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Reviews
Dragonfyre (2013)
Bad Movie Mondays - #9
I moderate a bad movie screening series that's described as "A celebration of awful movies through semi-regular Monday night screenings by rotating hosts. From the polluted minds behind Good Things About Bad Movies and Halloween Horror Picks."
Dragonfyre was the ninth bad movie we watched, and most of us thought it was actually rather decent. What follows is the mini review I shared with the group shortly after first watching the movie.
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Tonight's Bad Movie was pretty watchable, at least compared to the no budget SOV garbage we usually watch. That's not to say that Dragonfyre was good, exactly, but we all agreed that it has been undeservedly kicked in the shins on IMDb... 3.4 is definitely lower than our estimations.
Still, at its core, this is a movie about a retired soldier (played by an underwear model) who finds himself the guardian of a dimensional portal that allows LARPers in Lord of the Rings costumes to hassle rednecks. There's something in there about an elf princess and a Native American stereotype too, not to mention a witch and a "fyre" breathing CGI dragon. Truthfully, the obnoxious spelling in the title might be the worst thing about this movie as I otherwise kinda enjoyed watching a redneck kill orcs with a shotgun for 90 minutes.
Driving Bill Crazy (2008)
Bad Movie Mondays - #3
I moderate a bad movie screening series that's described as "A celebration of awful movies through semi-regular Monday night screenings by rotating hosts. From the polluted minds behind Good Things About Bad Movies and Halloween Horror Picks."
Driving Bill Crazy was the 3rd bad movie we watched, and it remains one of the worst of the series. Here's what I had to say about the movie (on our private group page) just after having suffered through it:
"Ugh. I did not enjoy that. Mike made us watch an aggressively unlikable movie about stoner con-artists whose convoluted scam has something to do with annoying their roommate so badly that he eventually goes insane, and... something about opening businesses in his name... and selling experimental drugs... or something? Hell, I don't know. But the movie REALLY sucked. It may have been the worst Bad Movie Mondays entry so far, but then I remember the giant lake-shark that eats people who don't know what an island is (Attack of the Jurassic Shark), so maybe not. But it was close."
As that barely amounts to a mini review, I'll add that everyone who attended that night still cites this as one of the more painfully bad films he or she has ever seen. It's a comedy that isn't funny, which is only the tip of this film's iceberg of crimes. It's cheap, mean spirited, immature, amateurishly made, ugly, implausible, nonsensical, and barely watchable. I disliked it tremendously.
Watch at your own peril, but, if (like me) you masochistically seek out terrible movies for some reason... this will certainly do.
Sully (2016)
Clint Eastwood's Shortest Directorial Work is Also His Most Padded
Clint Eastwood rarely makes a movie shorter than 2 hours in length. Even Blood Work (2002), one of his shortest movies (and perhaps his worst film as director), clocks in at 110 minutes. So it's especially notable that his 2016 film Sully is by far his shortest at just 96 minutes.
It's also insufferably padded to reach even that meager length.
Ostensibly, the story concerns the real life drama behind "The Miracle on The Hudson", a true life event from 2009 whereby airline pilot Chesley Sullenberger saved the lives of 155 passengers and crew when he successfully landed his plane on the Hudson River after hitting a flock of geese and losing both engines shortly after takeoff. Tom Hanks plays the titular hero Sully well enough, with bleached white hair and mustache, but the key phrase of this paragraph is "real life drama", and in that the film is sorely lacking.
Oh, sure... the procedural scenes of the plane accident and its miraculous landing and subsequent rescue of all passengers and crew is real enough, if you can forgive the poor CGI. And if you like procedural drama (as I do), those scenes are pretty riveting as well. But Eastwood and screenwriter Todd Komarnicki know that you already know that story, and they've deigned to focus the bulk of the movie on a purely fictional and wholly inaccurate NTSB investigation that never feels genuine, plausible or entertaining.
The central drama of the film therefore involves a ridiculous assertion that the investigators at the National Transportation Safety Board just have it out for poor pilot Sully and are determined to fault him for endangering the lives of everyone on board. The villains helming the investigation smirk and sneer their way through scene after implausible scene, but none of it really happened. It's all so distasteful and badly conceived. An early line in the film implies that they're under considerable pressure from the airline and insurance companies, but mostly their behavior is to be taken at face value, and it just doesn't work. And though this plot (the main plot, I'd like to reiterate) is tedious and unwelcome, Eastwood and Komarnicki offer a number of excruciating bad scenes to suggest that the NTSB may be right, including far too many scenes of Sully waking up from PTSD-induced nightmares and fantasies of the plane crashing into the city, as well as scenes where he questions his actions to his lap dog co-pilot (Aaron Eckhart).
But even this empty, manufactured main plot (and its many supporting scenes of Sully questioning his worth as a pilot) only pads the film so much. In order to hit the 90 minute mark, the filmmakers become mired in uninteresting minutiae about all manner of supporting characters. The audience is asked to endure countless scenes in which Sully speaks with his wife (played here by Laura Linney, in a totally wasted non-role of a character) by telephone. They talk about nothing even remotely interesting and nothing that propels the story or the drama. It's painful and dull and insulting. Unless your idea of riveting drama is two people talking on the phone about bills and house payments and how it sure would be nice if this investigation would be over already, then perhaps you'll enjoy Sully. But, I can assure you that's not my idea of good storytelling and I found the whole wife subplot unnecessary and distracting.
There are also a number of scenes involving passengers and hotel employees and regular New Yorkers, and they all get about as much to work with in terms of quality. There's the bartender (Michael Rapaport, again completely wasted) who tells Sully how he named a drink after him, and the makeup girl (Molly Bernard) who kisses Sully for her mom, and the passenger with a baby (Autumn Reeser) and the passenger who gets separated from his family (Sam Huntington) - But none of their stories are compelling because we either already know that everyone survives or we just don't care about such obvious padding in scenes that have little to do with the central story. They're the kinds of roles that would be cut out of most films because they drag the movie down, but in the case of Sully, they are given the unenviable task of simply killing time.
And don't get me started on the various flashbacks of Sully flying. (Here he is learning to fly as a boy! Now he's in the Air Force!)
Sully is a disappointment, to be sure, but Eastwood and Hanks try to make the best of the dreadful screenplay and almost make you think you're watching something important. And the bloated supporting cast of struggling or barely recognizable actors (that had to be employed in order to pad out the many, unnecessary characters) are actually mostly pretty good. Or, at least the ones who can hide their excitement at working in a scene opposite Tom Hanks or getting direction from Clint Eastwood are good - Some are worse at that than the rest, sadly.
As real life dramas go, this one falls way short, mostly due to the obvious padding that only serves to ruin the good stuff.
The real Chesley Sullenberger deserves better.
Dead Kansas (2013)
Dead Kansas is dead on arrival.
I picked up a DVD copy of Dead Kansas last year because I noticed Irwin Keyes was in it. And I popped it on this weekend after the announcement that he passed away a few days ago. Unfortunately, Irwin's part is so miniscule, it's hardly worth mentioning. It's too bad, really, because he'd have been a far more interesting character to follow than most of the amateur leads.
I say "most" because Joe McQueen (the actor who plays "Skinny") is actually quite good and very watchable. Unfortunately, that can't be said about the rest of the main cast, especially in regards to the poorly scripted lead role: Emma. (Note: this character was played by two separate actresses, due to a prolonged shooting schedule brought on by obvious budgetary limitations. It's quite clear that production lurched along in fits and starts, with shooting commencing only when money and scheduling allowed. It should be a surprise to no one that such a disjointed approach to filmmaking would result in a sloppy and inconsistent final product.)
Still, I watch no-budget, regional horror not because I expect perfection, but rather because it's always great to stumble upon some unseen diamond in the rough. A good idea or an interesting concept can often transcend the limitations of an amateur cast and crew, or a non-existent budget. (See the works of Richard Griffin, The Zellner Brothers, Adam Wingard, Mark Leake, Zachary Hadden, Kristian Day, Damon Packard, Adam Cooley, Ryan Trecartin, or any number of others doing interesting work with no money.) And, to be fair, the concept behind Dead Kansas does work to a point. Essentially, this is a post-apocalyptic zombie movie loosely structured around a Wizard of Oz story template: A young girl must leave her Kansas farm after a tornado (and a zombie bite) leaves her father injured. She takes to the road with a ragtag group of friends in the hopes of finding a doctor who can help her father.
Unfortunately, the Wizard of Oz elements are merely surface deep. So the idea collapses under the weight of a poor script that barely succeeds at delivering the most basic elements of screen writing 101: Plot, Character, Dialogue. (And utterly fails at the more complicated elements of screen writing and storytelling such as Pacing, Conflict, Theme, etc.) And therein lies the film's most crippling problem. It's just not a very good story. Characters barely serve the needs of their badly scripted scenes, let alone the rest of the plot or larger picture. I did enjoy one aspect of the ending, but frankly because I'd given up hope in a fully realized concept by that point and was surprised to see ONE obvious (but oh-so welcomed) story resolution.
There are other problems with Dead Kansas beyond the bad writing, amateur acting and choppy filmmaking... the sound mix is uneven, the editing and camera angles are poor, and the low budget doesn't allow for many effect shots at all (so you can forget about seeing the zombies, kills, the tornado, and most of the "action")... but honestly, all of that could be forgiven if the script was better.
I wish director Aaron K. Carter the best and I sincerely hope his future efforts benefit from the lessons he learned and the mistakes he made with this one. I'd even watch a sequel to Dead Kansas if it ever happens. But I do hope he works on his screen writing and scrapes up a little bit of money to put a better production together before rolling camera. And I really hope he manages to put his stronger cast front and center, and retires the amateurs to the supporting roles next time.
The Sobbing Stone (2005)
God-awful
The Sobbing Stone is just about as bad as it gets, and that's not hyperbole. I think it cracked my bottom 10 list, and I watch a lot of bad movies. Even among the worst Lifetime Cable, zero-budget horror, shot-on-video Zen Cinema, and Christian rapture movies that I've seen, this is a low point. The Sobbing Stone is that bad.
This is a movie about a talking rock (which looks a lot like a malted milk ball) that sobs openly because of Jesus. A bunch of "scientists" sit around and listen to it and occasionally argue very passionately about science and religion. These scientists rarely make anything resembling a coherent argument (and they never use the scientific method in their approach) but in the end... SPOILER! ...they're all touched by the blood of Jesus and horrified into submission to the cross.
This movie is what happens when a small town church group decides to turn their Christian guilt into a regional embarrassment.
Much of the movie is shot without the aid of lighting and the few scenes that are lit manage to get the lighting equipment in the shot. You can also play "spot the boom pole" if that's your thing.
The bulk of the movie takes place in a classroom. When the story does venture beyond these walls, no effort is made at all to disguise Grandma's bedroom into looking like a believable location for the characters. Scenes depicting biblical events are cringe-inducing in their factitiousness.
Beware the positive reviews you might stumble upon, they lie. This movie isn't interesting. It isn't well-made. It does not contain a surprising twist or an effective revelation. It is not the work of a promising new director making the best of his small budget. The cast is not talented or good. The deaf girl does not have a future in acting. None of the kind words you might read about this pile are honest opinions, or, if they do represent someone's honest opinion it's the opinion of an idiot with wretched taste.
Put simply: This movie is incompetently written/directed/acted/edited/scored. It's simply god-awful. You would be best to watch just about anything else.
Oh, and I badly wanted to eat that chocolate ball the whole movie.
J. Edgar (2011)
Underwhelming, sappy, and grossly inaccurate historical whitewash
'J. Edgar (2011)' represents a serious disappointment and critical misfire by director Clint Eastwood and writer Dustin Lance Black.
The film's crimes are many, but its most annoying offenses are: 1.) Devoting the bulk of its two plus hours to The Lindbergh kidnapping (a rather infinitesimal footnote in the Hoover story) while completely glossing over or ignoring Hoover's greater and darker legacy (his collusion with organized crime, the Nixon/Kissinger wiretaps, COINTELPRO, McCarthyism, etc., etc., etc.), and 2.) focusing on unfounded (but sensational) speculations about Hoover's supposed homosexuality and cross dressing.
Numerous scenes between Hoover and Clyde Tolson simply defy credulity. By devoting large portions of the film to highly speculative private interactions (rather than what is historically known and documented), Black and Eastwood have fashioned together a non-credible account of one of America's most interesting (and loathsome) figures. They attempt to excuse themselves by suggesting that this is the story Hoover would want us to believe in that much of the narrative is framed by Hoover's dictation to his biographer, and in fact a late scene in the movie has Tolson literally accusing Hoover (and the film itself) of fabricating history. But these small efforts do not excuse the predictable confusion most audience members will experience nor the resulting mess of a movie the filmmakers have assembled.
Compounded to the film's questionable accuracy is a rather groan-inducingly sappy tone, especially in the final act. Despite the character's contemptible standing, the audience is forced to endure a barrage of syrupy and sorrowful sequences upon Hoover's death, including disembodied words of reflection by Hoover and a sequence with Tolson crying while reading love poetry.
On the plus side, Leonardo DiCaprio elevates the lackluster script and keeps the film generally watchable, or at least as watchable as can be expected beneath the weight of so many other shortcomings. Attempts are made to depict portions of Hoover's accomplishments, career, and legacy (including his contributions toward crime fighting techniques, willingness to blackmail sitting presidents, bloated paranoia of the communist threat - both real and perceived), etc.) Additionally, the minimal score is effectively sad and pretty, if not inappropriately manipulative. Unfortunately, these few positive points do not counter-balance the film's innumerable failings.
At best, this film represents poor reporting, an incomplete story and a missed opportunity of the highest order. At worst, it's exploitation and outright bunk knowingly served as fact. A shamefully bad movie in either case.
Carnival Magic (1983)
12 reasons Carnival Magic needs to be released on DVD.
EDIT - 08/12/11 - Since posting this review my dreams have come true in the form of an actual DVD/Blu-ray release! I'm leaving this review as is, but know that you can and should pick up a copy in the format of your choice asap!
***Spoiler Alert***
1.) Any movie that casually features a talking-chimpanzee (with the attitude and vocal-inflections of a Mississippi blues-man) deserves to be seen by the widest audience possible.
2.) Ostensibly a children's movie, it somehow manages to showcase domestic abuse, vivisection, alcoholism, animal exploitation, attempted suicide and carnie chicanery, all from behind the pulled curtains of a southern, traveling carnival midway.
3.) The lead human protagonist is sort of a cross between Harvey Keitel circa "Fingers (1978)" and Patrick Swayze fresh off "Point Break (1991)".
4.) It was one of the final productions by exploitation/schlock director Al Adamson.
5.) It was the final film for Adamson's wife, buxom bombshell (and ex-Elvis arm-candy) Regina Carrol.
6.) A major character progressively transforms from frumpy tomboy "Bud" into total woman and lover "Ellen".
7.) A man gets mauled by a tiger.
8.) 60 minutes into the movie, the camera suddenly and inexplicably cuts to a shirtless, midget hick with a mustache and a mullet.
9.) A monkey performs in a magic show, steals a car and leads North Carolina police in hot pursuit, brawls with the staff (and random passerby) of a vivisection laboratory, and attempts to commit suicide.
10.) More unintentional laughs than the entire first season of "Walker Texas Ranger".
11.) There is a circus parade at the end of the movie. Seriously... who doesn't like a circus parade?
12.) And last but not least, perhaps the greatest unfulfilled promise ever made... the post-credit announcement: "Coming next year... More Carnival Magic!"