5th Monday Ugh: Catwoman (2004)

You may have noticed I haven't been keeping up with this blog on a weekly basis; it probably has something to do with some ineffible law of internet thermo-dynamics where everything self-published online prematurely degrades or something. Somebody could write a paper about it. However, that doesn't mean I've abandoned it! To prove this, here's a 5th Monday Ugh!!

There are so many good places to start talking about how bad this movie is. I want to poke fun at the name of the director, "Pitof" (one word, like Madonna); I want to point out that this super-hero action movie is--in all actuality--about make up; I want to dig in deep to my inherent dislike of the overused, washed-up material we so often find in movies of this vein; instead--after giving it some careful thought--I think I'll start here: This movie isn't about Catwoman. 

Those of you who haven't seen it you may find this claim hard to believe, but it's true. Selina Kyle is the woman who has tortured the heart of America's favorite bat for the last 73 years. This movie is about a mild-mannered woman who works in advertizing named Patience Phillips. Yes, you heard me right. Patience. Phillips. Instead of a disturbed but talented young woman who chooses to take upon herself the attributes of the domesticated feline, she becomes--wait for it--supernaturally infused with the power of catness (not to be confused with Katniss) for reasons which even the movie seems embarrassed to explain. 

The best promo picture ever taken? You be the judge.

Mostly this movie is about ogling Halle Berry in a revealing (if rather bizarrely constructed) costume, which is--quite frankly--demeaning. There are a few laughable fight scenes, and a moment or two of the obligatory bad science used by the detective/love interest to track the enigmatic jewel thief, but mostly it's just her. Being there. Bending. Jumping. Looking crafty. Uncovering the makeup plot that couldn't hope to hold the attention of a seven-year-old girl.

I would say there are two things about this movie that I genuinely enjoy: 1) There are cats in it, and I like cats. 2) Patience's friend is a little overweight, but her character doesn't have anything to do with her weight. It's shocking how rare it is to find a mainstream film with a character like this, so I'll take it where I can find it. Despite the fact that many overweight women live lives that have very little to do with their size, the vast majority of film and television labors under the damaging delusion that half of the world's population is defined by their size.

All-in-all, this is a good bad movie. For those who enjoy bad movies, there is something for you here. To those who legitimately enjoy this film...well, I'm not sure how to address you without being insulting. Just know that I respect your right to have your own opinions. :)

-MA 12.30.13

5th Monday Ugh: The Wicker Man

Might I interest you in some bees?

In 1967, David Pinner published a horror novel called "Ritual." Six years later, Robin Hardy directed a very highly regarded (and very R-rated) horror classic based on that book he called "The Wicker Man." Over three decades later, Neil LaBute and Nicholas Cage thought maybe they could do it better. The result? A film I must admit I'm a bit obsessed with: the 2006 remake. Now, hear me out, I'm not saying it's a good film; in fact, everybody pretty much agrees it's one of the worst horror films ever made. When I say I'm "obsessed," I mean I am obsessed with its badness. I've seen this movie a lot of times (and I do mean a lot); I've even watched the director's commentary! So here's my two cents on what makes it bad, and what it is about that badness that makes it sort of irresistible.

Like the best bad movies, this film means well; LaBute is artistically-minded, if nothing else. The problem is he makes the wrong choice at pretty much every turn. There is some degree of talent involved here, but it is misused and poorly focused. You can feel the intention behind the screen, but what actually reaches us is impossible to take serious, confusing, and at times downright non-nonsensical. Why does this film take place in a reality so alien to our own? Why do the characters have such trouble just completing their sentences?? The humans here do not act like humans, so it's impossible to care about what's happening. They stutter around their thoughts and actions as if removed from humanity. They laugh and fight and smile and scream, but we don't have a real sense of them doing so in a logical progression based on what's happening. You've never seen people laugh about saying there's a shark in a bag until you've seen "The Wicker Man."

I don't know Nicholas Cage personally, and maybe he's a totally cool guy, but what I see when I watch this movie is someone who is extremely eccentric, maybe even a little disturbed, and it doesn't feel like acting. In the director's commentary, LaBute explains that drastic revisions were made during the actual filming because Cage would say, and I'm paraphrasing here, "No. This isn't how I would do it if I were really Edward. I would do such and such. I would do this instead." You can see the logic, right? As an actor, he's envisioning himself in the situation and saying it would be more realistic if he handled it differently. This might hold water if Cage were like you or me, but what we actually see is an inept policeman doing very little police work and a lot of erratic, bizarre, often somewhat hateful things. We see Cage lose his temper over and over. He punches people. He screams. He seems tense and frustrated, but we never really get the feeling that it's about anything. He simply has these feelings and does these things. Watching the film, you might find yourself thinking, "Hm. I don't think I would have thought to handle that situation in such a manner." Also, how can someone act so uninterested in what they are doing and yet so angry at the same time? Truly, he is a master.

Many times, I watched the film with the help of
the Rifftrax commentary. I even got Kevin Murphy
to sign my copy of the movie!! "Not the bees!"

My absolute favorite thing about the movie is how the opening scene has absolutely nothing to do with the plot as a whole. Clearly, SOMETHING supernatural is happening; Cage watches an 18-wheeler slam into a parked car, killing the two passengers (a woman and her daughter), and their bodies are never found. That's kind of interesting, right? Who were they? How do they relate to Cage being summoned to Summersisle to look for his missing daughter? Well, despite constant flashbacks reminding us of this traumatic incident, we get to the end of the film, to the plot twist about why Cage was coerced to coming to the island in the first place, and we find...nothing. The backbone of the film, the "ritual," the Wicker Man itself, has nothing--may I repeat this? NOTHING--to do with the mother-daughter tragedy from the opening scene. As a director, what could possibly be the appeal of doing this? Because it's weird? Maybe LaBute hopes to draw us in with the incident, and then let us forget about it, but how can we when he shows it to us no fewer than five times throughout the entire movie?

At every corner of the film there's something that might have worked, that maybe could get the juices flowing, the mind turning, but we always come up empty-handed. LaBute sets the stage over and over, he hints at a greater mystery, he makes promises, but in the end it all turns out to be a ruse. No, I don't mean a ruse to fool Edward, I mean a ruse to fool us. At best, this film is an insult to its viewers; at worst it is an unfulfilled, high-budget dream.

-MA

Some bonus Wicker Man fun!

Comedy trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_mW8mBzmHo
Who burned Nick's toast?: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JV-D60nRvCU
Conan's Nicholas Cage Terror Alert System: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9C102uy70qA
The Rifftrax commentary: http://www.rifftrax.com/rifftrax/wicker-man

5th Monday Ugh: Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen

Actual movie quote: "I am directly beneath the enemy scrotum!"

It's a fifth Monday, and you know what that means, don't you? It means instead of reviewing some great work (as is heavily implied by the name of the blog), I will instead be addressing something which affects us all: bad movies. Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen is my least favorite film. (And, yes, I've talked about this once before.) I'm not saying it is the worst movie ever made, I'm saying that I personally despise it with such tremendous passion that these feelings have come all the way around again, and I find it bizarrely irresistible. Drake Lloyd, director of the 1990 horror b-movie Troll 2, once said something to the effect of, "Having people tell me this is the worst movie they've ever seen is the same as them saying it's the best movie they've ever seen." Obviously, I don't think Transformers 2 is so bad that it has magically become the best film ever made, but I must concede, when I'm in the mood to be angry, I enjoy watching Transformers 2.

Typically on this blog, I try to organize my thoughts in a way that makes sense and is accessible to the reader, but I'm going to make an exception today. :) Bay expects his audience to sit through complete confusion, and he's incredibly rich. Perhaps lack of cohesion is precisely what this blog needs to propel it forward to absolute fame. So here is my rant, which should be read aloud and with as much gusto as you can gather:

There are THREE scenes in which something is humping something else. Two are dogs ("No dominating Franky!"), and one is a small robot. One of these humping scenes is a brief breakaway shot entirely unconnected to any other action or dialogue in the film. It hopes only to appease our appetite for random stimuli. 

I have seen this movie a number of times, but only in searching
for these images have I learned this little lady is apparently
named, "Alice." Good to know.

I watched in wonder and disgust, mouth slightly agape, as the two-and-a-half hour long juggernaut of a film lumbered on from one incomprehensible scene to another. The plot is about as easy to follow as Primer, but instead of showing confidence in our intelligence, the film seeks to destroy it. 

Shia's mom acts like a mental patient, but we don't know why. At Princeton (you know, the party school where everyone dresses like they just stepped off the cover of the Cosmopolitan, and no one cares about grades) she eats compacted green cubes out of bag with a marijuana sticker on it, insisting that they are normal brownies, despite her family's pleas that she stop. She then promptly tells three or four passing girls that her son's cherry was recently popped. This gem is followed by her tackling someone playing frisbee for some reason, but we are not sure why, since random violence is not a well know symptom of digesting pot. Twice during the film robots fart for our entertainment. Not one girl in the entire movie seems to weigh over a hundred-and-ten-pounds, and everyone of them has the same kind of clothes and wears their hair down. 

Robots fight, but we have no understanding of who they are or what they are doing. We cut away to a robot orbiting earth several times, but why? We cut away to some other planet where robots talk to each other about "waiting" to initiate a "plan," but we don't know where it is, or who is talking, or why. The "plan" is formless and without point A or point B. Did they end up "waiting?" Who knows! 

Let's see: Breasts? Check. Shia looking maybe not so smart? Check.
Random machinery? Check. Now just throw in someone screaming
a word or phrase repeatedly, something humping something else, and
some kind of indecipherable action, and you've got yourself the perfect
Transformers 2 tableau.

The sun is apparently going to be blown up at some point, and the only way to stop it is to bring another robot back to life, but the connection is lost to us. Some objects can bring some robots back to life, but not others. Some of these objects cannot be used without a human visiting Robot Heaven or someplace, where robots say that they are testing him. Also, they can control matter from beyond the grave sometimes. Robots have Brooklyn accents, English accents, "Gangster" accents, but we don't know why. Some of the robots are very, very stupid, but there is no explanation as to WHY ANYTHING IS HAPPENING. There are two robots named "Skids" and "Mudflap" who are insulting caricatures of African American "gangstas," that would be more at home in a closet white supremacist movie fifty years ago. 

Apparently, though they are super-advanced robots, they cannot read, nor can they think. Many robots fight in the desert, but we don't know why. They fight in a forest, in a city, near a beach, in suburbia. We don't know why. We are expected to not ask questions. Megan Fox wants to leave Shia Labeouf's character, but then she stays with him, then she wants to leave him, yet she wishes he would tell her he loves her, which he--despite being patently obsessed with her--has apparently never done. 

The characters talk rapidly, unintelligibly, repeating any line they can as often as possible. The subtitles assure as that the garbled mess we are hearing is actually made up of words. These are lines such as, "Go, go, go, go, go, go, go!", "You're my son! You're my son! You're my son!", "Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait!" and my personal favorite, "Stand up against the wall! Stand up against the wall! Stand up against the wall! Stand up against the wall!" Shia befriends a young man who is exactly like him in every way we can assess. The Rifftrax beg the pointed question "Doesn't this movie already have a Shia Labeouf?" 

See Shia. She Shia run. Run Shia, run.

The evil robots, whom I originally tried to keep track of by remembering that they are the ones who aren't colorful, become more colorful as the movie progresses, obliterating all hope of being distinguished. People make jokes, but we don't understand them. A professor acts godlike, Shia freaks out because he either touched something or saw something or read something, he says that Einstein was wrong, then leaves class. Do I even need to tell you that we don't know why he does this? 

We hope that by wishing as hard as we can we will be able to banish Rainn Wilson, Tom Kenny, John Turturro, and Scott McNiel from this mockery of film, but when we open our eyes, they are still in it. It goes from bad, to worse, to inexcusable, to unbelievable. You might wonder, out of all this (and so much that I have failed to mention), what was the worst thing about the movie? It's success. I bid you adieu, with the humble plea that Michael Bay's future funding be divided out equally among Shane Carruth, Joss Whedon, and Jared and Jerusha Hess.

-MA 4.29.13


PS - Can I just add this? The ENTIRE third film is devoted to creating some nonsense called a "space bridge," yet "Iron Hide" makes one in the second movie NO PROBLEM. Where are the quality assurance people??

5th Monday Ugh: Kickin It Old Skool (Movie)

What does it say about a film made in 2007
when there isn't a high resolution image
of its cover easily available online?

What can I say about 2007's "Kickin It Old Skool" that isn't said by its 2% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes?  This movie is basically a "Hot Rod" knock-off with everything good replaced by something soulless.  I'm not just saying the film is bad, it's also horribly dark, offensive, and bad-natured.  What is supposed to be a wacky, high-energy comedy leaves the viewer feeling not only bored but strangely soiled.

In "Kickin It" Justin Schumacher (Jamie Kennedy) is a child break-dancer in the 80's who hits his head while dancing and falls into a twenty-year-long coma (as one does).  As his parents are about to pull the plug he hears the song "Rockit" by Herbie Hancock, and this somehow revives him.

When he entered this coma he was twelve; when he wakes he is thirty-two.  Why then, does he act like a disturbed six-year-old?  At what point did this seem like it would be funny to anyone?  He meets up with his old dance crew, and we enter into the abyss: a mind-numbing parade of failed joke after failed joke, poking fun at everything from pornography addiction to individuals with mental disabilities.  The feeling of the film is best encapsulated in one memorable deleted scene in which a young girl misunderstands adult Justin's hand motions describing how he squeezes lemons for his lemonade stand after inexplicably asking him, "How do you squeeze the lemons?" (which has to be the worst joke set-up in history).  She calls him a perv, flips him off, and says venomously, "F*** you!" before storming off.  Now we're having fun.

If you have a desire to abuse yourself--in fact, maybe if you kind of hate yourself a little--might I recommend this movie without hesitation.  For the rest of you I would just stick with reading the (very entertaining) critic reviews.

This promo wallpaper of Kickin It's "Chilly Chill"
may perhaps be the least used desktop image of all time.

I find myself in agreement with one reviewer, who refers to the film as "laugh-proof".

-MA 12.31.2012