Most pop
culture aware people have seen at least some fan made videos, parodies,
impersonations, or general mockery directed at George Lucas and everyone
responsible for the Star Wars prequels. These humorous
attempts have been done with varying degrees of competency and success.
However, recently I came across one that has raised the bar for dissatisfied
fans everywhere. It is a series of parody reviews on the Youtube channel, RedLetterMedia, from man calling himself Mr. Plinkett. Each review is about an hour and a half long, and he has released one for all three of the prequels. They. Are.
Hilarious.
He uses a few memorable phrases to describe the main problems with The
Phantom Menace including "it's mind boggling how complex the
awfulness is." In addition to the humor, Mr. Plinkett makes some obviously
well thought out criticism of the movies. He explains in great detail the main
failings, not just focusing on obvious aspects like Jar-Jar Binks and Queen
Amidala's hair. It is a great learning experience that you will laugh your
whole way through.
If you find any other great parodies, leave them
in the comments section.
Everyone with a functioning Netflix subscription owes redditor clayton_frisbie a debt of gratitude. He cross referenced IMDBs top 250 movies with what was on Netflix and spit out the top 50. It is a great viewing guide if you're looking to see a few classics but don't want to wade through the list to find which you can watch. Thanks to Uproxx for the heads up. Here's the link. Enjoy.
(Okay, this one is a little predictable, but it needs to be said) For the last few years, the nearly unrivaled cinematic catastrophe that is The Room has slowly been percolating through movie-going circles. Many fans are calling it the worst movie since Plan 9 from Outer Space.
A big part of what makes The Room so bizarre is also what makes it hard to describe. There are a series of almost completely unconnected subplots that weave in an out of a strange, almost bipolar love triangle between the main character, Johnny (Tommy Wiseau), his friend, Mark (Greg Sestero) and Johnny's fiance, Lisa (Juliet Danielle). These awkward relationships are characterized by intermittent, extremely intense, and definitely uncomfortable sex scenes.
The Room, not unlike The Happening, the last bad movie I wrote about, is incredibly entertaining. The madness of each subplot (perhaps most memorably: a woman tearfully discovers she has breast cancer and proceeds to never mention it again) is matched only by the oddness of the dialogue. All that can be said of Tommy Wiseau's portrayal of the main character is that it will leave you astonished.
The guys over at CinemaSins did an excellent job skewering The Room. Frankly, I'm surprised how short this clip is.
As a bonus, here is writer, producer, director and main actor, Tommy Wiseau talking about his experience creating The Room as well as, wow, the finer points of comedy (see part 2). Apparently he's a misunderstood expert in the field. Enjoy.
Note: The man does seem like a nice guy, I'll give him that. He's no Uwe Boll (who's up next).
In the last several days since Transformers 4: Michael Bay Swims in Money came out, I’ve heard people compare Bay’s 160 minute turd to Pacific Rim three times. This is wrong for so many reasons. I’ve literally hurt my brain trying to understand why so many people are still going to see transformers movies. Even someone dumb enough to keep the name Shia finally jumped ship before this one.
I know Guillermo Del Toro’s movie about giant robots smashing things (Pacific Rim) is just as dumb as Michael Bay’s 4 movies about giant robots smashing things. But I love the former and I honestly hope Michael Bay dies alone all Citizen Kane-y remembering the one good Indy flick he accidentally wandered into years before, (slowly whispers) “Take… Shelter…” (if you haven’t seen Take Shelter, you absolutely should. Michael Shannon and Jessica Chastain will knock your socks off).
There’s a key difference in the two. Del Toro made PR and dismissed the idea of coherent story structure in order to make a good, silly action movie, because realism would impede that. Instead, he sunk his teeth into outstanding visuals, a few great fights (a robot smashing a Godzilla thing with a cruise ship? Yes please.) and one epic speech from the man, the myth, the legend himself: Stringer Bell. I mean Idris Elba, aka Stacker Pentecost, aka I’m naming my firstborn Stacker.
If you pick apart all the logical inconsistencies: the coastal wall, the sword, the EMP, stopping the Jaeger program, Charlie Kelly being a biologist, I’m afraid you’re missing the point entirely. Could some of those aspects have been fixed? Yes, but then it wouldn’t be Pacific Rim, in all its hilarious awesome/dumb glory.
Michael Bay, on the other hand, thinks his movies are just misunderstood. He has a style, we just don’t get it because we’re dummies who don’t have houses made of gold. Bay’s movies, with the possible exception of The Rock, are all mashups of interchangeable, blurry, repetitively choreographed fight scenes with protagonists the audience will all actively be rooting against by the time the screen goes black.
Because it’s making an absurd amount of money and Michael Bay has no soul, there’s going to be a 5th, 6th, and 7th (a 7th!) Transformers. The good folks over at Warners quickly green-lit a PR sequel not long after it opened too. If you must see Transformers again, it’s your life. But you should check out Pacific Rim 2 (Atlantic Rim?), in case you’re looking for a better version. Maybe the best fight of the movie:
Most movies run the gambit in quality from mediocre to pretty good. Every so often a movie is great, and a few films manage, despite a great deal of effort and money, to be terrible. Once in a few years, a film arrives on screen that manages to stand out, even with other great movies (many critics are saying Boyhood might be one of those films, you can watch it and decide for yourself).
However, as many movie goers familiar with M. Night Shyamalan's recent work know, there are also some movies so bad, so transcendently awful, so magically inscrutable, they manage to jump to the other end of the quality spectrum and become just as entertaining as the excellent movies. Sometimes a film is just so terrible, it becomes good. More than good, it can be great. One of my favorite films is in this category. The same might be true for you as well. This is the first installment in a series that could potentially be very long.
Note: Some terrible movies are god-awful because the film is lazy or basically engineered to suck. Those, generally, are unwatchable (see Transformers franchise).
The Happening-currently at a 17% on Rotten Tomatoes
Mark Wahlberg and Zooey Deschanel tried their hardest to make this good. The infamous Mr. Shyamalan did as well, I assume. It was to little avail. If you haven't heard of The Happening, it is a adventure-horror flick based around the idea that nature has had enough of pollution. The premise is even a fairly creative one. Plants have begun excreting a pollen (or something) that makes people commit suicide. Could be kinda cool if done well, right? We will really never know. The dialogue is so honky it's funny. Characters speak out of character constantly, state the obvious, and talk to fake trees (below).
Interestingly, the most fun in watching The Happening comes from the idea that is supposed to inspire the greatest amount of fear: the death sequences. The suicides in The Happening are so absurd it almost seems like creative genius. In one instance, a violinist is hit with the sickness mid-recital and proceeds to attempt to swallow his bow. It's great.
The Happening is a movie I strongly regret not seeing in the theatre. A friend of mine had the privilege of catching it right as it came out, so the theatre was packed. He related to me the experience of seeing it as one of the best he'd ever had in a theatre. The whole audience, one by one, slowly realized the utter horribleness of what they were watching and united to insult and make-fun of every terrible scene that came on screen. The Happening, it turns out, is a movie that brings people together.
The Room is owning every discussion of bad movies I've heard recently, and this movie certainly deserves a shot, so watch The Happening. Check out the clip below for a taste.
Also, watching with the RiffTrax commentary is a great idea. The MST3K people are doing god's work.
My feud with Michael Bay continues to grow. Ok, this isn't a feud because a feud technically requires both parties to be aware of its existence. However, as I stated a while ago, Michael Bay is just awful. I considered just making an article on how bad he is for the movie industry, but I don't really need to state the obvious. Anyway...
Poor Mark Wahlberg. Michael Bay really is trying to ruin you, isn't he? I just re-watched Pain and Gain, Michael Bay's previous movie that didn't involve weird racist robots, in order to study up on what not to do when creating a movie. It was pretty forgettable. It was so forgettable, that I just now realized Marky Mark starred in both Transmorphers 4 and P&G.
This is going to be a short post, because I want to occupy my mind with a movie less awful than Transformers 4-insert literally any other movie here. I like Wahlberg as an actor. He needs to spend more time working on the Entourage movie, which has a chance at being pretty good in a guilty pleasure sort of way, and less time with Michael Bay. Hopefully, I'm not the only one who thinks this way. Because he's talented. Here's Mark being Dignam, because why not.
Superhero movies dominate the screens these days, but years ago, martial arts stars like Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan (and the incomparable Patrick Swayze--just for Roadhouse) were masters of choreographed action. Both genres are great in different ways, but it is sad to see how marginalized the later has become. I've started Martial Arts Movie Mondays in order to appreciate those wonderful gems that existed before Marvel and Christopher Nolan entered the movie-sphere like an invading army.
Jet Li's Fearless came out in 2006, making it one of the last of its kind. I've always loved Jet Li as an actor; Unleashed was excellent and he has carved out a nice space for himself in the Expendables crew (mindless action, but it could be a lot worse).
In Fearless, Li is superb. He plays Huo Yuanjia (yes, I had to look up how to spell that). The movie begins with Li as a full fledged master battling three westerners come to "show them Chinamen how we do it in the west." In three excellently choreographed fights: boxing, lancing and fencing, Li shows great range and continues kicks ass with style every time. Before the final battle with a much more reserved Japanese opponent, the audience is treated to the story of Yuanjia's life, which takes up most of the rest of the film. He starts as a small boy who, after being bullied, decides to become China's greatest master of Wushu--a truly beautiful fighting style if there ever was one. In short, an excellently done, if predictable tale. It is compelling, cool, and a little cheesy, like all good martial arts movies are. The true strength of the movie, not unexpectedly, is its fight choreography. I defy anyone to find a movie not involving Bruce Lee (or Neo, although that is a bit of a stretch) that has fights this well done. Every battle is different, and they're all great. My favorite is probably Yuanjia's clash with a 300 lb. giant boxer, appropriately named Hercules O'Brian, right before the final tournament. The creativity he uses in order to combat the massive difference in size and strength is a ton of fun to watch. Four out of four stars. All I can say is: watch this movie. Note: It's even on Netflix, so now you have no excuse not to watch it.
