My wife and i walked out on one of the twilight movies, the one where the two boopy teen heartthrobs were fighting shirtless over bella for 45 straight minutes. As critical drinker would say, the movie was utter sheit..
Jake's been lucky in that he's been involved in some good movies. Donnie Darko, Brokeback Mountain, The Day After Tomorrow. If Jake's resumé listed any Ed Wood movies, I think he'd become "Jake who?" I don't know what you mean by "he wears his shirts well", though. Anyone can wear a shirt well. Can you please elaborate? Well ... Connor McGregor was a professional mixed martial artist (and professional boxer) before he became an actor, and he's also a former Ultimate Fighting Championship Featherweight and Lightweight Champion. You don't get all that by being nice. More negatively, he was recently (two weeks ago) found guilty of raping Nikita Hand in a Dublin Hotel in 2018. Unsurprisingly, he's now a global pariah. Where he goes next remains to be seen, but he’s hinted at still wanting to fight again. I'm not surprised, TrevorD. The Twilight "books" spawned out of vampire fan-fiction (and not the good kind, either). I'm also not surprised they made it so far in Hollywood. You'll never go broke appealing to the lowest common denominator. The movies are aimed at teenagers, which is why you'll get teeny-boppers acting in them ... if you can call what they do "acting". But hey, people who like mediocre things like them because they don't know any better. (That's why films like "Battlefield Earth" and "Starship Troopers" and "Kindergarten Cop" did so well). Another film I didn't particularly care for: Braveheart (1995). By the end of watching this 3-and-a-half-hour tripe-fest, I found myself wishing for Mel Gibson to go through the same thing that William Wallace endured: drawing, hanging until nearly dead, emasculation, evisceration, and then quartering. (The film cuts to white when the gory stuff starts). I found it particularly annoying that the film tries claiming that the producers got Scottish historians involved, 'cos obviously they didn't listen to anything the historians said. Yes, I know it's a film, and I was not expecting a documentary. But to get so many things wrong about Scotland, etc... yeesh. (I'm not alone in saying this, by the way; I'm not Scottish, but I have Scottish friends, and they all hate this film). That's why I created this mock-promo poster.
Ah, yes. Australia strikes again, I assume? In the US, I am 90% sure that wasn't censored. I haven't seen it, but I have heard about some strange censorship from AUS.
Update: I guess the torture scenes were never shown in the movie?? https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0112573/parentalguide/?ref_=tt_stry_pg
Well, I may have misremembered. The film doesn't quite cut to white, but it does cut to Gibson's face, and he yells "Freedom", and the scene dissolves to the next scene. That's what I mean. Wait, what??? No, the film I saw didn't have any of that stuff. The most that Australian TV deigned to show us was the Scots mooning the English, which (by comparison) is very tame. And yet, when this film is shown, it is always shown at 8:30pm onwards. Dammit, Aussie TV is treating us adults as kids. Yet another reason not to watch it. I mean, I haven't watched TV (other than the news) for years -- but ...
I can't agree that Army of Darkness is a bad movie... it is exactly the horror comedy it sets out to be. Likewise Commando is one of the very few American 80's action movies that isn't so bad it's good. Here's one: Death Wish 3. It has to be seen to be believed. Actually most of the Golan-Globus catalogue would probably fit in this thread. The Star Wars Holiday Special. I love how it makes George Lucas and his fanboys cringe. It's glorious. A more recent one may be Van Helsing. The movie is trash, but very well made trash, such that I find myself rewatching it every few years. It's like if Uwe Boll were a competent filmmaker but still Uwe Boll.
Nope, Starship Troopers is a masterpiece. "But Heinlein's book..." Come on, who cares about that stupid book? Braveheart is truly bad and its influence on subsequent medieval movie battles is entirely regrettable. The notion of discipline, formation, etc seems entirely lost- even when units march up in formation they always break apart for disorganized brawls. That said, and while I disagree with Mel Gibson on pretty much everything else, his Anglophobia is justified and appreciated.
Starship troopers in movie form did a fair job of capturing the book. The book raised several ideas that were a bit controversial at the time. Just as Stranger in a strangling did. Robert Heinlein provided entertaining stories with, often unpopular, social commentary.
The movie flipped the controversies on its head, depicting war as an absurd slaughter of often comical gore and even more comical PSAs and propaganda vignettes. The Baywatch style actors helped there too. Paul Verhoven deliberately directed the film as a spoof that didn't know it was a spoof in its own internal logic. The makeup and prop department had to create hundreds of corpses and severed limbs and all sorts of mangled configurations. I love the movie. It's as deliciously stupid as stupid gets.
Yeah I was a little scared at how many people seemed to think Starship Troopers was meant to be taken seriously. I saw it in the theater with my brother and we were the only ones laughing.
It does a great job of straddling the line. The violence is beyond cartoony but the characters are unaware of that and take the events extremely seriously. Not easy to do from a tone perspective. One little wink/nod from the actors or writers would crash the whole thing. You totally believe their rah-rah-rah act while simultaneously giggling at all the severed limbs flying across the screen. Not a good movie by any measure but specifically brilliant in its execution. I have to watch it once a year. I don't remember if I saw it in the theater or not. I would have been 18 when it came out (not that anyone was really carding at the theater then), but I think I caught it on video.
i resent the assertion that Army of Darkness is bad or flawed. however, i'm about to show my entire ass, because i have unimaginably terrible taste and cannot hide it. this came immediately to mind: as long as it's been a pop culture staple, i have despised The Matrix, and today my husband and i engaged in a playful shouting match because i said that Equilibrium is a more entertaining watch. that's not to say Equilibrium is a good film, because it verifiably is not. however, where Equilibrium is so-bad-it's-good, i think The Matrix is painful and i cannot tolerate it. as a recommendation, i'd like to put the Mythica film franchise on the table as a so-bad-it's-good fantasy slopwatch. completely incoherent world building, awful characters, bad acting, dumb subplots, terrible effects, no budget, it's really the best of all worlds when it comes to bad movies. they're very recent and the first five movies were crowdfunded, and you can find them pretty easily on free streaming platforms. if you like sword and sorcery as well as a good bad movie, i thoroughly recommend Mythica. also, it's Matt Mercer's only live action acting role. Kevin Sorbo's in it, though, so that's a possible dealbreaker.
Hmm. Never seen The Matrix; I prefer comedies, anyway (just not romantic ones, please. I've seen way too many of those). If I may, I'd like to make a recommendation. This film was panned by half of Hollywood when it came out (and received just 11% on Rotten Tomatoes). Why? Because, in my opinion, the leading actor took a chance and went for a role and a film that most critics wouldn't have expected him to do. The film is called Oscar (1991), and the leading actor is none other than Sylvester Stallone. Now ... no, it's not an action film, and it has nothing to do with the Oscars. Calm down. Rather, it's an intelligent comedy farce, in the tradition of "screwball" comedies of the 30s (and set in 1931, when mafia power was at its height). Stallone plays a mafia boss who, on his father's deathbed, swears to his dad that he will go straight and be a legitimate businessman. Despite having no experience in making money in a legal manner, he tries to keep his promise. But things are not that simple; the cops are still watching him, his old crime buddies want him for "one last heist", his daughter is getting married and, on top of everything else, he has to make a big impression on the "legitimate business" side of town ... Production values are excellent: the men's and women's costumes are very reminiscent of the 30s, as are the cars, houses and paintings. (Personally, I loved it, but then I was always a fan of film noir). The music is suitably based on Rossini's The Barber of Seville, setting the mood for silly antics, as well as 20s and 30s standards. The cast is also stellar. Among the more familiar names (besides Stallone himself) are Tim Curry, Don Ameche, Harry Shearer, Kirk Douglas, and Marisa Tomei (who would go on to win an Oscar the following year for her role in My Cousin Vinny, and who delivers a fantastic performance here). Why did it fail? I'm not sure. Maybe because it was a Stallone film straight after three or four turns of Rambo, and people expected him to take off his shirt and kill somebody. He doesn't do that here, but he does deliver a good performance of a father (and former mafioso) under pressure, which is all he needs to do. Besides, would you blame him for not wishing to be typecast? I don't. In retrospect, Oscar was a box office flop and the critics - except Tribune, Variety and the Austin Chronicle - hated it. But it's aged very well, and I thought it was delightful. Give it chance, will ya? (I am pretty sure it's available on YouTube, too. *searches* Yep - here it is.)
No, I think your taste is right here. By what standard is Army of Darkness bad? Like, what are you expecting from it that it isn't delivering? Here's a great bad movie that I don't think has been mentioned yet: Red Dawn. It's great because, despite the preposterous premise, and many other ridiculous things, it's hella fun to watch and has some strokes of brilliance. John Milius may be a psycho but he's also kind of a genius, and seems to have a pretty solid grasp of insurgency/ counterinsurgency. Some scenes are truly brilliant (e.g. the Soviet soldiers goofing around at the Arapaho park before the guerillas ambush and slaughter them) and the ones that aren't are hilarious.
I haven't seen that in forever. Very, very 80s... even by 80s standards. I love me a dipshit ridiculous premise. Go big or go home!
Chinese Super Ninjas is my favorite Shaw Brothers movie. The action is ridiculous but takes incredible skill too, so I respect that aspect a lot. Here's a crazy scene from it. (There are many crazy scenes in it.) Since this aired on TV back when television was rad, you shouldn't need a trigger warning. God help you if you do. The premise is that this troupe of Chinese fighters have been trained in the ways of the ninja and must now defeat the invading ninja who have been brought to China to destroy their clan. The evil ninjas like to hide and use special "elemental" killing techniques. I've watched this movie a couple dozen times. I love the absurd effects. I like the jumps filmed in reverse, the sideburns that are a foot long and don't line up, the rustling sound as people jump, the smirks from the main character . . . Everything really. By the time I finish laughing at one death, another one even more preposterous is underway. This scene has better fighting, just because of the choreography. The camera cuts are few and far between. That's a sign of extreme skill of the performers. The moves they pull of are just nuts. And they finish by turning the axe sideways and knocking the guy into a cliff like Wile E. Coyote. The Water Ninjas are cool too and possibly even funnier, but that's enough for one post, I think.
The Matrix was groundbreaking at the time but hasn't held up well. You could almost call it seminal in how that style of movie was made. There are movies that came before The Matrix and movies that came after, and it's very easy to tell which ones came when without looking at the dates, relatively speaking. It wasn't just the special effects, which were eye-popping, but that time period of 1999 kind of perfectly straddles the arc of technology. The Internet had been around for awhile but was just becoming ubiquitous. Smart phones weren't around yet and highspeed, non-dialup connections were just coming online. I think it came to Rhode Island in 1998 but it might have been 1999. I only know this because I was on the wait list for cable modems when I got my first apartment in late 1997, and it was a probably a year before it was available. Having said all that, the movie itself isn't great. Fascinating premise and special effects, but the acting, writing, and characters are not good. You didn't notice that in 1999, but looking back now, it's not as profound as it seemed then. The rest of the movies being trash didn't help it either. And Keanu wasn't doing a self-Keanu impression yet.
Oh man, Five Elements Ninjas is such a joy. One of Chang Cheh's best and he had so many great ones. I could make a whole thread about Shaw Brothers and other wuxia films. Some of the most insane films ever came out of Hong Kong in the 80's. Holy Flame of the Martial World is a must-see, here's one of an endless succession of colorful and quite mad scenes: I could go on and on if anyone asks me. Edit: Who am I kidding, I could go on and on if anyone doesn't ask me either.
On the subject of gonzo ninja action, Ching Siu-Tung's debut Duel to the Death vies with Five Elements Ninjas:
