Prequel/Sequel/Remake – Page 7

Bonfire of the Vanities Recap

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! Bonfire of the Vanities? More like Bonfire of the Banalities. I had a tough time figuring this movie out, and I’ll tell you why. Let’s go.

The Good – For much of the movie it is well acted. I was rather impressed with Hanks, Willis (surprisingly), and especially Melanie Griffith. It is, for decent stretches, at least fascinating. I would say I was more confused as to whether this was supposed to our world or a truly surreal satirical take on our world, and perhaps that is what kept my attention, but there were certainly bits I did like.
The Bad – Where to begin … I mean, I know this movie is a satire, but it does come across as genuinely racist. Like it is painting a picture of a world it imagines exists and then takes the unfortunate tack of taking down the strawman caricatures it creates, as if that is meaningful. I kept grasping at things, trying to think how I could make the movie better in some tangible way, but the unfortunate thing is: without reading the book I didn’t know! I knew the movie’s approach couldn’t be the book’s angle because it would have been torn down and cast out of society with vigor. But how it differed I didn’t know. Reading the IMDb notes and realizing they were forced to recast the judge as black (Morgan Freeman) makes oh so much sense. At times I really couldn’t believe what I was watching. I found it shocking. I knew it was supposed to be satire, but it is so weak that occasionally you get lulled into the sense that you are watching a real movie only to be shaken awake by angry and awful people and actions. I found the first half of the film stressful, and the second half unpleasant (if slowly relieving as you realize that things are kind of going to way you’d expect them to go). So there you go. I did not think this is was not that bad, but perhaps that is the mood I was in, willing to take this silly movie a bit too seriously. And yet my feelings seem to mirror the critical reception at the time, so I’m giving myself the benefit of the doubt.
BMT – I’ll keep this short. I thought it was boring, but shocking enough to warrant a solid 25 and maybe (maybe) I’d throw it to someone with the tentative recommendation that you are watching a truly strange movie come to life. I do kind of want to read the book about the making of this movie. It must have been simply bonkers.

Let’s see. Sequel/Prequel/Reboot would be fun to try and figure out who would play all of the people in a reboot made this year (plus, hey, it’s not like we are having a serious discussion on race in the United States at the moment …). So in the Tom Hanks role I wanted someone with that boyish charm, who can play someone you kind of want to hate a bit, and as close to 35 as possible (a believable age for the social position Hanks was in in the movie), and I think Andrew Garfield in that role would work really well. You could definitely believe him on Wall Street and then sympathize as his world falls apart around him. Bruce Willis comes across a lot older than he actually is (also 35 at the time), but also the literal alcohol character is tough to pull off I feel like these days, they are either now much older or the perpetual party boy type deal (like Miles Teller in The Spectacular Now). I went a little older and found Danny McBride which I think could work, even has the comedy chops if they wanted to go that direction again. Jeremy Renner or Joel Edgerton could both work as well. Scarlett Johansson in the Griffith role rounds out the important bits. Recast Freeman in his own role and you got a stew cooking.

There isn’t much beyond the three leads to make this movie again if they cared. The rest of the cast you could debate back and forth, but really that is unimportant compared to actually getting the tone right.

Jamie

As we finish our Now A Major Motion Picture cycle heading into our transition week, I can start to think retrospectively about the collection of books that I’ve (largely suffered) through. In most cases the books and the films were either very similar, bordering on straight adaptations (Pinocchio, Phantoms, The Choice, and The 5th Wave) or wildly different (Fair Game, Get Carter, and Random Hearts). The Bonfire of the Vanities stands out because it’s not really in either category. The first half of the film is basically a straight adaptation, with only minor changes to how characters look or behave. Halfway through the film though, it veers wildly off course. Starting from a scene where our main character Sherman McCoy wanders out of a courtroom in which he has been indicted on charges of reckless endangerment, we, as the audience, also wander helplessly from a film that made some sense, to one that makes no sense. I was so confused by the tone change at that point (anchored by what I knew from the book) that I actually assumed for a while that what we were seeing was a dream sequence (spoiler alert: not the case). It seems at this point that the filmmaker decided that he no longer liked the film he was making (probably because all the characters are terrible people) and decided that the movie needed some bucking up. Let’s all of sudden make Peter Fallow a hero (rather than the shitty pulp tabloid man that he is in the book), let’s have Sherman comically brandish a shotgun in a crowded party, and let’s make the climax of the film be the just acquittal of our valiant hero (!!!) Sherman McCoy. In the book this climax was just only in that it took all the shitty, vain people involved in the story and destroyed them all in a blaze of glory. In the film none of the characters are developed enough to convey this (and the ones that are developed have been developed into nicer, softer characters) so that the climax is played straight. Gross.

Funny enough this probably wouldn’t have made a difference to me if I hadn’t read the book. I wondered if I would have thought the film was well-acted and well-written (albeit a bit aimless), and produced in that Hollywood way to make it pleasant enough. I thought that I might have even said It’s Not That Bad.™ With the book, though, it seemed like a disaster. In the end I think Patrick and I agreed though. The fact of the matter is that the book is considerably more shocking in its racism than the film and in that way you can see the satire. It creates caricatures of real NYC dwellers of the time, but magnifies the hidden racism that roils beneath in order to satirize the institutions in the city (police, law, finance, politics). But how the film reigned back the exaggeration and dared to soften the McCoy and Fallow characters destroys the satire and in turn makes it simple offensive. Basically, I was wrong in my assumption that I might not be offended if I didn’t have the book to anchor me. His recap proves that I would have probably been even more offended.

Perhaps it’s a byproduct of all these films being based on books, but we’ve had a nice little run of films with very distinct settings for Settings 101. Once again we have a film that gets an A! In this case The Bonfire of the Vanities is a takedown of the New York City elite. Obviously they couldn’t change the setting or else the entire message would be lost (instead they just lost the message through shitty character development). We get several shots of the New York skyline, a close-up shot of Sherman McCoy’s New York license plate, clear “Manhattan” and “Bronx” highway signs, and a climax that centers around the idea of a white Manhattanite running over an African American youth in The Bronx. Kinda hovers a bit between A- and A as there isn’t really a distinct New York landmark used as a prop. But as the setting itself is vital to the plot and unchangeable, I give it the A. Once again, misses out on the coveted A+ by not having the setting in the title of the film.

Cheerios,

The Sklogs

The Choice Recap

Jamie

This week was our Romance category, and nothing screams Romance like Nicholas Sparks’ instant classic The Choice! The Choice presents an interesting case for the based-on-a-book cycle. This is primarily because I found the book to be somewhat offensive. And not even in the hyperbolical sense (like “the editing in The Choice offended me”). It was truly offensive. For those who haven’t read the book, the plot isn’t too far off from the film: boy meets girl, girl has boyfriend, they fall in love, she leaves boyfriend, they get married, there is an accident, the boy must make a choice regarding whether to take the girl off life support. Thus the title The Choice. Now all this would simply be incredibly sad if this choice had to be made because Travis and Gabby (our main characters) had not thought through the situation in advance (which would be pretty common given how young they are). With no advance directives laid out, Travis would have a gut wrenching decision to make regarding the woman he loves. Is he ready to let her go given the quality of life that she would endure otherwise? Here’s the rub though: she did have an advance directive. She signed, with Travis and a lawyer witnessing, an advance directive stating that she wished to be taken off life-support in the event that she was in a coma for more than 120 days. So the choice is actually whether he is going to follow her advance directive… … … and he chooses not to. I understand that this is an incredibly tough decision, but ignoring an advance directive and going against Gabby’s wishes… that’s not right. That’s the wrong choice. I’m sorry. It is. It was her (and their) choice and they made it together and then he disregarded it. And then for Sparks to have the gall to have Gabby come out of the coma and imply to the reader that Travis made the correct choice is even worse. It’s offensive. Straight up. It’s all a little less offensive in the film for two reasons: 1. The movie is poorly told and edited, so the offense in question is actually kind of hard to grasp. I don’t think this is on purpose, but it softened it a bit nonetheless. 2. They seemed a bit more aware of the problem. There was a particular scene where Travis’ dad (a vet) decides that he is going to buy a new lizard for a little girl whose pet has died and pretend that it lived by some miracle, instead of breaking the bad news to her. It’s almost a metareference to the entire story, “Yeah, here’s a miraculous story of Gabby coming out of the coma (when we know that the truth is much harder and harsher a reality). But it’s nicer for you sweet, naive audience.” As you can probably tell I had OPINIONS about the adaptation.

Alright, well this can hardly be judged for Settings 101, but here it goes anyway. Everyone everywhere always knows that this book/film is set in North Carolina. Why? Because it’s a Nicholas Sparks book, duh. They are all set in North Carolina. Like Phantoms, though, they don’t really go out of their way to mention it much. Fortunately for The Choice it has a few things going for it: 1. License plates confirmed the location. 2. It was shot on location in the actual setting of Wilmington, N.C. so the restaurant and beaches and stuff are well known Wilmington landmarks (!). 2. Gabby is from Charleston and we see Travis drive there (passing a Welcome to South Carolina sign no less) along the coast, so realistically they can only either be in North Carolina or Georgia. All adds to a C. Now normally for a film that only definitively proves its location through license plates and the like you would be in the D range, but come on! They filmed in the small coastal town where the book took place! That’s kind of crazy. Gotta bump that up to a C.

Patrick

Olá a todos! That’s right, I was on holiday (as they say) in Portugal for the week and naturally I carved out some time to watch The Choice (more like … My Choice is Nope! (?) I’m not sure, there isn’t a good rhyme [EDIT: My brother pointed out that using the version of nice pronounced like noice you could get something like “The Choice?! More like Not Noice!”, it is pretty good. Better than the garbage I put out into the world. Thanks bro]) … not really, I watched it when I got back. And I must say, let’s get into it.

The Good – Huh, the main woman was kind of cute in a I-Can’t-Quite-Figure-Out-How-To-Do-An-American-Accent-Properly kind of way, so that’s nice for a rom dram. The scenery was unbelievable, really putting NC right up and center. Fighting the good fight in showing how the 1% are just like us, you know? (Seriously though, everyone in this movie was quietly and absurdly wealthy and they almost conspicuously don’t mention it).
The Bad – The main guy looks like a cartoon, in such a way that he could only ever exist in Civil War movies (jelly much Patrick? Whatever, he looks like a cartoon). The movie is pretty dull. The ending is absurd (you don’t just shake off a 100 day coma lady, c’mon!). The movie is 20 minutes too long. Both main actors are terrible. If I could freeze this movie in a time capsule I would as a testament to “this is what a bad romantic drama is”. The perfect ending to Nicholas Sparks’ production company I must say.
The BMT – Hell yeah. This movie is crazy bad and there is one scene that kind of saves it for me (think motorcycle ride in the rain ending with a singing church scene, it is amazing). But if someone said let’s watch this and make fun of it I would definitely do it … for an hour and then tell them to stop because it isn’t worth it at that point.

Phew. I did have opinions. Major opinions. I’ve felt like my responses have gotten a bit stale over the past few weeks so I’m going to go back to Sequel Prequel Remake and then start mulling over some new games when Jamie goes on vacation. Here I think we definitely need a Prequel where we see Travis just smashing it in NC for a summer. Fresh out of college you see him rebel a bit against his father’s dreams for him as a vet. He buys a boat, buys a sweet adirondack chair and makes a life promise with his best buds that they’ll never get married! But oh, a blast from the past as his old high school squeeze blows in threatening to derail all of the summer shenanigans for the newly minted graduates. Can this sleek southern gentleman juggle his friends, his summer plans, and his heart?! The Choice 2: Summer Fling. There is definitely some southern dreamboat on the CW who would kill in this role.

Obrigado,

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

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

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

Harlem Nights Recap

Patrick

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

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

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

Jamie

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

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

Cheerios,

The Sklogs

Eragon Recap

Patrick

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

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

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

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

Jamie

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

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

Cheerios,

The Sklogs

Down to You Recap

Jamie

Was there some fad in the early 2000s that I don’t remember where romance films eschewed the typical “meet cute” device in favor of a super earnest “we were always meant for each other even if we didn’t always know it but we still kinda knew it” device? Why do I ask? Because Down to You and Here on Earth are essentially the same movie and were released within weeks of each other. I’m not saying that Down to You is as good a BMT film as Here on Earth. That would be impossible. Here on Earth is a unique star in the BMTverse that shines with no comparison. But it feels the same. So if there wasn’t some earnest teen romance film fad, then I like to think they this is some bizarre example of a twin film scenario. Like Deep Impact and Armageddon or White House Down and Olympus Has Fallen. As if Miramax heard that Fox was putting Here on Earth into production and Harvey screamed at his assistant, “Get Freddie on the phone, we’re making a movie,” while dusting off an old script of Here on Earth he had lying around and grabbing the closest intern to be the director. They even play the same god damned song in the middle of the movie! You know, the song that plays when Chris Klein is dancing in the barn before drunkenly crashing the fair… what am I saying, obviously you remember it. That’s all my mind was able to focus on while watching the film… it was just so similar. And yet, it wasn’t nearly the BMT film that Here on Earth was. Felt a little in on the joke… which makes sense, it’s a comedy after all.

Quick game for me. This film was not based on a book. Strangely, though, Stiles is a book cover artist in the film and in the end gives Freddie a book called Down to You that she illustrated. So what was that book about? My guess? It’s the story of an endless love between a girl and a boy who always and forever knew they were meant for each other. Life gets in the way, but they always find their way through. Yeah, she cheats on him and he can’t handle their drifting apart, but when all’s said and done they recognize their own faults and how they make each other better… Oh, and the book also stars Chris Klein and is the best and is actually called Here on Earth: the Book and it won the Pulitzer. Perfect.

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! Down to You? More like Down on This Movie! And I was, let’s get into it.

The Good – I think I’ve said this every week in our one and done director cycle, but passion. The writer-director here had a vision (I think). He wasn’t that successful, but I appreciate it. See below for more details. I did appreciate that they shot it in NYC though. It was obviously NYC. It was so NYC it hurt.
The Bad – I don’t think I appreciated how not-good Freddie Prinze Jr. was as an actor until this movie. The movie was really kind of gross-weird in a gross-weird kind of way (you know?). The fact that the characters talk directly to the camera was just a horrible horrible (horrible) decision.
The BMT – What? Yes. I would give it a 50 on the BMeTric which is where it was really. It is a poor man’s Here on Earth. But who would be shocked? Freddie Prinze Jr. is a poor man’s Chris Klein (in BMT terms). Is that a good thing or a bad thing? Not sure.

One last thought on the film. Basically, I have the distinct feeling this movie was the director’s passion project. It is extremely reminiscent of Cusack films like One Crazy Summer. A little bit more drama (so maybe throw in a bit of Hughes for good measure), The main characters talked directly to the camera, it felt like a person telling their own story of their one great college romance (and how fleeting that can be and feel), and there is a strange surreal storyline woven throughout the film with Zak Orth as a porn auteur. And yet … the film kind of falls flat on its face throughout. Who to blame? Impossible to know. Perhaps seeing a young writer-director’s singular vision of a film just slo-motion explode is punishment enough, I don’t know. I think I’ll have to come back to this movie someday (ugh), just to really sort through things ….

Quick Sequel Prequel Remake, Sequel duh. Fast forward 16 years, the movie is called Down to Earth (I’m already excited about the potential Here on Earth, Down to Earth, Down to You trilogy!) and shows our protagonists struggling to rekindle the romance after ten years of marriage and two kids later. Hard drama. Revolutionary Road style, it comes out to rave reviews and snags both leading actor awards at the Oscars. One reviewer notes the “real pain behind Freddie Prinze Jr’s revelatory performance, … demanding your attention and admiration all at once”. First time writer-director Patrick Smadbeck was shut out of all major awards much to his chagrin. Bah, now I’m angry.

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

Can’t Stop the Music Recap

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! Can’t Stop the Music? More like Please Stop the Movie! Amirite!!!!! Wowwy Wow. Let’s get into it:

Good – Guttenberg was certainly enthusiastic. Really really into it. The director has some tricks up her sleeve that, while not wholly original, at the very least showed passion. If you like beefy man bods there is puuuuuhlenty to work with here. Paul Sand was funny. Caitlyn Jenner was actually really good at acting, at least relatively. If you hadn’t told me that was Caitlyn Jenner I would have guessed he was just a no name 80s actor.
Bad – Let’s start with 90% of the music in the film. A lot of it was genuinely bad. Most of the actors were terrible, especially the leading lady. They put way too much on the shoulders of the Village People who were all really really bad. The movie was also literally 40 minutes too long. I was shocked it was over two hours. This should have been a 70 minute barely movie from conception.
BMT – Uh, yeah. But you have to really get into it, or else it is merely boring. Watch the musical sequences and marvel at their length. Revel in each gratuitous shot of Dr. Pepper as they sip it casually in every other scene. Wonder aloud “did Guttenberg really suggest that Perrine should eat two snowballs and a ding dong for his music career? What a bizarre sexual innuendo that is simultaneously disgusting, offensive and inventive”. If you are there this is a 70 BMeTric movie, creme de la creme. If you are like me though, this was a borderline 25, something that needed to be watched more for bad movie street cred rather than specific enjoyment. Can’t Stop the Music, you’ve just been served (speaking of future music-based BMT choices…).

I was trying to gauge where on a bad movie musical scale this fell. You might be surprised if you had looked it up because it is rare to find Can’t Stop the Music on any online list. I saw it listed #31 on one list and left off of multiple other lists entirely. At the very least Spice World, Glitter, From Justin to Kelly and Rhinestone (all BMT) are all pretty universally considered worse. The Apple shows up more frequently as a similar contemporary. I would kind of agree, this ain’t nothing special. Get over yourself Can’t Stop the Music.

Game time, I needs a prequel baby! It’s called It Takes a Village and is focused on Sam Simpson’s rise through the mean streets of the fashion world while staying grounded in her crazy loft in the Village. As her career skyrockets a new hot designer, Chili Piper, invites her to fashion week in Paris. But will her blossoming romance with young music exec Steve Waits derail this huge opportunity with the smarmy Piper (who wants her body for more things than just pictures)? A cameo (somehow) by a young Steve Guttenberg delights. Billy Zane is electrifying as Chili Piper (spoiler, he doesn’t make it to Fashion Week in Paris, poor Billy Zane).

I want to see that movie.

Jamie

Now that you know a little about the “film” we can get a little into what the film means. It both causes me to exclaim “Why don’t we watch more older film? This film is nuts!” And “This is a perfect example of why we try to stay away from older films.” Why? Well like White Comanche before it I think Can’t Stop the Music exemplifies a type of film that occasionally crosses our BMT path. This is the “inherently hilarious” film. A film whose mere premise will make people say “You have got to watch this. It’s stars William Shatner playing a Native American…” And then you watch it and indeed, there’s William Shatner playing a Native American. Are these types of films fun to watch? Yes, occasionally. I think Can’t Stop the Music is a good example of one that is pretty fun to watch (albeit way too long). But often times once you get past the inherently hilarious part, there is nothing underneath to capture your attention. It’s actually just a really boring film that stars William Shatner as a Native American. And Native American William Shatner can only take you so far. That’s mostly why Patrick and I have steered clear of these types of films for BMT, which populate the 1980s at a much higher rate than the late 90s and the 2000s (mostly due to the rise of mid-major studios in the 80s… and probably cocaine). Thus our predilection for more recent fare. For us it’s just more fun to make fun a film that managed to sneak out of the studio system and still end up a complete disaster. So Can’t Stop the Music holds a place in the niche section of BMT whereby we build credibility as BMT experts. “Yes, we’ve seen Can’t Stop the Music. But have you seen Here on Earth?” That’s what BMT is.

Hope that wasn’t too philosophical. It’s sometimes hard to explain why BMT generally lives in the more recent past than most bad movie ventures. Can’t Stop the Music provided a vehicle for the explanation. As for my BMTsolution, Can’t Stop the Music is not based on a book. If it was it would be based on the Village People’s memoir called Macho Men. The book details the group’s rise from the anonymity of the streets of NYC to global stardom. The climax of the book involves the making of the Village People biopic called Can’t Stop the Music, which ends up being a massive flop and tears the group apart. In the book, the film is based on a memoir written by the group called Macho Men, which details the group’s rise from anonymity of the streets of NYC to global stardom. The climax of the book within a book involves the making of the Village People biopic called Can’t Stop the Music, which ends up being a massive flop and tears the group apart. In the book within a book, the film is based on a memoir written by the group called Macho Men, which details…

Oh dear, seems like my book collapsed in on itself and created a tiny black hole. Oops. Cheerios,

The Sklogs