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Aquarium of the Dead

Well now. Now then now then then now then then now then.

What to say about this? First, it’s from Asylum pictures. So far we’ve 3 deths in 20 minutes, 2 by Zombie Octopus, 1 by Zombie Dolphin. But some Zombie Seals have just shattered their tank, so I’m expecting more silliness any second.

However…this film is wussing out. All deths off-screen, probably due to heavy use of Really Bad CGI.

Lawks this is a poor, poor effort. But I’m gonna stick it out. The budget might well have been 2 ha’penny’s, a still wrapped spangle and some bellybutton fluff, but they must’ve spent it somewhere.

And remember folks. The “so bad it’s good” horror trope only works when, however incompetently, the makers genuinely tried to get it right, the camp and silly brilliance being a by-product.

I don’t know. The Sharknado movies were pretty funny, and they were doing it “on purpose” from the second film on. The third is the best in the series, and that’s also when they most embraced the cartoonish ridiculousness.

I firmly disagree. I want earnestly bad horror. Not “we actively tried to make an awful film, do I win £5?”.

Troma are a notable exception. They produce incredibly campy films, but put solid effort into doing so.

Snow White and the Huntsman

The answe to: what if Snow White was a Lord of the Rings designed by Guillermo Del Toro?

This film has a bad reputation the same way Krull and Willow have bad reputations. But to me it worked in the same way those worked. There was no weapon as cool as the glaive, and the cast didn’t have the same charisma as Willow’s cast, but the film still featured scores of well-costumed fantasy types battling across beautiful locations and physical sets to decently exciting music. The story was pretty basic: an “epic fantasy” built on the bones of a fairy tale, with equal parts success and kludgyness. There were some dazzling fantasy encounters, monsters and magic, and a wardrobe department doing a lot of heavy lifting. You can see the budget on the screen. Unfortunately the only above average performance was by Charlize Theron, clearly having a blast as the villain.

If you long to see a throw-back fantasy movie full of real people on real sets with some inventive fantasy elements, give this a watch. If you want a sharp script and top notch acting, maybe give it a pass.

I love me some bad movies, but even I can not stomach things made by The Asylum.

They lack a certain sense of..... something..... that makes a bad film watchable.

There’s just no soul to them. The gag is always “hurr hurr cheap and nasty, we am the clevurs”.

They forget to insert any charm whatsoever. Even when a genuine effort becomes a bad film, there’s usually something of the original effort emerging from the muck. But Asylum are just making crap films with no effort.

Yeah, Asylum films cogver a quite wide range. But the times of Transmorphers or Sherlock Holmes are long past and what i saw thereafter was bascially "people in unniforms walking through forests until the CGI dinosaur walks by". It's just not entertaining.

Also, I think several other companies emerged which tried the same stuff (not necessarily mockbusters, but mainly D-grade action creature features).


Then there are the streaming services, which I think cost these smaller trash studios a lot of money by making huge-budget trash films.

So I watched a Netflix film!


You People (2023)


Jonah Hill works in finance, but dreams of running a podcast (about "the culture"), which makes him a complete git. He falls in love with Lauren London, who works in fashion. The thing is though - he's white and Jewish, she's black and from a Muslim family! Whoopsie-daisy! They decide to marry, they Meet the Parents. Julia Lewis-Dreyfus (pretty bad writing at times, but of course executed very well) and David Duchovny (very funny) on the one side, Nia Long (there, keeps up) and Eddie Murphy (excellent) on the other.

This is a romantic comedy. The comedy is mostly very predictable and sitcom-like at times. The romance part is dealt with pretty swiftly, so we can get to the meat of the matter: calling up buzzwords, showing people unwittingly say racist things, "awkward" and "cringey". This film reduces what should be people to roles, based on their clearly labelled 'identities'. They snap at certain buzzwords, they are oblivious to other buzzwords the other people are supposed to react to and so on.

The cast is pretty impressive, the dialogue is grating at times, sometimes there's an amusing line, there are NO realizations, NO actual debates or ideas, in the end the parents apologize to their kids and they marry and live happily for ever after. Could have been interesting, but came out as the usual Netflix ware: a bit uneven, a bit too long, cast too good for the material, probably too expensive, yelling all the "current affair buzzwords" at us whilst having nothing to say. But hey, we got the subscription, so the film is kinda free, right? Can't expect anything for that but a very lukewarm experience. And in the end - that's what we actually want, right.

I'm not mad at the film; it's kinda endearing at times and there are a few funny lines, but the system behind it and the meaninglessness of it whilst trying to appear to touch on issues is annoying. This is about as deep as A Catherine Heigl/Gerard Butler film from 15 years ago, but people wear worse shoes.

Pass.

Yeah, but some people who were cool, but aren't that cool right now got some work so...... it all works out in the end.... somehow?

Odd thought. I guess, but probably not that odd.

Smellyvision and Tasteovision don’t do an exist, though that’s not to say it’s not been tried for certain screenings of mostly horror films to my knowledge.

But here I am, 43 years old, listening to The Imperial March on YouTube. And in its own way, my mind as well as recalling the scenes it’s pertinent to, has cast itself back to family Christmases in the early to mid 80’s, when UK TV channels would air Star Wars movies, and all the sensations associated, from the main meal to grandad’s attempt at stuffing (sadly not so good) and his trifles (amazing and unbeaten), to Gran and Grandad’s Labrador choosing to settle down with us kids for cuddles as we watched the movies and other offerings.

Sorry. Tangent is tangential.

 Easy E wrote:
Yeah, but some people who were cool, but aren't that cool right now got some work so...... it all works out in the end.... somehow?

I'm all for good actors getting work and getting paid and all of that, but the films that come out of that very often seem to be so incredibly meh whilst pretending to be topical and "now".

Syriana (2005)

One of those movies that I return to every few years.

Absolutely stacked cast (George Clooney, Matt Damon and Jeffrey Wright as mains and a ton notables in minor roles) and a compelling, complex yet easy to piece together and follow along story (technically like 5 concurrent linked stories) make this movie one of my favorites. Its got family drama, espionage, terrorism, political and corporate greed all wrapped up in a tight hour and a half.

Superior to Academy Award winning Traffic by the same screenwriter in my opinion.

 nels1031 wrote:
...
Superior to Academy Award winning Traffic by the same screenwriter in my opinion.

Wow. Maybe I should give this one another try then. Pretty sure i've never fully seen it.

I'm watching Magical Mystery right now. The film about wacky Berlinnian Techno people go for a tour during the mid-90s "to recharge their souls" because they feel like their genre has lost its soul and got too commercial. They can afford it because they run an EDM record label and make money hand over fist, and also wanna use the tour through Germany to promote their label and new releases. Their driver and "handler" is Karl Schmidt, who used to be with their clique, but suffered from psychosis due to drugs or something else. Based on a book by Sven Regener of course, and it's just a nice, light, fun ride with melancholic undertones and Germans. I wrote about it before.

I'm half-way through the new Netflix film "Heart of Stone". I don't usually stop half-way through, but I started pretty late and had to get up for work in the morning, so I'll watch the rest later.

So far, it's flashy, highlights why Gal Gadot might be easy on the eyes but is not a good actor (her line delivery is either flat or awkward), and the overreliance on nonsense hologram technology makes some of the scenes really silly (especially when you realise it's just a German guy in a room waving his arms around and they added all the stuff afterwards).

 Easy E wrote:
I love me some bad movies, but even I can not stomach things made by The Asylum.

I've only seen one. Death Racers. It was... something else.

You have to watch it with a group of friends who know what they're getting into.

 Sigur wrote:
... and they marry and live happily for ever after.

After having a very awkward CGI kiss at their wedding.

Just watched Avatar the wet one. My god it’s loooooooong. It’s kinda like a mixture between a hallmark film of self discovery and a natural history documentary about space whales.

The set pieces were definitely cool, but the teenage angst in between was a bit cringey.

We started Tremors: the Series. So far it’s a monster of the week show with some continuity, similar to Stargate SG1. It’s pretty fun, but we’re watching on Tubi and the image quality gets funky sometimes.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Whoops, that was a mini TV review. For movies:

Legend (Director’s Cut)

A classic from a time when fantasy movies were weird and gross and uncomfortable. I never really felt connected to any of the characters, except maybe Tim Curry’s Darkness, but the weirdness was compelling. The music was weird and uncomfortable. Even the casting—the ones who aren’t covered with slimy prosthetics are the ones with the creepiest faces. Great special effects and set design. If you liked Labyrinth but didn’t find the goblin king sexually disturbing enough, this is your movie.


Black Angel

This was a short film made to play before Empire Strikes Back in UK theaters. It inspired the look of Excalibur. It’s…really slow.

You can find it here on YouTube with an introduction by the director. I recommend it for that early 80’s adult-oriented fantasy mood.

Heart of Stone - Holograms/10

So I finished watching this uber-expensive globetrotting new Netflix film, starring wooden-as-a-post-and-lacking-range-but-damned-easy-on-the-eyes-Gal Gadot.

And it was... predictable as feth.

So there's a super-duper secret spy organisation ("The Charter") that answers to no one and damn-near worship "The Heart", which is this AI/statistical engine that can calculate probability in perfect real time and project vision of anything everywhere all-over the world like the every air molecule is a spy-camera. And these are the good guys - basically like Rogue Nation, except not evil but good - basically doing all the gak that the real intelligence agencies can't.

So our main character, Rachel Stone (Gadot) is undercover as a tech-geek (LOL!) in an MI6 team, who I quite liked, but she has to rescue them and maintain her cover. She has special augmented reality contact lenses that give her wall-hacks and other bs.

And someone is out to steal the Heart for themselves to make some rich guy pay and there are double crosses and betrayals and, for some reason, Glenn Close. I guess she lost a bet or something.

Anyway, of you start watching this film and immediately think "That character is going to betray her!", you'll be right!

Everything about this film - the super secure "heart" of their operation getting attacked, the leader standing Gal's character down for her being a loose cannon, the realisation that the main bad guy's motives may not be in line with the other bad guy's goals - is super predictable. I'm convinced this was written by AI based on rejected Mission Impossible scripts.

The action is fine, and far more realistic than a lot of movies (when tiny women take on big hulking men, they get thrown the feth around, and have to fight smarter, not harder) but the big stunts are silly and too fake looking. It's like someone trying to imitate a M:I film with none of the skill, quality or authenticity.

And my God the holograms. This film has a major hardon for interactive mass-scale holograms. Like they watched the first two Iron Man films and went "Let's just do more of that!". I feel sorry for the poor German guy who acts as Gal's "man in the chair", because more often than not he doesn't have a chair, but a big empty room where he waves his arms around and animators then go and add endlessly complicated holograms to make it look like he's doing something.

That character is also also saddled with all the worst dialogue, over explaining everything we see, and when the Heart goes down, he tells us that it's gone down in the most obvious way. At one point he even says "Don't worry, the heart is over Africa! It's completely secure!" which is a terrible example of really obvious foreshadowing. Poor guy. What a thankless role.

Ahh. Red Notice was better than this.

If you've gone nothing to do, and don't want to watch something you've already seen, then maybe... go outside instead. This one isn't worth the time.

Transformers, Rise of the Beasts

A very solid entry in normally rubbish film series. Clear fight scenes and dialogue, very cool character design. Unicron looks amazing.

Perfectly enjoyable movie and I look forward to more.

Dungeons and Dragons, Honour Among Thieves

Only just put this on, but as a PSA this film, or rather Prime, came super, super close to getting up my nose.

See, it’s been available to purchase for £13.99 for a while, but I’d resisted. Tonight however couple of the boys came over for a movie night. And it was a choice between this, and Rise of the Beasts.

Thankfully, i went with Rise of the Beasts. Because, whilst there’s not a hint of it on the Prime front page, or Paramount+ “newly added” section? About halfway through Rise of the Beasts, FB threw up a post….”Dungeons and Dragons, Honour Among Thieves now on Paramount+”.

I came so, so close to objectively wasting £13.99.

Not cool, douchebags. Not cool at all.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
... FB threw up a post….”Dungeons and Dragons, Honour Among Thieves now on Paramount+”.

*checks*

Still ain't up in Oz...

Finally got around to watching Black Adam.

Can't help feeling it would have been a more enjoyable movie without Black Adam in it. Loved the Justice Society. The story overall was ok, if more than a little formulaic. But it has the same problem as the Justice League, in that the plot revolves around everyone else largely just waiting for the least interesting character to arrive and save the day.

I would pay cash money for more Hawkman and Doctor Fate, however.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

Dungeons and Dragons, Honour Among Thieves

Started watching this last night. Abandoned after 20 minutes when I realised I could be doing something interesting instead. I'll give it another attempt tonight.

 Henry wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

Dungeons and Dragons, Honour Among Thieves

Started watching this last night. Abandoned after 20 minutes when I realised I could be doing something interesting instead. I'll give it another attempt tonight.

Nothing interesting to do tonight?

I really enjoyed D&D.

Enough “nod and wink” to the little I know about the game system to tickle my pickle, but other than that? You don’t need any knowledge other than “it’s a fantasy setting” to enjoy.

Solid cast, decent comedy, good chemistry. Some of the effects (Halfling effects) are a bit dodgy, but fleeting enough to be of little overall concern.

 Sigur wrote:

Nothing interesting to do tonight?

I asked for that, didn't I.

I found time to have D&D on in the background and I found the second half was more impressive than the first and overall agree with what MDG says above.

Hugh Grant has played excellent bad guys before (Paddington) and I feel he may have over hammed it a bit on this one. I also don't understand how anyone in the stadium was supposed to see any of the games with those big walls going up and down.

Michelle Rodriguez is excellent, pulling off the powerful woman part very convincingly. The choreographer for her character's two individual fight scenes did terrific work showing off the physique of the stunt actors and exploiting the scenery. My only laugh out loud moment of the film was in one of these fights and it was at that point I had to grudgingly admit I was enjoying myself. Plus Michelle keeps her reputation for...

Sorry to get political, but it’s not just me, and Hugh Grant was indeed channeling Boris Johnson in that role?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Rawhead Rex

Well. This was a trip! Nice bit of Clive Barker, but not done all that well effects wise.

But hey. Some good gore, and some pleasingly pagan messages.

It’s a bold, if not overall competent, offering.

Asteroid City.
I missed this at the theatre & got a chance to see it on Amazon last night.
I love it's visual style.
Other than that? It's somewhat entertaining, features a lot of well known people, & is just.... odd. Not really good, not really bad, just kinda odd.

So a typical Wes Anderson movie. If you've seen other stuff he's done then you know exactly what I'm talking about.

Dune (1984)
I went back to rewatch this as I don't really remember it from the first time and man, it's just not good. Like, the soundtrack is neat but what a mess.

Also, the Harkonnen's unifying trait is they're all gingers. Why?

 Gert wrote:
Also, the Harkonnen's unifying trait is they're all gingers. Why?

Don't you know that gingers are evil? As the saying goes, better dead than a redhead.

Bad Times at the El Royale

A very QT-esque flick, in an era where QT-esque flicks aren't the norm anymore. 5 strangers; a vacuum salesperson, a Black singer, an aged Priest, and a Hippie woman a show up at an; isolated motel on the CA/Nevada line in the mid-60's. They all have their own stories and motivations, and it all eventually intertwines in a big set-piece at the end.

Interesting movie.... but you kind of know how it is going to end. The joy is letting it all unfold to see how it all weaves together. Like looking at a good quilt. There are some really strong moments and scenes, and Jeff Bridges kills it.

Guns Akimbo

A post-Potter Radcliffe enjoys starring in some low-rent action movie fare. This movie has Music Video editing vibes at the beginning, but it mellows out a bit as it goes on.

The premise is this guy is an online troll, who eventually pisses off the wrong people. They bolt pistols to his hands and then is placed in a city-wide death match with a psycho woman. Hijinks and antics ensue. They really like to play up the fact that it is really hard to do things with guns for hands.

Taken

Liam Neeson is very bad ass. Interesting enough plot, decent action scenes. Hokey in places, but not massively daft.

Taken 2

Liam Neeson is markedly less badass, and whilst Maggie Grace impresses, it’s got a bad, bad case of Sequelitis.

Taken 3

No not really. Seen it before and it’s even worserer than Taken 2. PSYCHE!

Taken 3 was abysmal. I've mentioned how it was so bad my brain made me forget it, to the point where it took me sitting down to watch it to remember that I'd seen it already.

But the whole "Umm... let's make the stepfather evil, I guess?" angle was so awful. And replacing Xander Berkerley with Dougray Scott didn't help.