Whilst subjecting ourselves to a Bennifer weekend film extravaganza ( Paycheck and then DareDevil) my husband came to the conclusion that these two *meh * films had two redeeming points.
Paycheck Uma Thurmond’s tight body ( for him. He doesn’t like her looks.) For me, I get as a crappy consolation prize of Ben Affleck.
**DareDevil ** which is a steaming pile of dog poo on the hot side walk of life has only one redeeming part: Jennifer Garner in a tight leather outfit. It is just criminal that that woman is so gorgeous.
Affleck, again giving me the shortchange in the eye candy department, looks like some extra for the Village People in his tight red leather get up.
“Joe Versus The Volcano”: Tom Hanks’ flawless comic timing is the only thing that saved this clunker. His reactions to his boss and to his work environment were hilarious. The boss’s phone conversations were priceless, as well: “I know he can get the job, but can he do the job?” The second half of the movie was absolute shite.
Resident Evil is a shitty, shitty movie, but it’s got a strong and legitimately interesting performance by Milla Jovovich. As I sat through the stinker, I felt really bad for her, watching as she gave her all to a movie that didn’t deserve her. If I were her, I would have sunk into my seat at the premiere, thinking to myself, “I worked my ass off for this?”
Ditto for Soldier, which has a great performance by Kurt Russell. Perhaps not coincidentally, it’s directed by the same doofus who did Resident Evil.
And along the same lines, Angelina Jolie is absolutely perfect as Lara Croft, but both of the Tomb Raider movies are junkier than a Chinese harbor.
The otherwise horrible and grubby looking racial drama The Klansman from 1974 features lots of over the top racist stereotypes, bad dialogue that uses racial slurs like punctuation, drunken performances from Richard Burton and Lee Marvin, and multiple graphic rapes and violent shootings in place of plot development. However it has some guilty pleasure humor moments derived from seeing OJ Simpson as a one-man black power army. Beyond his usual bad acting we get to see him roaming around the county killing bigoted rednecks then out running a freight train to make an escape at one point (aided by sped up film), hiding in the back of a blue and white Bronco, and dropping out of the trees to add to his body count during the lackluster climax. You can view it as a training film for his later domestic activities.
I vote for Mars Attacks. Overall, it’s a complete mess – long, dry stretches of unfunniness, entire scenes and characters that serve no purpose whatsoever, etc. But sprinkled among the crap are some really hilarious and memorable bits: the aliens knocking down the heads on Easter Island with a giant bowling ball, frying Congress with 1920’s-style Death Rays, and of course, Tom Jones. Now every time I hear “It’s Not Unusual,” I think of big-headed aliens going “Ack! Ack!”
If someone would edit that movie down to about 45 minutes – and it wouldn’t be too hard, since there’s barely a plot – it could be pretty darn funny.
I gnashed my teeth through most of The Fast And The Furious. It was a pleasant suprise to see the uber-cool hijackers get their asses handed to them by an anonymous trucker with a sawed-off shotgun.
If you like low-brow humor, Scary Movie II has a hilarious segment with James Woods spoofing The Exorcist. The rest of the movie is utter shite.
I think you’re choosing the wrong redeeming quality from Resident Evil. The true redeeming quality can be summed up in three words: the laser scene.
Clint Eastwood’s overwraught True Crime is a study of “meh”, but the next-to final scene at the prison is absolutely chilling and wonderful, especially the performance of the “warden”. I would actually recommend this movie just so people could see the final scene.
Janene Garafalo’s long string of crappy movies can only be redeemed by her almost painful cuteness.
The Incredibly True Adventures of Two Girls in Love - Crappy, crappy, crappy, but the scene at the end where the girls are in the car reading aloud erotic scenes from Rubyfruit Jungle was a nice tribute to those who have come before.
Tomorrow Never Dies - Best movie sequence opening I’ve ever seen. I don’t think the music ruined it, either.
True Believers- Bad acting, horrible pacing, but two moments- ‘Art Supplies’ is a great ‘reveal’ moment, and towards the end where James Woods makes the sudden logic leap when he sees the ambulance going to the morgue… Let’s just say the line, “I thought the morgue was farther uptown.” has become the staple for me when I suddenly have a revelation about a problem.
**Austin Powers: the Spy who Shagged Me **
Bad movie partially redeemed by several funny lines.
“I never noticed those before.”
“Babies: The other other white meat.”
“In charge of the project will be Dr. Alan Parsons. I shall call it: the Alan Parsons Project.”
“Ivana Humpalot”
Day of the Triffids is a pretty poor excuse for a monster movie, and doubly disappointing since the original novel was a perfect blueprint for one. Every change they made only made things worse.
But there’s one nice chilling scene in an airplane.
The plot involves, among other things, a meteor shower that causes everyone to watches it to lose their sight. The airplane is flying along with their passengers now blind, the pilot and stewardesses soothing them. Then a kid asks, “Is the pilot blind?” Panic ensues. Quite effective.
The latest incarnation of The Count of Monte Cristo had wonderful cinematography, truly luscious. The plot and acting, however, were a dull mediocre rendition of a wonderful book.
Carlito’s Way has two things worth watching: Sean Penn’s breat performance as a weasly, coke-up Mob lawyer and the final train station chase/gunfight revolving around the escalators. That chase would make a great short film and is further evidence that Brian DePalma is a fantastic cinematographer and is great at flashly camerawork and certain set pieces within a film. The rest of the movie is more evidence that he is a pathetic and derivative director who can rarely sustain an interesting or coherent story for an entire feature.
Get Carter is a pretty awful Stallone movie. The plot was something something brother killed something something knew too much something disc something molested niece something ass kicking. Yaaaawn. Except there’s a couple really good scenes where Sly made me give a damn about his character - he’s trying to say something to the niece about how she didn’t deserve it and that she’s a special girl, which sounds amazingly corny but the way he acted it seemed very… genuine. I was honestly touched. And then I was pissed off, because now I cared about this awful movie.
The Angry Red Planet was a pretty awful SF movie (and I’m a fan of awful SF movies – but this one was pretty bad). But there’s a redeeming feature at the end.
One astronaut has had the misfortune to stick his arm in a Gant Space Amoeba (don’t ask). Although he was pulled free and gets taken back to Earth, his arm is still covered in green goo that is apparently now its own amoeba, and it’s slowly eating his arm.
How to get the damned thing off? You can’t pull it off, it’s infiltrated his tissues. In your ordinary flick, it’d either end up consuming him completely (a la The Blob), or else they’d come up with some handy-dandy super-science solution (“We just whipped up a batch of Formula X, and it got that Space Amoeba right off him!”). But they didn’t do either of these. They came up with a scientifically viable, realistic way of getting the amoeba off. If I had a bad case of Space Amoeba, I’d use it. It had the ring of truth. Real Science iction, in the midst of awful sci-fi space opera!
What was it doing there? I suspect one of the writers came across a similar story in Science Digest or something, and decided it would make a good addition to the story. If so, it’s exactly the way good SF authors rip off the truth for their stories. And it’s something that, sadly, we don’t see enough of.
