Category: BMT Live!

Jamie

There is always the tenuous tightrope we walk as we pursue four appropriate BMT Lives in a year. We want bad movies that are clear BMT qualifiers (like Madame Web). But we also don’t want them to be so bad that they aren’t fun. We want fun bad movies (like Madame Web). But they also have to be big and bold. They gotta have stars (like Madame Web). They also gotta say something about film and where it’s going. It’s gotta have some cultural cache that we can really chew on (like Madame Web). And you gotta be able to meme it… well maybe that’s a soft requirement. But maybe being able to think fondly about the crazy sunglasses one character wears at the end of the film is a positive… theoretically of course (like Madame Web). Anyway, I’m hoping Borderlands fits the bill and isn’t another Keeping up with the Joneses (the what?) Exactly.

To recap, Lilith is recruited The Expendables style to find and return Atlas’ daughter Tina on the planet Pandora. Pandora is not only the planet where it’s been long rumored that a “Vault” exists that contains immense power (attracting hunters from all over), but is also Lilith’s home. Anyway she arrives on the planet and yada yada yada she finds a robot Claptrap programmed to follower her, Tiny Tina hiding out, and a couple other misfits, Krieg and Roland, who have decided to keep Tina safe and specifically away from Atlas (this is literally yada yada yada’d in the film, so don’t worry about it). Turns out she was genetically modified to be able to find the Vault and Atlas just wants her so that he can use her to find it. Thus begins the hunt. They find the woman who raised Lilith after her mother died, Dr. Tannis, and with her help they locate the keys needed to direct them to the vault. This involves a big ol’ battle through some maniacs and teleportation and similar very exciting things. At this point Lilith decides not to give Tina back to Atlas, but there is a classic misunderstanding and Tina and the rest go off without Lilith for the vault. Ultimately they find the vault, but it turns out that it was Lilith the whole time who was the key (what a twist!). A big battle ensues and Atlas demands that Lilith open the vault for him or he will kill Tina. She obeys, but using her vault powers as the Firehawk (ooo) they trap him in the vault. Now in her true form as the hero of Pandora, Lilith and her new family celebrate with the citizens of the plant. THE END.

You could separate this film into two pieces. The first half is basically junk they needed so that they didn’t start with a fifteen minute text crawl or voice over. It’s cobbled together from reshoots and montages. Me and Patrick looked at each other in disbelief at what we were witnessing because we had paid for a movie. What we were seeing resembled a wikipedia synopsis page more than a movie. The second half at least was a movie. A very predictable one, but something where a robot said jokes, crazy action sequences were shown, and a MacGuffin was pursued. So you have a complete zero for maybe ⅓ of a film and then a 4 for the other ⅔, which comes out to 8/3. That’s my rating. Anyway, I think the only other thing I want to specifically mention is I liked Jack Black’s robot character. He was funny (as opposed to Kevin Hart for some reason) and Cate Blanchett came off fine, but Jamie Lee Curtis was terrible in this. I can already feel this erasing from my brain.  

Hot Take Clam Bake! I think Lilith and Roland are going to make it in the long haul, everyone. What’s that? Roland and Lilith didn’t smooch at the end of the film? I just imagined it? Whaaaaaaaa? I mean, didn’t anyone else notice the sparks flying between Cate Blanchett and Kevin Hart? I was having flashbacks to watching Fifty Shades Darker in the theaters. Hooooo weeeeee. Hot Take Temperature: Firehawk.

Patrick?

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! *gif of me looking confused as a clip from earlier in the film is edited into a scene later in the film in a non-sensical manner* Let’s go!

The good? I mean, if you are looking for dumb fun the movie is something that is entertaining on, for example, an airplane. There are almost no stakes, everything is supremely predictable, and there is the perfect audience approved ratio of action to exposition.

The bad? Everything else. The beginning is almost completely incomprehensible. There is some stuff when Blanchett first arrives on Pandora which is very very clearly reshoots, specifically a strange voiceover sequence. In the sequence you see her talking to some Mad Max-esque children and I was like “what the hell is happening here”. Then twenty minutes later Blanchet frees a bunch of Mad Max-esque kids from a truck and they run off and it is like … oh, I see, they shot a whole bunch of stuff which really really didn’t work, and so they cut it all into a montage to just get Blanchet from her arrival on Pandora to the point where she meets Jack Black-bot. But they had to have an explanation for her getting the truck later on, so that was left in even though it is incredibly obvious bits of it was wildly out of order at that point.

I guess I’m saying you can see the seams of this movie. People are barely acting on the same stage. Apparently Jack Black did the voiceover for the robot like years ago. The reshoots were assuredly done with only Blanchet involved. If you power through that first thirty minutes though the end is kind of dumb fun with a few fun action set pieces.

The film though … I can’t see it as anything but lazy, and that is almost never fun. You need to be earnestly thinking you are making a good movie. Unfortunately the actors and director all probably knew the whole thing was a mess from the beginning and so nothing ends up being fun. It is mostly just sad and tragic.

If you want a highlight as to why AI analysis of movie data is somewhat amusing in the abstract, here is the quite unexpected interaction I had about the Borderlands poster. I asked it a simple question: how many characters from the Borderlands movie are featured on the poster. I fully expected it to either say 5 (because the robot doesn’t really look like a character in the poster, another character is sitting on it), or 6 (because there are six names at the top). But instead it said seven. The interaction went like this: “Name the 7 characters” Proceeds to name the six characters. “That’s only six” Oh sorry, there are seven names at the top of the poster. “There are only six names at the top of the poster” Oh sorry, it’s because there are seven characters in the image. “Who is the seventh?” A character called King who is in the video games and I don’t know if he’s in the movie, but he might be … The most normal of all AI interactions.

Anyways, Setting as a Character (Where?) for the alien planet of Pandora. Huuuuuuuge MacGuffin (Why?) for The Vault which contains something completely unknown but definitely awesome that everyone wants for sure. And Worst Twist (How?) for the realization that, shocker, it was Cate Blanchet all along who was the super secret key to everything. This movie was almost unwatchable, bland, and dumb looking, I think it is Bad.

Learn all about video games probably in the Quiz. Cheerios,

The Sklogs

Jamie

Who watches The Watchers. Apparently we do. And Live! no less. This is one of those BMT Live! films that will likely live in infamy. It’s our third out of four films for the year and do we really think we won’t get two more bangers in the next half a year? Not really, but there is a logic to our madness. The first point is simple math. There have been an unusual (at least for recent history) number of poorly reviewed horror films this year. Films like Night Swim, that seem like they should garner at least a “meh,” are getting slammed. So we gotta get a horror in and the closer you get to Halloween the more likely the studio has confidence that it’s good. The second point is that once we get into the last cycle of the year we could always watch a film in theaters for the cycle itself, as it by definition fits. Anyway, that’s how you end up watching The Watcher. Let’s go!

To recap, Mina is a saddo living in Ireland because she’s never gotten over her role in the death of her mother which has left her estranged from her twin sister. She’s tasked with delivering a rare parrot to a zoo (for real) and ends up lost in the forest. She’s ushered into a strange concrete bunker where she is told she must stay during the night or The Watchers will get her. Bum bum bum. This turns out to be true as that night they come and they all have to show themselves to these mysterious Watchers. From there Mina does a bunch of exploring and shows that she is much more daring than her comrades, Ciara, Madeline and Daniel. She explores some tunnels and takes some of the Watchers’  junk and that makes them unhappy. Ultimately Daniel locks Mina and Madeline out because he doesn’t trust them and this also makes the Watchers extra angry. Once back inside they realize that the Watchers are going to break in and kill them. At the last moment Mina finds a secret door and they figure out that the whole place was set up by a professor. In his lair there are details on how to get back to the real world. They also see that the professor befriended the creatures, which are fairies that can shapeshift. The next morning they are able to escape, losing Daniel on the way. Back in the real world Mina tracks down the professor’s old office and in it realizes that Madeline was the professor’s wife who had passed away. In reality the Madeline she knew was the shapeshifter that the professor had interacted with. She runs to Ciara’s house where Madeline is already lying in wait. Before she kills them, though, Mina is able to convince her to let them live and to go find others like herself instead. The monster is like “good point,” and flies away. THE END.

After having seen the film, the merits of this as a Live! film are harder to defend. The best it can do is prove that Ishana Night Shyamalan has the talent to be a good director. The look and atmosphere of the film are solid and it’s pretty darn impressive for a mid-20’s director. So no need to worry about nepotism too much… unless you really think about the fact that a pretty half-baked film was greenlit for a feature. It probably should have been a short film or an episode of TV or a straight-to-Shudder flick. That being said, it’s really a rather forgettable film with some merely OK acting and a classically bad Shyamalan twist. It’s also Lady in the Water level on-the-nose regarding what the concept of the film is… Like they live in a little concrete box where one side is a glass screen and every night the watchers come and watch them and oh… Also, the only thing they have to watch in this bunker is a box set of some made up reality TV show. Are you getting it yet? It’s about reality TV and escapism.  

Hot Take Clam Bake! Uh, obviously she was dead the whole time. One does not simply get lost in a deep dark forest where a bunch of other people have disappeared and live to tell the tale. They certainly don’t live to tell of a weird concrete TV that they had to live in with a bunch of other people where they learned to accept the death of their mom and reunite with their estranged twin. Convenient. But it’s all much simpler than that. Do you know how I know she was dead the whole time? Because fairies aren’t real… dumb. Hot Take Temperature: Lair of Love.

Patrick?

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! The Watchers? More like I don’t want to Watch-its, amirite? Let’s go!

Naturally with, somehow, film releases being a family affair for the Shyamalan family we felt the need to go watch this film in theaters.

Because normally I think we would shy away from dunking on a film made by a young director just trying to make her way in the world one second unit directorial effort at a time.

But here we are, reviewing a very slight film with a kernel of an interesting idea: what if fairies were real, what if they were evil, and what if you were trapped with them?

But mostly the movie is boring with a fairly foreseeable twist, an unnecessary fourth act that takes place in the real world, and not particularly good acting. The acting was so odd I was stunned to learn the star (a grown up Dakota Fanning) is actually nominated for an Emmy this very same year. Quite a comeback. I don’t think she has much to do here though.

And naturally the whole film being an allegory for people watching actors in a giant television set and mimicking them in the real world … yeah, I think there is something there, but the whole thing feels very on the nose.

All that being said the movie is pretty, has a nice set piece, and the kernel of an idea could serve something that could be built off of if Shyamalan wants to push further into the Sci-Fi-Fantasy realm.

Setting as a Character (Where?) for Ireland which makes for quite the stretching needed to explain why Dakota Fanning is American. I do like a living breathing MacGuffin (Why?) kind of, with the Queen of Bavaria Parrot Fanning is inexplicably asked to drive to Belfast. And of course you can’t have a Shyamalan film without a Worst Twist (How?) in the reveal that one of the people being watched is, in fact, a half human / half fairy who will be destined to unite the two worlds together in the end. This movie is boring and Bad and just not worth it.

I’m trying something new in the quiz where everyone will get to learn about the Emmys, the Queen of Bavaria Parrot, and other stuff. Cheerios,

The Sklogs

Jamie

Buckle up. Madame Web came. Madame Web saw. Madame Web conquered. It’s the classic example of a film where me and Patrick look at each other and said, “If this doesn’t qualify for BMT then we should just pack it in.” Never a doubt, my friends. BMT continues for another day. It saw all the fun that people were having at its expense and essentially was like “oh yeah, well it’s even crazier than you thought it would be.” People complained that the funny line in the trailer wasn’t in the film. You know why? Because even funnier lines were ADR’d into the film in its place. This. Movie. Rocked.

To recap, Cassandra Webb is an EMT in NYC having come up through the foster system after her mother was killed in the rainforests of Peru while researching spiders whose bite can give people special powers. After experiencing a near death experience she starts to see the future. Meanwhile, her mother’s murderer, Ezekial Sims, having used the spiders to give himself powers, begins a hunt for three girls, Julia, Anya, and Mattie, who he can see eventually lead to his death. Cassie starts to get a handle on her powers after seeing one of her friends die and not being able to do anything about it. On the way to his funeral she has a flash that shows the three girls being killed by Ezekial. She gathers them up and goes on the run, inadvertently being mistaken for their kidnappers. She hides them away in the forest. While she goes to gather supplies, they get themselves in trouble and are nearly killed by Ezekial. Realizing that she needs help, Cassie leaves them with her friend Ben Parker and heads to Peru where she meets up with the spider people that helped save her when her mother was killed. They tell her all kinds of spider mumbo jumbo just in time for her to return and realize the girls are in trouble. She swoops in and saves them and then heads to a firework factory for the big… fireworks. Ezekiel follows and they fight a bunch. They realize that Cassie can change the future and was always meant to kill Ezekial and she drops a delicious Pepsi sign on his head. She’s injured in the blast, though, and is left blind and in a wheelchair. Oh, did I say she’s left blind and in a wheelchair? I mean that she was left in a rad futuristic wheelchair sporting the dopest sunglasses this side of New York City. THE END (or is it? IT IS))

Did I mention that this movie rocked? It ironically rocked to the extreme. I felt bad for a second because there were some little kids in the theater that seemed to be enjoying themselves unironically (irony only develops later in life) and I had to stifle my laughter for the last, oh, thirty minutes of the film. The climax is nuts with the giant Pepsi sign and the serious (?) setting at a literal fireworks factory. But when she shows up in a high tech wheelchair and some crispy dope futuristic sunglasses circa Demolition Man I was actually laughing out loud. They must have at least been a little in on the joke at that point, right? Dakota Johnson had to have taken one glance at those sunglasses and thought, “oh shit, I guess I’m in this kind of movie. No amount of ADR and CGI can save me from those sunglasses.” This is all without mentioning the craziest part of the entire film: almost every single line the bad guy said was ADR’d. It’s like Val Kilmer in The Snowman level of craziness. This. Movie. Rocked.

Hot Take Clam Bake! I’m willing to say it… I don’t think she’s blind at the end. I also think she can walk. She is a super spider woman. She survived death without a scratch earlier in the film. We are meant to believe that suddenly spider powers mean nothing? Spiderman can be thrown around like a ragdoll and is fine and Cassie gets some sparklers in her eyes and she’s donzo? I don’t think so. She just wanted to cruise around in that wheelchair and rock those sunglasses. Who wouldn’t? She sits around all day with a trio of babes bringing her chinese food and saying “your sunglasses are so cool,” (presumably). Sign me up. Hot Take Temperature: Fireworks.

Patrick?

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! Are we talking about my mother studying spiders in the Amazon right before she died?! Let’s go!

Oooooooooooooooooh hell yeah. Like Argylle? Whatever. A weird film. Good to get a Vaughn in since he genuinely seems like one of the weirder “Blank Check” directors around at the moment. But this? This is glorious. This might as well be Cats it is such a bizarre strange delight. Great to see it in theaters live.

People attempt to deny it, but I feel like there is something undeniably intriguing about Dakota Johnson as an actress … I don’t know what it is. But the almost deadpan delivery, and amusing detachment, it is hard to describe, but it just comes across as kind of cool and elevating. It is no exception here. She is one of the only bright spots of the film I feel like.

The second is Sydney Sweeney who is the best actress of the three young ladies in the film, and kind of for the same reason. Like … there is something that shouldn’t work with how she delivers lines. But it works in almost everything I’ve seen her in.

The bad guy … woooooooooof. They ADRed everything and it was one of the weirdest things I’ve ever seen. I’m sure it was just because of some weird reason where they didn’t like his strange Peruvian accent he was affecting or something. It was weird.

Great use of Toxic by Brittany though.

And the ending at a literal fireworks factory was also a faintly amusing touch.

And of course we get to see baby Spiderman and secret Uncle Ben as well.

And then the film ends with her in a wheelchair with no joke the craziest pair of sunglasses I’ve ever seen. YOU HAVE TO SEE THESE FUCKING SUNGLASSES!!

What a very strange but very entertaining and weird film. What a great addition to the annals of BMT. Dare I suggest … a Hall of Fame film?

I do love the several instances of Product Placement (What?) involving Pepsi including at the (real life) giant Pepsi sign in Queens (apparently). And obviously a hilarious Worst Twist (How?) on the reveal that Madame Web owns a hilarious pair of sunglasses. Wait, that isn’t it, it was that the Ben we knew and loved throughout the film was indeed THAT Uncle Ben. This movie is BMT through and through, it is great.

Read about the sequel that will never be made in the Quiz, Cheerios,

The Sklogs

Jamie

BMT Live! Always a bit of calculus goes into picking these films. Do we hit up all the horror films that our hearts desire? Do we gobble up whatever Liam Neeson (aka The Neese) is up to these days? Do we wait for Statham to roll the dice on the seventeen films he’s starring in to figure out which one comes up snake eyes (but not Snake Eyes the Nic Cage film (or Snake Eyes the G.I. Joe picture))? These questions get us all twisted into knots until we find ourselves in the theater for a $200 million Apple film starring Bryce Dallas Howard that doesn’t even have “Jurassic” in the title. So maybe catching Argylle in the cinema was a mistake. Only time will tell. But at least we didn’t burn up a film that would have been an easy connection to the year-end Chain Reaction entry. That we are still in search of.

To recap, Elly Conway is the author of the Argylle series of books about a super spy. She, however, is not a super spy… or is she (she’s not… at least not yet). After punting on the ending of her latest entry, her parents implore her to come home and hash out the ending there. On the way, though, she finds herself seated with a mysterious man, Aiden, who claims that her books tell the future and that super spies are going to be coming in to kill her. Wha-wha-what? That’s crazy. Not as crazy as all the super spy shit that happens right after. They escape and go to London in search of a masterkey that her books are apparently leading the way to. There she ends up finding out that her parents are part of the group of people trying to get her. In fact her whole life seems to have been a set up for writing these books in hopes of leading the baddies to this MacGuffin. Ultimately, Elly finds out that she and Aiden were involved… sexually. She also finds out that she was a double agent and at one point was helping the baddies do their bad shit, but then she stole the key and lost her memory. That very clearly and obviously explains all the twists. No problem. She uses this to her advantage as she is able to flip the script on the bad guys and send the key to the former CIA director. All kinds of real kooky fighting stuff happens, but it doesn’t matter because the good guys win the day and Elly and Aiden smooch… hard. THE END.

This is some real Hypnotic starring Ben Affleck shit going on in this $200 million Apple film. It’s kind of the same movie. An agent hides a MacGuffin and then their memory is erased. They then are put through elaborate mind games to try to get the agent to naturally lead them to the MacGuffin. But not so fast, the agent actually uses this against them to prevent them from getting the MacGuffin. Then in a midcredits sequence the crowd goes wild as Jeff Fahey/Henry Cavill (the Jeff Fahey of his era) appears to be alive. So imagine Hypnotic except at one point Bryce Dallas Howard slaps some knives on her shoes and skates around a room where the floor has been covered in oil. That happened. It’s mega stupid. Straight dumb. It’s like Kingsman but real dumbo for real. As an in-theater experience it was kind of horrible. Not because the movie was dumb or anything (at times that helped), but rather because it is 140 minutes long and all those responsible for that should be arrested. Hypnotic was only 94 minutes… you taking notes, Argylle?

Hot Take Clam Bake! Seems obvious to me that Elly actually was just an author with the ability to see the future that was then hypnotized into having super spy skills so that they could then double hypnotize her into being an author again. Then they could go through the ruse of revealing the original ruse (which wasn’t a ruse at all) which would trick her into using her fake spy skillz to get the masterkey (which is worthless) and handing it over Samuel L. Jackson (who is actually Samuel L. Jackson hired to portray a former CIA agent in the context of the film). This then prompts her to go back to her life as an author and write her next book which will reveal the vital secrets about the future that the bad guys are hoping to inspire her to write using the original double ruse. That then makes it obvious why the real Agent Argylle shows up at the end. He’s always been real because the books are telling real amazing stories of the future… I mean… duh, right? Hot Take Temperature: Jeff Fahey. 

Patrick? 

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! Are we talking about the worst trailer I’ve ever seen and dumb bullshit involving spies and ice skating?! Let’s go!

Jesus, where to start. The beginning of this film is quite fun I suppose, although any moment with John Cena and/or Henry Cavill is painful. It then takes a turn that … well we’ll get to that.

The whirly bird dance might also be the worst thing I’ve ever seen. I see what you are doing Vaughn, and I don’t find it amusing or clever or whatever you are thinking with this bullshit.

The entire middle of the film when she doesn’t know she’s an agent is a decent conceit if quite poorly executed and looking like shit. The idea that a mystery writer kind of vaguely stumbles onto a story that is reminiscent of real life spycraft and so they kidnap her. And then she has enough experience to kind of pull it off and crack the case? That’s almost like Miss Marple or Murder, She Wrote. An interesting concept I think. Unfortunately …

That isn’t the actual story. You see, actually the whole twist’em’up is that Bryce Dallas Howard was a spy who lost her memory in an explosion and the whole book thing was actually a way for the (evil) spy system to try and get her memory back before she exposes them all … dumb.

And of course it ends on a giant dumb looking set piece complete with (gulp) an ice skating scene in oil in which Howard kills a bunch of people with a knife.

We of course watched this film live and it is one of those films that begs the question of why it exists. As a matter of fact, why does the entire Kingsmen universe exist? The first was good, the second bad, the third not much better. Now there are like fourteen different Kingsmen adjacent films being made (including this one) and I just can’t quite figure out who will be watching / paying for these. Huge Zach Snyder energy.

Which I guess means I should float my hot take / theory: Matthew Vaughn and Zach Snyder I think maybe are being tricked / intentionally deceiving themselves into thinking their junk is popular? Imagine a world in which a PR person run amok creates a bot army that demands The Snyder Cut / The Kingsmen Cinematic Universe. Now imagine you are a narcissist who reads this PR material on like … r/MatthewVaughn or whatever. Now imagine you are convinced that everyone in the world loves the Kingsmen universe. Armed with this opinion (and the “data” to back it up) something like Argylle is created via a forged blank check. Actually that’s what I will call this: this is a Forged Blank Check film. A clear blank check film but where it doesn’t seem like the person earned it.

I think this is a weird Product Placement (What?) or perhaps more accurately Vertical Integration with the use of the (Apple exclusive I assume) new Beatles song which is, admittedly, quite catchy. We got a Road Trip film (Where?) which is truly an international affair. We have a MacGuffin (Why?) naturally (what spy caper doesn’t?) for the super secret thumb drive containing all the spy secrets that they don’t want to get out. And a final Worst Twist (How?) for the reveal that she is actually a spy and the whole thing was a ruse by the very eeeeeevil Bryan Cranston. I think this movie is Bad, boring, trite, and just plain not very enjoyable (it reminded me a bit of something like The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard).

Read about my cinematic universe in the Quiz. Cheerios,

The Sklogs