[Cross-posted on the Bad Movie Night Facebook page.]
If you happen to be an unusually diligent reader of these posts, you may have noticed that there wasn't a post two Mondays ago. This wasn't a mistake but actually the result of the writer of this blog being on vacation in New Orleans. The movie that night was a rewatch of "Russian Terminator" which we watched over five years ago so the writer did not remember it enough to write anything about it.
We were going to watch "God's Not Dead" tonight but it's currently in the mail so we decided to bet on what seemed to be a sure thing: the first American movie by John Woo starring Jean Claude Van Damme. It's basically "The Most Dangerous Game" set in New Orleans. It was a good bet.
A perpetrually surprised looking woman goes to New Orleans looking for her father who left when she was young only to find out that he died mysteriously the day before. She almost gets mugged by some guys who Van Damme beats up for her. Turns out he is a Cajun native (with the greasiest mullet in America) so she pays him to lead her around the city and help her solve the mystery of her father's death. They stumble upon a company set up by some foreigners where rich people can pay to hunt poor people who will get $10,000 if they can make it ten miles to the Mississippi without dying. When the foreigners realize Van Damme is onto them, a third of the movie becomes an extended fight scene that takes place mostly in a warehouse full of old Mardi Gras floats. Oh, and at one point they meet up with Van Damme's uncle who is the guy from the diabetes commercial.
This movie is actually quite funny and most of that is thanks to John Woo and whoever edited this film. The direction and editing decisions are WILD. There are Woo trademarks like doves in the background and dual guns and a POV shot for an arrow, but there are also great awkward still frame moments, weird wipes and dissolves, and just tons of poorly timed cuts.
The biggest downside of this movie is that Van Damme doesn't wrestle a gator. We still totally won New Orleans bingo though.
Spoon Rating: 6
[Cross-posted on the Bad Movie Night Facebook page.]
America and Christianity: two questionable tastes that are often paired with little regard for sense. Christian movies we have watched in the past have usually had a sprinkling of patriotism, but never have we seen something quite this blatant. The American angle is so strong that we almost thought we were watching a war movie originally. I mean, look at that cover on the right. It certainly doesn't scream, "Christian movie" so much as it screams, "ex-veteran biker" who actually is our main character and narrator. Oh, and a holy martyr representing all persecuted Christians in America. What, you ask? Who are these persecuted Christians since Christianity is actually the dominant religion in America and Christians have tons of cultural capital? Let me explain "Last Ounce Of Courage".
The film starts by talking about a soldier going off to war and dying, leaving behind his wife and baby son. The story is told by his father, an ex-veteran and fervent Christian. For whatever reason, 14 years later this man, who is a pharmacist, biker, and mayor, and separately a crew of high school students decide that the town needs more Jesus. They stop saying "Happy Holidays" and start saying "Merry Christmas." They fight to keep decorations on a Christmas tree. The kids change their secular winter play about aliens to be the nativity story, which isn't actually a stretch since the play is literally just a version of the story down to actually using "Silent Night" in the play with changed lyrics. Our main martyr fights against the evil secular powers on the platform of freedom. He pretty deliberately gets arrested for putting up a cross and is applauded like a hero. The kids put on their play and somehow no one is sad they didn't get to see a play about winter aliens. Most strangely, the soldier's son, who has had nothing really to do for most of the film, comes on stage to play the video of his father dying in the war to prove . . . something. Something other than, "I own a snuff film that surely would have been seized by customs." The audience cries as he holds an American flag. Christmas is saved. Kirk Cameron would be pleased.
This movie elicited a lot of groaning, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. It was amusing in a trainwreck kind of way. The kind of Christians who watch this kind of movie want so much to be punished for their beliefs (I hear the "God's Not Dead" series has a similar bend) and it's kind of sad. It wasn't always laugh-out-loud funny, but it's pretty worth the watch.
Spoon Rating: 5
[Cross-posted on the Bad Movie Night Facebook page.]
Here's a real blast from the past: "Dungeons and Dragons." We watched this movie on the sixth week of Bad Movie Night back in 2012, and it has kind of been kicking around in our heads ever since. Unfortunately, the only thing we really remembered about the movie was that Jeremy Irons overacts and Thora Birch underacts. The actual plot was a mystery. Even after a rewatch, it still is, but we also now know that the overacting/underacting dichotomy is literally enough of a reason to watch this film. It is magnificent.
The plot centers around a land where magic users (mages) are the higher class and non-magic users (commoners) are the low class. Queen Thora Birch wants to create equality and mage (senator?) Jeremy Irons doesn't. This is technically the secondary plot because the main plot follows two commoner thieves who team up with a mage girl to do . . . something. They also team up with a dwarf and a lady elf who wears body armor with boob cups and a molded belly button. It's very much a ripoff of all the "Indiana Jones" trilogy and "The Goonies" in terms of action-adventure scenes. The annoying thief played by a Waynes brother dies, and we were all pleased we wouldn't have to hear his jokes anymore. Then Jeremy Irons releases the dragons and there's a big finale with lots of cheap CGI. Thora Birch tries really hard to be distressed while not moving a single facial muscle.
Honestly? Watch this movie. Even if you only look up every time Jeremy Irons is on screen, it will make your night.
Spoon Rating: 8
[Cross-posted on the Bad Movie Night Facebook page.]
We started the loosely conjoined Evangelism trilogy a few weeks ago with "Without Reservation" and tonight we finally continued with part two, "Future Tense." This short film focused on the rapture and one particularly religious college student's determination to save his family before that day, which will definitely happen in their lifetime. After doing some sick™ bike tricks, he goes to a recording booth to make a teary recording about how his family needs to find Jesus so they can join him in heaven during the rapture. We are then treated to a full scenario of the rapture where the distressed family tries to find the college student and his really little brother who have been saved. They watch a bunch of news pundits debating whether or not the rapture has happened. Then we go into the head of the college student who imagines the journey to heaven like being at an airport where he's the only one with a ticket to heaven (even though we all know heaven is reached via stairway). He tries to call his family over but his little brother is the only receptive one; probably because he's young enough to be influenced.
After that, we watched "Alibaba," an animated Indian movie with mid-90s graphics that tells the story of how Alibaba found a cave of treasures, bought a bunch of stuff, and got pursued by forty thieves. Someone might be tempted to call it an "Aladdin" rip-off, but there are not nearly enough comparisons to make it valid. The plot is thin and Alibaba himself is a really unlikable protagonist, but the details are wild. For one thing, the film is not in English but three or four songs in it are, and they are all so out of place. The forty thieves have a really weak rap they do whenever they are coming. There's a "Whole New World" rip off song that plays while Alibaba and his donkey float around on a rock, making us believe they are in love. The movie also has moments that feel a little out of place for a kid's movie. Alibaba's brother gets decapitated by the thieves and they put his head on a stick, and there is a scene with a dancer who has nipple tassels. Overall, we got a few laughs, but India has made better films.
Spoon Rating: 3.5
[Cross-posted on the Bad Movie Night Facebook page.]
Dear All Male Aspiring Writer/Director/Producers,
You are not Martin Scorsese. You will never be Martin Scorsese. We already have a Martin Scorsese, and we don't need another one.
Sincerely, The Bad Movie Night Crew.
After "Turf War" and "Checkmate" we thought we might be done with low budget, poorly written gangster movies for a while but alas here we are with "Partners." I never thought I would long so much for Tommy Wiseau's delusions of Tennessee Williams or Neil Breen's Lynchian sensibilities. This movie is the brain child of Peter James Iengo, a supposed college professor of "storytelling" (in spite of him only seeming to have a bachelors degree in creative writing). I don't know what college he teaches at or what their standards are, but I did learn this by reading the author biography on his self-published book.
The plot is pretty standard: two cops who are partners with different personalities try to take down a gangster doing a really bad Joker impression. Things happen. There's a jazz singer lady who gets to do a whole song, creating a neo noir vibe that is never replicated again. The camera is out of focus roughly 40% of the time. The dialogue is bland and repetitive. The production value is surprisingly higher than that of "Turf War" in terms of them having some real looking sets and costumes, but the camera work shows a lack of basic understanding of film rules. Characters who are supposed to be conversing with each other are looking in opposite directions. An Italian mafia guy with a pizza restaurant keeps looking at his lines on the table in between cuts. You can visibly see the moment the director told them to start walking and then never editing out the point where they are stationary. It's not "Black Ninja" levels of bad film making, but it's definitely got that high school foreign language class video vibe.
It's okay as a bad film albeit a little boring. I personally melted into the couch at around the hour mark when I realized the film would never top our pre-movie shows: "Psalty The Song Book 1," a video of kids singing about Jesus, and the Kazoo Kid video.
[Cross-posted on the Bad Movie Night Facebook page.]
This is a movie that fails on basically every level, and ultimately we are the ones who must suffer for this. On the surface, this movie seems like a winner. It stars Nicolas Cage and Hayden Christensen, two actors renowned for their odd acting choices. It is set in 1100s China for some reason. No one saw it. This feels like good omens all around until you are an hour into the movie and you wonder if Nic Cage is ever going to actually show up. He does, by the way, for a mere twenty minutes of the film, the best twenty minutes but still barely worth it after having to spend an hour watching Christensen and the two non-evil children of the former emperor wandering around China. This movie also only made back one fifth of its budget, and part of the reason for that is that it was banned in Hong Kong for promoting the white savior narrative. And if you can't make your money back in China, with a movie that is set in China and has Asian actors, you are screwed. The Wikipedia page even uses the Chinese poster for the movie, which is just so very sad. But if the movie wasn't really meant to be seen in America, and China found it offensive, who is it for? No one. No one but bad movie people who clap excitedly at the prospective of another eccentric Nic Cage performance.
The movie starts in the Middle East during the Crusades with Nic and Hay killing brown people for Jesus. We were a little confused about what this had to do with anything because a few years later we ended up in China (the Far East) with a whole plot regarding an old emperor bequeathing his kingdom to his younger son who escapes with his sister while the older son offs his dad and claims he didn't do it. The young son and sister (who is apparently a well known actress in China and going to be Mulan in a live action Disney remake) run into Hayden in an opium-stupor and somehow this leads to a team up. They wander forever and eventually pick up another lost girl who holds no baring on the plot. Not much happens in this hour. Finally Nic Cage, a.k.a. The White Ghost, shows up with one eye and a pirate accent for the only funny parts of the movie. There's a final showdown against the big brother who kills Nic Cage and his Chinese wife and stabs his sister and Hayden. Somehow the sister and Hayden survive and the 14-year-old brother is put on the throne and all is well. Because never in history did a child ruler lead to a military coup.
Aside from the white savior nonsense and the overall limp plot, there are a couple other bad things worth pointing out. The direction is garbage, and it turns out this is actually a directorial debut. There's a lot of shaky camera and a really strange scene where Hayden dumps water over his head and the camera is inside the bucket. The editing is confusing to the point where it seems like the camera is trying to hide things from the audience. Fight scenes involve an entire army attacking a single guy one or two men at a time. Oh, and there's at least one instance of "that slutty outfit the barmaid is wearing isn't historically accurate."
Overall, if you can find just the twenty minutes Nic Cage is in then this movie is worth exactly that amount of time and no more.
Spoon Rating: 2
[Cross-posted on the Bad Movie Night Facebook page.]
Following last week's "Turf War," we wanted to continue the curious adventures of the drug dealers, bikers, and cops in the sequel "Checkmate." Regrettably, this movie was nowhere near as fun as its predecessor. About halfway through, Lady Rider gets her revenge in her rapists and we learn that the sausage links in the photo from last week were actually supposed to be dismembered (ha) penis. Other than that, they bring in even more new characters with little impact on the plot, they make you believe that Flash (Fat Joe) is dead for a few minutes before revealing that he somehow hid in a sewer, and ultimately there isn't really any closure on anything since most of the players are still alive and have exactly as much power as they did before. Also, Alex Maisonette doesn't understand chess outside of knowing that it is sometimes played by thug types as some kind of metaphor (i.e. Alex Maisonette has probably watched "The Wire" and wishes he could make something as good as "The Wire").
But the worst part: underutilized Lenny G. At least you can still get some amusement from pausing the movie to look at the poorly made sets and costumes.
And no, if this is a trilogy we will not be bothering with part three. We've already committed three hours to this nonsense.
Spoon Rating: 3
