Tag: Patrick: BMT

Get Carter Recap

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! Get Carter? More like Retched Art, Huh?! (Holy shit, that’s the worst I’ve done, bar none). Anywho, we went to crazy town and absorbed way too much information about this film. I’ll let Jamie cover the book, let’s get into a bit about the movie (and by extension its predecessor)!

  • The Good – I’m going to be honest, not much. Rourke worked for the character they were going for. With their tone choice (see below) I didn’t mind how they twisted the story to fit the tone so much. Jeez, yep.
  • The Bad – Sigh. It’s not like I loved the original, it was just an interestingly dark drama with one of the most profoundly detestable main characters you might see as your anti-hero of choice. This movie though softens it so much in favor of a lighter tone it kind of manages to destroy whatever it had going for it in adapting the source material a second time. Sly mumbles the entire time, it is way too flashy, the Alan Cumming character is nonsense. The entire thing leaves a sour taste in your mouth and isn’t even very interesting to boot because, to be honest, the lighter tone doesn’t work. Give me Sly as a drunk thug out for revenge, not some pinnacle of Family First nonsense we know and love from Fast and Furious. As I said, sigh. I might not be as jazzed as Jamie about it, but it really is rather detestable when you sit back and look at it.
  • The BMT – Yep, you could teach a master class on it. The only thing that doesn’t kick this up a notch to the legendary range is that Sly is at least somewhat competent. You put someone who is also just way out of his league in there and you got a stew going.

I’ll leave it there and close with a very abridged Audio Sklog-entary. This was yet another Director-only commentary with Stephen Key and I quit after thirty minutes. The only thing of remote interest is hearing Kay talk vaguely (although surprisingly frankly) about how intimidated he was by the project and by extension explaining a little of where things seemed to go a little wrong. But it is boring, filled with not-very-interesting factoids, technical nonsense (you can see at one point that they had to add a filler shot and so the gatekeeper transforms into an old man! Coooool), and no funny or interesting anecdotes. I stopped. I couldn’t do it. I have better things to listen to. F. An aggressive unyielding F. Although I’m willing to listen to someone if they tell me the last hour of the commentary is decent.

Jamie 

In many ways the Get Carter remake exemplifies the spirit of BMT. The film contains MonoSklogs, a prominent and specific setting (Seattle/Las Vegas), a horrifically bad side character (John C. McGinley), a horrifically bad bad guy (Alan Cumming), mirrors featured as metaphor (a la I Know Who Killed Me), Sly Stallone having a weird character quirk (OCD), Sly Stallone mumblemouth, randomly taking place during Christmas, dutch angles, Hollywood badass bars, Chekov’s guns (or in this case a Chekov’s cookie jar), etc. etc. etc. etc. All things that we have harped on over the years. Add on top of that the fact that there is waaaaaay too much source material to deal with (a book, two previous adaptations, and a commentary) and it’s like Hollywood asked us to make a film for BMT (although in our Get Carter adaptation John C. McGinley’s character is played by Chris Klein). If it was more fun in its badness it would probably be a BMTHoF candidate. As it stands it’s simply a case study. A film that would be taught in BMT lecture halls across the world, but just doesn’t go to the extreme in any one particular area to be pushed to the next level. Still fun to watch though.

As hinted above Get Carter was a masterpiece of source material. I read the book, watched the previous adaptation, and watched the new one and have to say: remarkable how similar they all are. The original film is ridiculously true to the book. Almost Pinocchio-esque. Most changes made were minor except for the final twist in the film which is more substantially changed (I’ll get to that later). The remake is much more divergent. They really softened everything up. To be true to the source Stallone’s character would have had to been an alcoholic rage monster that kills both men and women with no regard (which is exactly what Michael Caine is in the original film). Who can blame them for balking at that and instead making him an estranged uncle looking to forge a familial bond with his niece. So how do they all rank? Well you can kinda tell the quality by simply looking at how the ending twist was handled. Alright, so in all three cases the story ends with Carter confronting the man who killed his brother (Eddie in the book). In the book the main character is about to kill Eddie but lets his rage get the best of him. Eddie gains the upper hand, stabs Carter, and takes his gun (an antique rifle Carter and his brother bought as kids). When Eddie tries to shoot Carter it blows up in his face killing him instantly (remember it was an antique). Carter dies in the forest from the stab wound while still fulfilling his task of revenge. Great ending. Shocking and satisfying. Carter was an asshole, but you also wanted him to get revenge. Perfect. In the original film they weirdly chose to have Carter succeed in killing Eddie, only to be shot by a sniper sent by the mobsters a moment later. Really an odd choice. A tad too Deus Ex Machina for my taste. Not as satisfying for that reason. Finally in the remake the studio clearly didn’t want to kill Stallone so he kills his nemesis and then goes on the run, but not before imparting some valuable life lessons to his niece. Blech. So you see: book best, original film OK, remake terrible. Just have to look at that ending.

Cheerios,

The Sklogs

 

Pinocchio (2002) Recap

Jamie

Easily the most interesting thing about Roberto Benigni’s Pinocchio is just how true an adaptation it is from the original tale. Watchmen ain’t got shit on this. Perhaps only Gus Van Sant’s Psycho can surpass it. It’s almost a scene-for-scene, line-for-line transcription of story to screen (with some scenes excluded for time). The only thing explicitly changed is a random expansion of the Candlewick character (called Leonardo here). Benigni seemed to go out of his way to include him in as many scenes as possible. Why only change that one aspect? Hard to explain. Anyway, this is probably why many reviewers of the film regarded it as so bizarre. They chalk it up to misguided vanity that Benigni would prance around on screen spouting macabre nonsense, perhaps not realizing (or deciding to not acknowledge) that the nonsense was just the original story. It would be like if a Cinderella adaptation was made where in the end birds fly down and poke out the eyes of the evil stepsisters striking them blind for the rest of their wretched lives. Or a Snow White adaptation where the evil queen has to dance in burning hot iron shoes until she dies. American reviewers would be like “WTF, mate! This is a children’s film!” Benigni simply made the most accurate adaptation of a book that we may have ever witnessed and it probably flew over a lot of people’s heads. The real story just isn’t particularly well known here. Does that mean it’s actually good? Ha! Oh deary me, no.

Do I dare do a Settings 101 for Pinocchio? Seems so obviously Italy. Although the fact of the matter is that I can’t remember if they actually say that it’s set in Italy. It obviously is, but treats it as a given. You almost have to give it a D, just for leaving it implicit. Instead I think I’ll just make a SklogCycle for the film. Don’t know what that is? Neither does anyone else cause I just made it up. Inspired by the ridiculous(ly awful) voice cast of Pinocchio, I’m going to make up a BMT cycle featuring stars of that cast. It would be called Pi-NOPE-io cause Patrick nailed it. Let’s see:

  • Scattergories (Calendar): The Country Bears (features Queen Latifah who voiced The Dove)
  • Comedy: Underdog (features Jim Belushi who voiced Farmer George)
  • Action: The Mod Squad (features Eddie Griffin who voiced The Cat)
  • Horror/Thriller: Mary Reilly (features Glenn Close who voiced The Blue Fairy)
  • Rom Com: Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous (features Regis Philbin who voiced Ringmaster)
  • Chain Reaction: The Out-of-Towners (features John Cleese who voiced Talking Cricket)
  • Sci-Fi: Delgo (features Eric Idle who voiced Medoro)
  • Razzie: Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties (features Breckin Meyer who voiced Pinocchio)
  • Scattergories (Based-on-a-book): Christmas with the Kranks (features Cheech Marin who voiced The Fox)

This cycle would physically harm me. The Country Bears, Underdog, Delgo, Garfield: A Tale of Two Kitties, and Christmas with the Kranks all in one cycle? No thanks. Pretty impressive though as I even got a Chain Reaction coming from Cheaper by the Dozen 2 and two transition points, which means this cycle could have legitimately been inserted between the Calendar and Based-on-a-book cycles. Boom. Don’t worry about it.

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! Pinocchio? More like Pi-NOPE-io!!!! Benigni is out of his mind, let’s get into it:

  • The Good – It is a beautiful movie. The acting, given that it is an Italian film (by which I mean, there is clearly a different style of comedic acting in Italy, far more slapstick, which you can see in other Benigni films), is rather good. It is an incredibly bold accurate retelling of a children’s tale from 1885 …
  • The Bad – Yeah, so anyone familiar with Grimm’s Fairy Tales might know that the original tales are rather, hmmm how do you say? Bonkers insane terrifying nightmare fuel? This is no different. At one point the Blue Fairy fakes her own death and effectively makes a tombstone that says “Fuck you Pinocchio, you did this!!” and he flips out only for her to be like “haha, you passed the test! Hooray!” At another point she has creepy rabbits with a coffin come in to convince Pinocchio he is dying so he’ll drink medicine. At the end of the movie he is essentially working himself to death because he “learned his lesson” about being a good boy. It is ridiculous.
  • The BMT – … I am very much glad we did this movie for BMT. It is super weird, but at the same time it makes you say “why did someone at Miramax think this would sell again?”. The Brekin Meyer voiceover is bar-none the worst voiceover in movie history. I am not at all shocked that zero people could psych themselves into saying “you know what? There is more good than bad here”. But yet it is an interesting and beautiful movie nonetheless. It is wild and weird and bad and I would totally watch it again with someone game to see a wild and weird and bad film. So there.

Phew. I’m going to cut it a bit short to announce a new project from BMTHQ. It was five years since our first BMT last February and that got me thinking about how much I’ve learned about bad movies in those years and also just how different our approach to watching bad movies is now than then. So in order to take advantage of this wealth of knowledge we have decided to introduce the Bad Movie Twins Hall of Fame (BMTHoF). Last week we voted our first class with the stipulation that it must have been over five years since we saw the movie (so if you look at the archive anything from before Norbit on June 30, 2011. In the coming months we will be producing induction speeches for each of the five movies we voted in and (and this is depressing) at least one of us will be re-watching each film. Oof. How do we find the time (it is hard, our lives are hard, pity us). Without further ado the first BMTHoF class is:

Old Dogs, Battlefield Earth, Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun Li, Wicker Man, and Norbit.

I know that I for one am especially excited for watching Old Dogs and Norbit (still the most unpleasant movie I have ever seen) again. And Jamie is going to demolish the 1000 page book for Battlefield Earth. And when it is done a de novo preview and recap will be created for the Archives! Truly exciting times at BMTHQ.

Cheerios,

The Sklogs

 

Fair Game Recap

Jamie

Fair Game, God damn! I love when we have a plethora of media to work our way through. I, of course, read the book that this (and the Sly Stallone masterpiece Cobra) was based on, A Running Duck by Paula Gosling. It’s a dime store thriller that was only available to me by ordering it in large-print edition (for the visually impaired) from a Wisconsin library. If there was ever anything that made me question everything that BMT stands for, it’s imagining a little old lady in Wisconsin working her arthritic fingers to the bone trying to find the only copy of A Running Duck that exists in the MN/WI area. She probably thought some other near-blind little old lady in MN wanted a thrill ride for the ages, but nope. Just me. Anyway, the book is nothing really to write home about. A standard thriller and honestly a bit boring. Someone wants to kill a woman, a Vietnam vet-turned-cop troubled by his violent past is set to protect her, they bone, he kills the bad guy. The only interesting thing to talk about with it is the odd similarities that exist between a book like this and current bestsellers like Twilight and Fifty Shades of Grey. Throughout the book I was hit over the head with dominance/submission overtones. The male protagonist frets constantly over the safety of the female protagonist (who always seems to be defenseless and in a daze). Much like Twilight there is a powerful force out to get the female character and eventually the male character takes over her entire life to battle this force. There is a lot of talk of “doing as I say” and “learning to obey commands” with the idea that the female character will in the end be safer. And she of course realizes that this type of relationship is what she has been missing in her life and falls in love with him. You could have really replaced the characters in the book with Bella and Edward, and the assassin with a rival vampire and you would have basically had Twilight. Certainly interesting to think about.

As for the adaptation, to truly get a full picture of it I rewatched Cobra. This turned out to be a good thing because it helped realize that both adaptations are actually pretty good. They take key aspects of the plot of the book, but twist them in slightly different directions. They are neither too close or too far from the source material. In fact they are almost complements of each other, things that are changed in Cobra are often the same as in the book in Fair Game and vice versa. I think Cobra is the slightly better adaptation, because a lot of the changes for Fair Game were pretty silly and lame (the bad guys are now Russian hackers plotting a heist, random setting of Miami, Billy Baldwin is not a particularly good cop, etc.) while Cobra kept a lot of the cool shit. This by no means implies that Cobra or Fair Game are good films. They are not. They are both ridiculous.

Word up. Once again I’m going to go with the Settings 101 game that I love so much. Right away in Fair Game we get a clear idea of the city and state that we are dealing with. That’s because whenever there are cops involved in a film you can’t just make up a police department. Billy Baldwin has to be from the Miami PD. Perfecto. What takes this up to the B grade is the fact that the bad guys spend most of their time (life?) on La Tortuga, a boat that located off the coast of Miami. How do we know where it is? Because the film continually shows a map depicting exactly where in the ocean they are floating. Wonderful. Of course, Miami itself doesn’t really get to shine all that much in the end, so it can’t really make it up to A-level. In fact I honestly can’t really think of famous Miami landmarks. Are there any? I guess they would have had to set up a sting at a Marlins game or something (a la Abduction). Anyway, just for kicks we can also give Cobra a C+ or B-. It also clearly takes place in Los Angeles with the LAPD… but that’s all it really has. Kind of the bare minimum with a clear setting without resorting to license plates.

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! Fair Game?! More like Fairly Lame! Kind of true. This was a weird one, let’s get into it:

  • The Good  – The movie was pretty much composed of non-stop adrenaline-fueled in-your-face action, if that’s your thing. The actions scenes were also often quite impressive from a technical perspective (even if they were often ludicrous). The movie is more of a movie than I expected, but …
  • The Bad – The movie still felt like it was barely theatrical released. Basically Billy Baldwin was all that stood in the way of this being Firestorm starring Howie Long, and it was about two levels below the other A Running Duck adaptation Cobra in quality. Cindy Crawford was genuinely terrible and there is no excuse really. Selma Hayek’s character makes no sense.
  • The BMT – Yes. More so that Firestorm. 40-50 I think. Quality stuff, but again, not as much of a “real movie”™ as one would hope. Would I watch it again? Yeah, maybe. I could imagine it fitting in quite well with a Seagal / Van Damme / Baldwin trilogy bonanza. Like … On Deadly Ground / Timecop / Fair Game would make you question everything you’ve done with your life.

I’m going to keep this a bit short, so let’s think of a quick game. I’m feeling Sequel / Prequel / Remake and especially a sequel. Imagine an older Billy Baldwin and older Cindy Crawford running around like idiots pretending like any of this still makes sense? It would be truly glorious. I would even still make the bad guys Russian and the theme of the movie would still be heavily focused on the neo-Luddite ideals of technology allowing criminals to control the world. I would call it Fair Shake and could make it on a dime Netflix.

Cheerios,

The Sklogs

 

Basic Instinct 2 Recap

Jamie

Basic Instinct 2 is horrific. A truly bad film. It’s probably not memorable or interesting enough to be considered in the pantheon of straight dog poo films, but it had aspects that set it apart somewhat. First and foremost, Sharon Stone competes for the title of Worst Acting Performance Ever Seen in a BMT Film. She smirked after every deadpanned line as if to wink at the audience and say “remember this character? Isn’t this fun?” No it was not. I dreaded when she would appear on screen. On top of that this provides a perfect example of one of the main ways that a truly bad BMT film is created: the vanity project. I’ve said before that I feel like BMT films have to be made organically because they are rooted in delusion. If you set out to make a bad film you by definition lack delusion (you are obviously aware that you are making something bad), and so you will not succeed in making a BMT film. Alternately, the vanity project is a product of delusion. This was Stone’s vanity project. No one really cared and they let her drive it into the ground. This will all be detailed in my upcoming books (set for a June, 2054 release): The Seven Deadly Sins of Hollywood: How Bad Films get Made. The Greed chapter would be loooooong. I’m not sure what would be in the Gluttony chapter of the book… The Island of Dr. Moreau?

I’ll just have a quick game to go through our Settings 101 for Basic Instinct 2. This is easily a solid B+. Very, very, very clearly takes place in London. It even opens with a high speed car ride through London with a professional Footballer riding shotgun with Stone. They talk about London and the police investigation is performed by the British police. But what really pushes it to a high B is the fact that David Morrissey’s office is purportedly in the Gherkin, which is the glass egg-like building in the middle of London. Perfect. Only way it could have been an A is if Stone killed someone in London Tower, Big Ben, or Parliament and it was called Basic London. An additional small note: The original Basic Instinct is also a B+ for its clear San Francisco setting. Wonderful.

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! Basic Instinct 2?! More like this Bullshit Stinks Too! Booooooom. To preface this discussion of the movie we have to get a bit into the original Basic Instinct which I watched for the first time in preparation. My feeling? It is like looking at the erotic thriller genre with fresh new eyes. Sharon Stone is amazing, Douglas is amazing (deep V in the original Hollywood badass bar included. The bar was so luxuriously not-crowded, you could get a drink at the drop of a hat, solid stuff). The story could have been an entire HBO series and it would have murdered all 10 hours of it. It almost has an anti-pattern of a twist as well, I found it revelatory. Like what the Thing is for sci-fi horror or Halloween for slasher films, it feels quintessential. And yet I still have two legs to the Michael Douglas erotic thriller trilogy (Fatal Attraction and Disclosure being the other two, also the three highest grossing erotic thrillers in history). So yeah, I’m excited. But not as excited as I was to see how Basic Instinct 2 butchered the original’s legacy, let’s go!

  • The Good – The story, while very similar in beats to the original, is at least somewhat interesting. Moving the film to London does give it something of an exotic and novel feeling when directly compared to the original. And that is honestly it, because …
  • The Bad – Sharon Stone is a straight up parody of herself, I don’t understand how the woman I saw acting in the original became this shadow of herself in only 15 years. The main actor couldn’t keep up with anyone else in this film. The pacing for the movie was a crawl. The directing was lazy, the writing wasn’t nearly as sharp as it needed to be, and the ending is ludicrous. It is a genuinely terrible movie made only more so by the competence of its predecessor.
  • The BMT – Yes. 70? Sure, but only given what came before. I think it is a solid 50 (40 if you don’t like films that are more on the boring side) regardless, but given how incredible the original is this is a genuinely incredible film. It didn’t kill the erotic thriller, but it may have killed the erotic thriller sequel genre before it even got started.

Phew! I’m going to do a quick Audio Sklog-entary for the solo director commentary for Basic Instinct. There is only one thing I would recommend about this commentary, and it is those brief moments where the director awakens from his slumber and just tears into the film. At one point he exclaims “This isn’t the cure for cancer!” and “If you didn’t like the film, I don’t care”. It is stunning. Besides that, a lot of rote directoral details and discussion of London as a setting. D, this is why you don’t get just one person for commentary, especially a non-enthusiastic technical person. Boring.

Cheerios,

The Sklogs

Warcraft Recap

Jamie

Before Patrick gets his say on this I’m going to go ahead and address the odd dichotomy between fan and critic reactions to Warcraft. I honestly think they’re both kinda wrong about this. The critics are being a bit harsh in criticizing the fact that straight gobbledegook is sprayed at your face for over two hours and you’re expected to understand what is happening. Welcome to fantasy. They are playing at a disadvantage and trying to establish something for future entries in the series. Besides it looked great, so sit back and relax and don’t worry so much. But I’m not one to buy into the whole “the film did what it set out to do.” That’s bullshit, a bad film is a bad film. So at the same time the fans need to understand that at some point you have to stop forgiving bad films for being bad just because they never set out to be particularly good. Just because Warcraft didn’t want to have a real plot (you know, one with a beginning, middle, and end rather than just a long middle) and its pacing problem were not their fault, doesn’t mean it’s better than it actually is. It’s a mediocre film. BMT? I’m not so sure, but it was pretty fun to watch for BMT.

For my game I think I’ll Sklogify the cast. I think the most obvious recasting would have been Nic Cage as the wizard Medivh. I would also consider Ray Liotta, but he already did evil wizard in In The Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale. I think Kellen Lutz would play our main action star Anduin Lothar, Selena Gomez as the orc(ish) warrior (although I would also love to see Fergie in the role), and Neal McDonough as the King (LudaChris Klein is a good option here too, but Neal is a little more regal with his striking ice blue eyes. Billy Zane is on line 8 if everyone else turns us down). For the main Orc, Durotan, I think I’ll go with Alex Pettyfer, but besides that the orcs can be played by unknowns since you don’t really see who they are. We just really need that main orc to be as wooden as possible and we know Pettyfer can deliver. Finally for the already woefully miscast young wizard you have to go with Taylor Lautner (make a bad thing worse). God, Taylor Lautner and Selena Gomez in the same movie. Be still my heart. I think that film is properly Sklogified.

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! Warcraft?! More like Warcrap! We went live for this one, let’s get into it!

  • The Good – The first 30 minutes of this movie had me thinking I was seeing a true blue amazing fantasy tale. The 3D and CGI was pretty stunning throughout. The main plotline has been making me think “hey, I could watch a few more of these movies, this is kind of fun”. It really is a beautiful film.
  • The Bad – The plot is also completely scattershot. They jump from place to place and confuse the viewer consistently for the entire middle part of the film. I could never see myself sitting down and watching the film again, it would be too boring. The wizard character is a complete miscast, it is as if I dressed up for a Renaissance fair and ended up in the movie, that is how ridiculously misplaced he seemed at all times. The final third is a complete incomprehensible mess.
  • The BMT – It won’t ever be BMT and that’s because its IMDb rating will never drop below 7.0, that is a fact. I loved it as a Live! because it is really divisive, but it shall remain around the worst BMT we’ve ever done (and likely the highest rated BMT film on IMDb forever more). I would think this would be a 25 though, average. It is honestly around where critics should have rated this, 30-40, slightly more forgiving. The sub-30 this movie got is kind of absurd, but so is the IMDb score. It is an enigma.

Let’s see. I’m having a hell of a time trying to figure out a good game for this one actually. So I’m going special BMT Live: Theater Experience edition. I viewed this movie at the Fulham Road Cineworld in London. At the time the showings were already getting a bit sparse, usually one per day per theater, and exclusively 3D. I grabbed the earliest showing I could find (9:10PM blah) and bought an absurdly priced ticket (you also buy the glasses here, 16 pounds). There were more people than normal in my BMT Live showing, around a dozen or so. And the couple behind me decided to talk throughout the previews in French (?, couldn’t tell) and were (I think) cracking open beers as well. But everything quieted down for the movie and I had an unusually pleasant viewing experience. I was pretty proud of myself: despite not really knowing what was happening at times I remained awake and alert throughout. This was also the fourth movie in a row where no one was in the theater when I arrived five minutes before it started, which I guess is common when you book specific seats? I don’t know. I rate the experience a B+, there was a weird overhead light that bothered me throughout, but otherwise a delightful time.

Cheerios,

The Sklogs

The Day the Earth Stood Still (2008) Recap

Jamie

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

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

Patrick

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

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

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

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

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

Cheerios,

Sklogs

 

Cheaper by the Dozen 2 Recap

Jamie

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

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

Patrick

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

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

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

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

Cheerios,

The Sklogs

Material Girls Recap

Jamie

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

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

Patrick

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

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

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

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

The Fog Recap

Jamie

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

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

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

Patrick

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

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

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

MaterialGirls_RV

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

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

RatingsPlot

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

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

The Avengers Recap

Jamie

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

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

Patrick

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

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

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

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

Cheerios,

The Sklogs