Dec
30
To close out the 2000s, I thought I’d review the worst movie that I saw in a decade that had some pretty craptacular offerings. It’s hard to settle on one movie that’s stunningly awful and beats out all the rest, particularly when “Rollerball” is sitting there eating bananas. So I had to come up with some criteria. It needed to be a movie I’d seen twice. Sometimes, you see a movie in the wrong frame of mind, and upon a repeat viewing, it suddenly works for you. This pretty much knocked all the other potentials out of the running. No way was I going to give “Soul Survivors” another chance to impress, Eliza Dushku or not. I also wanted a movie that genuinely felt like a wasted opportunity. Some movies had no right to be good anyway, like “Alien vs. Predator,” so it’s hard to begrudge their awfulness. The worst of the worst really had to shit the bed. Only one movie managed to edge out Tim Burton’s remake of “Planet of the Apes.”
Yes, the worst film of the aughts is “Battlefield Earth.”
For folks who haven’t read L. Ron Hubbard’s book of the same name, it’s probably difficult to imagine “Battlefield Earth” as anything but a punchline. However, the 1,050-page pulp sci-fi novel makes even something like “Avatar” seem smallish in scale. I read it in the summer of 1999, still smarting from the resounding disappointment that was “The Phantom Menace,” and thought it was the best space opera I’d laid eyes upon, a true epic that’d make for one hell of a movie or series of movies. At the time, I knew filming had begun on a big-screen adaptation with John Travolta playing the heavy, Terl, a paranoid star beast.
In the book, Terl is fed up with his bureaucratic position on the backwater planet Earth. It’s the year 3000, and the planet has since been conquered by the Psychlos — an species of furry lizard-people — that have wiped out the bulk of the human population and turned the planet into a mining colony. Out of pure boredom, Terl decides kidnap a human and train him to do unenviable tasks just to see if it can be done. So he snatches up Jonnie Goodboy Tyler, a young blonde frontiersman. Jonnie proves to be a quick study, learning the Psychlo language as well as how to operate their vehicles and machinery. Terl then decides to educate a whole bunch more humans, so they can mine a deposit of gold he’s discovered in a hush-hush side operation that’ll make him rich enough to retire early. The humans he’s trained, meanwhile, aren’t complete imbeciles and plot an insurgency against the Psychlos in an attempt to rid the planet of their occupiers. What follows is something along the lines of “The Empire Strikes Back” and “Braveheart.” At least that’s how I pictured it in my head.
The movie manages to take a fairly straightforward men’s adventure story, something James Cameron could’ve done in his sleep, and turn it into the cheapest-looking $60 million turd I’ve ever seen; we’re talking SyFy Original Movie production values here. Director Roger Christian shoots everything at a canted angle for no reason, directs John Travolta’s shrillest performance to date, and delivers the ugliest, clunkiest and dumbest sci-fi western that wasn’t part of George Lucas’ prequel trilogy. The Psychlos all look like doughy, middle-aged Predators wearing shoe-lifts. That these monsters conquered space is more disbelief than I’m willing to suspend.
Simply put, the film remains somewhat faithful to the source material without really understanding what makes it entertaining. Everything comes across as rushed and wholly unbelievable. In an unintentional bit of meta-text, Terl educates Jonnie by projecting a whole bunch of information directly into his eyeballs, which is not unlike what the film itself does to the audience. It’s an aggressive, mind-boggling info-dump. All the fun little moments are lost. During the same sequence in the book, Terl is monitoring Jonnie in his cell. Famished, Jonnie reluctantly eats a rat, and Terl mistakes rats for an actual delicacy. So later he brings Jonnie a mess of rats to eat and is very confused when Jonnie reacts with disgust.
Terl’s a terrific character in the novel. Cunning, extremely duplicitous, a frightening and yet likeable bastard — the character seems like a great fit for Travolta. In the movie, though, Travola plays him like a preening, unwashed schmendrick. The Terl in the book would’ve eaten this clown’s lunch.
After Terl dies partway through the book (*spoiler*) and the Psychlos are vanquished, Jonnie finds himself having to defend the planet from other intergalactic nogoodniks. The film elects not to kill off Terl at the climax, which falls squarely in the middle of the events of the novel. Presumably, the filmmakers were crossing their fingers that the film would be a hit, the second half of the book could be realized on the screen as a sequel with Travolta returning to his Razzie-nominated role. But the film opened a week after “Gladiator” in the summer of 2000 and quickly sank like a stone at the box office. I do find it rather hilarious that the misnomered production company Franchise Pictures actually financed “Battlefield Earth.”
In measuring sheer awfulness, I think “Battlefield Earth” best exemplifies the absolute worst the 2000s had to offer. The film is commercial filmmaking at its most stunningly incompetent, where not a single choice made by anyone involved was correct. An artistic and financial failure, it’s one of the first phony franchise-starters of the decade full of ‘em. I wonder when they’ll try to remake it.
-Brad Lohan
Dec
29
Pitch Fests, or How to Waste $250
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I periodically receive emails from various pitch festivals. It doesn’t matter how many I unsubscribe from or mark as spam. I’m doomed to get these emails for the rest of my natural life. So what’s a pitch festival, anyway? Well, it’s a way to separate novice screenwriters from their money by giving them an opportunity to pitch their scripts to top-shelf Hollywood production companies, literary agencies and the like. Twice I’ve allowed myself to be duped into attending these complete wastes of time and money. If I can prevent one person from shelling out their cash to go to a pitch fest, well, I’ll feel like I’ve done my part. After all, that $250 can be better spent on a girlfriend experience.
Wait, didn’t I say that pitch fests offer face time with high-power industry types, access that writers without agency representation would never have otherwise? Why wouldn’t that be worth a few hundred dollars to attend? First of all, and I’m going to italicize this for emphasis, you should never have to pay one red cent to pitch your work. Technically, you’re not paying the industry types themselves for their time; you’re paying an admission fee for the festival, where there are seminars and networking opportunities as well. Nonetheless, a pitch meeting should come at no cost to you, the writer. Think of it as paying for a job interview; you wouldn’t do that, would you? The endgame after all is to get someone to pay you money for your screenplay. Don’t give me that whole line about how you have to spend money to make money.
So who are the industry types that you can pitch? This is such a slap in the face. The festivals name-drop all these big-time producers and whatnot. But here’s the rub: hundreds of no-name screenwriters go to these things. You have to get there hella-early, wait in line for the doors to open, and then it’s a free-for-all as everyone scrambles to sign up for an allotted time to pitch. Maybe James Cameron’s Lightstorm Entertainment will be at the pitch fest, but that means jack shit if you don’t even get a seat at the table with them because a whole bunch of other jerkstores have already signed up to speak with Lightstorm.
Let’s say you do actually get to speak with a major player, like Dreamworks. Are you actually going to be pitching Steven Spielberg himself? Excuse me while I regain my composure after having doubled-over with uncontrollable laughter. No, Spielberg doesn’t go to the pitch fests, scouting young and fresh talent. Some 23-year-old douche who’s fresh out of USC and is an assistant to the assistant of someone close to Spielberg will be the one hearing your pitch. He’ll be wearing his nicest Ed Hardy shirt, too. The bottom-feeding lowlifes that the production companies and agencies send to the pitch fests are not decision-makers and really aren’t happy about being inundated with a bunch of morons’ dumb ideas all day.
Still convinced that getting a chance to pitch your script is at least something? Well, let’s talk about the pitching process itself. Ever tried speed-dating? It’s almost exactly like that. You get five minutes to pitch your screenplay to someone who’s already decided they don’t like you from the moment you sat down. Now, screenwriting manuals tell you that a logline should be 25 words or less, and you should be able to sum up the overarching story in three paragraphs or so. All that being said, you should have more than enough time if you just regurgitate your logline and brief synopsis, right? Yes, that’s true. But when you strip down your story to its bare bones, it’s probably going to sound hollow and perfunctory. Novice writers aren’t hip to all the sales-y nuances of pitching, either; they get caught up in minutiae or forget important elements. The time crunch also works against them. There’s simply too much pressure.
Well, what about the screenwriting seminars, hosted by actual working screenwriters (who never sold a single script at a pitch fest)? Those have to be somewhat worth the cost of admission, don’t they? I dunno, maybe? The thing I hate about seminars is that they get hijacked by idiots. There’s some unwritten law of the universe that the stupidest people in a room will always be the most vocal. At any rate, if you want to sit through a lengthy Q&A session about proper script format and how many script pages equal a minute of screentime (the answer is one), by all means attend a seminar with all the dullards who think they’ve got a great idea for a “Die Hard” knockoff. (My “Die Hard” knockoff is set in Medieval times if you must know…not the restaurant, but the historical period.)
But what about the success stories, the people whose scripts were bought by one of the production companies at the pitch fest? Those folks are the exception, not the rule. The ratio of people whose scripts don’t sell versus those that do is sadly disproportionate. It’s Vegas odds, kids.
Even as a networking opportunity, a pitch fest is a joke. The only people you’re like to meet are dimwits that were also snookered into paying good money to attend a pitch fest. You need those lameos on your Facebook like you need a hole in your head.
All things considered, a pitch fest is a pretty lousy way to market yourself if you’re a struggling screenwriter. There is no one tried and true method of breaking in, but this is certainly no better than pissing up a rope.
-Brad Lohan
Dec
28
Why Haven’t I Made a Movie-Film?
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I’m almost finished reading “Produce Your Own Damn Movie,” Lloyd Kaufman’s latest how-to manual for aspiring, no-budget filmmakers. Once I’m done with the book, it’ll go on the shelf next to Kaufman’s other titles, “Make Your Own Damn Movie” and “Direct Your Own Damn Movie.” My tiny library of books on guerilla filmmaking, not to mention my B.A. in Electronic Media and Film, sort of suggests that I wish to someday make a movie, doesn’t it?
So what’s the friggin’ holdup? Why haven’t I made a movie? Is it because I never finished reading “Feature Filmmaking at Used Car Prices?” Well, there are myriad reasons/excuses for my artistic inertia. Let’s do a deep dive. But before I get ahead of myself, know this…
Los Angeles is the worst place in the world to make movies.
Believe it or not, this is absolutely true. Even major film and TV productions set up shop in Vancouver, BC or Bulgaria or the surface of the friggin’ Moon because practically anywhere else in the Milky Way galaxy has less red tape. But what do I mean by that? Read on.
Unions.
In L.A., you’ve got to deal with a bunch of unions like SAG and the DGA and the IATSE, who I’m sure are very nice people once you get to know them. However, if you’re working with zero budget, you can’t exactly hire union people to work on your shoot. Even if someone in a union actually wants to work on your show because he’s between gigs, he can’t unless he uses a false name and hopes no one rats him out to the union bosses; then they’ll fine his ass. Never mind that part of the reason he’s out of work is that all the big shows have buggered off to parallel universes/alternate timelines to save a buck.
Permits.
For argument’s sake, let’s say you don’t want to shoot your entire movie in your apartment. Actually, even if you do want to shoot your flick inside your cozy bachelor pad, you’ll need a location permit that’s signed by the property owner. And the same thing goes for anywhere you want to shoot. You need permission in writing. I can understand business owners not wanting some film crew to start setting up lights and camera equipment in their workplace without so much as asking if it’s cool with them. But it seems a simple verbal agreement between the manager and the ultra-low-budget filmmaker should suffice. The cops, however, disagree and are happy to shut down film productions, regardless of their size, for not having the right permits. Never mind that if you’re making a film on the cheap, chances are you can’t afford the fees to get a permit in the first place.
Insurance.
People are klutzes. Injuries happen on film sets all the time. Once I broke my heart on a film shoot when I developed a crush on this EMT named Lois who only dated firefighters. At any rate, you need to insure your production against injuries as well as not being able to finish the movie because of — get this — an Act of God; even Atheists need to insure themselves against what’s called force majeure, which is French for “God hates you.” Insurance ain’t free, either. Before you shoot a frame of film, you’ve doubtless pissed away a good portion of your budget on things you won’t even seen on the screen like this. Hey, let’s talk about all the expensive crap that goes into actual production.
Equipment.
Books that try to light a fire under you to make an ultra-low-budget movie always tell you how relatively inexpensive cameras are these days, how you can buy a digital video camera for $500! But still, cameras, lights, editing software — it begins to add up. And your production will still kind of look like a home movie. Oh, you can rent more high-end equipment, like a Hi-Def camera, but rental houses really pull your pants down over the prices on those. Want to shoot on film then? 16mm? Or 35mm if you’re really ambitious? Film stock is pretty expensive, and that’s before you develop it. Then you’ll have to bump it down to video so that you can edit it. Nobody uses flatbeds anymore. I forgot to mention that if you shoot on film, you’ll also need to rent sound equipment, so you can record sync sound. Do you see how far down the rabbit hole this goes? It’s a money pit. So what, if anything, can you get for free? Well…
Cast and Crew.
These delightful individuals will bring your script to life as they work tirelessly either in front of or behind the camera…for about a day. You can usually bullshit a handful of friends or desperate weirdos off Craigslist to do your picture for little to no compensation. But you get what you pay for. Filmmaking is no fun at all, and very few people working on your cinematic gem are anywhere near as excited about seeing it through as you are. And so, folks start dropping off pretty quickly, like right after you wrap the first day’s shoot. It’s real work, particularly on a no-budget flick where some people are doing multiple jobs while other people are hurrying up and waiting. Whatever they’re doing, it’s exhausting, and nobody’s as altruistic at the end of a long day as they were when you first gave them a major role or a pair of gloves and something hot and heavy to be charge of not breaking.
Having read all of this, I think it’s probably pretty clear to you that I have made a few attempts at filmmaking and gotten my lumps. In fact, I tried making a feature-length movie way back in 2003, and that was full of fail. I had no idea what I was doing, absolutely no money and simply thought my blind ambition would get me through it. Yeah, I shut down production on that flick after we wrapped shooting on day one. It was mortifying. But I was in way over my head.
A friend of mine gave me some rock-solid advice shortly after I realized my lifelong dream was completely and totally out of my reach. He told me to write a script that I could produce in one day. After a year or so of hemming and hawing, I did just that: I wrote a 15-page short script that I produced in about eight hours with a few friends. It took about a month to edit, but the finished product satisfyingly came together quite nicely. What was even more rewarding is that apparently I’m the only person who liked the goddamn movie. No one I’ve shown it to laughs anywhere near as hard at the thing as I do. Where most filmmakers hate to watch their films, they see only their mistakes, I watch mine and love it to death. I made a movie for an audience of one — me. Eh, whatever.
I wrote and directed one more short film after that. I think it turned out just as good. Crumbs, it’s been almost five years now since I’ve done anything like that. I’ve since lost touch with virtually everyone I worked with on those two productions, and worse, I’ve lost touch with all their expensive equipment I didn’t have to pay to use.
Ultimately, I would like to make my own damn movie at some point down the road. But kicking that goal further down the road, as far down the road as that road goes, is the plan for right now. I mean, I’ve still got to finish that book I’m reading.
-Brad Lohan
Dec
27
Crummy Trailers | Winter 2010 Edition
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You never know what trailers are going to be unspooled prior to the feature. The mystery sort of gives the experience a bit of a thrill. What cinematic wonders lie in store just a few short months from now? Of course, the effect can be a little numbing if more than three or four trailers are shown. They start to run together after a while and you forget half of what you saw.
Generally, you assume that if you’re going to see an action movie, the bulk of the trailers attached to the film will be action-oriented fare; a drama will have trailers for other dramas; and so on and so forth. But who’s to say, really? I’ve seen some pretty disparate trailers played before movies in the past. Even so, certain trailers may fall into the same genre as a film you’re seeing but still look like dog’s breakfast.
That being said, I’ve been to the movies a few times this holiday season and seen trailers for some crappy looking movies. 2010 doesn’t look completely hopeless, though. In fact, it’s getting off to a strong start with “Daybreakers,” “The Valley of Eli” and “Legion” all dropping in January. However, there’s still a batch of movies coming soon that are going to forever tarnish this bold new decade we’re about to enter into.
Leap Year
Amy Adams, who I keep confusing with Isla Fisher, stars as yet another rom-com bimbo whose lifelong ambition is to become some rich d-bag’s wife. When she thinks her boyfriend is about to pop the question, she’s sorely mistaken; instead, he gives her some nice earrings, not an engagement ring with a fist-sized diamond. Then he pisses off to Ireland on business. When she learns that in Ireland it’s socially acceptable for a woman to propose to a man on February 29th, she catches a flight across the pond, determined to make an honest man out of her boyfriend. But her flight gets rerouted to Wales. There, she finds a hunky local to take her the rest of the way, and believe it or not, sparks fly! Oh, and then once she catches up to her boyfriend, he proposes! ZOMG! What’s a girl to do?!
Knight & Day
Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz star in “Mission: Impossible IV,” also known as “Knight & Day.” Hey, it’s a punny title! I bet those are the characters’ last names as well. I wonder if it’s safe to assume that there’s a difference between the two of them. Yeah, Diaz is probably a head taller.
Salt
Angelina Jolie stars in “Mission: Impossible V” as Veruca Salt, a bottle blonde secret agent who goes rogue like Sarah Palin on steroids. She gets into auto accidents, doesn’t leave her insurance information and runs up walls before punching people. This summer, pour Angelina Jolie on your wound.
Death at a Funeral
From the director of the “Wicker Man” remake, comes a comedy that’s intentional this time. Chris Rock, who seems to be on some sort of tranquilizers, toplines a cast of actors who are all playing the “wacky guy.” At least the material’s fresh, right? Get this, a guy takes pills that he thinks are one type of prescription, but they turn out to be another type of prescription entirely; then he trips balls. Oh, you’ve seen that before? Hmm. Devoid of any real gut-busting laughs — typically a bad sign when you’re trying to sell a farce — the trailer uses a gay midget as a closer.
The Bounty Hunter
Gerard Butler and Jennifer Aniston — separately they’re enough to steer me clear of whatever mid-level programmer they’re in. Together, well, they just might spell the end of the human race. Butler plays Boba Fett, who’s trying to bring in outlaw Aniston. Believe it or not, romance ensues. I missed part of this trailer because I came into the auditorium late. What I saw looked exactly like how I imagine hell.
Cop Out
One of my biggest trailer pet peeves is when it sells itself as a certain type of movie then there’s that record skip sound effect, and it turns out you’re actually watching a trailer for a comedy that makes fun of that type of movie! This brings us to “Cop Out,” formerly known as “A Couple of Dicks.” No, seriously, Warner Bros. changed the original title of the film when they realized that was the funniest thing about it. Kevin Smith brings his lazy directorial vision to someone else’s script in what looks like a dull as doornails laffer about Bruce Willis and Tracy Morgan doing a whole lot of nothing.
Sometimes, trailers are pure bliss, like the one for “Iron Man 2.” They play like gangbusters and almost make you forget what movie you actually came to see. Others make you pray for a quick death. But hey, at least they don’t run this Pepsi spot anymore, right?
-Brad Lohan
Dec
26
Sometimes, a movie will leave you with such a sense of overwhelming indifference, it’s almost impossible to write a review. Enter “Sherlock Holmes.” What seems like a slam dunk on paper — Robert Downey Jr. reinventing the world’s greatest detective (sorry, Batman, you ain’t it) for the 21st century — is rather a dull and uneven caper through the green-screened streets of Victorian London. It’s not a complete bust like “League of Extraordinary Gentlemen,” but it’s really nothing more than an overextended first act, a lot of place setting for the inevitable sequel.
And therein lies perhaps my biggest gripe with the film: It’s basically two hours of setup. What would’ve been condensed into the first ten minutes of any big-ticket movie prior the glut of prequels and origin films is now drawn out over the course of an entire film. These days, every franchise-starter is the cinematic equivalent of a Wikipedia entry. It’s all one big info dump.
Yet it’s pointless to have a scene with Sherlock Holmes in a bareknuckle brawl at the beginning of a movie, beyond the fact it gives director Guy Ritchie an excuse to show off his enthusiasm for speed-ramping, when Holmes can barely hold his own with anyone else he fights in the remainder of the film. But, didja know that Sherlock Holmes is a pugilist? You didn’t? Well, he is!
The movie is loaded with bullshit like that. In its attempts to strip away the audience’s preconceived notions about the character and butch him up, we learn gobs of useless information about him that doesn’t propel the story forward. It’s just simply there to give Robert Downey Jr. something to play around with or to pad out an otherwise uninvolving plot.
Like virtually every blockbuster made in the past twenty years, the story is way too complicated for its own good. Guy Ritchie used to be able to balance multiple narratives that intersect and create a throughline that pays off all the disparate plot threads at the end. That was circa 2001. “Sherlock Holmes” is a mess. The plot has something to do with a dark arts practitioner named Lord Blackwell (Mark Strong, the English version of Andy Garcia). Holmes helps the police apprehend Blackwell at the top of the film, and he’s summarily put to death for his crimes. But Blackwell doesn’t die, and back from the grave, he tries to take over the world with a clockwork WMD or whatever.
I thought the concept of the logical and rational Sherlock Holmes being confronted with a villain whose magical powers defy reason was interesting, but boy, Blackwell is about the weakest opponent I’ve ever seen in a mainstream Hollywood film. The most menacing thing about him is the fact that one of his front teeth is really crooked — oooh. He’s simply no match for Holmes even with his apparent mastery of black magic. Meanwhile, there are all these little scenes that establish the shadowy Professor Moriarty, Holmes’ greatest literary adversary, suggesting a much more exciting sequel.
In all, the film fails to live up to its trailer, which crams pretty much all the money shots and humor from the movie into two whole minutes. No shit.
-Brad Lohan
Dec
25
Best Films of the Aughts
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2010 is right around the corner, bringing us that much closer to a whole pile of “best of” lists that will all be more or less the same. Oh, some might rearrange the order a bit. But it’s all going to be a bunch of interchangeable pretentious art house fare you never saw or is languishing somewhere in the middle of your Netflix queue.
My list is different, I guarantee you that. You ain’t gonna see “Crash” anywhere near it. I haven’t even seen that movie. Why would I see that movie? No, the movies on my list are what I consider to be the best the past decade has had to offer.
Instead of choosing one movie from each year, I’m selecting two — one indie and one mainstream Hollywood film. See if you can guess which is which! Also, each of these films are actually in my DVD collection or will be upon their home video release. I can’t claim to love these movies if I don’t own ‘em.
All that being said, here’s my top 20 of the 2000s:
2000 – “Requiem for a Dream” & “Gladiator”
2001 – “Memento” & “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone”
2002 – “Monster’s Ball” & “Spider-Man”
2003 - “Oldboy” & “Master & Commander: The Far Side of the World”
2004 – “Fahrenheit 9/11″ & “Spider-Man 2″
2005 – “Brokeback Mountain” & “Batman Begins”
2006 – “Babel” & “Casino Royale”
2007 – “No Country for Old Men” & “Superbad”
2008 – “The Wrestler” & “The Dark Knight”
2009 – “The Hurt Locker” & “Avatar”
Clearly, some years were stronger than others. It was generally more challenging for me to find a solid popcorn flick each year than it was to single out a fine drama. And no, none of the “Lord of the Rings” movies made the cut because I just don’t like them. Meanwhile, comic book movies came strong for the first time in the history of the recorded image.
What are you top films of the past ten years? Please don’t say, “Crash.”
-Brad Lohan
Dec
22
One of the perks of being a film student is having film professors. They know more about movies than some the folks who make them and many the folks who review them. They see movies differently than you or I. And they oftentimes have very eclectic taste. My favorite professors are the ones who had blockbusters out of hand. Let’s face it. This generation of film students hasn’t grown up on the films of New Hollywood, the arty-farty movies of the 1970s; no, they grew up on the New New Hollywood, the box office bonanzas of the 1980s. As such, their sensibilities are completely at odds with the poor fellows whose job it is to teach them how to make movies. It can lead to interesting class discussions to say the least.
At any rate, I think it’d be fun to take a second look at “Avatar” but through the eyes of one of my film professors. That isn’t to say this blog is intended to be mean-spirited or make fun of him. Rather, I’d like to channel what I imagine his reaction to the film should be. So, without further ado, here’s “Avatar” through the eyes of one of my film professors.
First of all, it’s a space movie, and I don’t like space movies. They’re boring. I like art movies and foreign films. In one of my other screenwriting classes, like, half of the scripts the students turned in are for space movies.
I think the script was too long. The movie’s, like, almost three hours. It could’ve been condensed more. There are all these talky scenes with the blue cat people. Why do they have to be blue, anyway?
I didn’t like the antagonist. I think he’s way too one-dimensional. He wasn’t interesting to me. Like, all he wants to do is kill the blue cat people. I can’t remember what they’re called. He should have had more dimensions. I want my antagonists to be likable.
I liked the 3D. It reminded me of watching my new TV at home. The picture is so good, it’s like being in the movie. I rented some more Blu-Rays from Netflix that I watched this past week. Has anyone seen that new Russell Crowe movie? I don’t remember what it’s called.
Can I write characters or what?
-Brad Lohan
Dec
21
10 Worst Horror Movies of the Aughts
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Originally, I was going to do a list of the 10 worst movies of the past decade, but as I started jotting down titles, a pattern emerged. Most of the films were horror entries. I think this has to do with the fact that I’ll see pretty much anything in the genre. This also used to be true of action films — I actually saw the dreadful Chris Klein version of “Rollerball” theatrically — but I’ve become more discriminating in recent years. At any rate, I decided to just do a list of the 10 worst horror films released during the aughts.
As a genre, horror is ugly and uncommercial. Successful horror films are almost always happy accidents. Even the franchise starters were intended to be one-offs made by directors with aspirations of moving on to bigger and better material. No filmmaker wants to be pidgeonholed as a guy who only does scare flicks. Well, nowadays you find some sociopaths out there who do, and their output is dogshit.
So why do I like horror movies if many of them are bilge? Well, when I find that occasional diamond in the rough, like “28 Days Later” or “Shaun of the Dead” or “The Descent” or “The Mist” or “Paranormal Activity,” I instantly forget about pretty much all of the flotsam on my list below. The genre is so diverse and so full of potential. There are tons of places horror can go that other genres shy away from. But it can also go wrong, and a lot of the time, that’s what happens.
For fun, I decided that each movie on the list should represent a different sub-genre of horror. Otherwise, I’d have too many Rob Zombie movies and/or too many plain ol’ zombie movies on here. Now we’ve got a little bit of everything. Without further ado, prepare to be frightened by some staggering levels of cinematic incompetence, the scariest thing out there.
Underworld (“Matrix” knockoff)
Remember when every single stinking movie aped “The Matrix?” Chief among the offenders is Len Wiseman’s “Underworld,” an unrepentant “Matrix” lookalike that pits leather-clad vampires against leather-clad werewolves in a wire-fu fight to the finish. The film also takes a page from “Romeo and Juliet” — unfortunately not the bit about the protags dying at the end — and has the lycan-loathing vampire Selina (Kate Beckinsale) fall in love with a werewolf-bitten blank slate (Scott Speedman). The only thing good about this movie is its trailer, and the only thing good about the trailer is the Agent Provocateur song, “Red Tape,” which I have on my iPod (“Hey-ya, hey, hey, yawww!”).
House of the Dead (video game adaptation)
Director Uwe Boll’s exploded onto the scene as the absolute worst filmmaker of his (or anyone’s) generation with this dismal big-screen version of the arcade shooter. Abandoning the pistol-packing “X-Files” approach of the game entirely, the film is about a group of kids who attend a rave on an island teeming with zombies. The level of ineptitude on display is somewhat staggering. This film, too, aspires to be like the “Matrix,” riffing on the whole back-bending bullet-time effect, but the ultra-low-budget means the camera simply goes around the characters as they move at half-speed. Even worse, Boll’s cheapjack bullet-time gimmick is repeated endlessly. What’s truly amazing about this film, beyond how it almost seems to be shitty on purpose, is that it got Boll more work.
Halloween (remake)
The aughts were the decade of the pointless remake, and none is more unnecessary than Rob Zombie’s attempt to top John Carpenter with the 2007 version of “Halloween.” Zombie somehow managed to lens a “Halloween” film that’s more ungood than any of the sequels. Giving Michael Myers a crummy childhood is the first of Zombie’s countless lunkheaded moves. The character is supposed to be the embodiment of evil, not the product of an abusive household. That the film also lacks any chills or atmosphere, what Carpenter’s version has in spades, makes the exercise all the more insufferable. Zombie’s unnatural and unspeakable dialogue is pure punishment to listen to. His shrill, real-life wife Sheri Moon especially grates on the eardrums. Dig this, there’s a 3-hour making-of documentary on the film’s DVD that sadomasochists must put on an endless loop during S&M sessions.
Blade Trinity (comic book movie)
As an unapologetic fan of the first two “Blade” films, I honestly couldn’t believe what I was seeing when I caught this movie in theaters. Written and directed by David S. Goyer, a nice enough guy, it misses the mark in every conceivable way. The promise of seeing Blade face off against the granddaddy of all vampires, Count Dracula, is completely wasted. The Reapers in movie two are infinitely scarier than that goon from “Prison Break.” Blade’s given two youngish sidekicks, Abagail Whistler (Jessical Biel) and Hannibal King (Ryan Reynolds), who hardly bring a level of badassery that would warrant the spinoff film they were supposed to anchor in the event “Blade Trinity” was a hit. This is hardly the worst movie on this list, but it is probably the one that I found most disappointing overall.
Haute Tension (foreign film)
This film was released Stateside as “High Tension,” but I saw the French version, something I like to call “Haughty Tension.” Whatever its name is, “Tension” was supposed to be a return-to-form for the genre, something that many fans lamented had become too meta and self-reflexive for its own good. Director Alexandre Aja, who sucks by the way, starts things off nicely with a nifty decapitation-via-armoire. But he completely loses me with the film’s nonsensical final moments. Here’s the ending: the Final Girl turns out to be the Killer! What the shit?! In the context of the film, it does not work at all and retroactively makes the rest of the movie stupid because you realize you’ve spend the past 80 minutes being jerked around. Boycott France indeed.
Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 (sequel)
On the set of a music video way back in 2002, I was talking to the director’s sister and asked her if she was an actress because she looked familiar to me. She told me that she was in “Blair Witch 2,” and without missing a beat, I said, “That’s one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen.” I typically have a filter for potentially embarrassing comments like that. However, sometimes things slip through. She fortunately was dissatisfied with the finished product as well, so I didn’t end up with too much egg on my face. Still, when it comes to the aggressively stupid “Blair Witch 2,” a movie that bolloxes up its fairly straightforward sequel potential, one can’t say enough bad things about it. The franchise gets lost up its own ass in the very first sequel. Movie two abandons the mockumentary style of the original. In fact, the original “Blair Witch Project” is a movie-within-the-movie that all the characters in “Book of Shadows” are big fans of. And so, they go into the woods, where their bodies start stacking up.
I Know Who Killed Me (torture porn)
A cult is building around Lindsay Lohan’s last theatrically-released picture, a deliriously stupid thriller about a chick who investigates the kidnapping the mutilation of her long-lost twin sister. The movie is a bizarre hybrid of “Saw” and “The Bionic Woman,” as LiLo loses an arm and a leg at one point during the film and then gets highly-sophisticated prosthetic limbs. Like, we’re talking RoboCop cybernetics here, folks. This was supposed to be Linday’s big departure from Disney fare, as in the film, she swings around a stripper pole and shows some side-boob during a sex scene. But the dizzying incoherence of the plot makes it virtually impossible to follow. Oddly enough, it turns out that neither twin is killed in the movie, so even the title doesn’t make any damn sense.
Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon (mockumentary)
This one has a fanbase, so I might catch some flack for calling it a pile. Nonetheless, I found myself actively hating this movie, a fake documentary about a slasher named Leslie Vernon. Taking a cue from “Man Bites Dog,” a small film crew actually follows around a sociopath as he goes on a killing spree. It’s more or less another metatexual bit of bullshit that smooshes together “Scream” and “The Blair Witch Project.” “Leslie Vernon” has a few clever moments, like his elation at the discovery that he has his own “Ahab,” a character obsessed with tracking him down. But the film feels more like it’s ticking off a checklist of genre conventions rather than doing anything unique or interesting with them. It also bitches out in its final third when the camera crew grows a conscience and tries to stop Vernon. A predictable bore, the film even telegraphs its final scare, and that sort of defeats the purpose of having one.
Deadgirl (indie)
I caught a midnight of this turd before it went direct-to-video. It’s a deadly dull film about a couple high school losers who find an zombie-like woman chained up in the basement of an abandoned booby hatch. One of the hormone-driven young men decides to have sex with her repeatedly over the course of several days. Horror films generally ask a lot of the viewer in terms of suspension of disbelief, but this is on a whole ‘nother level. The student film production values and rapey characters make this a real endurance test for the viewer. I strongly considered walking out several times. I didn’t because I knew the filmmakers were in attendance and wanted to avoid hurting their feelings. What a dinkus I am.
Diary of the Dead (zombie movie)
George A. Romero limply tries to modernize his zombie allegory for the YouTube generation with the fourth sequel to “Night of the Living Dead.” Apparently, Romero can only get financing for these types of pictures now, but one has to wonder why. He’s lost his touch. “Land of the Dead” was painfully middle-of-the-road, and that flick had a budget. This is a guerilla-style cheapie — and another “Blair Witch” found footage effort — about a group of film students who document the zombie apocalypse. As shambling as the zombies themselves, the movie looks and sounds like an old man who’s still trying to be hip, and that’s pretty much all that can be said about Romero these days.
There you have it, the 10 weakest horror movies of the early-2000s. It looks like 2010 will get off to a strong start with “Daybreakers” and “Legion” in January. But again, I’ve been fooled before.
-Brad Lohan
Dec
18
Holy cats, “Avatar” is dope. What George Lucas couldn’t seem to pull off in three “Star Wars” prequels — world-building adolescent power fantasies — Cameron nails in less than three hours…and in three dimensions! My only gripe is that it took so long to reach theaters; this project was back-burnered by Cameron way, way back in 1994. I’d all but given up on mega-budgeted thrill rides because they lacked the craftsmanship the King of the World brings to the table. There’s no denying the man can dazzle like no other. Oh, he’s overly sentimental and hardly the most nuanced auteur of his generation. But who goes to these kinds of movies for subtlety? This is space fantasy at its god damndest.
So what’s it all about anyway? Well, in the year 2154 our economy is still in the tank, and we evidently don’t have universal health care yet, either. But we’ve conquered space! And on a distant planetoid a bajillion light years from Earth, a mineral deposit worth an ass-load of money sits beneath the holy land of a felinoid race of nine-foot-tall aliens called Na’vi. Corporatists and gung-ho military men wish to relocate the indiginous people, peacefully or otherwise. To their credit, they try a diplomatic solution first. This involves genetically engineering a batch of “avatars” — human/Na’vi hybrids that one can download his consciouness into and have the ultimate out-of-body experience. These avatars will ingratiate themselves with the Na’vi people before politely asking them to move along.
Paralyzed ex-Marine Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) takes the place of his late twin brother in the avatar program. He’s teamed with some leery, peacenik scientists who fully embrace the Na’vi culture. Chain-smoking Dr. Grace Augustine (Sigourney Weaver) in particular receives him coolly. That he’s taking his orders from the ruthless Colonel Quaritch (Stephen Lang) does little to earn anyone’s trust. Meanwhile, Jake is absolutely thrilled to walk again while in his avatar body. But orders are orders, and when he and Na’vi warrior Neytiri “meet cute” after he’s nearly mauled by vicious beasties, he begins gathering intelligence about the “hostiles.” Soon, though, he starts questioning his mission as he finds his place among the Na’vi.
All this culminates with the most ginormous showdown between the hulking military industrial complex and the arrow-slinging blue meanies in a whiz-bang aerial battle that schools every setpiece I’ve seen in the past ten years.
What the trailers for the film don’t do justice to is the film’s scope. The depth and breadth of the film, enhanced by the 3D presentation, is staggering, simply staggering. The moon Pandora is completely alien, a glow-in-the-dark jungle that crawls with all manner of wildlife and even defies gravity in some sectors, where mountainous chunks of rock hang in the sky. My contacts kept drying out because I went so long without blinking while watching this film. I just wanted to drink it all in.
Where I’m often highly critical of CGI in the films, I found the look of the Na’vi, which does take a little getting used to, truly amazing. Neytiri resembles a giant, super-skinny blue version of my cat with her wide-set yellow eyes. Zoe Saldana’s performance shines through the pixels, as the animators really bring computer graphics to the next level. The CGI in this flick works. This is the new standard. Jar Jar Binks can eat me.
“Avatar” is one hell of a popcorn movie. It’s the last enormous sci-fi actioner of the decade, and the aughts certainly are going to go out in style. Welcome back, James Cameron.
-Brad Lohan
Dec
15
Quintessential Quadrilogies | Die Hard
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With Christmas fast-approaching, I feel it’s appropriate to kick off my ongoing quadrilogy series with the four “Die Hard” films, seeing as how movies one and two are set on Christmas Eve. I posted reviews of “Die Hard” and “Die Hard 2: Die Harder” last Christmas, so I’ll eschew a detailed analysis of the first pair of installments. Instead I’ll focus on the latter two, “Die Hard With a Vengeance” and “Live Free or Die Hard.”
“Die Hard With a Vengeance” was released five years after “Die Hard 2.” One emerging pattern I’ve noticed in quadrilogies is that the later chapters aren’t released in as rapid succession as the earlier episodes; there’s a twelve-year gap between “Die Hard With a Vengeance” and “Live Free or Die Hard.” The long stretches of time between installments lessens the fanfare with which each subsequent film is received. Studios are typically loathe to wait more than four years between episodes and nowadays prefer a two-year turnaround.
The third and fourth “Die Hard” sequels are also excellent examples of how studios have a phobia about assigning numerical designations to films when the franchises become long in the tooth. “Die Hard 2″ sounds less ridiculous than “Die Hard 4,” I suppose. At any rate, by the mid-1990s, sequels with numbers in their titles were less and less common. The “Star Trek” films dropped the Roman numerals from their titles once the Next Generation crew became the focal point, and the “Batman” films never bothered numbering their sequels to begin with. These days, if a number is worked into a sequel title, it’s done literally, like in the case of “2 Fast, 2 Furious.” I think “Di3 Hard” looks like dog’s breakfast as does “Die H4rd.”
The unnumbered third and fourth “Die Hard” films jettison many of the key elements of the first two parts. No longer is John McClane (Bruce Willis) confined to a limited arena — a skyscraper or an airport — and is able to move about more freely within his given environment. In movie three, the bulk of the action is set in New York City, and in movie four, the DC-area. McClane’s estranged wife, Holly, is no longer held hostage or in some kind of danger, diminishing McClane’s personal stake in the plot proceedings. However, the fourth movie does put McClane’s estranged daughter Lucy in harm’s way. This is a late development in the plot, though, and comes across as perfunctory. Movies three and four are also set during the summertime rather than on Christmas Eve, like parts one and two, a somewhat inconsequential omission.
“Die Hard With a Vengeance” and “Live Free or Die Hard” introduce a “buddy” element to the franchise with mixed results. McClane has an ally character in all four films, though in the first two, he generally dispatches the terrorists single-handedly. The latter two films team McClane with quirky sidekicks. In “Die Hard With a Vengeance,” McClane’s partnered with Samuel L. Jackson’s the black militant shopkeeper Zeus Carver, and in “Live Free or Die Hard,” he’s paired with Justin Long’s spineless computer hacker Matt Farrell. As the sequels increase in number, so does the sheer impossibility of the feats of derring-do that McClane performs. The sidekicks function as “audience identification” characters, since McClane is nearly invincible and less empathetic. Throughout the proceedings, the sidekicks both absorb quite a bit of punishment, not unlike McClane in the first movie. As such, they draw attention to how McClane has evolved from a vulnerable everyman to an unstoppable killing machine.
Movies three and four in effect undermine the first two films, another symptom of a quadrilogy I’ve found. In “Die Hard With a Vengeance,” McClane is once again separated from Holly and on suspension from his duties as a New York City policeman. It’s never thoroughly explained how or why their marriage is in trouble, but it does diminish McClane’s character arc in the first film. Also, we see in the second movie that he and his wife are still very much in love a full year after the events of the original “Die Hard.” Returning McClane to New York and driving another wedge between him and his wife weakens him as a character. It’s also openly suggested in the third film that McClane has become an alcoholic, but this is never more than superficially addressed in the narrative. At the end of movie three, McClane resolves to call his wife and presumably patch up their relationship. However, it’s established in movie four that he and his wife have since divorced.
So how does “Die Hard” measure up as a quadrilogy? Well, it’s an uneven series at best. The first and second sequels have their apologists. I enjoy them both but still acknowledge that neither measures up to the original. “Live Free or Die Hard” arrived so late, it almost feels like a completely different type of film; its PG-13 rating contributes to this significantly. That said, the fourth movie is easily the weakest. I’m going to make it my mission to find a fourth film in my ongoing quadrilogy series that is actually better than the second or third. But as far as the “Die Hard” series goes, the diminishing returns become more and more apparent with each subsequent installment.
-Brad Lohan