Hello, and welcome back to Weekly Cinemeh. This week our theme was bad movies, because Eshi and I deserve to be punished for some reason. Not a lot to say, three bad movies that are some of the worst of the worst. Let the pain begin.
1: Max Payne
Ugh. I have never played a Max Payne game, so maybe I am missing context. Is everyone in those games morose, because I have never seen such a joyless movie. This movie isn't all bad, it was trying really hard to be an artsy action flick/neo noir, but the combination of a bad script and the curse of video game movies fucked it. MP is about a depressed cop whose family was murdered. He gets pulled into a case about drugs and violent murder, and needs to save the day while looking tortured. This movie is a good example of style over substance. Every character is one dimensional, the movie keeps trying to make allusions to Nordic mythology but gets the basic information wrong (Valkyries are used in the tripping scenes and they are all look like this because fuck you I guess), and every cop in the movie is stupid. Painfully basic clues are overlooked in the initial investigation, only to be brought up later as a revelation and not staggeringly bad police work. Marky Mark (who I do not hate) was bad, but that might be because the script does nothing to make me like him at all. Mila Kunis doesn't need to be in this movie (I like her as an actress but her character only exists to play Deus ex Machina during the climax). There are a bunch of plot holes, and the guy that is supposed to be the main antagonist (described as invincible) is killed in a very blasé way. That being said there are some artful shots, but the action scenes are bland and the bullet time scenes the games are famous for added nothing to the movie.
Eshi: This is my second time watching this fucking abortion, because Eshi doesn't believe in making good life choices. Some movies (like Plan Nine) are so bad you can't help but have fun with them. Some movies (like The Wicker fucking Meh down there) are really bad but have a couple enjoyable scenes. This piece of shit was having none of that. There isn't a single moment of levity in the whole goddamn thing, which wouldn't be so bad if the writing was at all good or the story wasn't the narrative equivalent of forced analingus. Not even the violence is interesting, all of the remotely engaging action happens off camera. There are some really pretty shots, I will happily concede that, but finding tinsel in Bubba's grundle does not meaningfully improve the salad tossing experience, no matter how festive.
2: The Wicker Man
I want to get this out of the way: Don't watch this movie. The original movie is far better, and well worth a watch. Now, this movie is a remake of a movie that didn't need to be remade, and it fails its source material. To try to make it more "American" for some reason they placed the action in the pacific northwest. The village is turned into a matriarchal commune that raises bees and oppresses men. The addition of a super negative view of feminism takes away from this movie and takes it from a virtuous christian vs an island full of occultists to men vs women, and that shit is unnecessary. The script is bad, Nick Cage is laughable, and the rest of the cast is mediocre at best (despite having some good actresses). The finale suffers the most in this movie in my opinion because it leaves out the terror that accompanied the original. In the original (you know how we feel about spoilers: its from 73, get on it), Sergeant Howie is brought to the wicker man and realizes immediately what is about to happen to him and before he is sacrificed he screams out a curse to Lord Summerisle ("The next time it will be you who is sacrificed to the wicker man!") and dies praying that he will not be taken by some heathen god while the island folk sing in the background. The remake just has Nick Cage screaming while the people chant for his death, which seems kind of dumb. This movie is fucking bad. Don't watch it, and prevent others from seeing it.
Eshi: I'm going to save you some time. That is the only enjoyable scene in the entire fucking movie and that was probably enhanced by all the weed. The plot doesn't matter, the reasons don't matter. Just enjoy that one moment in time and move on from this fucking thing.
3: Plan 9 From Outer Space
This movie is often touted as the worst movie ever made. I disagree, its just the most famous bad movie. Ed Wood actually liked making movies as far as I know, so if intention counts for anything, Manos: Hands of Fate, a movie made because a man bet a buddy that he could make a horror movie on a tiny budget, takes the cake. Back on topic though, Plan 9 is about aliens who want to make contact with earth and warn them about the path earth is on. They get mad eventually because humans deny their existence, so the aliens decide to raise zombies. Yeah, because that is the next best step right? How could that go wrong. When I say that this movie is not the worst movie ever made, I don't want anyone thinking its good. Its not. That being said it is fun to watch. You know when you see a video on youtube that has a laughable script, bad special effects, and terrible props/sets? You watch it because its funny how bad it it. This is that. Its a great drinking game too. Watch this on Halloween while getting high with some buddies, its a fun time.
Eshi: The thing that makes Plan 9 great is that it kind of revels in how bad it is. Scenes are cobbled together and, in one case, reused whole-cloth at least three times, props are blatant and largely disregarded, and the cast seem to confuse "science fiction" with staring at each other panicked whilst talking like Shakespearean trained robot. The central plot point is essentially, "we can't convince them to acknowledge our existence, so lets use zombies to lure them into our ship and kill them so they don't tell anyone about us." The central narrative is just... just gone. Plan 9 comes off as an exercise in producer placation.
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