RECENT VIEWINGS (Bad Movie Thread!)

[chainsaw midget]

Just watched Y2K.  It's a light horror/light comedy, with a few chuckles, some smirks, but no outright laughs.  Likewise it's not really mean or nasty enough to really feel horror, and the kills it does have aren't really focused enough on to hit home. 

The plot is about how at midnight on 1999, machines immediately gain sentience, start building robot bodies out of every bit of machinery available and start killing people.

The real appeal in this movie is the focus on the late 90s highschool culture, particularly the very early internet.  I can see how people that weren't there for that wouldn't really be into it, but I thought it was fun.  Mild, but fun. 

[LilCerberus]

Tonight's Stinker
Battle In Outer Space (1959)
https://youtu.be/0tDnW5Xhg44?si=NqXQ8FYMk4F7j5XA

Aliens attack a space station & several earth cities....
A science alliance in Tokyo develops a new kind of laser gun, & heads for the moon....
For some reason, all of this takes way longer than I'm describing.....

The movie feels like it's over after about an hour & ten minutes, but then they tack on another twenty minutes for a segment about Earth uniting & preparing for another alien attack, then a final battle.....

[zombie no.one]

MURDER BY NUMBERS (2002)

glossy tv-movie-esque thriller garbage, but the fact that it never devolved into endless crazy explosions / car chases / screaming and fighting, meant I managed to stick out the 2 hour run time.

Sandra Bullock is a spikey detective who almost immediately susses out the guilty parties in a local murder, then spends the rest of the film fretting about life the universe and everything, before a ridiculously unberrrlieeevable ending.

Ryan Reynolds is a main character in this, playing a smarmy student... I thought that might make this the first film with him in that I've ever seen, but looking at imdb he was in SMOKIN ACES as well, which I did see when it came out - no recollection of him though.

I see he's also in BLADE TRINITY which I have lined up for a watch soon... turning into a regular Ryan Reynolds superfan over here

[M.10rda]

Is it Reynolds or Gosling? I've never seen it (not a Bullock fan) but I know my wife has. She is a big fan of both Ryans so it's a 50/50 throw...

[M.10rda]

HARDCORE POISONED EYES (2000):
The title for this SOV-horror flick must've been generated randomly on some early GeoCities' web app - nothing hardcore about it, no eyes are poisoned, you get the idea. Three Staten Island/Jersey girl tough chicks hole up in a cabin one winter night and talk and talk and talk and eventually start to worry about one or more Satanists stalking them in the nearby woods. Occasionally they take a break from kvetching about their relationships and careers to run blindly around in the snow screaming their heads off, then they go back inside, warm up, rinse and repeat.

The actresses are all lovely and seem like capable performers, and its admirable that the writer/director wanted to develop their characters, give them backstories, allow them to relate to each other as human beings, etc. But HPE is a real demonstration of how implausible and false dialogue can break a film completely. About three-quarters of the way the one gal reins in her hysteria long enough to soliloquize about how much she's sacrificed to pursue her career as a writer, and while I'd almost buy her motivation under the extreme circumstances, she's forced to express herself in such a clunky way that it just murders all possible tension, even more brutally than the Satanists would presumably murder these broads.

I did end up zoning out during this, maybe one of them does get poisoned (at least she starts puking blood at one point) but I remain 100% adamant that the film remains entirely softcore or sub-softcore throughout. Meh.

2/5

Also I suspect (due to the closing credits thanking "Anton Szandor Lavey" and others) that the auteur was one of those 90s edgelords who thought Satanism was super cool and edgy, and thus likely was unaware that Lavey spent most of his time kayfabe-ing, boozing it up, and having bisexual orgies, and probably exactly 0% of his time hunting and murdering young women in the woods.

[zombie no.one]

Is it Reynolds or Gosling? I've never seen it (not a Bullock fan) but I know my wife has. She is a big fan of both Ryans so it's a 50/50 throw...

woah, you're correct, it's Gosling. what a basic error, although in my defence I really have no idea who anyone is these days 

- just checked Gosling's imdb and yeah that's the first of his movies I've seen :)

[M.10rda]

He's a good actor, more range than Reynolds, but they're both just pretty muscular white guys. Dime a dozen!

[zombie no.one]

Also I suspect (due to the closing credits thanking "Anton Szandor Lavey" and others) that the auteur was one of those 90s edgelords who thought Satanism was super cool and edgy, and thus likely was unaware that Lavey spent most of his time kayfabe-ing, boozing it up, and having bisexual orgies, and probably exactly 0% of his time hunting and murdering young women in the woods.

he was also credited as a 'consultant' (or something similar)  on THE CAR which I watched the other day, which had zero examples of anything resembling wizardy witchcraft that I was aware of...

never heard of this film, weird title indeed. sounds more like an Alanis Morrisette album title :)

[LilCerberus]

Tonight's Stinker
Empire of Ash (1988) AKA Empire of Ash II (1989)
https://youtu.be/3PYrC-Yr_vY?si=zF1pqvPO0H7tMC2f

Really low budget Mad Max ripoff, slow paced with no real plot...
Punk rockers in a big truck drive around shooting everyone they see, while a worldly preacher cheers them on...
They kill an old man, & kidnap his grand daughter... After a while, her sister shows up, meets a nomad who promptly gets kidnapped by mutants, and she decides to go rescue him, because he knows where the punk rockers took her sister....
Some action scenes, with stunts & pyrotechnics that aint so bad considering the budget...

[Jim H]

The Next Karate Kid - I finally saw this one.  It's bad.  Some of the training sequence stuff with Swank is kind of fun and her and Miyagi have some good moments (I like the dance part), but man, not much else is worth anything.  It's just bland and very poorly written, a lot of very bad dialogue and structure, with a way over the top pair of villains, and not fun ones like in part 3.  One is super rapey, which is a bit much for the film really.  And then he just kind of turns at the end?  Which doesn't feel at all earned, unlike Johnny in 1.  The production feels like a big budget TV movie. 

The director also did The Principal and Young Guns, which are both MUCH better made really, which is saying something.  I dunno.  Didn't care for it, and I'd call it the worst of the quadrilogy, if we can call it that.

7% on Rotten Tomatoes seems about right.

For an amusing bit, when they let the hawk in the film go free, watch for a smaller bird trying to show it whose boss in some shots.  Thought it was funny that ended up in the film.  Also look for Walton Goggins in a small role as a minor villain, his first named role in fact.

[M.10rda]

never heard of this film, weird title indeed. sounds more like an Alanis Morrisette album title :)

  You're absolutely correct. Perhaps the working title was SUPPOSED FORMER SATANISM JUNKIE! Heck, the whole film really belongs "Under Rug Swept"! Stop me, I'm on a roll!

[zombie no.one]

arf...

"it's like a good movie, when all you need is a bad movie" [/irony]

[LilCerberus]

Tonight's Stinker
1990: The Bronx Warriors (1982)
https://youtu.be/gqm_nD1kKxk?si=ISnlal0rtLKUabzj

Starts out with a premise like "Escape From New York", then turns into a ripoff of "The Warriors"....
A poor little rich girl escapes her handlers in Manhattan, & falls in with a biker gang in The Bronx...
Her handlers hire a dirty cop to bring her back, but he's more interested in starting a gang war...

[Dr. Whom]

Trouble Every Day (2001)

This one caught my attention because of Béatrice Dalle, who made a deep impression on me way back when 37°2 le matin came out. It is about a couple on their honeymoon to Paris, where the husband is in fact trying to track down a former associate of his. The latter has retired and is nursing his wife (Dalle) who is either a vampire, or a serial killer with vampiric tendencies. Anyway, there is lots of blood.

This not such a bad movie, and have been hesitating what category I would put it in. It is just that everything. is. so. damn. slow. This makes 2001 Space Odyssey look like something by Michael Bay.You have the classic way of padding out runtime by having your characters do mundane stuff in realtime. Even the things that matter, take way too long. Near the end, there is a brutal rape scene, which keeps going on, making it especially disturbing and voyeuristic.

You can easily cut it down to about one hour, and have a watchable movie. People have taken issue with the disjointed way of storytelling. This didn't bother me, except that many scenes are just there, adding nothing.

[M.10rda]

I don't necessarily disagree w/ any of your comments about TROUBLE EVERY DAY. It wasn't a rollercoaster of a viewing experience for me. But it's one of those films that lives in my mind and plays out perpetually in my recollections... perhaps a more rewarding film to remember and think about than it is to actually watch.