RECENT VIEWINGS (Bad Movie Thread!)

[zombie no.one]

yeah not the most kid-friendly scene (oh hang on, kids probably loved that scene)... but I get what you mean. beyond 'family movie' type stuff really, which is kind of where I think the JP franchise is supposed to be pitched?

fwiw I watched a Wesley Snipes 2000s era film tonight which was so unremarkable I can't even be bothered to report on it. not even for you guys. sorry

[lester1/2jr]

The Game blew my mind and had my spouting conspiracy theories. To each their own, I guess.


Also, I've never gotten Jurassic Park. A bunch of CGI dinosaurs who cares? They should have actually created dinosaurs, then I'd watch it.

[M.10rda]

I liked THE GAME. It isn't Fincher's best but the cast is good and it's fun to watch Michael Douglas get jerked about.

[zombie no.one]

The Game blew my mind and had my spouting conspiracy theories. To each their own, I guess.

of course, that's the way it has to be and I totally respect all you guys' takes... it's super rare that I ever change my own opinion on a movie after 1st watch, but it has happened

[zombie no.one]

KILL SWITCH (2008)

"Seagal's best movie in years" says the blurb on the dvd inlay

so of course it's no better or worse than any of his films from the preceding 5 years or so (and I have them all, so I can say that), and is definitely worse than any which precede that.

this one starts with a flashback sequence to a traumatic event in Stevie boy's childhood, when he and his brother are playing in the woods, and his brother goes to retreive a frisbee or something, and is killed... by... someone?

this event flashes back a few times throughout the movie, with increasing intensity, although what it has to do with the main plot I have no idea...

Seagal talks with a truly ridiculous regional twang of his own concoction in this one, which sounds half hillbilly redneck and half LA pimp...

fights is fought and heads is cracked and it's all okay in the end.

[LilCerberus]

Tonight's Stinker
Rocket Attack U.S.A.(1960)
https://youtu.be/rysX2mJmveA?si=UED4GmPkLAguw4IF

The Soviets have launched a new Sputnik, so the U.S. military sends a spy to Moscow to see what's up....
Upon arrival, he learns his contact is a woman who's started an affaire with a top ranking Soviet minister, and that they have all the research data they need to start work on an ICBM....
Meanwhile, American attempts to get a missile up fail, so the only option is for the American spy to sabotage the Russian missile....

Cold war & space race exploitation....
About an hour, with mostly a narrator talking over stock footage...
The acting is mostly stiff, with most of the scenes over dubbed, while some recite their lines as if they only just saw the script, a second ago.....
Meanders for the first half, then switches directions.....

[LilCerberus]

Tonight's Stinker
First Man Into Space (1959)
https://youtu.be/Fp_9o4AIDqM?si=Y3DcQSQdhVeD0mtV

A repurposed Bell X-1 (in other words, stock footage) is shot off into space... The airbase commander says it's reached it's limit & should turn around, but the pilot is his reckless younger brother, who pushes the plane AND himself slightly beyond.... He manages to get back to Earth, but wrecks the plane.... Instead of returning to the airbase, he goes to see his girlfriend, which puts him in deep doo-doo with his already irate older brother, but Washington gives him another chance....
The pilot disobeys orders again, the plane runs into a cloud of space dust.... The plane returns to earth with no pilot....
Then about halfway through the movie, cattle, people & a blood bank are attacked by a creature that breathes like Darth Vader....

Get plodding at times in spite of the runtime, the pilots personality & the premise make for some real headscratchers......

[Newt138]

Just finished a horrid film

Smokey & the Bandit 6 Bandit and the Beauty

But wait you are thinking there is only 3 S&tB films. Well that was until 1994 when 4 made for tv sequels got unleashed.

This one had Kathy Ireland as the female lead. Bandit is on his way to a race,Kathy steals his car. Bandit ends up driving a bus full of Nudists and nuns.

Total s**t.

[zombie no.one]

ATM (2013)

2 guys and a gal go to an ATM machine at night... one that's in a medium sized kiosk... but a nasty mean dude guy bloke man appears outside and stops them from getting out, and acts all nasty!

help, that's the plot!

nothing to see here... truly horrible bratty banter and stilted acting. what was the point. 1/10

[zombie no.one]

Just finished a horrid film

Smokey & the Bandit 6 Bandit and the Beauty

But wait you are thinking there is only 3 S&tB films. Well that was until 1994 when 4 made for tv sequels got unleashed.

This one had Kathy Ireland as the female lead. Bandit is on his way to a race,Kathy steals his car. Bandit ends up driving a bus full of Nudists and nuns.

Total s**t.

haha, kind of intrigued by these tbh... seems all 4 movies were done in 94 (edit, oh you said that) and just go under the name BANDIT: (Insert Subtitle)

the 3rd movie is possibly the most half assed attempt at an actual proper movie I've ever seen

[LilCerberus]

Tonight's Stinker
Blood Moon(2014)
https://youtu.be/3j5lxefgeEU?si=EKdsG536_zq0SIw5

A gunfighter has to put down his horse & flags down a stagecoach... Meanwhile, A marshal in a nearby town is after a pair of potty-mouthed bank robbers.... The stagecoach stops at an abandoned town, & the bank robbers take everyone hostage....
And there's a werewolf lurking around outside....

Indie production that's pretty grating for the first forty-five cliché infested minutes before it gets interesting.....

[LilCerberus]

Tonight's Stinker
Twice a Judas(1968)
https://youtu.be/o0SIX8IGcF4?si=pk_9JrQ6CO-moQsf
(Or here) https://youtu.be/qAPDGizn1Vw?si=lrUxKG-AYeiYVL4w

A gunfighter wakes up in the desert with a bump on his head & no memory... He makes his way to a nearby town, where he learns his name, and that he's part of a murder for hire plot....
The next day, he learns the target is his brother, so he chickens out & kills his partner... His brother (Klaus Kinski) is a Confederate land baron feuding with a Yankee bank man (neither is the good guy)....
The gunfighter starts to piece things back together with research & some instincts, & slowly learns who his enemies are....

Spaghetti western with a mystery.... Pretty enjoyable.....

[M.10rda]

If my overextended, work-addled mind couldn't even retain the simple title "JAY KELLY", how the heck can I be expected to remember...

HOLIDAY TOUCHDOWN: A BILLS LOVE STORY (2025):   

This is some kind of diabolical team-up between the Hallmark Movie network and the NFL, which recycles the same title and (for all I know) the same plot for different football teams. There is at least a HOLIDAY TOUCHDOWN: A CHIEFS LOVE STORY (feh!) and possibly others? But besides that this is just like any other garbage Hallmark Christmas movie, which I tend to disregard (though Madame will occasionally watch them). We watched this one because it appeared to be shot on location in Buffalo and promised glimpses of local landmarks and (as often will be the case in WNY-shot features) cameos from WNY's large pool of theatre artists. But as a famous Admiral once said, "It's a trap!"

The cameos you will get are of past and current Buffalo Bills, including 80s/90s legends Jim Kelly and Thurman Thomas, QB and RB for the only team in NFL history to contend in four consecutive Superb Owls (and thus also the only team in NFL history to lose four consecutive Superb Owls). I didn't recognize him but apparently (per the credits) there's also an appearance by Scott Norwood, famous among football fans for losing one of those classic Superb Owls at the very last moment with a "Wide right!" field goal; and famous among film enthusiasts for ruining Vincent Gallo's life in BUFFALO 66, becoming a naked obese strip club owner, and getting his brains blown out by Gallo in the climax of the film. (Norwood didn't play himself and Gallo wisely changed the name to "Scotty Woods.") The current Bills head coach has an entire dialogue scene with the male lead, though his name isn't mentioned and I don't know it  in spite of watching the equivalent of one entire Bills game (or parts of four quarters of a few different games) this season, which is probably the most TV football I've ever watched in a single season in my life. Alas, though current star QB Josh Allan is mentioned, he's too busy getting paid a lot of money to appear in commercials and enjoying his new wife Hailee Steinfeld (hot star of SINNERS, who also doesn't appear, natch)... thus I presume if you were to watch A CHIEFS LOVE STORY, you'd get no Pat Mahomes or Travis Kelce (or Taylor Swift).

I wrote a musical about the life and career of Thurman Thomas a few years back. Thomas told me that when he flew into Buffalo as a rookie from Texas in the mid-80s, his first thought was "Where's the city? It's so flat..." To be fair to Buffalo, 21st century urban renewal has made it look a little bit more like the platonic ideal of a "city" than it used to. Unfortunately HOLIDAY TOUCHDOWN shoots almost all of its exteriors on one small downtown block of one of Buffalo's sleepier suburbs, failing to distinguish this from downtown Buffalo proper, thus making my region look approximately as p**sant as how I presume residents of other cities think Buffalo looks. (I've been to parts of Kansas City that were $#!tholes, too, so I hope the CHIEFS LOVE STORY team was more considerate about their location scouting.)

The majority of HT:ABLS looks like it was shot on sets possibly outside of Western New York (the credits have a huge "Connecticut" icon, sigh) and, most disappointingly, nearly all of the actors were clearly cast from elsewhere and imported. The supporting cast I recognized include Caroline Aaron from MARVELOUS MRS. MAISEL; Michael J. Fox's wife Tracy Pollan, who is 65 and looks 40 max, though her forehead never moves; the always-welcome Abraham Benrubi as Santa Claus; and Joe Pantoliano, co-star of THE MATRIX, THE FUGITIVE, and "The Sopranos", who can't possibly need money this badly but gives a real performance anyway and nails the Buffalo accent. That's more than I can say for the inept romantic leads and the hopeless younger actors who play their group of friends, all of whom I guess cut muster by Hallmark standards, though they wouldn't easily make it on to any regional stage of repute.

That's a real shame - practically the only reason Buffalo theatre artists watch the (mostly bad) films shot in Buffalo is to spot people we know. There is one nominally "real" WNY actor visible in this film or named in the credits, I worked with him once in 2012, he's got about three lines, and he doesn't exactly represent the region as being a rich center for theatre... but somehow they found him and put him onscreen, so one wonders - why couldn't they have filled dozens of other roles not played by Name actors with similar local talent? There are only a couple dozen Women of a Certain Age in WNY who would've been thrilled to play "Mrs. Claus" (who has more screen time than Benrubi as Santa) and would have done as well or better than the import they hired. That actress happens to also be the exact size and shape as Buffalo's own Stephen McKinley Henderson, and walks and gestures identically to Steve. Although Steve obviously wouldn't play "Mrs. Claus", he still makes time around his many appearances in Oscar Best Picture nominees to come appear in independent features shot in WNY, reminding us that HT:ABLS could have done better if it wanted to. For another example, I could point to the closing scene of BUFFALO 66, where Gallo has a long conversation with a doughnut shop clerk played by Buffalo's playwright laureate Manny Fried. (I founded and ran the Emanuel Fried New Play Workshop for 15 years, with Manny's blessing.) There are other real Buffalo actors in that donut shop finale, too.

1/5
But I suppose the audience for this was Hallmark Christmas movie fans nationwide and less so actual Buffalonians or Bills fans. As such it does deliver all the usual Hallmark horse$#1t, alas.