Film is Pwn

My all-time favorite worst movie of all-time has to be The Order of the Black Eagle, a little gem I stumbled over several months ago, and I encourage you to read the blog I wrote about it here.  It’s an amazing movie that features a monkey driving a tank, the lamest “superspy” in film history, and raspberry filled Frozen Hitler.  I only bring it up because since that time, when I could find no clip of the film on youtube, the original trailer has been posted, and you can find it below for your enjoyment. (more…)

Frost/Nixon was one of the most critically hyped films of 2008, and to be sure it is a good film.  But it is not, by my eclectic estimation, a great film.

(more…)

As a half-Scandinavian, my heritage doesn’t really get a lot of respect from Hollywood or the fine people at the EPCOT Center.  In fairness, what do we have that’s really exotic other than the Viking thing?  Still, is it too much to ask that after 100+ years of movies, we get one great Viking movie?  And a documentary about the Minnesota Vikings doesn’t count!

What have we had up until now?  The 13th Warrior, the crappy Michael Crichton adaption where Vikings team with Islamic Cleric Antonio Banderas (no, seriously) to fight weird guys who live in a cave?  Pathfinder was a relatively entertaining action flick featuring Native Americans warding off invading Vikings, though I wouldn’t call it “good.”  There’s always Erik The Viking, a farsical comedy starring Tim Robbins as the titular Viking, which should tip you off to the quality of the film.  They are making a major movie out of the Mighty Thor comic book to be released in two years, but that’s got as much of a chance of being as bad as Howard the Duck as it does of being as good as Iron Man.

So, I would like to, on behalf of my fellow Scandinavians, I would like to officially pronounce Outlander as the best Vikings movie ever.  What is Outlander?  It’s a semi-big budget flick that sadly didn’t get a major theatrical release, and is now sneaking onto DVD under the radar, but — by golly! — it’s a really entertaining film.  Outlander the cover boasts a critic saying “Beowulf meets Predator!” and that’s the truest, shortest definition I can provide.  Yes, we Vikings have to play second fiddle to otherworldly monsters and charismatically handsome aliens, but beggars can’t be choosers. (more…)

I had zero desire to see Angels & Demons, the follow-up to the blasphemous, idiotic, and historically inept Da Vinci Code, until my brother — a man who reads the spoiler to any major movie he has no intention of seeing — told me some of the plot twists and shocking conclusion.  Being a sucker for bad movies, the idea of “how bad could it be?” was enough to lure me to the theater as I killed time before my softball game Saturday afternoon.  In the interest of not putting any coin in the coffers of Dan Brown, I paid for a ticket of Star Trek — a movie I’d like to see a sequel to — and sneaked into a under attended matinee of Angels & Demons.

Directed by the great Ron Howard, Angels & Demons is not incompetent in presentation.  Based on the novel by Dan Brown, Angels & Demons is rendered moronic at the story level.  The top-notch cast, featuring the likes of Tom Hanks, Ewan McGregor, and Stellan Skarsgård, has essentially nothing to work with.  Angels & Demons is an A-list version of a made-for-TNT movie.

I expected the film to be anti-religious, but I came away with the impression they were striving ardently not to offend that segment of the audience and present the central theme of science vs. religion with an obvious tilt toward science as the greater of the two.  The condescending idea is that religion is a heart decision and science is a head decision is rather annoying.  Still, I half expected Stellan Skarsgård’s character, head of the Vatican police, to bellow out, “The Earth is flat!  Burn the heretic!”

(more…)

This Christmas comes the first significant Sherlock Holmes project in many a decade, from vaunted British director Guy Ritchie (not a fan, personally) and terrific actors Robert Downey, Jr. as Holmes, Jude Law as Watson, and the lovely Rachel McAdams as the love interest.  As a proud Holmes enthusiast and an avid reader of author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, this project excited me when news of its inception crept onto the world wide web. For us literary devotees, this was bigger than Star Trek redux.
(more…)

This is another film that I stumbled over on the MGM-HD channel, and let me just say, Brenda Starr might just be the dumbest movie I’ve reviewed yet for Film Is Pwn, which says a lot coming off of a little film I like to call Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus.  This is not “you-can-see-the-monster’s-zipper” stupidity or “the-digital-monsters-look-cheaper-than-the-Trix-rabbit” terrible, Brenda Starr is buffoonery at the plot level, idiotic from its very conception.

Brenda Starr is based on a long-running comic strip of the same name that I vaguely remember seeing many moons ago, when I actually got a newspaper and would turn to the funny pages for Calvin & Hobbes.  I assume a lot of the film is intended to by a Adam-West-era-Batman-style-camp affair, but it’s so painfully unfunny it can only be enjoyed as an object of ridicule and scorn.  A 20-year-old Brooke Shields plays Brenda Starr, and at this point of Brooke’s career as an actress . . . she’s a beautiful woman.  We’ll leave it at that.
(more…)

So apparently Dolph was out one day when someone unwittingly broke into his home, tied up his wife and began the process of robbing them blind. Upon discovering a photo which clued him in to whose home he was pilfering the crook ran for it, leaving Lundgren’s wife still tied up.

Lundgren upon hearing the news was so angry that he went home and loaded up from his personal stockpile of munitions and wandered the streets shouting about revenge and shooting at everything resembling a crook.

Ok, so that last bits a total fabrication but the rest is actually true.

Full Story

Perhaps once in a generation comes a film that is capable of capturing the spirit, the disposition, and the yearning of an entire generation.  Such films transcend definition and cannot be pigeonholed to a single genre and are never defined as a “guy movie” or a “chick flick,” these are human movies that encapsulate the human experience to a degree that weakens the knees, lightens the heart, and quivers the lips of the hardest of cynics.  Applause is not praise enough for these rarest of movies, and Academy Awards too meaningless a prize.  These movies have inspired the apathetic, changed lives for the better, brought an end to decades of feudal warfare, and in one rare case cured a terminal disease.

Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus is not such a film.  But it is a lot of fun.

With a title like “Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus,” the anticipation in Film Is Pwn HQ was off the charts.  Strangely, we weren’t the only ones excited.  Some publicity from MTV.com made this little offering from our friends at the Asylum a bit of an Internet phenomenon, with the trailer getting over six hundred thousand hits on youtube alone before the release.  It’s kind of like the buzz behind Snakes on a Plane, except in this movie Samuel L. Jackson’s dialogue isn’t dictated by fans on message boards.  Oh, yeah, and Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus is vastly more entertaining than Snakes on a Plane for the simple reason it’s neither trying to be a camp classic sensation nor a great movie, it’s just the latest in a string of very silly, low-budget romps with grand ideas and generally less than professional execution from the Asylum. (more…)

There are some debates that science fiction aficionados such as Yours Truly can argue endlessly.  These questions have turned brother against brother and taken nations to war: Who was the better captain of the Enterprise, Kirk or Picard?  Which film was superior, the Empire Strikes Back or Ewoks: The Battle for Endor ?  Is Independence Day/Godzilla/The Day After Tomorrow director Roland Emmerich a hack or does he simply suck?

On the lower tier of these debates, which are generally congenial though sometimes contentious to the point of ending in brief but intese fist shaking, is the battle of profession film mockers, Mike vs. Joel. (more…)

That’s right, loyal readers, the next movie from our pals at the Asylum is sure to be an instant classic, no less a film than MegaShark vs. Giant Octopus.  Tom and I gathered to debate the merits of the contest that will redefine “heavyweight monster fight” for this generation.  Incidentally, we actually got the date wrong, the movie FIGHT is actually coming out on MAY 19th rather than MAY 26th. Pardon the bad lighting, as the Film Is Pwn studios are going through some renovation to get up to code, we were forced to film in my living room:

I assure you, I said “Giant Octopus” — now, click for “more” for the official trailer of the film: (more…)

No, not the “go to the beach, take a vacation” part of the Summer, I’m hypothesizing that the Summer movie slate in 2009 has nothing that remotely piques my interest half way as much as Star Trek did, and I’d be (pleasantly) stunned if any of them were half as enjoyable. (more…)