Bad Movie Tuesday: Breaking Dawn Part 1
By: Sweet Sugar (Mark’s brother)
To put this review in context, a masculine adult male reviewing Breaking Dawn is like a sorority girl reviewing The Expendables or any Dolph Lundgren movie. So of course, the Movies Films & Flix crew is giving Breaking “Yawn” a Bad Movie Tuesday nod, which seems like too easy of a target, but this is THE bad movie of the moment.
There’s no glory in slamming this movie along with the tidal wave of other bad reviews. It’s not like its stopping fully-invested Twilight fans from watching two hours’ worth of talking about feelings. The movie has a 28 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes, but still cashed in $138 million in its opening weekend. It’s like the more the series is slammed, the more it grows, just like the Evil in The Fifth Element.
Reading about the Twilight movies with the endless use of the word “psychosexual” has been much more interesting than actually watching the movie. Here are a couple of my favorite quotes from film critics …
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“So: Sex with a vampire. Finally. For three films now, the ‘Twilight’ narrative has practically goaded the audience into having intercourse on behalf of the characters.” – Michael Phillips, Chicago Times
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“Yes, the most eagerly awaited deflowering in recent movie history takes place entirely off-screen.” — Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times
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“As much as I despise these movies, that is a parade I am not willing to rain on, no matter how much Stewart’s unrelenting sourness makes me regret my career choice. So party on Twi-hards, you have no apologies to make for your love of this pulpy, romantic saga; just don’t take it personally when the rest of us decide to party elsewhere.” – Matthew DeKinder, St. Louis Today
So yeah, it was a really bad movie, and thankfully I wasn’t the only guy in the theater sucking it up for the wifey. The way that Kristen Stewart rubbed her baby bump unceasingly made me think about a pregnant Natalie Portman aimlessly brushing her hair while staring off into space in Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith. The wolf pack reminded me of the gang in West Side Story getting ready to “rumble.” And I was surprised that the only opportunity for actual multi-dimensional acting was given to none other than Taylor Lautner.
The Movies Films & Flix suggestion to salvage the final movie: Switch Anna Kendrick with Kristen Stewart and pretend like nothing’s amiss. Some witty banter and more sex appeal would do wonders for the movie. Anna committed scene larceny in her bits and pieces throughout the series, and just imagine what she could do with a demon child, sassing the Volturi, and ordering around an over-sensitive Vampire hubby.
Movies about pregnancies to watch instead: Nine Months (1995) starring Hugh Grant, Julianne Moore, Tom Arnold, Joan Cusack, and a preppy non-scientific Jeff Goldblum, or Lethal Weapon 4 (1998) with Mel Gibson, Danny Glover, Joe Pesci and Chris Rock at his best.
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Good Neighbors
The best thing I can say about this film is that it is unpredictable.
The best advice I can give is to not watch the trailer, or look at the pictures on Rotten Tomatoes. I love RT but was bummed that the pics gave away the major plot twists of the film. This is not a great film and won’t make any top ten lists but it does provide a welcome dose of uncertainty. I also dug how it looks good on a budget. The locations are used well and the set design is solid. This film provides a decent lesson of how to maximize every dollar.
The movie focuses on three people living in an apartment in Montreal. Not only do they have to survive a Canadian winter they have a serial killer to deal with. jay Baruchel, Scott Speedman and Emily Hampshire all provide solid work as the not-so-normal tenants. I wouldn’t say you ever become engaged in the characters but they don’t annoy you. They do just enough to keep you around until the end.
If you are in the mood for a dark indie or just curious to see how well Jay Baruchel fits in a drama check this film out.
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Trailer Talk: Goon
I really like Seann William Scott as an actor. Role Models, Evolution, The Rundown, American Pie and The Promotion are flicks I enjoy. I’m glad he is finally getting a chance to headline a film that highlights all his strengths.
In this film Scott is a nice/tough/dumb hockey enforcer who beats up a whole lot of people. Sounds great. Can’t wait to watch him fight a moustached Liev Schreiber. Also, Jay Baruchel and Alison Pill are a welcome addition to any cast. Watch the preview.
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A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas
I dug the first Harold and Kumar flick. It was funny, simple, extreme and fresh. The second H & K flick hurt my soul. It was tired and lazy. I am happy so say that the third installment is a decent time. It breaks no new ground but manages to provide a solid dose of heart amidst the raunch. What makes this film work is the friendship of the main characters. You like the guys and want to see them become pals again.
The biggest problem with this film is that the majority of it was shown in the previews. The funniest scenes were given away. The best part of the H & K films are the surprising situations they find themselves in. It is not as much fun when you know what will eventually happen.
The movie takes place several years after the second installment. Harold looks like this:
Kumar looks like this:
Harold has to please his wife’s overbearing family by planning the perfect Christmas:
Harold and Kumar reunite and Danny Trejo’s prized tree goes up in flames:
The two go on a journey and things go wrong. They end up looking like this:
They get drugged and claymation occurs….No Yeti though:
They run into the immortal NPH:
A song and dance number occurs:
They get their mojo back:
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Bad Movie Tuesday: The Change Up
I feel the need to break down this film without being too Negative. Saying that a film is bad is too easy. I am going to look at the science of why it is bad as opposed to just saying The Change-Up sucks. Like it or not there is a formula to gross out comedies. If you do it right the film will makes millions. If you do it wrong it becomes The Change-Up.
Here is what I think happened. The director David Dobkin is a known commodity (Wedding Crashers) and the writers Jon Lucas and Scott Moore are responsible forThe Hangover. This team is reliable and they managed to cast Ryan Reynolds, Jason Bateman and Leslie Mann in the leads. From what I hear the original script was great but somewhere along the way things got murky. The people got cocky and ditched the plot and decided to put the actors in funny seemingly funny situations.
The problem is that putting actors in situations and expecting them to be funny rarely works. They need to build a funny/creative situation and the hilarity will follow. You cannot force funny. I call it the Chevy Chase effect.
Chevy Chase was once considered one of the funniest men alive because he could
underplay just about anything. He could be funny without knowing he was funny. However, when people starting putting him in ridiculous situations it didn’t work. Chase was trying to be funny. Years ago he got laughs by simply talking to his kid while in the middle of the desert. However, Vegas Vacation had him climbing the Hoover Dam. This is a trend that happens all the time. Look at the Fonz “jumping the shark” or Indiana Jones “nuking the fridge.”
This film jumps the shark when in the first minute a CGI baby butt shoots poops all over Bateman’s face. A critic from the Houston Chronicle sums up the movie perfectly when she said movie abounds with “Pee-pee humor. There’s also a lot of poo-poo humor. And ta-ta humor.”
There are naked pregnant women, ball shaving, vomit, poop, masturbation, 345 F bombs, guys peeing in front of children, horrible advice, thumbs in butts and more poop. None of it is funny because none of it movies the story forward. It becomes juvenile. The director must have thought people would laugh because Jason Bateman is doing something gross to Ryan Reynolds.
The majority of these gross things have been done much better in other films. Dumb and Dumber, Brides Maids, Kingpin, Hot Tub Time Machine, Clerks, Mall Rats, She’s Out of my League and American Pie. These movies have featured incredibly gross things yet they have been successful. The reason for this is they move the plot forward.
A perfect example of a hilarious scene is in the Farrelly brother classic There’s Something About Mary. Do you remember the Franks and beans shot? Not only is it hilarious but it sets up Ben Stiller losing Mary. He doesn’t randomly get his nuggets zipped. This scene is a tactical plot point that intelligently deals with gross. Ben Stiller is not rude, crude or dumb. He is nervous and likable.
I like Hot Tub Time Machine a lot. It has tons of raunch and profanity but when it comes down to it the guys are friends and would do anything for each other…..They are jerks and self-absorbed but you like them. That is why the movie works.
In The Change Up you have no reason to like the characters. They are rude, angry and non intelligent. Bateman is dissatisfied with his life and Reynolds is the lazy slacker who can only be found in movies. There is no reason to like them and their bodies switch so quickly that you never really know who the other is.
The Change-Up could have been a solid flick but they messed up the equation. Next time hopefully they stick to the formula.
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Assassination Games (2011)
MY CALL: A solid straight-to-DVD action flick. For that college-rental sort of category, it gets a B+. IF YOU LIKE THIS, WATCH: This made me want to re-watch Double Impact and Undisputed II-III where they each shined brightest. To keep with hitman flicks, maybe The Mechanic. I liked it, but Mark was less of a fan. Here’s his review. Maybe The Professional, The Big Hit, In Bruges for some dark comedy, or Grosse Point Blank for a straight up comedy.
I was way-stoked about this one. I mean, c’mon. Scott Adkins (Ninja, Undisputed II) and Van Damme (The Quest, Bloodsport)? I’m there! Hell, I was there yesterday.
The opener is Van Damme disguised in some hideous sideburns performing a clever assassination of some Euro-mob father-of-the-bride. Well done, and already more promising than most of Van Damme’s work in the past decade. Thankfully, the sideburns do not endure throughout the movie. What does is some surprisingly decent camera work, abrupt but good combat work, and not so surprisingly mediocre acting. Van Damme has a hitman-chic, secret bachelor pad, a cute turtle, and a violin collection.
Then we cut to Scott Adkins, who is sponge-bathing the catatonic wife in a bedroom the size of
a quadriplex. Oh, yeah, he’s also a hitman. These guys both agree to do the same job, end up planning on doing it at the same time, and it gets botched. They fight. They make up. They work together. To give the stars some flavor, some concepts were clearly borrowed from other movies. Adkins pulls some a la-The Professional vanishing acts while Van Damme has a rather Transporter-ish unwelcomed female guest (who also smacks of an older, emotion-evoking Natalia Portman from The Professional). These are over embellishments, of course.
Some interesting things stuck out in this movie. 1) The filmmakers really tried to make this
good—for a straight-to-DVD action flick they did, but I won’t dare suggest it should’ve been in theaters. 2) Time is a strong element. I think they were going for a subtle motif, but it is way in your face. 3) Neither hitman needs the money. They kill to fill some other void. 4) Van Damme hasn’t been working out nearly as much as Adkins. 5) My favorite character was the turtle.
In other good news, Adkins will be working with Van Damme again in Universal Soldier: A New Dimension and The Expendables II, and then with Michael Jai White (also of Undefeated II, Blood and Bone, Never Back Down 2) in El Gringo. Here’s some more martial arts goodness to come (click here).
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John’s Horror Corner: Inseminoid (1982)
MY CALL: Not a cult classic. Not so bad it’s good. Not very gory. Really just not worth it. This is just tasteless–even if you think you like movies that are tasteless. IF YOU LIKE THIS, WATCH: Galaxy of Terror and Contamination; also early 80’s bad sci-fi-horror. For some real sci-fi horror, Alien and Event Horizon are musts. DRINKING MOVIE STATUS: Approved. Perhaps necessary. FYI: There might be as many as ten different movie posters and DVD/VHS cover designs for this movie. Also, Netflix quality is so-so, but maybe good enough for a movie like this. Here’s another on (below).
You may have stumbled across this in Netflix as Horror Planet. Then it was renamed and issued a new title, not unlike Contamination (not to be confused with Contagion) which was also released as Alien Contamination. I’ll breakdown the premise for you—as if the title didn’t blatantly perform that task already. A team sets out on an archaeological expedition to another planter investigating a tomb that when unreported from a previous, abandoned expedition. Their goal is to identify the cause of extinction of an alien species. Now since the planet’s surface temperature is a constant 89 degrees below zero, and noting the title of the movie, I’m gonna’ go ahead and guess that this un-heavenly body has been serving as a big alien sperm bank.
The story jumpstarts when some of the investigators are spelunking through bauxite cave and see a moving shadowy figure inside a crusty white chrysalis-looking structure which, for no reason at all, just explodes! An unconscious scientist is then rushed to the medical bay clinging to a handful of crystals which contain “living matter.” The “exposed” crew begin to exhibit a bit of space madness. What maddened me was that neither these crystals nor the explosion were ever explained. In fact, these scenes should not have been included in the movie. Deleting them, with no replacement whatsoever, would actually improve the movie.
This flirts with being an exploitation movie, but never quite crosses the line. The alien resembles some anatomical structures you may recall high school sex ed. When we first see the “Inseminoid” it is inseminating a female crew member (who, of course, is naked on an examination table). As if possessed, the now-impregnated and considerably stronger woman gets a little stabby with a colleague. Naturally this worked up an appetite, so then she eats a corpse.
The violence (I hesitate to call it “action”) is very poorly executed and complemented with the liberal overuse of blood. Other gore is minimal and uncommon; a severed head prosthetic here, a cut up leg there. I expected more. I guess the F/X store ran out of rubber guts. I was hoping that some scenes would look like throwing a side of beef in a wood chipper. Needless to say, I was disappointed. Making matters worse, this movie really doesn’t go anywhere.
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Trailer Talk: The Kick
By John Leavengood
I’d like to start by pointing out how stoked I am about this movie. When I want classic, semi-serious, fun kick-flicks I would turn to Van Damme (recently of The Expendables II, Assassination Games). For somewhat realistic and brutally honest fight flicks, I want Michael Jai White (Never Back Down 2, Blood and Bone, Undisputed 2) and Scott Adkins (Undisputed 2, The Expendables 2). For technically surreal flare I look to recent Thai action installments like Tony Jaa’s Ong-Bak and The Protector or Chocolate. Well, from the folks who brought you Ong-Bak, here’s The Kick.
This looks GREAT. 540’s and 720’s abound, along with some jump spin-kicks which look like they might even be 900’s! It looks like the premise might be a bit hokey, but whatever. The stunts alone make this movie worth owning. Here’s another trailer that’s cool but is less informative.
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Bunraku
By John Leavengood
MY CALL: Revenge is an act of style—one that no Kill Bill fan should miss. If you are careful about your expectations, this movie could be a great pick for you. [B+] IF YOU LIKE THIS, WATCH: Kill Bill, The Good The Bad and The Weird, The Warrior’s Way, Sin City…maybe even Sucker Punch (which wasn’t good, but had some great scenes and ideas). SIDEBAR: I have no idea what the name of the movie means. If they mentioned it in the movie, I missed it, and I miss little in movies.
This appears to be another take on genre-crossing in a genre-style movie. Previous examples include the wildly successful Sin City movies, popular western splices like The Good The Bad and The Weird and The Warrior’s Way, and the stillborn Sucker Punch. But all these movies were well-advertised and wide theatrical releases (in Asia, at least, for The Good The Bad and The Weird). Should I approach this lack of advertising as a snake’s rattle and keep my expectations low? When I stumbled across this I thought “This movie features Josh Hartnett, Demi Moore, Ron Perlman, Gackt, Woody Harrelson and Kevin McKidd, and I had never heard of it or saw a trailer. How does that happen? Is this a weird little gem waiting to be discovered, or an utter Sucker Punch tragedy?”
The opening credits are cleverly presented during an animated story background. The style was much like that of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part One or Hellboy 2: The Golden Army. When moviemakers really care about a movie, they make an effort to have the opening credits “affect” the viewer somehow. Even if it’s only music over a black screen, moods are set and pace is foreshadowed. I’ve commented on the great opening credits of The Good The Bad and The Weird, and that movie was awesome. This made for a promising start.
In this perhaps futuristic world guns have somehow been banned, making way for a resurgence in swordsmanship and a feudal yakuza-esque gang culture. A young, Doc Holidayish brawler (Hartnett) and a swordless samurai team up to exact their revenge against the ruthless king of the hill, “The Woodsman” (Perlman). To do so, they must kill their way through leagues of henchman and his nine right hand men, one of which is played by a sleek Kevin McKidd.
This film is VERY stylistic. The effects and music smack of Scott Pilgrim versus The World with comic book stylings of villainy and storyline much like Kill Bill. The combat follows suit, with choreography focusing more on a dance-like technical precision than producing a realistic fight. It’s more like theater than cinema. In fact, the set designers erected intentionally artificial-looking structures in order to unsubtly accent this feeling. Sets and wardrobe contain elements of the present, the future, the old west, and the early 1900’s. Many theatrical devices are employed as well. All of this synergistically produces an other-worldly feel.
The style of this movie is rare and difficult to execute. The fights are fun, the scenes are clever, and (with the exception of Demi Moore’s role) the characters were interesting.
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Bad Movie Tuesday:Trespass
Or as it is called in Norway: Loud Noises
When I heard that a movie directed by Joel Shumacher and starring Nicole Kidman and Nic Cage was going direct to DVD I became very excited. It meant that Trespass had to be incredibly bad. Cage has starred in many bad theatrical films like Next, Season of the Witch, The Wicker Man and Drive Angry 3D(read these reviews, you will love them)… I figured this movie had to be a special kind of bad. The kind of bad movie where Nic Cage wears these glasses.
The answer was simple as to why the film is bad. It is a movie where everybody yells bad dialogue constantly. Nic Cage yells, Nicole Kidman yells, Cam Gigandet yells, the junkie thieves yell, Nic Cage yells again then loses it…then yells more, the viewer starts yelling. Also, during a flashback Nic yells at Nic(ole) via the phone.
I have never heard more yelling in a film. It gets ridiculous at points. If you are a thief you probably don’t want to be yelling a lot. Hans Gruber never yelled in Die Hard. Paul Bettany never screamed in the bad movie Firewall. It seems like lazy filmmaking. All I could think of was Anchorman’s Brick Tamland saying “loud noises!”
Two seconds after this picture Cage yells:
I really hope the sound guy made a lot of money because the levels must have been through the roof. the poor boom operator must have been on double duty. I bet by the end of the film they were calling him “What” because every time somebody said something the boom guy said “what?”
The swearing-in this film is very creative as well. Nic Cage screams “sh** F***, Sh** Fu**ing bastard and Fu** Di**. If I was the guy being trespassed on by moustached attractive junkies I’d be swearing creatively as well.
The movie Trespass centers around a bunch of attractive junkie thieves trying to steal diamonds from Nic Cage. The plan goes bad and screaming occurs. Nic gets his hand smooshed. Kidman gets thown into 17 walls and bad decisions rule the day.
The film goes down like this:
1.The robbers ask Cage where the money is.
2. Nic Cage defies them and swears a lot.
3. The robbers yell, swear and threaten Nicole Kidman (who then calls her agent and fires him for putting her in the movie).
The process repeats itself X30.
Watch this film if you have a new sound system and need to break it in.
Movies, Films & Flix 