Recap – Page 52 – Bad Movie Twins

The Day the Earth Stood Still (2008) Recap

Jamie

In an alternate world I’d be sitting here telling you that The Day the Earth Stood Still was actually not that bad. Keanu was a great Klaatu (that sounds made up), the CGI was really solid (so solid that it kinda got me excited for Dr. Strange being made by the same director), and the plethora of good television actors was fun. But it’s not an alternate world. Since Patrick and I are ardent consumers of all things bad movie related, I obviously watched the original film and read the original short story on which it’s based. Guess what both those had? Really good twist endings and meditations on the nature of the human race. What did this one have? A terrible ending and a meaningless, meandering plot. That’s the thing. When I groan audibly during the ending of a film it kinda ruins its chances of being Not that Bad.™ And when the original film is a stark christian allegory on the decline of morality in the atomic age, and the new one has an entire scene set in a McDonald’s in central NJ… well.

You know what I was loving in this film though?! The fabulous Settings 101 display that The Day the Earth Stood Still put on. They reset the original film in New Jersey/New York as Klaatu wants to meet with the world leaders at the UN. That’s satisfying enough for a nice easy C grade in the class. A main setting of the film is talked about by the characters. But wait, The Day the Earth Stood Still wasn’t done yet. We are then told via insert titles (meta-acknowledgment!) where almost every scene of action occurs in NY/NJ! And I’m serious, like every scene is like “OUTSIDE NEWARK, NJ.” It happens like ten times. Amazing work. You’re in B range. TDtESS must be done now? Not a chance. At one point Klaatu has to be picked up by Connelly at Newark fucking Penn Station. They are going out of their way to include settings in the plot! Straight up A- all over the place. They can’t do any better than this, right? Wrong. In the climax of the film, as nanobots are eating their way through the New Jersey (as they should), the film goes out of its way to show the nanobots devour MetLife stadium in The Meadowlands (as they should). A major New Jersey landmark getting destroyed in the climax! That’s an A folks! Only way it can get to A+ is if they titled it The Day New Jersey Stood Still… but alas. Can’t win them all (unless you’re London Has Fallen).

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! The Day the Earth Stood Still? More like the Hour my Brain Stood Still! Booooooooooooooooooooooooom. We watched a remake of some classic Sci Fi, so what is the worst that could possibly happen? … let’s get into it.

The Good – If this wasn’t a remake I would have said the story was at least somewhat interesting. The CGI was pretty incredible for the time. The cast for the most part handles their parts pretty well.
The Bad – Not surprisingly Jaden was a pretty bad part, but mostly because his character was totally unlikeable. But mainly the black mark upon this movie was that it was adapted from a classic. Without the previous movie as a touchstone this is like Day After Tomorrow, a movie whose fault lies in its heavy handedness. Instead it felt a bit closer to the new Red Dawn, just not a good idea in the face of inevitable comparison to a classic. Makes me want to watch the new Point Break?
The BMT – I guess. I’m honestly a tad bit surprised at how many votes this movie got, and 40 I guess feel a bit too high. I would say more like 30 ish at best. Might even go a little lower, below average even. The effects were alright, and you really have to stretch to find things that make you go “I’ve got to show this to somebody!”.

This movie is also a fine addition to the how-much-product-placement-can-you-sell-before-it-is-a-parody-of-itself pantheon. The original (table sized) Windows Surface, some watch, and an LG phone were pretty noticeable. But holy shit, right in the middle of the movie they might as well have had Keanu shout “I’m feeling hungry, but a kind of hunger that sticks, where do you Earth people go for high quality sustenance?” and Jaden and Connelly look at each other and say “Sound like someone needs a Mac-ers run!”. What followed was essentially the Mac and Me McDonald’s Dance Sequence:

And then at the end Keanu could have walked towards his space ship, turned around to look at Jaden, given a Terminator 2 thumbs up and said “Da-da-da-da-da … I’m lovin’ it!”. I’m only being mostly hyperbolic. The irony of McDonalds, one of the largest corporations and producers of garbage in the world, being on prominent display in an unabashedly pro-environment film is also hilarious (although I’m thinking that might have been the point, McDonalds trying to show they are working with environmentalists across the board at the time). Anyways, this was, bar none, the highlight of what was otherwise a nuisance of a reboot, I do love me some in your face marketing.

The assessment of product placement is a long standing tradition with us, so it needs a name. Product Sklog-ment brought to you by McDonald’s. Da-da-da-da-da, we’re lovin’ it! It’s got a good ring to it.

Cheerios,

Sklogs

Cheaper by the Dozen 2 Recap

Jamie

Cheaper by the Dozen 2 is not the first time we’ve watched two films in a series separately for BMT, but it does kind of fly in the face of some of the measures that Patrick and I have taken in constructing BMT. We have slowly built up to consuming all relevant media when watching a film. So for Endless Love I read the book, watched the original film, and watched the 2011 film. For Paul Blart we watched the original as a bonus film when tackling Paul Blart 2. So this is a bit of a relic of yore. Now we probably would have watched both films at the same time (and read the book and watched the original film and…) but instead we are just watching this film a year later trying to remember what we thought of the first one. As I remember it I found the first to be a thoroughly depressing adaptation of a very good book with OK acting. Unsurprisingly the second film is a not quite as depressing but infinitely shoddier version of the first film. Lower the stakes and up the physical comedy and voila. Not particularly satisfying.

Patrick and I have been workshopping the Settings 101 class. Really trying to hammer out the details on what make a good setting for a film. For Cheaper by the Dozen 2 we get a surprisingly solid settings film. Now, it’s not as good as the first film. In the first film the crux of the plot is the family moving from Midland, Indiana to Evanston, Illinois to coach at the imaginary Illinois Polytechnic University. Look at those settings! It screams ‘Illinois!’ at the audience. That’s probably an A- (we’re tough graders). In the second film the family is still living in Illinois and decides that they have to go to the lake house in Wisconsin. While kudos to them for going all in on a specific setting again, it wasn’t as clear this time exactly where they were going. In fact I kind of missed it until later in the film when the oldest son and Jaime King talked about moving to Wisconsin to pursue their dreams. So I kinda have to give it a C+. It would have gotten into the B or B+ range if they had been clearer. Maybe passing a “Welcome to Wisconsin” sign when driving to the lake or just printing it on the screen. I call that a meta-acknowledgement. Where the film itself nods to the audience and says “in case you didn’t know where we were.”

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! Cheaper by the Dozen Two?! More like Sequel Repercussions, Boo! (does that make sense? It felt good writing it). We went full on BMTquel, a very rare double BMT delight (Grown Ups and Growns Ups 2 come to mind for sure, not sure about other sequels). Let’s get into it!

The Good – I do think the “family comedy” genre is necessary for the world. I for one enjoyed things like The Great Outdoors growing up even though that movie is objectively terrible in retrospect, but I was like eight, why worry about movies like this? The tom-boy girl was fantastic in this film as well. Maybe the best kid actor in BMT history.
The Bad – It is a movie that you can kind of see the seams of its movie costume in. It doesn’t feel like a real movie. It is like a producer was like “What? The stupid remake of Cheaper by the Dozen made money, shit … I guess make another one. I have this script for The Great Outdoors 2 which makes no sense and stars the ghost of John Candy, can you rewrite this?” The movie legit stars 25 different people and is excruciating for 95% of the runtime. I really didn’t enjoy this film for a variety of reasons, but mainly because it just felt like a throwaway.
The BMT – Yes! I’m actually surprised it isn’t higher than the 40 something that it was. It is a kids movie, but again, it is kind of the worst the genre has to offer in a way. I should have put Steve Martin and Bonnie Hunt in the good category to a degree, they clearly ad-libbed all of their lines, and they are solid as rocks, but still, the movie is super weak and I didn’t like it at all.

Boom. Audio Sklog-entary review. So this one was again just the director. This guy was pretty funny and had some good anecdotes … but was also kind of hilariously down on the movie. Everything seemed rushed, he was wrangling 20 kids at all times, and in addition to that he had to deal with the fact that Tom Welling, Hilary Duff and the twin boys (who were on Desperate Housewives at the time) were almost literally not on set all together at any given time. The guy did admirably (and was also weirdly obsessed with the noises his stomach was making throughout), but still not as good as if there was a second person to get the stories out of him. B. One of the better single person commentaries I’ve listened to thus far.

BTW I want to Reboot Cheaper by the Dozen haaaaard. Just to make Steve Martin a competent football coach / father. Example: Tom Welling is meandering around like a weirdo in both films at this point. Why not make him become the assistant coach? Why not show Steve Martin do something with his family? He talked about kids being “hardwired”, but seriously, his son liked football, he didn’t hate it, it makes no sense that all of a sudden he’s opening a garage in rural Wisconsin. One of the more frustrating storyline issues with both movies in this series. I’ll do the remake for a dime. No joke.

Cheerios,

The Sklogs

Material Girls Recap

Jamie

I’ll let Patrick sum up Material Girls. The film is small enough that probably just one perspective is needed. I’ll keep my notes limited to a comparison between this film and Sense and Sensibility (on which it is “based”).

So technically Material Girls is based on Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen (so Book Review obvs). I did indeed read the book to make sure I got the full Material Girls experience. I can tell you… not necessary. If you squint you can map the characters between the book and the film (Elinor is Hilary Duff, Marianne is Haylie Duff, Edward is Tommy, Willoughby is Rick, and Colonel Brandon is Henry). Besides that there is literally no resemblance. I amused myself while watching the film by imagining what Sense and Sensibility would be like if its plot actually did resemble the plot of Material Girls. And it would go… a little something… like this: Elinor and Marianne Dashwood are heirs to their father’s corset empire. Unfortunately upon his passing they learn that his corsets are dangerous and has led to the permanent deformation of its wearers. It can’t be! In order to clear their names, get their beaus and receive the inheritance they rightfully deserve, they must infiltrate the dances of their rivals to uncover the dastardly conspiracy to defame them. Along the way they learn that money isn’t everything and love can’t be bought. Boom. That would be the worst book. This reminds me of an idea I had (that would also be the worst) which is writing books-films-are-based-on… not books-based-on-films. Rather than just adapting the film directly into a book, you take the film and reimagine it as a book that it could have been based on. Get it? There’s a subtle difference… nevermind, it’s not important.

Patrick

‘Ello everyone? Material Girls, more like Makes Me Hurl! (oof, my wife had to help with that one). So you know how some movies feel like they aren’t real movies? No? Well this one was barely a movie. But I know the question on everyone’s mind: was it dog poo in my face? You’ll have to wait and see, let’s get into it:

The Good – I did not think Haylie Duff was substantially worse as an actress compared to the actors surrounding her, the story was surprisingly interesting, and what should have been a really terrible Erin Brockovich reference ended up being the best part of the movie.
The Bad – Data from Star Trek was not so good. Lukas Haas was straight dog poo in my face, more on that later. This is barely a movie, and so clearly involved (1) a studio trying to salvage a Olsen Twins movie gone wrong, and (2) was only released because someone in production (probably the director) had connections in the industry and got distribution.
The BMT – Yes! But I would put it at 30-40 just because of the size of the film. It was not straight up dog poo in my face because in its small way it was charming. I would never watch this film again exclusively because Haylie Duff and Lukas Haas have the single most excruciating romance in the history of cinema.

Alrighty. Quick hot take on the commentary, a mini Audio Sklog-entary, this was exclusively the director and confirmed for me that a single person commentary is necessarily inferior to multiple people. Also, while I know the director is well meaning, it comes across as kind of a shoddily put together film. The entire commentary is just about how they were trying to explain the story from A to Z, nothing really super interesting here beyond the fact that apparently the director herself convinced a very tentative Lukas Haas to act like a weirdo in a comedic role and it came out horribly, no joke. D+. I can imagine less interesting commentaries, but they’d be trainwrecks.

It looks like Jamie is doing a little Sense and Sensibility review, so I might as well rock a Settings 101. Am I allowed to? I’m not sure, but this movie was very much set in LA, complete with “hilarious” LA-has-terrible-public-transportation jokes. I think I give it a C+. It’s story doesn’t require the film to be set in LA necessarily, but they use the setting to solid effect in the end (the aforementioned bus gag, the boyfriend is a star on an OC-like show, a couple gift bag gags). Maybe Jamie can chime in on the scale and some examples of what is an A – D setting. Obviously an F setting is one which just doesn’t have a setting, like Trespass starring Nic Cage.

The Fog Recap

Jamie

I guess I’ll start the recap for The Fog by discussing the John Carpenter original a bit. It’s pretty classic Carpenter: great music, good practical effects, and a simple way of telling a story without getting bogged down. Was it scary? Not really. But The Thing wasn’t really all that scary and it’s still the best. I really had only one complaint about the whole thing. It’s that we didn’t really know any of the characters, even by the end of the film. Very little character development to the point where they were hard to distinguish. Case in point, in the A.V. Club’s review of 2005’s The Fog they mixed up the characters that Adrienne Barbeau and Jamie Lee Curtis played. And I don’t blame them. It was hard to figure out their distinguishing features. Besides that it was an alright horror film of the era.

Now how does this all compare to the 2005 film? Well you can think of the 2005 film as pretty much the same as the original except take everything good and turn it into a pile of garbage and take everything bad and turn it into more of a pile of garbage. What I’m trying to say is that the film is a pile of garbage. I experienced Strange Wilderness level despair at having to sit through it. It’s not even a Silent Hill: Revelations or Legend of Hercules where they are so ridiculously off the charts horrible that I couldn’t stop laughing. This was just an assault on my senses. On top of all this it was no doubt the least scary horror film I’ve ever seen and had a couple of the worst horror deaths ever put to film. Was this 70 level BMT? I certainly think so. I honestly just don’t know how enough people watched it to garner a 70.

This film doesn’t deserve a game. Instead I’ll tell you a tale. It was a comedy of errors trying to get Rupert Wainwright’s commentary for this film as it’s only included on the (seemingly rare) unrated DVD release. Netflix claimed to have the unrated DVD for rental, but I saw through their lies and ordered the 1980 original (settling for streaming the remake on Netflix proper). Lo and behold they still mistakenly sent me the 2005 version and my hunch was confirmed when it did not have the commentary on the disc (so it was useless garbage like the film it contained). I then had the brilliant idea to order the disc through my local library system. The great thing about the system is that the details of each disc (including special features) are included when making an order from an outside library. I found a copy of the unrated DVD with the commentary in the system and was on my way to Rupert Wainwright-town. Or was I? When it arrived it was still just the regular DVD without the commentary! Damn public library system. Who would have thought that the wonderful librarians at the Mabel Public Library (Mabel, MN, population: 780) couldn’t figure out my nuanced request for a particular version of 2005’s The Fog? Obviously I want to listen to the commentary! Just like any red-blooded American! Whatever. In the future I’ll have to embarrassingly note the version I would like and make sure the librarians work their arthritis-plagued hands to the bone providing me with exactly the bad movie viewing experience I need at the expense of the taxpayers of MN. Harumph.

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! The Fog? More like … y’know what, surprise NY Post headline! There would be a picture of Maggie Grace in a stupid hat with the headline: Lost in the Fog! Anyways, I’m glad Jamie his the big message because I’ve got more important things to attend to. But quick hits, let’s go!:

The Good – Um … it was a nice relaxing film. No stress. They didn’t go the cheap route and kill the black guy first, or have him say “Aw Hell Naw!” or “That’s what I’m talking about!”. Good for them (I was seriously considering just leaving this blank, but resolutions and silver linings and all).
The Bad – This is literally all that is terrible about late 90s / early 00s horror. It is not scary. All the actors are skewed weirdly young and are awful. The story is convoluted, shock horror abounds, terrible kills, terrible CGI, an unnecessary remake. It wasn’t even so ridiculous you laugh at it, you stare at it in confusion and disgust. Blah.
The BMT – 70? Weirdly I say yes, even though confusion still exists about how it ever could accrue the amount of necessary votes. It is quite confusing, it keeps me up late into the night. But the BMeTric I think gets it right, this might be the worst horror film ever made.

Usually here I would play some game, but this upcoming movie has thrown us a little curveball. So we need a little BMT:CSI:SVU (We’re the Special Victims). A long time ago I discussed the BMysTery of the IMDb inflection point (remember? No? Whatever). After solving that I, naturally, took a triumphant seven month long hiatus. But this graph, the ratings / vote graphic for Material Girls shocked me!:

MaterialGirls_RV

Look at that rating trajectory, it climbs over two points! I you were like me (a literal crazy person) you’d know this is absurd. After reading this fivethirtyeight blog entry I could only conclude one thing: Material Girls was tragically brigaded by awful people in its early days and is, in fact, a hidden diamond in the rough for us to enjoy (hooray!). But something I remember from long ago was bothering me … what if it is just regression to the mean. What if whenever I looked at a ratings plot and thought to myself “Huh, I wonder why the rating of The Fog is rising over time? People are dummies” is was in fact me who was the dummy?

So here is the crux of the story: it is totally plausible that this entire time, whenever I expressed mock horror at the rating trajectories rising through time for bad movies, I was a dummy and pretty much exclusively looking at regression to the mean. No joke, just look at this plot!:

RatingsPlot

Basically with such a steep and definitive negative correlation between where a movie’s rating started and how it changes pretty much all of the movement I’ve seen in the ratings of bad movies was due to regression to the mean. Take Material Girls as an example (the blue square). It is a movie that climbed so thoroughly out of the gutter it genuinely shocked me, and yet, it is actually pretty close to what you’d expect from a movie of its initial caliber (it climbs not much higher, although I do think there was some element of trolling on the Material Girls rating when it first came out).

Unfortunately with how I got this OMDb data, as impressive as it was, it isn’t really enough to use this idea for much beyond guessing at what a movies rating might have been when it was first released. But it has inspired me in a way that hopefully will benefit BMT real soon (but that is for a later date). Read the full write up here. Cheerios and back to you Jamie.

The Avengers Recap

Jamie

At certain points while watching The Avengers I started getting that special, flighty feeling in the pit of my stomach. The feeling I got when I first laid eyes on Chris Klein dropping lines from Birches. The feeling I got when Big Momma was delivering a baby/sermon. The feeling I got when a monster-alien stood atop the mountains of Mars screaming “Bananananananas!” Namely, it was the feeling that we were on the cusp of something special (in its own special BMT way). Unfortunately, we never quite got over the hump. Each time we seemed on the verge of crossing into Hall of Fame territory, the film reeled itself back into boring or downright confusing territory. It goes back to something I’ve said before about bad movies. To make a truly bad movie you need that special sauce: freedom. You need to have such buy-in from the studio that they let you do what you want without oversight. You need to be delusional and everyone around you needs to be too afraid to let you know that it’s all a disaster (or just not care cause it’ll probably make money anyway). The Avengers didn’t have that. The studio was horrified when they tested it and hacked the movie to pieces. That makes for fun in its own right, (I dare two people to watch this film and come out with the same plot synopsis) but it also means that it’s very difficult to reach the next level of craziness that we strive for at BMTHQ. Not for lack of trying though. There was a full 10 minute sequence where Sean Connery prepares to date rape Uma Thurmon that was seriously messed up (and fortunately averted at the last moment). I’ll end on that sour note.

No commentary this week as I’m sure the studio didn’t want anyone involved to speak on record about what happened. I’m also not going to talk about the adaptation aspect of the film as it was based on a television show and there was just no way to absorb enough material to make an adequate judgement (although I did watch pieces of several episodes). Instead I’ll just do a quick game I just made up. It’s a BMIT class I teach called Settings 101 and it’s where I try to measure how well the film took advantage of the setting it chose. The Avengers almost reached peak Settings level. It was explicitly set in London (and not some vague location in England), it was cued by maps, signs and addresses in the film, it was mentioned by characters, and a major landmark of the setting plays a role in the film (Big Ben is destroyed by a lightning bolt). This is basically A- material right here as far as Settings go. How could it have gotten to A+? Why by mentioning the setting in the title, of course. Next up on the syllabus, The Making of an A+: London has Fallen.

Patrick

‘Ello everyone. The Avengers? More like My Tormentor, amirite? The Avengers got street cred coming out of every which way. A film spoken about as the crown jewel of one of the worst summers in Hollywood history. Shoe in, right? BMTHOF easy right? Well…

The Good – I found the “storyline” somewhat interesting and Connery somewhat compelling. I liked trying to pick out places in London. Erg, in retrospect that is it.
The Bad – The movie is very slow moving. It is very confusing. No one besides Connery seems like they fit their characters, everyone is replaceable. There is a scene with a bunch of people dressed as teddy bears that is the second most bonkers scene in the movie! (The first being the aforementioned quite disturbing almost-rape scene). The characters live in a bizarre non-London with zero extras akin to I, Frankenstein. It doesn’t feel like a movie, it feels like a music video or something. Oh, and it has bar none the worst CGI I’ve seen since a Sound of Thund-ah.
The BMT – Well yes, but maybe not 70. This is interesting though. Usually when a street cred film doesn’t live up to expectations it is because the movie is secretly ahead of its time and kind of good (Freddy Got Fingered, Ishtar). This is the first one which I can say is objectively bad because it is hacked up, but it still just seems off. It feels like a 70, and is a 70, but yet probably wouldn’t make a bad movie film festival I organized. It is an enigma that breaks the BMeTric in a way.

I’ll close the review just by saying I was getting healthy whiffs of Wild Wild West throughout the film. I guess that isn’t surprising, those two movies came out amazingly close together, both were based on old television shows but targeted at younger audiences, and both were colossal failures and notorious black marks on the 90s movie archive. But there was a weird feeling of … cynicism? This idea of screw-the-source-material in a way. Not that I’ve seen either show to any degree, but the updating just feels wrong. At least the way both movies go about it does. This movie confuses me, I’m not joking. I think that is a trend in our recent spat of 70+ BMeTric film, general confusion about whether a movie is ahead of its time or dog poo in my face.

Quick game. Let’s go Sequel Prequel Remake and make a little sequel out of this. Connery is back as a sexy octogenarian lighting monster ready to electrify Uma’s heart once again! But can the Avengers pull double duty and also stop an evil banker, Max Moneygrubber, trying to pull off a complex multi-level Ponzi scheme? Will Connery help the light of his life to zap Moneygrubber or burn them once and for all? The Avengers: Max Attack! I just vomited in my mouth.

Cheerios,

The Sklogs

Taxi Recap

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! Taxi? More like Lacks Glee (I honestly am shocked I pulled an okay one out of that). Huh, a surprisingly high BMeTric? A genuinely interesting choice at director? Queen Latifah paired with Jimmy Fallon? I kind of knew this movie has the potential to confound … but I didn’t know quite to what degree. Let’s get into it.

The Good – There were moments that were genuinely funny. Queen Latifah was actually quite good. I appreciated the way it inverted tropes (and was rather effective at it). The director knew his limitations and managed the action comedy admirably. Everyone seemed on board and the film was far more coherent than I could have ever expected.
The Bad – And yet it is a terrible movie. Boring, not funny. The music is terrible. Fallon is no good and also too bumbling to be admired or appreciated. The entire thing ends up just kind of falling apart in slow motion. And the movie is 15 minutes too long.
The BMT – This is a 40-50 BMeTric film for sure. But I wouldn’t watch it again unless it just happened to be on television. It isn’t entertaining or unintentionally funny enough to sustain the runtime, but it does have some cred that bumps it up. Specifically Fallon and Bunchen buoy this otherwise lifeless BMT dud. The end.

I got into it. You know what time it is … Audio Sklog-entary. That’s right, we are on a roll. This one was with the director Tim Story all by his lonesome. Things I appreciated: he was very open about his own failings as a director, and very open about how rushed this production was. That side of things was incredibly interesting. But a single person just lacks the same dynamism that a duo has by being able to play off each other. Verdict: B-.

Jamie

Not since Phone Booth have we had a film so quickly become irrelevant. Now this film would be remade and called Uber (not really, they would get sued), about a ride-sharing, racecar-driving wannabe helping out a down-on-his-luck cop. Instead, since this was made when there was no such thing as Uber, we got a complete carbon copy of the French film it was based on. And I’m not exaggerating. This film was almost shot-for-shot the same film (particularly the beginning and end), to the point where the trick at the end is just replicated. Not even a neat twist. I guess they assumed the general American audience wouldn’t watch the original like me (cause I’m insane). Even the changes that were made were all surface. The mom was just a mom in the original? Let’s make her an alcoholic. German bank robbers? Make them Brazilian super model bank robbers. The bank robbers use a cleaning service to pick up the money after the heist? Make it a garbage truck. Just slight changes for the sake of changing something. Actually made watching the film a bit dull. One of the unfortunate byproducts of obsessively consuming all related materials to the movies we watch.

The way I’ve been thinking about the commentaries is trying to sum up the main idea in a single sentence or word. In this case the word was: rushed. It sounded like he had a super short casting window and even purposefully hired a music video cinematographer because he knew the shooting schedule was tight. Probably why the movie is so similar to the French original. Easier to plan and shoot a direct remake rather than make major changes.

Going back to the BMTsolutions well for my game. Taxi is certainly not based on a book (it’s based on a French film, duh. I was literally just talking about it), but if it were, it would go… a little something… like this. Queen Latifah (yes the book also stars Queen Latifah) is a NASCAR driver. She’s on the rise and feeling super sweet. Unfortunately she gets in a terrible accident that leaves her shaken and confused. Falshforward a year after her recovery and she’s now a taxi driver, obeying the laws of the street, but longing for the race track. She hangs around the local speedway on the weekends and notices something kinda odd. A car that some of the new guys have been using have fancy tires on them that prevents blowouts. Tires that are only sold in Germany. And didn’t she see those same tires in some of the bank robbery footage on the news? She runs to the police to let them know. They, of course, think nothing of it. Who is this crazy lady who thinks she can identify thieves by their tires? Leave the police work to the police. But one officer recognizes her from her racing days and doesn’t think she’s crazy at all. In fact, he’s sure that she’s the only one that can catch these bank robbers in the act. They team up to catch the crooks. Feel the adrenaline of… TAXI.

Cheerios,

The Sklogs

Cat in the Hat Recap

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! Cat in the Hat?! More like Cat that Falls Flat! (ooooooooooooooof that’s some rough stuff, but I ain’t no Dr. Seuss). Wowzers. Cat in the Hat is a legendary bad movie, it’s got street cred out the wazoo for sure. Mainly because people were already uneasy with the Ron Howard Grinch adaptation and then were met with this cat-astrophe (nailed it). It delivered. Let’s get to the BMT Breakdown!

The Good – Some of the production design is stunning. For what was demanded of them Baldwin and Fanning did a solid job. There is something ahead of its time and irreverent here. I put that in the good column despite …
The Bad – The irreverent adult humor has absolutely no place in a Dr. Seuss adaptation. Myers delivered on being the most terrifying thing I’ve ever seen, straight horror movie shit. The storyline makes no sense in the context of even the most basic telling of the children’s book. Myers catchphrase (Oh yeeeeeeeah! He says it like 40 times) and the way he walks is …. It profoundly upsets me.
The BMT – This is certainly a rare one. This has somewhere close to an 80 on the BMeTric (one of the worst movies according to that ever made). And … yes, that is appropriate. If someone asked me “I need a movie for a bad movie night, I’ve seen most things though, what you got?” I would say Cat in the Hat would blow a lot of people’s minds even though it is a child’s movie.

Yet another Audio Sklog-entary. This time with director Bo Welch and Alex Baldwin. I love commentaries with more than one person because there is some banter and prompting and overall a lot more interesting anecdotes. Without Alec this would have been a trainwreck with just Bo. But Alec (1) Keeps on referring to Kelly Preston as “my girl” and whispering creepily about her outfit every time she is on screen. (2) Does a really solid 5 minute impression of a hollywood producer trying to invite him to a party in Aspen which made me laugh more than the actual movie did. (3) Has a strange thread throughout the commentary about how pressed he was for time because he was always running around trying to see his daughter. Interesting because this was right at the time in 2003 when, allegedly, Kim Basinger was intentionally preventing him from seeing his daughter and actively trying to turn her against him (culminating, a few years later, in the notorious voicemail incident). Sure you learn some stuff about the film, but this commentary is genuinely amazing just for the little time capsule it creates around Bo and Alec. Verdict: B+. although I reserve the right to increase it after listening to more of these and realizing most are probably boring.

Jamie

I’m glad Patrick commented on the commentary so I didn’t have to. Baldwin just seemed to have a ball doing it and kinda made it worth listening to.

It’s going to be hard to express my feelings about The Cat in the Hat. Mostly because it’s hard to interpret and convey feelings when your brain has melted. I swear that there is a part of me that believes that if this were any other movie (perhaps one starring Tom Green), I would be sitting here talking about how, ‘you won’t believe it, but this film is NOT THAT BAD and AHEAD OF ITS TIME.’ Except I can’t. I can’t sit here and say that the atrocity committed against the Dr. Suess material was anything but that. An atrocity. But if you took that out of it and said to yourself, ‘This is not a children’s film, this is not an adaptation of a beloved children’s story,’ you start to realize that the film is essentially a stoner film. Jokes on jokes on non sequiturs on jokes. A mile a minute, looking snazzy, with a ridiculous monster-cat Mike Myers literally bouncing off the walls. It’s Adventure Time before that existed. It’s Rick and Morty a decade too early. It’s a spoof of the material that they were supposed to be actually adapting. If it aired on Adult Swim at 3 AM, it would fit right in (outside of the first 15 minutes or so, before Mike Myers shows up). But because it was a children’s film and because it was an adaptation of a beloved children’s story, it was horrifying in the most absurd and ridiculous way. Was it BMT, you ask? Uh, cha.

The Cat in the Hat is obviously based on a beloved children’s story, but I won’t discuss that because it is an abomination (or more like an Obamanation, emirite?). Instead I’m going to Sklogify it. Instead of being an actual adaptation of The Cat and the Hat, Patrick and I would produce a film called The Dog in the Coat. The main character is a child left alone at home by his mom on a rainy day. He is totally fine spending the day with his nose in a book, but a terrifying anthropomorphic dog appears and insists on taking him on an interstate crime spree. The boy spends the day in a state of heightened anxiety as he gets The Dog in the Coat (aided and abetted by his unsettling crony Dr. Whatzit, played by Danny DeVito) out of the increasingly dangerous and irresponsible jams. At the end of the day The Dog in the Coat reveals that since he “learned some lessons or whatever” he will help the kid clean up the house before his mom comes home. Instead he gets drunk and falls asleep and the kid has to clean up the mess himself. This film would transition to a television show where each week The Dog in the Coat ruins the child’s life in a new and creative way. By the way, that’s pretty much what the actual Cat in the Hat film was.

Cheerios,

The Sklogs

Harlem Nights Recap

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! Harlem Nights? More like Meh, Alright! This movie is so weird, let’s get into it:

The Good – I liked the style. The music, costumes, opening credits, feel of it was genuine. It didn’t feel like a bunch of comedians wandering around in costumes looking like idiots. Very very ambitious. There are moments when vintage Eddie Murphy shines through.
The Bad – He wasn’t bad, but Pryor just sleepwalks through this. Too often profanity it used as a stand in for actual jokes. The storyline is just kind of boring. It is like noir films, when you hit it it is amazing, but when you miss it just seems like you’ve seen all the twists elsewhere. I was joking throughout the film that it felt like I had been watching it for years. It is so slow it does feel like it takes three hours to get through everything.
The BMT – This is a rare one: Nope! Too slow. Too boring. Not enough street cred to warrant wasting your time unless you are an Oscar / Razzie / Eddie Murphy completionist. I would say like 10. Maybe 15 on the BMeTric. But maybe I just wasn’t in the mood.

No game this week because I performed a little installment of what I call BMT:CSI:SVU (we’re the special victims!). This is generally data science work about bad movies and is what ultimately resulted in the BMeTric all those months ago. The first installment can be found here, and in general our bad movie musings (quantitative and qualitative) will be held in The Bad Movie Institute of Technology (BMIT), found here.

Jamie

I really have very little to say about Harlem Nights. I actually thought there was a lot of things done right in the film. The music was great (shout-out to Herbie Hancock), costumes were bomb, and it generally looked nice. The whole story was a mess, though. Just slow and bizarre. So bizarre, it’s hard even to say whether it was a good or bad film in the end… it just was. If you had to try to compare it to something else from that era the obvious choice would be Nothing but Trouble, the Dan Aykroyd disaster. Just like Murphy, Aykroyd was given complete creative control of every aspect of his film. In the case of Nothing but Trouble this resulted in a monumentally unpleasant film that borders on unwatchable. In the case of Harlem Nights it resulted in an ambitious period piece that looks beautiful, but misses badly with an underdeveloped storyline. Clearly one is better than the other. Congrats, Harlem Nights.

Harlem Nights is not based on a book. I would have loved to read that book though. Nice slow, character-driven burn. But I don’t care to talk about a fake book this time. Instead I’ll do a classic Prequel, Sequel, or Remake and I have to say: I think a solid remake could be great, especially if they move fully away from comedy. Cast? Michael B. Jordan in Murphy’s role, Denzel Washington in Pryor’s role, and Danny Glover in Foxx’s role. That would get me pretty excited. Give the film a darker tone, with the major heist at the end cut together with the concurrent boxing match and you got gold I tells yah. Let’s get on the horn, Patrick, and take this train to Oscar town. Of course, the only person who would actually end up getting nominated for an Oscar would be Christopher Walken playing the crooked cop because… well you know why.

Cheerios,

The Sklogs

Eragon Recap

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! Eragon? More like Era-Don’t! (I could think of something that actually rhymed, this was honestly the best I could do). Oh, I get to tell you guys the story of Eragon, what an absolute pleasure (I guess sarcasm is the main place that an email like this fails where a podcast would succeed, but such is life):

The Good – The landscapes were beautiful. The CGI was amazing (especially for the time). I’ve seen worse swords-and-sorcery movies. Jeremy Irons was solid. The story itself has something there, I can feel it. It’s just that …
The Bad – The story is so tired and the way it is told is so cookie-cutter and the overall result is just banal from top to bottom. As is usual when you get a bunch of professional actors together dress them up in ridiculous costumes and tell them to do what you want the performances were … spotty. The absolute reliance on this being a trilogy (eventual tetralogy) is kind of nuts.
The BMT – The more I think about it the more the movie kind of comes apart at the seams. It is kind of lower-mid table as far as its genre, so maybe 30/100 on our bad movie scale. Above average, but nothing special. The fact that it has a 60+ right now is a testament to just how angry fans of the book series got about it.

Audio Sklog-entary! Listened to the director commentary. The guy seems like a really solid visual effects supervisor. He was obsessed with sets and CGI and knew his stuff. But holy shit, he was just putting a movie together like it was a puzzle. Paint-by-numbers movie, what time is it? Can I talk to my CGI artists in Germany yet? Explains a bit I think. Seems like he probably just had no interest in directing a movie after the reception Eragon got.

Sequel/Prequel/Remake I’m going to go with Prequel. Tell me more about Bron the dragonrider and his adventures with the mad king Galbatorix! All real words. I’ll keep it short, because Jamie’s review is loooooong.

Jamie

Eragon fits nicely into the relatively rare subgenre of Sword and Sorcery and as BMT progresses we get a nice broader picture of these small subgenres. We can start to rank and put films into a bit of a hierarchy. I would say that we’ve watched five films that would fit the genre: Conan the Destroyer, Seventh Son, Eragon, Dungeons & Dragons, and In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale (I love writing out its full title). I’m sure you’re all gnashing your teeth and rending your clothes at the fact that I’ve left off Highlander II: The Quickening and The Legend of Hercules, but playa please. We’re talking true, blue Sword and Sorcery, not a film that takes place on Earth. I want imaginary worlds and made up bullshit, thank you very much. So where do these five films fit in our BMT Sword and Sorcery landscape? Like a beautiful Bob Ross painting, Seventh Son is the happy little mountains in our fantasy realm. Eragon is a happy little tree off to the side and Conan the Destroyer is a happy little lake from which happy deer drink happily to sate their thirst. Dungeons & Dragons is unfortunately a happy little castle that Bob accidentally painted pink and couldn’t change it cause it was too late and besides he only has thirty minutes to paint this and the viewers probably won’t notice anyway… right? As for In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale. Well that is the happy little toxic waste spill that poisons our happy little lake and ends up wiping out the entire happy little deer population in the valley. It’s poison leaks into the ground water destroying the ecosystem in the area for generations to come and causing widespread illness among the populous in our happy little valley. Oh woe are those in our Sword and Sorcery Valley. Woe indeed. Oh! And if you didn’t follow the metaphor: Seventh Son > Conan the Destroyer = Eragon > Dungeons & Dragons >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale.

Obviously for my game I’ll be doing my BMTsolution. Eragon was definitely adapted from a book and I, of course, read it. It’s a *gulp* 500 page young adult novel following the adventures of our titular hero as he discovers he’s super lame (oh, and a dragon rider too). Probably the funniest thing about the book is just how similar it is to Twilight and Fifty Shades of Grey, except replace Edward/Christian Grey with a dragon and Bella/Anastasia with Eragon (no, I didn’t make a mistake in how I classified the characters). Eragon is super headstrong. He’s always getting into trouble and subsequently getting saved by his dragon. The dragon is always like, “I can’t handle you being in danger, you have to stay with me all the time so you can be safe,” and Eragon has to fight for his independence while also being like, “I love you so much dragon. It flips my world upside down. I was an ordinary boy a second ago and now you make me feel so special with your love.” Then if you thought it couldn’t get any weirder, Eragon rides his dragon for the first time and it hurts him badly. He is then resistant to riding the dragon again, for he is afraid of how much it hurt him the first time they did it. But the dragon is reassuring and wants him to ride her because that is how they are meant to be. Then when he finally plucks up the courage he realizes that flying doesn’t have to hurt and in fact is wonderful and they can look through each other’s eyes and souls while they fly together. Oh it’s beautiful! How it feels to fly with a dragon you feel so connected to!… … … Incredibly uncomfortable stuff. The whole time I was like, “He’s basically having sex with this dragon… and it’s weird as fuck.” Besides that, the book is a blatant rip-off of Wheel of Time (not Star Wars like the reviewers claimed for some reason), and so I probably would have loved if it came out when I was in 6th grade. Who am I kidding, I didn’t mind reading it now and I’m an adult(ish).

Cheerios,

The Sklogs

Bulletproof Monk Recap

Jamie

There are a lot, lot, lot of things to talk about with Bulletproof Monk. I’ll let Patrick take control of talking about the film itself, while I talk about my true passion: settings. Remember when we watched The Tuxedo a couple weeks back and I was all like, “wait, why does this movie go out of its way to specifically not be set in NYC?” I even created a whole new game, BMysTeries, asking the question of why films occasionally are not set anywhere in particular. Who would have thought that just weeks later, Bulletproof Monk would also seemingly go out of its way to not be set in NYC? And who would have thought that it would provide information that (partially) solves the mystery? Here’s what I learned. Both were filmed in Toronto in 2001 (in fact several locations in the films were filmed in the same buildings). In the writers’ commentary for Bulletproof Monk (which Patrick and I try to listen to now) they mentioned how the film was originally set in NYC, but they decided to scrub out all the references to New York. Why? September 11th! Of course! Basically it was deemed unnecessarily dicey to set a film in NYC, especially one where there may be a shootout or threat of an attack. So in post they CGI’d all the NYC references out. So those “Great State” license plates? More than likely CGI, used to replace the NYC plates with the generic plates that are typically used in films without a setting. So the specific Tuxedo BMysTery was solved! And not only that, solved by our crazy decision to start listening to DVD commentaries while we run. Already paying dividends.

While Bulletproof Monk was not based on a book, it was based on a three-part graphic novel series! And guess who used the fantastic public library system in his local community to obtain said graphic novel series? That’s right, this guy. The series was pretty good. Nice mix of action and Far East philosophy. Really took that part seriously. Reminded me a little of Wanted though. Like I hated the characters. They kinda sucked. But otherwise a good story. So how was the adaptation?… well “adaptation” may be a strong word. The writers and producers were pretty open about just wanting to use the title. It started out with just the words “Bulletproof Monk.” Chow-yun Fat liked that idea and wanted to play that character, so they bought the rights and made a film where he was a character. Everything you see in the film is only loosely based on anything in the comic. Which in some ways is a good thing, since the comic ends after the third issue and doesn’t actually finish the story. The creator just stopped making them for reasons that we can only speculate on. Probably the most troubling thing is that the entire cast of the graphic novel is Asian. The film? Not so much. Kar and Jade are both whitewashed. This would have been huge news if this happened today (see: Gods of Egypt) and may have even stopped production for recasting, but at the time no one thought twice about it. The final note, generally when Patrick and I are looking to see if a film is based on other material we look to writers credits on IMDb. Oddly, the writers of Bulletproof Monk did not get credits on the film. In fact, only the creator of the comic got credit as a producer. I tried to figure out why this is and it would seem the creator is just kind of an asshole. It seemed like he may have created the comic in order to sell it to Hollywood, because once he accomplished that feat he closed up shop, never continued the series (which was written as more of a prequel to a larger story), and became a talent agent in Hollywood. He claimed he couldn’t get credit for everyone because they would have pulled the adaptation, but everyone involved in the comic seems to think that’s bullshit and he just kind of threw everyone under the bus. Fantastic.

Told you there was a lot to talk about.

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! Bulletproof Monk? More like Man This Goof Stunk! Watch out everyone, we tried something new, but more on that later, let’s get into it:

The Good – Chow Yun-Fat and Seann William Scott were pretty solid, funny and clearly into the project. Uh ….. Um …. I laughed during the movie.
The Bad – Ooof. The longer I think about it the more it seems like a surreal dream. The movie is a complete mess, hacked together into a loose storyline that really doesn’t make sense. The fight scenes were bad. The Nazi centric storyline was bonkers. And sorry, but Jamie King was simply awful. The movie is very dark and grimy as well, but I think that was a comic book thing.
The BMT – Again, the more I think on it the more I think this is a solid 50 in BMeTric terms. But the first two thirds are so boring I tend towards a 40. I’ll have to watch it again obviously.

This movie was really rather crazy. Hacked to shit is putting it kindly. And that new thing I mentioned? I listened to the commentary from the writers! (My life! This is my life! What hath our mere human minds created!?) Here is a quick takeaway. I loved listening to it, it was basically them telling stories about production for two hours. It actually operates perfectly as a podcast. And the writers … yeah, they sounded kind of like sellouts. The entire time they were talking about how everything changed due to producer or director pressure and seemed quite cheery about it all. Just like “Oh yeah, the director told us he wanted someone to die, so we said ‘bye Mako’”. They killed off a top ten billed character because the director felt like the Nazis had to kill someone at some point … the scene doesn’t even make sense! Whatever. Really fun. I look forward to Audio Sklog-entaries becoming a new thing in my life.

Quick game I’ll call WTF Did I Just Hear … That Can’t Be Right. Here I’ll highlight a line from the movie that just boggles the mind. This exchange was between Seann William Scott (SWS) and Jaime King (JK):

SWS: “Coming with me takes some gut. Guts and insanity. An interesting mix.”

JK: “Not making it out alive. That would really suck. Under the circumstances.”

SWS: “Yeah, definitely.”

Seriously …. What did I just hear?

Cheerios,

The Sklogs