bmt 2024 – Page 3 – Bad Movie Twins

Tarot Preview

No sooner had Patrick introduced Nathaniel Cawthorn to Jamie than he found himself back at his beautiful Hallston Public Library. Crows… crows were not his thing. He scours the graphic novels for his next great find. Not only not pounding the dweebs that he finds there, but even conversing with them on occasion. “Meow,” Mr. Whiskers says by his side, which reminds Patrick of his actual mission at the ‘brary (as he had heard the kids call it). “Right, I gotta focus and find something to help Jamie out of his doldrums.” But every graphic novel and book he looks at doesn’t seem to be quite right. “Caw caw!” Nathaniel Cawthorn screeches, much to the dismay of the shushing librarians. But Patrick knew that ‘caw’ anywhere. That was the caw of a crow with a hunch. Patrick follows Nathaniel as the crow flies over the stacks. Rounding a corner he comes to a screeching halt. “They have movies here too?!” he yells, getting another loud shush from the librarian. “But I’m guessing they only have only beaten up DVDs,” he whispers, but Nathaniel caws softly and pecks at a disc in the “New Arrivals” section. It’s beautiful. Tears well up in Patrick’s eyes. There was just no way Jamie could be sad watching that. A week later he surprises Jamie during one of the three times a day he forces himself to eat slices of unbuttered, dry toast. “Hey Buddy,” Patrick says, but Jamie just continues to crunch loudly into slice after slice of the flavorless toast. “You wanna maybe feast on something a little more flavorful?” With that he holds up a brand spanking new copy of the blu-ray (you read that right, blu-ray) copy of 2024’s Tarot, the hot new horror film for the gucci crowd. That’s right! The real life versions of ourselves are also watching Tarot, the hot new horror for the gucci crowd. Although I probably have to retire that phrase in favor of something to do with rizz… I’ll have to mull that one over in the ol’ noggin. Let’s go!

Tarot (2024) – BMeTric: 65.8; Notability: 12

StreetCreditReport.com – BMeTric: top 2.8%; Notability: top 17.2%; Rotten Tomatoes: top 4.4%; Higher BMeT: Madame Web, Borderlands, The American Society of Magical Negroes, Uglies, The Crow, Night Swim, The Strangers: Chapter 1; Higher Notability: Joker: Folie à Deux, Reagan, Borderlands, The Garfield Movie, Madame Web, Back to Black, Here, Argylle, Kraven the Hunter, Lift, Rebel Moon – Part Two: The Scargiver, Red One, Jackpot!, Atlas, The Union, The Crow, Justice League: Crisis on Infinite Earths – Part Two, My Spy The Eternal City, Harold and the Purple Crayon, A Family Affair, and 23 more; Lower RT: Tyler Perry’s Divorce in the Black, Megamind vs. The Doom Syndicate, Borderlands, Madame Web, Mother of the Bride, Kraven the Hunter, Breathe, Uglies, Rebel Moon – Part Two: The Scargiver, Justice League: Crisis on Infinite Earths – Part Two; Notes: Horror BMeTrics are always off the chain. Dems the breaks Tarot.

Variety – Set in a world where every door creaks and there isn’t a single well-lit location, “Tarot” is little more than a clearinghouse of horror clichés.

(Yeah, it isn’t wrong. This is a whole new era of “teen horror” I think. The type of horror you bring your boo to and snuggle under a blanket and pretend you are super spookified which probably smooching / on your phone telling you friends how spookified you are. Facts.)

Trailer – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XNTEjJm4WXg/

(Really profoundly dumb. The acting also looks dire, although I agree with some of the reviews, the fact that Batalon is in this at least intrigues you since he was a highlight of some MCU films.)

Directors – Spenser Cohen – ( BMT: Tarot; Notes: Wrote a bunch as you can see, but as a director he did a few non-qualifiers, and a podcast series, but Tarot is a somewhat ignominious feature debut.)

Anna Halberg – ( BMT: Tarot; Notes: Co-director on the podcast series as well, she was also involved in The Expendables 4, so she must be professionally involved with Cohen specifically in some way.)

Writers – Anna Halberg and Spenser Cohen – ( Known For: Extinction; Distant; BMT: Moonfall; The Expendables 4; Tarot; Notes: They have a AI horror film called House/Wife coming out, it looks rough based solely on the poster. Netflix though, so it’ll be somehow hugely popular. They are definitely writing partners though.)

Nicholas Adams – ( BMT: Tarot; Notes: Maybe the original writer? His only credit.)

Actors – Harriet Slater – ( Known For: Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny; BMT: Tarot; Notes: Was in the show Pennyworth, and is in an upcoming Outlander spin-off series.)

Adain Bradley – ( Known For: Wrong Turn; Butter; BMT: Tarot; Notes: Obviously is in Industry, and was on The Bold and the Beautiful for years which makes sense. In an A24 film called Warfare coming out this year.)

Jacob Batalon – ( Known For: Avengers: Endgame; Avengers: Infinity War; Spider-Man: No Way Home; Spider-Man: Homecoming; Spider-Man: Far from Home; Lift; Let It Snow; Every Day; Blood Fest; Shortcomings; Banana Split; BMT: Tarot; Notes: Spiderman guy. You’d recognize him. He’s also in Novocaine, and in some upcoming mystery movie (show?) called The Wrecking Crew.)

Budget/Gross – $8 million / Domestic: $18,771,004 (Worldwide: $49,256,239)

(That’s fine. Didn’t need the worldwide. Again, Horror can do no wrong. You basically can’t lose money with tiny films like this.)

Rotten Tomatoes – 17% (11/63)

(Let’s go for a consensus: Personality-less and trite, you’ve seen all this before, and with a PG-13 rating you are guaranteed not to be scared.)

Reviewer Highlight: It’s trying to be everything at once, and ends up feeling flimsy, empty, and again, very, very frustrating. – Matthew Jackson, AV Club

Poster – Larr-O

(It honestly seems a tad cheap. That gross hand. The death card. The only mildly interesting font. I’m not feeling it. C-.)

Tagline(s) – Your fate is in the cards. (D)

(Yeah, I know. It’s tarot. Bah, try harder, Tarot. I want to love you so much.)

Keyword(s) – 2024-2024

Top 10: Dune: Part Two (2024), Deadpool & Wolverine (2024), Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024), Civil War (2024), Inside Out 2 (2024), The Fall Guy (2024), Alien: Romulus (2024), Road House (2024), The Substance (2024), The Beekeeper (2024)

Future BMT: 62.3 The Exorcism (2024), 61.6 Imaginary (2024), 61.6 Joker: Folie à Deux (2024), 36.0 Singham Again (2024), 27.4 Slingshot (2024), 27.2 Harold and the Purple Crayon (2024), 25.9 Fighter (2024), 24.8 Devara Part 1 (2024), 19.0 Reagan (2024), 16.7 Here (2024), 11.6 Red One (2024)

BMT: Madame Web (2024), Borderlands (2024), The American Society of Magical Negroes (2024), The Crow (2024), Night Swim (2024), The Strangers: Chapter 1 (2024), Tarot (2024), Argylle (2024), The Watchers (2024), The Garfield Movie (2024), Back to Black (2024)

Best Options (Horror): 65.6 Tarot (2024), 62.3 The Exorcism (2024), 61.6 Imaginary (2024)

(I wonder if we’ll ever get to Imaginary. The Exorcism is probably going to happen only because there will be some allured in completing Russell Crowe films at some point. But Imaginary? Might be for the real Betty Buckley-heads.)

Welcome to Earf (HoE Number 26) – The shortest path through The Movie Database cast lists using only BMT films is: Olwen Fouéré is No. 8 billed in Tarot and No. 3 billed in The Watchers, which also stars Dakota Fanning (No. 1 billed) who is in The Cat in the Hat (No. 2 billed) which also stars Mike Myers (No. 1 billed) who is in The Love Guru (No. 1 billed) which also stars Jessica Alba (No. 2 billed) who is in Mechanic: Resurrection (No. 2 billed) which also stars Jason Statham (No. 1 billed) who is in In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale (No. 1 billed) which also stars Leelee Sobieski (No. 3 billed) who is in Here on Earth (No. 1 billed) => (8 + 3) + (1 + 2) + (1 + 1) + (2 + 2) + (1 + 1) + (3 + 1) = 26. If we were to watch Hide and Seek we can get the HoE Number down to 23.

Notes – Loosely based on the 1992 novel “Horrorscope”, written by Nicholas Adams.

The tarot card deck used in the movie was specifically created for it.

The title card appears nearly 17 minutes into the run-time.

The directors Spenser Cohen and Anna Halberg are among the well-wishers in Hailey’s email.

Elise is a Libra, Lucas is a Capricorn, Madeline is a Pisces, Paxton is a Taurus, Grant is a Leo, Hayley is an Aquarius and Paige is Virgo

The Crow (2024) Recap

Jamie

We spotted The Crow from a million miles away and I declared “If this does not qualify for BMT then we may as well close shop because it won’t be a world we want to BMT in.” Thank heavens The Crow delivered, otherwise you (and by you, I mean the bots at Internet Archive) wouldn’t be reading this right now. It was a Madame Web level disaster waiting to happen to the point where we didn’t even care to do it Live. We had already waited a while for the film to come out… what’s a few more months? In preparation, I of course watched the original film and at first I was like “what in the world?” but then I started to vibe with it. I also really appreciated a couple moments where in creating the dour rainy world of The Crow they employed some miniature work.

To recap, Eric is a drug addict in rehab. He’s just real brooding and dark but is handsome. You wouldn’t understand. Shelly is also dark and brooding but is a beautiful girl also with drug problems. You wouldn’t understand. No one understands. That is until Shelly gets a video from her friend Zadie that is like… wow. Soon the henchmen of the eeeevil Vincent Roeg are after her for that video. Before they can snag her, though, she is snagged for possession and sent to rehab. Eric and Shelly mean and it’s like… wow. But in a different way than the video. You wouldn’t understand. But they understand… each other. When trouble comes for Shelly, Eric is there to help her escape and soon they are in looooooovveee. They are just a couple of young people having fun while sticking their middle finger up at the world. Wooooo. But then they get murdered. Sad. Eric ends up in purgatory where he is offered a deal: kill Roeg, who actually works for the devil, and he can be with Shelly. He immediately agrees. He becomes… The Crow. He goes around killing people because he’s invincible, slowly working his way up the chain towards Roeg. But then he finds the video. It shows Roeg forcing Shelly to kill a woman. He’s shocked (shocked!). He’s not so sure he loves Shelly. Without the power of love he is able to be killed and only by promising to exchange his soul for Shelly’s is he given a second chance. This time he don’t miss. He slays everyone with super dark and cool moves. Roeg attempts to steal his powers in a climactic battle, but Eric is able to trick him and kill him and save Shelly. Ultimately he sacrifices himself for Shelly… for love. THE END

I have to give this movie a lot of credit. They could have just remade the original film. Swap out the music, but otherwise just keep it more or less the same. Or they could have made it even more like the original source. But they did neither. They basically went their own way with the idea of The Crow. So I can see why they might be excited about it. But this really isn’t it. It’s quite bad. The characters are unlikeable pretty much from top to bottom. The additional supernatural element of the bad guy is kind of dumb (but you also need it because how else is Danny Huston going to be your bad guy?). And worst of all… it kind of comes off lame. I got a deep waft of lameness off this guy. But they tried.

Hot Take Clam Bake! I think Eric probably should have killed Roeg for his own life in the end. He barely knew Shelly. She killed someone! What else has she done? He doesn’t know… because he barely knows her. And as we all know, you can’t love Shelly the way she deserves until you love yourself. And if you love yourself then isn’t that the real true love (awww). And if that’s the true love then maybe that’s what gave him his dope Crow powers. Thus… keep it for yourself, bro. Treat yourself. Hot Take Temperature: Sweet guitar licks.

Patrick?

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! *Gif of me looking extremely confused and distressed watching this film* Let’s go!

The Good? I’ll say this, I guess I can understand why someone would look at this and think to themselves, this is unique, this is creative, this is interesting, this is what film should be. Taking chances means not all of the chances are going to work out right? I can see why someone would say that.

The Bad? Literally everything about this movie. It is a slap in the face. It is a slap in the face to fans of The Crow, and it is a slap in the face to someone like me who merely appreciates the idea of Squalor Porn films like The Crow. This takes that concept, and then flushed it down the toilet. As I told Jamie: “Imagine The Crow, but now the movie is filled with the worst people you’ve ever met.” The entire first half of this film is, arguably, mentally ill young adults hanging around and being self-destructive and we are supposed to understand this as the pinnacle of love somehow? The back half of the film gets closer to what The Crow seems to actually be about (a rad goth guy who through the power of love becomes an invincible revenge demon?), but by that point I so distrusted the makers of this film it was all for naught. This is the worst film of 2024. Bar none, it is the film I would say encapsulates the 2024 class of bad movies.

The BMT? I think so. Out of all of the films of 2024 if we were to re-watch one I think it would ultimately be this one because it is just so weird. IT also helps that The Crow as a series has several quite notable potential friends floating around, so once we do those as flotsam in the future we’ll also have a few other weird ones to draw from as bad movie Crow-adjacent cinema.

Batch image processing! Now this is what I call flawless AI classification. Right? … Right? WRONG. Well, it is better. The exact same experiment from last time but using batch image processing:

So now when Revenge of the Nerds 2 (position 1 in experiment #1) is right next to Jaws 3D (always position 0) it still gets it. The thing that is a bit mind bending is the shifting. For whatever reason it just cannot seem to get the index straight. I’ll spare you the other graphs but things I’ve tried: (1) Giving it the number of elements and the range of possible indices (helps with errors for sure, it will no longer go off the end of the array, but it didn’t fix the shifting). (2) Inverting it, i.e. putting Revenge of the Nerds 2 first and moving Jaws 3D (no change). (3) Adding more posters, positing that it was the end of the array that was causing issues (just makes the end more fuzzy).

The main complaint I would have here is that there is really very little recourse in getting it to give consistent indexing back, and without consistent indexing batch processing is incredibly difficult. I’m sure there is some giant query that will help, but this is already a tiny bit discouraging since it isn’t that it is just missing out on films occasionally. Rather it is identifying the poster correctly and then just returning an off-by-one index with no indication of when the error is occurring (Experiment #10).

I literally am at a loss to think of any superlatives this fits into in the end. Not even a twist or even really a MacGuffin. The film is an amorphous blob operating as IP-driven non-IP. It is wild. This film is BMT, it is a weird view into what 2024 means as a film year.

Learn all about corvids I would guess in the Quiz. Cheerios,

The Sklogs

The Crow (2024) Quiz

What form does purgatory take in the Dante poem Purgatorio? An island-mountain? Hell naw, you know that shit is a rail-yard filled with crows. Let’s go!

Pop Quiz Hot Shot!

1) Brandon Lee and Bill Skarsgård played The Crow on the big screen, but Mark Dacascos played him on television in The Crow: Stairway to Heaven. He’s been in three BMT films, Cradle 2 the Grave, The Island of Dr. Moreau, and what video game adaptation as Jimmy Lee?

2) The film stars UK musician FKA twigs. What does FKA stand for?

3) A song by Enya is on the soundtrack that is named for a queen of the ancient British Iceni tribe who led an uprising against the conquering Romans around AD 60. What is this queen’s name?

4) The crow is (famously, if you are into early Reddit lore) a corvid. Corvids include magpies, rooks, jays, among many others. What corvid shares a name with a type of doll often seen around the Christmas season?

5) The Crow was nominated for two Razzie awards, but the most surprising was that it didn’t win for Worst Remake, Rip-off, or Sequel. Which (future BMT) film ultimately won that crown?

Bonus NYTimes Listing Question: On November 22, 1996 The Crow premiered on primetime on Channel 11. Competing with it on HBO was this film:

What is this film?

Answers

The Crow (2024) Preview

The cat was a rousing success. His name was Mr. Whiskers and Patrick loved him with all his heart. The cat loved Mondays and hated lasagna, which went against everything he knew about cats, but he was a perfect pet despite these deficiencies. So Jamie didn’t take to the cat. So what? All that meant was that Patrick and Mr. Whiskers could spend so much more time at the Hallston Public Library. As Patrick spins around the stacks revelling in all the knowledge he could gain, Mr. Whiskers gives out a loud “Meow.” “What is it boy,” Patrick says, hurrying to a corner of the library he hadn’t yet explored. He comes to a screeching halt near Mr. Whiskers and gives out a gasp. “My word, they have comic books too?!” Patrick says. “What doesn’t this place have?!” A nearby nerd gives a snort and goes back to his comic. Patrick narrows his eyes. But there is no time to pound some dweebs. He goes to where Mr. Whiskers is crouched and his eyes alight on the comic (or more accurately, the graphic novel) that he is pawing. “But that can’t be right, Mr. Whiskers,” Patrick says confused. “It looks too sad. Jamie needs something happy.” But Mr. Whiskers is insistent, pawing and meowing even more urgently. Patrick thinks for a moment and the lightbulb goes off. “Mr. Whiskers, you are a genius.” A week later he surprises Jamie during one of his many naps. “Hey buddy,” Patrick says softly, shaking his shoulder and bringing a crate onto his bed. “You wanna say hello to my other little friend?” Jamie just rolls over and pretends not to hear him, but shoots upright as the creature in the cage gives out a loud “Caw!” That’s right! That’s the ‘Caw!’ of The Crow remake. I had my eye on this for ages, but we had to bide out time for the end of the year cycle. It’s just too good. Let’s go!

The Crow (2024) – BMeTric: 67.8; Notability: 33

StreetCreditReport.com – BMeTric: top 1.6%; Notability: top 5.6%; Rotten Tomatoes: top 9.3%; Higher BMeT: Madame Web, Borderlands, The American Society of Magical Negroes, Uglies; Higher Notability: Joker: Folie à Deux, Reagan, Borderlands, The Garfield Movie, Madame Web, Back to Black, Here, Argylle, Kraven the Hunter, Lift, Rebel Moon – Part Two: The Scargiver, Red One, Jackpot!, Atlas; Lower RT: Tyler Perry’s Divorce in the Black, Megamind vs. The Doom Syndicate, Borderlands, Madame Web, Air Force One Down, Mother of the Bride, Kraven the Hunter, Breathe, Uglies, Rebel Moon – Part Two: The Scargiver, Justice League: Crisis on Infinite Earths – Part Two, Tarot, Reagan, Killer Heat, Canary Black, Mea Culpa, Atlas, Night Swim, Dear Santa, Trigger Warning, and 1 more; Notes: Tyler Perry had a film this year? It got 0 good reviews out of 17, that is incredible. Welp, we’ll never watch that.

RogerEbert.com – 2.5 stars – There’s a scene in the movie where Eric and Shelly are walking across a bridge and Shelly not-really-jokingly talks about jumping, and they envision a double-jump ending in their deaths, and Shelly imagines that teenagers would make shrines to them. I think that in time, teenagers will make their own shrines to this movie, in their own ways. It’s the kind of movie where, if you saw it when you were 14, you’d see it ten or twenty more times, and be inspired to check out books from the library, maybe memorize some poetry.

(Oh wowza, I really really disagree with that. That feels like a ludicrous take. No teenager is watching this film. And the idea that watching the two worst people you’ve ever met read poetry would inspire someone to do the same is a terrifying prospect indeed.)

Trailer – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4CLE3pWAAr8/

(“Quite brilliantly broken”, immediately I find these characters obnoxious. That fundamentally is the issue with the film. I always describe it as: Imagine if the worst people you’ve ever met became superheroes. Rough stuff.)

Directors – Rupert Sanders – ( Known For: Snow White and the Huntsman; Ghost in the Shell; BMT: The Crow; Notes: My god, that is a pretty dire career. Amazing that he’s only managed one BMT film.)

Writers – James O’Barr – ( Known For: The Crow; The Crow: Salvation; The Crow: Wicked Prayer; Future BMT: The Crow: City of Angels; BMT: The Crow; Notes: The writer of the comic book. His story is pretty interesting, it is worth a read, a true blue independent comic book creator.)

Zach Baylin – ( Known For: King Richard; Gran Turismo; Creed III; Bob Marley: One Love; The Order; BMT: The Crow; Notes: Nominated for an Oscar for King Richard. Again a little surprised he only has one … Creed III is pretty rough.)

William Josef Schneider – ( BMT: The Crow; Notes: Kind of weird, he is an executive producer, and this is all he has basically in his filmography.)

Actors – Bill Skarsgård – ( Known For: Deadpool 2; It; Eternals; John Wick: Chapter 4; It Chapter Two; Atomic Blonde; Barbarian; The Devil All the Time; Anna Karenina; Boy Kills World; Assassination Nation; Villains; Nine Days; Simple Simon; Arn: The Kingdom at the End of the Road; Behind Blue Skies; Naked Singularity; Simon och ekarna; The Crown Jewels; Kenny Begins; Future BMT: Allegiant; BMT: The Crow; Notes: Swedish. I did like him in It. And nice, he voiced the Deviant Kro in the MCU… I wonder when that is coming back.)

FKA twigs – ( Known For: Honey Boy; BMT: The Crow; Notes: Really no offense, but she was perplexing in this movie. I’ve heard good things about Honey Boy though, maybe I should watch that to get a better sense of her range.)

Danny Huston – ( Known For: Wonder Woman; Children of Men; The Aviator; Robin Hood; Game Night; 21 Grams; 30 Days of Night; The Constant Gardener; Leaving Las Vegas; The Kingdom; Marie Antoinette; Big Eyes; Edge of Darkness; Hitchcock; The Proposition; Stolen; Birth; Stan & Ollie; The Professor; IO; Future BMT: How to Lose Friends & Alienate People; The Warrior’s Way; Marlowe; BMT: X-Men Origins: Wolverine; Clash of the Titans; The Number 23; Wrath of the Titans; Angel Has Fallen; The Crow; Notes: He plays the bad guy. I feel like I know his as big bads in things like Angel Has Fallen. He’s apparently in the new Naked Gun starring Liam Neeson. That could be wild.)

Budget/Gross – $50 million / Domestic: $9,275,659 (Worldwide: $23,999,106)

(I mean, horrific. The idea of making The Crow at all is one thing, but making it like this? Then you deserve to lose money. This movie is actually genuinely kind of offensive towards the source material.)

Rotten Tomatoes – 22% (29/134): Dreary and poorly paced, this reimagining of The Crow doesn’t have enough personality or pulse to merit the resurrection.

(It doesn’t. But also it changes everything about it to something worse. You might think I’m joking but it literally takes every single thing about the original movie and makes it worse.)

Reviewer Highlight: It’s like an anti-entertainment protest. – Robert Abele, Los Angeles Times

Poster – The Bro

(Boy that’s bad. I like the font, but only because it’s drawn. But this just doesn’t look professional to me. Like fan art or something. C-.)

Tagline(s) – True love never dies. (C+)

(This is almost comically generic, but it’s also appropriate, so I’m a bit torn. I’ll boost it up a bit. But really the general concept of a film isn’t also its tagline usually.)

Keyword(s) – 2024-2024

Best Options (Action): 67.6 The Crow (2024), 36.0 Singham Again (2024), 25.9 Fighter (2024), 24.8 Devara Part 1 (2024), 11.6 Red One (2024)

(This was by far the best one. And Again, when we watched this Red One wasn’t out yet, otherwise … well, we would have probably watched both because we would have moved this one somewhere else. There was no way we were missing out on The Crow.)

Welcome to Earf (HoE Number 19) – The shortest path through The Movie Database cast lists using only BMT films is: Danny Huston is No. 3 billed in The Crow and No. 4 billed in The Number 23, which also stars Virginia Madsen (No. 2 billed) who is in Firewall (No. 3 billed) which also stars Harrison Ford (No. 1 billed) who is in Hollywood Homicide (No. 1 billed) which also stars Josh Hartnett (No. 2 billed) who is in Here on Earth (No. 3 billed) => (3 + 4) + (2 + 3) + (1 + 1) + (2 + 3) = 19. If we were to watch Marlowe we can get the HoE Number down to 17.

Notes – When asked if he had seen the trailer for this film, Ernie Hudson replied, “I haven’t seen it. The actor – who I can’t name – is playing the lead, I love and respect. But for me, ‘The Crow’ is Brandon Lee. I can’t imagine… let’s hope they don’t try to redo him, that they do their own thing with it and take it in a different direction. I haven’t seen [the trailer]. I haven’t seen any of the other ‘Crow’ [movies] because of what happened to Brandon.” In an earlier interview in 2021, Hudson explained he hadn’t even seen the 1994 original, saying, “It breaks my heart, and I can’t get past it. So much of it was action stuff, but Brandon and I got a chance to work together.”

Luke Evans, while still working on the production of The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies (2014), held a live Facebook Q&A. During some of the questions that he personally responded to, when asked about joining the “The Crow” reboot as the leading character, Evans stated that he felt inclined to drop out from the project as he felt “unworthy” of portraying the late Brandon Lee’s most iconic role.

F. Javier Gutiérrez was at one point courted to direct the film, but not as a remake. Crow creator J. O’Barr admitted in an interview that he was impressed when he saw that Gutierrez’s take would be a black-and-white shot-for-shot remake of the original graphic novel using both panels and dialogue directly from the source material for story-boarding to be as faithful as humanly possible to the comic. Due to production troubles and delays in shooting, Gutierrez dropped out to direct Rings (2017).

At one point the Crow film was intended to be called “The Crow Reborn” based on a screenplay by Cliff Dorfman being an original story about an undead police officer returning to avenge his family. The script attracted the attention of Jason Momoa, who was then cast in the lead role, but the production fell through when Momoa left because he didn’t like the constant rewrites which wore away any semblance of the Dorfman script, turning it into more of a remake of the 1994 film and less the original story he signed on for. Dorman himself disowned the resulting film after seeing a screening, posting his response to possible fan skepticism of the film’s quality writing simply, “It is. And don’t.”

During a Reddit AMA, Shannon Lee, sister of Brandon Lee was asked if there should be a remake of The Crow (1994) to which she responded, “I don’t think they should remake ‘The Crow.’ Booooo!”

The Garfield Movie Recap

Jamie

There is a selfish desire on my part to have this or any other Chris Pratt film include a submarine. A submarine opens the film Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (although I feel like at times I was promised more… like a dino on a sub). The Tomorrow War suggests the possibility and then I could have sworn that The Electric State, the tragic Russo Brother’s Netflix film, had one, although the evidence appears to be scrubbed from the internet. I was slowly nurturing a beautiful Chris Pratt Submarine Trilogy and there is a real possibility that both The Tomorrow War and The Electric State don’t have one! In any case, given Chris Pratt’s career it would be nice if one of the submarine films came from his animated efforts. So The Garfield Movie? Are you going to have one? Don’t worry if you don’t. It probably won’t change my opinion of you. Besides, I’m guessing one of the Mario sequels will have one. Everyone loves submarines.

To recap, Garfield is a little kitten on the streetz. His daddio, a gruff street cat, tells him to stay put while he finds food, but the little kitten gets scared and wanders off to an Italian restaurant. There he befriends Jon Arbuckle. Flash forward to Garfield and Odie having a great life with Jon. That is until they are abducted as part of an elaborate plot to entrap Garfield’s dad, Vic, and force him to steal a large quantity of milk for the eeeevil Jinx. They agree and head to Lactose Farms. When they get there they agree to help free the girlfriend of Otto the bull, the former mascot of the farm, in exchange for help in getting into the farm. While they train for the big heist Garfield comes to learn that Vic actually did care for him. In fact it’s why Jinx knew that stealing Garfield would help trap Vic. When they enter the farm, Jinx double crosses them and calls in the fuzz. Turns out it was a double trap. Garfield and Odie help get the milk out and are shocked when Vic leaves them behind to deliver the milk to Jinx in hopes that it will mean she will leave Garfield alone. Nope! Jinx captures Vic and plans on killing him. Meanwhile, Garfield and Odie are picked up at the pound by Jon. At home Garfield finds evidence that Vic really did care for him and heads out to save him. In a big climactic scene Garfield saves the day, Jinx’s plan is foiled, and Vic is integrated into their family with Jon. THE END.

If you will allow me a comparison to another Chris Pratt animated film, I am someone who enjoyed The Super Mario Bros. Movie. I thought it was fun to look at and set up the quest in a way that was consistent with a lot of what I loved about the characters. It also had moments that I thought were genuinely funny. As I said, I enjoyed it. This is kind of the opposite. It’s pleasant enough and I do think it is nice to look at, but what in the world does this have to do with Garfield? This actually has a lot more in common with Heathcliff than anything that happens to Garfield. Just a baffling decision on the entire plot of this movie and introduction of Garfield’s dad, Vic… literally decades and decades of Garfield strips to pull from and you choose to make up a bunch of nondescript new ones? It smacks a bit of this being a not-Garfield script that got turned into a Garfield script. May as well also mention that this animated film is rife with product placements… which is kind of odd for an animated film not named Foodfight!

Hot Take Clam Bake! We are gearing up for the big reveal that Vic’s son was not Garfield after all. He was adopted by Jon but eventually returns from whence he came: the junkyard. In the sequel the real Garfield will return, take his rightful place (with his rightful voice: Bill Murray) while the old Chris Pratt Garfield will take back his original name: Heathcliff. He’s then look at the camera and say “you mothers really thought that was a Garfield movie. You are a bunch of dummies. Grow up.” Hot Take Temperature: piping hot lasagna.

Patrick?

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! *Gif of me watching some television, hating Mondays, and eating some lasagna (which I call ‘sagna for short)* Let’s go!

The Good? … Well … I mean, if I was a child I guess it would be acceptable? I really don’t get this film. Let’s just skip to the next section.

The Bad? What is this movie? Like why is this film? I do not understand how you end up with a Garfield film about Garfield being reunited with his father which is basically invented whole cloth for this movie. Why? Why is this the thing that people would ever want to see? Here’s the thing. I just want to see Garfield stories. Make it about Jon going on a date with the vet and Garfield trying to sabotage it initially until he realizes he loves Jon and so then the mission changes: to make this date a success! Make it about Garfield dealing with Nermal. Or Odie. Or whatever. The plot of this film is absurd. Wait … wait a second. I know perfectly how to describe this film: a slap in the face to fans. It really is like a puppet dancing like a Garfield film, but is actually not at all a Garfield film. It’s straight weird.

The BMT? I mean … could it be? No, I refuse. I refuse to accept that this film I will never ever ever ever watch again could be BMT. I refuse. This film is bad. Man … starting with three Bads in a row. Not a great year 2024.

Yeah, I spent an inordinate amount of time working through some of the issues with video as batch image processing idea. Some highlights: (1) The frames leak (obviously) so having something like Jaws 3-D next to Revenge of the Nerds 2 and asking if they have a shark in them, it is much less likely to correctly mark out Revenge of the Nerds 2. I would presume this is because it is now primed (in context) to look for a big ol’ shark face instead of a fin. (2) The timestamp determination is incredibly fuzzy, almost to the point of being useless. (3) You can figure out the frame is taken from between 0.25-0.5 in each second which I suppose is amusing. I’ll leave you with one graphic:

As I said, it is a little crazy just how unlikely it is to identify Revenge of the Nerds 2 (in position 1 in Experiment #1 for example) when it is close to Jaws 3D (always position 0). The kicker? Batch image processing actually exists, so this was all kind of just a thought experiment in the end anyways.

Obviously a Planchet (Who?) with Odie, look in your heart, you know it to be true. Some Product Placement (What?) with things like Catflix, a play off of Netflix. And I’m just going to leave it with saying the film is Bad.

Learn about cats in the Quiz. Cheerios,

The Sklogs

The Garfield Movie Quiz

What was the heaviest cat in history? Himmy? Hell naw, you know it is Garfield. He fucking loooooves Lasagna. Let’s go!

Pop Quiz Hot Shot!

1) Lasagna is possibly the oldest type of pasta. And to make the dish (also called lasagna) you will it with cheese, seasonings, ground meat, tomato sauce and what mother sauce of French cuisine?

2) I mean, Garfield’s least favorite song is probably Monday, Monday. That song was the only number one hit for what quartet?

3) Remember Garfield and Friends? That’s not the question. The question is: that show had two separate 12 minute programs, one being Garfield. The “friends” refers to what other syndicated Jim Davis comic strip?

4) Famously Garifled has been voiced by Lorenzo Music in the original cartoon, and then Bill Murray in the movies (and now Chris Pratt … no comment). Lorenzo Music also played what other animated cartoon character with a connection to Bill Murray?

5) Apparently there is a video game in development, but over the years there have been numerous Garfield computer and video games. One, called Garfield Labyrinth, was only called such in Europe. In North America it was reskinned as The Real Ghostbusters, and in Japan it was the fourth entry of the Crazy Castle series starring what classic character?

Bonus NYTimes Listing Question: Going head to head with Garfield Gets a Life, the last animated special, is this famous film:

What is this film?

Answers

The Garfield Movie Preview

Jamie was clearly depressed. While it had seemed that he had gone through all the stages of grief in a matter of moments and lived his life to the fullest with Samantha, it now was clear that that was all a mask. That he was stuck at stage four and couldn’t shake it. Patrick tried everything. He baked him his favorite cake (an inverse cake where the cake was actually the icing and the icing was the cake), but he barely took a nibble. He showed him his favorite film (not a film, really, but just the motorcycle sex scene from Woman of Desire), but he didn’t even crack a smile. He read him his favorite poem (the poem that Rocky reads Adrian in Rocky II), but his eyes remained dry. Even during their daily gymnastics/dance workout Patrick barely gave it his all and called it a day after just two and half hours. “I don’t know what to do,” Patrick says sadly over the phone to Kyle. Kyle couldn’t move to Hallston with his burgeoning family back home but was able to offer at least one piece of advice. “You know, maybe if the usual things aren’t working you have to look outside your own experiences.” After hanging up, Patrick walks to Hallston’s local public library and looks in the “Sad” section. There he finds a book “Are You Sad?” After flipping through it for a moment his eyes alight on a page that makes his eyes gleam. “Library, you’ve done it again, you glorious bastard.” A week later he surprises Jamie at home during one of his lengthy wall-staring sessions and opens a small crate. “Say hello to my little friend,” Patrick says, coining a wholly original phrase. From the box comes a tiny meow. That’s right! It’s the 2024 cycle and we’re doing the hottest cat movie around. Unfortunately 2024 still hasn’t delivered the Heathcliff movie the Gucci crowd is clamoring for, so we’ll settle for The Garfield Movie… ah… well. Alas. Let’s go!

The Garfield Movie (2024) – BMeTric: 37.4; Notability: 54

StreetCreditReport.com – BMeTric: top 13.6%; Notability: top 1.2%; Rotten Tomatoes: top 19.7%; Higher BMeT: Madame Web, Borderlands, The American Society of Magical Negroes, Uglies, The Crow, Night Swim, The Strangers: Chapter 1, Tarot, Trigger Warning, The Exorcism, Imaginary, Joker: Folie à Deux, Mother of the Bride, Hellboy: The Crooked Man, Megamind vs. The Doom Syndicate, Rebel Moon – Part Two: The Scargiver, Mea Culpa, The Deliverance, Breathe, Time Cut, and 14 more; Higher Notability: Joker: Folie à Deux, Reagan, Borderlands; Lower RT: Tyler Perry’s Divorce in the Black, Megamind vs. The Doom Syndicate, Borderlands, Madame Web, Mother of the Bride, Kraven the Hunter, Breathe, Uglies, Rebel Moon – Part Two: The Scargiver, Justice League: Crisis on Infinite Earths – Part Two, Tarot, Reagan, Killer Heat, Canary Black, Mea Culpa, Atlas, Night Swim, Dear Santa, Trigger Warning, The Strangers: Chapter 1, and 25 more; Notes: The Notability is insane on this. Only Joker 2, Borderlands, and … Reagan? Wait, Reagan had over 50 people involved in it with a wikipedia page? That makes no sense.

RogerEbert.com – 1.5 stars – I cannot think of a single reason for another Garfield movie, and apparently, the people who made this couldn’t, either. It reminds me of the legendary comment about “Nancy,” which, like “Garfield,” was originally a comic strip known for the spareness of its design and the helium-weight lightness of its humor. When asked to explain “Nancy,” someone once said, “It takes less energy to read it than to skip it.” Those who have children pestering them to see “Garfield” will feel the same way about this film. It’s not awful. It may be too much to say that kids will enjoy it, but it is probably fair to say they will feel that they have been entertained. But those accompanying the children may feel dispirited by the emptiness that emanates from a film that is just an IP cash grab. And parents may have some concerns, discussed below.

(That quote about Nancy is hilarious. And yeah, that is basically how this film feels. It was easier just to watch it than to try and think about something else to watch.)

Trailer – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yk2Ej59DnrE/

(Is this trailer real …. Am I going crazy. It is just repeating over and over with a song behind it. Are they going to grow up and the movie explained a little at all? Am I going crazy? It is on the Sony Pictures Entertainment channel … It tags Snoop Dogg, so he would have done something about it if it was fake. It says Final Trailer. I DON’T UNDERSTAND HOW IS THIS A TRAILER WHY IS THIS MAKING ME WANT TO WATCH THIS FILM. This is infuriating.)

Directors – Mark Dindal – ( Known For: The Emperor’s New Groove; Cats Don’t Dance; Future BMT: Chicken Little; BMT: The Garfield Movie; Notes: It is kind of weird … because I felt like Chicken Little was relatively well received, but actually it qualifies. He was like the main guy behind The Emperor’s New Groove, which was excellent, but also apparently was a mess behind the scenes.)

Writers – Mark Torgove and Paul A. Kaplan – ( BMT: The Garfield Movie; Notes: He wrote for television, and even then mostly an episode at a time. Seems like an interesting career path.)

David Reynolds – ( Known For: Finding Nemo; Mulan; The Emperor’s New Groove; Atlantis: The Lost Empire; Fantasia 2000; Future BMT: Chicken Little; BMT: The Garfield Movie; Notes: Nominated for an Oscar for Finding Nemo. Weird he didn’t get a credit for Finding Dory. He has some sort of TV Movie series called Captain Jokes Parrot … Oh I get it, Captain Jack Sparrow.)

Jim Davis – ( BMT: Garfield: The Movie; Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties; The Garfield Movie; Notes: He made the comic strip. Watch the I Think You Should Leave sketch about the woman who bought his house.)

Gene Stupnitsky and Lee Eisenberg – ( Known For: Bad Teacher; Good Boys; BMT: Year One; Notes: Genuinely curious if they are actually going to make a Bad Teacher 2 ever. Seems unlikely. Isn’t Cameron Diaz semi-retired?)

Actors – Chris Pratt – ( Known For: Avengers: Endgame; Guardians of the Galaxy; Avengers: Infinity War; Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2; Jurassic World; Her; Moneyball; Thor: Love and Thunder; Wanted; Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3; The Lego Movie; Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom; Zero Dark Thirty; The Super Mario Bros. Movie; The Tomorrow War; The Magnificent Seven; Onward; Jennifer’s Body; The Five-Year Engagement; Delivery Man; Future BMT: Passengers; What’s Your Number?; Take Me Home Tonight; Jem and the Holograms; BMT: Jurassic World Dominion; Bride Wars; Movie 43; The Garfield Movie; Notes: His career path is incredible. By which I mean it has now crossed over and become a bit embarrassing. I mean, I would take the money, but like The Electric State I think maybe marks him crossing the Rubicon into Bruce Willis cash grab territory.)

Samuel L. Jackson – ( Known For: Pulp Fiction; Django Unchained; Inglourious Basterds; The Avengers; Avengers: Endgame; Goodfellas; Avengers: Infinity War; Iron Man; Jurassic Park; Avengers: Age of Ultron; Thor; Captain America: The Winter Soldier; Captain America: The First Avenger; Iron Man 2; Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace; Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith; The Incredibles; Kill Bill: Vol. 2; Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones; Kingsman: The Secret Service; Future BMT: The Legend of Tarzan; Sphere; Star Wars: The Clone Wars; Spiral; Basic; The Spirit; Loaded Weapon 1; Formula 51; The Man; One Eight Seven; Life Itself; Freedomland; Amos & Andrew; Fluke; Strictly Business; BMT: Jumper; Glass; Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard; Argylle; xXx: State of the Union; Shaft; Twisted; The Garfield Movie; Notes: It is kind of crazy to realize he was nominated for an Oscar for Pulp Fiction. I guess I never quite realized how mainstream it was. Three acting nominations is crazy.)

Hannah Waddingham – ( Known For: Les Misérables; The Fall Guy; Hocus Pocus 2; Winter Ridge; Future BMT: How to Lose Friends & Alienate People; BMT: The Hustle; The Garfield Movie; Notes: Won a Primetime Emmy for Ted Lasso (3 nominations) and nominated again for Krapopolis as a voice actor. Hocus Pocus 2 was awful, I really don’t get how they botch those legacy-quels so consistently.)

Budget/Gross – $60 million / Domestic: $91,956,547 (Worldwide: $257,211,519)

(That isn’t bad at all. Not at all. And that is why making a dumb Garfield movie can never be a bad deal. Even when the plot is about reuniting Garfield with the father no one knew about because he wasn’t in the comic strip at all.)

Rotten Tomatoes – 37% (50/136): The Garfield Movie rolls along at a zany enough clip to be diverting for kids, but this animated adventure doesn’t much resemble Jim Davis’ iconically grumpy creation.

(It does not, and that is the main crime. It is one thing to be trite and dumb. It is another to be trite and dumb and also not to resemble the thing you are trying desperately to mimic.)

Reviewer Highlight: Hyperkinetic stuff, lots of famous voice stars, almost no relationship to the original source… it just left me thinking of Bill Murray. – Mark Kermode

Poster – Heathcliff: The Movie

(It’s very orange. I like that. I like the font. It’s clever in some ways. It’s not perfect, obviously, but I like what they did here. B+.)

Tagline(s) – He gets bigger. (C+)

(My brain isn’t totally comprehending what we have here but… I think I like it… I think. Like he’s a fat cat, right? And this is a movie, which is bigger than a comic strip, right? OK. Are we sure this shouldn’t have been “He gets even bigger”? I’m going to be kind to this one.)

Keyword(s) – 2024-2024

Best Options (Comedy): 37.4 The Garfield Movie (2024), 27.2 Harold and the Purple Crayon (2024), 11.6 Red One (2024)

(Rest Assured, Red One wasn’t out yet when we watched this movie. So Harold and the Purple Crayon was the other one and there was no way I was watching that. That somehow looked even more trite than this did.)

Welcome to Earf (HoE Number 14) – The shortest path through The Movie Database cast lists using only BMT films is: Samuel L. Jackson is No. 2 billed in The Garfield Movie and No. 3 billed in Jumper, which also stars Michael Rooker (No. 5 billed) who is in Here on Earth (No. 4 billed) => (2 + 3) + (5 + 4) = 14. If we were to watch The Spirit, and The Black Dahlia we can get the HoE Number down to 13.

Notes – Garfield shown as a kitten crosses the street there is a place he passes by called Lorenzo’s Music Store which is a nod to Garfield’s original voice actor Lorenzo Music.

Frank Welker, who’s voiced Garfield since 2007, expressed his disappointment at not being asked to voice the character for this film.

The code that Garfield uses to unlock his phone is ‘061978’, the date of the first “Garfield” comic strip.

The number on the waste container where Garfield is left behind is the date of the very first Garfield comic strip, 06-19-78.

The scene of Jon bathing Garfield is reminiscent of the September 5, 1978 strip, where Jon is also seen wearing a helmet and gloves while giving him a bath. Likewise, the follow-up comic has Jon dry up Garfield, which results in Garfield being all fluffed up, much like in the movie.

Night Swim Recap

Jamie

It feels like we have gotten back to a place where films like the haunted swimming pool movie aren’t getting unacceptably high RT scores. In 2024 we had a plethora of horror films to choose from. Night Swim was a major horror release too and still critics didn’t lean on the “well this isn’t for me, but if it’s for you then maybe you’ll like it,” kind of review. Perhaps because now there are more critics that would say horror is actually for them. Not sure. Regardless, it feels good that I can look at the trailer for a horror film and go ‘that looks like trash,’ and then a month later it comes out and gets the trash reviews it needs for me to watch it. BMT life.

To recap, Ray and Eve are just trying to navigate the end of Ray’s baseball career due to MS, while also taking care of their children, Izzy and Elliot. While out in MN looking for a handicap accessible home to move to, they stumble upon an older house with a swimming pool. Ray, who isn’t quite ready to totally call it quits, is drawn to it. In particular the pool, which he uses to convince Eve that they should buy that house instead. As they clean up the pool, Ray scratches his hand. The pool maintenance man also reveals that it’s a special pool hooked directly to a natural spring. As a result of the scratch, Ray begins to spend more and more time in the pool and his illness seems to recede. He even begins to send out videos to scouts showing what he can do. Meanwhile things are going to shit for everyone else. The kids are attacked. The cat disappears. At a pool party they throw, Ray ends up almost drowning the child of a friend of theirs (as happens). Even begins to investigate the pool and tracks down a previous owner who is pretty willing to offer up the fact that she used the pool to save her son. All she had to do was sacrifice her daughter. No biggie. Even thinks this is a real biggie, actually, and realizes that the pool will kill one of their children in exchange for healing Ray. When she gets back home shit has really hit the fan. Ray is trying to kill everyone. So is the pool. Elliot gets sucked into the water and Eve has to dive and save him. The real Ray is able to realize what is happening and sacrifices himself in order to avoid the sacrifice they fear. Eve then has the pool filled in with concrete to avoid any chance at a sequel. THE END.

I actually really disliked this film. It’s not that I think it’s too silly or poorly made. Really it’s just that when I sit down to watch a movie called Night Swim I don’t really want to watch a drama about a dude navigating this end of his professional baseball career. If the film was called Sad Baseball Dad, then yeah, I’d be picking up what they were putting down. As it is, this is simply a really, really bad horror film that spends far too much of the film messing around and far too little time scaring you or doing fun, spooky things with the haunted pool. Sigh. Why can’t they just give us The Faculty or I Know What You Did Last Summer or even, like, House of Wax? This is just not for me. But maybe you’ll like this sad baseball dad movie. As for Revolution, I can certainly see why they took one look at this film and thought “goo!” and shelved it. It’s boring, the acting is bad, it’s chopped to shit and that’s still not the worst part. It’s unpatriotic! You think maybe an American audience might not take kindly to an “actually, the American army and British army were both pretty terrible” take on the gritty realities of war? What a blunder. I’m actually offended by it. Booooo, Revolution.

Hot Take Clam Bake! Oh, that pool’s coming back. Straight-to-VOD Night Swim 2: The Deep End is going to be made despite that pool getting filled in with concrete. They’re going to find out that they just filled in their own pool with concrete and didn’t do any more digging (literally or figuratively). Two blocks over we’ll find that there is another pool, fed from the same spring. Spooky ghost girl will be back to haunt (and help?) again. Really the best turn they could do with the franchise would be to pull a Friday the 13th and just change the bad guy to be a slasher eeeevil pool guy. Night Swim 7: Jacob the Pool Guy in Manhattan here we come. Hot Take Temperature: Hollywood hut tub.

Patrick?

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! *Gif of me with super bloodshot eyes slapping a phone out of Jamie’s hand while screaming “STOP THAT”* Let’s go!

The Good? Well, I liked the setting. I used to live in Minnesota, and that plus the random stuff about baseball was just kind of fun. The film isn’t scary, but I’m a spooky scaredy cat, so I do like relaxing horror films and this is at least somewhat relaxing. I thought the daughter in particular was very good, and the two leads (the parents) were also pretty decent.

The Bad? Not scary! The film has to be a little scary. Horror films are supposed to be a little scary. This isn’t scary. The film feels like it is entirely predicated on the idea of “haunted swimming pool” being an interesting concept. By all accounts it is a concept that can hold up in a short … a feature length film less so.

The BMT? I mean, we are starting off strong for 2024, but I still think this is a Bad film. Horror films kind of have to be laughable in the end, this is merely not scary and in the end uninteresting.

I think I mentioned this in a prior Recap, but my boss told me the other day that AI will be a new programming language except “stochastic and a black box”. I’m okay with the first part, but not so with the second … except it does tickle that one part of my brain which is like “wait, is this a puzzle?” Part one in further exploring the poster analysis is trying to formalize a few things and then determining a benchmark.

An initial benchmark is that I took the top 100 films from 1990 (according to IMDb popularity), and noted that three of them feature Mel Gibson prominently (Air America, Bird on a Wire, and Hamlet). I then compiled these 100 into a video and asked the simple query “This video is a series of movie posters. Give me timestamps for whenever Mel Gibson appears.” I asked this 10 times in a row. It was, impressively, 10/10 for all three. I then took the Hamlet poster and created three new posters, one where I blocked out Gibson’s face, one where I blocked off his name at the top of the poster, and one where I blocked off both. The results are here:

Basically: initially I was getting a little impressed it was still getting Mel Gibson pretty well, but once I got to Experiment #3 I realized what was happening. By keeping the original Hamlet in the set it was just using that context to answer the same as the original poster (kind of impressive … also kind of concerning since it means the context is influencing its response as it consumes the images, so it is a little different than batch image processing, but good for video analysis I suppose). The last three experiments are testing this and yeah … it is fairly clear it is probably just using the name to determine if Mel Gibson is in the Hamlet poster. It must be able to do facial recognition in some capacity because it can recognize Emilio Estevez in Mighty Ducks movie clips. There are no words in those clips, so it can’t be cheating. But with posters, I would guess it is going to be woeful for anyone not incredibly famous or without their name on the poster. More analysis to come.

As part of this final “friend” cycle film we watched the Al Pacino classic Revolution. Uh … what the hell is this film? First, Al Pacino appears to be doing a half accent which maybe is supposed to be a mix between colonial American and French Canadian, it is very hard to place. Second, meanwhile, Nastassja Kinski appears to have simply kept her accent. Third, this film seems to want to make a realistic look at the Revolutionary War, but instead seems to have made a very boring look at the Revolutionary War. I do appreciate that they made the British just mustache twirling villains in this. Not a single redeeming quality in the bunch. A bunch of snivelling assholes throughout. Just very funny. A little like how the British are sometimes depicted in Indian period films like RRR. C-, too boring to be good, but too interesting to be truly worthless. Very weird though.

Obviously Setting as a Character (Where?) for Minnesota, which I do love, he is definitely getting treated at the Mayo Clinic, or at least that must be the indication in some way. A new category, The Haunted Blank (Why?) for the core of a movie being a ridiculous Haunted Swimming Pool. You know what? I like the twist that there is nothing to be done, the father has to sacrifice himself to appease the pool. The film, as I said, is Bad though, not scary, not fun.

Learn all about … Swimming pools? In the Quiz. Cheerios,

The Sklogs

Transylvania 6-5000 Recap

Jamie

We are killing ourselves with bonuses here, but fortunately we are really hitting some big time BMT films with them. Like *checks notes* Transylvania 6-5000? Weird. Did you know the title of this is based on a song Pennsylvania 6-5000 from 1940? It’s such a disastrously misguided title that I have to twist myself into pretzels to even justify it. Really the only justification is that Dow Chemical funded the film as a way to convert their Yugoslav dinar into American dollars. Otherwise that money had to stay in Yugoslavia. I can just imagine the ancient executives at Dow Chemical being like “just one note… call the movie Transylvania 6-5000. The kids love that swing music and jazz cigarettes.”

To recap, Jeff Goldblum and Ed Begley Jr. are two reporters for a tabloid. Goldblum aspires to bigger and better things, so is particularly dismayed when a grainy homemade video suggesting the existence of a Frankenstein’s monster gets them assigned to the wild goose chase. Off they go to Transylvania where Goldblum assumes they will find nothing. Jokes on him because Frankenstein is real. Not according to the townspeople, though… or the police… or anyone, really, and Begley Jr. is laughed at whenever he inquires. Goldblum is more fascinated by a lovely tourist, Elizabeth, but slowly also gets a feeling that the town itself is not what it seems. As they begin to have run-ins with several other monsters, such as a vampiress and a wolfman, they grow suspicious of a local mad scientist. Things start to really get out of control when Elizabeth’s daughter appears to be kidnapped by the Frankenstein’s monster. This culminates with them finding the laboratory of the mad scientist, who appears to have created all of the monsters they have run into. But they eventually also learn the truth, that the mad scientist is trying to help them. They reveal this to the town, who eventually welcomes the monsters with open arms. This enables Goldblum and Begley Jr. to get a crazy story out of it all and the publicity of their dreams. THE END.

This is barely a movie. Mel Brooks must have had so much sway back then to get this and Silence of the Hams made simply because someone remotely connected to him (but not Mel Brooks himself) was involved. It’s like a one note SNL sketch stretched out for ages as people scramble around. I guess one positive note about it is that I thought it got better as the film went on (and on and on) and we get some early Michael Richards doing a bunch of crazy shit, which is always a bit fun. But when I say they are scrambling, I really do mean they just kinda bop around doing bullshit for 90% of the film. Not even funny bullshit mostly. But… it’s better than Silence of the Hams (raves Bad Movie Twins).

Hot Take Clam Bake! Keeping the Mel Brooks connections going, are we sure this isn’t riffing on The Elephant Man? Hear me out. We have that hot Brooks connection. We have a doctor taking “freaks” under his care to try to help them be more accepted by society, which he ultimately succeeds in doing. They were shopping the film for five years. It’s a 1985 film. What was five years before that? The Elephant Man. Is it a sequel? Is it a prequel? Is it a reboot? I think it’s a reboot. You heard it here first: Transylvania 6-5000 is a reboot of The Elephant Man franchise (“and it’s better than the original!” – Patrick). Woah! Now, Patrick… that really is a hot take. I don’t think I’d go that far. But you do you. Hot Take Temperature: John Hurt.

Patrick?

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! *Gif of me manically running around a hotel while a young Michael Richards chases me* Let’s go!

The Good? Oooooooof. I mean, some of the jokes I guess. We’ve watched a few spoof films in the past few months. This, I didn’t really expect to be a spoof film, but in many ways it is a spoof film, spoofing the classic Universal Monster Films. And there are little kernels here and there that I can appreciate. The trick on getting into and out of the insane asylum. The monsters all being people looking for medical treatment. Some of Michael Richards gags. As over the top as it often is there are on occasion small funny bits.

The Bad? The film is very unfunny, it very weird, feels interminable, looks like shit, and is basically just two actors playing right into their schtick. I like both of their schticks, but it is just not enough to sustain the whole thing. It is unbelievable this is a wide release film. It looks soooooo bad. It is such a weird film. It is really just a much smaller step up from Silence of the Hams than you would expect.

The BMT? I don’t think so. The film just is too bad and not funny. Same with Silence of the Hams. I would be embarrassed to show this film to someone and that pretty much precludes it from being a true BMT film.

I had to try out this image batch operation on some posters. So I scraped the top 200 posters for 1985 off of IMDb and asked the very scientific query: “Give me all the posters which feature Jeff Goldblum”. The results were: Silverado, Into the Night, Transylvania 6-5000. Those three are correct. In that those are the three major films Jeff Goldblum was in in 1985. The only quibble is that it can’t really differentiate between the name being on the poster and the person appearing on the poster. I don’t think he’s on the Silverado poster, but his name is there. Still, fun.

A real Setting as a Character (Where?) for Transylvania, which, this could be the best Romania film we’ve ever seen. There is a MacGuffin (Why?) in that they are chasing a story about the real deal Frankenstein (and they get more than they bargain for). And again, I liked the twist (that all the monsters are just regular people getting medical treatment), so there. The film is Bad, straight up, not funny and scattershot.

Learn all about monsters I guess in the Quiz. Cheerios,

The Sklogs

Night Swim Quiz

Who was the last person to bat .400 in a season? Ted Williams?! Hell naw, it was Ray Waller. Let’s go!

Pop Quiz Hot Shot!

1) In the movie the main character has been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, which ends his baseball career. MS is an autoimmune disease where the immune system attacks the insulating covers of nerve cells called what?

2) Wyatt Russell, son of Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn, plays a professional baseball player in the film. He actually was a professional athlete for the Richmond Sockeyes, Langley Hornets, and Brampton Capitals among other amateur and professional teams. What sport do these teams represent?

3) Kerry Condon plays the AI voice F.R.I.D.A.Y. in the MCU. The name doesn’t seem to mean anything, or at least no reputable source claims to have an official reason behind it. In actuality it appears to merely be a reference to what Daniel Dafoe book?

4) The Judas Priest song You’ve Got Another Thing Comin’ is on the soundtrack, and it is the only US charting song for the heavy metal band. It isn’t the highest UK sharting song though, that honor belongs to both Living After Midnight and what three word song (a song title often chanted by Beavis & Butthead)?

5) Produced by Blumhouse, there has been over 100 productions by the company in the 25 years of its existence. The company though really got started with the release of what film which ended up being a hugely lucrative franchise for the company?

Bonus NYTimes Listing Question: Spare yourself from this similarly named horror film:

What is this film?

Answers