Con Air [1997]

[Cross-posted on the Bad Movie Night Facebook page.]

I had to double check that Michael Bay was not involved in this film because this is an insanely Michael Bay film. The movie opens with shots of war that are mostly explosions and close-ups of American flags for God's sake. And just look at that movie cover!

The movie follows the curiosity that is Nicolas Cage as he returns home from a war (which one?), has some rednecks uncharacteristically hate on him for being military (don't rednecks love blind patriotism?) and having an attractive wife (who specifically won't sleep with them thereby making her a whore or something), and then accidentally kills one of them in a fight (while explosions burst behind them for no reason). Being that his hands are deadly weapons, he gets sent away for seven years, getting parole on the day of his daughter who he's never met's birthday. He just needs to take one little prison plane ride first and OH NO, John Malkovich is a crazy and clever killer who has teamed up with other inmates to hijack the plane! What will our hero do? Recite oddly cadenced lines and try to find a way to get his cellmate friend his insulin while sending John Cusack clues about where the plane is so the government can stop it, that's what. Among the various passengers there's best selling black militant author Ving Rhames, creepy rapist Danny Trejo, silly crackhead Dave Chappelle, and the inexplicable only sane man cannibal Steve Buscemi and his Buscemeyes. Hilarity ensues of both the intentional and unintentional kind with a bit more of the latter as the convicts try to make it to Mexico and run out of gas, ending up in a plane graveyard of a town in the desert. This really could have set the scene for a fun buddy comedy but unfortunately the movie up until that point didn't seem to be heading in that direction. What followed instead were scene after scene of fighting and explosions and none of us knew what was going on. Then the action switched to Vegas and repeated. Bad guys died, modes of transportation became scrap metal, and Nic Cage met his daughter while that annoying Trisha Yearwood song that was so damn popular at the time played again. 

Also, there was a scene where a car was tied to the end of a plane and when the plane was taking off, the car smashed directly into a control tower. This is a metaphor for the film as a whole, I'm sure.

Nic Cageiest Line: "Put the bunny back in the box!"

Adam's Missing Movie Line: "I may be a con but I have CONviction."

Adam's Grandma's Review: "It's good like you said. Lots of action."

I Know Who Killed Me [2007]

[Cross-posted on the Bad Movie Night Facebook page.]

Did you know that during the peak of Lindsay Lohan's highly publicized insanity she made a movie? Even better, what little press the movie had surrounded the idea that she played twins in it which called back to the first of her two most famous movies and was the biggest spoiler of the film. Whoops.

The movie opens on a lengthy shot of Lohan dancing in a strip club, shot like someone who has probably made a music video once or twice, before cutting to Lohan reading depressing self-insert fanfics in front of her class while somehow managing to be the smartest, bestest, most popular girl eva. This girl, Aubrey, gets abducted and tortured by a guy who has already killed one of her classmates but when she is found and wakes up in the hospital she insists that her name is Dakota and that she's a stripper who grew up in a poor, drug-soaked house. Everyone thinks she's full of shit (she did write stories about this idea) or possibly under going some kind of repression from her torture. Dakota smokes cigarettes, nails Aubrey's boyfriend, and thinks everyone's an asshole. She slowly reveals that her limbs were not cut off by some psycho but just kind of fell off resulting in the exact same missing arm and leg as the first victim of this psycho. Limbs just do that sometimes. The explanation for why any of this is happening is so phenomenally dumb and unlikely that I'll let you find out on your own. Hint: it's "The Parent Trap" but with injury.

You quickly catch onto the fact that the movie doesn't seem to fully get symbolism since it pretty much tells you all you need to know with color. Any scene with Aubrey is blue and she only wears blue. Any scene with Dakota is red and she only wears red. This is not an exaggeration. On top of that distracting fact, there are unnecessarily long stripper scenes, a phoned in performance from Lohan, a fair amount of gore porn, a villain whose motivation is never explained, and the fact that the movie name makes no sense but still manages to get dropped in the film. You do not know who killed you. You're still alive, you never died in the past, and no one has even tried to kill you. Nothing about this statement is accurate aside from the fact that it is exactly the kind of name a bad movie would have. Success.

Quote:
[To a girl with one leg] "You're a kicker!"

Adam's Grandma's Review: "Interesting."

Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever [2002]

[Cross-posted on the Bad Movie Night Facebook page.]

We've got another "worst movies ever" list topper with a solid 0% on Rotten Tomatoes for you this evening. Every Steven Segal movie in the world back to back would not feel as tedious or have as much pointless action as the hour and 31 minutes we endured watching "Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever." Michael Bay wishes he had this many explosions in his films but probably has at least one person near him telling him it might be a bit excessive. I guess this is what you get for letting a guy going by the monkier of "Kaos" direct your movie.

 

I can barely even describe this move since only about five minutes of the entire thing had dialogue and some sembalance of plot which only Sarah seemed to half follow and then had to explain to the rest of us. This is what we could manage to decipher: In a world of flapping black trench coats, Sever flips her hair and then kidnaps some women's kid and keeps him in a rather cozy cage with Hostess cupcakes while fighting against the kid's father, Kant, by destroying an industrial park with bullets. Ecks is brought in to fight Sever (we think) but learns that his wife is still alive and the kidnapped kid is actually his and that Kant made him think his wife was dead for some reason and therefore ex-Ecks wife. Also Kant killed Sever's family so she hates him. It doesn't take long for the movie to go from Ecks vs. Sever to Ecks and Sever vs. Kant. Also there's something about microbots that can be put in someone's body for later biological warfare. In the words of Harley Quinn "Why don't ya just shoot 'im?". Truthfully though, they did try in the Stormtrooper, no-aim-whatsoever kind of way. The movie is mostly just flying bullets, exploding cars, fight choreography peppered with random pauses and poses, and guns that shoot things they can't actually shoot all set to a score and soundtrack that was probably burned onto a CD with "Badass Mix #5" Sharpied on it.

 

Summarizing Quote: "Situation out of hand."

 

Adam's Grandma's Review: "Okay."

Gerry [2002]

[Cross-posted on the Bad Movie Night Facebook page.]

Yesterday we dove into another new genre of bad movie for us: art house. Now the problem with bad art house movies is that someone, somewhere is always going to think that it is actually brilliant and that we are uneducated plebeians for thinking that it's crap. Our movie for instance has a 62% on Rotten Tomatoes and unlike "Sharknado"'s 82%, this rating doesn't come with irony or appreciation for bad movies.

"Gerry" isn't so much a movie as it is a slideshow of nature scenes that manages to go on for over an hour and a half. Here's the plot: two guys named Gerry (Matt Damon and Casey Affleck) go for a hike, deviate from the path to "the thing at the end of the path", get lost for days, and one of them ends up finding the road and leaving with some random family. That's not the plot in a nutshell. It's the whole plot. The only other things going on involve a short running scene, meaningless conversations about "Wheel of Fortune" and an "Age Of Empires"-esque video game, Affleck!Gerry getting marooned on a rock that he somehow can't get down in spite of the fact that he climbed it, a conversation about how they got lost that uses the word "gerry" about twelve times, and Affleck!Gerry hallucinating Damon!Gerry telling him that he knows how to get back to the car. Aside from the ending, THAT'S the whole movie. The one thing that can be said about it is that when you're watching it, you really feel like you're lost with them but instead of sympathizing with their plight, you want nothing more than for the two of them to just die so your torment can end.

Thankfully, we were aware of how boring this movie was before we watched it so we came prepared:

In case you're wondering how many of these were actually consumed, it breaks down like this (in order of lowest caffeine tolerance to highest):

Adam's Grandma: Nothing. Maybe tea.

Kay: Sonic Energy Refresher

Keith: Mountain Dew Kickstart

Sarah: Vitamin Water Energy, Full Throttle

Adam: Monster Muscle, Spike Shooter (300mg of caffeine), Amp

I don't know who drank the Guarana Root Beer. Probably Adam.

Movie Quotes:
[when he can't get down from the rock] Affleck!Gerry: I'm rock marooned! Make me a dirt mattress!

BMN Quotes:
[during a long scene]
Keith: Oh, I thought your computer froze.
Adam: We'd never know if my computer froze.

Kay: What do you think was the budget of this movie?
Sarah: Nothing.
Kay: It cost a few thousand to hire Damon and for Affleck they threw a fifty at him and let him wear a shirt with a star on it to convince him that he was the star.

Adam's Grandma's Review: "I told you; it was boring."
(Note: She didn't fall asleep during this movie but it's probably because Adam was so caffeine high and bored that he kept screaming every ten minutes.)

BOOK REVIEW: "The Disaster Artist" by Greg Sestero & Tom Bissell

If you find yourself wondering why I'm doing a book review on a blog devoted to the bad movies we watch every Monday, then clearly you have yet to hear of this book (or perhaps can't figure out where you've heard of the first author before). The full title of the book is "The Disaster Artist: My Life Inside The Room, the Greatest Bad Movie Ever Made" and the author is more commonly known as "Oh, hi Mark."

The book is essentially written with two alternating timelines: one that focuses on Greg Sestero's friendship with Tommy Wiseau and the effect it had on their lives and careers, and the other that focuses specifically on the making of "The Room."

In the first timeline, Sestero recounts meeting Wiseau in a San Francisco acting class where he watches him butcher a Shakespeare sonnet before the class and then has the gall to tell the teacher that she is the one in the wrong for criticizing him. Impressed by his unfounded confidence and courage, Sestero decides that he must do a scene with him, a decision that leads to the oddest of friendships. At first Wiseau is a great friend, giving encouragement and assistance when Sestero has no one else who supports him, going on sponteneous adventures to sites significant to James Dean, one of their mutual favorite actors, and being optimistic about both Sestero's career and his own. However, as Sestero's career starts to take off and Wiseau remains stagnant, things start to become strained between them. Somehow they end up hostile roommates before Wiseau disappears for months and comes back with the idea to write his own play/screenplay to prove that he can be not only an actor but a director, producer, and writer. The book draws parallels of their relationship to the main friendships in The Talented Mr. Ripley and Sunset Boulevard, which is exactly as unnerving as it sounds.

This part of the book is mostly the story of their friendship but there are a lot of interesting things to it. Aside from just recounting how close friendships and competition can be a volatile mixture, you also get Sestero's personal story of how difficult it can be to find fame in Los Angeles and how his career is simultaneously helped and harmed by his friendship with Wiseau (along with some hilarious commentary on Wiseau from his mother). This part of the story also shows many of the quirks about Tommy Wiseau that make him such a strange person and often, explain parts of "The Room." Sestero talks about Wiseau's reluctance to reveal his age, origin, or job, and perpetually acts like he is already famous. He's endlessly paranoid about people poisoning his food and records all his phone conversations to listen to later, and is deeply ageist in spite of no one knowing what his age really is. 

In case you're wondering if the book answers any of these questions, I would say it partially does. While Sestero can't confirm Wiseau's origin or job, the books does offer plenty of hints and offers a rather detailed potential back story of which Wiseau frequently changes the details. His age is offered but the answer is still unbelievable to Sestero and to anyone else who has seen Wiseau. The only truth Wiseau seems to offer Sestero in their friendship is that he has been in two very serious car accidents which might explain something, but what?

While pieces of Wiseau's life may still be somewhat shrouded in mystery, in the portion of the book surrounding "The Room"'s production many questions you may have had about the film get answered. Sestero manages to explain how a movie that looked so cheap cost $6 million dollars, why there are so many lapses in logic and consistency, and just how much power Wiseau had over the movie (literally all of it). Sestero also talks about the actors in the movie which really makes the reader understand why anyone would agree to appear in something so horrible. Sestero himself ended up in the movie because the day before they started filming Wiseau pleaded him to be in it, insisting that he wrote the part of Mark for him and offering him a ton of money and a new car to play the role . . . without firing the guy who was originally offered the part or telling him until they had been filming a few days. You learn why Juliette Danielle who plays Lisa took the role when so many other actresses balked out, how everyone felt so bad for Philip Haldiman being stuck playing the endlessly creepy character of Denny who was supposed to be about ten years his junior, and about the fascinating back story of Dan Janjigian who plays Chris-R. Sestero really makes you feel for these actors and crew members as he had, watching them fruitlessly offer suggestion, suffer in poor working conditions, and, often, furiously quit, all in the name of Wiseau's vanity project.

"The Disaster Artist" is captivating and hilarious and touching and terrifying in equal parts. Every fan of "The Room" should read it and, honestly, if you aren't a fan of "The Room", I would assume it just means you haven't seen it yet and therefore should.

As a final note, it must be said that earlier this year Seth Rogan's production company got the rights to the book and there is a film planned with James Franco directing and his younger brother, Dave Franco, playing Sestero. So that's a thing.

The Langoliers [1995]

[Cross-posted on the Bad Movie Night Facebook page.]

When someone decides to adapt a Stephen King novel into a movie there are two methods that one can chose to take. The first method is when the director and/or writer decide on an artistic vision for the movie that manages to capture the spirit of the book while maintaining conciseness and style. Probably the most famous examples of this include Stanley Kubrick's "The Shining" and Scott Hick's 'Hearts In Atlantis". Then there's the other method: to cram absolutely everything from the book into the movie no matter how long and meandering it becomes. This is an example of the latter.

The story follows a group of people on a plane from LA to Boston who wake up to find that most of their follow passengers have disappeared and they must then figure out what's going on. Among them are a former pilot, a school teacher, a British hitman, a blind girl, and a very angry business man who calms himself down by tearing up pieces of paper in near orgasmic bliss. They discuss conspiracy theories for an hour while deciding to land in Bangor, Maine, which is supposedly closer than Boston, but when they get out there's no man or beast around and the world suddenly lacks flavor, smell, sound, etc. Angry business man gets crazier and crazier and starts shouting in fear about the langoliers because he read ahead in the script. Then he tries to kill people. Then langoliers, who look like Pacman with sharp teeth, try to kill people. Why is all this happening you ask? The plane apparently went through a vortex and, because these particular passengers were sleeping, they got transported back in time to a, I guess, deserted world because everything else has moved forward and the langoliers are creatures that destroy the past by eating it. In summary, Stephen King doesn't seem to get time travel and has never seen an episode of "Doctor Who." Come for the three hour long nonsense plot, stay for the obvious dialogue, bad mid-90s CGI, King cliches, and Bronson Pinchot's hammy acting.

Quotes: "I'm blind and I can't see her."

Adam's Grandma's Review: "I liked it."

We had langolier for dinner (also known as meatloaf and Wheat Thins).

Although we did not win Stephen King bingo (Kingo, if you will), we did get a lot of spaces.