Film is Pwn

Bronson.  It’s an independent movie skillfully and artfully made.  Tom Hardy, looking like a true Haberdasher, plays the titular Bronson — based on the real life story of Britain’s most notorious and expensive — and is brilliant.  If someone were to talk Best Actor for Mr. Hardy, I couldn’t disagree; it’s a brave, bold, menacing performance. 

The director makes some stylistic choices with Bronson, in his mind, putting on a campy stage show to an enraptured audience where he gets to explain his sick, perverse outlook on life.   There are other more serious moments where Bronson speaks to the camera directly as if in a confessional, where the nutjob is about as lucid about his madness as possible.  I thought they worked and were interesting.

And I utterly detested the movie.  I can’t fathom why a talented group of men and women would willingly conspire to write, produce, cast, direct, and perform the material.  I derived no entertainment value from the experience and I would strongly encourage any caring human being to keep clear of theaters screening Bronson with a 30 mile radius, just to make sure they don’t accidentally wander into one of the showings by mistake.  If there is a scientist who intends to show Bronson to criminally, clinically insane lab rats to gauge their reaction, I would gladly stand shoulder-to-shoulder with those loons from PETA to protest cruelty to animals.
(more…)

I caught a showing of the brand-spankin’ new action movie, Gamer, that opened today, and I must say it is beyond terrible, it’s unwatchable. 
(more…)

As you may or may not know or care, Film is Pwn on the “Screeners list” at our friends at the Asylum — the studio that brought us and the world such classics as Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus and the TerminatorS — which is the ONLY studio we’ve actually contacted to get on the distribution list.  The problem with getting on too many of these lists is that you’re kind of obligated to review the DVDs when you get them, and I don’t want to be stuck reviewing season Season One of Saved By the Bell: The College Years. 

All year, the Asylum has churned out the kind of movie I love — low-budget, fun/bad Sci-Fi/action stuff.  The Film is Pwn staff eagerly anticipates the arrival of these DVDs, and drop everything at a moments notice to assemble at the Pwn Cave when the DVD comes.  But, as I mentioned in my Odds ‘n Ends blog from a few days ago, the latest Asylum release is an exception.  It’s a unrated, unratable stoner comedy called “Sex-Pot” that boasts being a cross between “Harold & Kumar” and “Half-Baked,” but looks more like the worst movie we’ve ever seen, National Lampoon’s Gold DIggers.   *Shudder*  (more…)

Rollerball is bad.  (This is the part where you’re supposed to say, “how bad is it?”) Every DVD sold ought to come with a spoon with which one can gauge out one’s eyes. It’s so dreadful it cannot be enjoyed on any level by any sane person with a basic understanding of what it feels like to witness motion pictures.  I have my doubts that even a comatose man could endure Rollerball and I would encourage doctors to try showing this film to catatonic patients to see if this film’s terribleness could provoke them to rise from slumber, even if only to race until Rollerball is no longer within earshot.

Am I being harsh?  Consider, for a moment, that one of the film’s stars LL Cool J, while appearing on the Late Show with Conan O’Brian with the specific purpose of promoting Rollerball admitted that it “sucked.”  If you need corroborating evidence, understand that I — the man who embraces wretched movies — only managed to slog through Rollerball in three sittings.  Why did I keep going back to Rollerball despite the physical and mental toll it took on me?  I believe the condition is called “Cinematic masochism”.
(more…)

Now, you might think that Man-Thing, which originally debuted on the Sci-Fi Channel, would have its origins in the same “Hey, why not make a movie called, Man-Thing!?” way that got Mansquito made, but Man-Thing is in fact based on a comic book character whose history dates back to 1971.  (Yes, Virginia, there really is a Mansquito.  Read about it here.)

The character wasn’t created when a thing bit a man, as you might think if you were to think about what created Man-Thing rather than simply consulting with your local library for reference material.  As a reformed comic book geek, I can attest that no one really knows or cares what Man-Thing is.  It’s just a pile of walking, violent swamp material that occasionally appears, usually fighting some manner of evil, and then goes away.  Big whoop.

(more…)

Of all the film’s Tom Stephens and I watched during the now infamous ten movie marathon — where we consecutively watched the ten most critically maligned movies from rottentomatoes.com — one stands out above the others.
(more…)

A few weeks ago we called The Love Guru, The Worst Movie We Never Saw. It’s because we had an innate ability to notice that when Mike Myers remade Tim Meadow’s failed movie The Ladies Man it would be at least as bad as that.
(more…)

For the record, there will be no review of the second half of Alexander, which should tell you something.  But, before we get to the cinematic torture rack that is Oliver Stone’s Alexander, allow me to provide you more genuine entertainment than the film itself provides in the form of a joke:

Q: What do Alexander the Great and Smokey the Bear have in common?

(more…)