unrealistic, two dimensional, poorly colored and hopelessly preposterous sloth, or whatever it was, to fight that really angry platypus/aardvark that the other guy turned in to, I was riveted. Riveted I tell you! As though someone had driven long, wide stakes into my body so I could not leave the sofa. It was powerful film making. The very gravity of such a battle shook the cardboard sets to their foundations. And those silly metal arms probably shook a little too.
If you're looking for a movie to watch tonight, and you find yourself thinking "Christopher Lambert is just too good an actor for me to watch tonight, is there some substandard version of him out there?" Then fella (or whatever the female equivalent of fella is) this movie's for you. Enjoy!