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« June 2007 |
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| August 2007 »
Let's face it, Stan Lee is a complete moron. Gary Conway is a complete moron. Conway actually went on record to say that Dolph Lundgren as a The Punisher was a bad choice. Why is Conway a moron? Because his creation is nothing more than a lame ass version of Death Wish, which needs someone like Lundgren (Or better yet Bronson) to actually fill the role convincingly. (See Thomas Jane. Ugh) and he' s just a standard viglante except the hero in question wears a stupid uniform that looks incredibly gay. (Ooh a skull, looks more like a guy trying to fit in at the local leather bar than anything else.) Stan Lee is of course a moron because he has for some reason found it necessary to include himself in a cameo in almost every single comicbook adaptation ever. Can we say ego?
Thankfully The Punisher starring Dolph Lundgren is Stan Lee cameo free. Also thankfully it has little to do with the horrendous comic that spawned it. Ooh he's a vigilante in a skull t-shirt who shoots people. The Punisher comic itself is a rip off of Death Wish, except where as Death Wish was cool and for people who actually live outside mom's basement, The Punisher comic was for acne infested morons who's closest action ever gotten from a woman, is the time the female cashier told him to have a nice day. Thankfully the movie starring Dolph Lundgren, is for cool people as well, in that it is nothing more than Dolph Lundgren dressed in black killing Japanese and Italian mobsters. How much action is there? So much that for 92 minutes at least 5 people are killed a minute in this bone crushing classic.
Lundgren plays an ex-cop who then turns vigilante. Louis Gossett Jr is his old partner who believe Lundgren is indeed The Punisher. Despite the obvious fact that Dolph Lundgren is 6'5 and is pretty hard to miss, although somehow the bad guys have an even harder time missing him when they shoot at him. It's all a straight forward 80s actioner and the perfect example of a comicbook movie. In that things are violent, children are smacked (And are almost sold into slavery), nannies are shot, people are tortured and Lundgren stabs a lot of people.
Now this movie divided its audience (And it did too, because the only people who don't like it are basement geeks still hoping that their 39th birthday will lead to their first kiss that they don't have to pay for.) and I don't understand why, this movie is nothing but simple action with no pretense at anything else. It's Dolph Lundgren at his best and it contains very good action. (People who say the action is bad, are people who lie.) Now of course there are those who like both the comic and this movie, and indeed it's easy to tell who, because you can smell the scent of a woman nearby, however for someone like me who actually spent their teenage youth kicking ass in the ring and getting pussy, this is the perfect adaptation of a comicbook because I have no idea what it gets right or wrong with the comic nor do I care. Please note that i'm not afraid of you fanboys, i'm not the 110 pound girl that you stalk on regular intervals, I will kick your ass if I notice you following me and I will run you down with my truck if you start chucking your action figures at me while i'm driving.
Hell even Dolph Lundgren's biggest detractor Part Time Ninja loves this movie, because Dolph shows his ass (Think Van Damn!) not once but twice, indeed the people watching this movie with PTN at the time, felt the room get a little hotter after that scene. Me on other hand, i'll pass, I'll stick to Van Damme when it comes to gratuitous nudity. It's just kinkier that way.
On the other hand when it comes to non-stop action, Dolph Lundgren actually giving a good performance and watching Louis Gossett Jr and Jeroen Krabbe (The guy who was in a real James Bond movie with the real James Bond, Timothy Dalton) treat this thing like Shakespeare, and if you really love a movie where everybody sooner or later gets a boot to the head. Seriously, i've yet to see a movie where more people face head trauma due to people wacking each other.(Although more wacking was probably going on at PTN's house) Then The Punisher is indeed not only a must for Bad Movie Knights, but a must for anyone as well.
Oh and avoid the remake, this version featured a complete pussy in the role, seriously Roger Moore was more masculine than Thomas Jane, and while in that movie there is thankfully no cameo from Stan Lee, there is unfortunately John Travolta and Rebecca Romijn and that's just no damn good.
Once again, the winning math formula for this classic is, 92 minutes of pure ass kicking bliss+Dolph Lundgren+Louis Gossett Jr.+Jeroen Krabbe+Tons of kids getting beaten up+Ninjas+Van Damn!+Fast pace -Stan Lee cameo=A great way to spend 90 minutes in front of the boob tube. Need I say more.
Hamlin Grade: 8
Ryan
-Board certified professional safety dancer
 No Woman will ever be the President of the United States.
Your initial reaction to my first statement ever on Bad Movie Knights would of course be one of shock and you might respond with "Bill you sexist bastard!" To which I would immediately retort "Refer to me as Mr. Shatner you fucking worthless peasant or I will have your insignificant life snuffed out before you can say Captain's Log."
Now back to the truth behind my bold declaration. While it is easy for many of you, women and men alike to see me as nothing more than ignorant, and perhaps short sighted, you must clear your eyes of the anger, and empty your heads that are currently packed with shit.
Fact: Women hate women. Don't deny it ladies. True, many of you can pretend to get along, even for long periods of time, but these uneasy peace treaties are broken time and time again. Why? Because of the vagina. Yes. The Vagina.
True, the vagina is a fleshy oasis that has brought me years of unbridled pleasure, but at it's core, it is a beacon of evil. This evil pervades and controls your very being, thus being in possession of said vagina transforms it's carrier into a vessel of hate. The Vagina is also not unlike an evil magnet. Put two magnets up against one another and what occurs. They repel. Put to vaginas up against one another and what do you get? An outstanding scenario if it happens to occur within the comfort of my harp seal skin sheets.... but in every other instance..... anger, fear, oppression.... the vagina are these.
That being said, back to my point. No woman will never be the President of the United States.
Why? Because of women. Sure some women will vote for a female candidate, but even those in support will feel disdain for doing so. Most women will have a similiar reaction.... "Who does that bitch think she is?!" or "Look at her hair, I couldn't vote for that!" or "No woman is gonna tell me what to do!".... the list of reasons will continue on and on, but all carry a familiar ring. Any campaign in support of a female candidate will be like attempting to rescue the Kobayashi Maru.
There will undoubtedly be more men than women voting for a female candidate. True there is a large contingent of men in the United States who exhibit an unparallelled brand sexism, but in California and New York their are men willing to support and cast their vote for a woman. We call them fags (in Montreal they are referred to as French).
All one needs do is some simple math. More than half the country is female..... so the woman has already lost. Your loss however is my vagina..... I mean our gain.
Sweet Bill
I must admit that I was never a huge fan of Transformers growing up. Sure I had a few toys and stuff but I was more into the Ninja Turtles as a kid (Cause I was 8 in 1989 and I was only 4 when this came out.) That being said Transformers:The Movie is a movie brought to life to sell toys and thankfully provide adults with the bad movie fun of seeing such stars as Eric Idle, Leonard Nimoy, Robert Stack and (especially) Orson Welles slum for an easy paycheck. I would normally say Judd Nelson also but because this movie is one of his few high points in his filmography (and seriously did anyone here (even at Bad Movie Knights and Twisted Edge) watch Conflict Of Interest, Cabin By The Lake, Blue City and Blindfold Acts of Obsession? I thought not. And yes I did.) So with such star power the greatest thing ever took place. We got the greatest movie ever inspired by a toyline. (Seriously Masters Of The Universe sucked hard even if it had contained brilliant (bad) acting from Dolph Lundgren, Frank Langella, Meg Foster and (worse of all) Courteney Cox) G.I Joe: The Movie was utterly unwatchable and the Ninja Turtles were originally based on a comicbook which is why the first movie is actually pretty decent. So with that all said and done Transformers:The Movie is the best movie to ever be based on a toyline.
However Transformers:The Movie may perhaps be the worst movie to ever get a 20th aniversary edition. I mean seriously, did we need something in big letters saying that this was the 20th aniversary edition, especially when the movie is about stupid ass cars turning into stupid ass robots and dinosaurs. I mean wouldn't a DVD release be enough? Guess not.
Describing the plot of this movie is nearly impossible because I for one couldn't connect with who was who and follow the logic of what was going on. However it's about a society of morphing machines who are at war. There are autobots and deceptabots (Spelling? Ah, who gives a shit?) For reasons unknown, so Unicrom (Voiced by Citizen Kane himself) a powerful robots who destorys planets for reasons unknown wages war and only the matrix can stop him. Actually the matrix is never explained (Kinda like The Matrix movie.) but apparently it's a blue light that gives the right transmorpher the power to destroy evil. Once again as some one indifferent to the Transformer series, this is embarrassingly awful writing. Even for a children cartoon.
However there are some classic moments, For instance Casey Kasem's voiced robot says "Shit!" when Unicrom (Voiced by Orson Welles, I still can't believe it.) captures him. Judd Nelson talks constant gibberish, you think he's the main hero of the movie but then he disappears so long and does nothing all that heroic or for that breaks a sweat in combat. Indeed what this movie needed was a training montage, mainly so we would know who the hero was and would sense that he really needed to whip his ass in shape for the overwhelming odds against him. I mean seriously he even had Stan Bush on the soundtrack (Stan Bush who would later go on to do the work that people thousands of years from now will remember him for, his work on the Kickboxer and Bloodsport soundtracks that made Jean-Claude Van Damme's muscled torso a cultural phenomenon and not Jeff Fahey.) So where's the training montage?
The animation is well done, even if the story makes little logical or dramatic sense on any levels. There are some nice shots that would put anime to shame (Not that it doesn't already, since Anime is for losers who don't understand that they're missing life's parade, in that they could be watching movies with Jean-Claude Van Damme.) However some of the colors are nifty, the voices rarely match the machine's lips (?) and therefore this is a must see to watch high on mushrooms or drunk off your ass. Ooooh the colors!
Transformers:The Movie is the pinnacle of bad movie knight magic. The type of movie that kids should like today, instead of all the wussed out Spongebob Squarepants bullcrap. Whatever happened to watching and enjoying ridiculous violent entertainment? Stupid ass kids, you're a far cry from the greatness that us kids were and that goes double for the entertainment that we availed ourselves into. How did we go from asskicking turtles and asskicking machines to a sponge that lives under a pineapple who is a complete retard? What's next a TV show about how to be a hopeless nerd who takes his wedgies with dignity? Seriously us kids would've totally kicked the asses of today's children. I mean we all had ADD and aggression. An aggression that wouldn't be relieved until we witnessed violent mass destruction.
Of course like Stan Bush we went onto better things (Jean-Claude Van Damme movies of course) but I'd like to think that movies like Transformers were our training montage for bigger and better things.
So go out and get emerge yourself into the glory days of when kids entertainment was silly, cheesy and violent, the way it used to be and should be. I think as generations come and go, I'll be telling my grandkids about the way it used to be. Before Al Sharpton and Nancy Grace made this country into the worthless society devoid of what has entertained us since the caveman days. And if you choose not to see Transformers:The Movie, just know that you're letting the terrorists win. And do you really want to take a chance on a society run by Nancy Grace?
I'll let you make the final decision on that.
Hamlin Grade: 8.5
Ryan
-Board certified professional safety dancer
American Outlaws is the worst way to spend 90 minutes. Timothy Dalton is at a low and even worse is that dumbass Colin Farrell is in it. (This is why PTN has no credibility, he gives Dolph a hard time, but next to Farrell, Dolph is the next coming of Marlon Brando.) However American Outlaws is worse than Colin Farrell himself.
It's also worse than Young Guns. Worse than Young Guns II. Worse than Rosie O'Donnell in Exit To Eden. Worse than the Tonya Harding sex tape. Worse than England.
The only two things that this movie isn't worse than is Batman and Robin and Carlos Mencia's stand up or TV show. That says it all.
You've been warned.
Hamlin Grade:
Ryan
-Board certified professional safety dancer
Ah yes, the first sequel to Nightmare On Elm Street, a movie that contains tons of gore, bad acting, things that happen for no logical reason (A bird who flies in the room and explodes) and a cast that includes special appearances by Hope Lange and Clu Gulager. The former was in the best vigilante movie ever made (Death Wish, and damn you Part Time Ninja for not having Charles Bronson on the top ten coolest celebs, I mean he didn't even make an honorable mention but Colin Farrell sure did. Just gay to the tenth power.) and Gulager was in the best zombie movie ever made (Return Of The Living Dead, and nobody shall sway from this stand.) This doesn't sound like much but I neglected the ultimate best part of Nightmare On Elm Street 2- Freddy's Revenge. The homoeroticism.
Of course many people might think this can't be, and as much as I'd like to claim responsbility for coming up with this observation, i'm not. Several reviewers have had their eyebrows raised by the overt and completely obvious homoeroticism. Hell even my DVD guide ( I forget if it was 2 or 3) said "Often referred to as the gay one" Indeed. This isn't Freddy Krueger killing people, this is a metaphor about one teenager's fight against a homosexuality he can't fight or supress. Indeed when reading the tagline, i'm surprised it wasn't "Hiding in the closet won't save you!" To add further proof the star of this now performs on Broadway, which basically speaks for itself.
Anyway before I get into the obvious gayness of this movie, let me explain what the movie is about. Freddy Krueger has posessed Jesse, a kid in town who has moved on elm street. However suddenly Jesse is blacking out and all of a sudden he feels Freddy's force inside him (Pun intended) this leads to him killing lots of people and at the end it's only the love of his girlfriend that can save him from Freddy's wrath.
By the way, Freddy is more of a symbol, symbol for gayness that is. One night Jesse wakes up and decides to head down to the local gay bar. (I'm not even making this up.) he then meets his phy ed teacher (Who they have it wrong, since male gym teachers are never gay, only female gym teachers.) and his gym teacher brings him back to the school (Which is weird cause it's late at night and technically he isn't on school grounds) and is forced to run around the track. Not able to suppress the desire for a better work out, the gym teacher is tied to the walls (In the shower no less!) and "Freddy" makes sure to wack the gym teacher in the ass, before slicing him up. Before Jesse is even posessed he gets into a fight with his soon to be best friend, and in the heat of battle pants are pulled down. I myself have been in many fights but i've yet to ever lose my pants during the heat of battle. Of course what this all means, is that Jesse doesn't feel complete until he pulls down another man's pants.
Nothing however is more telling then in the scenes where Jesse tries to embrace heterosexuality. Seems there is a girl (a cute red head that was in Hellrasier:Bloodline) and when he tries to make out with her and eat her pussy, seems "Freddy" won't let him get it on with her. He tries to caress her but Freddy's tounge blocks him for kissing her, he tries to touch her breasts but Freddy starts making Jesse look freakish. It goes on and suffice to say Jesse never gets it on with the redhead chick in this movie.
There is of course the sequence where Jesse dances to Cathy Dennis' Touch Me (a supergay techno song) and his mom and beard, I mean girlfriend walks in on him. Of course even more telling is how the ending is implied, it has a set up for a sequel (One which would follow the Quickening appraoch) and the ending finds that the love of a good woman conquered Jesse's gayness, it's telling that at the end the bus in which Jesse and his red head girlfriend are on is attacked by Freddy. Implying that sooner or later, Freddy's gonna get you. Most likely up the ass if we are too understand what we have just witnessed.
Other things that were just peachy, was the part where Freddy starts killing people left and right at the pool. How the pool starts heating up for no reason, how teenagers offer Freddy a beer and of course the way people are just randomly killed. This movie isn't just a Nightmare On Elm Street sequel, a movie with tons of gore and a movie too ridiculous to take seriously. This movie is obvious symbolism. None too subtle symbolism.
So just keep one thing in mind, it's hard to escape from Freddy's wrath. You can try coffee, you can try staying up, you can try dream supressors, you can try pills that make you able to fight back, just remember what we learned from this series that sooner or later Freddy is gonna get you. And hiding in the closet won't save you.
Hamlin Grade: 6
Ryan
-Board certified professional safety dancer
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