Shane Watches a Bad Movie on Facebook with Friends: Miami Connection

1987 action movie

Rating: 3/20 (Josh: 12/20; Fred: 2/20; Libby: 3/30; Carrie: 2/20; Larry: was unfortunately not able to finish the movie with us--I believe his wife came home and caught him watching Miami Connection which led to some trouble)

Plot: A rock band consisting of orphans has to battle a rival gang and some ninjas who ride motorcycles. Drugs are somehow involved.

"Uh oh. Ninjas."

Wall-to-wall action and ceiling-to-floor stupidity! This is really just a series of badly-choreographed fight scenes and a couple musical numbers (including the should-have-been-a-hit "Friends Forever!" with lyrics that had to have been written by children) connected with a plot. It's connected the way a dried-up glue stick would connect the pieces of a child's art project. This kind of stupidity doesn't come along that often. The stars have to align just a certain way to bring all the pieces together to make something as special as this, and the production company (Draft House) that brought this thing back from the dead in recent years (complete with action figures) was right in thinking it's a potential cult classic. You'll see everything that makes bad movies like this so magical--terrible acting, continuity errors, bad effects, inept camera and sound work, poor editing, general clumsiness--but there's something that just makes this stand out a little bit. Like a lot of historically bad movies, this one seems to be the responsibility of one guy--Y.K. Kim, who co-wrote, co-directed, and co-starred in this. He's got some sweet kung-fu movies, at least when compared to most of the gangly white dudes in this movie. However, he has not mastered the English language and with the help of that gives one of the worst performances you'll ever see.  I had trouble not laughing at everything he said, including his pronunciation of the word orphans which sounded like orpins. This was Kim's only movie as a writer, director, or an actor. There's also a guy who looks a little like how Chuck Norris would look if he became really really ill. One of the orphans--the black one--is actually able to reconnect with his father, an attempt by the filmmakers to inject a little emotion into the movie. It made me cry anyway. With laughter! That black guy is played by Maurice Smith who screams the greatest scream that I have ever heard in a movie. The aforementioned "Friends Forever" song is one of two songs performed by the band--Dragon Sound, a fivesome who perform kung-fu moves while rocking out. It's the kind of song that will make you feel proud to be a human being, and the song has become the new Facebook Bad Movie Club anthem. As Libby said, this seems to be a movie made by 8-year-old boys for 8-year-old boys to watch and enjoy. It's one of the best bad movies I've seen in a while.

Oh, you know who else is in this movie? Bubba Baker, the guy who played "toothless giant" in Ace Ventura: Pet Detective. In this, he plays "Nail face," a random guy in a scene that takes place in a bar who shoves a nail into his face.

Enthiran (Robot)

2010 ridiculously stupid sci-fi action romantic comedy (with music)

Rating: 14/20 (Unapologetically!)

Plot: A scientist makes himself a bitchin' robot that looks like him and can do anything that the writer/director of this thing can dream up. His girlfriend's upset that he spends so much time working. Eventually, the robot develops into something a little more human and falls for his maker's girlfriend. Then, things get really stupid.

Oh, goodness. This movie broke some kind of record for winning me over in the quickest amount of time because this bad boy had me at the menu screen with this delirious song that went something like "Boom boom robo gah robo gah zoom zoom." I'm easy to win over apparently. And yes, that song is in the movie, probably when the titular robot is doing something absolutely ridiculous. Actually, if I recall correctly, it was used in a montage where the robot--which is named Chitti, by the way, something else that entertained me because I'm apparently seven years old--cooks, dances, teaches karate, dresses hair, applies make-up, gives pedicures, plays practical jokes, etc. No, this guy isn't just a military fightin' rock-'em-and-sock-'em robot. He's one who can deliver babies. Love this conversation prior to the baby delivery:

Chitti: May I try?
Person: Are you a doctor?
Chitti: I'm Chitti. (pause) The robot.
Person: Can you do this?
Chitti: Why not?

Then, there's an ultrasound where the baby is revealed to be a cartoon. Awesome. Chitti also has a ridiculous action scene and then, to blow your fucking mind even more, he starts singing. Of course, the most memorable parts of this are when the robot gets to show off his fighting skills. And those scenes defy all logic. Over-the-top, silly, but undeniably creative, these are action scenes that will leave you wanting to high-five yourself. The special effects are probably on par with the stuff in the second Matrix movie, and there's even a chase sequence that reminds me of what they did with cars in that movie. But whereas that Matrix crap was happening in some kind of fantasy land (I don't really know because I didn't understand those movies), this is supposed to be happening in the real world. Those ridiculous special effects stand out most during a train scene with some interesting fisticuff action, a scene with a flying baby, some fire, and a what-the-hell moment when some mosquitoes start talking to each other. Oh, and there's a scene with a woman getting hit by a car which I believe is the worst thing I have ever seen. But when that robot [SPOILER ALERT!] duplicates himself and all the Chitti robots start piling on top of each other to make giant towers or giant Chittis, it's sublime and will, if you're anything like me, make you pee in your pants. This stars "Superstar" Raiji in dual roles, and at first, I was thinking, "This guy doesn't look much like a superstar." But there was a point early in the movie where he does this little giggle, kind of like a robotic dough boy, and that put him well into "superstar" range. He is good as both human and robot although he's aided by special effects. Since this is Bollywood, you can expect lots of music, and the action and plot are interrupted a few too many times with bad music videos about how we need to watch them "robo shake it" and other stuff. I say "other stuff" because the music video song lyrics were not translated for me. They're slick, and I didn't mind watching Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, who I assume is also a superstar, dance around in a variety of colorful outfits, but the music videos are really why the fast-forward button was invented. There's also a lot of stuff that I'm pretty sure was supposed to be comedic but that I didn't understand because it's probably a cultural thing. This movie's also very very long with a plot that develops far too slowly. At about the hour and fifteen minute mark, a character actually says something like "Now the story has begun!" which made me think, "It's about time!" Don't get me wrong though. This is close to the greatest movie ever made.

I finished watching this movie at around 3 in the morning, I think, and I immediately emailed my brother to tell him to check it out. He probably hates me for it.

Aliens

1986 sequel

Rating: 15/20

Plot: Ripley's convinced to travel with some soldiers to the planet from the first movie to check on some colonists. They have to square off against a bunch of Xenomorphs.

This replaces the chilling atmospherics and almost raw poetic and almost elegant creepiness from the first movie with non-stop action. And as far as non-stop action Hollywood blockbustin' action goes, James Cameron nails it. This pretty much takes the ideas from the first movie and increases the quantity while sacrificing the quality. This is bigger, bloodier, and louder, but if the first movie is a knockout, this is like a violent and exciting uppercut that looks great on the television before replays show that it didn't connect with anything. And Ripley's underwear fits a little better. The minimalist music that worked so effectively in the first movie is replaced with dull, predictable stuff. The space scenes look terrible compared to the first, odd since this comes about seven years after its predecessor. The characters run around like living and breathing stereotypes. There's a black guy chewing on a cigar, a bunch of asshole marines, an ultra-tough Latina, Paul Reiser's villain. They're Hollywood clichés except for my favorite character in this--Lance Henriksen's android Bishop. Bill Paxton is awful as one of the space marines and was apparently told that he needed to screech all of his lines. As much as I hate cats, I wasn't happy with the kid Newt who replaced the cat from the first movie. With this collection of characters, it's not hard to see why I was rooting for the titular aliens pretty early in the proceedings. Sigourney Weaver's character turns into Bruce Willis--taping space guns and flamethrowers together and discovering her inner-badass. Actually, I guess she retains her hair in this movie, so maybe she doesn't quite turn into Bruce yet. I was surprised to learn that she was nominated as Best Actress for this. She's at her best as Ripley here, but is it a Best Actress worthy performance? Maybe she was nominated for the scene in the elevator where she screams, "Come on, God damn it!" I've decided that I'm going to do that every time I use an elevator from now on. Don't get me wrong. This is a mostly entertaining movie even when it feels a little too ludicrous. Cameron knows how to put together an action sequence, and the last half of this movie is relentless action--just action piled on top of action, an orgy of action! It's a great action movie, but that's a little disappointing since its predecessor approached something a little closer to great art.

Supposedly, there's a subtext here, and this is a Vietnam allegory. I don't know anything about that. I didn't learn about Vietnam in school.

Wreck-It Ralph

2012 cartoon

Rating: 13/20 (Jennifer: 16/20; Dylan: 12/20; Emma: 13/20; Abbey: 20/20; Buster: 19/20)

Plot: The titular video game baddie--a bulbous-fisted bully who destroys buildings--is tired of living the life of a villain and covets the popularity of his counterpart Fix-It Felix, a guy with a hammer who scrambles around fixing Ralph's messes. Ralph decides to bolt and find a game in which he can be the hero and win both a medal and the admiration of other video game characters. Things don't go well at all.

I really wanted to like this, but it was just too much. There's some humor, and it was good seeing Q-Bert again. There are more than a few nods to video games from my childhood as well as people younger than me, an obvious attempt by the Disney people to grab everybody. There's a bunch of action, and the whole thing is animated really well. The voice work--especially Alan Tudyk as the really unlikable King Candy, but also Reilly, Silverman, the almost too-recognizable McBrayer, and Jane Lynch, the latter who might have the funniest lines--is really good. Is Jack McBrayer going to be in every animated movie from now on? That seems like the kind of thing that could happen.

Studio Executives: Ok, and we need the voice for this little pipsqueak of a character. Who should we use?
Other Studio Executive: Duh! Jack McBrayer? Heard of him?
Studio Executive: Great choice! He's right next door finishing up work on another animated movie. Let's fetch him!

That's right. Jack McBrayer is the kind of actor who is fetched. I can only recall one other animated feature film with his voice (not that I've seen them all), but I have a feeling I'm about to get really sick of the guy. Sarah Silverman stretches things a bit. I didn't recognize her voice, but Jennifer did. Anyway, the voice work is fine. The characters, however, aren't all that likable. There's really nobody to latch onto here. Ralph's not a bad character, but he just doesn't work as the emotional center for this thing. For one, we're supposed to buy that he's forced into this bad guy life but is really a hero at heart, but he acts so selfishly in this movie that I had trouble seeing that heart. He's also not very bright. Secondly, about midway through the movie, the audience is jerked from his story into Vanellope's (am I missing a pun here?) world and the conflict in that game. Like the colors, camera swoops, and barrages of sound thrown from my television screen, the clashing stories was just a little too much to take. I didn't like Vanellope's character either, and the limited amount of feeling that I could spare for these characters was stretched really thin. I liked a lot of what I saw and I really thought it was a creative idea with loads of potential. I just wish the story wasn't driven by too many modern animated movie cliches and had better characters.

This got me thinking about modern animated films that are very visually busy compared with the older, much simpler animated treats such as, say, Bambi. How do you think somebody in the 40's would react to seeing something like this? Would they vomit? Froth? Convulse? Flee in terror? A combination of those? I wonder what effect modern entertainment--especially visually with a definite shift from very simple ideas to very complex ones and the sonic barrage we get nowadays--has on children and their minds?

Shane Watches a Bad Movie on Facebook with Friends: Starchaser: The Legend of Orin

1985 animated science fiction

Rating: 13/20 (Fred: 12/20; Josh: 11/20; Libby: 13/20, although she fell asleep; Carrie: technical difficulties)

Plot: Robots keep humans underground as mining slaves until one finds a magic sword hilt and pops up the surface to have a look around.

We wanted a bad animated flick for the Bad Movie Club this week, and although I was really pushing a Titanic cartoon on my friends [Note: A different Titanic cartoon than the one with the rapping dogs that I reviewed last year], they eventually decided on this one. I agreed because I had been accused of being a Bad Movie Club dictator and wanted to change that perception. Libby suggested it initially and fought hard to get everybody else on board. Then, of course, she fell asleep long before it was over.

I actually kind of liked the movie. The storytelling's a mess, and the titular hero--the Luke Skywalker of this Star Wars rip-off--is a little lame. The main baddie--the Darth Vader--isn't very compelling and never seems quite as intimidating as he should. I think it has more to do with his wardrobe choices than anything else. There are a ton of creative ideas, however, including these mandroids that search for body parts in a Dali-esque swampy landscape and a really cool spaceship--the Millennium Falcon of this movie. The action sequences, especially the little spaceship battles, are as confusing as they are well done, and there's even a scene in which a cigar-chomping character named Dag--the Han Solo of this movie--violates a female android by manipulating her butt circuits. Dag calls Orin a "little water snake"--kind of like how Han Solo calls Luke "kid" in the original trilogy--which made Josh decide that he's going to call me his "little water snake" at school next year which makes this barely effective teacher want to do something else for a career. There really were a lot of Star Wars parallels, but this also seemed to borrow from Masters of the Universe, Dune, Back to the Future (only because they were life vests like Marty), and Terminator. As mentioned, the story's got issues. There's a lot of meandering and too much of a blind kid, a character that leads to an ending detail that nearly ruined the entire movie. Oh, add the Gospels to things the makers of this borrowed from. I forgot that one. More annoying than the blind kid is a little fuzzy glowing thing--the Ewoks of this movie--that randomly save the universe a few too many times. So although there is some cool animated landscapes and nifty-looking characters, this is a little too much of a mess. Of course, I didn't watch this in 3D like I was supposed to, so maybe I'm missing out on the artistic genius. I did enjoy the score, a very synthy and cheesy 80's sound that had my toes tapping throughout the movie.

That poster up there is very misleading, by the way. That blind kid never rides a horse.

Shane Watches a Bad Movie on Facebook with Friends: The Impossible Kid of Kung-fu

1982 spy movie

Rating: 6/20 (Fred: 19/20; Carrie: 20/20; Libby: did not finish)

Plot: Mr. X, a criminal who wears what looks to be a KKK hood, is kidnapping millionaires as part of some not-very-elaborate plot to get some money. Only one little secret agent can stop him!

I've decided that my Facebook friends don't really understand my movie rating system. Fred called this the worst movie we've seen to date with the Bad Movie Club, but he gave it a 19/20 because he was enamored with a scene where Weng Weng walks on a tightrope. Carrie, halfway through, announced that she wished she would have just done her homework because that would have been more entertaining than this movie. But she was impressed with a scene where Weng Weng jumps over a chasm on a pocket rocket. I mean, who wouldn't be? Libby was unable to finish. But heck, what are people looking for? You've got 2'9" Weng Weng, the previous Billy Curtis Award winner who I wrote about here, riding that aforementioned sweet ride, beating up on thugs three times his size, taking time to love on the ladies a bit, and performs what I have to believe are his own stunts, most notably that jump across the ditch on his motorbike and a leap of about 150 feet from a building. The plot is so simple that a first grader could have penned it, but it still somehow manages to be confusing. Weng Weng's great in this sequel to For Your Height Only, but nobody else in the movie really belongs in a movie. The worst thing about the film is probably the score which alternates between three songs--one flute-heavy suspenseful piece, one song that sounds a little too close to Mancini's "Pink Panther" thing, and another one. They're as repetitive as the rest of the movie. But, come on! Weng Weng displays action chops that I'd stack against anybody's, and he's got one of the best haircuts that I've ever seen. In fact, the next time I get my haircut, I'm going to ask the to "give me the Weng Weng," and when they look at me in a confused manner, I will hook up a VCR and pop in a tape of Weng Weng's highlights. But there's no way in hell I'm going to allow any of them to operate a scissor after that experience!

The Avengers

2012 superhero mayhem

Rating: 14/20

Plot: A glowing cube--perhaps the same one from a Transformers movie or something--threatens the existence of mankind, and Samuel L. Jackson and his motherfucking eyepatch have to assemble the titular group of superheroes in order to save everybody. The boring emo villain from Thor's movie is also involved. Thor and his hammer, Iron Man and his snarkiness, Scarlett Johansson and her glorious posterior, Captain America and his patriotic shield, some guy with a bow and arrow, and the Incredible Hulk and his magic indestructible pants team up to deliver all sorts of one-liners and do superheroic things.

I really got tired of hearing about this cube. Everytime one of the characters mentioned "the cube," I just thought, "The cube? Really? Is that the best they could do?" This movie depends on character development from the characters' individual movies except for the two who don't have their own movies. There's potential with Johansson's character maybe and I like her costume because I'm a pervert, but the bow-and-arrow guy (Buckeye?) played by Jeremy Renner is just a dull character. The new Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) is fine; this is the new best movie with the Hulk in it. I still think Chris Evans is perfect for Captain America although he's a little overshadowed by all the personality around him, especially with Downey Jr.'s arrogant Iron Man. And Samuel L. is fine although I prefer him in more realistic roles like he got in Pulp Fiction or the Star Wars prequels. He kind of seems like he's going through the motions here although that could be because he can only use one of his eyes. But look at all those characters! It was a lot to keep track of, and since this is a comic book movie, the plot was almost incomprehensible to me, at least for the first half before everything comes together. All I really understood completely was that there was a cube because that was referred to about three hundred and fifty times. If I had played one of those drinking games where I took a shot each time a character said "the cube," I would have died from alcohol poisoning. Once things were cleared up, this story's a pretty thin earth things vs. alien things with the titular superheroes battling some fairly nondescript and unmemorable space beings who were apparently brought here by the cube. The aliens do have a funky gyrating caterpillar thing, and the destruction to the poor city during the very long climactic action sequence is an impressive demonstration of terrific special effects and creative camera movements. There's one sequence in particular that I really enjoyed where the camera was swooping around to the different characters kicking ass--like Thor would hammer somebody 200 feet away while the camera follows to reveal Buckeye shooting an arrow which the camera would follow to the Hulk smashing something. It was very well done, almost poetic comic book character movements and cartoon violence.

For those of you who keep up with this sort of thing--Is Buckeye going to get his own movie eventually? How about the cube?

Casa de mi Padre

2012 comedy

Rating: 7/20

Plot: Mexican Will Ferrell and his brother have to save the titular casa from a drug lord.

The music, which as far as I know could have been lifted from other movies (I didn't want to spend any more time with this movie and check the credits), was pretty good. I made a promise here a while back--no more Will Ferrell movies. So I'm not exactly sure why I decided to watch this. I think it might be because I feel sorry for the movie. Will Ferrell movies don't come up in conversations I have often, but I've not heard anybody at all talk about this one. I'd almost assume that fans of Will Ferrell movies can't read (yeah, I know--I'm going to edit this out before I publish this post), so I'm not sure any of them would watch this anyway. Then, I see lots of copies at the library, but they're shelved in the foreign movie section, a collection of outcast dvd's that aren't even allowed to be near the other movies. It's unlikely that a Will Ferrell fan who hasn't heard of this one is going to stumble upon it. So I guess part of me just wanted to put this on the blog so that Will Ferrell fans who Google "Will Ferrell's actual buttocks" and find this post will find out this exists and check it out. I'll make sure not to use any big words in this entry. I'm not sure they'll like it because it's just not funny at all. In fact, it would be unclear whether it was a comedy at all if not for some too-wacky moments. Will Ferrell's in the movie. He speaks Spanish, and although I'm not exactly a linguistics expert or anything, it sounded pretty good to me. When I first heard about this movie, I was under the impression that he couldn't speak the language at all and was faking it here. If that's the case, he did a great job with it. I'm never going to say that Will Ferrell isn't a talented guy or even that he isn't funny, but everything he does just feels exactly the same. I'm not just talking movie to movie either. It's joke to joke. With this one, I almost turned it off the second time Will Ferrell and his pals engage in some lengthy chuckling. It was a typical Will Ferrell movie moment. I'm glad I didn't turn it off, however, because I would have missed out on what I can only assume are several shots of Will Ferrell's actual buttocks. And the lovely Genesis Rodriguez's actual buttocks. The plot's so predictable and intentionally-derivative that it makes you sleepy, and the novelty of Will Ferrell speaking Spanish wears off after about five minutes. I really can't imagine that this would appeal to anybody at all, even the most rabid fan of Will Ferrell or Will Ferrell's actual buttocks.

I looked at Genesis Rodriguez's imdb page for research purposes. One message board post wonders if she's related to Genesis P. Orridge. Here are more subject lines:

"I wish to impregnate her"
"A-WHOOT A-WHOO!!! RUFF-RUFF-RUFF!!!"
"HHHHHHHHRRRRRRNNNNNNNG GGGGGGGGGGG...."
"HHRRRNNNNNN..."
"HNNNNNNNGGGGG"
"DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYUM"

Those are the first six, all started by different people. Apparently she brings out the best in people.

Oh, and the Will Ferrell embargo is back on!

Team America: World Police

2004 marionette action movie

Rating: 16/20

Plot: A stage actor joins the titular terrorist busters, stops a group of terrorists in Egypt with the help of his acting abilities, and then must face Kim Jong Il who is planning to use his weapons of mass destruction to take over the world.

There are a lot of movies that I like that nobody else seems to like very much. I get it most of the time. I don't blame or criticize anybody for not liking Eraserhead. But this one I have trouble understanding. Not even South Park fans seem to like this much at all, and I don't understand why. For me, this is easily the most brilliant and brilliantly executed and consistently humorous thing that Parker and Stone have ever done. They nail big dumb Michael Bay-esque action movies, and the satire is just perfect. Of course, I was sold within the first few moments of the movie when there's a marionette who has his own marionette and a mime. All within seconds! And you get to see puppets engaging in fisticuffs including a guy vs. terrorist fight sequence near the beginning that includes the Crane Technique. And yes, there's the infamous marionette sex scene which is not only one of my favorite sex scenes ever but one that should be required viewing for all newlyweds. These puppets are awesome. I'm easily entertained anyway, so something as simple as getting to see marionettes "walk" around is enough to please me. Still, the way they give these little figures facial expressions and all gives them this realism and makes them seem like better actors than the people who are usually in movies like this. The sets are absolutely amazing with this surprising amount of details. I always imagine Parker and Stone catching part of this on television (because in my mind, they're always in the same room as each other) and saying, "I can't believe we made this thing!" Like most of their stuff, this is also a musical, and the songs are also pretty great. There's a wonderfully catchy song about AIDS, a dumber-than-dumb "Freedom Isn't Free" song which is stupid enough to seem real until a line about how "Freedom costs a dollar fifty" line, fist-pump-inducing "America, Fuck Yeah!" that should probably replace our current national anthem, Jong Il's number about how rone-ry he is, and the brilliant "We're Gonna Need a Montage." The big swing and miss is a song devoted to making fun of the Pearl Harbor movie. Aside from a bit of political jabbing that is pretty harsh on both liberal and conservative ideals, there are plenty of goofy moments that just make me laugh. I don't like all the meta-jokes that draw attention to the fact that the characters are marionettes. Those didn't need to be there. But I laugh every single time I even think about that Matt Damon puppet and his repeated single line. And "No me gusta!" makes me smile. And the line "When you see Alec Baldwin, you see the true ugliness of human nature." Oh, and the line "I was raped by Mr. Mistoffelees." A hammer slid across a table, Kim Jong Il's panthers, the gruesome deaths of many Hollywood stars. Seriously, somebody tell me what's not to like here! That's a rhetorical exclamation, by the way, so you don't really have to answer. Bonus nods for a strong use of the Wilhelm Scream and an allusion to the cantina scene in A New Hope. This might not be a perfect movie, but I challenge you to find a movie this freakin' funny that also contains an extended scene of marionettes having sex.

Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked

2011 sequel to what I assume are movies that are just as bad as this one

Rating: 3/20 (Dallas: 5/20; Rodrigo: 15/20; Osni: 17/20; Melany: 16/20; Dutch: 18/20; Lance: 15/20; Drake: 1/20; Ig'Enid: 5/20; Kimberly: 11/20; Mary: 16/20; Jaidah: 16/20; Breona: 17/20; Adrian: 19/20; Kuenton: 17/20; Justin: 10/20; Cierra: 1/20; Matthew: 1/20; Danel: 19/20; Sarah: 2/20; Tyler: 13/20)

Plot: Talking chipmunks fall off a boat and Jason Lee ruins his career looking for them.

So this is the complete bullshit they're forcing me to watch at school now? I saw the terrible and terrible-unfunny punny title of this and said to myself, "This thing loses points just for the title." And then the chipmunks started talking and singing, and there went the rest of the points. Speaking of their voices, here's a question: Why do they need famous people--Amy Poehler, Anna Faris, Justin Long, Jesse McCartney, Chritina Applegate (some of them are famous, right?)--to do the voices for the chipmunks? Their voices are speeded-up and unrecognizable anyway! You know what I think? I think they're doing it just to screw with me. That's right. Director Mike Mitchell, who after this and Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo should probably never be allowed to work again, cast Justin Long as Alvin just to screw with me. Well played, jackass! Jason Lee looks really uncomfortable here, and I'm not sure if it's because he has to talk to himself (well, imaginary chipmunks) the whole time or if he's upset that his career has come to this. And what's David Cross doing? His appearance actually makes me a little angry because there are a lot of things that David Cross could be doing with his time that doesn't involve him walking around in a chicken suit in this movie. This is annoying on more levels than I knew a movie could be annoying on. The chipmunks rap, sing, sing some more, rap again, and sing. And gyrate. There are way too many songs, and I was really close to sending one of my students out to pull the fire alarm so that I could a) hear something more pleasant and b) have a reason to go outside for a while. There are also all kinds of awkward references to much better works of art--Cast Away, Lord of the Rings, James Bond, television commercials, and Internet memes. All of them seem tired, and some of them won't make any sense in a few years. Hopefully, nobody's being subjected to this trash in a few years though. This movie really loses steam when they run out of things to do on the island, and it really didn't have any steam to begin with. I will say this, however: the chipmunk animation works well with the animals blending in with their surroundings perfectly. Unfortunately, they must have run out of special effects dough before making the volcano. I think this completes a "bad volcano trifecta" actually.

There was a movie that the chipmunks watched on the boat that had this monster that could shoot lasers out of its mouth. I really wanted to watch that movie instead. Hell, I really wanted to watch any other movie ever made instead!

Yes, I lowered the grades of any student who gave this above a 5/20. It makes me tremble when I think of our country's future.

And really. This and Deuce Bigelow? Blacklist this fiend!

The Spy Who Loved Me

1977 James Bond movie

Rating: 16/20

Plot: It's just like the plot of the last James Bond movie I watched except with boats instead of spaceships and an indestructible guy with metal teeth.

Call me a blasphemer, but I really might like Roger Moore as Bond as much as I like Sean Connery. The movies I've seen and remember with Roger Moore are at least a little more fun. I think I prefer my Bond to be a little goofy. A good Bond movie needs a good villain, and this one's got a couple--a dude who has webbed fingers for absolutely no good reason and Jaws with those metal teeth. And Richard Kiel's character really is indestructible. He is pinned against a wall with an SUV, he has a bunch of heavy shit dropped on him, survives a car crash through the roof of a house, and [SPOILER ALERT] ludicrously bites a shark to death. I just love the way Kiel dwarfs Roger Moore in these scenes. Curt Jurgens plays an interesting enough villain--still can't figure out why he they needed to give him webbed fingers--but the henchman definitely overshadows him here. He probably needs a new dentist though. This entry's stuffed with great action, from more blue-screen skiing scenes with disco accompaniment to explosions/magnets/sharks hooey at the end. In between, you get trampolining and gymnastics backed by "Nobody Does It Better;" a great obvious dummy falling off a cliff; a thrilling chase sequence featuring a motorcycle, a helicopter, and a fly submarine-car; and a nearly pornographic shark attack with some soothing classical music behind it. Since this is a Bond movie, he travels around a lot, and here, he gets to see pyramids. That's a terrific scene, and I loved how music and color was used there. There's also another cool bad guy base, the Atlantis, although I'd argue that a villain who once again has a perfect opportunity to kill the protagonist and refuses to take it probably doesn't deserve a cool base. And then there's Barbara Bach, the titular spy who loved him unless I'm confused and he's the titular spy who loved her. If one of them has to be titular, I'm going to go with Bach though. Indeed, there's some side boob in a shower scene. Bach's easy on the spy's eyes, but either her accent or her lack of acting ability makes it seem like she's a terrible actress. I do love the play between her and Bond though. The wonderfully leggy Caroline Munro (Mrs. Phibes herself) is also in this, and my favorite moment in any James Bond movie just might be when she winks in this movie. Needless to say, I'm putting that toward the front of my masturbation rolodex. Throw in plenty of double entendre ("Let him pull out immediately," "Delve deeply into Egypt's treasures," and Bach's character called Agent Triple X) and some camel noises that I'm pretty sure came straight out of Star Wars. One gripe: There are a lot of similarities between this and You Only Live Twice. Boats eating boats in a serpentine effort to start World War III isn't that far off from the spaceship eating spaceships thing in that movie.

Casino Royale

2006 James Bond reboot

Rating: 15/20

Plot: James Bond has to beat a guy at poker in order to save the world!

I don't know if I'd expect James Bond enthusiasts to really dig this one. It's a James Bond movie and all, but there's an awful lot of poker in it. The poker is exciting and almost realistic, like ESPN poker, and if there's one person I'd rather not slow-roll during a poker game more than Christopher Lee, it'd be James Bond. License to kill and all. But it happens here which might make terrorist-funder Le Chiffre (that's "the fart" in French, I think) a really nasty villain. Being slow-rolled is more excruciating than the testicle torture that happens later in the movie. Le Chiffre isn't a classic Bond villain though he does weep blood. The poker's fun and all, but there are plenty of action sequences including an intensely choreographed round of fisticuffs in a bathroom that actually made me grunt a few times prior to the really cool opening credits that suffered from a really-not-cool Chris Cornell theme song (all Bond movies should have loungy female vocals for the theme song, right?) and a climactic set piece with a sinking building that is equally cool and ludicrous. The best scene of the movie is a foot-chase through a construction sites that is one of the most thrilling things I've seen in a while, party-Chan and part-parkour. Wowser, does this stuff look dangerous! Daniel Craig is a fine James Bond. I like the ruggedness although I'm not sure Craig's acting is very good. But he can handle the action hero parts of the role adequately, and his Bond is one who gets hurt quite a bit and is in very real peril throughout the adventure. He also screws up, and this story is a real learning process for him. He's humanized, kind of artificially. A shower cuddling finger-lickin' scene seems almost tacky, especially with the gross piano music. I'm really unsure if I want my Bond to be this human actually. I do like the rapport between Craig/Bond and Eva Green's Vesper Lynd. Cool movie even if it feels like something more modern than a James Bond movie. I look forward to finding out where Craig takes this character.

Goldfinger

1964 James Bond movie

Rating: 18/20

Plot: Bond has to stop the titular villain who plans on contaminating the world's gold supply. Oddjob has a dangerous hat. Pussy Galore has a dangerous name.

You think Connery takes great pleasure in saying that first name? Poosy, he says. His expression after Pussy Galore introduces herself is my favorite thing in this movie with a lot of favorite things in it--the cool car with its ejector seat, cute Jill Masterson covered in gold paint for what has to be one of the sexiest deaths in movie history, the delivery of a "What's with that trick pool table?" line, a whole laser-to-the-crotch sequence, scores of extras collapsing from nerve gas like they're in a B-movie (how many extras, do you reckon, fell down more than once?). No, wait. My favorite thing about this is a shot of this old lady with a machine gun. This has everything you'd expect from a James Bond movie but a much better henchman, the mute Oddball. Yes, there are villains who are as iconic, but you can't have a conversation about iconic villains without mentioning him. That first appearance--a shadow with that hat of his--is terrific, and then you get to see him vandalize statues, smash golf balls in his bare hand, and help his boss cheat, all the things you hope to see from a criminal mastermind's henchman. So good. Add in the typical Bond fun dialogue ("You expect me to talk?" "No, Bond, I expect you to die."), double entendre ("Positively shocking" will make you groan.), a car chase or three, some gadgets, a great pre-credit action sequence involving confined fisticuffs, and a ridiculous Shirley Bassey title song, and you've got yourself a Bond film, probably one of the best.

Bonus points for slipping the name Pussy Galore in there. Seriously, how'd that happen?

On Her Majesty's Secret Service

1969 James Bond movie

Rating: 15/20

Plot: Annie's adoptive father is at it again, this time putting out an advertisement for "Hot Chicks with Allergies" in order to create an army of hypnotized women to help him kill everybody. James Bond is sent to stop him.

I'm not exactly a James Bond expert, but I'm pretty sure George Lazenby is universally considered the best 007. This entry suffers a bit from some dated special effects and general silliness, both exemplified in some exciting skiing scenes featuring obvious blue screens and a plummeting dummy. Still, they're thrilling scenes.  There's also a pretty bitchin' icy car chase. Aside from some effects, this also suffers from a few cliches, including the whole bad-guy-giving-away-all-his-plans-and-refusing-to-instantly-dispose-of-the-good-guy thing. You know, like in almost every episode of the Batman television show. But I imagine people don't really watch James Bond movies for the realism. This movie does have some nice stylistic touches--there's a whistling midget (what they were called back in '69), some cool colors and the CASINO reflected in a pool near the beginning, great music enhancing beach fisticuffs, dizzying jump cuts and weird angles and close-ups during other brawling scenes, and one great death featuring pink snow that might rival Fargo's woodchipper scene. You even get to see chunks if you're into that sort of thing. Of course, the subsequent "He had lots of guts" is the kind of brilliantly stupid line that makes you want to high-five somebody. And James Bond movies really need a director who knows how to properly display a woman, and Peter Hunt does a good job with showing us Blofield's brainwashed beauties. I hope that doesn't sound too chauvinistic. I really do like Lazenby. There's a bit of meta-humor with a line about "the other guy," and I like how he steals a Playboy. He's suave, and the dialogue's got all those double entendre you'd normally expect along with some fun dramatic irony. The Alpine setting is cool, and Savalas's Blofied, seemingly not all that popular, is a worthy adversary up until the end when a chase scene gets way too stupid. I think I might just like Savalas because of the way he smokes his cigarette here. I also liked how Blofield was using cassettes to brainwash the women. It just seemed so quaint--"Do you remember when you were allergic to chickens?" I can imagine Savalas saying, "Is that really what you want me to read here?" I'm really not sure how I feel about the wedding and honeymoon that follows, a marriage that is only slightly longer than a Kardashian's. It humanizes the character a bit, but it all seems so cheap.

Death Wish

1974 gritty urban Western

Rating: 14/20

Plot: Jeff Goldblum and some other dangerous weirdos murder the wife of a guy with a mustache. Both the guy and the mustache decide to get revenge, take the law into his own hands, and become a vigilante killing machine.

It's ludicrous how many times this guy is the target of these thugs in this movie. Out of all the people (heck, out of all the architects) in New York City, they attempt over and over to mug this one architect who's carrying around a gun for purposes of shooting people just like them. What are the chances? I mean, what makes Bronson look like such an easy target? I never really bought him as an action hero when I was a kid. I maybe could have seen him playing Mario in a game based on the video game. Still, I don't see Charles Bronson and think, "There's a guy who'll be easy to mug. Let's get him, boys!" And it probably would be the mustache that would keep me away. When you're out there mugging with your posse, a mustache is usually a sign to steer clear, right? Am I wrong here? I think, by the way, that this movie is the reason why I always assumed New York City was the most dangerous place on earth when I was a kid. You've got people like Jeff Goldblum running around painting swastikas on people's walls and guys being attacked on the streets and subways every single night. I used to have nightmares about New York when I was a kid.

After some weird opening credits with a lengthy returning-home-from-vacation montage and a shot of Bronson's wife picking her ear backed by some Herbie Hancock noodling (I loved Bronson's "What's wrong with right here on the beach?" line and tried to fit similar lines into the rest of the movie--"What's wrong with right here in the taxi?" "What's wrong with right here in the bread aisle?" I've tried it in my personal life, too. "Jennifer, what's wrong with right here at the soccer game?" She doesn't have a clue what I'm talking about though.) Things really pick up once Jeff Goldblum shows up. He's so awesome and completely believable as a thug, just this raw physicality. He and his freaks--they're Freak 1, Freak 2, etc. in the credits--are such immature criminals. Of course, I'd probably wag my tongue at grocery store shoppers and throw turkeys around if I were a 1970's thug, too. And if attacking women (hypothetically, of course), I'd probably spend the majority of my time painting them instead of the traditional hooligan activities like raping and stealing stuff. I really like all the bad guys in this. Like a lot of 70's movies, they're all just so sleazy and obvious, the type of people who would likely be arrested just for looking the way they do. And only some of them are black! They're just all so jittery and cocky, throwing out mo-fos and spontaneously rhyming ("Throw us the money, honey!" The lesson I learned is that thuggery might not be the worst career choice if this teaching thing doesn't work out. No, maybe the lesson learned is that I could easily get over my wife's murder by shooting thugs, repainting my living room to cover up swastikas, and blasting game show music. No, hold up. The lesson is obviously that America needs to loosen up its gun laws because it's our second amendment right to have any kind of gun we want to and liberals have made it far too difficult for guys with mustaches to purchase firearms. Yeah, that's it. The pro-gun propaganda here did make my teeth hurt a little bit, but the random little person, the guy with an artist dog at the precinct, and a bum's hat error made up for it. This is an entertaining enough bit of 70's stink with about the right mix of grit and goof, but I never had any desire to see any of the numerous sequels and still don't. I imagine I'm missing more of the same but with a lot less Goldblum. Doesn't somebody kill his daughter in the second one? Maybe I did see that. What happens in the third one? Does somebody run over his dog or something?

The Dark Knight Rises

2012 blockbuster

Rating: 16/20 (Kent: 19/20; Dara: 15/20)

Plot: [Spoiler free!] One of my creepier experiences was when I was at a grocery store in Terre Haute called Great Scot. I was eight, and one of my favorite things to do was roll the Coke bottles down the noisy conveyor belt. My mother wandered off--as she frequently did--to take care of the bottles, and I was approached by a guy in a raggedy trench coat. He had a mustache, one of those mustaches, and I didn't trust him, mostly because one of his hands was submerged in the folds of the trench coat. In my eight-year-old brain, I could only assume that he either had a gun or a penis in that unseen hand, and either way, I wasn't comfortable with the way this trip to the grocery store was going to end. "Hey, kiddie," he said in a way that could be described as damp, "want to see my Batman comic." I ran off and found my mom loading up the cart with Zingers and told her about the encounter. "Well," she said, "I've warned you about that."

Is there another third superhero (I know, I know--Batman ain't a superhero) movie that is any good at all? Superman III is a travesty. Spiderman III is embarrassing. I don't remember the other Batman's third movie, but I assume it's awful. I had my doubts about this one, but it's a satisfying conclusion to the trilogy. The Dark Knight is better, mostly because of Ledger's use of hand sanitizer, but I really enjoyed where this one took the characters and where it left them. Now, you need to be aware that I am typing these words as a person who does not read Batman comic books. I don't know how faithful Nolan is to those, but I really don't care about that sort of thing all that much. There are a handful of new additions to the cast. As much as I like Matthew Modine, I don't really understand why his character is around so much or why he's Matthew Modine. I wasn't excited to see any Catwomen in this, maybe because of that dreadful Halle Berry movie, but Anne Hathaway has a nice shape to her and her character was really interesting. The rapport with her and Bale was great. The other new addition is the villain Bane played by Tom Hardy. He's a good villain, a combination of evil brains and terrifying brawn, but having to follow the Joker? Those are tough purple britches to fill! Still, it's a great character until the very end when something unfortunate happens which lame-ifies him a bit more than I'm comfortable with. A lot was made of the voice when the previews came out, but I really liked it even though I really wish I had subtitles during a couple scenes. It was Sean Connery in a gas mask. Bale's voice remains irritating. I guess I understand the need to disguise his voice, but why does he need to use the deep-voiced, gravelly Batman voice when it's just him and Alfred? Bale, as I said an hour or so ago, makes a good Batman, but I think he's an even better Bruce Wayne, and this trilogy is really more about Bruce Wayne and his redemption than it is Batman. Or maybe it's about Gotham City, a microcosm of modern humanity. Marion Cotillard isn't very good in this, but Joseph Gordon-Levitt turns on his action hero switch and makes his character work. I also really liked how this connected to the other two movies, referencing the first thematically and tying it all together in some nifty and relatively non-cheesy ways. This movie does have one of the lamest death scenes you're ever likely to see. No, I'm not even talking about that one. I'm talking about the one that comes after that. There were also all kinds of time problems during the climax. I thought for a moment that I was watching 24 or something. As with the first movie, you've got some stuff that happens right when it's supposed to happen, but I can probably ignore that. Oh, and I almost forgot to mention Michael Caine when I wrote about Batman Begins, and I don't want to forget him here. Where the other actors play their parts, Caine manages to rise to a new level here. His story in this third movie was surprisingly touching. These movies aren't perfect, but even though I'm far from an expert on this kind of movie, I'm pretty sure it'll be the best superhero trilogy for a very long time. At least until they get start on those Plastic Man movies.

Am I weird for wanting a Catwoman action figure? How about if I purchase one while wearing a trench coat?

Mousehunt

1997 mouse movie

Rating: 16/20 (Jen: 15/20, Dylan: 15/20; Emma: 18/20; Abbey: 18/20)

Plot: Two down-on-their-luck brothers who don't really get along inherit a seemingly worthless house and a string factory from their father. They find out that the house is potentially worth millions, the lost design of a famous architect, and start fixing the place up. In their way stands a mouse who isn't happy about the human intrusion. Mousehunt!

"A world without string is chaos!"

I've seen this one many times, but I hadn't seen it in several years. Always really liked this one, a vibrant family non-animated cartoon comedy that's fun for adults and children and only slightly risque for the latter. There's a visual flamboyance--maybe expected given director Verbinski's later work--that I really like, and the special effects are really great. The shots that follow the mouse as it maneuvers through tight spaces in the house are a lot of fun, and my family started making fun of me when I kept asking, "How are they getting the mouse to do that?" It's hard to tell which scenes involve a live trained mouse and which ones are manufactured with the magic of special effects, so I'm just going to assume the whole thing is done with a real mouse and declare that mouse to be the greatest mouse actor and stuntmouse to ever grace the silver screen. Speaking of rodents, I'm now two-thirds of the way to a rodent trifecta after this and Rat. Somebody suggest a third for me. Rodent trifecta would be a good name for a punk band, by the way. The human actors are almost as good as the mouse. Nathan Lane and Lee Evans bounce off each other well, both stretching these unrealistic comic situations--enough comic mischief to give this a PG rating without the aforementioned risque scene--as far as they can without destroying any potential for believability. Lee gets the funniest moment in this or almost any other movie I've seen recently during a scene where he screams "I've got you now, little guy" at an auction. That whole scene is slapstick perfection though. Christopher Walken has a small part as Caesar the Exterminator, an underappreciated role. Only Walken can deliver a line like "What's that--horse? Fiendish! I won't eat it!"--a line that looks completely nonsensical on paper--and turn it into comedy gold. William Hickey, playing the boys' father in flashback and in painting form, looks like he could fall to pieces at any moment. There's an absurdity to the action scenes and a few no-way-real-people-survive-that moments that might remind you of Home Alone but with a mouse, and the overall flashy comic tone gives it just the right amount of cartoonishness. It's like Tom and Jerry or a Donald Duck short where you know the characters will be OK even after you just watched them explode. There are a few darker comic moments though, including a wowser opening that shows the tail-end of a funeral that sets an irreverent and humorously violent tone for the rest of the movie. The music's terrific, too. I don't think this first feature from Gore Verbinski is highly regarded, but I think it's a very entertaining and almost special little movie.

Smokey and the Bandit

1977 truck movie

Rating: 17/20 (Jen fells asleep a little before Burt Reynolds' first appearance.)

Plot: The titular outlaw drives a Pontiac Trans Am as a blocker for truck-driving pal Snowman as they attempt to illegally haul a load of Coors 1,800 miles in 28 hours in order to win a bet. On the way back, Bandit picks up a hitchhiker who has just fled from her wedding, an act which will later inspire Garry Marshall to make The Runaway Bride. The father of the groom, a tough sheriff named Buford T. Justice, chases relentlessly. Because the Bandit is played by Burt Reynolds, there's time to stop for sex.

On the surface, this is a chunk of 1970's sleazeballery, your typical counter-culture truck drivin' action/comedy flick. But this is the Shakespeare of truck drivin' films, less a movie really than a transcendent experience, a film that comes from some place you could never understand. Watching Smokey and the Bandit isn't like watching another movie. Well, at the very least, it shouldn't be like watching another movie. If you watch Smokey and the Bandit correctly, you really have to leave your body and watch yourself watching the movie, and I'm convinced that only the most virtuous viewers can make that happen. I watched this movie back in the late-70's, probably because my step-dad was a truck driver. I'd been to church, but watching Smokey and the Bandit is what really convinced me there was a God. How else could one explain Burt Reynolds' mustache? The speed of these vehicles? The human capacity for coming up with the idea that drives the plot of this movie--a bet to illegally transport Coors across state lines in time for Big Enos and Little Enos's party? Burt Reynolds is a force. There's no way his laugh, his crotch, his smile can possibly be organic. There are a limited number of possible effects that the Bandit character can have on individual audience members. Woman will at the very least want to smell Burt Reynolds, and in more extreme but also more likely cases, they will will want to have a sexual encounter with Burt Reynolds. And men? They will either shit in their pants or, in more extreme but not all that likely cases, want to have a sexual encounter with Burt Reynolds' hat. And almost everybody watching Burt Reynolds in this movie will want to get in his motor vehicle and drive it as fast as he can, just praying that somebody starts chasing him. But as amazing as Burt Reynolds is in this movie, it's really Jackie Gleason that is the heart and soul of this movie. Gleason, mostly improvising, has dialogue that John Keats wishes he would have been alive to write. No, I'll take that back. John Keats wishes he would have lived long enough to even hear lines like these:

"Give me a diablo sandwich, a Dr. Pepper, and make it quick. I'm in a God damn hurry."
"There's no way that you came from my loins. Soon as I get home, first thing I'm going to do is punch your mama in the mouth."
"You sumbitches couldn't close an umbrella."
"Get off of there, you Schnauzer's tit."
"My name is Smokey Bear and I'm tail-grabbin' your ass right now."
"Do what I say you pile of monkey nuts."
"Duck or you're gonna be talking out your ass."
"Nobody make Sheriff Buford T. Justice look like a possum's pecker."
"This happens every time one of these floozies starts poontanging around with those show folk fags."
"I'm going to barbecue your ass in molasses."

Combine writing like that with the cinematography, Burt Reynolds' mustache, and the grace of Sally Field and you've got yourself something a little closer to poetry than just your average movie. The incomparable Jerry Reed plays Snowman so well that you wonder how much of his life was spent talking on a CB radio. He also contributed a song or two that you won't be able to get out of your head for a week or so after you watch this movie, especially if you're like me and had to watch it six times straight. Paul Williams plays Little Enos, and he's not really a little person but I'm using my tag anyway. He wrote "An Old Fashioned Love Song" which became a hit for Three Dog Night, the first band I ever saw in concert. He also wrote "We've Only Just Begun" and "Rainy Days and Mondays" for the Carpenters and, most importantly for me, "Rainbow Connection" for The Muppet Movie.

Two bits of Shane trivia: 1) I stopped wearing jeans, for obvious reasons, after seeing this movie. 2) Sally Field was my first lover.

Cory's Birthday Movie Celebration: Godzilla vs. Destoroyah

1995 monster movie

Rating: 13/20

Plot: Godzilla's having an allergic reaction and develops a nasty glowing rash. It's painful, and he decides to take his frustration out on the architecture. Meanwhile, some scientists invent themselves a new kind of crab that threatens humanity. Godzilla's son, Godzilla Jr., shows up, a little upset because dad hasn't been attending his t-ball games. A bunch of fire happens, and the Japanese Al Gore starts telling everybody that the world is going to either blow up or melt. They combat the inevitable with ice tanks and ice planes while more fire happens. Then, almost shockingly, there's even more fire!

Fire! This is the type of movie that can burn you if you get too close to it. I mean, just take a gander at that bitchin' poster there! What the hell is this movie called, by the way? Cory called it Godzilla vs. Destroyer which seems to be what the characters in this are saying. IMDB has it as Godzilla vs. Destroyah while most other sources seem to add the extra O. I think the title screen had the extra O, too. I'm pretty sure this movie is the victim of a typographical error, and those, as you know, can be more deadly dangerous than Godzilla.

I think this is the third time that I've watched a Godzilla movie on Cory's birthday which, if you think about it, is actually the lamest present imaginable. I'm going to start doing this for other people. Oh, it's your birthday, Dad? I'll watch that time travel movie with Superman. For my brother's birthday, I can watch Amelie. For my wife's birthday, I can pop in First Blood. No cost to me and I get to watch a movie. Anyway, happy birthday, Cory. Last year, I goofed and picked a random Godzilla movie that wasn't one of his faves. This year, I grabbed one that he actually likes.

This movie is almost as good as its poster up there with all that fire and smoke. Of course, we all know that there's no way a movie can be as good as that poster. The world would melt. The big guy looks extra menacing in this since parts of him are glowing orange. He also looks extra pissed, right at the beginning of all this before the giant explosion that precedes the title screen. That explosion is there to foreshadow more explosions. It seems the people in charge of this 90's series asked themselves, "What is missing from those original Godzilla movies?" and answered it with "Extraneous explosions!" It all matches the explosive mood that Godzilla seems to be in at the beginning of all this. He even shoots flames from his mouth that are capable of making water explode! I thought maybe I had missed something from a previous movie. I mean, why's he so irritable? Luckily, science is used to explain it all logically--Godzilla's got a power reactor for a heart. I think E.T. had something similar going on, but it didn't put him in a terrible mood. The special effects in this thing are a little fancier than the older movies, for better or worse. Some are pretty bad though. Near the beginning, you've got a couple shots with Godzilla behind the city, just dwarfing the buildings, with people in the foreground who could easily see or hear the monster not reacting at all. The big ice plane often looks like a toy, and some of the cars look even worse. For the most part, however, the special effects are pretty cool with stuff turning all orange and explode-y, unfortunate fish decomposition, Godzilla slithering around on the surface of the water all Loch Nessy. The mini-Destoroyah don't move all that smoothly or realistically, but I liked watching them. In other Godzilla movies, the giant things are menaces to whole cities or all of humanity and the destruction is mostly in long shots. Here, these little guys let us see some hand-to-crab-leg-and-blue-steam combat which I think makes the terror a little more personal. Or at least intimate. There's a scene with a woman in a car that reminds me of Jurassic Park or something with some very real tension and a camera filming as close as the scared victim is. The little Destoroyah guy even has an Alien-esque mandible extension that, to me at least, made the whole scene with the woman in the car seem a little dirty. One goofy special effect that I really liked--when that blue steam hit the soldiers battling the mini-Destoroyah, this little swirly thing appeared on their chest before they perished. If you have to have a monster kill you, you might as well die in a psychedelic way. It took a while for the action in this movie--well, after the initial pissed-off Godzilla scene, of course--to get going. I got a little bored with the people parts of the movie, and there was a little too much science going on. Once the dangerously radioactive Godzilla shows up again and that ice plane has to get involved, it's pretty much non-stop explosions though. That scene with the ice plane, despite it looking like a toy, was fun, and I'm happy that director Takao Okawara was able to find the coolest fucking guy in Japan to pilot the thing. The fight scenes that make up the last thirty minutes of the movie are pretty badass although explosion and white flash heavy. I still have no idea how all the mini-Destoroyah combined into one giant one, but I'm glad there weren't added scenes with scientists explaining it to me. Some spewing liquid was an added treat. Apparently, Godzilla's fire not only makes water explode but can make Destoroyah regurgitate egg yolk. Things even get a little emotional at the end with a touching father-son reunion. But of course, that's nearly destoroyahed by the two chicks in the helicopter describing what is happening. That was commentary that I didn't need. Godzilla's eventual meltdown, almost like a reptilian Wicked Witch, was downright grotesque and surprisingly moving. And a final shot with a zoom through all this smoke and destruction to a shot of Godzilla Jr. was terrific. There's also a great score that reminds me of the 60's Godzilla scores just like it should. Well, except for the repetitive rousing numbers for the scenes with the ice plane and ice tanks. Those were pretty lame. Despite this movie's flaws, this is a really entertaining action movie. I do think I prefer the older ones though.

Two more little things that I liked in this movie: 1) There's a character named Commander Asshole. Well, unless I heard that wrong. 2) There's a scene with a guard in an aquarium where he is whistling "Singin' in the Rain" and stops to say hello to a fish. I wouldn't mind seeing a prequel about this guy and his relationship with the one fish out of all the fish in the aquarium that he interacts with.

My spellcheck told me that destoroyah is not a real word.

The Great Muppet Caper

1981 shenanigans

Rating: 16/20 (Jen: fell asleep; Dylan: 13/20 ; Emma: 18/20; Abbey: 20/20)

Plot: Kermit and his twin brother Fozzie are newspaper men who, along with their photographer Gonzo, aren't doing a very good job. They get one last shot to report a big story and travel to London to get a scoop on a jewel heist.

For my money, this is the funniest of the Muppet movies. And Jim Henson's just showing off here in this more freewheeling and irreverent follow-up to The Muppet Movie. He's got Muppets swimming, a Muppet multitude riding bicycles, Muppets flying through the air, Muppets climbing up the sides of buildings. There are so many moments where you just scratch your head and wonder, "How the hell are these puppets doing that?" Yes, the story is more than a little goofy, and a lot of the puns are very nearly painful. But the cameos aren't as obtrusive as in the predecessor (Peter Falk is particularly funny), and, if I'm remembering clearly enough, there are more Muppets involved in this one. The Swedish Chef, that eagle guy, Stafford and Waldorf, Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem, Bunson and Beaker, and a bunch of others not even I can name all have their chance to be funny. A lot of this takes place in a dilapidated hotel called The Happiness Hotel, the only free place Kermit, Fozzie, and Gonzo can find in London. It's a place slightly better--maybe a fourth of a star better--than the motel I worked at. Only it's got a bitchin' bus. And when I imagine that bus without all those Muppets hanging out the window, it makes me want to tell a stranger about it while grabbing him by the shoulders and vigorously shaking them. Charles "Freakin'" Grodin hams it up--in a good way--as the villain while John Cleese and Peter Ustinov are also funny in small roles. Oscar the Grouch also has a brief cameo appearance. But it's really the five guys who do the voice work for thirty-three (if I counted correctly) Muppets that are the stars here. The Muppet movements and, as weird as it feels to say this, facial expressions helps them blend into the settings and make them feel like living things, but it's the voice work that gives them their personalities. Lots of laughs during this family movie night, so much that I'm surprised Jen didn't wake up. Oh, and this makes yet another musical for family movie night. The songs in this are fine if not especially memorable. The Electric Mayhem get to throw down on the bus. I wonder if that bus would have been allowed at the airport. My boss at my motel told me that I had to take the magnet with our name off the door when I picked up customers at the airport because "we are not allowed there." I never asked what the hell he meant by that.

I'm going to have to re-evaluate my ratings for all these Muppet movies. The Muppet Movie and the new one were both 15/20 according to the blog. Treasure Island was only a 12/20, but it's not very good. I guess Manhattan isn't on the blog, so that might be an upcoming family movie night pick. But that rating for The Muppet Movie seems awfully low, especially since it does have memorable songs and, if I'm remembering correctly, a wild Muppet sex scene.

Trivia time: Charles "Freakin'" Grodin was in one of the worst movies I have ever seen. Want to guess what that was?