Singham Returns [2014]

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

It is over! And by "it" I mean graduate school for Sarah and Kay. For now at least. They have graduated and now we can get back to our regularly scheduled programming of bad movies every Monday night. In fact, we have a new plan for the next couple of months until we get bored with this plan: two weeks of the month will be new movies, one week will be a rewatch, and the other week will be a Bollywood film. Our drive into Bollywood with "Singham" really opened our eyes to a whole world of fun, high budget movies that we could be watching outside of the low budget crap produced mostly in America (although we have seen a fair amount of UK, Canada, and Italian productions in particular). Of course, we also need to specify that bad is subjective. We thought "Singham" was straight up awesome but there were a lot of things that made us laugh when we we're totally sure if we were supposed to be laughing, crazy camera movement, and over the top acting. Are these things characteristic of a bad movie? Of course. Does this make "Singham" a bad movie? Doesn't matter. We loved it.

"Singham Returns" was mostly more of the same delightfulness we got from "Singham" but where it falls apart for us as a bad movie crew was the more frequent dips into serious commentary. Like the first one, there is a plot involving a cop who dies under circumstances that seem to indicate that he was involved in corrupt activities and Singham wants to prove otherwise. Like the first one, there is a side romance with some wacky hijinks and a music number (although Adam distinctly doesn't trust the new love interest for reasons he can't quite articulate). Like the first one, there is some big conspiracy going on but this time it's even bigger. 

Singham is now a cop in Mumbai and the attempts by bad guys to get him to abandon his principles have increased exponentially. This leads to the new catchphrase "Singham gives; he doesn't take" i.e. Singham will give you pain, not take your bribes. Singham also says, "Now I've lost it" a bunch, usually before punching people (and during the credits there was a new song based on this phrase). The large overarching plot is about an upcoming election where the progressive and good candidate is murdered by his corrupt opposition comprising of a financial guy and a dude passing himself off as the religious leader of a cult. Stuff gets messy when you mix religion and politics and there's even a prominent newsachor figure who brings in the media component. 

The most memorable part of the movie is also the least funny and most real moment. Singham is punishing some kids for accepting bribes to vote for the corrupt politicians and then one of their moms steps in to give a long, heartfelt speech about how they need the bribe money to eat and how they don't care about which government is elected because their concern is just existing from day to day. Singham is shook. He has a very somber music segment where he has a crisis of faith. We are shook. We don't even know what to do with this hardcore truth dropped into our silly action movie. 

Regardless of the sharp turn to the didactic, we still love Singham and really hope there's a third one. 

Spoon Rating: 7

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

Rapsittie Kids Believe In Santa [2002]

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

We've got a new Christmas tradition: "Rapsittie Kids Believe In Santa."

This movie, if you could call it that as it's only 45 minutes long, is atrocious in the best possible way. The plot is pretty simple: kid gives teddy bear his dead mom gave him to his crush for Christmas. Girl is a jerk and throws it away. Girl realizes that was an awful thing to do and retrieves it. Girl gives kid her best present on Christmas day. The moral is the same moral as every Christmas story (except "Saving Christmas"). What makes this movie so special is that it is some of the worst animation in existence. Yes, worst than "Foodfight." Characters laugh and look like they're vomiting. A girl's arms pass through her body so it looks like she's cutting off her neck. Everyone looks like they're moonwalking or levitating because their feet aren't animated to move on ground. The eyes are so dead. SO DEAD. And did I mention it's a musical too? And the bad dialogue? 

This is a masterpiece.

Quote:
"I'm gonna get you, Smitty. I'm gonna take your sandwich."

Spoon Rating: 8

The Robot Vs. The Aztec Mummy [1958]

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

So grad school continues to have a direct effect on the ability of half of the bad movie night to actually engage in the films. There are only two more weeks so hold on. Instead of watch what is sure to be a favorite, "Singham 2," we decided to do a double feature of things that are only about an hour. Our first movie, "Robot Vs. The Aztec Mummy," is a dubbed Mexican horror film that pretty much followed a lot of the plot of the unmemorable "Wrestling Women Vs. The Aztec Mummy."

The plot of this movie is about 75% flashback. We are told of some kind of magical breastplate that a doctor and his collegues went to find but . . . mummy. There's also some plot about a girl being telepathically controlled. So much of this movie is flashback, we spent most of the movie waiting for the movie to start. Particularly when the title is "Robot Vs. The Aztec Mummy," there's gotta be some robot eventually, right? Not until the last 15 minutes of the film, but oh, those fifteen minutes. When the mad scientist, who has made a robot using human parts for some odd reason, finally reveals his robot that he has been hyping up, it looks like something made by a fourth grader for Halloween. Then we got 20 seconds of solid gold when the robot and the mummy fight and the mummy basically tears the robot to pieces. It's in the last two minutes of the film and it's the only thing worth watching.

Quote:
"You'll go up to your room and you'll go to sleep, and when you awaken you will act quite normally."

Spoon Rating: 2

REWATCH: No Retreat, No Surrender [1986]

As graduate school winds down for Sarah and Kay, the need to mostly do rewatches increases until finals are over. It had been quite a long time since "No Retreat, No Surrender," a movie that acted like Van Damme was the lead even though he maybe had 15 minutes of screentime while some Bruce Lee-obsessed teen was actually running the show. He did karate, worshipped Bruce Lee's grave, made a token black friend, had a very long montage with the ghost of Bruce Lee (played by a man who neither looked nor sounded like Bruce Lee), and eventually triumped in the end. And did a lot of retreating and surrendering. Ironically.

Wrestling Women Vs. The Aztec Mummy [1964] & REWATCH: Samurai Cop [1991]

Quick update here.

Last week the writer of this blog was overseas so everyone else watched the strange but kind of underwhelming "Wrestling Women Vs. The Aztec Mummy." It did deliver on the title but was structurally leaving a lot to be desired.

This Monday we did a rewatch of the classic "Samurai Cop." Read our previous review here.

TC 2000 [1993]

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

When someone sets out to write a martial arts movie, there is a spectrum of how much love and care you want to put into it. Will your lead actor or actress be a known name? Will it feature cops, military, or just martial artists? Will there be an explanation for why Jean Claude Van Damme is an American with an accent or is the audience just supposed to roll with it? And, most importantly in terms of memorability, will it have a unique plot? It will be hard for us to forget last week's "Dark Angel" because of its unique alien drug dealer premise, but what if you just want to make a thing and don't care much? Rip off other movies and only create the thinnest of scripts. That's what this movie, "TC 2000," chose to do. The film smashes together such films as "Mad Max," "The Terminator," "Total Recall," and other, better, movies with roughly the same science fiction action movie aesthetic. In spite of its influences, this movie is about 10% plot and 90% punching faces.

Not Wesley Snipes (Billy Blanks a.k.a. Tae Bo guy) and Not Jessica Alba are cops in a dystopian future who live underground and take orders from Not Tom Selleck and his scientist underling Not Steve Buscemi. He doesn't get along well with fellow cop Not Dolph Lundgren (who was actually the same guy who played the drug dealer alien in "Dark Angel"). A new gang of Saturday Morning Cartoon villians lead by a Hamburgler-esque man called Nicky PIcasso start causing a lot of trouble above ground and they go to stop them. Not Jessica Alba gets shot and dies and is recreated by the scientist to be essentially a Universal Soldier. Billy Blanks realizes there's some sketchy stuff going on and leaves the police force to get Nicky Picasso on his own. He teams up with Bolo Yeung and we get a lot of training montages. Meanwhile UniSol!lady teams up with Picasso because it turns out the police is corrupt and in cohots with Picasso's gang. A final battle ensues. There's also some big thing about destroying or repairing the ozone layer with a key that UniSol!lady's dad gave her and that she wears around her neck. The ozone layer is saved. Probably. This movie was mostly just punches, kicks, and killing people with your thighs. And bad monochromatic cinematography. And sets with pipes everywhere.

Quotes:

"My overlord seems like a decent leader."

"Time to die!"

"Time to get a new watch."

"Of the two men that have entered, only one may leave." 

[Not at all ripped off from "Mad Max."]

We forgot to spoon rate this. Or ask Grandma for her opinion. That's how apathetic we were.

Dark Angel [1990]

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

As it has probably been mentioned before, the Bad Movie Night crew are collectively into Dolph Lundgren and will watch anything with him in it. Even a stereotypical 90s cop movie with the added bonus of drug dealer aliens. You're welcome. For the reference, the reason why the title of this post and the title on the poster don't match is because the film was originally called "Dark Angel" but then after realizing that there were already two movies by that name (and many more things eventually after this movie was released), they decided to rename it "I Come In Peace." This title both makes more sense and is highly inaccurate.

Near Christmas, an alien comes down to Earth for unknown purposes initially outside of killing people with a weapon shaped like a CD. He is also only capable of saying, "I come in peace" in spite of this being incredibly false. The Christmas concept is quickly dropped for being to reminiscent of "Die Hard" and we are introduced to our main characters. Dolph Lundgren is a cop who failed to save his partner from getting killed in an attempted heroin bust. He gets paired up with obnoxious overachieving rookie and they try to solve the mystery of how everyone involved in the bust was killed with this mysterious CD object and why all the heroin disappeared. They take the CD to a scientist who is so hopped up on caffeine and other drugs that he can't stop fidgeting and screaming randomly in order to relax. He can't really explain it. Soon we are given enough intercut scenes of the alien injecting people with heroin and then extracting a fluid from them which we realize is endorphins, thanks to a random discussion by Lundgren's semi-girlfriend who's a coroner, that we realize he is a drug dealer from the stars. He also has an alien cop who speaks English chasing after him but he dies after losing too much cream filling. Lundgren and rookie track down the alien and defeat him. Earth is saved but only in a highly specific way.

This movie was pretty amusing. If you take out the alien part, it's your typical 90s action movie right down to the music choices and the font of the opening titles. 

Quotes:
"I like abuse as much as the next girl."

"Who's that guy?"
"Some asshole from outer space."

"I come in peace."
"And you go in pieces, asshole."

Spoon Rating: 4