Film is Pwn

The Asylum presents The Terminators, and a part of me deplores their most legally untenable title yet, I have to admire their audacity in taking a similar them to a popular franchise and attempting to circumvent the copyright laws by simply making the title plural.  These are the plucky plagiarizers who were sued by the makers of “The Day The Earth Stood Still” for their movie “The Day The Earth Stopped,” and won, so I’m guessing they’re feeling lucky.  One wonders the next endeavor from the Asylum will feature a cloned British spy, who will be known as “James Bonds.”

Up front I want to say I had an absolute blast watching the Terminators with Tom last night, and for fun/bad movie lovers I highly recommend it.  Now without further ado, on to dissecting the absurdity:

The basic premise is that mankind has an army of androids performing various tasks and oddjobs around the country.  The robots revolt in unison around the country and begin uniformly attempting to kill every human being they can, by either pulling out various organs, impaling them with punches, or just shooting them with a gun.  Sadly the robots (cheekily dubbed “TR4s”) are mute throughout, which leaves one to imagine the horrible puns that could have been written for them (“I’ll come back!” “Come with with me if you want to live . . .just kidding!” *blam!*). (more…)

No time for a full-fledged blog on the subject tonight, as I must get some sleep and go to work in the morning, but I wanted to throw up a post to say that Tom and I just gathered to witness the brand new Asylum Studios, totally, 100% original movie, The Terminators (the “s” stands for you can’t sue!).  Staggeringly, on this, the first afternoon The Terminators was released, the first Blockbuster I went to had their lone copy already checked out, before 5 pm, so I had to drive to another Blockbuster to acquire the evening’s entertainment.  We had a blast, and if you’re into fun/bad movies, I highly recommend it. There’s a video podcast forthcoming that we just recorded, and I’ll do a full-length blog in a day or two.

Disclaimer: This entire blog is going to be one enormous spoiler, so if you have been intending to see the Morgan Freeman-Ashley Judd thriller High Crimes for the last seven years and just haven’t gotten around to it due to an unparalleled series of prior commitments, I suggest you go no further.  Actually, on second thought, I suggest you keep reading because it’s better to spend the next few minutes reading this article than wasting two hours actually enduring this lackluster yawner like I just did.

High Crimes is one of those murky, mystery-suspense-thriller flicks that you just know there’s GOT to be a twist ending, and that makes determining the shocking conclusion excessively easy to guess simply because there’s only one option that would be at all surprising.  The movie features Ashley Judd defending her husband Jim Caviezel of murder charges with all the zeal she would later defend wolves right to destroy caribou, and the twist is — despite the whole movie looking like the husband is being railroaded and framed – he’s *gasp!* guilty after all.
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I caught the new Russell Crowe political thriller State of Play in theaters this week, and I enjoyed it immensely.  State of Play is the kind of thriller with requisite twists and turns and intrigue a plenty.  In the final analysis, I thought there was one plot twists too many, and there is a dramatic showdown that really felt like it belonged to the smart, sophisticated film I’d just seen, but they are forgivable faults in the final analysis. (more…)

As we gear up for the release of The TerminatorS in a matter of days, today I’m blogging on The Asylum’s answer to the Pirates of the Caribbean sequels in ‘06 and ‘07, a very, very, very loose adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s all-time classic novel “Treasure Island” dubbed: Pirates of Treasure Island.

A lot of liberties have been taken with the literary classic, most notably the addition of giant bugs.  Giant, poorly animated, mutant insects inhabit Treasure Island, and in the film’s prologue we see how Long John Silver (Lance Henriksen, yes, THAT Lance Henriksen) loses his leg to a huge bug.  Flippin’ awesome.

In this movie, Jim Hawkins (Tom Nagel) is a 20-something tavern owner, whose “most pleasantly positioned grog shop” looks to have been decorated as a kindergarten class project.  The most authentically 1800s artifact is a miniature, hand-painted American flag with 13 stars that looks as though it belongs on Mom’s fridge with a “C+ – Good effort, Susie!  You’re getting better!” emblazoned above it. (more…)

I am totally, 110% stoked about The Terminators, for real.  This is the latest from the Asylum, the low budget movie studio that produces similarly titled and themed movie to big budget movies, like releasing “Transmorphers” adjacent to “Transformers,” or like producing a soda titled “Dr. Thunder” that tastes kinda like “Dr. Pepper.  The Terminators will be released on Tuesday, April 28th, and the unofficial release party is at my house.  To get your blood going like mine is, please enjoy the trailer: (more…)

I can’t believe I actually watched this movie without the Rifftrax; how I wished I’d waited!  Read my blog on the movie here, continue on for a free sample of the guys from MST3K riffing on the teen hearthrob with immortal bloodlust and angst:
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Jim Carrey’s Yes Man a funny comedy, the sort of starring vehicle for Carrey that he was cranking out when he broke out in the mid-90s: Material that utilizes his rubber face, manic energy, and man-child charm.  I criticized the premise when it initially appeared as being a remake of Carrey’s own Liar Liar (probably his best movie to date), except in Yes Man Carrey cannot say no, whereas in Liar Liar he could not tell a lie after a birthday wish from his son came magically true.  Call “Yes Man” “Yes Man Yes Man” and you’ve got yourself an official sequel, my friends.

There is a slightly different dynamic here, as Carrey’s character — Carl — is the unadventurous sort, turning down any and all opportunities outside his dreary routine.  A friend (John Michael Higgins) invites him to a “Yes!” seminar where Carl, being publicly confronted by the guru of the affirmative (Terence Stamp), makes a “covenant” that he will say yes to whatever opportunities are presented to him.  Carl gives it a shot but isn’t too convinced, especially after the first round of saying yes to everything sees him giving a ride, his phone, and his cash to a chatty homeless dude.  As soon as Carl breaks down and says “No,” horribly unlucky things happen, and Carl is convinced he must say “Yes” or the sky will fall. (more…)

Amusing fake posters featuring the characters from the animated movie Open Season in a couple slightly different movies.  They gave me a chuckle, see them for yourself: (more…)

Did Charlton Heston lose a bet to appear in the 2001 Jean Claude Van Damme film The Order?  I don’t want to denigrate Mr. Van Damme or the Order, which I firmly believe stands as the greatest Holy Land martial arts film of the 21st century, but I gots to know what inspired one of the greatest and most revered actors of all-time to appear in a low-brow kickboxing movie?  I cared enough to utilize the quintessential fact-finding tool of the 21st century, a.k.a. a Google search, and yet failed to uncover the anecdote that reveals why the star of Ben Hur opted to appear astride the star of Replicant on the big screen.

If it is any consolation, Mr. Heston is not on-screen for long.  He picks up JCVD in an Israeli airport, delivers some exposition, rides shotgun in a car chase, and then is killed off.  Check, please!

Maybe Mr. Heston wanted to visit Israel and figured an afternoon filming this (kosher) turkey was worth the ticket.  Or maybe Mr. Heston has long admired Van Damme’s thespian skills and just wanted to work with him.  Or perhaps for Mr. Heston this appearance was the result of the “dare” portion of some Hollywood Icon “Truth or Dare” game (this theory might also explain Jack Nicholson co-starring with Adam Sandler in Anger Management). (more…)

The next Van Damme movie I’ll be writing about is none other than THE ORDER, a relatively big budget film that features one of the last performances from Charlton “Ben Hur” Heston. The blog will be up in a day or two, but I feel this is worth a pre-blog post due in large part to this wonderful, Spanish language trailer that I found. Enjoy:

The question is not, “Is the Spirit a terrible movie?” for that answer is no more complicated than a straightforward “Yes.”  Rather, the enigmatic riddle of the hour is “WHY is the Spirit so utterly, inarguably terrible?”
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