Tag: The Good The Bad The BMT

A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child Recap

Jamie

Freddy’s back, Jack! And boy howdy does he still like to kill teenagers. In this entry Alice is still the dream master, but uh oh! So is her unborn child! And he’s now helping Freddy bring people into his dream domain. Can Alice stop Freddy and save her unborn child before it’s too late? Find out in… A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child.

How?! After subduing Freddy in the fourth film through her combined dream powers as the Dream Master, Alice and her beau Dan are living it up. They plan to travel the world after graduation, much to the dismay of Dan’s parents, but they don’t care! They’re young and alive… well, that is until Freddy returns to kill Dan by turning him into a motorcycle (this is real). But that doesn’t make sense. Alice wasn’t asleep to bring Dan into the dream world, although she did seem to have a premonition when she dreamt of Freddy’s birth (rebirth?) just prior. She soon gets news that starts to clarify things when it’s revealed that she’s pregnant. Uh oh! Alice’s friends are mostly supportive, even if they think she’s a little crazy. One of her friends soon dies in a very Freddy-esque way and Alice figures out that Freddy is using her child’s dreams to bring new souls to him. Jacob is a future dream master and Freddy is feeding him souls to try to corrupt him. Her friend Mark helps discover a possible way to fight Freddy by finding and helping his mother Amanda who is trapped in the asylum where Freddy was conceived. But when they go to the asylum in the dream world, Freddy uses their friend Yvonne to distract them and ultimately kills Mark. Now fully convinced Yvonne goes to the asylum while Alice battles Freddy and finds and frees Amanda. Amanda comes to Alice’s aid just in time and helps her and Jacob escape. With Freddy safely locked away Alice settles into a life raising Jacob. THE END… or is it? (it never is). 

Why?! In many genres the motivations of the bad guys are more interesting and/or nonsensical, while the good guys just kinda want love and justice (not necessarily in that order). In horror they often throw out the antagonist’s motivations as well, particularly as the series goes on. Freddy is and always was just an insane maniac. It’s a little vague exactly why or who he is in the first film but by the fifth entry he’s the progeny of a hundred maniacs and he lives forever in the dream world. An immortal killing machine. The protagonists just want to survive, mostly to no avail, although in this one Alice also wants to save the soul of her unborn child. So that’s a little wrinkle.

Who?! Very very very briefly there is a cameo by a conservative talk show host named Wally George who shows up on Mark’s TV with his show Hot Seat. On it there is a band which consists of Ted Nugent, Rudy Sarzo, Eric Singer, and Ron Armstrong… the first three are very famous musicians. I don’t know who Ron Armstrong is. Interesting factoid is that Wally George is the father of Rebecca De Mornay. Also interesting given the setting of the Nightmare franchise because Hot Seat was a local broadcast only available in Southern California… hmmmmm.

What?! In some ways the Nightmare films are always playing with some form of MacGuffin, mostly because they are always coming up with a new reason that Freddy is still alive in the dream world and how they can finally (and likely unsuccessfully) kill him once and for all. In this one it turns out that Freddy was able to be reborn because his mom wasn’t there to keep him in check since she wasn’t properly buried. By releasing her from her prison within the asylum she is able to absorb and imprison Freddy.

Where?! Up until the sixth entry in the film I assumed the whole series took place in LA. The first film has palm trees and California license plates and just feels very LA suburbs. After that it gets hazy and I guess they decided to switch more to an anywhere USA vibe with an Ohio setting. So this is set in Ohio, but not super up front about it. In fact online sources suggest it really wasn’t made explicit until the sixth film, so I wasn’t wrong in assuming it continued to be LA. D-. 

When?! This is one of the clearer time frames of any of the entries as it coincides with Alice’s graduation from high school. Almost certainly starts in May or June and then proceeds quickly through the plot in a matter of what feels like is a few weeks. Not really sure why it needed to be set at the end of the school year other than to ratchet up the tension between Dan and his parents at the start of the film. B.

After four relatively highly rated films in the franchise (which are actually somewhat hit or miss), the first entry that qualified for BMT is a little confusing. Definitely not my least favorite of the first five (that would be the second one), this one might even be slightly higher on my list than the fourth one. Although really, I thought the 3rd, 4th, and 5th were all pretty solid entries in a genre that often goes off the rails pretty quickly when it comes to franchises. The first is still my favorite mostly because Freddy is still a serious character at that point and it’s genuinely creepy. By the fifth, Freddy is already a bit too much of a chatterbox and starting in on the sexist “Bitch” gag that comes to define parodies of the character. The films also become borderline fantasy films more than horror films as the scares start to wane. But the entry is still consistent with the series and the visuals continued to be mostly effective and interesting. Just from a pure artistry point of view the middle three films are pretty interesting to look at. The sixth? Well… I guess just go to that recap for that one to see what I think, but it’ll just say that you may as well stop here. The mere fact that I would recommend watching the fifth one as part of the series, though, probably means it’s not as bad as the reviews suggest. Patrick?

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! In the run up to the big 600 in BMT we set out to finish a full horror mega-franchise. Amazingly the first Nightmare film to qualify is the fifth. Let’s go!

P’s View on the Preview – It is indeed quite shocking to realize the first four Nightmare films were all at least reasonably well received. Given that I hated the second film, it does make me wonder about the quality of this film. Then again, critics tend to be quite hard on horror films, so maybe this was actually secretly good. What were my expectations? A ridiculously vulgar Freddy, and nonsensical and non-scary thrills and kills. You know, all I care about is some sweet dream kills though and practical effects, so I hoped it would have that in spades.

The Good – The lore in A Nightmare on Elm Street is, by far in my opinion, the best of the three big 80s horror franchises. Halloween had the dumb Cult of Thorn. And Friday the 13th … well it was a mess and zombie Jason is fun, but I wouldn’t call it good. This is the culmination of that lore, with the Dream Child born of a Dream Master with characters who at least knew genuine Elm Street kids. The effects are okay, not as good as some of the previous films, but still they are decent practical effects. And the main actress was quite a good actress. Best Bit: Practical effects.

The Bad – Borrows heavily from the third film as far as “we must find someone’s body and consecrate it, it is the only way to stop Freddy!” Spoiler alert, it didn’t actually stop him in either case. The overeating kill looks bad and is gross and I didn’t like it. And, as usual with the later sequels, the main character is Freddy Krueger (a gross child murderer) who talks way too much, says “bitch” multiple times for no reason, and is starting to just come across as silly this time around. Fatal Flaw: Silly Freddy Krueger.

The BMT – Just the Halloween franchise to go no really. Interesting to watch a full franchise basically straight out, and especially in the context of Friday the 13th. Both Jason and Freddy become silly as their franchises wear one, but Jason in in an amusing tongue-in-cheek way, and Freddy in an annoying way. Michael Myers is just flat nothing and becomes boring eventually. An interesting trichotomy. Did it meet my expectations? I had heard of the motorcycle kill prior to the film and it didn’t disappoint. Freddy, though, was as unpleasant as expected … so yeah, it met my expectations.

Roast-radamus – Not much, as usually a decent Setting as a Character (Where?) for Springwood, Ohio, although I’m not sure you really explicitly know that until the sixth film really. And an okay MacGuffin (Why?) for Freddy’s mother’s bones which I guess need to be consecrated and buried to put them to rest to help lock Freddy away? Definitely closest to Good in my opinion, I think this is about on par with the fourth film which was also quite good for a late-series sequel to an 80s horror franchise. 

Sequel, Prequel, Remake – In the end I think I would like to Remake the lore of the franchise as a whole. It is pretty good, especially compared to Halloween or Friday the 13th. But still it feels like that drop the ball a bit with the Dream Master idea later on. The first, third, and fourth to an extent concern the systematic murder of all of the children of the vigilantes who killed Freddy (and the numbers kind of make sense). The second I think I would change only slightly to make Freddy’s goal to get Jesse killed by a vigilante mob after possessing him and forcing him to murder people, thus bringing in more children to kill. The fourth and fifth, with the Dream Master, I would make it far clearer that Freddy is a Dream Master, and due to abuse as a child he retreated so far into the Dream World that he was able to construct a form of immortality whereby when he died his soul survived there, but that he can only kill the children of his murderers, or people connected to other Dream Masters. The sixth I would change completely, but I’ll get into that during that recap. I guess the main problem is that Freddy is immortal, and also his power limitless. I think they didn’t do a good job explaining a good weakness, and the good Dream Masters were a perfect opportunity.

You Just Got Schooled – There is obviously a ton of stuff with this so between the two recaps I’ll try and hit the main series, and then extracurriculars separately. I naturally had to watch the four original films. A Nightmare on Elm Street: Amazing film with some really cool technical achievements as well. I can tell I’m quite close to being acclimated to the genre because this movie freaked me out when I first saw it ten years ago, but now I just stare at it and wonder how they did the effects and grade each kill. A, solidly. A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge: quite bad with almost no dream kills which defeats the entire purpose, if not for the sixth film this would be my least favourite. C-, not horrendous, but a below average slasher. A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors: The best of the sequels. Despite not being a super great actress, bringing back the lead from the first was a good idea, and the idea of the Dream Warriors is great and rightfully carried through the bulk of the sequels. B+, enjoyable with probably the best lore building of the major three slasher franchises. A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master: Loved how the story carries through from three to four. Some weak kills and poorer effects, but, again, maybe the best core background given for a slasher killer. B-. The main issue you can see carrying through all of the sequels is that slowly but surely Freddy becomes the main character, he starts talking more and more, he becomes more vulgar, and finally he becomes a parody of himself because guess what? A child murderer doesn’t have much to say beyond “bitch”, who would have thought. Overall the best series as far as slashers go and very painless to get through. The lore was shockingly good, usually long running horror franchises cult-of-thorn it quickly, but these were pretty okay.

Cheerios,

The Sklogs

Xanadu Recap

Jamie

Sonny is an artist with a little painter’s block. He’s lost his inspiration and sadly heads back to his dead-end advertising job. That is until a beautiful muse (literally) comes along and inspires him to the true heights of artistic achievement: teaming up with an old man to open a roller disco. Can he achieve his dreams (and get the girl) before it’s too late? Find out in… Xanadu.

How?! Sonny is a pure artist. Unfortunately he’s lost his inspiration and in a fit of despair throws his work out the window. This work blows over to a painting of the Greek muses, which breathes life into them and brings them into the world. One of the muses, Kira, heads Sonny’s way and just as he is about to return to his dead-end advertising job she kisses him. Struck by this beautiful woman who randomly kissed him, Sonny is even more perplexed when the first advertisement he is asked to paint has her picture on it! He begins to try to track down who she is, but no one seems to remember. During his search he befriends a former big band musician, Danny, who has made a fortune in construction and the two artists strike up a friendship, recognizing in each other similar artistic qualities. Eventually Sonny catches up to Kira at the rundown Pan-Pacific Auditorium where they fall in love, but Kira still resists telling him anything about her. They have a magical time together, eventually inspiring Sonny to quit his job and go into business with Danny to try to revamp the auditorium into a roller disco club. With her job done Kira reveals that she’s a muse and they can’t be together and leaves Earth. However, through the power of love Sonny follows her to her home where she reveals to her father that despite the rules, she has indeed fallen in love with Sonny and wishes to go to Earth to be with him. Initially she is refused and Sonny sadly returns to Earth to open the club, but he’s soon delighted to find Kira has returned for the big night and they probably smooch and shit. THE END.

Why?! Art and love, duh. It is a literal metaphor for the power of love to inspire artistic greatness. Kira is Sonny’s muse, literally, and through her he is able to achieve the pinnacle of artistic achievement… a roller disco… which obviously is the pinnacle of artistic achievement. Goes without saying.

Who?! This is a fun one. The Tubes were the band that showed up in a dream sequence for this film. Still active. There is also a film-within-a-film which starred David Tress and Madison Arnold. A classic 40’s gangster film, which seems to be a trend when people make fake film-within-films. Then, while he isn’t credited as Zeus, I believe Wilfred Hyde-White voiced him. Best known for My Fair Lady.

What?! Like all films of the late 70’s into the 80’s, this could be perceived as an advertisement for rollerskating. Everyone is quite into it. Because this does hold some cult attraction it’s not surprising that legit memorabilia shows up on ebay here and there. Like these original wardrobe drawings. You’d actually think more would be around, but probably the failure at the time got most of the props trashed. Who would think they’d eventually have value?

Where?! Kind of an incredible LA film. You got the beach, you got the boardwalk, and the big time roller disco they open up is in the old Pan-Pacific Auditorium. At the time it was just declared a historic building and so seemed to have some local standing as a place of note. I’m sure the idea of it being transformed into something shiny and new was appealing to the filmmakers. Alas, nine years later it was destroyed in a fire. A.

When?! Patrick helped with this one. At one point in a dinner you can see a calendar. The exact year and month is not discernable (until I purchase the original print and get it remastered), but it seems likely that the film is portraying events in July 1980, approximately when the film was released. Not solid, but interesting possibility. C-.

There is a joy to this film where I believe if you open yourself up to it (and ignore some obvious shortcomings) you can honestly have a ball. It reminds me a little of Cats. Obviously the crazy cat monsters and ridididiculous everything about that film can’t possibly translate into it being actually, unironically good. But… doesn’t mean I wasn’t watching Skimbleshanks the Railway Cat prance about with a smile on my face. I enjoyed the pure enthusiasm for rollerskating and dance that I was seeing. I enjoyed Olivia Newton-John singing nicely and looking beautiful. I even enjoyed weirdo Gene Kelly trying on a series of crazy 80’s outfits in his Pretty Woman turn. It’s a fun bad movie that is weird enough that I could imagine pretty confidently showing the film off at a bad movie screening. Few will have seen it, many will be bewildered by what they are seeing, while most will still get some laughs and enjoyment out of it. Overall I was surprised by Xanadu. Particularly since Xanadu was one of the films that inspired the Razzies. The other? Can’t Stop the Music, another weird musical from 1980. But that one is terrible. This is not. As for Punmpkinhead II: Blood Wings, what is there to say about a cheap sequel to a pretty fun original horror film. Not much. It’s cheap and filled with actors that scream “this is a direct-to-video movie so maybe the presence of Bill Clinton’s half-brother will be juuuust enough for you to watch this.” At times it feels like they didn’t even really understand (or even possibly watch) the original film before embarking on the sequel, which is a shame. Patrick?

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! We are on a streak of good films, so Xanadu will obviously break that cycle … or will it? Did I secretly love Xanadu? You’ll have to read the recap to find out! Let’s go!

P’s View on the Preview – Ever since watching Can’t Stop the Music the next big BMT musical sensation was obviously going to be … Cats, and it still is Cats actually because Cats is the greatest film ever made. But before Cats it was supposed to be Xanadu! An absolute classic in bad movie circles, not least of which because it was one of the original films that inspired the Razzie awards. What were my expectations? Disco singing sensation? I assumed it would be like Can’t Stop the Music which was a ludicrous barely-movie that I don’t even really remember. So … that.

The Good – Wait for it … I kind of dug this film. It isn’t a good film by any stretch of the imagination, but with Gene Kelly and the whole story about big band nightclubs, all mixed together with 80s disco and rollerskating, something about it was maybe the most unique film I’ve seen in a long long time. Unlike Can’t Stop the Music I would happily watch this film again some time. This is a bad film, but it is also an interesting and mostly harmless film. Best Bit: The wild 15 minute long musical sequence that ends the film incoherently.

The Bad – The reviews naturally nail it. The direction was rough, the film looked cheap, the actors weren’t very good (although I liked Olivia Newton-John), and the musical numbers couldn’t save it. The films ends like seventeen times near the end, there is a whole story about Greek muses. And then three words: sexy animated animals. Somehow, among the madness that is this film, the two main characters become cartoon characters and then transform into two fish and two birds, and Olivia Newton-John is, for lack of a better description, a sexy fish and a sexy bird. What is with animators and the insistence on drawing sexy animals. It is so weird. Fatal Flaw: Sexy animals as usual … naw I’m joking, it is a crap special effects that undermine the actual decent music.

The BMT – Out of all of the 80s musicals this is by far the most interesting for BMT, and I just can’t see how any other film takes that crown from Xanadu. Do I dare? Do I dare call this film a good movie? No. I mustn’t. But it is darn close, and that is a shock! I would have never imagined Xanadu would be anything by a catastrophe. Did it meet my expectations? It wildly exceeded them. I expected Can’t Stop the Music, but instead kind of got like … Newsies maybe? Like Newsies but with ELO, bad effects, and a dumb Greek muse story.

Roast-radamus – A decent Setting as a Character (Where?) for Los Angeles, where Gene Kelly plays jazz clarinet on the beach, natch. And a borderline Exact Date (When?) for maybe like … July 1980? There was a calendar and you can see that the month has 31 days and the 13th is a Sunday, so I assume it is July. Maybe it is Fourth of July and this is a holiday film? I think the weird mix of good and bad from the film makes this a decent BMT in the end.

Sequel, Prequel, Remake – Definitely a Sequel. Bring back Olivia Newton John and Michael Beck and now they are the ones in the Gene Kelly role. Retired long ago and living happily together, Xanadu was sold off, replaced, and forgotten, its place in the world lost along with the 80s … that is until 80s nostalgia hits hard! The old site of Xanadu becomes an ironic pilgrimage site for those rad hipsters who love all things Stranger Things. Olivia Newton-John, aka Terpsichore, is invariably drawn to Xanadu. There’s dancing, and signing, and eventually Michael Beck and Olivia Newton-John team up with Twitch star LolXanadu4Life (played by a real like Twitch streamer who I’m not going to name since I don’t know any of them) to create a cross between an arcade and microbrewery all wrapped up in a Twitch themes ESPN Zone situation. It’s super sweet, and super ironic, and all the rad hipsters love it. It ends with a 45 minute 80s themes song and dance number. Xana2: Legacy.

Bring a Friend Analysis – Naturally for Xanadu we brought along … Pumpkinhead II: Blood Wings? Obviously I had to watch both of the Pumpkinhead films for this bit. The first? Is quite good. It is a really cool contained story about witch’s curses and the regret a good man has for unleashing the demon Pumpkinhead on a group of mostly innocent teenagers. The practical effects are incredibly impressive, and as a self-contained story it is really cool. And then they made a pointless direct-to-video sequel. The sequel looks like absolute trash. It stars the star of Hellraiser, and has multiple cameos by horror villains (e.g. Kane Hodder, the best Jason), but eventually as the creature starts really killing people it just goes over a cliff and all of the characters go insane and … I didn’t know what was happening anymore. Apparently filmed in 23 days with a director hired the day before shooting essentially, I have a feeling they realized they were doomed from the start and just decided to have fun with it. Guess who didn’t have fun with it? This guy. D. Much like the sequels to Basket Case this just couldn’t capture the charm and raison d’etre of the first to make it worth my while.

You Just Got Schooled – And now to reveal why Pumpkinhead II: Blood Wings is the friend for Xanadu … it’s because Pumpkinhead II has a video game tie-in! Against all odds they made Blood Wings: Pumkinhead’s Revenge, a PC game which, first, barely works, and second, appears to just be a rip-off of Doom? It is a really weird game that I couldn’t quite figure out. Like, you are fighting skeletons (not in the film) and then travelling to the Netherworld (not in the film) to capture crystals (not in the film), which then allow you to I guess watch FMV video from the movie? I wouldn’t know about the last bit because the game basically doesn’t work and I couldn’t figure out how to capture the crystals. Unfortunately, the one video I could find of someone playing they had about as much luck getting crystals as I did … how do I keep playing the worst games ever made for this section? How is Little Nicky by far the best movie tie-in for a BMT film we could find? F.

Cheerios,

The Sklogs

Days of Thunder Recap

Jamie

Cole Trickle is a race car driver you just wants to win. Just when he figures everything out he gets in a terrible wreck and finds himself fighting for his job against a young upstart trying to take his place. Add in a new love interest and things are getting complicated. Can he win the big race (and get the girl) before it’s too late? Find out in… Days of Thunder.

How?! Cole Trickle is a race car driver with a lot of promise. Unfortunately he just can’t listen to advice (or even really understand the sport of NASCAR) and keeps burning out his cars by pushing too hard. After his pit chief Harry Hogge puts him through some training, Cole becomes the darling of NASCAR and a big time rivalry with hot shot racer Rowdy Burns starts up. This culminates in a contentious race where both Rowdy and Cole are seriously injured in a crash. As Cole recovers, he develops a romantic relationship with his neurosurgeon Dr. Claire Lewicki and patches things up with Rowdy as they become super best friends forever. But all is not well on the race track as Russ Wheeler, a young upstart who has taken over Cole’s car after the crash, is making waves. Instead of giving Cole his car back after he recovers, the owner expands to two cars and a bitter rivalry between Cole and Russ develops. This eventually results in Cole being let go by the team. However, Rowdy needs brain surgery and to pay for it he needs Cole to drive his car in the Daytona 500. What luck! With a new team assembled, a little help from his old team, and some fancy moves on the racetrack, Cole and Russ find themselves neck and neck at the finish line. It looks like Russ has the whole thing wrapped up, but Cole tricks Russ by switching up his patented slingshot move at the finish and wins Daytona and everyone is super excited and Claire is like hooray (even though she’s like a way more impressive brain surgeon) and it’s great. THE END. 

Why?! Fame and fortune I think. Although Cole also has all kinds of other stuff that factor into his passion for driving that I don’t totally remember. I know that part of the attraction to NASCAR was that the cars are the same so that it’s all about dem skillz. And boy howdy does he have the skillz. I mean, I think that’s it. He wants to win Daytona… it’s not complicated.

Who?! Obviously there are some cameos in this guy. Richard Petty and Rusty Wallace are a couple. Sometimes I even discover a new entry for these categories and this is an interesting case of a “based on a true story” that really isn’t (but kind of is in a winking way). Cole Trickle is mostly based on Tim Richmond, who was a larger than life driver with a tragic story. They made a 30 for 30 about him. A lot of the events from the film are anecdotal about a variety of drivers. So almost based on actual people… but it’s not.

What?! The whole thing is kinda like an advertisement for NASCAR. Wouldn’t be surprised if NASCAR recruiters set up shop outside the cineplex to rope unsuspecting teens into NASCAR boot camp. And of course with NASCAR comes Mello Yello racecars and with Mello Yello racecars follows the inevitable sex scene featuring Sweet’N Low. I even think I remember that on the SATs back in the day. Autumn:Winter::Mello Yello Racecar:________. The answer was obviously Sweet’N Low Sex Scene. I believe the only question in history where everyone who took the test got it right.

Where?! In my mind this is a Florida film. Not just because that’s where the climactic race of the film takes place, but really because that’s where Cole recovers with Claire. So in my mind I see Cole driving around Florida and falling in love to the tune of a Daytona sunset (awww). On the other hand it’s a pretty good out-of-the-box road trip movie. It even has a scene where Cole is racing at the Dover International Speedway… let me say that again: there is a scene in this film in Dover… Delaware. B+.

When?! There are some clear dates here just in terms of the races that are explicitly names. At the very least you know that Cole was injured in July and then the climactic Dayton 500 would occur the following February. Really all the events seem to take place in just under a year, which seems odd. Like Cole is a rookie, becomes a rival with the top driver, is injured, starts another rivalry, gets fired from his team, and then wins the Daytona 500 on a different team in like… 10 months or so. Road trip through time as well. B+.

We’re on a bit of a streak of pretty good films. Or at least not entirely bad films. I found this one to be downright watchable and really not that bad (It’s not that bad! It’s not that bad!). Though, I can understand why it’s not in the Top Gun level of nostalgia at this point. The bromance is just not at the same level, the rival comes in too late to hit Iceman potential, the love interest is barely written, and fighter jets are cooler than race cars. But… but… it’s got all that adrenaline pumping fun and sports movie juice to get me through a sitting no prob. My biggest gripe is Nicole Kidman’s neurosurgeon character who falls in love with Cole (an immature race car driver who kinda sucks) for no apparent reason… she’s a beautiful neurosurgeon and she’s going to fall in love with one of her patients who has a death wish? That’s unlikely. Patrick?

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! We get to dust off another borderline BMT and play a sweet NES game with Days of Thunder. Let’s go!

P’s View on the Preview – This film has always been kicking around as a sports film for BMT, a sub-genre we don’t often get to do. I don’t know why that is. I looked it up once, I think there are actually plenty of films to do (Mighty Ducks, D2: The Mighty Ducks, D3: The Mighty Ducks, to name three), so it is just something about them that we avoid. Probably because they don’t really fit into any genre. Is this an action film? A romance? Mighty Ducks I suppose is a comedy. The other notable things about this film is it is the only feature film Cruise has a writing credit on, and it is also where he met Nicole Kidman. Truly a landmark in film history. What were my expectations? Heart pounding NASCAR action! No seriously, I pretty much fully expected it to be an okay actioner, all the reviews just seem to complain about the romance and how inaccurate the film is about racing.

The Good – And an okay actioner is it! The final race in particular is quite good I thought, with enough vulnerability shown by Cruise to get me rooting for him to win, and enough action to keep you entertained. It didn’t really matter that you knew who was going to win. The whole story works quite well and I think the credit might lie with Cruise there. He knew that having some prodigy young hot shot as the lead wouldn’t work well and was willing to play a character who admitted he just didn’t know a thing about cars. You know if that was late-career Vin Diesel he’d be like “I can’t lose a race, it is in my contract. Fambly.” Best bit: Final race

The Bad – Definitely sags a bit in the middle when they are just mostly winning races / recovering from injuries and moping about. I could have used a bit more of the classic redemption arc of “we were rivals, and I hate you Cole Trickle … but goddamn if I respect you!” from Rooker. You can tell everything concerning racing is nonsense (albeit a necessary and forgivable flaw). I think the only unforgivable sin is that Duvall lives on a farm with a barn, but Tom Cruise never punches a big sack of hay while recovering from injury in there a la Youngblood. A travesty. Fatal flaw: Tom Cruise didn’t punch a big sack of hay … just joking, it is probably just the slowness of the middle of the film.

The BMT – We’ve watched quite a few racing films over the years, although mostly (outside of maybe only Driven?) they are about illegal street racing. This still, weirdly, isn’t the best BMT about sanctioned racing, that is surely Driven with Sly Stallone. It gets your blood pumping, though. I can definitely see myself settling in to watch just the final race if I saw it randomly on television. Also it is surprising just how much of a parody Talladega Nights is. Watching those two films back-to-back would be great fun … yeah I’m just going to pencil that in for some lazy Sunday in the future. Did it meet my expectations? Amazingly, it exceeded them. I think I expected it to be even more nonsensical than it was, but it does an okay job of balancing competition, rivalry, and the romance story, and ends up being pretty fun.

Roast-radamus – Two incredible Product Placements (What?) with the quote “ESPN … their coverage is excellent, you’d be surprised how much you can pick up” being used to explain Cole Trickle’s inherent abilities in stock car racing, and also Cole guzzling Budweiser throughout the film, and ultimately being sponsored by Mello Yello at the end of the film. A decent Setting as a Character (Where?) for North Carolina in particular, I think they ended up just bouncing back and forth between the two headquarter cities (Daytona and Charlotte) for NASCAR throughout the film. And I’m declaring it, this is a Super Secret Holiday Film (When?), because everyone knows the Daytona 500 (which bookends the film) always takes place on Presidents’ Day weekend, at least that was true in the 80s and 90s. Definitely closest to Good for me.

Sequel, Prequel, Remake – Prequel baby! You know when they throw out tantalizing nuggets like “my father owned my IndyCar team and was a fraud and bankrupted and embarrassed me so badly I had to move to NASCAR” in a film I just need to see that as a prequel story. And guess what? Tom Cruise is going to play that father! That’s right, it has been long enough that we recast Cole Trickle (easy, Timothée Chalamet) and Tom Cruise plays his own character’s father in the film. Pretty straightforward, I mean … they explained the whole concept in Days of Thunder. I think the key though is that the characters will be following NASCAR during the film (ESPN has great coverage) and will see Bretherton’s crash and Harry Hogge get drummed out of the series at the same time. Draw that connection. We also need an IndyCar rivalry to revive in the sequel (after Trickle triumphantly returns to IndyCar after the events of the original film), I’m going to call him … Kyle Frisk and he’s played by Jaden Smith. Days of Thunder: Grand Prix.

You Just Got Schooled – This is a two-fer! This film had several singles from its soundtrack album, most notably a cover of Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door by Guns N’ Roses which peaked at #2 on the UK charts, and Show Me Heaven by Maria McKee which spent four weeks at the top of the UK charts in 1990. Additionally, there was a PC and NES game also called Days of Thunder. I played the NES version and hoooooooo doggy, it is basically impossible. I’m not even joking, there is a race in the game which even the best runners say is impossible to win given the pitting mechanics. I played for an hour or two and started to get the hang of it to some degree, but you should at the very least watch a speed run just to see how insane the pitting mechanics are, you have to manually do them!

By the end of the movie tie-in cycle I think I’m going to end up playing every single type of game ever made, you have to love it.

Cheerios,

The Sklogs

Toys Recap

Jamie

The head of a fanciful toy factory passes away and instead of leaving it to his similarly minded son, Leslie, he gives it to his militaristic brother. Soon the factory is deep into the development of drones and most of the workers laid off. Can Leslie and his gang of misfits team up to stop the general (and perhaps get the girl) before it’s too late? Find out in… Toys.

How?! Leslie is the silly son of a silly founder of a silly toy company. He has his head in the clouds and is a bit of a flake, so on his deathbed his father decides to give the factory over to his militaristic general brother instead. The general comes in guns a-blazing, taking a liking to tamping down perceived corporate espionage and the possibility of getting back in the war game with the development of toy-sized drones. As the budgets of these secret military projects balloon, Leslie soon looks around and realizes that all the happy employees are gone and the factory has transformed into a venture that he barely recognizes. Leslie decides that the general must be stopped and finds allies in his sister Alsatia, his new boo Gwen and, surprisingly, the general’s son Patrick, who has realized that his father is a monster. They head into the factory, which is now controlled by a state of the art AI driven security system. They face death at every turn at the hands of the (surprisingly effective) drones. But through ingenuity, elbow grease, and good old-fashioned fun they break through, take out the security system and confront the general. In the final fight Alsatia is revealed to be a robot, which is a bit of a surprise, and the general is ultimately taken down by his own ultimate weapon, The Sea Swine (which I choose to imagine is a sophisticated submarine drone). In the end Leslie gets the factory and the girl and everyone lives whimsically ever after. THE END.

Why?! This is where you have to start to question whether the film is actually bad or not. The motivation is pretty thought provoking, because why was the factory even left to the clearly eeeevil general? It becomes obvious that the Zevo patriarch always meant for Leslie to take over, but that he was flaky… he had no backbone. He knew that the general would twist the factory to his whims and eventually Leslie would be forced to fight back and through that process he would grow into the owner that the factory needs. Profound… although he almost killed his own son and ruined the company, so not a foolproof plan or anything.

Who?! Ladies Love Cool Jamie and also LL Cool J making his (almost) film debut. He was coming off the Michael J. Fox film The Hard Way but who remembers that? Everyone remembers him in Toys camouflaged in a couch. Paved the way for NCIS: Los Angeles. The best NCIS… although I can’t make that judgement. Patrick is the resident NCIS expert. (Patrick Note: I’ve only seen one episode of NCIS: Los Angeles, but I do think Chris O’Donnell and LL Cool J are a significantly more fun pairing that Mark Harmon and Michael Weatherly)

What?! There are quite a number of props from this film for sale online. Given that there is a battle between thousands of toys at the end this is unsurprising. Nothing too spectacular, though. Then as Patrick mentioned we see that the Toy factory serves Pepsi and not Coke, so no wonder it’s going down the tubes. Other than that, the sea swine is kind of a MacGuffin if you squint enough… it’s at least an object of great but unknowable power, but not really something that everyone wants to get their hands on.

Where?! I usually say that if I could just get my hands on a prop newspaper or look closer at what’s on TV or in the background of shots that you could figure out where any film takes place… but probably not this film. Seems pretty clear that they have set this very specifically in an unknowable, whimsical location in the United States. Case closed. F.

When?! Secret Holiday Film Alert!… I think. The opening and ending of the film is a Christmas extravaganza. I speculated on the possibility that this was just because the owner of the factory was dying and Christmas was every day because he loved that time of year, but when it came back at the end I threw that theory out the window. Add in that one of the songs that plays during the celebration is called The Closing of the Year and I have to think that in fact the events of the film take place over a single year from Christmas to Christmas basically. B+.

I mean… this is not that bad (It’s not that bad! It’s not that bad!). I can understand that when people saw that there was a film about toys starring Robin Williams they came in with some expectations. Those expectations were not exactly met by a dark comedy about military toys with a heavy surrealist influence on production. But it’s not like some auteur “dream projects” that are the bread and butter of bad movies. Is it weird that this was Berry Levinson’s passion project? I don’t think so. It’s an interesting story with some downright prescient themes on drone warfare and a beautiful and whimsical visual spectacle that is kind of the definition of movie magic. Just like how there are things to celebrate about Little Nicky even existing, it’s a wonder and amazing that this exists and it really isn’t even all that bad (unlike Little Nicky). Interesting. Patrick?

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! Wonder and whimsy is the name of the game. And a … mechanical sea slug maybe? Real hard to tell what is happening with that thing. Let’s go!

P’s View on the Preview – Toys! I’ve seen Toys a ton of times, it was constantly on television when I was a kid. And spoilees. I loved it as a kid. Kids … are morons. But Robin Williams was great, and it was just a bunch of kid jokes and toys flying around in an insane toy factory. What’s not to love?! What were my expectations? I think like with that other Robin Williams classic, Hook, I’ll be able to acknowledge that Toys is a messy film that should have been a lot better, while also admitting that I still love it. That’s my prediction.

The Good – Whimsy is indeed the name of the game. With horror films the most interesting thing, to me, is often the practical effects and how that really brings a horror film to life. With the occasional comedy or drama with a very specific set of directors, pure set design can at least partially save a film. This is one of those rare films (and funny enough so is the aforementioned Hook). There are genuine “wow!” moments in this film, and it is a shame the product wasn’t polished enough to really let it stand the test of time. Best Bit: The set design.

The Bad – The film is a mess for a few complex reasons. It feels cobbled together from a bunch of Robin Williams manic improvisational shots, and while they sometimes work, they sometimes are just really really annoying. The military ends up feeling like a weird antagonist, likely because the film was originally written in the late 70s (and thus Vietnam was in the more recent past). And then the finale is a real dud with a weirdo sea slug machine thing (in the original script, by the way, it was called a “submarine with a nose”). It seems like the film wants to be a kids film when determining humor, but also have giant war scenes and a sex scene and stuff. It is weird. Fatal Flaw: Thinks it is funny, but it isn’t.

The BMT – Log this as another Oscar-nominated BMT film, a BMT film from our past, and a BMT film I kind of like. I can’t hate Toys! It is an indelible part of my childhood. But yeah, it is a mess … you can mostly get the gist of it by watching a youtube video about the production design. Did it meet my expectations? Yeah! Actually, I did get the ending of the film a lot better as an adult. I always was a bit confused as to why Robin Williams thinks he can defeat the military toys with the old Toys … but he doesn’t, he just uses them as a distraction to buy LL Cool J time to defeat his father. See, well worth the rewatch.

Roast-radamus – A genuine Product Placement (What?) for Pepsi of all things, which is a wild product placement for a film like this, it feels like they would have you know … gotten some toys or something. And I declare this an official Secret Holiday Film (When?) for the beginning and ending of the film almost definitely taking place around Christmas one year apart. It is debatable, but I think it is easier to reason about if it was actually Christmas rather than some other event involving Santa. I think it is closest to Good, sue me.

Prequel, Sequel, Remake – You know what? I’m going with remake. Sell it to Netflix, and make it a nostalgia driven period-piece a la Stranger Things. Set in 1980 (so not too far off from the original script date), right as personal computers and a big arcade boom was coming around. Re-tool the story towards Leslie being too resistant to technology for his father to entrust the company to him. And then Leland becomes obsessed with military games, just like in the movie. Underlying the whole thing is an underground Soviet-US double agent thing with Leland attempting, with the help of some Russian dissidents, to start a third world war. In the end, Leslie, with the help of a few of the kids brought in to test the war games, ends up creating a whole line of whimsical Zevo brand arcade games, and they hack the planet to take down Leland once and for all. Toys: World War. It will be a ten episode order obviously. The second season would bring in a rival toy company and really ramp up the magical whimsey to eleven, so consider that before passing on this Netflix.

You Just Got Schooled – The video game movie tie-ins keep on coming, and Toys is no exception. There was a SNES game called Toys: Let the Toy Wars Begin! and hoooooooooooooooooo boy is this a pile of dog poo in my face! The game is an isometric shooter (for the most part) consisting of only five levels. The first four are mostly identical, involving Leslie running around defeating military toys and then playing a bizarre mini-game to turn off the cameras to allow Patrick, Leland’s son, into the factory. The final level is a side scrolling game with you in an airplane. Notably considered one of the worst movie tie-ins ever created, and playing it I can’t say I disagree. The wide variety of games I’ve played for this cycle is astounding! I think by the end I will have played basically every type of game totally by accident. It is great. F. Absolutely worthless game with aggravating gameplay. Just watch the speed run to see how it operates if you are curious.

Cheerios,

The Sklogs

The Bodyguard Recap

Jamie

Frank Farmer is the best. So when rising singer-actor double threat Rachel Marron life is in danger there is only one man to call. Frank doesn’t like to mix business with pleasure but Rachel and her YOLO lifestyle cracks through his tough exterior to find… love (awww). But can Frank stop the threat before it’s too late? Find out in… The Bodyguard.

How?! Frank Farmer will always love you. And by “you” I mean “stopping danger”. That’s cause he’s a bodyguard extraordinaire and if the price is right he’ll be there at your side stopping any threat. But there is one thing he won’t do: guard a celeb. Why? They are too much for his super serious methods. But Rachel Marron isn’t just any celebrity. She’s the it girl: a singing sensation on the verge of winning an Oscar. So he says yes, but it’s pretty clear pretty soon that he’s in trouble. That’s cause he can feel his ice heart melting and soon he and Rachel are totes in love for real. But love doesn’t stop the threat (unfortunately) and Frank and Rachel are always at odds on how best to guard her against the stalker leaving creepy notes, while also doing promotion for her big soundtrack release and Oscar campaign (how relatable). When Rachel’s son is threatened she finally realizes the seriousness of the situation and Frank takes her and her crew up to his father’s lakehouse. Unfortunately the whole thing is a setup and Rachel’s sister, jealous over her sister’s success, has been the one behind the threats. She hired a hitman through so many back channels that even she can’t stop it now. Before Frank can get anymore information Rachel’s sister is murdered. After burying her sister, the big Oscar night is here and Rachel insists on going cause obviously she’s going to win. When Rachel goes up on stage to accept the award, Frank realizes that the killer is a former secret service agent he knows and is able to take the bullet for Rachel and then shoot the killer. Later, Rachel is off for bigger and better things and Frank insists that the relationship won’t work, so they say goodbye at the airport. At the last minute, though, Rachel gets off the plane and gets her a piece of some Kevin Costner action. Love! THE END.

Why?! Love. It can’t be denied that this film is all about L-O-V-E. Do we care about Rachel’s Oscar campaign? Sure, who wouldn’t. Are we intrigued by Kevin Costner’s interest in ancient Japanese culture and the ways of the samurai? Duh, I mean, we’re all humans right? But despite all these very interesting things happening it still all boils down to love.

Who?! I wonder how many fake Oscar hosts there have been in cinema. In this case Robert Wuhl was the host, which makes some sense. He was part of the writing team for Billy Crystal’s 1990 and 1991 shows so he would know exactly what the job entails while also… you know… not being Billy Crystal.

What?! Are we absolutely sure that the film itself is not a very long advertisement for the power of Whitney Houston’s voice? I mean… check out this music video. Do you even need to watch the full movie at that point? This is actually fun, I’ll have to keep that in mind for future What?! Sections. Whether there is a music video using clips from the film. Like Wiki-wiki-Wild Wild West.

Where?!  Mostly Los Angeles, but there are some pretty good Miami scenes (I thought for sure it was in the same hotel as in The Specialist, but IMDb tells me I’m wrong) and Lake Tahoe. Lake Tahoe was a funny one because I was thinking how weirdly familiar everything looked in the Tahoe scenes, but then I realized that I was just remembering The Godfather Part II. I’ll give it an A- since we get that sweet Oscar LA centric.

When?! Speaking of the Oscars, perfect kinda secret holiday film alert. At the time the Oscars took place on the last Monday of the March. Meaning that the climax of this film takes place on March 30th, 1992 (assuming this isn’t set in the near future for some reason). Makes sense too with the weather and in Tahoe and the idea that he would be protecting her from around the beginning of the year as the Oscar campaign heated up.

I kinda think a film like this is timeless, but just not this specific film. Mega-celeb stalker situation that needs a mumbly Kevin Costner statue man to swoop in? Yeah, make that every few years, throw it on Netflix or whatever and people are going to be into it (at least I would be). They even had a pretty good variant of it come out not that long ago called Beyond the Lights that is more or less this story without the overwrought Oscar/assassin plot. While this film was fairly enjoyable, and I thought Houston did a pretty good job, I think it really didn’t deliver on a few things that really hurt it. 1. Just a complete lack of sexy steamy action. I personally blame Costner who was even more wooden than usual. 2. Really pretty basic paint-by-number thriller plot, which they shouldn’t have needed (see point 1). 3. Hollywood likes nothing more than a film talking about Hollywood… but they also will hate a movie that talks about Hollywood in a not serious way. The Oscars ceremony scene in this film is bonkers and I kinda love it, but critics probably hated it. Patrick?

Patrick

‘Ello! Iiiiii-iiii-iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii will always loooooooove Kevin Costnerrrrrrrrr. He’s just always so brooding and emotionally stunted, you know? Super sexy stuff. Let’s go!

P’s View on the Preview – This is definitely in the category of “films I’m surprised qualify for BMT.” Prior to looking I would have guessed the film got something like 50-60% on Rotten Tomatoes in general. Even the reviews seemed somewhat tepid, merely calling the film a bit schlocky and cliche. I’m 100% convinced if this film came out today starring, I don’t know, Lady Gaga, that it would at least get a “meh, what did you expect?” from most critics. What were my expectations? A good movie. But in that Kevin Costner-in-the-90s sort of way. I’m not joking when I say he plays an emotionally stunted very quiet and brooding man in basically all of the films he’s in … and usually he’s a widower. I’ve watched maybe five of his films in the last six months.

The Good – It is a pretty entertaining (if a bit overlong) film, and Whitney Houston is surprisingly good. I’m a little surprised she didn’t get more roles after this, although I think this was also the beginning of her tumultuous fall into addiction that ultimately ruined her career. The soundtrack, naturally, is top to bottom bangers. And the few action scenes when they happen are solid, especially the sequence in Tahoe. Best Bit: The soundtrack obviously.

The Bad – Overlong, as I said. The twist in the end of the film is very Murder, She Wrote-esque. Oh, the person who seemed like a pretty famous character actor who was in the film for approximately one minute early in the film for no reason is the big bad guy? Who could have guessed? The motive for the crime is also weak. As much as I love the amusing fake Oscars they set up at the end, the camera gun assassin seems like it is somehow from a different movie … In the Line of Fire comes to mind. Fatal Flaw: Bad twist.

The BMT – I kind of dig this film, although I don’t think I would watch it again anytime soon due to the length. But if I turned it on and I saw Kevin Costner in snowy Tahoe? I would stick around for, at least, the chase scene soon after. It’ll always have a place in the BMT Record Collection for a rare film that spawned a number one hit single in the US. Did it meet my expectations? Yeah, not surprisingly the film is pretty entertaining, if a bit long and old school. And it was very very Kevin Costner.

Roast-radamus – The first decent Product Placement (What?) in a bit with the characters literally guzzling Stolichnaya Vodka at times, which is hilarious. Also not a bad Setting as a Character (Where?) for Los Angeles where the film predominantly takes place (except for the quick jaunt to Tahoe). Really really nice Specific Time (When?) for the ending of the film which takes place at the Oscars, so very specifically late-March (with the rest of the film taking place probably from sometime in the previous Fall). And finally a Worst Twist (How?) for the unsurprising reveal that that guy who seemed like a significant character in the middle of the film, but had only had one minute of screen time, popped back up as the assassin. Definitely closest to Good.

Sequel, Prequel, Remake – Obviously we are going Prequel here, because I got to know about the Reagan assassination attempt which is hanging over Frank Farmer’s career. A cross between Oliver Stone’s JFK and The Bodyguard, we follow a young Frank Farmer, a hot shot Secret Service agent who always gets his man. The story unfolds through post-event interviews mostly, with Frank admitting that with the death of his wife, his head just wasn’t in the game. But … could the event have been stopped? As a (entirely fictitious, creative license and all that) conspiracy slowly starts to unravel, along with Farmer’s life, we learn that Hinkley may have had an inside man in the Secret Service. In the end, to cover up the potential scandal for the service, Farmer is relieved of duty and goes into private security. But, he vows to find the ones responsible for nearly killing the president on his watch (That’s for The Bodyguard: Legacy starring DeVaughn Nixon reprising his role as Fletcher, grown up and following in Frank’s footsteps). The Bodyguard: Origins.

You Just Got Schooled – I was thinking about just listening to the entire Bodyguard soundtrack while working one day, but nah. Instead I decided to hit up one of the few remaining big Kevin Costner films I haven’t seen, Dances with Wolves. Why hadn’t I seen it? Because it is three hours long. For a three hour film it is quite good. Never really flags, lots of interesting characters, a beautiful setting, with a few impressive action set pieces thrown in. I can see most of the complaints about the film, and as usual Kevin Costner’s very Kevin Costner-y performance as “Kevin Costner on the frontier” (I think that was his character’s name) is a bit distracting. But I can also see why it won Best Picture, this is basically the definition of 90s Oscar bait, with a story of resurrecting the Western as a genre thrown in. B+. I’ll just deduct a bit for Kevin Costner, I have to, it’s all I’ve been talking about in this entire review.

Cheerios,

The Skloga

Virus Recap

Jamie

Kit and Steve are part of the unlucky crew of a tugboat whose container ship gets lost in a storm (along with their financial future). Damaged, they find themselves in the eye of the storm with a ghost ship (with the most ship). Seeing a salvage opportunity, they board, but soon realize that something is amiss. Can they escape before it’s too late? Find out in… Virus.

How?! Kit is the badass XO of a tugboat whose captain has staked his entire life on one big container ship. Unfortunately that ship is now at the bottom of the ocean after they run smack into the middle of a Pacific typhoon. Badly damaged, they fortunately find their way into the eye of the storm where they are surprised to find they aren’t alone. A giant Russian research vessel is there and looking pretty rough. The captain is seeing dollar signs and as long as no survivors are found they can get a huge chunk of change for salvaging what is a very expensive ship. But things start going badly right away and they realize they aren’t alone. Not just that they find a terrified surviving crew, but when they turn on the power they feel like they are being watched and one of their crew goes missing. When they go searching for him they find an automated workshop producing robots and are attacked by a cyborg! Egad! Turns out there is a spooky alium onboard that is all electrical and shit and it is all up in those robots. They are taking people and turning them into robots too. Like a… uh… robot… uh, what’s the word I’m looking for? Oh… virus. A robot virus. Realizing they have to take out the computer brain they head off, only to be attacked by more alium robots. The captain decides to become a cyborg of his own volition (apparently so he can still salvage the ship… which will probably be a little difficult being a crazy scary cyborg person, but whatever) and the rest of the crew scatter just trying to survive. In the climax they have to fight (and kill) the captain cyborg and then ultimately sets a trap to fight (and kill) the main robot alium brain. Just as they explode the ship, Kit and Steve eject themselves off the ship and are rescued. THE END.

Why?! As usual I kinda love the motivations in a horror film. Obviously all the crew members just want to survive. Other than the captain who really doesn’t care if or how he survives as long as he can still salvage that ship. Turn him into a cyborg, he doesn’t care. Probably use his cyborg brain to get an even better deal on the salvage. Anyway, the bad guys are always more interesting and here the alien is indeed interesting to ponder. It’s electrical and, by my reading, was having a jolly time floating through space before unfortunately finding its way into a space station computer that was connected to the research vessel. Now the alien is trapped on this big dumbo ship and needs to find its way out. Solution? Get some cyborg bodies, pilot its way to a base, and upload onto the world’s computers like a big ol’ terrible alien robot virus. Check mate.

Who?! It’s been a while since I’ve had a surprise entry in this, but Ritchie (who builds the contraption that helps Kit and Steve escape the ship in the end) was played by Sherman Augustus. He was a former professional football player with the Chargers and Vikings. It sounds, though, like he might be a “former professional football player” like on The Bachelor. He apparently suffered a knee injury and never played in a game.

What?! Like Cutthroat Island, you know they were ready to unload what had to be an ungodly number of props for this film. I obviously love the ones that aren’t for sale because I like to imagine how much a fully animatronic cyborg prop would cost. Whatever number you have in mind factor in that one of the tiny robot props runs $2800.00. Yah.

Where?! In some ways this is an A. It takes place on a ghost ship (which the most ship) and that obviously plays quite a big role. However if we’re going from the actual location this is in the pacific somewhat generally. So it’s still quite good for a Middle of the Pacific film, but maybe would put this in more the B range.

When?! This seems to be unknown, although maybe you can catch a glimpse somewhere. The only thing you get is the time frame in relative terms. The alien gets beams down to the research ship before the storm and then seven days later our groups of tugboaters get damaged in the storm. I wonder why seven… maybe biblical? F+.

Much like the big ol’ dumbo ship, this is a big ol’ dumbo movie. It’s got some pretty weird and at times interesting (at other times a little cheesy) special effects. Clearly that’s all the director was interested in because most of the stuff the actors get to do is just scream and run and look at cyborg aliens (and then scream and run some more) and the script is as basic a scifi horror as they could have come up with. No wonder Jamie Lee Curtis talks about this like it’s the worst movie she ever made. Doesn’t seem like the director was very interested in giving the actors much to chew on. Everything is in service of the effects. This isn’t the worst movie though. Just a pretty one-dimensional movie. Patrick? 

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! How is it that I’ve watched multiple William Baldwin films this year? Well this one is about him fighting robo-aliums in the South Pacific, so … Let’s go!

P’s View on the Preview – An interesting preview since Jamie Lee Curtis hate, hate, hated this film. She has called it the worst film ever made in multiple interviews. That seems … hyperbolic. I mean, I’ve seen Battlefield Earf, so it is unlikely that Virus is somehow worse than that hot garbage. Based on a graphic novel (yeah, I’m reading that), and with a shoddy PS1 game barely released in the US (yeah, I’m playing that). What were my expectations? From the movie? I don’t know, I guess a mostly cheesy Sci-Fi film with bad effects. From the video game? The game genuinely looks like the worst game I’ve ever seen, and I recently watched someone speedrun King’s Quest 8. So that is exciting.

The Good – Some of the monster designs are okay, even if the execution is unimpressive. I also like Jamie Lee Curtis, who, despite hating working on the film, brings that Scream Queen cachet to the film to solid effect. The core idea of the electrical alien attack is trite now, but was definitely an interesting idea at the time when computer viruses were still a somewhat unknown entity in popular culture. Best Bit: Jamie Lee Curtis.

The Bad – The actual effects are awful, a poor man’s The Thing (1982). If they were done with as much effect as in that film, then I’m convinced the film would have been somewhat effective. Sutherland and Baldwin were both subpar, likely second or third choices for their roles, borderline television movie level at times. Like when Sutherland is a robot … it is Heartbeeps level weirdness, the whole thing feels like a director completely in order his head and over budget. Fatal Flaw: The aliums look like trash.

The BMT – I love films set on boats. I love films with electric aliums. I love films with William Baldwin. This film kind of had it all. It is a kind of fun movie is you squint, but it does get sunk by looking like garbage. The vitriol by Curtis is unwarranted … but you can definitely feel like the production must have been terrible. Did it meet my expectations? Yup, cheesy sci-fi film with bad effects. I was delighted that William Baldwin was as weird as ever, and who can help but be charmed by just-almost-too-old Donald Sutherland, if only he was an arsonist. Stay tuned for my video game review.

Roast-radamus – A pretty solid and rare Setting as a Character (Where?) for the boat being specifically stranded in the South Pacific. I wonder if they were near the Blue Lagoon. I think that is it. Closest to BMT I think. I personally liked it, but I’m also certain if I showed it to anyone they would be like “what the hell is this?” and laugh at it.

Sequel, Prequel, Remake – Definitely a sequel. Set 25 years after the events of the original film Steve Baker has made a name for himself in the US military as they prepare for the potential return of the electro-aliums from the original film. This terror is unleashed upon the world in the form of a communication satellite infected with a new virus which beams into, you guessed it, the internet. That’s right, the Aliums are in cyberspace and they want to take over the world! Ba ba baaaaaaa! Los Angeles, the mecca of social media influencers becomes ground zero for a viral infection that makes the original film look like a radio play, you got robots up the wazoo. In flies Baker, who gets Kit Foster, now a Neo-Luddite living off the grid, out of retirement to try and contain the cyberspace firestorm. They tap into cyberspace with the military’s new VR haptic suits and fight the virus virtually, and, spoiler alert, they totally pwn those alium dweebs. Virus 2: Cryptowarz. Get fat William Baldwin on the phone stat!!

You Just Got Schooled – Another tie-in cycle film, another terrible video game. This week, the survival horror game Virus: It is Aware. Oh boy … uh, this might actually be the worst game I’ve ever played. I only ultimately played an hour or two of it, and while I think I could finish it, I don’t think I have the will to. A bit tough to find, I ultimately set up a standalone PS1 emulator and got it working. It feels a bit like a homeless man’s Resident Evil as far as gameplay is concerned. Somewhat interesting in that each level, much like Little Nicky, is standalone. After you complete the level it gives you a code (you can save, but apparently around this time for releases to secondary markets some games chose to also provide a code instead, again, like Little Nicky!), and you get all of your health and ammo back. The parallels to Little Nicky are striking, a game made on the cheap, borrowing heavily from better games, to push to market a tie-in with little thought about gameplay. Except I found Little Nicky bizarrely charming. This … is an abomination, only to be played ironically. F. Until further notice this is the worst game I’ve ever played in my life, may god have mercy on the developers’ souls.

Bonus Book Report – Oh snap, that’s right, I also read the four issue graphic novel series by Dark Horse, also called Virus. The story is kind of close to the movie, although here everyone is immediately on board with the salvage operation, and the alium takes over really quickly. In my opinion … the art style is pretty bad looking, and the two main characters are cliches. It is pretty obvious that it was written by someone who isn’t a professional writer, ultimately creating an impossibly capable everyman mechanic as his main character with really really bad dialogue. It also seems potentially like a rip off of The Thing … especially considering he wrote a sequel graphic novel to the 1982 film that same year … it seems pretty likely. That being said, a pretty enjoyable quick read, took me maybe an hour, and you can see why they thought they could brush it up into a sci-fi thriller. C+. Not a good graphic novel, but a fun read regardless paired with the film.

Cheerios,

The Sklogs

Cutthroat Island Recap

Jamie

Morgan Adams is a mighty pirate cut from a different cloth. When her eeevil uncle vows to find the family treasure by any means necessary, she decides to beat him to it with the help of sexy rogue William Shaw. Can she stop her uncle, find the treasure, earn the trust of her crew (and perhaps get the guy) before it’s too late? Find out in… Cutthroat Island.

How?! Morgan Adams has quite the dastardly reputation in the Caribbean. Already a fugitive from the law, she finds herself in even more hot water when her father is captured by her evil uncle Dawg Brown. Rather than give him the secret of Cutthroat Island, her father chooses to give up his own life in exchange for giving a piece of the treasure map to Morgan. Now on the run, she gets the begrudging acceptance of her father’s crew and sets sail to Port Royal to find a translator for the map. In Port Royal, dashing rogue William Shaw has also found himself in hot water having lied and swindled ladies across the isles. Now a prisoner, Morgan buys him at auction, but not before the authorities recognize her and a major shootout ensues. Across the island they catch up with Morgan’s other uncle, but before they can get the second piece of the map Dawg appears. A fight ensues, Morgan is shot and in the chaos William is able to find and keep hidden the map piece. Shaw, who has claimed he is a doctor, treats Morgan’s wounds and perchance a romantic spark is lit. But before long Dawg is in hot pursuit and they only barely keep them at bay by navigating through dangerous seas. During the storm Morgan finds William attempting to use the map for his own devices and has him locked away, meanwhile the crew revolts and sends Morgan and her loyal crew off in a tiny liferaft. Miraculously they survive and wake up to find themselves at Cutthroat Island itself. On the island they are dismayed to find that Dawg and her former crew have teamed up and also surprised when they find that William is there and has stolen the last piece of the map from Dawg! With all the pieces in hand William and Morgan find the treasure, but are found by Dawg who forces them to jump from a cliff. William survives and is taken captive, while Morgan sneaks aboard her old ship and takes it back. A big ol’ climactic fight ensues on the high seas resulting in Dawg getting killed by a cannon and William and Morgan recovering the treasure. They then smooch and such and set out on another adventure. THE END (or is it? (it is.))

Why?! As Vinny D would say: fambly. Geena Davis comes from a family of pirates who’s patriarch (her grandfather) found and hid the family treasure on Cutthroat Island. Only the whole family could together find the treasure… you know, as long as the crazy evil one doesn’t kill all of them first. So the rest is obvious. Gotta stop that crazy evil one from ruining the fambly plan.

Who?! Renny Harlin appears in the film uncredited, which isn’t all that exciting. What is exciting is that Thor the dog appears CREDITED in the role of Pirate Dog. He had already appeared in a prior Renny Harlin film, Cliffhanger, so they must have had a good rapport. Finster appears uncredited as Morgan’s monkey, which is a travesty as the role was pretty big. He is better known for his star role as the titular monkey in Monkey Trouble.

What?! Whether you think of it as four separate MacGuffins or a single MacGuffin broken into four pieces, this is a pretty good one as the entire plot focuses around getting all the pieces together. It’s also a little unclear why the treasure was hidden in the first place. Maybe to wait out the authorities. But the family had all the pieces the entire time and never cared to get together and get it until Dawg started his own quest? It doesn’t make much sense. I found this to be a little more interesting than the thousands of props for sale online, which honestly probably ended up there because the studio sold it all off trying to make a buck.

Where?! The Caribbean and primarily Jamaica. It got me thinking about mapl.de.map. There have always been some vague parameters on what would “win” the spot on the map for a particular location. Is it how prominently the setting factors into the film or is it the grade (A+ location in title wins). This makes me think the answer is the former. Would rather have a film that best represents the location take the spot. B.

When?! I could probably write a bunch on this, but I think this might be an A film. I’ll keep it short, but they tell us explicitly that the year is 1668. Why? Because at the time Jamaica had just changed from Spanish to British rule, and let’s just say the Spanish weren’t happy about it. As a result the British, aiming to keep control of the island, supported piracy to fend off the Spanish. The island then descended into lawlessness from 1660-1670 after which a treaty was signed and the piracy was reined in. Interesting.

I certainly understand the reviews for the film. It took a big swashbuckling adventure and just filled it with explosions and were like “that’s fun, right?” The complete lack of humor is glaring considering that was a big part of what made Pirates of the Caribbean such a success. They would even say lines that almost sounded like jokes, but I assure you they were not. Just kinda bland explosions most of the time. All that being said, it was still a rollicking adventure if that’s simply all that you were looking for. It also took some shots for the gender reversal with Morgan as swashbuckling captain and Shaw as gentleman in distress, but I actually thought that was deftly done. Matthew Modine plays the pretty boy liar who slithers his way out of trouble with his smile well and Geena Davis was very winning. So I disagree with that. Overall some good and bad things and not the total disaster I maybe would have thought given the reputation it earned at the box office. Patrick?

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! Well, shiver me timbers. It is time to raise the Jolly Roger and ogle that 90’s heartthrob … Matthew Modine? Let’s go!

P’s View on the Preview – One of the most notorious box office bombs in history. All of the reviews seem to suggest it is … good? It does seem odd that swashbuckling adventures just were terrible in the 90s, so bad, in fact, that people thought pirate films were just done until Disney breathed new life into it half a decade later. What were my expectations? A good movie I guess. Which I don’t often say. It seemed plausible that the movie was actually pretty good, but it was just a box office catastrophe never seen before.

The Good – So … I wouldn’t call the movie good, which I’ll get to. But Geena Davis was solid, and the film is, indeed, a pretty fun adventure film. Like something like The Three Musketeers (the 90s one) maybe. The main set peces of Port Royal, the bar in Spittlefield, and the final naval battle are all incredible as well. You can definitely see where most of the money went in this financial disaster. And if you watched Masters of the Universe and thought “Man, I wish Frank Langella was allowed to really go over the top, he’s so restrained as Skeletor!”, well, then this is the movie for you. Best Bit: The set pieces.

The Bad – Unfortunately the action looks like absolute garbage. I might be being a bit harsh, but like The Three Musketeers (the 90s one) there is something about 90s films where swashbuckling action looks ultra cheesy and terrible. Something about cannonballs resulting in giant Hollywood explosions just doesn’t sit right. And something about the lackluster sword fighting in this film only serves to remind me how incredible Pirates of the Caribbean really is. And unfortunately Modine constantly feels like a second or third choice for the role, no matter how much good effort he puts in. Fatal Flaw: Bad action for how much money it costs.

The BMT – I don’t know … I kind of dug this movie. If you can excuse that it doesn’t look as polished as Pirates of the Caribbean and the action is kind of lame even compared to other swashbucklers from arond the same time, then there is a pretty entertaining pirate story sitting in there. And Geena Davis and Frank Langella are a solid good/bad team. Did it meet my expectations? Yeah, for the most part. I would have thought the movie would look better, but I can excuse that to get my swashbuckler on.

Roast-radamus – There is a halfway decent Planchet (Who?) for Captain Trotter who Ainslee just dunks on the entire film for being a dummy. Obviously a fantastic Setting as a Character (Where?) for Jamaica which, oddly, this film is rarely mentioned as being set there, but a good 50% of the film is very much explicitly in various parts of Jamaica. And then a solid MacGuffin (Why?) for the secret three part treasure map of Cutthroat Island, which isn’t on any maps! This film is very much closest to Good despite looking like garbage and having garbage action because, honestly, who hates a swashbuckling adventure story?

Sequel, Prequel, Remake – The obvious one is Sequel since they tease a sequel at the end of the film. Flashforward a few decades and Morgan Adams and William Shaw are married and ruling the roost in Madagascar as pirates extraordinaire! Suddenly, who shows up but their old enemy Dawg’s former first mate, uh … Pound Grisham (Dawg & Pound, get it? That’s the prequel I’m setting up). And who does he have as a prisoner, but Mordachai’s grandson, William Adams. Pound wants Morgan to help him to sail across the Indian Ocean and attack the great eastern pirate stronghold of … let’s go with Gao. Little does she know that this is all a ruse set up by William and Pound to attack her Madagascar fortress himself as her back is turned. Racing back to Madagascar things are bleak as it looks to be too late, but who is coming around the corner but Bowen (Christopher Masterson), and Mr. Glasspool, and all the other Caribbean pirates who now have their own crews. In the final battle blood proves thicker than gold (it makes sense, don’t think about it) and William switches sides to defeat Pound and save Morgan and Shaw’s skins. Looking to the half dozen pirate empires that rallied to her aid, Morgan openly wonders if there is any place that could stand in their way … could she, for example, rule Jamaica like Dawg once hoped? Smash cut to To Be Continued … Cutthroat Island: Escape 2 Africa. After would be Dawg & Pound: Tales from Cutthroat Island. And the third is Cutthroat Island: Black Harry’s Revenge.

You Just Got Schooled – This week’s film had another video game tie-in! Cutthroat Island for the SNES is a pretty basic brawler (think Final Fight) with a notoriously bad minecart level as level number 2. I played about an hour of this, but decided I should probably return to it after playing some brawlers. I never liked brawlers as I never had the patience to “solve” how to beat all of the different characters and things just devolved into button mashing. With this game that definitely happened, although I did eventually get to the point where I was able to get through levels 1 and 2 quite consistently. With only 10 levels there is a possibility I’ll finish this game sometime in the future. For now though I’ll have to give it a D. It is bad for a brawler, and apparently (who can tell these days) looks like garbage even for an SNES game of the time. I’ll get back to you about whether I’ve finished it sometime in the next decade.

Cheerios,

The Sklogs

Little Nicky Recap

Jamie

Nicky is the son of Satan and not so keen on taking over Hell. So he’s thrilled when his father announces he’s not retired. Unfortunately Nicky’s evil brothers don’t take it so well and break out of Hell to take over Earth. Can Nicky get them back before Hell freezes over and his father dies (and perhaps also get the girl) before it’s too late. Find out in… Little Nicky.

How?! Little Nicky just likes to rock out in Hell without all that evil mumbo jumbo. So when his father, Satan, decides not to retire he’s pretty thrilled. Particularly since his brothers, Cassius and Adrian, are pure evil and would have made his life a living hell (nailed it). Furious, they storm out of Hell to take over Earth as their own kingdom of evil. Unfortunately, Hell freezes over as a result and without souls Satan begins to die. Nicky is tasked with going up and capturing his brothers and bringing them back. Queue a long montage of Nicky acclimating to Earth and dying over and over again. In the process he finds all kinds of friends: a talking demon bulldog sent to help him, two satanists who are super into Satan and all that jazz, his dorky actor roommate, and the lovely Valerie. Despite the best efforts of his brothers to derail his plans, destroy his relationship with Valerie, and take over Earth, the evil within Nicky wins the day by taking down Cassius at a Globetrotters gain. Adrian responds by turning the whole city against Nicky, which ultimately leads to his arrest. But with the help of a few friends he is able to escape and lure Adrian into a trap. Unfortunately, Adrian isn’t just any foe and after a tussle Nicky sacrifices himself for Valerie. This sacrifice sends Nicky to Heaven where he meets his Mom. That’s right. He’s half good-half evil. He’s given a special orb as a weapon and returns to Earth to confront Adrian, who has taken over both Hell and Earth. They have an all-out, Popeyes fueled fight then ends with Nicky smashing the orb and revealing the ultimate weapon: Ozzy Osbourne, who captures Adrian. All is well back in Hell and Satan lets Nicky return to Earth to start a life with Valerie. THE END.

Why?! I believe the idea is that Nicky is part good and part evil… in other words, he’s human. By venturing up to Earth he realizes that that’s the place he belongs. So stopping his brothers isn’t just about saving his father, it’s about saving Earth… his home. Little twist at the end, too, where Nicky’s satanist friends are ultimately happier in Hell than on Earth. I wonder if they would eventually become the new satan(s) since Hell is where they belong? Did I just go deep on Little Nicky?

Who?! Sandler dominated these sections like young Shaq in the paint. This is just a posterizing jam here as the cameo game is pretty much on par with peak Sandler. Henry Winkler, Ozzy Osbourne, Regis, Bill Walton, Dan Marino (who weirdly went uncredited for the cameo), and then Carl Weathers playing Chubbs from Happy Gilmore. Kinda like how Brendan Fraser just kept playing Link from Encino Man over and over.

What?! This is where Sandler brings down the backboard and they have to spend a half hour putting up a new one. Probably should have just made his name Popeye, gave him a googly eye, and then have him fall in love with Popeyes because he thinks they make it just for him. That’s how major the Popeyes product placement is. Hit an A grade of product placement that will be an A+ once I come out with the BMT cut of the film titled Little Popeye. I don’t even have to mention all the other product placement, which pales in comparison (but would probably be a high point of any other BMT film).

Where?! Hell and NYC. I was trying to think of what other BMT films have Hell as a setting and Monkeybone is the first one that comes to mind, but I think that was set in Limbo technically. This might be the best one we’ve watched. Pretty good NYC film as well, but it does make we wonder where this would have been set later in Happy Madison history… does he emerge from Hell in a Cancun resort? A-.

When?! Oh I don’t know. I think it’s the summer because it’s kind of a joke that Nicky is always freezing and wearing a big coat. I usually say that I think any movie probably has something in it to pin down an exact date but… I don’t really think that would be the case here. Everything is fake. Every newspaper, tv spot, everything… maybe you could narrow it down based on advertisements around the city. But who has time for that? F.

If you want to appreciate the wonder and magic of the cinema then look no further than Little Nicky… because you realize while partaking in the film that at some point, somewhere a group of very important studio people sat around watching Adam Sandler put on a crazy annoying voice and smash Popeyes Chicken and had to think “it’s what the people want.” Cause I can’t imagine they fully understood what they were making. They just saw green and Sandler was (and is) a green machine. It’s actually pretty beautiful. A creator given full control to bring what they feel is funny fully realized to screen. The amount of set design and costumes and hair and makeup and props that went into making this real… it’s amazing. It exists and that’s a pretty crazy accomplishment, so I kinda love it for that… what’s that? What did I actually think about the movie? Didn’t care for it. Patrick?

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! *Take a big bite of Popeye’s chicken while watching Little Nicky* This movie is the shiznit! *openly weeps* Let’s go!

P’s View on the Preview – Adam Sandler films. Up until more recently we were mostly resigned to only really watching the more recent ones because we didn’t want to watch films we had already seen for BMT. Well, that is no more, so it is time to go back to what people might consider his “imperial” period, where he could do no wrong … until he did for basically the rest of his career (as far as comedies go). I think this is probably his first major miss, and it is a doozy. What were my expectations? I knew I would hate this film, because even when I was the target audience I hated this film. It isn’t funny, and Sandler is grating as the character of Nicky … so yeah, that’s what I expected.

The Good – Uh …. Well, if you are into the Happy Madison universe to some degree this is not the worst choice in the universe. Allan Covert is decent, and the set pieces (as far as Sandler comedies are concerned) are truly second to none. As a matter of fact a lot of the characters in the film could be decent, but the issue is they are usually saddled with either childish fart/homophobic/violent humor, or they are exclusively interacting with Nicky (the worse character in film history maybe, at least one of the more annoying), or both. Keitel, for example, could be decent except every few scenes he’s obligated to shove a pineapple up Hitler’s ass and it is like “ugh, this again?” Best Bit: Set pieces.

The Bad – Nearly everything else. The humor is everything that ultimately is wrong with early Sandler cranked up to 11. Homophobic humor at every turn. The solution to life’s problems being to punch someone in the face (and often the act of punching someone in the face represents growth somehow). And fill in the cracks with fart jokes, and for some reason demons with high squeaky voices. I’m not exactly sure how this film functions. It is like Sandler just gave $100 million to set designers, and then came back and improved the rest in a long weekend. It is a really really weird film. Fatal Flaw: Outdated garbage humor, and the most annoying character in film history.

The BMT – I mean, if I had to choose a single qualifying Sandler film as the BMT representative for him this is the leader in the clubhouse. And I am skeptical something like Eight Crazy Nights can stage the comeback. If Nicky was even a little less annoying as a character this film would at least be interesting to marvel at, because it really is just a production on an epic scale (especially for a comedy). It is Hollywood at its most self-indulgent. In the end it is mostly just a surreal experience. On the one hand I never want to watch this film ever again … and yet there is something deeply alluring about just how bad it is. Did it meet my expectations? More than I could imagine. It is maybe the least funny and most annoying comedy ever created. Congrats Little Nicky.

Roast-radamus – Genuine Planchet (Who?) for Covert as Nicky’s roommate in New York. His function does seem to be just to be dunked on by the Satan worshippers and to be called gay as a joke. Perhaps the greatest Product Placement (What?) in any Sandler film for Popeye’s, which is a huuuuuuuuuge part of the film. Nickey eats it at least three times, and the end scene features a giant anthropomorphic bucket of Popeye’s which walks around and the demons are obsessed with it. And quite a good Setting as a Character (Where?) for New York City which is featured in all of its weird glory. Definitely a contender for BMT I think, typically I would have went with bad, but this is so so weird it transcends badness and becomes BMT.

Sequel, Prequel, Remake – Easy, a Prequel. Get a young Keitel look-alike in there, and a young Dangerfield look-alike in there, and reveal that Little Nicky’s journey on Earth isn’t entirely without precedent. When Nicky’s grandfather was set to retire he too had concerns over whether Keitel was ready to take over the throne. But when a rogue fallen angel appears in Middle Ages Britain leading a brutal raving army of criminals, Keitel is sent to Earth to sort it out before God gets wind of the encroachment in their DMZ (Earth). Learning to love and live again, Keitel defeats the angel in a joust and gets the maiden. In the end, God appears (played by …. let’s go with Chris Rock) and reveals that he knew about the encroachment all along, but knew that Keitel would have the heart to save the day without needing to escalate tensions between heaven and hell. He suggests they have a mixer sometime, and then winks at the camera. Everyone cheers. 

You Just Got Schooled – As part of the movie tie-in cycle we are mostly sticking to films which have either hit singles released as part of the film soundtrack, or video game licenses. Well, there was certainly a doozy of a video game for Little Nicky on the Game Boy Color. One of the last games made for the obsolete system (as the Advance had just come out), it is a basic platformer. A small twist is that it doesn’t have a saving mechanism, but instead relies on a set of passwords. This mechanism is combined with only having 5-7 lives during the course of the game, and being brutally slow at times as the Nicky sprite can only sprint when charged up with heat. There is some good fun here and there, the different movement mechanisms they built into the game are fun, and the ratchet-like advancement meant that beating the 24 levels was somewhat of an inevitability. And beat it I did, it probably took me about 6 hours. The final fight is actually quite good. Amusingly, as the manual is unavailable online, the game is pretty difficult to beat without seeing the film! That’s the kind of tie-in you love to see. C+. As a platformer it is probably one of the worst you can play. But I’ll throw in the plus for being a pretty entertaining diversion. I wish more weirdo video game tie-ins like this existed.

Cheerios,

The Sklogs

Dangerous Minds Recap

Jamie

Louanne Johnson is recently divorced and looking for work. She finds it teaching a class of low-income students. Through teaching poetry and boosting their confidence in themselves, she helps them find a voice. But can she help them in the classroom and get them off the streets before it’s too late? Find out in… Dangerous Minds.

How?! Louanne Johnson is fresh off a divorce and looking for a new start. Through a friend she gets hooked up with a job at Parkmont. Little does she know that she got the full time position mostly because they were having trouble filling it due to the low-income students in the class. But Louanne Johnson, former marine, doesn’t back down from the challenge and slowly earns the attention of the students by first teaching them karate, then rewarding them with treats, and finally speaking to them in the language of music and poetry. Soon she is building their confidence with new methods of grading and positive feedback and is reaping the rewards of finding some truly talented students amongst the group. However, all is not well. Her star student Callie is pregnant and is being pressured by the school to leave in order to attend a school geared more towards raising kids than schoolwork. Two other students are pulled out of school when their grandmother finds out they are studying poetry instead of learning something that might help them make money. Finally, Emelio, a troubled student, is threatened by a drug dealer and hides out with Louanne before trying to tell the principal of the school what’s happening. But when the principal turns him away he ends up getting shot and this sends Louanne into a tailspin. She decides to quit, but on the last day of school all the students band together and tell her how much she means to them. She ends up deciding to stay and everyone is happy. Hip hip hooray. THE END.

Why?! I mean… it’s not really a cynical movie, so that’s a positive. The motivation is teaching children and trying to make sure they have opportunities in life. While the focus is on the white teacher to the film’s detriment, it at least dispenses with any personal issues and all her thought, motivation, and strife comes from wanting to help the students.

Who?! This one is easy. Raymond and Richard Grant play Durrell and Lionel Benton, star pupils who are pulled out of school much to the dismay of LouAnne. They are actually twins (Twin Film Alert) and comprise the rap duo DJ Twinz. Uhhhhhhhhhhhh, yeah. That sound you hear is me listening to some DJ Twinz right now.

What?! Besides being a stellar advertisement for education and love (awww) it’s also got a pretty good advertisement for butterfingers as that is the candy of choice that LouAnne throws around as a reward for correct answers. Although I prefer the sweet taste of karate and expensive French dinners, the other rewards she uses in the film.

Where?! This is very much an LA film, which is fine, but also not necessarily always the most exciting since so many films are set there. This at least seems to have a reason. The real LouAnne Johnson taught in the LA area and more specifically there is an underlying commentary about the fact that the kids are being bussed in from a lower income neighborhood, only to be shuttled into a class where they are ignored (that is until LouAnne shows up). B+.

When?! This takes place over a school year more or less. We don’t really get much holiday  talk or anything like that, and LouAnne is clearly a replacement teacher, so it’s possible that she took over in the new year and we see from Jan-June or something. Doesn’t really matter, this is basically a road trip through time. No specific timing. C.

It is perfectly possible to make an entertaining and engaging tale of helping high risk youths and still totally miss the mark. Beyond being just a cliche of the white savior trope, I think there is a real fundamental lack of familiarity with the world that is being portrayed that hamstrings the film from the jump. I would assume LouAnne Johnson’s book probably does a better job (I couldn’t get my hands on a copy in time to read it), but the film completely glosses over some of the most poignant and heartbreaking aspects of the children’s stories in favor of surface level stereotypes and instead spends an inordinate amount of time on the trials and tribulations of the white teacher. It’s hard to say anything more than that. Despite the good songs, engaging filmmaking, and good acting by Pfeiffer… this is not a good film. Just not in the typical BMT way of being a bad film. Patrick? 

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! This week it was Louanne Johnson’s Dangerous Minds versus the Bad movie Twins beautiful minds. Friday night fights! Let’s go!

P’s View on the Preview – We’ve just been living in a gangster’s paradise. I think the legacy of the film is entirely tied up with maybe the most successful song-movie tie-in in history? Maybe a Will Smith song or The Bodyguard narrowly beats it out, but the Coolio track is basically I know (or need to know) about this movie. What were my expectations? Well, Ebert spelled it out in his review: white savior nonsense. If that is the biggest complaint I fear there won’t be much to like in the film.

The Good – Fear not, there were quite a few good things with this film. Like with Rising Sun it feels pretty gross to be like “well, besides the racism, the film was pretty good!” … but I guess here goes? The film is basically that classic Stand and Deliver or Lean on Me story. The visionary teacher comes in and gets these kids to learn (and learns a thing or two him/herself!), everyone cheers or the teacher gets fired, it depends on how cynical they want to be about the American education system. And you can do worse, Pfeiffer is solid in the lead role and it does a good job avoiding an unnecessary romance angle for her character. Best Bit: Pfeiffer.

The Bad – The biggest issue is probably Courtney B. Vance’s character. I’m not sure if it was his choice or explicitly laid out in the script or what, but his character might as well be named Feckless Principal. He ends up being some sort of cartoon metaphor for how “rules” and a lack of compassion have poisoned the American education system … or something. We’ll get to the issue with the portrayal of the education system i.e. “if only teachers cared more”. But then, yeah, this film is top-to-bottom a white savior tale. That really shouldn’t be dismissed. Fatal Flaw: White savior tale.

The BMT – This is a classic addition to the BMT Discography (not a section on the website …. yet) with Coolio’s jamming tune remaining a highlight of the trailer for this film. I choose to remember this film within the lens of Coolio’s track alone. Would I watch it again? I would, especially in some bizarre “Badass Teacher”-mersion podcast me and Jamie are now definitely starting. Did it meet my expectations? It was actually a bit better than I expected. I think, outside of the Vance character and the white savior nonsense, the film is pretty entertaining and an easy watch. I was kind of expecting The Substitute, but it was basically just Lean on Me.

Roast-radamus – A minor Product Placement (What?) for Louanne tossing around Butterfingers (as Bob Dylan once said: No one better lay a finger on my Butterfinger) among other candy bars. And Setting as a Character (Where?) for the explicit setting in Palo Alto. Definitely closest to Good, although I hope that something better crops up.

Sequel, Prequel, Remake – Easy, a sequel. This is about Louanne’s daughter, who herself has just gotten out of the Marines and is going back to her mother’s old stomping grounds in Palo Alto. And hooooooooooooooooo doggy she has a whole other crop of issues to deal with with her children. Cyberbullying, sexting, like … I don’t know, like meeting people on the internet? My point is that this ain’t her momma’s high school, she now has techmologies to deal with, and she is ill-prepared. So when an elite North Korean hacker starts trying to hack the election via the school’s servers, she has to assemble her ragtag group of students together to unleash their viruses, hack the Gibson, and take down Ellingson Mineral. HACK THE PLANET! We can workshop the ending, but rest assured, right at that 80 minute mark Michelle Pfeiffer busts that door down and says “Miss me boys and girls?” and the whole theater cheers. Dangerous Minds 2: Cyberwar.

You Just Got Schooled – We’re back baby! A real BMT Homework section because Dangerous Minds was also a television show! Starring Annie Potts, the first episode kind of follows the storyline from the movie, except the students in the television show are far less disruptive, and the things Louanne is teaching are just normal high school English curriculum. The first episode mainly focuses on Of Mice and Men for example. The show got cancelled after a season, which isn’t too surprising since it wasn’t very good. The biggest issue I had with it was it really cranked up that “if only American educators cared you know?” attitude to 11. Louanne is buying people books, paying for a nursery for another student, letting people stay in her enormous house … in the first episode she probably spends like $1000 of her own money on her students. And the other teachers are like “yeah, if we can all just chip in we can really make a difference!” No! These are the things the school and local government should be dealing with, not rogue teachers with, evidently, a fortune to distribute to the needy. It feels like it ends up with the moral being “yeah, the issue with the education system isn’t class sizes or underfunding … it is probably that most of the teachers don’t give a shit!” D. An interesting watch, but the movie is better and, against all odds, less preachy.

Cheerios,

The Sklogs

Rising Sun Recap

Jamie

Web Smith is a police liaison called in to mediate a homicide found during a big time Japanese business’s gala. Surprisingly he is asked to bring along Capt. Conner, a police expert on Japan. Soon it becomes clear that there is more to the homicide than the company will let on. Can Web and Conner untangle the dastardly web of deceit before it’s too late? Find out in… Rising Sun.

How?! Web Smith is just trying to raise his daughter and do his job as a police liaison. One night he gets a call to help mediate a homicide call at a highfalutin Japanese business gala attended by all the bigwigs in town. Curiously, he is also asked to pick up Captain Conner, a semi-retired police expert on Japan. When they get to the crime scene the party continues uninterrupted while the crime scene is teaming with the company’s men. It becomes clear that they just want the whole thing dismissed, but Web and Conner are suspicious. Particularly when they discover that some of the tapes are missing from the state-of-the-art surveillance in the building. They suspect the boyfriend of the victim, Eddie, in the crime and cover up and when the missing disc shows up it appears to confirm their suspicions. They raid Eddie’s house only to have him flee and appear to die in a fiery crash. The next day they find that Eddie attempted to contact them about the missing disc and so they decide to take it to an expert who shows them how the film was manipulated. Returning to Web’s apartment, Web and Conner are shocked to find Eddie there alive and well. Someone else had died in the crash. He gives them the original surveillance tape, but the Yakuza show up and kill him and attempt to kill Web. After regrouping they view the tape and find that the killer appears to be Senator Morton, a powerful politician who was holding up a big acquisition for the Japanese company. The tape was being used to blackmail him, but in fact showed that someone else came into the room and killed the girl after he left. Wanting to smoke out the rat, Web and Conner go to a big meeting at the company and show the tape. Panicking, one of the lawyers flees and is ultimately killed closing the case, although leaving doubts as to how high the conspiracy could have gone. Bum bum bum. THE END.

Why?! Unfortunately, Web’s motivations are the least interesting in the film. Just doing his job. The Japanese company is a bit more interesting. They want to acquire an American microchip company , which is causing some concern in the government due to the connection of that company to national defense. Senator Morton initially is blocking the merger in the name of sovereignty, but ultimately is swayed though blackmail. Low key the most interesting motivation is Conner, who is semi-retired and living it up golfing and chilling with the wealthy Japanese businessmen of LA. There is some implication that he ends up turning a blind eye to the involvement of some of the particularly powerful people involved in the crime in order to keep his good standing (and great tee times) with them… kind of a last minute anti-hero twist for Connery.

Who?! Rooted in “real” economic concerns, the film also has “real” TV news entertainment segments in it. This includes a segment with Senator Morton hosted by Michael Kinsley and including a few well known journalists. Most interesting of the bunch is Pat Choate who went on to be Ross Perot’s running mate in the 1996 presidential election. Given his political stances, it actually makes perfect sense he appears in this film.

What?! There is something to be said here about fake businesses cooked up for BMT films. Here Nakamoto is portrayed as a powerful keiretsu housed in the Two California Plaza skyscraper. In Die Hard they have the fictional Nakatomi corporation housed in the Fox Plaza. Same companies? Different companies? Doesn’t matter. It tells you where Hollywood’s headspace was heading into the early 90’s collapse of the Japanese economy. 

Where?! Extremely solid LA film, to the point where I think you’d have to give it an A. I’m not sure there is another city in the United States that you could set this film and for it to still make sense. Unless you were to change the focus and thus the name… and thus pretty much everything about it. Funny enough, I think I had always assumed this was a film set in Japan. Tells you how little I knew about it before diving in.When?! The phone call to Web to get over to Nakamoto occurs at 9pm February 9th according to the testimony we see him giving in periodic flash forwards… turns out the testimony is from after Eddie is killed, Web gets shot, and then he gets put on leave. So really it’s like a flash middle. Fun to think that the climax of the film takes place 4 days after the date given… meaning we came very close to a Super Secret Holiday Film Alert with this taking place on Valentine’s Day. A- just for that fact.

When?! The phone call to Web to get over to Nakamoto occurs at 9pm February 9th according to the testimony we see him giving in periodic flash forwards… turns out the testimony is from after Eddie is killed, Web gets shot, and then he gets put on leave. So really it’s like a flash middle. Fun to think that the climax of the film takes place 4 days after the date given… meaning we came very close to a Super Secret Holiday Film Alert with this taking place on Valentine’s Day. A- just for that fact.

There were a number of critiques levied at the book and then the film adaptation for their portrayals of Japanese culture and business practices. For good reason! The book is even harsher, but you get the drift from the film as well. An unending stream of pejorative statements about Japanese business and America’s willingness to sell to them. Crichton defended the book as a purely economic argument, which might have gone over better if the Japanese economy wasn’t in the midst of a severe crash at the time of publication and then the film’s release. So it comes off as more rooted in xenophobia than the economic reality of the situation. All that being said up front, I think the film is otherwise just an adequate buddy cop police procedural. At times it lacks some direction and forward momentum, but I actually think it’s a bit of an improvement over the book. The book is just kinda boring, with a pretty bland main character and then Conner, who was clearly written with Connery in mind (but aren’t all Crichton characters… think about it). It feels like Crichton was more interested in getting his specific (offensive) point across and then built a generic police procedural around it. Of his books I’ve read it’s pretty easily my least favorite. As for After We Collided, I enjoyed watching the first one, I enjoyed watching this one, and I’ll enjoy watching the next one. They are real dumb and chock full o’ product placement, which gives a good laugh. I will also contend that, unlike Fifty Shades, this series actually has a purpose. It is about a young girl in love with an addict and the hope and desire that their love can ultimately overcome his trauma and his disease. He is not a bad person, but he has a problem and the depiction of their relationship is done more deftly than this dumbo series kinda deserves. So it’s not total trash. Patrick?

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! A pinch of noir, a dash of buddy cop, and juuuuuuuuuust a little (read: a lot) of cultural insensitivity, and you got a Rising Sun cooking baby! Let’s go!

P’s View on the Preview – This movie has actually been on my radar for a long time … although mostly because I’ve been continually disappointed it wasn’t set in Japan. It would definitely be the best set-in-Japan bad movie ever, but alas, they set it in Los Angeles like dummies. Yawn. Always fun to hit up a Crichton though, they always scream “90s” to me. Just something about him. What were my expectations? I had a problem: I hadn’t seen much noir, and I hadn’t seen much Snipes. So I was mostly going into it curious to see how it played.

The Good – I liked the dynamic between Snipes and Connery. It works as an odd couple pairing. A despite the Hollywood-style exploration of Japanese business culture that feels both racist and immediately outdated, I did enjoy the specific moment where they exposed Connery’s character’s hypocrisy, specifically his attitude towards the bribe he was effectively given early in the film. Among an otherwise muddled film there were a few things that still seemed to at least focus the film in an interesting way. Best Bit: The buddy cops.

The Bad – I mean … the immediately outdated and racist portrayal of Japanese customs and business culture? That’s it isn’t it? Even if you wanted to dismiss that all as pearl-clutching nonsense, the film was made in 1993, well after the Japanese economy entered a recession, and so at very best the Japanese business villains come across as Hollywood feeling around for a Big Bad after the collapse of the USSR. Other than that boring and borderline confusing are probably the biggest slights. Fatal Flaw: Racism.

The BMT – This is certainly a unique film at the very least. I’m not sure how many other films even exist with the Japanese business world as the bad guy … Gung Ho maybe. Remember that film? About like … making a lot of cars or something? Anyways, I think I ultimately enjoyed the underlying noir element too much to think about watching this again, but the specific time it was made makes it an interesting one time watch. Did it meet my expectations? As a noir I guess not, I kind of expected Connery to be a PI. But maybe once I watch more noir I’ll know better. As a Snipes film also maybe not? I got the distinct feeling he was playing himself in the film, but I haven’t watched enough of his films to know better. I’m giving myself an Incomplete on this assignment.

Roast-radamus – A pretty good Setting as a Character (Where?) because how can you create a noir film without setting it in LA? A very amusing, and borderline super-secret holiday film, Exact Temporal Setting (When?) for the fact that all of the events take place between February 9th and February 13th, one day off from being an incredible Valentine’s Day film! And finally Worst Twist (How?) for having the same twist as The Skulls whereby the person who was killed wasn’t actually dead until someone else came into the room and killed her! Solid stuff, with the overall film being closest to Good I think.

Sequel, Prequel, Remake – The Sequel is obvious here. A year after the events of the film Webster Smith gets an urgent letter from Jingo Asakuma that John Conner is back in Japan and in serious trouble! But when Webster arrives in Tokyo neither Conner or Asakuma can be found. In fact, Conner is wanted for question in connection to the disappearance of Asakuma a week prior. Huh, how odd. Webster, using some of the connections he had developed from the first film, ends up unwinding the strange tale of Conner’s return to Japan after decades in self-exile to discover who was responsible in the death of his old friend Yoshida. Along the way the daughter of the desk bound and contrite Ishihara helps Webster to navigate the underworld of modern Tokyo and the ever changing dynamics of the international business world. You have to know what the name is right? … Setting Sun. Boom, I think I just sold that spec on title alone. Call me Crichton, you can even write the book.

You Just Got Schooled – This one a film where I couldn’t quite decide whether to do a Snipes film or a noir. I went noir as I haven’t seen many of the classics and I’ve been watching only bad movies for too long. Naturally, I had to go for one of the best with Double Indemnity, which seems to be considered the noir to watch if you are looking for a definitive list. I was definitely thrown a bit by the subject matter and dialogue, because I’m mostly used to the Maltese Falcon where it is about a private detective / femme fatale dynamic. The insurance salesman, and the way he spoke, just really threw me off. But ultimately the perfect murder plot line is very engrossing and I can see why it is considered among the creme de la creme for the genre. Edward G. Robinson was particularly good. It ended up being the perfect choice because it broke me out of the mindset of noir = private eye, and I can see now why Rising Sun is considered to at least take inspiration from film noir (even if it is closer to a buddy cop film from the 80s). A+, obviously, it is a great film.

Bring a Friend Analysis – A pretty special week since we were able to bring along a BMT sequel as a friend, After We Collided, the sequel to the YA-romance novel-turned-movie After. The film is basically nonsense, but in that very special modern filmmaking kind of way. It appears to be something like six sex scenes held together by modular “destination” plot lines (a jaunt to the ice rink, a babysitting gig, a hot yoga session, etc.). Basically, it seems like the film could have been filmed by 20 different directors and then stitched together in any order they wanted at the end. Oh, and it is also one giant commercial for Amazon. It can’t be a coincidence I was watching the film on Amazon Prime while the main character is getting a Kindle as a gift. There was a storyline in this film … it just isn’t coming to me. Something like alcoholism is bad news, and you should make amends with your dad? Something like that. B+. I love YA-nonsense. This was kind of cheating because by all accounts this should have been released to theaters if not for the pandemic. But I’m glad we get to continue our journey into this YA-romance series.

Cheerios,

The Sklogs