Category: Uncategorized

I Know Who Killed Me Preview

A small note prior to this post: Once again we take a look back at the movies that we watched over five years ago and choose a Hall of Fame class, five movies that we thought embodied BMT in some way. Perhaps they were particularly bad, or an example of a specific bad movie trope, whatever, something made them stand out as special in our minds. Since we didn’t do email previews back in 2011/2012 we also decided to provide a preview for the movie as well. This is the final preview in a series of five leading up to our yearly awards the Smaddies Baddies. A recap (Hall of Fame speech really) will follow immediate afterwards to explain why the movie was chosen, things we loved about the movie, and things we discovered upon second viewing. Enjoy!

I Know Who Killed Me (2007) – BMeTric: 81.5

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(Something happened at the start of ‘08ish. The number of votes just stalls for what appears to be several months. At the same time the rating all of a sudden jumps up and then jumps back down once another archived page is sampled. My guess? Someone was gaming the system trying to get the rating for the movie to jump up, and IMDb got wise to it and locked down the page. After a bit they purged the fake votes and it returned to being one of the worst films of all time. The End.)

Leonard Maltin – BOMB –  Hopeless thriller in which a young woman is kidnapped and terrorized by a serial killer. When she wakes up in a hospital, she tries to convince everyone she is not who they think she is. Woefully inept, with an incoherent plot and incompetent cinematography.

(Directly to the point. Basically this movie isn’t just acted poorly, or written poorly, it is technically poorly made and it is crazy inept. Inept filmmaking. This is what we are here for boys.)

Trailer – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZgwl7nlP5E

(Wowzer. That trailer looks terrible. The story could be interesting, but the way it is presented is decidedly not interesting. It makes it look unintentionally funny. Almost like 88 minutes actually. Interesting concept but obviously not well made or cared for.)

Directors – Chris Sivertson – (Known For: All Cheerleaders Die; The Lost; BMT: I Know Who Killed Me; Razzie Notes: Won for Worst Director for I Know Who Killed Me in 2008; Notes: There is surprisingly little information about this guy. He broke onto the scene doing small horror films, had a flurry of films including this one around 2007, and since they has done relatively minor releases.)

Writers – Jeff Hammond (written by) (as Jeffrey Hammond) – (BMT: I Know Who Killed Me; Razzie Notes: Won for Worst Screenplay for I Know Who Killed Me in 2008; Notes: Now this guy … yeah there is nothing about this guy. Literally nothing. I did stumble onto a few weird script review sites … but couldn’t find anything about him. The only article on Variety is the announcement for this film. WHO ARE YOU?!)

Actors – Lindsay Lohan – (Known For: Mean Girls; The Parent Trap; The Holiday; Freaky Friday; Machete; Herbie Fully Loaded; Bobby; A Prairie Home Companion; Future BMT: Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen; The Canyons; Just My Luck; InAPPropriate Comedy; Chapter 27; BMT: Scary Movie 5; I Know Who Killed Me; Georgia Rule; Razzie Notes: Won for Worst Actress, and Worst Screen Couple for I Know Who Killed Me in 2008; Nominated for Worst Actress in 2007 for Just My Luck; and in 2014 for The Canyons; Nominated for Worst Supporting Actress in 2014 for InAPPropriate Comedy, and Scary Movie 5; Nominated for Worst Screen Combo for Scary Movie 5 in 2014; and Nominated for Worst Actress of the Decade in 2010 for Herbie Fully Loaded, I Know Who Killed Me, and Just My Luck; Notes: This film was meant to catapult her from teenage star to serious actress. But it managed to be a final nail in the coffin for her career at the time. It looks like perhaps she’s making a good move starring in 8 episodes of the Rupert Grint / Nick Frost television series Sick Note. Television could be the place to stage a comeback.)

Julia Ormond – (Known For: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button; Legends of the Fall; Inland Empire; My Week with Marilyn; First Knight; Sabrina; The East; Che: Part One; Chained; Albatross; Kit Kittredge: An American Girl; Surveillance; Smilla’s Feeling for Snow; The Music Never Stopped; Nostradamus; The Prime Gig; Future BMT: Rememory; BMT: I Know Who Killed Me; Razzie Notes: Nominated for Worst Supporting Actress for I Know Who Killed Me in 2008; Notes: The was the next big thing among British actresses in the mid-90s, and has since then made a fine transition into television primarily. Has a great track record all things considered.)

Neal McDonough – (Known For: Captain America: The First Avenger; Minority Report; 1922; RED 2; Flags of Our Fathers; Star Trek: First Contact; Darkman; Ravenous; Greater; Traitor; Falcon Rising; Little Birds; Future BMT: The Hitcher; Angels in the Outfield; Walking Tall; Telling You; The Last Time; Three Wishes; BMT: I Know Who Killed Me; Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li; Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2; Fire Down Below; Timeline; 88 Minutes; The Guardian; Notes: A true BMT legend. One of the first actors I remember noticing being in an inordinate number of BMT films. People like him make me wonder about the best path to managing a career. He has been in an amazing number of terrible films, but I think he is a great actor, and he not only stars in a multitude of television series (Suits, Legends of Tomorrow, Arrow recently), but has five films coming out next year. How do you do it!?)

Budget/Gross – $12 million / Domestic: $7,498,716 (Worldwide: $9,669,758)

(A complete and utter bomb. It was known to be one of the worst films ever made when it was release, so it is no surprise no one went for it, despite the creepy promise of Lindsay Lohan being in some sort of strip club scene.)

Rotten Tomatoes – 7% (5/75): Distasteful and ludicrously plotted, I Know Who Killed Me is a career nadir for all involved — particularly Lindsay Lohan in a dual role.

(Distasteful, tawdy, vile. Some of the words used to describe this film by critics. And honestly? It rings true. It was all of those things from what I can remember.)

Poster – I Sklog Who Killed Me (B)

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(The pros: I like the color scheme. I like the symmetry. Reminds me of classic 90s thrillers. The cons: The photoshop with the faces looks like crap. The flower looks cheap. The font looks like cheap 90s thrillers and it too easily mimicked. I’m going to bump it up to a B because if I saw this from across the street and I was in the mood for a thriller this immediately gets me curious and interested in seeing the film.)

Tagline(s) – If you think you know the secret…Think twice. (F)

(Boooo. I’m going to give it a bit of a pass because the poster itself is actually tagline-less, so it is less consequential. But this is a terrible tagline even if it does hint at the stigmata twin twist. I assume that is the secret. Also all of the twists in the film are glaringly obvious, so it isn’t even good from that perspective.)

Keyword(s) – stripper; Top Ten by BMeTric: 84.2 Piranha 3DD (2012); 81.5 I Know Who Killed Me (2007); 79.8 Nutty Professor II: The Klumps (2000); 78.7 Striptease (1996); 77.7 Universal Soldier: The Return (1999); 73.2 Showgirls (1995); 71.9 Zombie Strippers (2008); 68.4 Stan Helsing (2009); 67.5 It’s Pat: The Movie (1994); 66.4 The Crow: City of Angels (1996);

(Gross! We’ve seen Striptease, and will have to do a Showgirls viewing at some point as well for the record (at least one of us has definitely seen that one). The rest are kind of throwaway, which is actually weirdly disappointing. You’d think there would be better bad movies with stripping in it.)

Notes – Lindsay Lohan’s legal issues became a problem during filming as there were some days were she would either show up late or not show up at all, it got so out of hand that Chris Sivertson was forced to use a body double and digitally replace her face with Lohan’s while filming the climax of the film for the days she was not on set. (This was I think for drugs? I don’t think this was the stealing one)

Blue objects are dominant throughout the runtime of the picture (as the color represents Aubrey’s personality). In the first 35 minutes alone we see Aubrey’s dark blue shirt, along with her blue dress, blue gloves, a blue pill, blue football uniforms, football fans wearing blue sports shirts and blue body paint, Thomas Tofel’s blue ring, a blue mouth gag, a blue laptop bag, a blue cat collar, Aubrey’s blue Lexus car, Thomas’s blue car, blue tools of torture, a blue solution poured on a hand, blue everything in an operating room, a blue hospital gown, a blue iPod, blue roses, a blue pen with blue ink, a blue photo album, blue walls in a classroom, and blue hospital walls, even some characters have blue eyes. (Yup, it is super in your face, overwhelming, and honestly amateurish)

Lindsay Lohan actually took pole-dancing lessons to prepare for her role as a stripper but because of her strict no-nudity clause in her contract she was not willing to strip nude for the film. (Good for her I say. Don’t do it for some schlock like this at least. Perhaps for something you are proud of with a purpose to it all)

This is the third time Lindsay Lohan played two characters in one film. Her first time was as Hallie Parker and Annie James in The Parent Trap (1998) where she played twins and her second time was in Freaky Friday (2003) where she played mother and daughter Anna Coleman and Tess Coleman, whose bodies were swapped after an unfortunate Chinese curse.

In the first week of production, filming was halted after Lindsay Lohan had her appendix removed, filming was delayed even longer after the incision was infected and the filmmakers were waiting for a doctor’s approval for Lohan to continue working. This occured at the same time Lohan entered rehab for the first time in January 2007. Filming finally resumed in February. (Drugs, the above not was definitely about drugs)

Held the record for the most Razzie Award “wins” by one film in a single year, with 8 awards including Worst Picture of 2007. A record that was previously held by both Battlefield Earth (2000) and Showgirls (1995) and was later broken by the Adam Sandler comedy Jack and Jill (2011) (another movie where the lead actor plays two characters), with an incredible ten awards, including Worst Picture of 2011. The film received 9 nominations and only won 8 of those awards, the only award the film lost was Worst Supporting Actress for Julia Ormond who lost the award to Eddie Murphy for his role in drag in Norbit (2007). (The Jack and Jill “victory” was a crime in my opinion. Bucky Larson was a worse film that year)

Was not screened in advance for critics.

Because of her negative reputation, Lindsay Lohan could not even walk to her trailer without the paparazzi photographing her, sometimes they would even end up in the background of some shots of the film.

The only film that received an “F” CinemaScore from audiences upon its release in 2007. (I assume that is “in 2007” specifically. Mother! this year joined that club if I recall correctly)

Lindsay Lohan’s DUI arrest in late July 2007 prevented her from doing promotion for this movie. She was scheduled to appear as a guest star on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno (1992) to promote the film. (DUI! Had to be drugs or alcohol related to involve rehab)

Scenes in the trailer that didn’t appear in the theatrical cut include Jerrod (Brian Geraghty) talking to Aubrey about her story “Dakota” and stating “Aubrey you talk about her like she’s real, it’s a stupid assignment for class” and an unidentified character talking to another character and saying “she looks just like her but it ain’t Aubrey”.

Chris Sivertson took inspiration from the works of David Lynch, Brian De Palma, and Alfred Hitchcock incorporating their use of surrealistic imagery and creative color choices for the film.

Jeff Hammond’s first (and last) film as a screenplay writer. (awwwww, but I can’t really feel that bad. You wrong I Know Who Killed Me, what did you expect?)

Chris Sivertson’s favorite works such as Vertigo (1958), Blue Velvet (1986), Dressed to Kill (1980), and Twin Peaks (1990) all served as inspiration for this film.

Film debut of YouTube celebrity Jessica Lee Rose.

Shay Aster, Leslie Cohen, Dan Walters, and Clint Johnson all played supporting characters in the film though their scenes ended up on the cutting room floor.

Oddly, while most store-exclusive bonus discs with special features are included in an envelope in the case, the bonus disc with cast and crew interviews for this film was instead included in it’s own case separate from the film. (Very odd … that was sarcastic by the way)

In Aubrey’s bedroom seen throughout the film, if looking closely behind her door, you can spot a familiar purple guitar leaning against the dresser drawer. Not only is purple a color made from combining blue and red, the two dominant colors of the film, it’s also the same guitar that appears on the cover of Lindsay Lohan’s album “Speak.”

When Dakota is about to do a Google search on Aubrey’s laptop, she finds it’s locked with a password and somehow figures out what it was. The password was actually Dakota, named after her story of the same name. Although we don’t see the password on the screen, if looking closely at the keys Dakota is typing, you can see she’s hitting the letters that spell that name. (excuuuuuuuuuuuuse me. She does not do a Google search. This movie takes place in an alternate universe in which Ask.com has won the search engine wars and is a groudbreaking technology)

According to behind the scenes interviews, during the interrogation of Daniel Fleming by detectives searching for a missing Aubrey, a mural containing several paintings and drawings can be seen right behind Daniel as he’s talking to them. This mural’s paintings actually contain several clues and hints towards the twists and turns that will happen in the film.

In her hospital room, after Dakota has been treated, she is interrogated by a psychiatrist. He starts asking Dakota questions and writes her answers down in a notepad divided in half, with various bits of info on Aubrey written in blue while Dakota’s answers are written in red.

The Flemings and Dakota are driven home from the hospital by the police to avoid the reporters, while in the backseat, Dakota’s face is lit up, alternately, in blue and red from the police car sirens. This is supposed to be a motif that plays on the idea on whether or not she is really Aubrey or Dakota. (This shit is just bonkers. Just ridiculous stuff)

The original ending revealed that the characters Aubrey and Dakota were not real and that the entire film was simply an unnamed college student’s script (also played by Lindsay Lohan). This ending was cut after test audiences found it “too predictable” (it is included on the DVD and Blu-ray extras). (Jesus Christ, you gonna Jacob’s Ladder this thing?)

The neon sign above the strip club entrance malfunctions with the arm and the leg fading in and out, a foreshadowing technique for the fact that Aubrey and Dakota have their arms and legs amputated. (Robot arm and robot leg, the best part of this crazy bad film)

Jeff Hammond said his main inspiration for writing the screenplay was to write a story that featured the concept of stigmatic twins, siblings with a psychic connection that lets them feel each other’s pain and experiences. Producer Frank Mancuso Jr. saw this script and helped get it greenlit for production because he was impressed by the original concept. (Stigmata twiiiins. Maybe the best twin film of all time)

Several moments in the film allude to the idea of doubles, or two halves. Aubrey at one point mentions that she feels like half of her soul is missing, a student in the biology class asks if cutting a worm in half will result in two more worms, and the motorist who rescues Dakota off the side of the road talks over the phone about feeling like “half a person”, all of which foreshadowes the revelation that Aubrey and Dakota are psychic twins.

Awards

Nominated for the Razzie Award for Worst Picture of the Decade

Nominated for the Razzie Award for Worst Actress of the Decade (Lindsay Lohan)

Won the Razzie Award for Worst Picture

Won the Razzie Award for Worst Actress (Lindsay Lohan, Lindsay Lohan)

Won the Razzie Award for Worst Actress (Lindsay Lohan, Lindsay Lohan)

Won the Razzie Award for Worst Screen Couple (Lindsay Lohan)

Won the Razzie Award for Worst Remake or Rip-Off

Won the Razzie Award for Worst Director (Chris Sivertson)

Won the Razzie Award for Worst Screenplay (Jeff Hammond)

Won the Razzie Award for Worst Excuse for a Horror Movie

Nominated for the Razzie Award for Worst Supporting Actress (Julia Ormond)

Hall of Fame Speech #6: In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale

Brief note before we start: last July we got together and worked out a second class to be inducted into the Smaddies Baddies BMT Hall of Fame. It has been nearly seven years since we started BMT and the films we had seen more than five years ago, in some cases, deserved a rewatch and reassessment. Over the next five weeks leading up to the fifth (seventh?) Smaddies Baddies we’ll bring you previews and Hall of Fame Speeches for the five films chosen. This is the first, for the Uwe Boll classic video game adaptation In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale. The intention is to reminisce a bit about what we remember about the film, what we think of it now, and why it deserved a special place in BMT history. Enjoy!

Hall of Fame Induction Speech for In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale

For any BMT HoF film you can usually pinpoint one aspect of the film that made it a Hall of Famer. Battlefield Earth was the Icarus-like delusion of John Travolta. Street Fighter: Legend of Chun Li is our introduction to our god and savior LudaChris Klein. Old Dogs is a plot so ridiculous that we cannot believe our eyes as we gaze upon its glory (oh… and also the Icarus-like delusion of John Travolta). For In the Name of the King it starts and ends with its cast. Statham (cool), Burt Reynolds (cooler), Matthew Lillard (coolest), Ray Liotta (hilarious scary mask face), and Leelee Sobieski (LEGEND). Read that list again. It’s incredible. Add on the fact that the film seems to be written by the 13-year-old Sklogs at the height of our LotR/Wheel of Time obsession and you’ve got gold.

As will be the case with all the BMT HoF films, it’s been five years since we watched this film. So let’s go through what I remember from that first viewing:

  • I remember this being a rare film recommended to us, rather than a pick of our own.
  • This is the only Uwe Boll film we’ve done. You would think he might have gotten a mention at the top, but we generally avoid directors/studios that purposefully wallow in the muck. When you have a Lillard/Liotta/Leelee starting rotation, though, you cannot be denied.
  • It has the single greatest ad libbed line, flubbed ad libbed response, and editing decision we’ve witnessed on film. Lillard is looking on as his minions fight and casually says, “they fight like dogs,” to the extra standing next to him. The extra seemingly panics and haltingly says, “Yes sire,” in response… and Boll kept it in. It’s like when a boom mike falls into frame in a major motion picture. No excuse for it being in the film. It’s so great that I remember the line OFF THE TOP OF MY HEAD FIVE YEARS LATER.
  • Patrick completely predicted the ending. I did not. I blame my bad movie inexperience at the time.
  • Terrible practical effects that made all the bad guys look less like LotR orcs and more like putties from Power Rangers.

I guess what I was most interested in for this rewatch was getting a better sense of the film in its entirety. I remembered that line, I remembered that cast, I remembered how the film looked, but I didn’t really remember how it felt watching the film… oh boy. I’m not sure we appreciated just how horrendously bad everything about this movie is. It’s like The Room mixed with Gods and Generals mixed with Strange Wilderness. The lines are so serious, but nothing makes sense. They are sentences made up of words spoken by actors on film, but they are embarrassing 100% of the time. On top of this the film is interminably long. It’s over 2 hours of this garbage nonsense. I stared in wonder hoping and pleading with the gods (and generals) to have the film move forward. JUST MOVE! GO FASTER! So overall I would say that I didn’t remember the film being so infuriatingly horrible. Does that make it a HoFer? Not by itself.

That would be this cast. We have everything. We have Leelee deadpanning every line like we know she can. God she’s good and this is already her third (!!!!!!!!!!!!!) BMT HoF film. That’s a 30% rate of return from our girl Leelee. And she’s not even done! She has a guaranteed first-ballot HoFer in next year’s class! Makes me think we need to look into The Glass House just to make sure we don’t have a hidden gem there. On the other side we have Lillard. He is off the chainz for almost the entirety of the film. It’s impressive, so impressive that his performance overshadows Liotta’s scary mask face and random acts of screaming.

Speaking of Lillard, we do have to discuss that line. It is just as glorious as I remember. Maybe even more so. As he sits on his horse viewing the battlefield Lillard smirks and delivers the famous, “They fight like dogs.” You distinctly see the extra look startled for a moment and pause just long enough to make it awkward before mumbling, “Yes, sire.” I used to think this was a product of Lillard ad libbing and the extra being taken off guard. On the rewatch I’m flipping that assessment. This is almost certainly a written line, after which Lillard looks at the extra. I think this look is what prompted the flubbed ad lib. It seems to me that Lillard looking at the extra made him think he was supposed to say something and after wracking him mind for a second he came up with a half-hearted, “Yes, sire.” Why do I think it’s written? Earlier in the film Lillard and the King get a report from the field stating that the Krug have taken up arms. Lillard scoffs at this saying that this report would be as if they were told that dogs had taken up arms, to which the soldier responds, “They fight like men.” When I heard that my monocle fell out of my eye and straight into the pâté I was eating, spilling my large glass of Pinot Noir. It is the moon to the “They fight like dogs” sun.

This film straddles the line for a bad film and a BMT film. It’s got the cast and looks of a film that exemplifies what we strive for in BMT, but it also has the length and lines of one where you want to strangle yourself to death to escape the misery. It’s a very interesting dichotomy and one that is encountered often in the very worst of the “popular” bad films. The Room, Troll 2, and Plan 9 From Outer Space all hinge on those moments of joy that people remember, the insanity of the lines, and the moments that make you believe that the artist responsible is nothing less than insane. In The Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale has all that, while also having the incredible boredom of everything else. It is a classic bad movie with moments of BMT excellence and is a type of bad movie worthy of representation in the Hall of Fame.

In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale Preview

A small note prior to this post: Once again we take a look back at the movies that we watched over five years ago and choose a Hall of Fame class, five movies that we thought embodied BMT in some way. Perhaps they were particularly bad, or an example of a specific bad movie trope, whatever, something made them stand out as special in our minds. Since we didn’t do email previews back in 2011/2012 we also decided to provide a preview for the movie as well. This is the first in a series of five leading up to our yearly awards the Smaddies Baddies. A recap (Hall of Fame speech really) will follow immediate afterwards to explain why the movie was chosen, things we loved about the movie, and things we discovered upon second viewing. Enjoy!

In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale (2007) – BMeTric: 85.7

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(Wow that started low. The way this is fading makes me wonder how much actual legs this has in the end, but there is a reason this is one of the worst reviewed films on IMDb. Other than that not much else to say, classic legendary bad movie.)

Leonard Maltin – BOMB –  Reluctant warrior Statham joins forces with a brave king (Reynolds) to battle a treacherous usurper (Lillard) and a wicked wizard (Liotta). Another video-game-inspired fiasco from the unfortunately prolific Boll. Even with a bigger budget and better actors than usual, this is a plodding patchwork of haphazardly edited action sequences. Alternate version runs 162 min.

(I will likely try and watch the (gulp) three hour cut. Jamie owns it, although on Blu-Ray I think. Regardless that cut it likely happening and I will not enjoy. Deep burn on Uwe, but that is expected since Uwe is a terrible filmmaker who has been openly ridiculed by critics for years.)

Trailer – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7Um98FZei8

(You can kind of see the ridiculousness of the fight scenes in this film from the trailer. And you can kind of see how ridiculous everyone’s costumes are. But they keep this generic-fantasy for now. Smart.)

Directors – Uwe Boll – (Future BMT: Alone in the Dark; House of the Dead; BloodRayne; Postal; Blackwoods; Bailout: The Age of Greed; BMT: In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale; Razzie Notes: Won for Worst Director in 2009 for In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale, Postal, and Tunnel Rats; Nominated for Worst Director in 2006 for Alone in the Dark; and in 2007 for BloodRayne; and Nominated for Worst Supporting Actor for Postal in 2009; Notes: Well known for spitting out tons of schlock. Was a critic in the 80s and seems to revel in bad reviews. He challenged a number of critics to a boxing match and won all of the matches as chronicled in Raging Boll)

Writers – Doug Taylor (screenplay & story) – (Known For: Splice; A Christmas Horror Story; They Wait; BMT: In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale; Razzie Notes: Nominated for Worst Screenplay for In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale in 2009; Notes: Canadian. He had a few interesting articles written about how he still lived in Montreal, even while working on promoting a big project like Splice. I don’t know what he’s precisely up to know, but it is an interesting glimpse into a screenwriters world. The number of projects he was working on was noted as “head-spinning” and yet he only has had four credited screenwriting jobs result in a theater release. It sounds nuts.)

Jason Rappaport and Dan Stroncak (story) – (BMT: In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale; Notes: I don’t think these guys are necessarily writing partners, but there is no info on them. I think they probably work for Uwe Boll’s production company? Would make sense to have Taylor write the script, and then have some of your own guys help with whatever Uwe wants in there.)

Chris Taylor (video game “Dungeon Siege”) – (BMT: In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale; Notes: Just the video game guy. Was named the 30th most influential developer of all time in 2002. Left his company in 2016 to work on indie games)

Actors – Jason Statham – (Known For: Fast & Furious 8; Fast & Furious 7; Snatch; Spy; Furious 6; The Italian Job; Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels; Collateral; The Expendables; The Expendables 2; Parker; Homefront; The Mechanic; The Transporter; Death Race; The Bank Job; Hummingbird; Transporter 2; Future BMT: The Pink Panther; Wild Card; The One; Transporter 3; 13; Turn It Up; Killer Elite; Revolver; Mean Machine; London; BMT: Crank; Crank: High Voltage; In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale; Ghosts of Mars; Mechanic: Resurrection; The Expendables 3; Notes: An all-star of BMT naturally. I’ve also heard great things about him over the years. Mainly that he’s hilarious and has a magnetic personality. Makes sense.)

Ron Perlman – (Known For: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them; Pacific Rim; Drive; Hellboy; The Bleeder; Tangled; Alien Resurrection; Blade II; Hellboy II: The Golden Army; Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters; Enemy at the Gates; The Book of Life; The Spiderwick Chronicles; The Name of the Rose; Looney Tunes: Back in Action; Titan A.E.; The City of Lost Children; Kid Cannabis; Poker Night; La guerre du feu; Future BMT: Police Academy: Mission to Moscow; The Island of Dr. Moreau; Conan the Barbarian; Mutant Chronicles; Sleepwalkers; Bad Ass; Down; The Ice Pirates; Stonewall; Skin Trade; Outlander; Bunraku; Star Trek: Nemesis; Crave; Romeo Is Bleeding; BMT: In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale; Season of the Witch; Notes: We should watch Ice Pirates. Ron Perlman is probably most well known now for either Sons of Anarchy or Hellboy, but he’s been in a bunch of stuff obviously. Was in Del Toro’s debut Chronos in 1993 which lead to a life-long friendship.)

Ray Liotta – (Known For: Goodfellas; The Place Beyond the Pines; Blow; Sin City: A Dame to Kill For; Identity; Killing Them Softly; Bee Movie; Date Night; The Iceman; Field of Dreams; Cop Land; Kill the Messenger; Heartbreakers; Youth in Revolt; Muppets Most Wanted; Narc; Something Wild; Unlawful Entry; Battle in Seattle; Observe and Report; Future BMT: Turbulence; The Son of No One; Operation Dumbo Drop; Crazy on the Outside; Revenge of the Green Dragons; The Identical; Forever Mine; Even Money; Powder Blue; Revolver; Better Living Through Chemistry; The Lonely Lady; The Death and Life of Charlie St. Cloud; Unforgettable; Slow Burn; Smokin’ Aces; Corrina, Corrina; Hannibal; Crossing Over; Pilgrim; BMT: In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale; Wild Hogs; Notes: He is most well known for looking like he is wearing a Halloween mask of himself. Joking, but this is the first movie I watched where I was like Liotta looks a little odd these days. Hugely famous, mainly for Goodfellas, he still gets decent enough jobs. Definitely an interesting career.)

Budget/Gross – $60,000,000 / Domestic: $4,775,656 (Worldwide: $13,097,915)

(So, Uwe Boll had a decent racket going for a while. The way it works is detailed here, but here’s the short version: if you are a German citizen looking for a tax shelter you can set up a shell company, “finance a film” for millions of euros (immediately tax deductible), and then lease back the rights to a Hollywood studio for almost the entire amount saving millions in taxes. The key is having a German director to direct … wait a minute I know a German director by the name of Uwe! I think they closed that loophole, it is the only explanation as to why Uwe isn’t still churning out trash. This is also the definition of “sweet IP”: video games no one else wanted to make into movies … so sell it to Uwe.)

#106 for the Fantasy – Live Action genre

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(A genre of the 2000s. Just about at the nadir of the genre though. Below Troll from 1986, and paired up with Seeker the Dark of Rising (twin film) for bringing down the gross for a time. Has held mostly steady since, but the new Harry Potters could help it along the way.)

#32 for the Sword and Sorcery genre

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(Literally the lowest grossing example released to more than 4 theaters! There isn’t much to the graphic except that it is small and kind of consistently made over the years. Hopefully the disaster that was Warcraft doesn’t handicap the genre too much going forward.)

#34 for the Video Game Adaptation genre

inthenameoftheking_videogameadaptation

(This guy basically sits … well around other Uwe films. Not that many video game adaptation are super successful. They are coming hot and quick now though, so we’ll see if they can cross that $100 million threshold consistently.)

Rotten Tomatoes – 4% (2/50): Featuring mostly wooden performances, laughable dialogue, and shoddy production values, In the Name of the King fulfills all expectations of an Uwe Boll film.

(Sick burns … although true. The film looks like a few episodes of The Mighty Morphin Power Rangers strung together. Considering it is through and through a German production … that might actually not be a bad analogy.)

Poster – In the Name of the Sklog: A Dungeon Sklog Tale (C+)

in_the_name_of_the_king_a_dungeon_siege_tale_ver3

(I like the color, but not much else. I can kind of give it credit for being in that high-fantasy mold. It is shockingly similar to some of the artwork for Lord of the Rings. But too much going on and not enough done with the font. I’m giving it a C+ for at least being derivative of something good, but most of the deduction is for being cheap looking to boot.)

Tagline(s) – Rise and fight (C+)

(I’ll give it credit for being short and sweet and fantasy-epic-esque. Doesn’t tell you anything, and is boring though, so I mark most of the credit off. Sorry Uwe.)

Keyword(s) – farmer; Top Ten by BMeTric: 85.7 In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale (2007); 84.1 Piranha 3DD (2012); 69.8 Year One (2009); 58.0 Monsters: Dark Continent (2014); 57.7 The Seeker: The Dark Is Rising (2007); 49.3 Seventh Son (I) (2014); 45.0 Jeepers Creepers II (2003); 43.8 The Watch (I) (2012); 43.7 The Giant Spider Invasion (1975); 43.7 Priest (2011);

(We will never watch Piranha 3DD, but Priest is going to happen. Farmer is prooooobably pushing it, although The Seeker and Seventh Son did genuinely have farmers in it … and the main character of this is literally “Farmer”.)

Notes – Kevin Smith and Juliette Lewis were filming Catch and Release (2006) on an adjoining set, and came to visit this set. Burt Reynolds saw them steal two boxes of Krispy Kreme donuts. (I believe it, but Burt Reynolds throughout these notes sounds ridiculous).

Script development took over a year. In the end, Doug Taylor re-wrote eighty percent of the script, because the original story was considered too reminiscent of the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy. (Amazing, what could the storyline have even been?)

Production of the computer graphics imagery in the movie was convoluted and problematic. Uwe Boll claims he had to fire several different CGI providers, who outsourced their jobs to lower-quality providers, who worked for less money. (Yup, this is why graphics in movies causes so much trouble, bullshit like this)

The “medicine” Merick gives Farmer was actually tea mixed with ketchup. Uwe Boll purposely concocted the mixture to get a disgusted reaction from Jason Statham.

During production, Uwe Boll sponsored a charity visit to the set. Guests got to see behind-the-scenes work, and proceeds were donated to a children’s hospital. Reportedly, Ray Liotta was extremely upset by it. In future interviews, he talked about how “crazy” Boll was for allowing so many spectators onto the set.

Siu-Tung Ching’s salary was higher than Uwe Boll’s. (HA!)

Jason Statham filmed many of his action scenes while nursing an injured tendon in his foot. He is noticeably impaired while running.

John Gajdecki had trouble filming many visual effects shots, especially scenes with outdoor “greenscreens”. Jan Kruse left the project, due to conflict with Gajdecki, who was eventually fired, and replaced by Doug Oddy. (These notes are ridiculous)

Some of the Krug costumes cost over ten thousand dollars each to produce. (Not a great idea)

Uwe Boll considered releasing the original cut of the film in two installments because of its length. Instead, it was edited into a theatrical release, and the Director’s Cut was released on DVD. (Smart …)

While filming an outdoor fight scene, Burt Reynolds grew overheated in his armored costume, became unconscious, and fell from the platform, on which the duel was being filmed. Reynolds claims this was the only time in his career that he had to miss a day of filming, due to sickness or injury.

Kevin Costner was offered the lead role. Uwe Boll claims Costner wasn’t interested in filming a large-scale action film, and instead offered Boll the opportunity to direct the project he was working on at the time, Mr. Brooks (2007). Boll turned it down. (WHAT, why would anyone offer Boll to director anyone?)

Claire Forlani was the last major performer to be cast. Her role had been previously offered to Jessica Alba and Jessica Biel. (Who probably just laughed into the phone for half a minute)

Though Siu-Tung Ching was the action Director, Uwe Boll personally choreographed the scene featuring Jason Statham and Ron Perlman fighting the Krug in the barn. (The one where it literally looks like Puttys from Power Rangers I think)

A day of filming was lost due to heavy fog. Some of the forest terrain and mountaintops could only be accessed via helicopter, and on a particular foggy day, Uwe Boll and part of his crew were literally stranded on a mountain for over two hours, because the helicopter wouldn’t take off.

Burt Reynolds extensively re-wrote and edited the dialogue for his death scene, creating friction with Script Supervisor Ingrid Kenning. Reynolds had never played a character who died in a film, and was adamant that the scene be something special.

Won the Razzie Award for Worst Director (Uwe Boll)

Nominated for the Razzie Award for Worst Picture

Nominated for the Razzie Award for Worst Supporting Actress (Leelee Sobieski)

Nominated for the Razzie Award for Worst Supporting Actor (Burt Reynolds)

Nominated for the Razzie Award for Worst Screenplay (Doug Taylor)

Geostorm Recap

Jamie

After the world’s weather went crazy the nations of the Earth, led by Jake Lawson, banded together to build a weather manipulation satellite system. Years later this system goes haywire and Jake is sent to fix it, only to find that it’s not a bug after all, but rather a scheme for world domination. Can Jake save the world before it’s too late? Find out in… Geostorm.

What?! We open on an extended voiceover explaining that in the near future the world’s weather began extreme fluctuations resulting in worldwide death and destruction. In an effort to curb the damage the world’s nations came together to build a complex satellite system led by a rough and tumble scientist, who don’t take no guff from nobody, named Jake Lawson. This inability to take guff sends Jake Lawson to the unemployment line and the satellite system marches on without him. Years later things start acting kooky (sorry for the technical terms) and Jake is pulled back into action and sent to space in an effort to find and fix whatever bug is causing the issue. In the least realistic aspect of the film Jake insists that there aren’t any bugs in the system (sure bro, whatever you say) and yet it becomes immediately clear that the weather catastrophes are not in fact caused by a bug at all but rather a virus that has been planted in the system. Needing the presidential kill codes to reboot and flush the virus, Jake’s brother Max rescues the President from a superstorm in Orlando and escorts him to Kennedy Space Center. They are able to upload the kill codes but not before self-destruct is initiated on the space station. Uh oh! Jake stays behind to make sure everything is rebooted and proceeds to climb aboard a satellite and ride it back to Earth an international hero. Wooooooooooooo! Geostorm! The End.

Why?! Action films provide the best motivations. Not for our main characters or course (Jake Lawson is only concerned with quelling the slanderous claims against his entirely bug-free complex satellite system), but for our vast criminal enterprise hell bent on world domination. Basically the Secretary of State has devised a plan whereby he got a lackey on the space station to upload a virus. This virus will ever so slowly begin the systematic destruction of the world in order to make it seem like an accident. The aim is to wipe out most of the world, including all those that stand in the way of the Secretary of State’s ascension to the presidency, and lead to total domination. What he didn’t plan for was Jake Lawson, international hero, stepping in and saving the day… What’s that? That actually was explicitly in the plan… get international hero Jake Lawson to take the blame and die in space. What a terrible plan… he’s Jake Lawson! International hero! He obviously would be the last person you’d want up in space trying to stop you… literally the only person. In fact wouldn’t you just go ahead and kill him before even starting the plan? I already just fixed your plan. Step 1. Kill Jake Lawson.

What?! After a long day of stopping a conspiracy to destroy your reputation for bug-free coding (and also destroy the world) there’s only one thing that will quench that thirst for justice: a nice cold Coors Light. It’s the taste of the Rockies and the choice of international hero Jake Lawson.

Who?! Two weeks in a row for fake US Presidents. This time it’s Andy Garcia’s President Andrew Palma. While it seems like President Palma is well on his way to reelection (before a Geostorm so rudely interrupts his DNC speech #DemsInDisarray, amirite?) he probably has to reevaluate his vetting criteria for his most valued advisors. I mean, having most of your cabinet wiped out in a conspiracy set in motion by your own Secretary of State? Not a great look.

Where?! Great settings film. Not just because we spend most of our time in space, DC, and Florida, but also because we so specifically spend such a long time in Orlando for a fake future Democratic National Convention. This after we spent the entirety of Jaws 3D in Orlando. Having quite the BMT moment. I give it a solid B.

When?! Little point of contention here. It’s hard to get a good idea of exactly when everything takes place for a film in theaters. I think they said things started going crazy in 2019 and in three years we built the satellite system (going off of my memory here, so might be slightly inaccurate). When we jump forward we are close to the ten year mark for the system. So we should be somewhere around the 2032 election? We’re also going through nominations for that election so must be summer 2032? This is all +/- 4 years. C+ if I go back and confirm all this from the DVD (Spoiiler Alert: I’m not going to be doing that).

Overall, the film is not well made. It was clearly rewritten and reshot (unless they meant for the beginning to just be a series of expository scenes that are super boring. If so then they just made a bad movie from the jump) and made the start of the film a mess. Once we get to space and the Geostorm starts things picked up and a lot of the scenes in space were shockingly beautiful. Funny enough there was one aspect of the film that everyone I know who saw it couldn’t help focusing on: Max Lawson a.k.a. Jim Sturgiss’ haircut. The most catastrophic disaster in the entire film, but I’ll let Patrick explain a bit more. Patrick?

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! GEOOOOOSTORM. What will cure those summer boxoffice blues? A disasterpiece from the maker of Independence Day (I call it ID4). GEOOOOOSTOOOOORM in my face! Yeah. What’s that? It’s been delayed by a bit? That isn’t so bad, I mean … oh, two years? It was delayed by two years and stars Gerard Butler. I mean the co-stars though … what’s that? The co-star is the guy from 21 with a terrible hair cut? Uh … you know what, I have a refrigerator to defrost, I’ll see you later, tell me how it is. Let’s get into it!

The Good (Seuqel / Prequel / Remake) – The space visuals were stunning. When I say the first one I legitimately wondered exactly how cheap it had all gotten, is this just going to be normal now? No more hilarious spikey comet set from Armageddon? If you squint you might not hate this movie because it is so dumb. This time I think I want to see the Sequel. Why? Because think of what the sequel would actually involve. Another almost Geostorm! How could such a thing happen? In this case I think we revisit Jake Lawson, but this time it’s … President Jake Lawson. The world owns Dutch Boy, and all is peachy keen until (uh oh!) it isn’t! Storms they are a-brewin’, and things are looking dire. How could this happen again!? What a twist! It was Jake Lawson causing the issues after he realizes the world had begun to recover from humanity’s ecological ruin and scientists are about to recommend that Dutch Boy be shut down completely! Wait, that sounds shaky, why would he want to keep Dutch Boy around? Because he thinks the instant humanity gets pulled back from the brink of disaster we’ll fall back into our disastrous ways (probably true). Anywho, he turns heel and audiences cheer in Geostorm 2: Jake Lawson Strikes Back.

The Bad (Crimes Against BMT-anity) – The entirety of the story on the ground was absurd. Gerard sleepwalks through the film. The bad guy is so obvious and mustache twirling-ly eeeeevil that it is almost sad when the finale comes into play. It is also aggressively stupid. Which I have decided is both a good and bad thing. It is cut to shit and at times just makes no sense, complete with super hero hacker who makes nearly anything possible and then is promptly forgotten during the finale. And now, for a new game! In Crimes Against BMT-anity I identify a specifically perplexing part of a terrible film. In this case (was there ever any doubt?) it was Jim Sturgiss’ amazingly distracting haircut. Are we to believe he dates an incredibly attractive secret service agent for three years and she never once asks who his barber is any why he still uses him? Or more likely makes him stop cutting his own hair. The most ludicrous part of the story bar none. Congrats Jim Sturgiss’ haircut! You have a non-zero chance of getting a nomination for Worst Screen Couple at the Razzies this year.

The BMT (Legacy / StreetCreditReport.com) – This has some serious cred potential. It is one of those movies that will kind of vaguely live in the collective conscious of a generation because it’ll just be like always on Netflix or something. Out of all of the bad movies of 2017 it is the one I can imagine people talking about along the lines of “you know what was a decently fun movie everyone thought was terrible at the time …”. An Armageddon for another generation. It was one of the worst reviewed films of the year, although it did manage to avoid an incredible sub-10 on Rotten Tomatoes (which seemed quite possible for a time). Still, for both legacy and street cred this I think measures up very well among BMT Lives.

A quick BMT Theater Review and I’m out. I went with the much posher Fulham Vue this time around and it was a pleasure indeed. And given the movie not a wary eye was cast at the lonesome creeper catching a movie on Tuesday night. There were some noticeable guffaws when something particularly ridiculous happened, but for the sparsely populated theatre (as the Brits call it) the tone was expectedly muted. Can’t say I don’t miss the raucous crowds I would expect at something like Transformers 11, but it was pleasant enough. B-. Nice theater, muted crowd.

And with that our BMT Live season is complete. A highly successful season I think marked by a patience we didn’t exercise last year much to our own chagrin.

Cheerios,

The Sklogs

Geostorm Preview

This would have been the closing week of the Bring a Friend cycle but the Barometric Macroclimate Targeting satellites Patrick and I sent into orbit last year malfunctioned and blew in a GEEOOOOOSSTTTOOORRRRMMMMM. That’s right! As was foretold on an ancient Egyptian scroll, we are indeed watching the much anticipated Geostorm for the final BMT Live! of 2017. The movie was delayed, reshot, and delayed some more to the point where I honestly didn’t actually believe they were releasing the film. Boy was I wrong! They released it all right and it was glorious. Garnering 15% on RT (and still only the third worst reviewed wide release of the week thanks to The Snowman and Tyler Perry’s Boo 2! A Madea Halloween), it got us to where we were needed to be and capped off a particularly fruitful year of BMT Live! with Fifty Shades Darker, The Mummy, Flatliners, and now Geostorm. Get excited. Let’s go!

Geostorm (2017) – BMeTric: 15.6 (October 22, 2017)

Geostorm_BMeT

Geostorm_RV

(Haaaaa. I usually don’t put up these plots for films that just came out, but this one was too good. Opens inexplicably at 7.0 on IMDb and then (wait for it …) drops like a goddamned stone. It is below 6.0 as of writing, although I won’t update the plot, so this should be a solid 30+ pretty easily even before people see it on VOD. Great stuff.)

AV Club – D+ –  In the tradition of KFC’s Famous Bowl—famously described by Patton Oswalt as “a failure pile”—comes Geostorm, which attempts to be every possible apocalyptic weather-based disaster movie at once.

(Hmmmm, an interesting take. The story does seem like a kind of mish-mash of disaster film / conspiracy thriller / action film. That did kind of throw me when I first heard of this film. The plot just sounds like the mix of four different terrible films.)

Trailer – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EuOlYPSEzSc

(After a chilly reception to a first trailer if I recall they went all in with the second. It does look fun if you can look past a questionable choice in music and a dire closing one-liner. “Marry her!” was a major criticism on the net (as the kids call it), and it turned out to be more reflective of this movie than this relatively fun trailer is overall.)

Directors – Dean Devlin – (BMT: Geostorm; Razzie Notes: Nominated for Worst Screenplay in 1999 for Godzilla; and in 2017 for Independence Day: Resurgence; and Nominated for Worst Written Film Grossing Over $100 Million for Independence Day in 1997; Notes: Mainly a producer and writer (see below), but he’s slowly been taking on more directing projects. Some minor TV Movies, and four episodes of the Librarian television series which he produces.)

Writers – Dean Devlin (written by) – (Known For: Independence Day; Stargate; Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning; Future BMT: Universal Soldier: The Return; Godzilla; Universal Soldier; BMT: Independence Day: Resurgence; Geostorm; Razzie Notes: Nominated for Worst Screenplay in 1999 for Godzilla; and in 2017 for Independence Day: Resurgence; and Nominated for Worst Written Film Grossing Over $100 Million for Independence Day in 1997; Notes: The son of two prolific Hollywood writers / actors from the 1960s, his wife is also an actress and has appeared in several of his Librarian projects.)

Paul Guyot (written by) – (BMT: Geostorm; Notes: Primarily a television writer he wrote seven episodes of Librarians. Devlin is, as I said, heavily involved with the Librarian television movies and series concerning the character of Flynn Carsen, and Indiana Jones-esque protector of ancient artifacts. I will likely never see any of them.)

Actors – Gerard Butler – (Known For: 300; RocknRolla; Olympus Has Fallen; How to Train Your Dragon; How to Train Your Dragon 2; Reign of Fire; Tomorrow Never Dies; Mrs Brown; Coriolanus; Nim’s Island; Beowulf & Grendel; Dear Frankie; Harrison’s Flowers; The Cherry Orchard; Future BMT: Dracula 2001; Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life; Tale of the Mummy; The Ugly Truth; Machine Gun Preacher; The Game of Their Lives; A Family Man; BMT: Movie 43; Gods of Egypt; The Bounty Hunter; Timeline; Gamer; Playing for Keeps; London Has Fallen; Geostorm; Razzie Notes: Nominated for Worst Actor in 2011 for The Bounty Hunter; and in 2017 for Gods of Egypt, and London Has Fallen; and Nominated for Worst Screen Couple/Worst Screen Ensemble for The Bounty Hunter in 2011; Notes: Scottish, but often plays Americans with vaguely Scottish accents. He has a law degree, but was fired a week before being able to practice. Plenty of BMTs to go for this BMT All Star.)

Jim Sturgess – (Known For: Cloud Atlas; Deception; The Other Boleyn Girl; Across the Universe; Eliza Graves; The Way Back; Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole; Spike Island; Fifty Dead Men Walking; Heartless; Mouth to Mouth; The Browning Version; Future BMT: Kidnapping Freddy Heineken; Upside Down; 21; Electric Slide; Crossing Over; BMT: Geostorm; Notes: Awarded the Worst Haircut in Hollywood Award (joking, but his hair does look particularly weird in this film). Was mainly a musician from around 2000 to 2005 in bands like Saint Faith and Dilated Spies, but re-broke into acting as Jude in Across the Universe.)

Abbie Cornish – (Known For: 6 Days; Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri; Limitless; Seven Psychopaths; RoboCop; Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole; Bright Star; Candy; Stop-Loss; Somersault; The Monkey’s Mask; The Girl; Future BMT: Trauma; Solace; W.E.; A Good Year; Elizabeth: The Golden Age; BMT: Sucker Punch; Geostorm; Notes: Raps under the name MC Dusk, and older sister to Isabelle Cornish who is in the new disastrous Marvel series Inhumans.)

Budget/Gross – $120 million / Domestic: $4,300,000 (Worldwide: $29,800,000)

(Unless it turns out China loooooves disaster movies (audiences there might actually) this will not even break even in the gross-equals-budget kind of way. It’ll float to something like $80 million. Turns out the biggest disaster was … this movie’s box office returns (ayoooooo))

Rotten Tomatoes (October 22, 2017)  – 11% (6/53): Lacking impressive visuals, well-written characters, or involving drama, Geostorm aims for epic disaster-movie spectacle but ends up simply being a disaster of a movie.

(Blah, not a very informative consensus. But the reviews are shockingly bad. This movie should be a prime good-for-what-it-is, and yet people just trashed it. There is some hope in the world!)

Poster – GeoSklog (C-)

geostorm

(Basically a poster that lives up to the film. Boring, terrible font, and nothing consistent to tie it together. It does tell a story, so that’s a minor plus.)

Tagline(s) – Some Things Were Never Meant to Be Controlled (C)

(Not clever enough to make up for the length. Combined with the poster it does tell a nice concise story on what to expect. All around meh for both poster and tagline, which is disappointing. Feel like they could have gone crazy with it.)

Keyword(s) – malfunction; Top Ten by BMeTric: 72.7 The Apparition (2012); 64.3 Stealth (2005); 55.5 Dark Tide (2012); 49.1 Fortress 2 (2000); 36.6 Two Moon Junction (1988); 33.3 Atlas Shrugged II: The Strike (2012); 32.7 Barbarella (1968); 28.5 Igor (2008); 28.1 Phantom (I) (2013); 24.6 Surrogates (2009);

(HA. Stealth is definitely a malfunction. The only other one I think that will really be on the radar is The Apparition, and borderline Surrogates. That film was barely BMT though.)

Notes – The film underwent re-shoots under the auspices of Jerry Bruckheimer, who was brought in in a producer capacity at a very late stage. Reportedly, these extensive re-shoots, featuring new material written by Laeta Kalogridis, were helmed by ” CSI ” alumnus Danny Cannon over a two week period at a cost of $15m. (Not worth it)

Noted by several cast and crew (even the film’s extras) as being the movie where producer and lead star Gerard Butler kept forgetting all his lines. (hahahahah)

Some NASA scenes were filmed at NASA Facility in New Orleans.

Dean Devlin’s feature directorial debut. (could it be a one and done?! Prob not, he already has another film slated for next year)

The film was set for March 25, 2016 release, But later in August 2014, Warner cancelled the March 2016 date for the film, and replaced the film Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016) with its original date. On December 11, 2014, WB shifted its live-action animated film Jungle Book: Origins to 2017 and gave its previous date October 21, 2016 to Geostorm. In September 2015, the studio again moved back the film to release on January 13, 2017. It has once again been rescheduled to an October 20, 2017 release date per its trailer on the Kong Skull Island Dvd. (Jesus Christ, that is a delay)

Originally set up at Paramount, but moved to Warner Bros. (Not a super great sign, as if companies didn’t really think it was going to make money)

The idea of catastrophic consequences of weather control by space based stations also is a major plot point in the directorial debut of Dean Devlin’s long time collaborator, Roland Emmerich, _Das Arche Noah Prinzip (1984)_.

Skydance’s 2nd project not released by Paramount. Instead, Warner Bros. Pictures will produce the film.

A game under the same name was released by developer Sticky Studios, which was featured by Apple. It keeps the same premise but follows an alternative plot where three people gather data on Earth to locate a rogue satellite. The game is a turn-based puzzler and generally has very positive reviews. (Huh … I might actually check that out)

Car 54, Where Are You? Recap

Jamie

You may ask why we would even care to delve deep into what is essentially just dog poo in our faces… why? Because it’s what we do. Here are the details!

What?! Officer Toody is a fun-loving Brooklyn cop just looking to have a good time. When he and his new uptight partner are tasked to protect a mob witness targeted for a hit, it’s made clear that he needs to shape up or lose his badge. Uh oh! Can they keep the party going while keeping the witness safe? Find out in… Car 54, Where Are You?!

Why?! Talk about a loaded question. Why, indeed? Officer Toody is our main character and the action almost exclusively follows him. His motivation for 95% of the film is to remove the stick up the ass of his new partner by getting him paid and laid. Doesn’t sound like much of a plot, right? It isn’t. Concurrently the station that he works in has struck up a deal to protect a state’s witness against a mob boss. After several nearly successful assassination attempts on the witness’ life the captain decides to hide him with Toody (who would ever suspect?!). Even then Toody doesn’t seem to care much about the witness until he loses him and has to hunt him down or get stripped of his badge. So that’s kind of a secondary motivation… first off, get his partner laid, second save the witness. Even writing this all down is making me sad.

How?! You have the general idea of most of the film from the motivations. There are two other aspects of the plot that play almost no role until the climax. The first is that the police station Toody works in has upgraded to a new computer system called Madd Cop (a play on police brutality? Hard to say), which is a futuristic crime-tracking system… this is strictly a plot device. The second is that Toody is obsessed with a Cops-like show and hopes to be on it one day. This luckily happens a week later when he begins to be followed by a camera crew… this is also strictly a plot device. After Toody has lost the witness, he ingratiates himself with the mob, impersonates a hitman, and goes after the witness. At the same time his partner uses Madd Cop and the tracking devices to locate the witness and goes after Toody. The real mob hitmen see a promo for the cops-like show and figure out that Toody is an imposter and go after both Toody and the witness. They all converge at Coney Island and after a brief chase the mobster is snagged by the police and everyone lives happily ever after. Confusing? No kidding.

Who?! There are a number of interesting musical cameos in the film, which include The Ramones, Tone Loc, and Coati Mundi. But by far the most interesting thing is the Ghostbusters-like rap theme song to the film called “Car 54 Rap.” It is terrible and yet mesmerizing. Unfortunately it’s not available online so you just have to take my word for it. But even that’s not as interesting as the artist that created the masterpiece: legitimate band MMM&S. They seem to be a funk band full of the whitest kids in the world according to the videos I can find:

That’s a banger! Seems like the same story as the Beasties Boys. White kids who started in funk/punk and moved to rap… except they never made it. Weird and wild stuff.

Where?! As MMM&S say in their rap, “Brooklyn! Busting out on a hot tip. Two of New York’s finest you can’t diss.” Brooklyn indeed. This is basically as close as you can get to an A without it being part of the title. Drips with Brooklyn and culminates on Coney Island. Perfection. B+.

When?! Secret holiday film alert! There is very little overt indication of the time at which this film takes place. That is until the mob boss laments the fact that his witness isn’t dead yet by opening a newspaper detailing who was killed by mistake. On the opposite page of that headline? A disastrous July 4th fireworks accident! This may in fact be my favorite ever. So fucking random. B+!

I just gave you so much unnecessary detail, let’s find out if it’s BMT. Patrick?

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! Car 54, Where are You? More like Bizarre Shitty Chore, It’s Dog Poo! (In my face … it’s dog poo in my face). Orion Pictures, on the brink of bankruptcy, decides to IP dump a Car 54 movie as a musical starring David Johansen, shelves it for 3 years, and then releases it without the musical numbers and cut to shit. What could go wrong? Sigh. Let’s get into it.

  • The Good – A few of the side actors, O’Donnell and Fran Drescher were solid for sure. The relationship between Rosie and Johansen feels real somehow, and even Johansen for all his over-the-top stage mannerisms (which Jamie pointed out to me was probably the reason he was cast and hardly a knock against him as an actor, the guy already has a starring role in Scrooged, they knew what they were getting) comes across as a genuine guy. There are a few jokes here and there as well including maybe the best spit take I’ve ever seen.
  • The Bad – Parts of the movie look like something I could shoot. The quality is dire. If this movie were to be released today it would have been dumped on VOD and forgotten about. There are basically no good jokes in the film, and the acting throughout from the main players is terrible. I will say that I didn’t necessarily feel bored during the film, but there is a level of wackiness that just doesn’t really work (or maybe it is that it isn’t consistent?). I’m usually not one to harp on things like this but … this movie is like 95% sex jokes strung together by basically no coherent story. Take from that what you will.
  • The BMT – Not since Dino De Laurentiis dumped King Kong Lives and Raw Deal have we seen such a blatant barely-movie widely released to theaters from a dying production company. If there is any legacy to this film it is the opening: if the movie got even close to “okay” for the rest of the film it may have gone down as the one true movie that is ruined by the opening scene (similar to how The Call was ruined by literally the last five seconds, a much more common trope). The opening is legendary, including terrible singing in a dream sequence complete with a cartoon bird dressed as a rapper. Bomb. Thinking about it I would actually give this is a pretty good BMeTric too, because I would definitely watch this again with a crowd. It is just so weird that I’m betting there are a million layers to unpeel.

I mean there is really only one thing to do: Prequel! It might not be pretty but we need to see Car 54, Where Are You? When Toody Met Leo … my god, the title even sounds like When Harry Met Lloyd. Anyways, in the first film we were given what is an oh so tantalizing glimpse of the hilarious (and heartfelt!) relationship between Toody and his partner Leo before they are torn asunder by Leo’s retirement in the beginning of the film. “We want more Leo!” was what I assume the Car 54-heads were screaming in their packed opening day theaters. Bonus, the film will feature a cameo by none other than a person who could pass as a young Rosie O’Donnell to show the early stages of Gunther’s courtship of Lucille. The screenwriter for this film (me) says, “the courtship is much like the Cyclone of Coney Island: A Rollercoaster!”.

Cheerios, 

The Sklogs

Fifty Shades Darker Recap

Jamie

What?! After their “dramatic” break-up in the first film, Christian Grey realizes that he can’t live without Anastasia Steele. Promising to give up his S&M lifestyle they get back together. Can they make it work? Find out in… Fifty Shades Darker… seriously, that’s all this is about.

Why?! Mostly it’s because Christian Grey is a broken, lonely man who needs to learn to love and he feels like Anastasia Steele is the first thing in his life that truly gives him that opportunity. As for Anastasia it’s oddly about taking control of her life and becoming more assertive about what she wants personally and professionally in part by giving into her desires with Christian (bit of a contradiction, no?). By setting her ground rules and allowing herself to do what she wants, she unshackles herself from societal norms and flies fr… blech… sorry, I just puked all over myself.

How?! Imagine just watching a couple people dating for two hours. That’s this movie. They just go on dates and stuff. Incredibly dramatic things happen to them (she almost gets raped, he is involved in a helicopter crash, she is held at gunpoint by a crazy former lover of Christian’s) and yet five seconds after these things happen they are forgotten and we continue to watch them argue casually over wine. There was a moment where they were having dinner where I actually thought, “Imagine if this never ended? That I had to sit here watching these two boring people go to dinner over and over again.” A cold shiver ran down my spine. That’s how mundane it all was. So yeah… that’s “how” it all went down. Oh, and they got engaged in the end. That was the climax (sigh, I feel like I can’t even celebrate that pun). Thank God the music was dope.

Who?! Ha! Just thinking about a version of this film that included a Planchet is amusing to me. Like if Christian Grey’s chauffeur Taylor was some chubby, bumbling fool that is the brunt of Christian’s constant chiding. That would be cool. As it is, there is no Planchet. So just gonna shout out my girl Kim Basinger. It’s a crime her role is so small this time around, but I heard it’s bigger in 2018’s future BMT film Fifty Shades Freed. Things are looking up for 2018!

Where?! If you didn’t know (but who doesn’t at this point) these books started as Twilight fan fiction. Accordingly, this film takes place in Seattle, Washington. Most notable Anastasia works at SIP, Seattle Independent Press. Also, the Space Needle is basically a character in the film given how many times we see it in establishing shots. B

When?! The major downside of BMT Live! is the inability to try to figure out exactly when the film takes place by analyzing the film frame-by-frame Zapruder-style. One would think that it’s immediately following the last film. It’s implied that they actually didn’t break up for all that long, so probably June right after graduating. This is supported by E.L. James’ assertion that Christian’s birthday is June 18th (perhaps detailed specifically in the book?), so basically they broke up for two weeks, she started her job, and then like two weeks later they got back together and got engaged. The thing that really shoots this in the foot is that you can see Christmas decorations on store windows when they’re walking around Seattle. Come on, guys. Think about the poor children trying to piece this timeline together. Think of the children! D-

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! Fifty Shades Darker?! More like Fifty More Movies please! Not really, one more movie exactly please (I feel strangely sad when movie series get cut short, plus the third is already filmed). We had a night at the movies. Was it an entertaining girls night (and Patrick!) night on the town!? Or was it so awkward I wondered if I perhaps had stumbled into a British comedy series?! Spoiler alert: I’ve never been so uncomfortable in my life. Let’s go!

  • The Good – The music was jamalaming. The film makes you think … more on that later. Dakota Johnson is a fine actress and does an admirable job. I don’t exactly remember the first movie, I know it happened to me but almost no details beyond that there was a sex contract, but I do know the sex scenes in this one came a lot faster and furiouser which I’m sure satisfied many of the target audience in attendance in my sparsely populated theater.
  • The Bad – Dornan is straight awful. Kim Basinger was given way too little to do (I nearly forgot she was in this). Oh, and literally nothing happens in the film. Basically she dumped his ass in the first film, and he comes back being like “You’re so plain I love you so much, I need you, I’m a billionaire” and then they date for a while. There is a stalker but that is dispatched quickly. Anastasia’s boss goes from zero to rape in 1.5 seconds, which was alarming. And Dornan get paid to look like a complete asshole for two hours. All in all it was a perplexing and yet fascinating time.
  • The BMT – Yes. I’m actually pretty sure this is the worst film of the year. I think it is. It is polished, it looks great, it has some decent acting here and there, but it is also boring, and yet consistently and often humorously terrible. I feel like I need to watch this film again, which makes me uncomfortable to my core. If that isn’t a 80+ BMeTric I’m not sure what is. I’m drawn to it like a fly into an electric fly zapper.

Oh my favorite of all the games: BMT Live! Theater Experience. So basically my plan of action for this film was to show up 15 after the official showtime to ensure the theater is dark, and sit near the exit. Great plan in theory. What actually happened was that the theater was still quite bright when I then very conspicuously entered and sat approximately 40 feet from everyone else. Also, since I was right near the exit anyone who entered after me would go around this little wall and kind of come face-to-face with creeper #1 sitting there like a creeper. Once the movie kicked off the rowdiness was sadly kept to a minimum, but I did indeed manage to bolt out of the theater and around the corner before, I think, anyone else even had a chance to get their things. It is the small victories I savor. This was bar-none the most awkward theater experience of my life. As I sat there it was almost a religious experience. A pariah, alone and consuming delights not meant for me. Reacting with disgust, but was it meant to evoke lust or joy? I would not know, for I was not the intended audience. This is something I do love with BMT in a bizarre way, particularly with Madea films. Watching something not meant for me. Wondering if what I was experiencing was intended in any way by the creators. In this case, I don’t think so, this was one for the ladies. Get yo movies, ladies. BMT Live!

Cheerios, 

The Sklogs

Smaddies Baddies IV

It has become an annual tradition. On the anniversary of the start of Bad Movie Thursday we take a look back at the year in review. With a name that’s just as bad as the films it honors it is ….

Smaddies Baddies! Smaddies Baddies! Ah what a year. We saw Shaq pretend to act, and read some terrible books, we started the BMT Calendar, and took the time machine to 30 years ago to see what was cracking on the bad movie scene during the Sklogs’ birth year, and no year would be complete without watching the worst of the worst (some in theaters in our new and improved BMT Live! system). Remember, any film we watched in 2016 qualifies. Smaddies Baddies, what films to we want to bestow the highest honor in all of Hollywood (er … Minnesota and London as least)?

As usual let’s start with the sci-tech awards of the BMT world: the special awards. New and improved with a 6W’s theme. Let’s go!

The Battlefield Earth Most Ludicrous Plot Baddie (What?!) goes to: The Avengers. It’s about Sean Connery blackmailing the world with a weather machine while dressed as a giant bear and riding around in a hot air balloon. The entire film is trash… and we loved it.

The Street Fighter Legend of Chun Li McGuffin Baddie (Why?!) goes to: Shanghai Surprise in which Sean Penn and Madonna spend the entire movie looking for “Faraday’s Flowers” which they think is opium, but then turns out to be a bunch of jewels… but they somehow still end up finding a bunch of opium.. It’s a very confusing McGuffin.

The 88 Minutes Worst Twist Baddie (How?!) goes to: Basic Instinct 2. If you don’t remember the entire film is about Sharon Stone probably (possibly, maybe) committing a series of murders… in the end it’s revealed that the psychiatrist (and hero?) was in fact insane and committed the murders… that he was helping investigate… but he was insane. Jesus.

The He Just Wants To Go To Fashion Week! Best Planchet Baddie (Who?!) goes to London Has Fallen where Gerard Butler get a bestie, SAS Lieutenant played by Bryan Larkin. He doesn’t even have a name! He’s in like thirty minutes of the film! He basically saves the President’s life at the end and he doesn’t even have a name! He’s just called SAS Lieutenant!

The I Know Who Killed Me Best Twins Ever Baddie (also Who?!, a tie!) goes to The Forest which starred a person playing a set of identical, and arguably stigmata, twins. We love twin films (obviously) and this one is probably the most satisfying since Lindsay Lohan got a robot arm and leg.

The When in Rome Location as a Character Baddie (Where?!) goes to London Has Fallen. It’s got it all: the name of the location is in the title, and that location plays a huge and indispensable role in the film … yeah, that really is all it takes. It literally has it all.

The Cobra Memorial Secret Holiday Film Baddie (When?!) goes to Get Carter. Sly Must love Christmas because for almost no reason this film is set during Christmas. I would give a strong runner up to Cheaper by the Dozen 2 whose finale takes place during the rarely represented holiday of Labor Day.

Phew. Now onto the big awards, no officially based on The Good, The Bad and The BMT. And without further ado:

The Freddy Got Fingered Surprisingly Good Baddie (The Good) Nominees: No Mercy, Taxi, On Deadly Ground, Harlem Nights, Conan the Destroyer.

And the Winner is: No Mercy. No Mercy was a genuinely fun movie starring a gritty Richard Gere and Kim Basinger doing a subtle (!) Cajun accent. Quite fun. Would recommend.

The Strange Wilderness Unpleasantly Terrible Baddie (The Bad) Nominees: Pinocchio, Under the Cherry Moon, The Chamber, Basic Instinct 2, The Fog.

And the Winner is: The Fog. With a surprisingly good predecessor the remake manages to shit all over that completely. The highlight of the recap: “It wasn’t even so ridiculous you laugh at it, you stare at it in confusion and disgust. Blah.” Blah indeed.

The Here on Earth Most BMT Baddie (The BMT) Nominees: White Chicks, Mechanic: Resurrection, Can’t Stop the Music, Get Carter, The Avengers.

And the Winner is: White Chicks. The look like monsters! It will be the enduring chant whenever bad makeup makes it into BMT. They look like monsters. They trick people who know who the people they are impersonating are … and they look like monsters. Incredible. I almost want to watch it again right now!

The Jack and Jill Worst of 2016 Baddie (BMT Live!) Nominees: Zoolander 2, Mechanic Resurrection, London Has Fallen, The Forest.

And the overwhelming Winner is: Mechanic: Resurrection. I watched this film in a desolate theater and watched in shock horror at the terrible CGI, the ludicrous plot, and Tommy Lee Jones playing a gun runner with a heart of gold. The predecessor wasn’t even that good (although the original was pretty solid) and yet it looks like The Godfather compared to this pile of garbage.

Smaddies Baddies, Smaddies Baddies. I love it when a wide array of films gets recognized. As usual, for those of you who fell asleep for the announcements: Watch White Chicks, No Mercy, and The Avengers. Skip Mechanic Resurrection, The Fog, and The Forest. They look like monsters!

Hall of Fame Speech #3: Street Fighter Legend of Chun Li

Brief note before we start: last July we got together and worked out a first class to be inducted into the Smaddies Baddies BMT Hall of Fame. It has been nearly six years since we started BMT and the films we had seen more than five years ago, in some cases, deserved a rewatch and reassessment. Over the next two weeks leading up to the fourth (sixth?) Smaddies Baddies we’ll bring you previews and Hall of Fame Speeches for the five films chosen. This is the third, for the action (and Chris Klein) packed martial arts masterpiece, Street Fighter Legend of Chun Li. The intention is to reminisce a bit about what we remember about the film, what we think of it now, and why it deserved a special place in BMT history. Enjoy!

Hall of Fame Induction Speech for Street Fighter Legend of Chun Li

From the first batch of HoF films, Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li is probably the one that best represents BMT. This is simply because it is the film furthest from what bad movie aficionados typically look for in a top film. If you follow bad movie sites and podcasts, this film is rarely mentioned and when it is it is largely dismissed. Part of that is the lack of true BMT star power. While Battlefield Earth has Travolta, The Wicker Man has Cage, Norbit has Eddie Murphy and Old Dogs has a devastating Travolta/Robin Williams one-two punch, SF:TLoCL merely provides a solid dose of Chris Klein (a BMT fave, but hardly top-tier Hollywood royalty). But for us it hit a magical spot that reverberated through the BMTverse for years.

So what did I remember about the film from my last viewing 5 years ago:

  • The film is about Chun-Li aiming to take down M. Bison because… something, something, something. Chris Klein is also there as Charlie Nash, an interpol agent with one-liners for days, who is also going after M. Bison because… well I presume he must be a criminal if Interpol is after him. In the end Bison is taken down because he wanted to bring his daughter to Bangkok… which doesn’t seem illegal at all in retrospect. I really don’t remember much about the plot to be honest.
  • I mostly just remember Nash’s super rad one-liners. Much like Nic Cage with The Wicker Man, The Legend of Chun-Li had a Chris Klein supercut of his lines circulate in the years following its release because they are so ludicrous. I think it’s only gotten funnier over the years:
  • Additionally, while this was an introduction to our beloved Chris Klein (this, Rollerball, Say It Isn’t So, and Here on Earth), it also introduced BMT to Neal McDonough (this, Timeline, The Guardian, I Know Who Killed Me, 88 Minutes, Fire Down Below, and Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2) and The Black Eyed Peas (namesake of mapl.de.map). Without Taboo playing Vega in this film there likely wouldn’t have been a mapl.de.map. Or at least it would have been named something different.

The first major thing to discuss regarding the rewatch of this film is just how ridiculous it is that this was released to theaters. The film is flat out poorly made. It looks a bit like a SyFy film with B-list actors, shoddy effects, and plot line that takes a lot of suspension of disbelief (mostly the disbelief that it was actually a real film). I guess this is probably why so many people are dismissive of the film. It doesn’t have the looks or actors of some of the biggest flubs, but also doesn’t go to the extreme of a The Room or Birdemic. It’s just in the middle where people merely ask, “Wait, was this really released to theaters?” The answer is yes, over a thousand of them. Why? Because this film cost… wait for it… … … $50 million to make so they kinda had to release it. This had to be some kind of financial scam. It makes absolutely no sense. This looks like a $10 million picture at most. Where did the money go?! Follow the money!

The second thing to note is that Chris Klein delivers. It is pure joy when he is on the screen. The most unfortunate thing about the film is that he is the third biggest character after Bison and Chun-Li, so doesn’t get as much screen time as one would hope. But boy does he put in the BMT work. Beyond his lines my favorite thing I rediscovered about the film is just how bad of a cop his character is. He constantly screws everything up. The best scene is when he and fellow cop Moon Bloodgood are supposed to be following Balrog and he inexplicably takes the opportunity to totally make out with Bloodgood (rad). While doing that Balrog switches cars and they lose him… all because he wanted to cop a feel. It’s pretty great. Without Chun-Li he would have just fucked around for a few days and not solved a single thing.

Finally, I had really forgotten how ridiculous the entire plot is. Back then we had a hard and fast rule to not focus on the plot, but in the age of close-watching that is no longer the case. Listen to this: We have M. Bison, a ruthless criminal slumlord, who takes Chun-Li’s father hostage. Years later Chun-Li goes to Bangkok to join forces with the Order of the Web and take revenge on Bison. Learning that Bison is importing something called the White Rose, Chun-Li goes to stop him (presuming it’s something illicit and could bring down his enterprise if he’s caught shipping it in). After the White Rose arrives it’s discovered that it’s Bison’s daughter, who he imbued with his conscience in a satanic exercise during her birth. She is the yang to his yin, basically. Chun-Li then murders him. Wait, what?! I don’t understand. I get that Bison is a criminal that should be brought to justice, but the White Rose is totally tangential to that. She could have went to his house and fought him literally any time… why wait for the White Rose to even appear? It was set up as if it was some major illegal shipment that they would nail him for and in the process fight him, but instead it turned out to be mostly legal (if they had her papers in order). But instead of waiting for another chance they then follow him to his compound and go ahead and kill him in the most gruesome way possible (Chun-Li quite literally kicks Bison’s head 180 degrees around to the other side of his body). It’s one of the best worst plotlines I can remember. The White Rose is a classic McGuffin and McGuffins are already lazy, but this one is even half-assed. A half-assed McGuffin!

Overall, this will stand as the most BMT of the first batch of HoFers. A film that is beloved by us, but by no one else. At a time when we were still somewhat beholden to a couple bad movie sources, this was an important separation. Something that was truly our own to love and cherish. I was happy to find that many of the things that we loved at the time continue to hold up today and many of the things we hold dear in today’s BMT world (close watching the motivation of the characters, settings, etc.) would be gangbusters as well. Fun watch and really, really, really, really, really, really, really not a good film.

Jamie out.

Street Fighter Legend of Chun Li Preview

A small note prior to this post: Last July we decided to take a look back at the movies that we watched over five years ago and choose a Hall of Fame class, five movies that we thought embodied BMT in some way. Perhaps they were particularly bad, or an example of a specific bad movie trope, whatever, something made them stand out as special in our minds. Since we didn’t do email previews back in 2011 we also decided to provide a preview for the movie as well. This is the third in a series of five leading up to our yearly awards the Smaddies Baddies. A recap (Hall of Fame speech really) will follow immediate afterwards to explain why the movie was chosen, things we loved about the movie, and things we discovered upon second viewing. Enjoy!

Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li (2009) – BMeTric: 70.2

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streetfighterlegendofchunli_rv

(I think this plot is a good argument as to Street Fighter’s lasting bad movie cred. A 3.7 is a comically low IMDb score, a score that, if this was a mere below-average or middling bad movie would have steadily crept higher as the thousands of votes flowed in since 2010. But it has basically just stayed constant around 3.8 since then. As I argued in The Wicker Man preview, it is the staying power that I think could be the defining feature of a good-bad movie. It is a movie people seek out, watch, and universally agree is garbage. And we have another one here. And of course 70+ BMeTric is nothing to dismiss.)

Leonard Maltin – BOMB –  Pointless new film version of the popular video game series finds pretty martial arts-trained Asian-American Chin-Li (Kreuk) spurred into action in Bangkok after her father is kidnapped. Sher uses all her wiles to snuff out the main bad guy, local crime lord McDonough, and his henchmen, led by the imposing Duncan. The 1987 game inspired a 1994 version which is Citizen Kane compared to this inept action vehicle, where even the centerpiece fight sequences are lamely choreographed and hopelessly contrived. When Interpol agent Klein yells, “Bomb! Get out now!” it would be wise to heed his advice.

(Doesn’t he say that at the end of the movie Leonard? Too little too late I would assume. Yeah, oddly a somewhat rare BOMB from Leonard within our Hall of Fame so far. I might not go so far to say the 1994 movie is that much better, but this one does stick out as a complete mess when I think about it. So maybe a cheesy Van Damme barely-movie is better than that. Solid hyphen game early by Leonard as well.)

Trailer – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EctFEyCMDL0

(Wow, that was actually really good. Basically as good a trailer as I could have possibly expected for this film. Makes it out like it’s going to be non-stop action street fights between characters you love. I was jazzed by the end. Am I sure this is a terrible film? Looks great.)

Directors – Andrzej Bartkowiak – (BMT: Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li; Doom; Exit Wounds; Cradle 2 the Grave; Romeo Must Die; Notes: It just occurred to me that if you take Exit Wounds (DMX), Cradle 2 the Grave (DMX, Jet Li), and Romeo Must Die (Jet Li) you get a nice little chain reaction. I wish Jet Li and Seagal had been in a movie. We’ve seen Doom and Romeo Must Die, but finishing his filmography is a must. He is more well known as a cinematographer and his collaborations with Sidney Lumet.)

Writers – Justin Marks (screenplay) – (Known For: The Jungle Book; BMT: Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li; Notes: Kind of fascinating career just because he wrote Street Fighter for release in 2009, and then didn’t write another feature until 2016 with The Jungle Book. He now is well on his way, with Jungle Book 2, Top Gun 2, Shadow of the Colossus (video game adaptation), and FBP Federal Bureau of Physics (comic book adaptation) in production. I’d be willing to bet three of those will be BMT or borderline, can you guess which ones? I am stunned this movie had a single credited writer.)

Actors – Kristin Kreuk – (Known For: EuroTrip; BMT: Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li; Ecstasy; Notes: One of her first roles was as the ex-girlfriend Fiona in EuroTrip, otherwise she’s stuck to mostly television (like Smallville). She is Canadian and has a purple belt in karate.)

Neal McDonough – (Known For: Greater; Captain America: The First Avenger; Minority Report; RED 2; Star Trek: First Contact; Flags of Our Fathers; Darkman; Ravenous; Traitor; BMT: I Know Who Killed Me (BMT); Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li (BMT); Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2 (BMT); Fire Down Below (BMT); Timeline (BMT); The Hitcher; 88 Minutes (BMT); Angels in the Outfield; Walking Tall; Telling You; The Last Time; Three Wishes; The Guardian (BMT); Notes: BMT legend having been in seven BMT films in our first six years, pretty good rate. He’s from Barnstable, Massachusetts of all places! Studied in London. I’m loving this guy, do your thing Neal.)

Michael Clarke Duncan – (Known For: The Green Mile; Planet of the Apes; Sin City; The Island; Kung Fu Panda; Friday; Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby; Daredevil; The Scorpion King; The Whole Nine Yards; The Last Mimzy; Cats & Dogs; Bulworth; Redemption Road; BMT: Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li; Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore; Green Lantern; Breakfast of Champions; Racing Stripes; D.E.B.S.; Welcome Home, Roscoe Jenkins; The Underground Comedy Movie; See Spot Run; Delgo; Slipstream; School for Scoundrels; A Night at the Roxbury; The Players Club; Armageddon; The Slammin’ Salmon; Brother Bear; Notes: Sadly died a few years ago from complications related to a heart attack. My favorite note from his IMDb page: On July 12, 1979, during the Disco Demolition Night fiasco at Comiskey park, Duncan ran onto the field and slid into third base. Ha!)

Budget/Gross – $50 million / Domestic: $8,742,261 (Worldwide: $12,764,201)

(A complete and utter disaster. If that budget is correct this would probably be one of the biggest bombs of that year, and only is saved a bit from being a legend by “only” having a $50 million dollar budget. To be frank I don’t really believe that, at least some of it has to be exaggeration for tax reasons.)

#95 for the Action – Martial Arts genre

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(This plot is actually kind of sad. Initial thoughts: The 90s boom is basically people like Seagal and Van Damme. Then there was a little dip before Jackie Chan ushered in another foreign / comedy boom for the genre. This came right in the final gasp there with Rush Hour 3 and Transporter 3 kind of having the genre die off. Now … is it possible that martial arts has been relegated to VOD? Are we entering an era of whole genres being shunned from theatrical release in favor of tentpoles? It makes me a bit sad, but then again I can’t think of a situation in which I would personally go and see a martial arts film in theaters. Crouching Tiger might literally have been the only one I’ve ever seen in theaters to be honest. This movie is below Dragonball: Evolution on that chart … I’ll let that be a closing statement of sorts.)

#63 for the Action Heroine genre

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(THIS MOVIE IS BELOW CUTTHROAT ISLAND ON THAT CHART. That movie literally destroyed a production company! That giant peak around 2005: Lara Croft 2, Underworld, Catwoman, Elektra, Miss Congeniality 2, Charlie’s Angels 2, Resident Evil 2, Blade 3, Domino, Aeon Flux, Underworld 2, Ultraviolet, Resident Evil 3 … that’s a lot of terrible movies. And note how little money they made on average! And naturally since 2010 the action heroine has been a huge seller for Hollywood. I wish I could say this movie blazed a trail … but it didn’t. It merely allowed Hollywood to get the garbage juice out of its system before getting serious.)

#31 for the Video Game Adaptation genre

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(We saw Warcraft this year, and Hitman Agent 47 the year before among several BMT video game adaptations. Street Fighter Legend of Chun Li sits right above Alone in the Dark the Uwe Bol classic … so not great. Video game adaptations still make less than the martial arts genre of the 90’s, which is unimpressive to say the least. Naturally they are looking to have that change over the next few years you would imagine, but this multi-bomb year probably didn’t help matters. Five video game adaptations came out this year, that is the most ever according to this chart. Someday there will be a successful video game adaptation. It will happen.)

Rotten Tomatoes – 6% (3/54): The combination of a shallow plot and miscast performers renders Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun Li a perfectly forgettable video game adaptation.

(Less than 10% on Rotten Tomatoes is extremely impressive. Doing it with over 50 reviews is incredible. I wonder who they are talking about when they say miscast performers … I’m so sorry Chris Klein. So so sorry.)

Poster – Sklog Fighter: Legend of Jamie (D)

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(That is unfortunate. A truly ridiculous color scheme and spacing. Glad we at least get a unique font that would make it hard to create Sklog Fighter: The Legend of Jamie.)

Tagline(s) – Some fight for power. Some fight for us. (B)

(Hmmm. My brain is telling me that I should like this, but my heart is telling me that this is terrible and sounds like garbage. Definitely has the cadence, brevity, and a bit of the plot. I think it’s OK. My heart is disappointed in me.)

Keyword(s) – gangster; Top Ten by BMeTric: 89.6 Catwoman (2004); 85.8 Gunday (2014); 82.7 Gigli (2003); 81.8 Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance (2011); 78.6 The Avengers (1998); 77.5 Super Mario Bros. (1993); 77.3 RoboCop 3 (1993); 72.8 Striptease (1996); 70.5 Grease 2 (1982); 70.2 Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li (2009);

(Well since we aren’t ever doing Gunday we will complete this genre with Grease 2 which has to be done at some point. Solid list obviously, but I assume a few films might be a stretch. There was around 1200 films that claim a gangster keyword (around that). All of these vaguely make sense, but was there really a “gangster” in The Avengers for example? Questionable.)

Notes – Back in 2003, Jean-Claude Van Damme was working on a sequel to the original Street Fighter movie titled “Street Fighter II”, for Universal. Several cast members had been hired to join him in the sequel, including his Universal Soldier co-star Dolph Lundgren in an unrevealed role, Australian actress Holly Valance would have replaced Kylie Minogue as Cammy White, and Damian Chapa would have reprised his role as Ken Masters. Byron Mann was also reportedly in talks to return as Ryu Hoshi. However, after a few years of trying to get the sequel off the ground, the project never materialized and any plans for a sequel were scrapped in favor of this movie. (Would have also been terrible. People try to have nostalgia for the original, but in reality it is also terrible and a sequel without Raul Julia wouldn’t have been much better)

A potential sequel with Ryu and Ken was planned but was cancelled due of the poor box office performances of the film. (Jesus)

This movie only has 7 world warriors taken from Capcom’s “Fighting Game of 2008” titled Street Fighter IV (originally, the game has 25 characters) with the legendary world warrior from Street Fighter Alpha: Warriors’ Dreams [1995] (also know as Street Fighter Zero in Japan, Asia, South America and Australia) known as Charlie Nash being a special guest to this movie rather than reusing the hybrid-character “Carlos Blanka” from Universal Pictures’s Street Fighter [1994], The world warriors that made their appearances are: Chun Li, Gen, Crimson “Maya” Viper, Rose, Balrog, Vega, Master Bison and Charlie Nash. The world warriors that are absent are: Ryu (who is mentioned by Gen once), Ken Masters, Major Guile (who is replaced by Charlie Nash), Blanka, Edmund Honda, Zangief, Dhalsim, Sagat, Cammy White, Fei Long, Akuma, Dan Hibiki, Sakura Kasugano, Able, El Fuerte, Rufus, Gouken and Seth. (All solid information, thanks IMDb)