Category: Recap

Saw IV Recap

Jamie

Franchise Man will live foreeevvvveeerrrrrr! You can’t kill him because all you little piggies can’t get enough of your precious franchises. Oink oink oink. Eat up your Saw IV slop. I’ll gladly partake for I am lore incarnate! Saw is my bible of lore. No one has done it better than Jigsaw and his wacky traps. With that out of the way, I do have to acknowledge that we live in a wondrous time. We are years from entry after entry of dumb-as-rocks entries in franchises like Final Destination (fun) and Saw (less fun) that just fed its sequels into the BMT machine. Because who gives a shit, right? It’s just a bunch of rube goldberg death traps (in both cases). Just kill some people in fun and/or unpleasant ways and yada yada yada profit. And somehow we are now getting good entries in the series. Isn’t that cool?… and yet, is it also not part of a BMT disease. Did I say Franchise Man will live forever? Maybe not if every dumb movie is now good. Then he will die.

To recap, you must bear with me. It appears that this film was designed as some kind of nefarious trap for Franchise Man. I fear I might die in an attempt at an accurate recap. So really the film starts with Detective Rigg, a hot head devastated by the death of his partner at the hands of Jigsaw, getting kidnapped. It’s implied that there is another apprentice to Jigsaw that is the key to everything we’re seeing (since at the end of Saw III we saw Amanda get killed). Rigg is warned that he better listen and not be a hothead detective or else things will end badly. He proceeds to be a big ol’ hothead and things continually end badly for him. Meanwhile we see Detective Hoffman (someone who has warned Riggs about the aforementioned hotheadedness) and Detective Donnie Wahlberg (of Wahlburgers fame) kidnapped and set up to be electrocuted or crushed or some shit. Meanwhile to this meanwhile, the FBI are tracking stuff down and we get a bunch of backstory about Jigsaw and how he was a loving husband turned crazy by not only his cancer but the miscarriage of his child. Through this backstory they are able to slowly track Rigg through his trial and it’s implied that by doing this they will ultimately kill an innocent man. Rigg gets to the location where Wahlberg and Hoffman are being held and despite being told to not be a hothead he hotheadingly barges into the room, resulting in Wahlberg getting his head smashed by giant blocks of ice (Cooool! Rad!). Hoffman rises up and reveals that he is in fact the apprentice (what a twist!). Meanwhile, the FBI gets lost like a bunch of dumbos and kills Jeff (a character from Saw III) thus revealing that all this happened simultaneously to Saw III and it’s really cool and we love it. THE END (or is it? (Come on))

Saw IV. Come on. How is it that a franchise that should be built on the premise of “none of this matters” somehow makes everything matter in the most insane(ly dumb) way possible. I have to admit, there is a certain beautiful satisfaction in watching the movie spin itself into a knot around a Lost-esque flashsideways. But when everyone is so very dumb and everything is so very cheap and the traps just don’t even try to make sense then I have to say it: fundamentals. Focus on the fundamentals Saw IV. Either that or just keep getting dumber. I want rocks to look like geniuses next to these movies. Do it Saw. In actuality, the fact that Saw X got good reviews should be devastating. Just when you make me want it to be dumber, you make it less dumb? No fair. As for Vibrations. Uh, cha. This is what we call a Friend. It’s a wild time on VHS. Just to highlight one moment in a consistently insane film, at one point a friend of the main character (who helped him with his robot hand situation) lets him use his special speaker that is so powerful that he implies it could kill people or something. And me and Patrick looked at each other and were like “wouldn’t it be so funny if in the end he sets up the people who took his hands so they get killed by the speaker?” and then that more or less played out exactly like that. And yes… it was so funny.

Hot Take Clam Bake! Jigsaw: not a good person, husband, or potential father. I really don’t think enough time is spent making sure the audience understands that Jigsaw, despite the backstory we are being treated (and I mean, treated) to, does not in fact have justification for killing all those people. In fact almost no time has been spent making sure that is clear and all the time has been spent trying to convince us that he was just a broken man driven to desperate measures to make sure people appreciate life. And I say ‘No!’ This hot take has been paid for by the Committee to Make Sure People Understand Jigsaw is Not Good. Hot Take Temperature: Burning coals in your eyes unless you let mice eat your ears off in the next fifteen seconds. 

Patrick?

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! *Gif of me screaming as my fingers are torn off or whatever AAARGH AAAAAAH ARRRRRRRGH* Let’s go!

The Good? The further you get into Saw the more ridiculous it gets and, somehow, the less revolting it ends up being. The tricks are so obviously stupid and semi-unwinnable you just sit there waiting for whatever like … pig bile to melt someone’s face off or something. All in the service of a dumb twist where it turns out Mr. Saw’s childhood friend is actually a copycat Saw killer or something. Then we all clap and go home.

The Bad? These movies are garbage. I kind of mean that in the best possible way (I guess…). They have such flimsy premises and they are specifically so obviously constructed to service a single goal (seeing dem torture devices babyyyyy), that that is part of the charm. But as actual movies? Trash. Even as horror films? Double trash. Because they aren’t scary, and even compared to other torture porn films they are quite tame. I didn’t feel sick to my stomach once while watching this film! What are we even doing here? If I can eat a sandwich while watching your film then you didn’t do it right. Fact. The acting is terrible, the premise is terrible, the film is terrible. Slammed.

The BMT? I don’t think so. I think there is going to be one Saw film which is well and truly BMT. This is dumb, but it hinges too much on prior films to be a film you’d ever revisit and revel in. That’s just a fact, Jack.

I’ve decided to, for now, revisit the idea of sifting through letterboxd reviews for something interesting. I tried initially to have it find the “weirdest” review, but it just returned aggressively unfunny reviews. So I call this “Hey Letterboxd, convince me this film isn’t garbage.” Here is the example of a good review for this film:

This is it right here. This ties up the loose ends of the previous three films and feels like a fresh start for the franchise, complete with more melodrama, Hoffman, and more frenzied intricacies within the storytelling that is clearly being written with future films mapped out—this is where the Saw lore becomes the Charlie Kelly Pepe Silva meme. I liked the peppering in of Kramer’s backstory and the quick pacing and editing are standouts, hiding what needs to be hidden…

There we go. The Pepe Silva thing … sounds bad, but I guess it is like the lore becomes such a thick fog and I can eat it up with a spoon and I unironically love how insane it gets. You know, the scene transitions and editing are a big thing among the good-ish reviews somehow. Honestly, can’t say I noticed.

I think in the end the only thing we can give this film is the Saw staple Worst Twist (How?) for the ultimate reveal that the film takes place at the same time as the third film (I think) and that the main guy is the partner to Wahlberg. What a twist. It like … almost doesn’t make sense it is such a good twist. This film is Bad as I explained above.

As for our Friend this week Vibrations: uh yes please, may I have another serving of someone getting their hands chopped off in a ridiculous way and then getting robot hands and becoming an electronic music legend? This movie is actually somewhat famous on the internets for its crazy concept and oddly famous cast (well … it has Christina Applegate and one of the guys from Twin Peaks, those are famous people right?). And coincidentally this film also marks the first time a VHS popped up on RedLetterMedia’s Best of the Worst series where I was like “I own that VHS!” The film is surprisingly heartfelt and non-ridiculous for most of the first half which is amusing in its own way, but once he basically becomes a robot the film gets shockingly entertaining all the way up to the Chekov’s killer speakers in the end. Spoiler: he doesn’t kill them, he just blasts their ears a bunch and then gets them arrested. So that is good I guess. B, I would watch it again, but it is a little slow because the film is actually only notable for the robot hands which don’t come into play until the back half of the film.

Read all about … torture chambers maybe? In the Quiz. Cheerios,

The Sklogs

D3: The Mighty Ducks Recap

Jamie

We talking D3? I remember this film being both a massive disappointment and also specifically having some of the best stuff in the entire series. All dem pranks? That’s my jam. This should have been 80% pranks and fooling around on the ice. Even before the rewatch, if you had asked me what I remembered from this film it would have been the shift from it being the Bombay show (kind of embarrassingly so in the second one) to it being entirely about the kids. Which is… you know… kinda how a Mighty Ducks film should be. Isn’t it weird how pretty much every underdog kids sports film is mostly about the coach and how much he learns about some personal demon of his. Why are The Goonies and The Sandlot and Stand By Me so iconic? Just look at who those stories are about. Mighty Ducks just got there one film too late.

To recap, the Quack Attack is back, Jack! This time they are heading to high school. In what appears to be an elaborate publicity stunt, the prestigious Eden Hall Academy gives full scholarships to the whole team to be their JV team. This is at the expense of any and all other players who might have wanted to play JV (lol, what?). The Ducks are ready to quack their way through another fun year, but are sorely disappointed to find that Gordon Bombay isn’t their coach! Instead it’s some nerd named Ted Orion. Sounds like a guy who couldn’t hack it in the NHL. Between beefing in a prank war with the Varsity team and beefing with their coach who doesn’t want to give Charlie the captainship, the Ducks are having it rough. Doesn’t help that Banks is recruited straight to Varsity. After a game one rout turns itself into an embarrassing tie, the Varsity challenges the Ducks to a scrimmage. This is a total debacle, which results in Orion declaring the Ducks dead. Charlie and Fulton quit in protest. When Hans suddenly dies, Charlie and the team attend his funeral and Bombay confronts him about his choice. He reveals that Orion wasn’t a big ol’ quitter, but rather quit hockey to care for his ailing daughter. Charlie decides to play hockey right and Orion welcomes him back. The school tries to take away their scholarships, but Bombay acts as their lawyer and keeps them in school. When the big JV-Varsity game comes up it’s a hard fought battle. With the game 0-0 Charlie gets a chance to score it, but using what he’s learned from Orion, he passes to Goldberg (now a defenseman) who scores a wide open goal to win. THE END.

Franchise Man here and hold onto your hats… this is the best film in the series. Let me be very clear, I mean that this is the best of the Mighty Ducks films to actually follow the framework of a typical film. The first is all weird with its focus on Bombay. The second throws all rules and regulations out the window. The third… it’s dealing with the idea of these kids from the wrong side of the tracks getting an opportunity at an education. They are being asked to play two way hockey and deal with being JV when they are kind of famous. The movie is pretty shitty, other than the prank scenes, but it’s more like an actual script than the second one. Interestingly, still about branding. It’s a little unclear, but it seems like the board approved bringing in the Ducks because they were famous. If anything I would have liked them to lean into that more. Instead of Bombay coming in for some bullshit lawyer scene I would have liked him to come in and be like “we know you brought them in for publicity… well it’s not going to look great when we take how you treated them to the media.” They also simply needed bigger stakes. How can you go from the Jr. Goodwill Games to a Varsity-JV scrimmage? Come on. Overall, F for nostalgia. A positive shrug for actual quality.

Hot Take Clam Bake! I don’t think Charlie and… uh… that girl he likes are going to make it. First of all, I don’t remember her name. Second of all, she’s like a total nerd who is into education and taking down Eden Hall’s outdated mascot: The Warriors, while Charlie is delusional enough to think he could go from Spazway all the way to the NHL when he can’t even make Varsity over Banks. I don’t think she’s going to take kindly to the hundredth time he tells her he doesn’t need school because of his future in the NHL. He needs to get his priorities straight, refocus on crew, get into Yale and then join some bone-related secret society (What could go wrong!). Finally, they are in high school (freshmen at that) and that’s… that’s just not realistic, now is it? Hot Take Temperature: The Flying V.

Patrick?

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! *Gif of me being a total douche to my coach for no reason. You don’t know me old man! Quack! Quack! Qua … no one else? Not even you Goldberg?* Let’s go!

The Good? Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm … This is tough because there might honestly be nothing. The film is kind of a perfect storm of very concerning decisions which (very naturally) completely killed the franchise for like 20 years. Maybe the low-stakes-ness of it all makes more sense than D2 and there is at least some admission that the only players who might actually “make it” to any degree is Banks (since he’s the most skilled) and Charlie (by sheer willpower). That makes a lot of sense to me. Oh, and Goldberg is finally benched and eventually moved to defense. FINALLY!

The Bad? Again, let’s go through the odd decisions. Bombay bounces and basically isn’t in much of the film (or so it seems, see later analysis). The school completely bails on the Ducks after like two losses (ridiculous). Killing off Hans is fine but like where is Jan?! Changing the setting from high-stakes Los Angeles back to the lowest of low stakes of JV hockey at a private school in Minneapolis is truly nuts. No new characters is also a mistake. Now that I’ve spelled it all out if you can get through those few issues there actually isn’t as much bad stuff as I remember. There is just no good stuff.

The BMT? I think this is Bad. The fun part is that this means the trilogy is a perfect BMT trilogy. The first one is Good. The second is BMT. And the third is Bad (and kills the franchise). It is actually precisely what I think trilogies should strive for.

Oooooo I actually did this AI analysis a very long time ago. So how Google Gemini (at least used to) work was if you sent in a video it would split it into single frames at one second intervals. I found this amusing since that is what I did anyways to analyze this movie. Specifically, I wanted to know: hey, Emilio Estevez is the top billed person in D3 … but how much of the movie is he actually in? The answer: well, probably somewhere between 5-10%. Given I deleted the burned DVD long ago I can’t confirm things, but I do know an inordinate number of positive identification of Emilio were false positives because the AI system seemingly can’t tell the difference between Emilio Estevez and Jeffery Nordling aka Coach Orion. Dumb AI. Anyways, “Emilio” appears specifically in around 500 frames of the film. I think you can say the false positive rate could be as much as 50% given what I recall, and the frames versus “existing in the scene” you could maybe increase things by 50% as well, so the safest rough analysis I can give you months later is: Emilio Estevez is top billed in D3 despite only appearing in 5-10% of the film. Anthony Hopkins appeared in about 13% of Silence of the Lambs (and famously won the Best Actor Oscar for it). This felt similar, and indeed, I think the numbers are probably pretty close in the end.

Might as well complete the trilogy with Planchet (Who?) for Goldberg who again just gets continually dunked on. A Setting as a Character (Where?) for some prestigious prep school in Minneapolis. I’m going to throw a Chekov’s Scholarship (Why?) in there for the scholarships they give all the Ducks which certainly won’t come to bite the school in the ass once ultra-lawyer Bombay shows up. And I kind of love the Worst Twist (How?) whereby for whatever reason Portman isn’t in the vast vast majority of the film riiiiiiight up until the end when he shows up and walks onto the JV team.

Read all about … Minnesota High School Hockey maybe? In the Quiz. Cheerios,

The Sklogs

D2: The Mighty Ducks Recap

Jamie

I have no trouble remembering the entry of D2: The Mighty Ducks into my life. At that point we were old enough to have probably seen it in theaters. Wheelhouse territory. Amazing that Kenan hadn’t quite yet popped on All That, but my memory has him in “elite” level pretty much from right here onwards. I was not going to be missing a Kenan (or even Kel) jam. No way. No how. Playing hockey, you couldn’t swing a stick without someone trying a knuckle puck, attempting a flying V in practice, or triple deking to our heart’s desire. And yes, we already knew as 8-year-olds that Iceland being the big bad was a joke. Years later, I can only assume the people making it also knew it was a joke… that was part of the joke. At the time, though, it felt good to be like “ha, what idiots.” Life was grand. We were the champions, no doubt.

To recap, the Quack Attack is back, Jack! After the team’s most important player (Gordon Bombay, of course) is injured in the minor leagues, just before getting his shot in the NHL (as some sort of Marchand/St. Louis type), he is recruited by Hendrix Hockey to coach Team USA at the Goodwill Games. Best of all he can bring all the Ducks (minus the less interesting kids). Off they go to LA where they meet new teammates (Whaa?). Don’t worry, they are pranking each other and best bash brother friends in no time (Phew). While the Ducks handily dispatch vaunted opponents, Italy and Trinidad & Tobago, Bombay is enthralled by the celebrity of LA and the cute Icelandic trainer unfortunately associated with the eeeeevil Team Iceland and their eeeevil coach, Wolf Stansson (good name). When the Ducks finally meet up with their eeevil rivals, it’s a bloodbath. Bombay needs the sweet green that celebrity promises! He begins to drive the team like some eeevil Coach Stansson type. Where is his love of the game? The team’s tutor demands he give the kids a break. This leaves them time to play street hockey and recruit Keenan and his knucklepuck to the team. Bombay’s old mentor Hans…’s brother Jan (for real) shows up and also demands he rediscover his love in the only way anyone knows how: blading it out at the beach in hot pants. He blades so hard that he’s late for the game. He arrives in the third to a tie game with Germany and helps inspire the Ducks to a win. With the help of Keenan in the following game against Russia, the Ducks win again. In the final it’s a close and tough game against Iceland until they find the Ducks inside of us all and quack their way to a tie. They go to a shootout where Bombay replaces Goldberg with Julie (the Cat) for the final shooter and she saves the day (literally). THE END (or is it? (no, duh… but also they have to sing We Are the Champions obviously)).

This is the hardest of the films to judge. It is ludicrous. But it also cranking nostalgia at levels not seen since Rufio. Everything in the film hits. The new player, gimmicks, Rodeo Drive, opposing teams, everything. You can almost tell in real time them realizing that Bombay kind of sucks and they need to go more for the players doing pranks and stuff. More crazy gimmicks on and off the ice! By the time you get to the end of the film there may as well be a dog playing. The rulebook has been thrown so far out the window that it rocketed into outer space. As for the whole idea of branding: still here. Knowing that the Ducks made for big headlines by breaking the Hawk’s streak, Hendrix Hockey brought them in hoping for another miracle with the kids wearing his equipment. Once again I feel like they set this up and then just decide it’s not worth following through on. Hendrix clearly should have been a bad guy. Just wants the miracle for his shitty equipment. They should have said “no way” and played in Hans/Jan’s equipment. Instead he just affably stands by while they make his dreams come true. Weird. Overall. A++ for nostalgia. Somehow the worst actual film of the franchise (but, shhh, I don’t care).

Hot Take Clam Bake! I don’t think Bombay and the Icelandic trainer are going to make it. First of all I don’t even know her name… I guess her name is Maria… which is also the name of the actress. They probably had [Insert name here] in the script. It’s like when an athlete adds “Sr.” to their jersey. Never a good sign. Second of all, she’s hot stuff and what? Bombay’s going to go to Iceland? No way. He’s gotta take that sweet job with the Goodwill Games (see: D3: The Mighty Ducks). Finally, I can officially say it: Coach Bombay kinda sucks. He keeps getting roped in by the sweet green and having to reignite his passion for the game by skating/blading his little heart out. Everyone needs to move on from this dude. Only person more overrated in the series is Goldberg. Hot Take Temperature: Iceland.

Patrick?

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! *Gif of me being a pretty sweet skater, but then an eeeeevil Icelandic hockey player slashes me in the knee, cripples me, and laughs in my face. “Well worth it” he says.* Let’s go!

The Good? Alright, this was a stalwart of young Sklog life, and I think illustrates an important factor in children’s entertainment. Specifically, when you are a child the second Mighty Ducks is the best one. It has the coolest uniforms, they get to pick and choose the best characters and replace the bad ones with more interesting ones, and you are seeing neat places like Los Angeles and playing on the biggest stage. When you are an adult the second film is either extraordinarily silly or abominable depending on how much you like the first one. I enjoy the silliness of the second one, even if some of the choices are weird.

The Bad? Let’s just go through some of those weird choices. They didn’t get Hans back and instead of recasting they get his previously unmentioned brother who then disappears for the third film, odd choice. They seem to seriously suggest Bombay was going to make the NHL at like a 32 year old rookie. Not impossible, it just feels rather unlikely. Also he goes from not playing hockey for about 20 years to borderline professional within a year. The endurance itself would take longer. He was a lawyer (and borderline alcoholic) for like 10 years! I personally doubt his back was going to hold up let alone any of the rest of his body. They then proceed to make him a sell out trash person (in line with his original character I suppose, not so much with Reformed Bombay) when the eeeeevil Team USA corporate overlord was right there ready to destroy the spirit of the team. Obviously Cat should have always been starting over Goldberg, a person who can barely skate and seems to be an objectively terrible goalkeeper. And finally Iceland has approximately 300 thousand people, just about the same number of people as Madison, Wisconsin. My understanding is that until recently they didn’t even really have any ice rinks on the island and only started to gear up their youth hockey program 20 years after this film came out. Why they chose Iceland and not something like Canada or even maybe Sweden as a (more friendly) rival is beyond me.

Again this film is very very very silly. The fact that they basically just ignore all of the lore from this film (outside of that kid they picked up off the street in L.A. moving to Minnesota to attend a private high school there) is incredible.

The actual good of the film I guess is that a good number of the characters they invented for the second film move forward to the third, which is probably a sign that they were doing something right.

The BMT? I think so. Of the three films this is the one that teeters right on the edge of so bad it’s good. It is so weird and silly that, personally, I can’t help but have fun with it.

Again, I think Goldberg is a Planchet (Who?), just getting dunked on all day. I’m inventing a new category, The Sklog Daily Lexicon (What?) for the word Knucklepuck entering firmly into everyday use in the world of the late-90s Sklogs. Definitely Setting as a Character (Where?) for saying fuck it and moving the production to the much more convenient Los Angeles. I do like the Wait This was Real (Why?) for the use of the Goodwill Games as the reason behind the entire movie taking place. The movie is very very BMT in my opinion, I probably watched it a dozen times on cable in the late-90s / early 00s.

Learn all about the real Goodwill Games I would think, in the Quiz. Cheerios,

The Sklogs

The Mighty Ducks Recap

Jamie

I can’t even imagine how big of a sensation The Mighty Ducks was. Mostly because, while the film was obviously a huge part of my cinematic life, it came out at a time where the memory of its actual release is hazy. Almost like The Mighty Ducks was always. And think about this, the film was such a sensation that there is still a major pro sports team named the Ducks. That’s Jurassic Park status. Anyway, it’s hard to parse these types of films from nostalgia. It’s why we avoided things like this (and Hackers) for a substantial chunk of BMT. How can we have anything from love and affection for The Mighty Ducks? And yet at a certain point it became undeniable that these films must be given the BMT treatment. For the sake of history. And so here they are, destined to win a Freddy Got Fingered award.

To recap, Gordon Bombay is a high powered lawyer. Sure he has a past life as a hockey-loving phenom with a dad who just wanted him to love the game with all his heart. But when that dad died, so did that love of fun. Replaced with a love of that sweet green, a need for speed and a taste for a couple of road sodas. Uh oh! Those road sodas come back and bite him when he’s pulled over and (given his general ‘tude in the courtroom) sentenced to *gulp* coach Peewee hockey! Mr. Ducksworth, this has to be a joke. That’s how he finds himself coaching the ragtaggingest ragtag group of nogoodniks this side of the Twin Cities. Things start out rough, but Gordon’s old friend, Hans, reminds him to recall the fun in hockey and he gains the trust of the team. Amongst this group is Spazway (a.k.a. Charlie Conway) who Gordon sees something in and takes under his wing. What’s that? He also has a smoking hot single mom? Oh my, Gordon hadn’t noticed, but now that you mention it… Anyway, this group is jokesters who don’t even really know how to skate, so Gordon goes out and finds even ragtaggier kids to join the team and help out. Things start coming together, so Gordon uses his lawyer skillz to find out the star player from the eeeevil Hawks, Banks, should be on his team. Blinded by his need to get one over on the Hawks’ eeeevil Coach Riley, Gordon inadvertently insults his entire team and they quit. Faced with this and the possibility of losing his job over the Banks fiasco he realizes that he doesn’t want to be a lawyer anyway. Suddenly the team is back in and they are marching to the championship. In the big game the Ducks are overmatched but play to a draw and Charlie gets a penalty shot to win it (Spazway!). Using Gordon’s patented Triple Deke, Charlie wins the game. THE END (or is it? (Nevveeerrrrrrr!)).

Is this film good? I’d like to frame this from the vantage point of Franchise Man. The Big FM would want you to understand the crux of The Mighty Ducks: marketing. Every movie is in some way about the Ducks being exploited by larger forces but ultimately coming through because of the exact opposite of marketing: genuine fun. Gordon Bombay has to forget what got him into this in the first place. He was in trouble and to get out of trouble he would coach the team. The team sucked, so to help them not suck he got his law firm to sponsor them. Ultimately, in all three movies(!), the film itself chooses fun rather than acknowledging it. They could have had Ducksworth come up and apologize, but no. Forget all that. All in all, though, the film is really weird. It’s like 85% saddo Gordon Bombay. I did appreciate the accuracy of the sports scenes in the end. Only the climactic goal is sorta fudged. They imply Bombay could choose anyone to take the penalty shot and have him explicitly choose Spazway. That doesn’t make sense with the rules. Overall, pretty middling, but an A+ for nostalgia.

Hot Take Clam Bake! You know, I don’t think Bombay and Charlie’s mom are going to make it. First of all he’s about to venture forth on a quest for the NHL as a thirty-something year old 5’7” rookie who (allegedly) quit playing after Peewee hockey. I’m thinking he won’t have much time to be there for a single mom working as a waitress to provide for her son. Second of all, she’s cute and the single guys of the Twin Cities are probably ready to pounce while he’s off toiling away on the Kalamazoo Wings. Third of all they totally whiff on Charlie’s last name in the credits of the film (Conroy? Come on)… so I don’t think they’re putting much stock in the character. Hot Take Temperature: 10,000 Frozen Lakes.

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! *Gif of me totally beefing it on the hockey rink, but then a second gif where Coach Bombay teaches me soft hands, but then a third gif where he starts dating my mom, but then a fourth gif where maybe I’m happy he’s dating my mom because then Coach Bombay would be my dad maybe? But then a fifth gif where he stops dating my mom and we never mention it again* Let’s go!

The Good? This movie. That’s the entire review I think we’ve said enough here. But for real, the strength of the original Mighty Ducks is that it is that thing that existed since the Bad News Bears (I think) where it is an ensemble kids’ film. Disney is just doing Disney things and snatching up bonafide kids superstars (Danny Tamberelli anyone?) and hanging an entire franchise on someone I would say is probably a Kid Actor Hall of Fame candidate in Joshua Jackson.

Speaking of which, since there isn’t much else to talk about with this film in terms of BMTness or badness, there was a question on Reddit where someone asked why kid actors on television often turn into abominable teen actors. I think the answer is fairly obvious: When you are a kid actor they often play to your strength early in a series. Namely precocious quips and one liners. Once you get to later seasons of a show and you start getting paid more (presumably), you are expected to handle dramatic scenes yourself. The kids who are the actual stars of their shows (Blossum, Corey from Boy Meets World, etc.) are often fine because they were cast to hold their own in these heavier scenes. But the actors who start as just window dressing to the main star of a show (e.g. the three kids on Home Improvement), they can get a bit dicey as time goes on. Now why am I mentioning this here? Because Joshua Jackson did get a bit dicey as a teen, but he was still good enough to transition to a elder teen on Dawson’s Creek, and has had a pretty impressive television career since. That’s what these movies need, and the entire kid cast is pretty great in the original.

The Bad? Nothing? Naw, sure. The actual thing is that they really get wild with some of the stats. At one point they suggest Bombay scored like 200 goals in a youth hockey season … Do they know how many games they play in youth hockey? I don’t think it is like 80. Somehow I think they are suggesting Bombay was scoring like 10 goals a game. Somewhat unrealistic.

The BMT? Naw, it is actually pretty offensive this even qualifies. This movie is a genuine banger. Great movie. Would watch it again right now.

I think we maybe have a Planchet (Who?) here in either Lester Averman (although people aren’t really dunking on him, more like just laughing at him, he’s true comic relief) or Goldberg. A great Setting as a Character (Where?) for Saint Paul, MN (at least in part, the place Charlie’s mother works is definitely in Saint Paul). I’m making up a new category for Slo-Motion Childhood Tragedy (Why?) for Bombay missing a penalty shot in the finals of the Twin Cities Youth Hockey Championship, his dad dying, and him quitting hockey all in the same year. ROUGH. This movie is Good, get the fuck out of here.

Learn all about NHL teams probably in the Quiz. Cheerios,

The Sklogs

The Back-up Plan Recap

Jamie

There are a whole bunch of rom-coms that came out in the 2000’s (the real peak of the genre) that really left you scratching your head at what in the world they were thinking. I’m not talking something like The Ugly Truth, which is bad, but the recipe itself is a classic. I mean cases where the recipe literally went bad. The Back-up plan is probably on the tamer end of that. In the middle is probably the Madonna film where she has a baby with her gay best friend and then falls in love. Probably the crown jewel is the Kate Hudson film A Little Bit of Heaven where she has terminal cancer… what a rom-com concept! And what a trilogy I just came up with. Three powerhouses of the genre in films that define logic. Officially this is the first leg of that journey.

To recap, JLo is a lady on the move. She’s got a great job, but she has given up on finding the man of her dreams. Right after getting (successfully) artificially inseminated she bumps into Stan who turns out to be *gulp* the man of her dreams. Oh no! They keep bumping into each other and soon he’s doing more than just bumping into her as he tells her he wants to see where things might go. They start casually dating. Unfortunately, during a trip to his farm she makes the mistake of not telling him she’s pregnant before they sleep together and he reacts poorly. They briefly break up, but Stan comes back and tries to make it work. Even when he finds out she’s having twins, he ends up making a dad friend at a playground and trying to work through all the overwhelming feelings he’s having. Comedy ensues as JLo has a bunch of goofy gags with a single mother’s group including a scene where she and Stan have to witness and participate in the birth of one of the member’s babies. It’s very funny and cool. The breaking point is when he makes a point to tell his ex-gf that the babies aren’t his in front of JLo and the break-up is official. But after a new specialty stroller arrives and her grandmother gives her some grandmotherly advice, JLo realizes that Stan has grown up. Just then her water breaks and they rush to the farmer’s market to pick him up for the birth. They end up getting engaged and probably pregnant again. THE END.

I just had a realization that this is essentially Look Who’s Talking but without the talking baby. The beats are the same. A working woman bumps into a guy who she’s somewhat put off by, he slowly ingratiates himself through devotion despite not being the baby’s father, ends with them finally together and the promise of a very special delivery. The problem? Bruce Willis had a funny voice for a baby, John Travolta has 1000x the charisma of the cardboard cutout of a man in this film, and they throw all the actually interesting drama from Look Who’s Talking out in exchange for an absolute catastrophe of a birthing scene. That Melissa McCarthy performance evokes Robin Williams in 9 Months (you all know what I’m talking about). I have no idea why this exists. I did not like it. Now if it had a talking baby in it I could at least understand the existence part.

Hot Take Clam Bake! I’m coming in scorching on this one. I think… Stan is actually the father of JLo’s kids. That’s the sequel. It turns out this sneaky cheesemonger has in fact been donating sperm for ages. He’s also been skulking around waiting for an unsuspecting woman to accept his donation and stages an elaborate meet-cute with her. Sure it seems like he’s nervous about being in a relationship with her, but he’s playing hard to get. Wouldn’t come off very convincing if he didn’t show some trepidation. His craziness when he finds out she’s having twins? Obviously that’ll cut into his skulking time, he’s gotta think it over. What’s JLo going to do when she finds out the truth?… Did I mention the sequel is a horror film? Hot Take Temperature: Fondue.

Patrick?

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! *gif of me finding a penny on the ground heads up and looking up and J-Lo is there and winks at me and then I look confused* Let’s go!

The Good? I’ve said this before, and I don’t want to get in trouble with my wife, but J-Lo man … from 1995-2010 or so J-Lo was probably the most attractive woman in Hollywood. Money Train. This. Just incredibly attractive. It boggles the mind.

The Bad? Everything else. The guy is a weird actor and doesn’t seem attractive (at least not attractive enough). The film has several insane sequences (especially the entire bit where the guy gets jealous of his pregnant girlfriend’s body pillow … WTF mate?). And overall the experience is the unpleasantness that was prevalent in mid-2000s comedies. Specifically things like The Break Up (2006, four years prior, this might be the death nell for this particular sub-genre).

The BMT? No, the film is just Bad. As far as J-Lo films are concerned there are three in my personal hall of fame: Money Train, Gigli, and, of course, The Boy Next Door. Man … The Boy Next Door. Remember that one?

And a final look at the potential use of AI to get Rotten Tomatoes scores. I did wonder if I was very very insistent and proclaimed null values as completely invalid would that “fix” the “problem” … kind of. In that it does maybe seem to get some more values filled in. The concern is that an unknowable number still end up being wrong for no real reason (e.g. Blue Lagoon being reported as 95% which is far too high), and then several (e.g. The Long Good Friday) are very consistently still reported as well. I only tested for the first 30, and I’m confident if I expanded it to the top 100 it would only get worse as you got to more and more unpopular films. Which basically means it isn’t really using the search as I had hoped or expected. Too bad. Would have been fun.

A genuine Twin Film (Who?) in this one, since J-Lo does specifically have twins in the film. It is a whole thing, they have to get a huge stroller, like with everything it melts Stan’s mind and makes him spiral into a crisis. Definitely a very funny Product Placement (What?) for an actual McFlurry sighting. Setting as a Character (Where?) for NYC. I think that is it. I think this film is just Bad unfortunately.

Learn all about childbirth? It’ll be in the Quiz. Cheerios,

The Sklogs

Staying Alive Recap

Jamie

Sigh, we are coming to the end. We are a Sly Stallone based venture. We operate on the Stallonian calendar which promises a Stallone flick every year with 53 Thursdays. Last Thursday of such a year is Stallone Day and celebrates all things Sly. This is all detailed on the website. Anyway, we are nearing the end of unique qualifying films and when we run out a question will arise that can only be answered by the BMT Council of Elders( BMTCoE). Some might be asking why I’m mentioning this before diving into Staying Alive. To those people I will simply say, “Get out! Shoo!” and throw pebbles at you until you leave. Staying Alive is the only film that Sly directed but did have a role in (not counting his uncredited appearance in the film). He’s also written two Statham films that he wasn’t in, but neither of them qualified. Truly unique. So keep in mind that this is a very special episode.

To recap, our hero Tony Manero is trying to make it in the Big Apple. He teaches dance classes to make a buck while going on audition after audition. It seems like he will never get his chance and it’s incredibly frustrating. He’s got a cool girlfriend, Jackie, but he even takes that for granted, sleeping with a star dancer that has blown into town for a new show, Satan’s Alley. At the auditions for Satan’s Alley they all get parts. Tony is very excited but also doesn’t love how small a part he has. Realizing he’s done Jackie dirty, he apologizes and asks for help practicing the lead dance in the show. He seems the main dancer is struggling and wants to take a shot at replacing him. When the time comes he pretty much botches it and the demanding director is like “ha, you suck.” This makes him feel like quitting, but Jackie is like “you can’t” cause she’s the coolest. He’s like OK and gives it another go and dances like a god dang star. The director? He’s like “Wow. OK. You have the part.” At the premier, Tony dances like a star again and the star dancer is angry because he’s using their chemistry against her. But this explodes on stage in the second half in what can only be described as literally the sexiest dancing scene in the history of cinema and in no way is it dumb and silly. By going off script, Tony becomes a hero of dance and the whole cast celebrates his one-of-a-kind achievement. Tony wins. THE END.

Hahaha, the crux of the problem for Staying Alive is that it is incredibly silly. Like no holds barred silly ass shit. Siskel must have been so disappointed! They really turn their back on pretty much everything the first (very good) movie was all about. He heads into the city at the end of that film (a pretty depressing film at that) because he knows his unserious life can’t last forever. Sure he’s hot shit in one club in Brooklyn, but at the end he’s given a trophy he doesn’t deserve because the judges are racist and it’s a moment of devastation. Just glaringly obvious that this stuff he’s been working on is meaningless. He heads off to Manhattan to become… a super silly Broadway dancer? Lol, what? A perfect example of the unnecessary sequel that should have been abandoned immediately once it was clear that the breakout star from the first film was just too famous to make a sequel where his loser character was still a loser. His character had to be dope as shit. That sucks. One final note: Travolta is a good dancer… but he is not a Broadway dancer level dancer. Crazy choices all around. Bravo. As for what the plot should have been? Easy, he should have been living as the arm candy for a stable of rich Manhattan ladies. Taking them out dancing and stuff while doing some modelling and commercial work. Acting is ultimately where Tony ends up if he is to succeed.

Hot Take Clam Bake! This was all a dream. It was a dream he had maybe just before a cab ran him over in Manhattan. Dreaming that, despite struggling with his art, he is able to break through and take over a Broadway show and demonstrate to the world that he is actually The World’s Greatest Dancer. Because otherwise the entire concept of the film makes no sense and is built on a tower of lies. And this was written and directed by Sly Stallone… so that would be blasphemy to suggest. Hot Take Temperature: Satan’s Alley.

Patrick?

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! *gif of me dancing. Hard. On Broadway. Everyone is watching like “Holy shit that guy can dance … hard!”* Let’s go!

The Good? Travolta’s body man … he is in incredibly good shape. The dancing is pretty incredible, even though at a high level, would this be on Broadway? Like … would people watch this on Broadway? I think the answer is yes. As a matter of fact I think I could figure out that the answer is yes because I bet I can find ads in the New York Times for shows EXACTLY like the weirdo one they put on in the end where a dancer dances his way through Hell or whatever.

The Bad? The film is soooooooooooo boring. And Travolta as a character is sooooooo shitty. He was shitty in the first too, but at that point he was in a shitty situation, and trying to even figure out what it meant to not be in such a situation. Learning what ambition even means. In this though he kind of seems like a dick, and did I mention the film is incredibly dull?

The BMT? Nope. It is nice that we finally did it because it has a very bad Rotten Tomatoes score, and is one of the last Stallone films we needed. But it is boooooooooring.

So … continuing what I was doing last time, can Google Gemini grounded search get Rotten Tomatoes scores from imdb links more easily than just scraping? Last time it wouldn’t provide answers for more than 10 when given 100 films. So I chunked them into ground of 10 and … nope, still, it mostly cannot find anything below the top 50, and for all but the top ten it gets somewhat random results. So no, this is not something I can use in any way. It is very disappointing. I really thought it would work, and given how I tend to use Google (to get IMDb and Rotten Tomatoes links mostly) this was the first time I thought something could work that would be quite useful to my BMT work. Alas. It just isn’t ready for primetime.

This is a huge Setting as a Character (Where?) for NYC, just Broadway and Brooklyn all over this piece. I think that is it. Sure his dream of being a Broadway star could be considered a MacGuffin I suppose. And his inevitable rise to stardom is a twist of a kind. By naw, just the setting here. This movie is ultra-dull and is the epitome of Bad even if the director and its status as a legendarily bad sequel screams out to be good-bad, it just ain’t.

What can we learn about dancing … hard? Find out in the Quiz. Cheerios,

Sklogs

Stay Alive Recap

Jamie

I have literally been waiting years for this moment. Stay Alive is one of a relatively small set of films that have me stop in my tracks and say, “Hold up… that qualifies?” These are major releases that are so crazy in concept that it’s a real wonder that they appear to have made no cultural impact. So little that I assumed they were straight-to-video. The year was 2006 and a film came out about a killer video game and I… have no recollection of it. It wasn’t even a massive bomb. If anything it was a modest success. Anyway, I always have to take a moment and celebrate when one of these films finally breaks through BMT rulez and finds a spot in a cycle. Now it just has to live up to the lofty standards (pun actually not intended, believe it or not) that The Loft set.

To recap, Loomis Crowley and his girlfriend, Sarah, are cutting it up with a new spooky video game. Even spookier, after the game ends they are killed just like their characters were. Hutch, Loomis’ friend, and Abigail, Sarah’s friend, meet at the funeral. Hutch ends up being given the game they were playing, Stay Alive. In memory of Loomis and Sarah, he and a bunch of friends get together to play the game. They are duly spookified and Hutch’s boss is killed in the game… and dies. Stay Alive! Like in Tarot, the police are like “so how many people in your lives have died in the last week?” Already pretty much knowing what’s happening they begin to research the subject of the game: Countess Bathory. One of the friends ignores the warnings and plays… and dies. Stay Alive! One of the detectives ignores the warnings and plays… and dies. Stay Alive! Hutch and the gang head to the plantation where the game is set and try to subdue the Countess’ ghost. They realize that the game can play itself (horseshit lore) and also that one of them can play and the help provided appears in real life (weird, but I’ll allow it). A climactic showdown occurs where all the very important game lore is used to kill the spirit. THE END. (Or is it? (They desperately want that to not be the case)).

Franchise Man has no right to comment on this movie until it unexpectedly becomes a franchise twenty or thirty years after the original. But… if he were to comment he would say that the rulez and lore in this movie are a travesty. The game plays itself? The game… just can kill you without you actually playing the game. Uh… I thought the tagline was Play It To Death. Operative word there being “play” as in play the game. It looks like shit and is total nonsense, so I don’t accept the claim on wikipedia that this is some cult classic. You know what would have made it a classic? More creative video game kills and making it so that to stop the curse they must, you know, play the game. I actually need them to make a sequel to right the wrongs of the past.

Hot Take Clam Bake! I’m brave enough to say it. I don’t think that video game was even haunted. I think there was a cool as hell serial killer out there pulling all the strings. A Jigsaw type character who was never stopped because they thought it was the video game all along. Some dopey ghost did all that? No way, man. It was this Jigsaw character trying to teach you all a lesson about life. In fact, I think it was actually Jigsaw. I also think Jigsaw is real and not a character in a movie franchise. How’s that for hot? Maybe I am Jigsaw. Hot enough for yah? Hot Take Temperature: Jigsaw

Patrick?

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! *gif of me playing a spooky video game and getting all spookified* Let’s go!

The Good? Uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuh. I mean, is there anything? I don’t think so. Not since I learned that Anna from The O.C. has turned into a religious film actor.

The Bad? Everything. The acting is bad, especially the main guy. Frankie Muniz is doing something, but that something probably made more sense when he was an actor instead of a racecar driver. And it isn’t a scary film. The only thing it really has going for it is that idea that it is a killer video game film.

The BMT? Hmmm. I think it is. Partially because if you watch the Director’s Cut they have a bunch of stuff in there which look wildly different than the rest of the film because they had to get it (seemingly) off of the B roll or something. The film is such a terrible, and yet unique version of that 00s horror that it almost inevitably will be a film we’d return to in the future.

A little bit of a curve ball on the AI journey here. I did a good number of experiments, which at some point I’ll continue, but I also was curious whether I could use it to get Rotten Tomatoes scores for a list of IMDb links. In other words … could it genuinely replace something annoying that I tend to just arduously scrape? Let’s do this naively. I used the Google Gemini “grounded” search, and decided on something straightforward: given the top 100 1980 films IMDb links, could it return a dictionary of all 100 rotten tomatoes scores? Naive answer: helllllllll naw. Well, that is a little unfair, it seems to have a hard limit on 10 searches per query. So when you give a list of 100 links it will only return 10 of those values (the rest are null). So in a way it can’t, but perhaps it still speeds things up 10x? That is for next time.

Definite Planchet (Who?) for Frankie Muniz playing an aggravating character who everyone tells to shut up a bunch but obviously ultimately lives. Super Product Placement (What?) for a sweet Alienware laptop all up in this piece. A huge Setting as a Character (Where?) for a very very New Orleans film. I think the cursed video game is a MAcGuffin (Why?) for sure. And I love the Worst Twist (How?) whereby the end of the movie is them releasing the killer game despite them breaking the curse. This film is crazy bad looking but hugely entertainingly bad and thus a BMT through and through.

What can we learn about killer video games? Find out in the Quiz. Cheerios,

Sklogs

Under Siege 2: Dark Territory Recap

Jamie

I often try to reflect on the imprint that the latest BMT films had on the younger me who experienced their release in real time. Jury Duty is a perfect example. Huge in my mind. Tiny tiny in the actual cultural impact. Seagal represents an inversion of sorts. I’ve found that many people have a real connection to watching Seagal films on cable growing up. Something like Under Siege 2: Dark Territory can loom larger in their minds than the original. Not so for me. I don’t know if it was good upbringing or our exquisite taste, but Seagal almost had no actual presence in my mind. I don’t think I had ever seen a Seagal film until BMT… not a starring vehicle at least. Despite now having seen quite a few, we still have a lot to catch up on.

To recap, Ryback is back, Jack! And he’s cutting it up once again. Still a chef (obviously), but he’s a bit sad. His brother died in an airplane crash and left his niece an orphan. It’s all up to him to take care of her, but he hasn’t seen her in a while. He also has to take a train from Denver to LA with her to attend the funeral because she’s now scared of air travel. I’m sure this will be an uneventful train ride for good ol’ Ryback, right? Wrong! That’s because some big bad terrorists are along for the ride ready to hijack an earthquake satellite and hold the world hostage! This is real. This is happening. Travis Dane is the disgraced creator of the satellite who is going to use his big brain to get it back and he’s going to use… dark territory to do it. What’s that? Thanks for asking, it is the area that this train will go through where it won’t be in contact with the operators and they can keep things secret. Anyway, Ryback’s niece is taken hostage and so he recruits a porter, Bobby, to help take down the terrorists one-by-one. And boy, do they. They are chopping them. They are shooting them. They are tricking them. The terrorists are shaking in their boots at the mere mention of Ryback’s name and Ryback is able to help the hostages escape. But with Dane’s haxxors skillz he’s also able to destroy all kinds of stuff and sets the satellite on the Pentagon. With his job done he attempts to escape, but Ryback catches him, destroys his laptop (allowing the government to destroy the satellite), and right before the train crashes is able to jump into a helicopter, leaving Dane to plummet to his death. THE END (or is it? (isn’t it?)).

Boy, this is a tricky one. On the one hand this is an objectively shit film with a terrible plot and a star that cannot act his way out of a paper bag. Seagal was deep into his extended Difficult Period and you can tell. There are literally scenes that make no sense and shouldn’t be in the film, but you get the sense that he insisted and the filmmakers were like “whatever.” His scenes with Heigl are… fraught. There is not a female body that they don’t dare to ogle. All that being said, this is straight-to-video brain candy unleashed on the big screen. It’s kind of the precursor to films like Moonfall and The Beekeeper where you have to admit that there is something to a film that is unabashedly pure entertainment. I’m not going to say it’s good and if I were a serious critic I would be like “no way, no how.” But I’m not. This was fun to watch.

Hot Take Clam Bake! I’m going serious on this one. There is a scene in this film where Morris Chestnut is recruited by Seagal to take on the terrorists and he reacts in disbelief. “But, you’re just a cook!” he exclaims. How does he know this? Well earlier in the film he and Chestnut are cutting it up in the bar area and Seagal tells the bartender not to give Chestnut all the brandy because he needs it to bake a cake. Smash cut to him making a cake in the microwave as Chestnut looks on. This scene is… well, extraneous is probably even being too kind. It’s insane that it’s in a major motion picture. My hot take is that Seagal only clocks the brandy to make it make sense that Chestnut is then watching him bake said cake, which in turn allows Chestnut to gain the knowledge of Seagal’s background. It is entirely constructed because someone, somewhere was like “Wait… how does he know he’s a cook?” It’s honestly beautiful. Hot Take Temperature: Microwave Cake.

Patrick?

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! *gif of me hanging off the side of a train and totally akidoing people to death* Let’s go!

The Good? I mean … there is kind of an argument here that this is a good Seagal movie. That isn’t saying much, but it is an incredibly wild film. As you watch it you want there to be hundreds of these types of films available. And yet, there isn’t. Out of every 100 VHS releases there is generously one Crackerjack in the bunch. Under Siege 2 is a bad wide release film (an absurdity even), but a VHS rental? An afternoon HBO film? Uh … cha, it does it for me.

The Bad? The film is absurd! The bad guy is absurder! He might be the most absurd actually. Is that a bad thing? Well, depends on your perspective. There is the Seagal of it all, and the harrowing experience of watching him interact with a young woman in the form of Katherine Heigel. But all of the bad can, in a way, be good.

The BMT? I mean, is it the best train film in the BMT canon? Maybe. It is a great train film. And of all the Seagal films when you actually think about it, it might be the third most entertaining. For a trilogy just smashing out Under Siege, Under Siege 2, and Executive Decision (and pretending like they filmed the actual tragic death of Stephen Seagal) is a decent option.

Oh snap, time to continue down the AI analysis journey. Last time I was looking at whether the order of the posters mattered when trying to pull out the ones that feature a clown. This is just about the same analysis, except I just ran 100 permutations, just to see if there was a pattern to when zero, one, or two posters are pulled out:

The green dots are both, the red none, and the black is Quick Change but not Child’s Play 2. The only real pattern is that Child’s Play has to be very near or after Quick Change to be ignored, which is interesting. In the end it does indicate the position mostly doesn’t matter, but you probably want to permute and run more than once to get accurate results. I would also say you should do more posters not less, I think it very much cuts down on the false positives … although maybe if you were looking for something common it would end up having more false negatives or something. I guess I’ll have to test that.

A Kinda Planchet (Who?) for Morris Chestnut who is kind of hapless throughout, but he is integrated into the hero crew™ pretty quickly. I’m going to go with a recently rare Product Placement (What?) for the sweet Panasonic Mash XBS boombox featured in the lone sex scene of the film. I do love the Setting as a Character (Where?) for the titular Dark Territory which appears to be in the Rocky Mountains just west of Denver, I think. Not really any MacGuffins or even twists amazingly. This is one of the most BMT films I’ve ever seen.

Oooooo what can we learn about satellites and dark territories? Find out in the Quiz. Cheerios,

The Sklogs

Jury Duty Recap

Jamie

Have I told the story where I thought the quote “That’s nice, Peanut” came from this movie because the dog’s name is Peanut (even though that doesn’t make sense)? But turns out it came from an equally quality film Celtic Pride? Yes, only a million times? Great. Just wanted to make sure it was clear that those two films were prominent enough in my cultural upbringing that I could mix up a quote from one with the other because I remembered (for eternity, apparently) the name of the dog in a Pauly Shore vehicle. The only other thing I remembered vividly from this film was the conjugal visit scene where Shore dresses up like a woman in order to see the man on trial. They then have a series of homophobic mix-up’s which results in the implication that they make love… which as a child was totally bewildering.

To recap, Tommy is a loser. He doesn’t have a job and even when his family tries to help him out he can’t help himself. When his mom and her boyfriend take the trailer and head off to Vegas, Tommy is left homeless and remembers that he has an opportunity to earn some quick cash (and a place to stay) on jury duty. He heads to the courthouse where after some searching finds a death penalty case for a serial killer, Carl Wayne Bishop. After getting himself on the jury, they head off to a swanky hotel that isn’t so swanky as most of it is being renovated. To make matters worse, Tommy is sharing a room with his high school principal (ha!). To get around this he convinces the manager of the hotel, who is struggling to book rooms during the renovation, to put him up in the nice part of the hotel in exchange for free advertising. At this point he is fully enjoying himself (and fallen in love with a fellow juror, Monica) and so when they head to the jury room he gets himself elected foreman and proceeds to plant the seeds for a drawn out deliberation. But the more he argues the more he is convincing a number of people that something is off. Just as they are ready to find Bishop innocent, the jurors find out about his dope digs and a mistrial is declared. Later, as he’s collecting trash with his stepfather, Tommy realizes that the connection between all the victims in the trial was styrofoam and that the killer was a deranged environmentalist. He tries to call Monica, but she won’t talk to him, so he tracks down Frank, another Juror who was a deranged environmentalist… wait a second! That’s right, Tommy walks right into the real killer, who was on the jury the whole time. A climactic action scene commences which results in good vanquishing evil and Tommy finding his purpose in life: the law. THE END.

I certainly have a fond recollection of Jury Duty. My new recollection of the film is less kind. The opening scene is actually kind of funny. Everyone appears disgusted by Shore and he doesn’t totally understand why. So it starts out at least recognizing that not everyone would be game for the Pauly Shore experience. From there the logic in the film makes almost no sense. There is the primary twist: the murderer was serving on the jury the whole time after tricking another potential juror to let him take his place. But like… this requires the murderer to have planned to frame the dude on trial. Did he find an insane person who threatens everyone he works with and follow him around killing his coworkers. And then when it came time to frame him his tasered him and left him at a crime scene and the cops were like… cool with that? And then he got on the jury and… did nothing? All for the environment? It is incomprehensible if you allow yourself the luxury of trying to understand it. As it is, it just feels like a low-grade spoof film they turned into a Shore vehicle. Also the conjugal visit scene is even worse than I remember. It is one of the worst things ever put to film.

Hot Take Clam Bake! Do I even have to say it? Pauly Shore does not make it through law school no matter how much this jury duty experience may have inspired him. As a result, I hate to say it, but Monica and Tommy… they don’t make it or the long haul. Sad, but true. Finally, despite what they show at the end of the film, Peanut does not have a successful run on Jeopardy. This isn’t an Air Bud scenario. I’m willing to bet there is in fact a rule against a dog (who has no way of effectively communicating with humans) being a contestant. Hot Take Temperature: Milk Man Scene.

Patrick?

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! *gif of me laughing as my father-in-law watches this film with me and keeps on saying “ugh this is awful” over and over* Let’s go!

The Good? Hmmmm … nostalgia. This was like slipping into a warm bath and remembering all the good times watching Comedy Central on summer vacation between stints at the tennis courts. This might genuinely be the worst film I have a decent amount of affection for.

The Bad? Everything about it if I’m being honest with myself. Pauly Shore is quite an annoying character (across all of the “weasel” films). The acting is really bad. And the worst crime of all: the court case makes zero sense. The actual killer gets on the jury of his own crime (Juror #2 style) and then doesn’t really even try that hard to get the guy convicted, and then, craziest of all, he is only ultimately suspected because he was on the jury! If he hadn’t gone on the jury there would be no reason to suspect him! … Even while on the jury there was no reason to suspect him! It doesn’t make any sense at all. Fun stuff.

The BMT? Hmmmmmmm … maybe. Of all the Pauly Shore films I think Bio-Dome is the pinnacle with the right balance of kind of fun dumbness with some decent laughs and fun actors. This is probably the third of the major Weasel films (after Son-in-Law and Bio-Dome), but it is the only one that is pretty boring.

Well, now that I kind of know that the batch imaging can work consistently, I wanted to test if there would be trouble with longer sets of images or with the order of images. Obviously the answer is yes. I ran ten experiments where I did a position permutation for each of the ten and then ran ten queries on trying to find clowns in the set.

Well, cool, I suppose. It isn’t getting false positives as much with the larger set. I would mostly know because I got a bunch when I ran 10 posters (I do wonder if sometimes the model is giving back the most likely poster with a clown, so when the set is smaller you get a lot of random posters flagged). Experiment 10 does give me pause. In that case the permutation happened to put both clown posters in the back third. I sure do hope it isn’t just reading N images and giving up in those cases … Well, that is something more to test.

This actually genuinely might be the Worst Twist (How?) in the history of BMT with the illogical reveal that the Fast Food Killer is Stanley Tucci because he is some eco-terrorist who for whatever reason doesn’t want anyone to know that the murders are due to ecological reasons. It makes no sense. This movie is actually just Bad, it is very boring compared to the high lunacy of Bio-Dome and the actual genuine goodness of Son-in-law.

What could we learn about juries and jury duty? Find out in the quiz. Cheerios,

The Sklogs

Kraven the Hunter Recap

Jamie

It was Morbin’ Time with Morbius. We dined out at Madame Web’s. If you thought for one second we weren’t going to go cuckoo for some Kraven bits just because it was out in theaters for the end of year cycle then oh ho ho! You must not have been paying attention to the dining experience at Madame Web’s. Now… this had a lot to live up to. Last we saw of this “franchise” (Franchise Man Note: This is obviously the Spider-man Villain franchise, so Jamie is correct here, however it also unfortunately includes the much more successful Venom films… which kind of spoils the fun of these one-off disasters… that’s just a Franchise Fact) Madame Web was donning the dopest sunglasses in the universe so… may as well pack it in and not even try, right? Pretty much.

To recap, Kaven is a hunter. He totally hunts people. Bad people, I guess. We see him hunt a dude and it’s cool and then we flash back to when he was a kid and that is decidedly less cool. Kraven’s dad is also a hunter. He also kind of sucks and everyone hates him. When his mother dies, he and his half-brother Dmitri are taken back to live with their father and become total baddies. On a hunting trip where there is a legendary lion that their dad is just jonesing to kill, Kraven is attacked by the lion and nearly killed. A young girl, Calypso, heals him with a magical serum which turns him into… Kraven the Hunter. Afterwards, his father is like “I totally killed that lion,” and that makes Kraven sad and he leaves Dmitri behind to go live in the wilderness. Flash forward and he’s still living in the wilderness. He’s a protector of nature and only ventures to London to see Dmitri and his father on occasion. During Dmitri’s latest birthday, Dmitri is kidnapped when people come to try to capture Kraven. Their father refuses to pay the ransom sent by the Rhino, the man behind the kidnapping who wants to overthrow the family’s criminal enterprise. It’s time to hunt. He’s tricked into heading to a secret hideout where the Rhino ambushes him, but Kraven escapes. The Rhino then sets the Foreigner on Kraven and hunts him to his sanctuary. During this whole thing Calypso is again helping Kraven… as a lawyer… like just a regular person now pretty much. Ultimately tracking down the ultimate hunter backfires as all the baddies are hunted and killed. He then kills his dad because he was in on it and is dismayed to find Dimitri is now a villain. Nooooooooo. THE END. (Or is it (you bet it is)).

There was a moment about 30 minutes into the longest intro that any film has ever had ever where I thought perhaps they had stumbled into another disasterpiece. I didn’t understand why they were doing this to us… and that felt right. However, after that it all just kind of fell apart. Definitely more Morbius than Madame Web. A couple cool set pieces and a bad guy that is at least serviceable can’t really save a rough script that at times completely lacked logic and an ending that was gobbledegook (see, once again: Morbius). It does feel like these films lacked a coherence that is startling. These are supposed to be the supervillains that populate the Sinister Six and yet… they are pretty much good guys? Why? It would have been a lot more refreshing if Kraven at least played the part. Make him a super hunter who is not afraid to go after the more dangerous game: poachers. He’s recruited to kill a supervillain and agrees because he’s intrigued, not because he thinks it’s right. Not that simple, I guess. Instead this was easily the blandest of the films and definitely felt like the end of the line.

Hot Take Clam Bake! I don’t think that Calypso serum did anything. This was all a Dumbo’s feather scenario and Kraven was Kraven the Hunter the whole time. He just had to believe in himself. His dad was making him feel like he wasn’t the Hunter, but just a hunter, and what you feel is what you are (you know?). But when he felt that serum touch his lips and this future lawyer said it was magic he totally was like “Yeah, yeah I do feel a little magic, now that you mention it.” All in all, what I’m trying to say is that he was never Kraven the Hunter anyway. He was just Kraven the Man. Thank you. Hot Take Temperature: Rhino.

Patrick?

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! *Gif of me in a totally rad fur vest just loungin’ on a throne like “what? You don’t know all about Patrick The Hunter?”* Let’s go!

The Good? Some of the performances are fun. I do like the character / villain of The Foreigner, that is a pretty weird performance, but at least interesting in the grand non-Spiderman film villains. I think that’s it.

The Bad? The film is very scattershot, often looks like crap, and doesn’t have a particularly good motivation for existing. We are asked, essentially, to care about late-stage Russell Crowe being a bad dad drug dad and keeping his drug empire from someone who quite literally transforms into a Rhinoceros? It is just something I don’t really care about. The DeBois character also feels completely superfluous, she doesn’t even really get a costume. The whole thing seems like them trying to put in the absolute bare minimum amount of work just to finish off this Sony contract once and for all.

The BMT? I think so. Madame Web is glorious. This isn’t quite that, but I still think there are bits there where you are like “oh like he’s literally a rhinoceros huh?” that does just enough for me to keep me going. It is really borderline, but I have a tough time thinking it is merely a bad movie. There is some there there, you know it when you see it.

The final one of the year (phew). So Last week I submitted the top 150 posters from 1990 in an attempt to find posters with clowns. This time? I’m doing the same thing, but splitting it up into groups of 10. My hypothesis would have been that this would result in more false positives since the model won’t lose context / get overwhelmed by stronger clownish posters.

And indeed that is basically what happened. Index (1,8) is Child’s Play 2 and (7,1) is Quick Change. But then it also thinks Drop Dead Fred (10,8) has a clown (it doesn’t, although Fred does appear quite clownish), and Child’s Play 3 (15,7) which I assume is just because Chucky looks crazy in that one. The other false positives are just busy posters as usual. I don’t know, it feels like it did pretty well with 100+ posters, but at the same time am I confident it isn’t missing false negatives? I’m not sure. Do I care? … I’m not sure about that either. Stay tuned in the new year.

Setting as a Character (Where?) for far eastern Russia, which is definitely a place I don’t remember seeing many films set before. Obviously, all of these things need a MacGuffin (Why?), in this case it is all about Nikolai Kravinoff’s drug empire (obviously). And a great Worst Twist (How?) for the ultimate reveal that Kraven’s brother has been transformed into Chameleon, which is a villain we’ll never ever see again I assume. This film isn’t as good as Madame Web, but I still think there is enough there to be BMT worthy in the end.

Read all about hunting I guess in the Quiz. Cheerios,

The Sklogs