Tag Archives: stinker alert

Super Troopers 2

In the 17 years between the first Super Troopers and its sequel, you’d think one of the guys from Broken Lizard would have written one half-decent joke. Even plagiarized one accidentally. And you’d definitely think that if, between the 5 of them, they hadn’t written any new material WHATSOEVER in 17 frickin years, they would agree that they did NOT have enough to make a movie and thus would not have made a movie – ha. You give them too much credit.

It is incomprehensible that any of these buffoons would be gainfully employed in any capacity, but it is no surprise that after being inexplicably handed back the very jobs they were so very deservedly fired from in the first movie, they would spend the whole of the sequel abusing their power in childish, unoriginal, and unamusing MV5BN2Y1YzM2YTMtNGViMy00NzYzLWJkYWUtZmZmNDkyYWEyNmEzXkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyNDg2MjUxNjM@._V1_SX1777_CR0,0,1777,948_AL_ ways. I’m normally pretty hard on sequels that are content to ride on the laurels of their predecessors, but in this case, Super Troopers 2 only wishes it could attain the very attainable, very modest heights of the first movie, a movie that could only dream of laurels in the first place.

In this iteration, the boys are back in beige because the Vermont border is moving north, into territory that used to be Canadian. So this movie exists for the sole purpose of making fun of Canadian stereotypes made up by, and existing only in the minds of, stupid Americans. This movie feels so out of touch with 2018 that I almost felt sorry for it – in the way that you almost feel sorry for Roseanne, who was fired from the show that bears her name, for just being her on-brand, normal, ignorant, racist self, in a world that has evolved to no longer reward such puerile, unenlightened behaviour.

We saw this movie as the third in a triple feature at the drive-in two weeks ago and I’m still not over how offensively bad it was. Of course, I didn’t really like the first one either. Too juvenile for me, but I said that, Sean was quick to jump on me: “But you own it!” he said, sure he was catching me in some sort of lie. And he’s right in that it does reside in the DVD collection in my garage. Which is why, on the quiet 3am drive home from the triple feature at Port Elmsley, I had to have The Conversation with Sean. You know, the one in which I confess that he isn’t the first boy to force me to watch movies against my will. He is shook. Not that we needed another reason to vehemently dislike Super Troopers 2, but boy did we get one.

The Strangers: Prey at Night

20 Replies

I’ve avoided slasher flicks ever since I was 12 and the idea of Friday the 13th (which I’d never seen but had the plot recited to me on a canoe trip the previous summer) made me run in terror anytime I was alone in the woods at night. Since then, I’ve seen very, very few straight-up slashers (Halloween being a rare excepti Strangers 7-5-17-6620.dng on and a standout) because, honestly, they’re almost always really stupid. The Strangers: Prey at Night is a very good example of “really stupid”, and that is about the nicest thing I can say about it.

Since I really don’t care for this type of movie, I may be dead wrong, but I have always thought the appeal of these films can be distilled down to three basic elements:

Clever kill sequences;
The filmmaker toying with the audience’s expectations, delivering a humourous jolt when we think a scare is coming, or vice versa; and
Seeing idiots get what is coming to them, namely being murdered in some kind of clever kill sequence.

Combine those elements with a memorable mass murderer and you’ve got a franchise on your hands!

The Strangers: Prey at Night has none of those things. Sure, the killers wear weird masks, but doesn’t almost every murderer? Otherwise, these killers just walk around menacingly, more out of obligation than for any particular purpose, and don’t have any discernable motivation, backstory, or personality traits. The only memorable thing is that the killers have a penchant for 80s music. Like, will search the radio presets until they find some, even if there is a potential victim right there for the murdering, so they are pretty big fans.

And there are no clever or humourous sequences, just monotony. The people who die get stabbed. Also, the people who live get stabbed. None of the encounters consists of anything more than that, save for the 80s synth-pop blaring consistently while the fights take place. Worst of all, we are forced to sit through about 25 minutes of family “drama” before the killing even really begins.

So who, exactly, is this movie for? You will have to tell me because it is not for me or for anyone I know. I also don’t think it would have worried little 12-year-old me in the least, which is the biggest strike of all since back then I was terrified by the very idea of the phantom zone from Superman 2. Basically, if you are looking for a mix of synth-pop and grisly violence, skip this film and stick with the holy trinity: Halloween, Drive, and Grand Theft Auto: Vice City.

The Cloverfield Paradox

25 Replies

So this is what “straight to video” looks like in the Netflix age. Honestly, I am surprised at the drastic drop off in quality from 10 Cloverfield Lane to The Cloverfield Paradox, if only because I gave 10 Cloverfield Lane a 3 out of 10 and by comparison to Paradox, Cloverfield Lane is a masterpiece.

Basically, The Cloverfield Paradox is a less entertaining, less scary, and less interesting version of Event Horizon, a movie that really let me down 20 ye GDP-08575.raf ars ago, and that I am sure has not improved over time. That The Cloverfield Paradox falls so far short of that (very) (very) (very) low bar is damning indeed.

For a “franchise” that I didn’t much care for in the first place, Cloverfield has managed to sink to new depths of awfulness with each new entry, especially with the two “sequels”, which were clearly written as standalone movies, then got stamped with just enough giant monsterness to justify the Cloverfield name.

At least at this point we can be fairly sure we’ve reached the end of this disappointing series. It is a sad state of affairs that I can’t totally exclude a reboot in five or ten years, but that’s a rant for another day (and one I’ve probably already written out three or four times in other reviews so I’m sure you can find it without too much effort!).

Geostorm

25 Replies

Geostorm takes incoherence to a whole new level, one I never thought possible. A guy dies on a space station for reasons that are entirely unclear and it seemed to me I had missed something. I rewound because I thought I missed an important detail, but I didn’t. It is just an unexplained and unexpected event almost 20 minutes into a 109 minute movie. The music cues told me this event was very mysterious, and eventually it ends up being a super important plot point be geostorm-1280-1508455954341_1280w cause it brings Gerard Butler into the mix (because he designed the space station in question). Come to think of it, Butler as a space station designer is one of the most believable aspects of this film. That’s Geostorm in a nutshell.

Geostorm is a shameless ripoff of Armageddon, right down to tragedies in Asia and hail the size of basketballs, and Butler is asked to be both Ben Affleck and Bruce Willis. He is not up to the task to even being William Fichter (the guy with the gun in space). But rest assured, there is tons of drama to come, and it is set to the most over-dramatic and generic music imaginable. And the drama keeps on building as the scientists theorize that a Geostorm is on the way, and it turns out that Butler and his brother have quite a complex relationship, and a secret code, and lots of sciency gibberish to share with each other. At least I think these things were an attempt to add depth to these characters, but it all comes off as total garbage, and a pale imitation of other disaster movies that weren’t all that great in the first place. The worst part is, there’s not even a Geostorm for, like, ever, as we are forced to wait and wait for the disaster to actually occur while the scientists overhype it (by a lot).

I am quick to make fun of Michael Bay, because he makes lots of big, dumb movies that make little to no sense. Well, Geostorm made me feel kind of bad about having done that, repeatedly. Mr. Bay, I am truly sorry for ever calling you a talentless hack because Geostorm makes Armageddon look like 2001: A Space Odyssey. In short, as a film, Geostorm is a disaster on a global scale. Fortunately, this is one disaster you can avoid all by yourself, without needing to prove that climate change is real.

Assassin’s Creed

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This is probably the most super serious movie that a video game franchise has ever birthed. We are quickly briefed on the thousand-year old struggle between Templars and Assassins, with the two sides warring for control over a magic apple, the Apple of Eden that contains the seeds of mankind’s deceit, yadda yadda, genetic code, yadda yadda, free will, yadda yadda, fate of the world at stake. So Michael Fassbender has to travel back in time, sort of, and find out where that apple is hiding.

assassins-creed-movie-Fassbender

Except those stakes are then lowered for no apparent reason because right from the outset Fassbender and the audience are told that nothing can be changed in the past – he’s just observing what’s already happened to one of his ancestors. Which is a bizarre choice for a movie based on a video game that put the player in control of an assassin’s kung fu fighting ancestor, as it leaves the movie’s audience passively watching Fassbender experience a “memory” from the distant past and kind of act it out with the help of a big mechanical harness.

Or, when Fassbender’s recovering from doing his mechanical harness work, we get to watch him fight ghosts (not real, we are assured, just glitches in the Matrix) and also guards (real but gentle because they need Fassbender alive since he’s the last ancestor of some guy, yadda yadda, never mind that this group also is holding Fassbender’s father at the same location [Edit: I just remembered that the ancestry was on his mom’s side but that opens up a whole other set of criticisms]). Admittedly, there are hints of danger, like Fassbender suffering a seizure caused by the harness and then being confined to a wheelchair, but 30 seconds later he is practicing karate moves again so it seems like it’s no worse than a little VR motion sickness.

There is some kind of 1%/mind control through consumerism/uprising by noble freemen underlying all this but don’t even try to find a worthwhile message because the premise of the film’s logic is that violence and free will are tied together, so only murderers and assassins can stand between the 1% and total domination.

That should have been the most insulting part of Assassin’s Creed, but it’s not. The most insulting part is that a decent cast (including Fassbender, Marion Cotillard, Jeremy Irons, Brendan Gleeson and Charlotte Rampling) is totally wasted in a blockbuster that lacks any semblance of blockbusting. My ancestors would be ashamed I ever watched this trash, and I’m right there with them.

Bright

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What’s worse than being flat, derivative and uninspired? Being all those things, showing a tiny bit of promise in spite of them, and then throwing the interesting parts away in search of a flashy climax and tidy resolution. That’s Bright.

The concept is sound – what if there were Elves and Orcs and magic in our world? It’s not a new idea and that’s fine. The hodgepodge of fantasy elements forming the basis of this world are standard fare as we bright_unit_06597_r_wide-67b1f15cb792c81ccc1359a7e8a2e6c0bce7b718-s900-c85 ll, straight out of Tolkien or World of Warcraft. Orcs are brutes with sharp teeth, Elves are beautiful and rich, magic wands are super powerful but not everyone can use them. The script, complete with minority and 1% allegories, practically writes itself.

The problem is, it feels like no extra effort was put in to creating Bright. Like, at all. Like, I’m pretty sure Will Smith was quoting himself from Men in Black every time he let a sarcastic quip fly. Not incidentally, well over 90% of his lines in Bright are sarcastic quips. Either stop phoning it in or stop being in movies, please.

Joel Edgerton doesn’t phone it in like Smith but he is totally unrecognizable and totally wasted here as the sensitive Orc sidekick. He had no chance of saving this mess. Full disclosure: this is a recurring exchange between Jay and me:

Jay: We should go see [small indie movie]. Joel Edgerton is in it.

Me: Who’s Joel Edgerton again?

Jay: The guy from [slightly older small indie movie that we saw a few months prior].

Me: That was Joel Edgerton?

Jay: We literally just had this conversation when you made me watch the Star Wars prequels.

Me: JOEL EDGERTON IS IN STAR WARS?

Jay: I hate you.

It happened again in Bright only I swear, this time it was not my fault. It was David Ayer’s, and Bright is proof that we should have cut Ayer off long before Suicide Squad. Thanks for writing Training Day, really, but that goodwill was used up long ago. A glimmer of promise and then an avalanche of mediocrity and disappointment – just like Bright.

Transformers: The Last Knight

17 Replies

I wrote a whole other review of this horrible, awful, infuriating movie and then accidentally deleted it. Honestly, my review was unremarkable for the most part so it’s not a huge loss. This movie makes no sense, it’s the fifth movie in a tired franchise that was only ever enjoyable if you, like me, liked seeing robots decapitate other robots in slow motion (and which stopped being awesome four movies ago), and it’s got Mark Wahlberg doing his usual “acting” by which I mean that he talks really fast in a whiny voice when he is under pressure and otherwise just stands around flexing his biceps and looking confused. In short, it is the why-critics-say-transformers-the-last-knight-is-2017s-most-toxic-movie (1) worst Transformers movie yet, and the next one will probably be even worse.

But there was one part of my review worth saving, and it’s this: Mark Wahlberg was clearly born to be in Michael Bay movies. It is the perfect match of all perfect matches. These two eventually found each other, but there are so many Wahlberg-less Michael Bay movies, and isn’t that a shame?

So…what if Michael Bay made special editions of his back catalogue, George Lucas style, and digitally inserted Wahlberg into all his “classics” as a way to link all his movies together?

Think about it! It would be the greatest shared universe of all time. We could have Bad Boys fighting bad robots under the supervision of Wahlberg and his good friend Joe Pantoliano, the space shuttle in Armageddon could be a robot who owes a favour to Wahlberg and who figures out a way to save Bruce Willis as payback, and Wahlberg could help bring Sean Connery and his estranged daughter Claire Forlani together while at the same time helping Nicholas Cage foil Ed Harris’ plot to steal that face-meltingly-deadly VX gas, this time without losing Michael Biehn’s whole SEAL team. And then Wahlberg could assemble a team of one million Ewan MacGregor clones along with the time travelling pilot duo of Ben Affleck and Josh Hartnett to destroy the Transformers once and for all, saving us all from ever having to see Transformers 6: Shia’s Revenge.

This needs to happen.

Person To Person

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the Best Western

the blue collar town where I grew up

guys who want to go dutch

tap water

prison-issued eyewear

hold music

vodka soda

You get it, right? What are: things that are completely & utterly devoid of charm or personality. Such as this movie.

Person To Person almost killed me with boredom. How to summarize a film totally bankrupt in plot? Well, see, there’s these people. Some of them know each other, some of MV5BOTVlZGRiN2QtZTJkMi00NjcxLWIzYTItMTY1MzQzMTBhYWVkXkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyNjU2NTMxOTg@._V1_ them don’t. And they have these lives. And they spend the day going about them, just generally moping about, doing a lot of whining and talking. The end.

Person to Person is that balding guy in your office who wears khakis and polo shirts like they’re his uniform, who eats the same sandwich and celery every day for lunch, who has nothing to talk about except the weather, and who you once caught reading the phone book. I see that Rotten Tomatoes got drunk, brought that guy home, and gave him a pity fuck (that’s my way of saying its score of 45%, while still rotten, is also completely unjustified – an overshot of at least 43%, I’d say). This movie was so dull I had to invent an all-new category for it on Assholes Watching Movies: Boring as Hell. But unlike Person to Person, at least hell is warm and peppered with interesting characters.

Naked

9 Replies

Naked is Groundhog Day for people who hate themselves.

Rob (Marlon Wayans) is about to get married to a woman (Regina Hall) who’s maybe a little out of his league and maybe he’s a little nervous about it. Her dad (Dennis Haysbert, aka, the Allstate Guy) is a vocal skeptic and would rather see his baby girl marry someone a little more worthy – like her ex-boyfriend Cody (Scott Foley) who is inexplicably invited to this wedding.

One small wrinkle: he keeps waking up naked in an elevator and he’s got an hour to make it to the wedding. But he keeps not quite getting there, so when the church bells MV5BOTIyYjBhYjMtYzgzYy00NWQ4LWI3ZDUtOTU1M2NmMGQ2ZmQ3XkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyNDQ0MTYzMDA@._V1_SY1000_SX1500_AL_ ring without him exchanging vows, the day resets and he has to do it all over again. It’s the premise of Groundhog Day, only without self-respect or any laughter whatsoever. Bill Murray had to learn to be a better person, and while the script eventually decides that Rob’s goal is be a worthy husband, his real daily achievement is just covering up his nudity in a series of wacky outfits. Oh, and sometimes chilling with Brian McKnight – because that’s totally how I’d prioritize my time if I had an hour to escape a horrifying time loop: 90s slow jams.

This is a Netflix original movie that will make you question whether movies should be made at all. If you’ve seen it, I’m sorry. Take some time. Pet a dog. Drink some tea out of an inordinately cute cup. Maybe make a dent in your reading stack. But do come back. For every bad movie on Netflix, there’s a good one. One day I will crack the exact ratio, but until I do, know this: on our site, the category ‘Netflix and chill’ simply means the movie is found on Netflix, it is not an endorsement; good movies are categorized as ‘what to watch on Netflix.’ Netflix is a black hole of movies and finding something watchable takes some mining, but don’t despair, they do exist.

Naked tries to be Groundhog’s twin and winds up its antithesis. Hard pass.

The Emoji Movie

37 Replies

I am way too old to use emojis. I use words to express my thoughts and feelings. Also, I like to use however many characters are needed to express myself. Emojis are a crutch and aren’t meaningful. For example, this movie in an emoji is 💩. But that doesn’t even come close to saying how bad it is.

I’ve just hinted that I think emojis are stupid. Not surprisingly, The Emoji Movie does not take that stance (though that would have made for a more interesting film). Instead, the main human in The Emoji Movie loves emojis, uses them at every chance, and seeks the perfect emoji to send to his crush so she will go to the dance with him. He doesn’t bother to talk to her or just ask her out with words because that’s so 90s.

SPOILER ALERT: the kid finds the perfect emoji because just before the phone store employee deletes everything on his phone, the sentient emojis in the phone text him a new emoji that is like a gif of five very similar looking faces, AND HER RESPONSE IS TO REALIZE HE IS A REALLY DEEP GUY WHO IS GOOD AT EXPRESSING HIS FEELINGS. SERIOUSLY? LIKE, SERIOUSLY? I mean, sending the “perfect emoji” was a slightly better idea than sending Rihanna lyrics (which was the best the main human could come up with on his own) but both ideas really, really suck (at least the kid deleted the Rihanna email, which of course closed with a high five emoji…).

OTHER SPOILERS THAT AREN’T REALLY SPOILERS BUT PROVE THAT THE WRITERS ARE OLDER THAN ME AND HAVE NEVER USED A SMARTPHONE:

1. When the kid’s phone makes noise at inopportune times (because the emojis are moving through his apps, duh), he doesn’t shut off the volume. HE CALLS THE PHONE STORE TO MAKE AN APPOINTMENT TO HAVE THE DATA DELETED. I mean (a) you don’t need an appointment at “the phone store”; (b) you can click one thing to delete all data on your phone whenever you want; and (c) deleting the data isn’t even going to solve the kid’s problem according to the movie’s rules because the cause of the noise is the sentient emojis, who would just return to his phone when a replacement “Textopolis” was installed.

2. In the movie, it takes 24 hours for trash to be deleted from the phone – which is not a phone thing and not really even a computer thing. It also takes several dramatic minutes to do a factory reset, and if you change your mind right at the very end you just have to unplug the USB cable from the phone store’s computer and all your data will undelete itself automatically – which is not a thing at all and even my grandmothers know that.

3. The apps visited by the emojis are real (-ish) but they make no sense in execution. Jay correctly called The Emoji Movie a lame ripoff of Inside Out, and the apps are this film’s attempt to build a world inside something both familiar and mysterious (Inside Out used brains, The Emoji Movie uses phones). Inside Out succeeds and makes it look easy. The Emoji Movie fails at every turn because it has no coherent logic. At all. It is all just a bunch of 💩.

DO NOT SEE THIS MOVIE. It is truly terrible in all the worst ways – a real stinker. Avoid it at all costs.