Cinemax is showing Battlefield Earth. Why? There are approximately 500,000 better movies they could be showing. Why do the pay movie channels show so many bad films?
They’re cheap. There’s a lot of airtime to fill.
Someone is bound to watch it, if only rabid scientologists.
When I had HBO, this used to drive me nuts. It’s not just that they ran crappy movies, but it seemed like there was an inverse relationship between the quality of the movie and the number of times they show it.
There is. The cheaper the film is to license, the more times they can lard the schedule with it for the same price that a decent movie would cost.
Consider also that one man’s crap is another man’s croissant. I have met a few people online who claimed that they were fans of Battlefield Earth. I guess that’s possible. My own husband likes Howard the Duck, and has subjected himself to multiple viewings of same.
Battlefield Earth may be a stupid movie, but it isn’t a bad movie. There are large numbers of mind-numbingly bad movies that are made every year, that are not even good enough to be shown at 4am on HBO.
A friend used to regularly read Variety. I’d skim through the paper when he was done with it. I was always surprised at how many movies had been made, that never appeared in local theaters, or on broadcast or cable television. Typically, these were really bad low-budget movies, made by, and starring, people you have never heard of.
Current PayPerView offerings on DirecTV:
Firewall
Fun With Dick and Jane
Freedomland
Munich
Date Movie
When A Stranger Calls
Cheaper By the Dozen 2
Big Momma’s House 2
Dave Chapelle’s Block Party
Last Holiday
Family Stone
Nanny McPhee
Hoodwinked
Doogal
HP Goblet of Fire
Chronicles of Narnia
The Producers
Grandma’s Boy
Something New
The Sisters
Casanova
Running Scared
Brokeback Mountain
London
Aeon Flux
Tamara
The Apostle
Sea of Love
Rent
These are the movies they want us to pay extra for. I haven’t even heard of most of them.
If it weren’t for TCM and Deadwood, I wouldn’t even turn on the set.
I thought Fun With Dick and Jane, Munich, Nanny McPhee, HP Goblet of Fire, Chronicles of Narnia, Brokeback Mountain and Rent were all enjoyable.
Me too. And maybe Chappelle. So who’s watching the other 25?
…Running Scared is an amiable buddy cop movie but nothing special, Sea of Love is a pretty good erotic thriller starring Ellen Barkin and Al Pacino and The Apostle is a masterpiece character study of an evangelical priest, written, produced, directed, and starring Robert Duvall in a tour-de-force performance. I loved it.
Overall, that DirecTV schedule looks pretty darn good compared to some of the crap that The Movie Network foists upon us here in Canada.
I’d be willing to bet this is last year’s Running Scared, which is supposedly an extremely dark, violent, gritty, intense film noir, and not the '80s buddy cop movie with Billy Crystal and Gregory Hines. I’ve heard excellent things about the new one, but if you aren’t into those kinds of movies, I wouldn’t recommend it.