Tag: Patrick: Bad

Deadly Friend Recap

Jamie

This week we began on the Sklog’s Birthday Bonanza, all movies from 1986, with a movie based on a book, Deadly Friend. As I watched Deadly Friend I couldn’t help but think to myself “Hmmm, I would have thought I’d be having more fun watching this than I am.” After all, this was a film that featured a bright yellow robot as a main character and a death scene involving a zombie throwing a basketball at someone’s head so hard that it literally explodes! But almost everything outside of those two things was pretty meh. But I’ll leave the further analysis of the film to Patrick.

In terms of the adaptation from the book Friend by Diana Henstell, we actually got a bit of a departure going from print to screen. The book was just a classic boy meets girl, boy falls in love with girl, girl is killed by father, boy resurrects girl on a stormy, lightning-filled night. Just classic stuff. At its core it’s just an update of the Frankenstein story to a 1980’s love story. The movie kept a lot of the main storyline (the boy’s weird robot best friend is probably the most peculiar), but scrapped a lot of the Frankenstein heavy features, choosing instead to focus on the love story (and eventually the gore). The most prominent change made was to the motivation of the main character bringing his love interest back from the dead. In the book the boy is distraught over her death and in a fit of anger/love/insanity steals her body from the mortuary and attempts to revive her (to horrifying effect). In the film they seemed to shy away from having the main character straight-up rob a grave. Instead he plans on installing a microchip into her brain to revive her from a coma. Finding that he is too late to the hospital and she has already passed away he decided to go forward with the operation and revives her (to horrifying effect). Just a little softening to make an unlikable character… well, still pretty unlikable. Overall, I found the book to be quite the drag (mostly because the main character is a pain in the ass and super weird) and unsurprisingly the movie it inspired isn’t much better. It’s basically the worst combo. At least with a lot of the other films we watched for this cycle I enjoyed either the film or the book (or both). In this case they both were just OK. Phew… finally no more books to read.

This week Settings 101 was an exhilarating adventure. We’ve been on quite the run of films with distinct locations, so it’s nice to have to work for it this week. While watching the film there were several scenes with fairly clear license plates shown to the viewer. Unfortunately, these license plates turned out to be prop plates with “Drive Safely” written at the top rather than the state name (kind of like the “Great State” license plates of The Tuxedo). Unwilling to give up I scoured the rest of the film for any other indication of location. Fortunately the film opens with a scene of the boy moving with his mother to their new home. He is navigating the highways and byways of America and has a map on his lap. That map? A map of Illinois! Now this would hardly be definitive except that there is a line marking their route through the state ending near the city of Peoria. Now does this really mark their route? How are we to know whether this truly means that the film is set in Illinois or if they just grabbed a random prop map for the film? Who cares! Set in Illinois! A definitive D-. Literally the least amount of information that could possibly be provided and still arguably have a set location. I. Love. It.

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! Deadly Friend? More like Dreadful Fraud, amirite? We watched what I will describe as a very strange movie, and probably for a very strange reason. Let’s just get into it:

  • The Good – Um, honestly nothing? It isn’t really a movie I would say. It is somewhat charming in the technological youth it exhibits in its hopes and dreams of robots at that point in the 80s. But it is a barely movie through and through. Even the practical effects aren’t effective. And acting is okay for what it is I guess. But at that points in time it is a low-budget nonsense movie. I wonder why it has a cult following …
  • The Bad – I’ve already went through it a bit, but the movie is bonkers. It makes little sense in some ways (the main character is either totally insane or a sociopath) and then is only morbidly fascinating in most others. It is boring, and weird, and falls short in almost every way. As Jamie said: it should be more fun, but it isn’t.
  • The BMT – No. Too small and boring. Like Maximum Overdrive it is only BMT in showing how people completely botched horror in the 80’s. Probably the cocaine.

Ah, and why did we watch this movie? Because 1986 is amazing terrible for bad movies. It was between this and Shanghai Surprise as far as we could tell (since we have already seen Cobra) and Shanghai Surprise had to be reserved for Romance … so yeah, getting a bit sparse. This cycle … might be bad.

You know what? I’m going to leave it there. Deadly Friend isn’t very inspiring.

Cheerios,

The Sklogs

The 5th Wave Recap

Jamie

It’s pretty easy to sum up my feelings on The 5th Wave book/movie combo. They are both equally terrible. The book was quite the slog, coming in over 500 pages but reading like if they took the beginning of The Hungers Games (before she even gets picked for the games) and just streeeeeettttcccchhhed that right out. We are made aware of an alien attack and how four waves have decimated the Earth’s population, but then spend hundreds and hundreds of pages with our characters sitting around working out their feelings of loss and despair. They just kind of repeat over and over “I was a normal kid, but now I’m not so normal. Perhaps I am no longer even human. Alas, what is human? What is humanity? What is life? What makes it worth living? Alas. Woe is me.” You spend hours in these kids heads as they mostly do nothing but sit around. It’s tough. As for the film, I would have ventured to say that it was virtually unfilmable. Not enough happens in the book to make it interesting on the screen, and yet there is so much setup (presumably for the other books) that it can’t all fit into an effective storyline. They either needed to totally change the story or combine the books into a single film and just focus on the action that’s available. They, of course, just put the book directly to screen… It was basically the worst of both worlds. Not only did they retain the noticeable lack of action, but they brutalized the characters in order to fit the book into a 100 minute package. God I hope they don’t make more of these. I really don’t want to read the next book. Patrick?

In what has become a standard in the BMT review we are once again grading this film for Settings 101. Like all YA novels, this story takes place in Ohio (fine, it’s just I Am Number Four… but isn’t is weird that a different, alien-centric young adult novel with a number in the title is also set in Ohio?). We first become aware of the setting through news network maps depicting the location of the alien mothership hovering over Ohio. There is also a hint of location during the earthquake/tsunami wave, where our main characters explains that they were able to survive since they only had to worry about a smaller wave coming in from the Great Lakes. This would have been enough for a solid C rating. Adding to the grade though is the vital role that Wright-Patterson Air Force Base (in Dayton, OH) plays in the plot! This is the alien base and is mentioned by name throughout the film. Additionally, when our main character is working her way to the base she uses a map of Ohio to do so with Dayton clearly marked and circled. Similar to Random Hearts I have to ultimately give this an A-. While the presence of Wright-Patterson as a major plot point is good, it could have been replaced by many other air force bases. It’s not iconic or irreplaceable.

Patrick

‘Ello everyone? The 5th Wave probably refers to how many overpowering waves of nausea you’ll experience while watching this film! (straight up roasts up here this week). Alright, we went YA with this, and as an expert in trash YA novels let’s get into it.

  • The Good – The acting across the board was adequate. Moretz and Schreiber (killing it again in BMT, right on the heels of his tour de force performance in Phantoms) in particular made it out mostly unscathed. The story for the most part was interesting, even if I needed Jamie to explain some of the secret book reasoning behind some choices.
  • The Bad – The love triangle was garbage, most adults in the film might as well have been faceless blobs for how relatable they are. The story structure is so classically droll (really? A voiceover flashback combination? I know it can make sense with a book, but mix it up, don’t “read” me the characterization of everybody. They end up completely botching the army storyline involving Zombie (who should have nipped that terrible nickname right in the bud when it came up, it is the worst).
  • The BMT – Yes, but especially if they can squeeze a few more adaptations out of it. I’ve read Hunger Games and Divergent and each of those tumbled straight downhill in quality. I’m tempted by Maze Runner as well (especially the Porch Trials). But this is by far the worst any of these series started out. And they almost always get worse as they go on. Give us one more, please. I need more Evan Walker in my life (not really, he was by far the worst actor in the film I thought).

Phew, I like YA novels and adaptation, especially when they are Sci Fi, but jeez louise, this is pretty mind melty. Especially when you have a true plot hole! I’m going to call this Major Sklog-servations a small discussion about a major revelation I had during Me and Jamie’s discussions about the film. In this case: In the book the revelation that (spoiler alert!) the aliens can take on human form is a rather well known fact apparently. It is a reason people distrust the army when they come around. In the movie this is not the case, they explicitly trust the army and do not find out about body snatching until the army tells them. The point at which the army tells the audience about this issue is one of crossroads for our protagonist played by Moretz. She has just missed the bus to the army base, she sees the entire refugee camp gunned down in the heat of argument, and she flees into the woods. There is no doubt that she couldn’t have heard or known about the body snatching from the army in the refugee camp … except moments later in her journal she discusses the issues concerning losing trust in humanity when anyone she knows could be an Other. Powerful stuff and a rare actual plot hole (most plot holes are usually just events that stretch credulity, not an actual plot inconsistency). She manages to intuit something inherently non-intuitive (and terrifying), that she cannot ask anyone for help because they may be an other. I would think this is clearly a plot point lost in translating the novel to the screen and either uncaught or left as a minor continuity issue. Fin.

Cheerios,

The Sklogs

Random Hearts Recap

Patrick

Guten Tag, allerseits! I was in Vienna this weekend, so we are still a little behind on things so I’ll try and make this quick. We watched Random Hearts (more like Not So Smarts! You have to give me a break on that, for some reason my mind was pulling me to “farts” rhyming with hearts which, while hilarious, seems below me, you know?), and I have to say: what? Seriously, I don’t understand. Let’s get into it.

  • The Good – Some of the performances were quite good. If you are a fan of the 80s style political / crime drama this probably has a place deep within Netflix where you go “I’ve never heard of The Falcon and The Snowman, I guess I might as well watch that, it isn’t like I’m doing anything else …” you know? There are large swaths of this movie which from a writing perspective seem effective and well done. In fact, the only notable thing about the audio commentary by director Sydney Pollack was his intense love for the script.
  • The Bad – Whoever had the job of waking up Harrison Ford so that he could stumble onto set and deliver lines in a monotone did a poor job. Hard to watch. The entire B storyline involving a crooked cop and Ford’s job would make you go “oh yeah, I forgot this was part of the story … why do I care about this again”. Incredibly little payoff overall in the movie. The entire thing meanders around for like 2 hours before reaching the “climax” and then I looked at my watch and said to myself: “There is only 20 minutes left … that is not nearly enough time to untangle this story.” And it was not.
  • The BMT – Weird weird weird. My gut says no. I would never watch this again. I would only ever recommend this to a political / cop drama enthusiast looking for a movie recommendation (not as a bad movie) and it would be in the context of “want to see what happens when someone tried to make an 80s style drama in the late 90s? Seems super weird right?”. The blunt answer is no. I think this movie is merely bad. In a boring way. Not BMT. Sorry.

See what I mean? Weird. I will note that since we’ve gone through Ford before in Chain Reaction (Firewall and Hollywood Homicide) this makes the third Ford focused ( … see what I did there, I’m the best) Chain Reaction film. And I look forward to more in the future. I would have done an audio commentary review, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. Instead I’m going to a quick career BMTrospective for Harrison Ford to look forward to his prospects and where he might land in the BMT pantheon. So here are his BMT films with respective BMeTrics:

(47.6) Hollywood Homicide; (47.2) Random Hearts; (38.2) Six Days Seven Nights; (34.1) Paranoia; (33.9) Firewall; (26.6) The Expendables 3; (24.2) More American Graffiti; (23.9) The Devil’s Own; (10.8) Extraordinary Measures; (7.1) Crossing Over; (3.6) Getting Straight;

So first, Getting Straight (only 6 reviews on rotten tomatoes) and Crossing Over (released to only 42 theaters) I don’t think qualify. Extraordinary Measures I think will be done, but on a very special occasion. I’m personally too busy for it, some might say I already work around the clock. Out of them all Six Days Seven Nights might end up being a keystone in a certain number game Jamie might just be outlining below, so I think it is a definite. And More American Graffiti seems poised for a sweet Bad Sequel cycle. I think 3 more Ford films will find their way into BMT then to make a total of seven (plus Paranoia which was done on our own as a Razzie nominee I think). For such a long career that is a pretty solid hit rate to be honest, to only have those handful of duds available. That’s your life Harrison Ford. Auf wiedersehen, and back to you Jamie.

Jamie

Random Hearts is the perfect Chain Reaction film for this cycle. Is it a thriller? Is it a romance? Is it a political drama? Or is it a political-thriller-rom-dram? Whatever it is it hardly fits into a standard category and provides something a little different than our typical fare. Patrick expounded on the weirdness of this film, even without the baggage of the book. Why? Because the book is exponentially weirder. Even though the book has some of the political angle of the film, there is no doubt that it aims to be a straight romantic drama. The only problem is that there is nothing romantic about the book in the least. The story starts essentially the same as the film: two people find out their spouses were having an affair after they turn up in a plane crash sitting next to each other under false names. Good plot. It then deviates into the super philosophical about the nature of love and what it means. The characters feed off each others’ crazed neuroses brought on by their anger and grief. They throw everything they own out, they sell their houses, Vivien give her son to her parents and implies that she’s never coming back, and she gets rid of her dog all because they believe that if their love wasn’t real then nothing else they had was too (including her son!). He then loses his job and so they spend their days shacked up in an apartment together obsessing over finding the secret love nest that their spouses kept, having sex, and talking endlessly about their nihilistic view of love and how nothing can ever be promised or built because love has no future or past. It is depressing and horribly unromantic. You might wonder how this was ever adapted into a film. Well, when you have a simple nugget of a plot so good (the plane crash aspect) it not hard to see the desire to take that and turn it into a totally different film, which is what they did here. Other than that particular crux of the story very little of the film has any relation to the book, which was a relief. 

We got a great Settings 101 film in Random Hearts. The film is very specifically set in Washington D.C. with Harrison Ford being a part of the D.C. police department and Kristin Scott Thomas being a state representative from New Hampshire. We get a jogging scene in front of the National Mall, a jaunt to New Hampshire, Miami, and Maryland through the film (I like when there are specific secondary settings in a film, adds to the fun), and the major event in the film (the plane crash) is explicitly detailed as a flight from D.C. to Miami that crashes into the Potomac. You have to give it an A-. Why the minus? The setting plays a major role in the plot, but not in a particularly fun way. Has all the elements of an A settings film, but could have been set elsewhere without much of a hiccup (other than changing the occupation of Thomas).

Next up is the Sci Fi category in our Based on a Book cycle. Cheers,

The Sklogs

Harlem Nights Recap

Patrick

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

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

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

Jamie

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

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

Cheerios,

The Sklogs

Maximum Overdrive Recap

Jamie

Hello students. Welcome to Dr. Smadbeck’s lecture on Trucks and its adaptations. I am the foremost authority on this subject as I’m actually the only person currently alive that has read the original short story by Stephen King, watched its first adaptation known as Maximum Overdrive, and the 1997 Canadian TV Movie that returned to the original title of Trucks. Let’s begin.

There is nothing in the short story that screams “I must be adapted.” Nothing. The story simply details a bunch of people hanging out in a truck stop while driverless trucks prowl about outside. People die, they end up pumping gas for the trucks (becoming their slaves), and end the story contemplating whether one day they may once again be free from their new masters. Like most Stephen King tales, the story is somewhat abstract in its creepiness. It makes one confront a fear that they may not have even known they had (like the helplessness that would go along with our own creations turning against us).

So you might expect that Stephen King (the director of his own adaptation) must have looked at this particularly abstract scary story and thought “I’ll have to jazz this up to get this to work on screen.” You would be wrong. As King is wont to do, he instead made an nearly exact replication of his work. Few details were added other than a shitty explanation for why the machines have come to life (answer: Earth passing through the tail of a comet… cool beans, bro). It was boring, it was silly, and it had a terrible ending. Worst of all it just wasn’t any fun, and that’s usually what I love about King. A pulpy 50’s feel.

Anyway, you’d think it couldn’t get worse. You’d be wrong again, because I then watched Trucks, a TV movie adaptation of the same work that originally aired on the USA network back in 1997 (egad! What has my life come to?). Oddly, I had a sneaking suspicion that whoever made the film ripped off Maximum Overdrive as several key elements, which were not in the original source material, appear in the TV movie. How little creativity do you need to have to steal from the adaptation that absolutely tanked? Even odder? I think this absolutely terrible TV movie managed to have a better ending than the major motion picture (double egad!).

I also have a more minor gripe I’d like to voice. Emilio Estevez is understandably cool as ice in this film. He looks cool, he seems cool, he is cool. A short time into the film a girl enters his life. She looks cool, seems cool, and is cool as well. They are basically the heroes. They run around saving people. She seems tough as nails and so does he. It’s perfect. It was one of the few things working in the film. Obviously, though, they end up boning (why wouldn’t they? They are both rad). Immediately after boning our once badass chick is no longer running around saving people. She throws on a short skirt, kisses Emilio, and tells him to be safe. She stays behind waiting for him to come back and kiss on her some more. It’s super duper lame. What happened to the badass chick that I liked so much?! It was really infuriating. From what I’ve read it was actually a conscious choice by the producer Dino De Laurentiis. He told King to stop dressing her in pants and to have her just be a typical girl in a short skirt for guys to ogle. Talk about having an old fashioned feel. Guess Dino never saw Alien.

With that I’ll conclude the lecture. I hope you’ve learned enough to never have to watch either of these films.

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! Maximum Overdrive?! More like Movie That Patrick Derides! Weak, but I think this is a historic moment, the first Bad Movie Title Pun (BMTP) with my name? Maybe. Anyways, I hated Maximum Overdrive. Oops, spoiled it one sec:

  • The Good – I liked Emilio. I liked Laura Harrington. Some tense moments, although few and far between.
  • The Bad – I hated this movie (there it is). Let’s see. Most of the acting was terrible. The entire movie is bookended by title cards explaining (unnecessarily) an origin for the machines awakening. The movie looks like it was made in 1975. By extension, this movie had the opportunity to have seriously sweet practical effects, but I’m convinced King as director waylaid any hope of pulling off anything interesting. The ending was straight hot garbage.
  • The BMT – Not really. I mean, for street cred purposes sure. But in general I would never really want to watch this film again. Borderline I guess.

But that kind of exemplifies the problems we often have with watching films from the 80s for BMT. Context. In context what did people think of this film in 1986? It really does look like it was made in 1975, it looks like Jaws. Did people notice that? Were 1980s horror fans going in and just baffled by the quality. Or was it just a shrug and a “not very scary, kind of boring” attitude. Without context for me it makes this movie very puzzling. I don’t like the movie either as a movie or as a BMT film. It satisfies Bad Movie Street Cred (BMSC) and nothing more.

Game? I do actually want a remake. I think there is something here with one simple change. Play it straight to start. Hey we can just wait out the trucks. They’ll run out of gas. Whatever is causing this will end. But no. The machines get their energy elsewhere, they don’t need gas. Show them rebuilding their fallen brethren. Evolving into better machines. Until it dawns on our protagonists that they are doomed. This movie comes across as silly without a sad ending unfortunately.

Cheerios,

The Sklogs

What to Expect When You’re Expecting Recap

Jamie

First, my (BMTsolution) thoughts on the book What to Expect When You’re Expecting. They actually did a strangely good job at adapting an instructional book on pregnancy into a film. I read three chapters of the book (Chapters 1 and 2, which were preparing for pregnancy and questions about early pregnancy, and the chapter for expectant dads). In each chapter there are kind of key ideas, like how dads can gain weight during pregnancy too, how hormones can affect women in totally opposite ways, and how women who are pregnant have a lot of non-glamorous things going on with their bodies (forgetfulness, etc.). Many of these key points are pointedly mentioned during the film. Often it almost seemed like they were reciting passages word-for-word (i.e. “Hey, it’s not weird that I’m gaining weight. In fact, it’s quite common for dads-to-be to gain weight through stress or sympathy”).

So good on the writers for incorporating large swaths of a non-narrative book into a narrative medium… still wasn’t great. I’d say like Valentine’s Day > What to Expect When You’re Expecting > New Year’s Eve… so like middle of the shitty pack. Was it the same in jolly ole England, Patrick?

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! Introducing Patrick’s Bad Movie Shortform Recap (PBMSR):

The Good – It was actually funnier that I thought it would be. I liked the Brooklyn Decker / Dennis Quaid storyline. It is better than New Year’s Eve as far an ensemble features go (slightly worse than Valentine’s Day).

The Bad – Jennifer Lopez was terrible and her storyline was terrible. The Dude’s Group wasn’t funny despite being filled with amazing comedians. I disliked the Dude’s Group immensely but also realized that without it we’d be left with no movie. Literally nothing. Too little D-Wade for my tastes.

BMT? Hell’s yeah. Actually a better BMT than I expected. To remind you the BMeTric gives this a 36.7, which is really good. That number is generous. This is more like a 20-25 level movie. Borderline, but definitively BMT.

Cheerios,

The Sklogs

P.S. Check out the 3rd Annual Smaddies Baddies. This recap was produced on the fifth anniversary of BMT, an amazing (?) achievement indeed.

The Chamber Recap

Jamie

BMTsolution right off the bat, guys. That’s because The Chamber was actually based on a book and not just on one that exists in my head. It’s a John Grisham book that it quite the slow burn (emphasis on slow), but which grew on me as I understood that it wasn’t a legal thriller at all, but rather a family drama centered around the possible moral issues associated with the death penalty. The main character wasn’t really defending his grandfather to save him (he never had much of a shot) but rather trying to discover his family before his grandfather’s bomb does its final damage. It already destroyed his personal history, it may destroy him, and it may destroy the state that compromises its morals for a notion of justice. It’s a story of how the death penalty is an extension of the crime (or so the main character believes). I liked it quite a bit… which made me nervous for what must have gone wrong for the film to get such bad reviews. The answer? Everything… every… single… thing.

This was the worst. Just the worst. If I had seen this in theaters I would have walked out. I nearly threw my TV out the window for having the gall (the AUDACITY) to dare bring such a thing into my home (my HOME!). It’s like the screenwriters looked at the book and said, “I liked the moral quandary this posed, but what if… it didn’t?” And it’s biggest crime? It wasn’t just a bad adaptation of a book I liked that personally offended me. It was a BORING bad adaptation of a book I liked that personally offended me. So bad that I have to TYPE IN ALL CAPITALS. That being said I thought Hackman was great and the directing good. I also understand that most people who haven’t read the book recently would probably watch the film and be like “Whatever.” Unfortunately I read the book.

A lesser known fact about The Chamber: it’s original working title was MonoSklog Central* and boy did it live up to its name. There were at least five separate MonoSklogs in the film. Some of Hackman’s were quite good. The others, not so much. In the end the best (i.e. worst) is probably Chris O’Donnell’s impassioned speech defending his racist grandfather (which we called Mi Abuelo). Unfortunately there is no available YouTube clip for this monologue. You’ll just have to watch the movie yourself.

*Not all facts presented on badmovietwins.com are true

Patrick

‘Ello everyone. You know what? I’m going to let Jamie’s part stand for The Chamber. He is passionate about it (as disgusting as that it). So just one quick point:

From the perspective of a person who did not read the book the movie was merely boring. You could kind of tell they tried to thrillerize something, but missed on the thrilling part. And O’Donnell was terrible while Hackman was amazing. I think that was sufficiently positive for my BMTsolution.

Cheerios,

The Sklogs

Firestorm Recap

Patrick

‘Ello everyone. Firestorm? More like Fire-whoever-thought-this-movie-was-a-good-idea, bam! Howie Long oh How-I Longed for you. Been missing him since 3000 Miles to Graceland. Let’s get into it.

  • The Good – Howie Long was better than expected, really hung tough with the rest of the cast (I apologize to the rest of the cast). Um … the ending was so bonkers as to be fun. If you can get to it it is pretty much worth it.
  • That being said, you ever flip through the backwoods of cable tv channels and stumble across that weird made-for-tv action movie starring the Boz or whoever and were like “oh this might be fun”, but then after 3 minutes you are like “oh yeah, no, I can feel my lifeforce bleeding out of me while watching this”? If you have, you know what Firestorm is like.
  • It does have one of the most ridiculous bad guys we’ve seen. When he has his weird blond wig and goatee on he is literally on par with Bananas from Ghosts of Mars.
  • And the aforementioned ending involving a Howie Long two hand overhead ax throw into the badguy’s chest from under water. I heard he did that at the combine to convince the Raiders to draft him. And then the bad guy comes back! Amazing.

What a weird movie. I hardly have an opinion about the movie because it is barely a movie. A little too close to made-for-tv or Van Damme territory for me, like Stone Cold (starring the Boz, natch). I was reasonably entertained though, congrats Firestorm.

And of course I want a remake. Almost any athlete vehicle can be remade because guess what? There is a whole new crop of athletes that can star in it! And of course JJ Watt will star in Perfect Firestorm. And of course the bad guy will be Ray Liotta. And of course Kaley Cuoco will costar as the spunky birdwatcher caught in the middle of it all. And of course our friends and family can be Executive Producers, it will be the number one stipulation in any screenwriting contract I sign. I’ve drawn up the paperwork, it is just waiting for a signature.

Jamie

FIRESTORM! I’m not going to dive too far into the actual film. Patrick took care of that. Instead I would like to point out something interesting: it takes place in Wyoming. How is it possible that Wyoming has two major BMT titles (Have You Heard About the Morgans? and Firestorm)? Seems like the type of state that would barely scrape by with one. It also begs the question: If we were forced to make an ultimate mapl.de.map, which of the films would be chosen? Have You Heard About the Morgans? is largely forgettable, but it is soooo Wyoming. Firestorm is fucking Firestorm, but almost seems like it’s set in Wyoming as an afterthought. What are we to do? Patrick suggests we resort to BMeTric. It’s cold and calculated… developed to replace us. These are the questions we are developing our algorithms to tackle (so you don’t have to).

For this movie I feel like Stone Cold was too on-the-nose as a real comparison. It’s almost like they are twin movies. Fire & Ice. I kept on being reminded of Bats for some reason. A wide release that was largely forgotten and has the feel of a SyFy Channel original.

For my BMTsolution, Firestorm was not based on a book. If it were based on a book, though, it would be a gritty 70’s pulp action book in the same vein as First Blood. Jesse Graves is a former smokejumper just returned from Vietnam. On his first jump back, he finds himself suddenly recalling his wartime jungle-burning experiences and nearly dies in his crazed attempt to escape his memories. In the process, he inadvertently injures the captain of the smokejumping crew. Several months later, the captain is retiring due to his injures and Graves is on desk duty. A group of prisoners, led by the psychopathic Randall Sharp, manage to escape work duty by brutally murdering the prison guards tasked with keeping them in line (who planted the weapons they used? What a mystery!). In order to hinder their pursuers, the prisoners set the Montana forest aflame. The smokejumpers jump to the rescue but find themselves ambushed by Sharp and his crew. All are slain except for Julie, Graves’ girlfriend (!), who is taken as a hostage (“and a mighty pretty one too” – a prisoner creepily notes). Can Graves jump one more time and take out these prisoners once and for all? Or will he be caught in the… FIRESTORM!

These books will be part of a series of novels I write called Based-on-the-Book, where I write books that movies would have been based on if they were adaptations… but they’re not adaptations of the films themselves. It’s a nuanced difference.

Cheerios,

The Sklogs

 

Ridiculous 6 Recap

Jamie

Ridiculous Six… *shudders*… Patrick?

Patrick

‘Ello everyone. Ridiculous Six? More like Ridiculous that we watched this non-movie! Ayyyyyyoooooooo. Unfinished Business tried to ruin my Tgivs, and this one tried to ruin my Christmas. I will overcome. I will persevere. Let’s get into it:

  • We had some walkouts! Watching with the Fam to start they quickly fled in a panic. Is this what we do with our lives? Is this what I have been allowed to become?! Sadly yes, I “watched” the whole thing. If putting my brain into Windows sleep mode while pointing my eyes vaguely in the direction of the television counts as watching something.
  • The dialogue! Does a movie have a script if it seems like nothing is written down? The movie starts with Adam Sandler deadpanning a list of groceries to a backwoods trader as I quietly breathed “oh God, what hath we wrought upon our beautiful BMT”. There are exactly two good jokes in the movie, and they aren’t even funny.
  • I don’t know … the movie seems like it cost a lost of money. You’d think someone would be in charge of making sure a somewhat funny movie was made. But just… like Vanilla Ice Mark Twain and a uncontrollably shitting donkey (sorry, burro … sigh) just, why?
  • That’s it, I can’t do any more, this movie was bad. I’m going to say it: straight dog poo in my face. Or caca de perro en mi cara according to Rob Schnieder’s totally not racist Mexican caricature.

Welp, there it is. We did it. We did a Netflix Original. Hopefully this is the first and last, because I like Netflix. Although, I am very curious about what is happening in this Crouching Tiger trailer with the music?

I feel like there is an interesting story there. I’ll just leave it there, no game this time.

Cheerios,

The Sklogs

Unfinished Business Recap

Patrick

‘Ello everyone. Triumphantly returning to the UK after triumphantly returning to the United States for TGivs, I got all into Unfinished Business (More like Unpleasant Nonsense! Am I fucking right?!). Wait wait wait, what’s that sound? Dog poo in my face two week in a row my mind is exploding!!!! Congrats BMT you ruined both legs of TGivs journey. Let’s talk about this “movie”:

  • The Bad – Vince Vaughn doing Vince Vaughn things. The movie has no plot, they just kind of meander from one place to another over roughly a week. I’m pretty sure no one knows how business works in this movie which is focused on literally the most boring business possible. They get into some serious real talk about bullying in this alleged “comedy” and then do little to address or resolve it.
  • The Worst – The fact that the movie makes you feel bad because the entire time I’m like “This Dave Franco character seems genuinely mentally challenged. Like … this goes beyond normal just making fun of a stupid person”, and then in the middle they say he actually is. He is mentally challenged. It is revealed that he actually is. At the end he meets his friends from his aided living situation he’s got. Jeez Louise Christ.
  • The Good – Hey, Nick Frost seemed okay. … … You got some pretty scenery from Germany. Dave Franco got to film on location in Germany. Um … yeah, nope, that’s it.
  • The BMT – Um … This movie is so bad as to be unpleasant to watch. BMT is a pleasant watching experience, one of wonder and ultimately of enjoyment. This … is not BMT. I’m sorry Unfinished Business … I’m sorry.

If I were to attempt to make a trilogy of unpleasant “comedies” it would be The Break-Up, The Dilemma, and Unfinished Business. Oh what do you know: they all star Vince Vaughn. I’m doing my own game this week called Vince Vaughn it! Proposed movie: Vince Vaughn is a small business owner of a commercial space flight company. Either Kevin James or Adam Sandler is the genius MIT engineer friend who is going to change the world. All I need to do is add some unnecessary real-talk serious subject matter and we’re gold. How about Kevin James is transgender and considering making a full transition, but oh no, Vince Vaughn can’t handle this and what it might do to his company. “Comedy” ensues. By which I mean a bunch of really serious discussions about Vince Vaughn not being able to handle the situation and then a sudden realization and change of heart. Let’s set it in Austin, so this happens inexplicably during like South by Southwest or something. Movie complete. I hate all of these films. That’s two dog poo straight in my face movies in a row. I think The Gunman is going to be a c-c-c-c-c-combo breaker though (mainly because I don’t think The Gunman will be interesting enough to actually get me riled up).

Jamie

BTW Patrick, your movie is like a comedy version of Aloha. Seriously. The whole film is about a commercial space flight company with all kinds of serious real talk.

I kind of went back and forth on how to deal with Unfinished Business. It’s bad. Like really bad. Patrick got to summarize our discussion and notes on the subject, so in a lot of ways the points he makes about the film cover both our opinions, and yet I can’t shrug this movie off. It’s in my head taunting me with its awfulness. So I do have to make one point (all my own): The writer of Unfinished Business has a large filmography of pretty good to good films under his belt, and yet this film may be the worst written film of the year (competing with Hitman: Agent 47). None of the scenes make any sense together. Everything is just cobbled together with no real impact, brief and inconsequential conversations occur early in the film to explain situations 30-45 minutes later making it ridiculously hard to follow why things are happening, and there is a cyberbullying subplot that is wildly out of place in a broad comedy. Makes one wonder what went so wrong? My guess? I think this was written as a drama with soft comedic undertones (a la The Weatherman), but when they went with Vince Vaughn in casting they grabbed a terrible comedy director and they punched up the script and screwed it all up. But that’s just a guess. This is somewhat, but not totally, supported by an interview he gave about the film. At one point he does mention how most scenes changed from his script during production and that it was a struggle to preserve the script to screen. But he also seems quite jolly about everything and talks about how it was fun to write a broader comedy than he is known for. So it’s still kind of a mystery. Something must have happened though. Because this was a travesty.

For my game I’m also going to do a little trilogy play. I call the game BMTril-oh-geez. It’s where I take something distinctive from the movie at hand and produce a trilogy of terrible films that prominently involve that thing/person/mineral. In this case Unfinished Business decided that a wonderful source of comedy would be aggressive male nudity in a scene involving several glory holes. Got me wondering, what other BMT films are there that involve glory holes? To start, this isn’t even the first one we’ve watched. The Sweetest Thing with Cameron Diaz also had a scene in a public restroom with a glory hole. Doing some research I also found that a terribly reviewed horror film The Unborn also had a crazy scene with a glory hole. So there we go: Unfinished Business, The Sweetest Thing, and The Unborn is the official Glory Hole BMTril-oh-geez. So when you’re looking for next week’s movie marathon with your friends you now have a glory hole three-pack to fall back on. And for all those clamoring to tell me that Scary Movie had a prominent glory hole scene, I’ll just stop you right there. The movie is too good for BMT.

Cheerios,

The Sklogs