YNTE Move Night - The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

My movie reviews of late have gotten a bit verbose, So I'm going to do this review in haiku:

No English at all
Too long and pacing is slow
Lots of rape; still good

Hopefully you now know if you want to see it.

YNTE Movie Night: Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan

So while I was writing those other two movie reviews tonight, I had a movie going on the other monitor and it was SO GOOD I had to write about it immediately. You know, good in a YNTE Movie Night sense, where it's terrible, but fun to watch and loudly criticize.

The movie of course, was "Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan", and before you ask, yes, that is really the title. They decided to go with "VIII" instead of "8" because this is a CLASSY film.

Before I get into the plot of this movie, a bit of background for those who haven't seen the first VII movies. They center around Jason Vorhees, who, as a child, attended Camp Crystal Lake. He didn't know how to swim and drowned as the lifeguards were off fucking instead of watching the kids. Since then, he returns on the anniversary of his death to kill camp counselors and other promiscuous teens.

Flash forward to this film. The main character (as a child, in flashback) is out boating on Crystal Lake with her creepy uncle who is giving her shit about still no knowing how to swim. He points out that Jason drowned here because he didn't know how to swim, and if she doesn't learn how to swim, she will drown too. He follows up this totally child-appropriate pep talk by pushing her out of the boat and telling her if she doesn't swim, Jason will grab her and drag her to the bottom of the lake. I should take uncle lessons from this guy, because he clearly knows how to motivate children.

Of course, this being a movie, as soon as he says that, IT ACTUALLY HAPPENS. Deformed child Jason grabs onto the already drowning girl and drags her deeper into the lake. Somehow she survives but her parents die and she is raised by Uncle Doucher.

As she graduates High School, many of her peers congregate on a cruise ship from Crystal Lake to New York city, which is a little shady since I was under the impression Crystal Lake was in Illinois. Geography aside, Jason of course hops on board the ship and hitches a ride to NYC, murderin' all the way. Some would point out that it is out of character for Jason to leave Crystal Lake as he has no motivation to do so, and they would be right, but since in two films he will be in space, I'm going to let it slide.

They are on this boat for a very long time. They might as well have called this movie "Friday the 13th Part VII: I'm on a Boat" since they don't set foot in New York until after an hour into the 90 minute movie.

Jason's victims try out a new tactic this movie, which they hadn't tried previously: sitting there doing nothing. Nobody really fights the dude. They just sit there and get murdered. ONE GUY fights back by punching Jason repeatedly for like 2 minutes straight (not exaggerating) and Jason just stands there and takes it because hey, this is the movies and only one person can be agressive at a time.

Oh, and of course as soon as the guy runs out of energy and stops punching, Jason decapitates him with one punch. Decapipunches are real, right?

Anyway, about an hour into the movie, Jason throws a guy at a computer which causes the boat to burn up. A few survivors manage to escape in a rowboat. Uncle Doucher does not help row, but has snide remarks for those who do. They finally manage to row their way to shore in New York, which once again raises Geography questions. Where are they originally from where New York is a couple hours away from rowboat distance yet is still a destination? I'm led to believe Camp Crystal Lake is in New Jersey which goes a long way to explain Jason's temprament.

Meanwhile, while they are rowing, Jason, is swimming behind them. Let me repeat that: Jason, on whom this entire series is predicated on not being able to swim, IS SWIMMING. And not just swimming, but swimming in the open ocean during a storm and keeping pace with a rowboat.

There's a brief break here for the main character to get kidnapped by gangbangers and dosed with Heroin to remind the viewer that this is New York. THEM STREETS IS VICIOUS YO.

Then back to the Murderin'! Jason chases them through the city past literally hundreds of easier targets/witnesses. Uncle Doucher gets drowned (irony!).

The chase culminates in a sewer with the last two survivors trying to escape up a ladder with Jason just feet below them. All of a sudden, TIDAL WAVE! Despite the fact that he had just survived being hit by a car and electrocuted, despite the fact that just minutes before he showed olympic level swimming ability, despite the fact that he spent the two years between the last movie and now chained to a rock underwater, six feet of water drowns him and he dies.

But the craziest fucking thing is this: when the water washes away, instead of adult Jason's body, it is child Jason's body. Why? Umm... symbolism? They find their dog. Credits.

Honestly, there is no point anymore in making a Jason parody because it has alrready been made and it was this movie. Completely unintentional. Just the way I like it.


BONUS CONTENT:
This is the song Alice Cooper wrote for Friday the 13th part VI. It contains such AWESOME lyrics as "You're deep in love, but you're deeper in the woods".

YNTE Movie Night: The Last Airbender

I realized as I was making that last post, that I have another movie night in the bank. About two months back I saw M. Night Shayamalan's "The Last Airbender".

I was going to come up with punny titles for this like "The Last Gharish Member" or "The Worst Airbender" or "the Last M. Night Movie I Will EVER see Airbender" or "The white people punch minorities because minorities are apparently all evil Airbender".

But I won't even dignify this film with a pun because quite frankly, it doesn't deserve it. It's bar none THE SINGLE WORST MOVIE I HAVE EVER SEEN. Remember my review for The Happening? Cinematic GOLD compared to this turd.

Its crimes are too numerous to list, but let me sum it up this way. This is two hours of things happening. People do not react to these things happening, cause them to happen or emote any real opinion on the things happening in the first place.

An example: In the start of the movie, two people are hunting. They accidentally uncover a giant ball of ice. They break the ice, inside is another person. Cut to them back at camp, the buy they found is there. Nobody is behaving as though anything out of the ordinary or special has occurred. Then the evil ethnic looking firebenders arrive. They "pillage" the camp. People continue going about their day as their fucking homes are being pillaged. The dude they found in the ice ball is kidnapped. They do nothing to prevent this from happening. Then, without explanation, they go off to rescue a stranger they just found and have shown no interest in up to this point.

That's the first 5 minutes. There's two hours of that nonsense.

Luckily, my timing worked out well, and I happened to have just heard that our FINE state had decided to ban FourLoko and had just purchased myself some right before the ban went into effect.

So, fortuitously, I was drunk enough for most of the night that I actually remember very little of the film. If you MUST see this film, do yourself a favor and get blitzed first.

Here's some tweets from the night in question when my memory of the film was clearer and my grasp on grammar and punctuation was not:
http://twitter.com/#!/jathevan/status/2572332614819841
http://twitter.com/#!/jathevan/status/2573027510325248
http://twitter.com/#!/jathevan/status/2573372412133376
http://twitter.com/#!/jathevan/status/2574762672914433
http://twitter.com/#!/jathevan/status/2584940642312192

Long story short? DO NOT WATCH THIS. NOT EVEN YOU, TOM. I KNOW YOU LIKED THE CARTOON BUT THIS IS UTTER SHIT. I AM SERIOUS, LOOK AT THE CAPS.

YNTE Movie Night: Sharktopus

I promised I'd watch those 5 "monsters eating bikini babes" movies by now, didn't I?

I'll get to them all... eventually. But I got a bit sidetracked and thus far, I've only seen one of them. But boy was it a classic.

I saw "Sharktopus", and it was exactly the movie you would expect it to be with that title.

Sure, the sharktopus is contantly changing size (one scene has him about the size of a person, another larger than a ship). Sure, his attributes change (by the end of the movie he has completely left the ocean and is cheezing around on dry land). But if you're willing to suspend your disbelief over the fact that the monster is a giant Shark-Octopus hybrid, these are really minor considerations.

This is a movie where EVERY character (yes, even the genetic scientists who created the sharktopus in the first place) are vacuous idiots. And most of them get eaten, stabbed, or torn apart. There's even one part at the end where the main character sets down his gun to poke the sharktopus with a big stick. Yes, that happened.

So it sounds like a slam dunk, right? Well I did have one major problem with the film. Let me explain:

A relatively in-shape human male has "six-pack" abs. Really in-shape guys will sometimes have "8-pack abs". Regardless of the number, they always come in matched, even, pairs, right?

Wrong.



The main character has disgustingly mismatched abs, and it's hella distracting. And he prances about the whole movie with his shirt open. BUTTON UP, FELLA. THE BUTTONS ARE THERE FOR A REASON.

I wanted to see a movie about a shark-octopus hybrid, not some mismatched FREAKSHOW. For Shame!

All in all, though, an enjoyable (though objectively not very good) movie. IF you can stand the abs.

YNTE Movie Night: Time to settle this!

There's a certain type of horror movie that I am a fan of: the Aquatic Disaster film. A film where a bunch of drunk college students, normally on spring break, get killed one by one by some sort of sea monster, normally a shark. It's bimboes in bikinis getting eaten. What's better than that?

Do these movies have complex plots or good acting? Absolutely not. All of them are objectively terrible. But, like so many other films that have been the subject of YNTE Movie Night, they're so bad they're extremely enjoyable.

For years, the reigning champ of the Aquatic Disaster genre was the made for TV "Spring Break Shark Attack". I was searching for a trailer to give you a taste of this cinema classic, but youtube didn't have one. However, somebody did upload the entire movie, and whoever owns the rights to the film didn't care enough to have it pulled, which should be an indicator of how much effort went into this film. Here's part one:



Good stuff, right? I thought no movie could ever be as good as that, and maybe I was right. But 4 films have come to my attention that could be challengers to the throne. They are:

1) Piranha 3d


2) SyFy Channel's Sharktopus


3) The Asylum's Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus


4) The Asylum's Mega Piranha


So, between now and the end of the year (or until Piranha 3D comes out on DVD), I will watch all 5 of these films and determine, once and for all determine what the best Aquatic Monster Disaster film of all time is.

But how much fun would it be if I did this by myself? You can help! Simply watch one or more of these movies, write up a review, email it to evan@jimmyandthehammer.com and I'll post them all up here in the ultimate showdown. A winner will be crowned.

This is not a YNTE Movie Night.

I envisioned the YNTE Movie Night as a way we could all watch terrible movies together and have a laugh at their expense. Fun times are had by all! But this month, that just wouldn't be the case. I can't recommend you see this movie, even to laugh at it, because I like you people, and this is maybe the worst movie ever made.

The movie I saw this month is M. Night Shayamalan's "The Happening", and it is maybe the worst movie ever.


Let's start with the tagline: "We've Sensed It. We've Seen The Signs. Now... It's Happening." From this tagline, we can learn two things: 1, that the marketing guy they hired LOVES capital letters, and 2, there is nothing good about this movie we can market other than "You Liked That Guy's Other Movies, Right? Remember?"

The movie start off with Marky Mark teaching a junior high science class about bees. He then proceeds to deal with an uncooperative student by saying "You're a pretty boy, but in the future you'll be ugly! You should care about science! Say hi to your mother for me!" He then goes on to posit that at times, the best scientific explanation is that things don't make any scientific sense. This is to plant the seed in your mind that later on, when things don't make a lick of sense, it's because of SCIENCE.

Next, we meet Zoe Deschanel, who is way too good of an actress to be in this movie. She's dating Marky Mark, but in the ultimate example of wish fulfilment, is cheating on him with none other than M. Night Shamalan.

The movie also has John Luigi-gezamo, a math teacher who is convinced that statistics is just about making up numbers.

Now here is the plot: Humans have a special part of the brain that has one purpose -- preventing the person from killing themselves. Plants are pissed that humans have been killing them for years, so the plants team up with the wind to murder people, but only in New England. The plants exact their revenge by emitting a toxin that overrides your brains notkillyourself center. Then, after a few days the plants get bored or something and stop. It makes no sense, but come on people, SCIENCE DOESN'T HAVE TO MAKE SENSE OR BE ACCURATE, IT'S SCIENCE.

The real problem with the movie is that not one person in it does a single thing that makes logical sense. EVER. The best example of this is when Marky Mark and pals come upon a group of people who have holed up in their house to wait it out. He asks to be let inside for some food. The people inside tell him that they are waiting it out and will not open their doors or windows for any reason, as the virus may get into the house. Marky Mark refuses to let it go, but the house people are insistent that they will not open up the door or windows. They then illustrate this point by opening up the windows to SHOOT KIDS. And this is just one of the many times in the movie where you will be scratching your head in confusion.

You would think the ending would be "plants are out to get us, maybe we should start being nice to the environment." Or perhaps "plants are out to get us, lets kill all the plants". Or at least "plants are killing us, lets at least act like we care or take some sort of action as a result". None of those were the ending. Instead they went with "plants are out to get us, BUT SCIENCE IS CONFUSING so we will continue our lives as if nothing happened.

"Unexplainable Force of Nature" my ass. It's just flat out lazy storytelling. And it's inexcusable.

This is worse than "The Village", which was about an old timey cult of people with bizarre rituals but it's actually just crazy people in a national park. This is worse than "Lady in the Water", where a lady is found in a swimming pool, but she's actually a mythical creature called a "Narf" who is at risk of being killed by grass dog monsters. M. Night's movies aren't so bad they're good, or so bad they're funny, like many of the YNTE Movie Night selections. They're so bad, they're REALLY FUCKING BAD.

Yet for some reason, I keep watching them. Will I see "The Last Airbender", in which all the Asian character must be played by white actors unless they're bad guys? Probably. Will I see "Devil", a movie in which 5 people are stuck in an elevator and one of them IS THE DEVIL? Also probably. I was going to compare watching his movies to staring at a car crash, in that it's horrible and you can't look away. But this is more like watching a guy crash a car, get out, crash another car, get out crash another car, and people keep giving him cars because he successfully drove once 10 years ago.

Honestly, this movie was bad. Really, really bad. Do not see it. But if you're like me, and despite knowing exactly how bad it will be watch it anyway, I am sorry.

Unofficial YNTE Movie Night: Mystery Team

So earlier I was subjected to this movie. Created by the Youtube group "Derrick Comedy" and given only a NY-area theatrical release, Mystery Team is what would happen if you took a team of 8 year olds solving mysteries... and fast forwarding about 10 years into the future and real world. The result is some out of touch high school seniors still trying to solve mysteries.

I will admit, it was a good movie. But I'm not sure if it's earned that on its own merits, or whether it's so bad it's good. Either way, give it a watch and you decide. I'm sure you'll at least get a kick out of it.

YNTE Movie Night: I'm.... hesitant.

One of the main points of YNTE Movie Night is for me to watch bad movies so you don't have to. I absolutely do not mind doing this, so long as the suck is self contained. But sometimes a movie can be SO bad it leaks over and ruins other movies. This is what I am afraid might happen.

Here's an example: ten years ago (yikes that makes me feel old) The Matrix was universally revered. It was an awesome movie. Then, they made sequels. Now it's just a film in a shitty franchise. It's a punchline. The original movie has not changed at all, but by association, it has been reduced to ruin. The same argument can be made for Star Wars and its prequels.

So here is where I sit. Two of my all time favorite movies have had sequels made, and I'm scared to death to watch them. But at the same time, I am somewhat entranced and I'm not sure I'll be able to avoid it.

Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day is the first sequel that worries me. Despite being written and directed by the same guy and retaining much of the original cast, so much of what made the first film good was its originality. Creating a film that is both true to the first and also original is going to be tough. On top of that, 10 years have passed since the first one came out. While a sequel released 10 years later CAN do well (see Clerks 2) I have no reason to suspect this one will.

S. Darko is the other one, and this one TERRIFIES me. It's the "sequel" to Donnie Darko, but DD director Richard Kelly has no involvement with the sequel (and went out of his way to make sure everyone knows that). On top of that, beyond the titular character, Samantha Darko (Donnie's sister), none of the original actors from the film are back. And when I say Donnie's sister, I don't mean Maggie Gyllenhaal, I mean his younger sister, known for her catchphrase "What's a fuckass" and for being part of Sparkle Motion.

It is worth noting that Boondock Saints II had such a small theatrical release, that I, a big fan of the first film, was not at all aware it happened. S. Darko went straight to DVD.

Can either of these movies be good? Should I watch them and risk ruining two of my top ten favorite movies? Or should I cut a wide path around them and pretend they were never made. Let me know what you think in the comments.

YNTE Movie Night: I'm not even sure this counts as a movie edition

...but since it was two and a half hours, I'm counting it.

For better or worse, "Lost" is over.

There will be spoilers ahead, so if you worry about that sort of thing you should probably stop reading.

The finale was pretty much your standard Lost fare. There were more questions than answers, the whole thing was left pretty ambiguous so that the internet could argue over what "REALLY" happened.

Basically, this season, they've been flipping back and forth between two different timelines. The one on the island and the "flashsideways", a world where their plane had never crashed on the island, and they all went on to eventually live pretty swell lives.

In the primeline, most of the cast is dead prior to this episode, but the surviving members fight and eventually kill the black smoke monster. Everyone (except for Jack, Hurley, and Ben) escape on a plane, even though they have no way of knowing where the island is and where civilization is in relation to it. Hurley is put in charge of the island, Evil Ben becomes his chief advisor, and Jack bleeds to death alone in the woods.

In the sideways world, it's revealed that everyone there has died, and were living out happy fantasy lives with each other before they "moved on". The entire cast (Even people who haven't been with the show since season one) smile and hug. It's basically a contrived plot point to give the show a "happy" ending.

The last two paragraphs took two and a half hours. There was a lot of filler.

It's important to point out that a good deal of the episode centered around the showdown between Jack and the Smoke Monster. They both believed that Desmond, due to his "special powers", would give them the upper hand. What are these special powers? THE ABILITY TO LIFT A ROCK OUT OF A HOLE.

It is perhaps also important to point out that Jack had to put the rock back in the hole later on, and despite not having desmond's magic rock powers, moved it just fine.

At no point was it fully explained what the island is, why it was SO IMPORTANT that it be protected, what the job of the protector really was, or what the mystical "rules" were that governed the job. They did spend a lot of time killing cast members to defend the island from the evil smoke monster who just wanted to leave, but couldn't due to the "rules". They also put a decent amount of focus on who that protector happened to be at any given moment, and how Hurley's first act as protector was changing the rules so people were allowed to leave now.

The whole thing was a big dramatic clusterfuck that took too long and only answered stupid pointless questions, while leaving the big important questions completely confusing. In short, it was pretty much like any other Lost episode, and kind of a fitting finale.

Did you see the finale and have an opinion? Leave your thoughts in the comments or shoot an email over to evan@jimmyandthehammer.com and I will post them up before the end of the month.

YNTE Movie Night: "I've Seen That!" Edition

So this month, it seems that I actually have seen Avatar. I had the privilege of seeing it in 3-d with a free pass, too. It's been a while though, so my memory might be a bit rusty. In any case, here goes (also I'm on cold medicine that's supposed to make me drowsy, so my writing quality might degrade after a while):

The Plot

You start the movie seeing a Marine named Jake Sully wake up from cryo-stasis, and you quickly learn he's a paraplegic. He's been assigned to a team lead by the lady from Alien (Sigourney Weaver) to take his dead twin brother's place as an "Avatar," a creature using both human DNA with that of the native alien race, the Na'vi. Basically he's piloting a chimera that's 3 times bigger than regular humans. Oh and also he's the only military-backgrounded guy with an avatar, since everyone else is a scientist. This creates a convenient plot point that leads him to get lost, find the native tribe, and befriend them. But at the same time he's also working with some dicks in the military that want to destroy the tribe... anyway.

This is all taking place on a planet named Pandora (well I guess it's technically a moon but whatever). The whole purpose of the human operation there is to mine the precious element named Unobtainium, which is obviously a better name than Francium. But this native tribe is hostile, since well, the humans are kinda mining in their territory. The Avatar program was an attempt to befriend the Na'vi for them to get permission to continue their mining operation.

Without spoiling too much (and thus spoiling everything), it goes like this: Sully befriends Na'vi but is also gathering intelligence, Sully becomes attached to them and does one of the alien chicks, the information he gathered is used by the military dicks to enact their great plan, great suffering ensues, corporate greed overcomes that of common sense, big battle happens, and everyone lives happily ever after in the end ('cept the dead ones). The plot is, to quote Christopher Titus, "Reliable, not inspiring."

The Good

-Effects are great, of course. CGI sure has come a long way since The Last Starfighter.

-The cast of characters is strong and they play their roles well

-Plot is reliable, and if you like most movies then you'll like this one too. (People say it's a blend of Dances With Wolves and Fern Gully and a bunch of other movies... probably, though it's been forever since I've seen any of those).

-The Na'vi are like giant blue kitties. And everybody loves kitties.

-The 3D effects DO NOT USE CHEAP GIMMICKS. This is what I found to be a very important point... if you've watched ANY 3D movie, you'd know how often the producers like to throw shit at the audience to give them a jump. Avatar rather augments the experience, and doesn't cheapen it with cheesy effects and making the audience jump.

The Bad

-Effects are a good part of the movie, but like most movies today it is heavily reliant on CGI.

-The cast of characters are kinda stereotypical.

-Plot is predictable, and if you hate most movies then you'll hate this one too.

-The giant blue kitties will never love you back.

-The 3D effects made my free ticket actually cost $3 more. And no aliens were leaping out of people's chests. (This is the ONLY acceptible gimmick because of Sigourney Weaver's role).

The Ugly

-The fans oh god the fans. Remember what people say about Jesus, "It's not the actual person I hate, its their fanclub."

-The Fans.

-The Fans.

-The Fans.

-The Fans.

-The Fans. (On par with Trekkies and LotR nerds by now)

-The Fucking Fans

-Did I mention the fans? Jesus Christ seriously?

If anything look at the last link. It is a link on the Avatar forums to help people cope with the depression that the movie is causing, because, and I quote, "Because the dream of Pandora can never come true." Seriously, it was a good movie and all, but people are going nuts and growing attached to a piece of fiction as if it were actually true. It's nuts and people really need to get a hold of themselves.

Consensus

Avatar was pretty good when it comes right down to it. It was well crafted and well deserving of its praise, even with all of the criticisms. Basically, if you can avoid the rabid rampant crazy fanclub, you'll be alright.

Final Thoughts

Give this a watch after you've seen the movie.

YNTE Movie Night: April Edition

April may be a bit of a controversial month for YNTE Movie Night.

The idea is that I pick out a movie that I have never seen (and thus have no firsthand opinion of) and based on what I have seen/heard/googled, looks pretty terrible. This month's movie is no exception.

The reason it may be a controversial choice, is that it is the #1 highest grossing movie of all time, James Cameron's Avatar.

Here's the plot as I understand it: Humans are on the far off planet of Pandora, attempting to mine a rare, hard to obtain mineral, literally called "Unobtainium". Unfortunately there's a race of 10 foot tall cat people who aren't fond of the intrusion. The humans decide that in order to broker peace, they will find a way to wear the cat people as skin suits and infiltrate their culture or something. This is the best the movie has been explained to me.

It's Dances with Wolves meets FernGully with a little bit of the Smurfs and Freaky Friday.

And yet, every single person I've talked to who has seen it has said it was awesome. Am I missing something?

Anyway, the DVD comes out tomorrow. I'll be watching it and posting my thoughts sometime this month. Will the movie be as stupid as it has sounded every time it has been attempted to be explained to me? Or is there some nugget of awesome contained within that everyone else has already discovered and I am last to the party?

If you want to participate, email your review to evan@jimmyandthehammer.com and I'll post 'em up at the end of the month.

YNTE Movie Night: Matt's Review

Damn Medusa, you scary!

So, I didn't actually watch the movie, but instead I found a clip of Medusa on youtube and listened to this song about the Krakken. Basically, the stop-motion claymation effects were state-of-the-art back then, and still cheesy. Considering they're in about half of the movie (if not more), it just seems like 3D animation in Today's movies, except it wasn't so glitzy (Which reminds me, someone reviewing the NEW Clash of the Titans movie commented that it was equivalent to Transformers 2... burn).

So yeah, the last minute of the song told me the plot of the entire movie, and based off of what I saw, there was lots of killing and bad blood effects and clay. Yet, Rottentomatoes.com scored this movie in the 80% range... so I guess take the special effects with a grain of salt and watch the movie for the plot.

But seriously, nobody wants to see a Krappen.

YNTE Movie Night: RELEASE THE "CRAPPEN"

Get it? It's like yelling "RELEASE THE KRAKEN" but with clever wordplay denoting that the movie had a qualitative value rougly equivalent to that of human excrement.

If you still don't get it, I'll explain it later.

Well, I finally saw "Clash of the Titans" (the 1981 version). I had never seen it before, but with the remake on the horizon, I decided to give it a shot.

You see, right now 3d is the hot ticket special effects item. It's so popular that movies are getting made in 3d strictly to showcase this new visual effect without any thought to plot, story, characterization, acting, dialogue, etc. The movies are just one big 3d action orgy with a half baked story and fully baked actors doing the bare minimum to tie together these big budget action scenes. By all accounts, the remake of Clash of the Titans will continue this trend.

However, now that I've seen the original, I feel that in this case at least, it's completely justified; asthe original Clash was nothing but a showcase for the "new" "awesome" special effects with almost no real plot or acting to tie it together. The only problem is the special effects are 30 years old and did not age well at all.

The movie makes the old Japanese Godzilla movies look awesome by comparison. The stop motion effects were groundbreaking so they were used at every possible opportunity, but there were many, many instances where they should not have been. There's a "monster" which is basically just a dude walking on two legs with a tail. A rubber suit would have been MUCH more convincing and probably would have cost less. But, for some reason, they stop motioned it.

Luckily, the bad special effects are incredibly humor prone. It is fun to laugh and imagine a world, not too long ago, when this looked "awesome".

And the "plot"? Hilarious. At one point, Zeus tells another God that she has to give up her animal companion (an owl) to his son Perseus. The God likes her owl so she "tricks" Zeus by building a robot owl (aka: R2-D2 with wings) instead. THIS IS A REAL PLOT POINT.

The movie has a pretty slow start. Most of the "action" sequences are in the second half. But if you keep watching, you are in for some chuckles.

FINAL VERDICT: So Bad It's Good.

Have your own opinion? Send your reviews to evan@jimmyandthehammer.com and I'll post them all in one big meta-review at the end of the month.

YNTE Movie Night: March Edition

Since the last YNTE Movie Night was such a RESOUNDING SUCCESS, I'm going to go for round two. And in preparation for its early April theatrical remake, this month's movie is the original Clash of the Titans.

I know almost nothing about this film other than what I saw in the google images search to find the picture, and that alone is enough to make me confident in my choice to include it. THe world of special effects has come a long way, and some of the old methods seem laughable.

Particpating in movie night is simple: Watch the movie and then review it(make jokes about it) here. Non-contributors can email their reviews to evan@jimmyandthehammer.com and I will post them up here. It's that simple.

Happy watching!

SHOCKING NEWS...

...Far Cry is a bad movie.

Despite being Uwe Boll's most accurate adaptation to date, it still feels incredibly dissimilar to the game I played.

For those of you unfamiliar with the game, it tells the story of Jack Carver, a war vet badass who now runs a charter boat. He is hired by a reporter to take her to a remote island. Immediately after she leaves to go ashore, his boat is blown up (this all happens in the opening cutscene). As he investigates, he discovers a sinister science operation experimenting on humans to create mutant supersoldiers.

Here is the shocking part: That all actually happens in the movie!

However, that doesn't mean the movie is at all similar to the game. There's a half hour of useless exposition before the boat is destroyed. Then there's some decent action scenes. This is the point of the movie I began to have a small nugget of hope.

Unfortunately, the movie takes a left turn here. The two main characters find an abandoned shack, and despite having been pursued by men trying to kill them just moments ago, the decide the safe thing to do would be to strip mostly naked and get in bed together. This of course leads to them having sex, despite the fact that they had done nothing but argue the entire movie up to this point.

Then we get back into some plot/action, as they try to infiltrate the military base to steal a boat and make it off the island. This scene could have been good, but was full of pointless dialogue about whether or not Jack was good in bed. It could have been a bit funny as a throwaway line, but it continued throughout the movie.

Then the movie started to really suck. When Jack finds a boat, it's inhabited by "Emilio", a fat idiot who follows them around the rest of the movie. He has no purpose but "comedy relief". The problem is that Uwe Boll mixed up "funny" and "annoying". The guy continues around the movie making annoying comments that have no purpose but to encite a murderous rage in the audience.

The movie was bad. Really, really, bad. But unlike previous Boll flicks, this one had nuggets of decent filmmaking. The action scenes were pretty good, when nobody was talking; there were even hints of a cohesive story for the plot. But the pointless characters, bad acting, and aimless direction keep it from getting anywhere near the potential I saw.

So in a way, this the worst Boll movie, because it was disappointing. It could have been good, but in the end, it was just the same old terrible slop he normally makes.

Final Score:
D--

So there's on YNTE Movie Night in the bank! Stay tuned for next month's flick!

Did you see it this month? Leave your thoughts below!

Worse than Far Cry?

So, I didn't get a chance to watch Far Cry this month. (Sorry Evan)

So instead I present to you Internet: The Movie, something that may be equally bad or much, much worse! Or more entertaining, depending on how much alcohol and drugs have been consumed. In any case, aliens are about to teach you how to use Netscape Navigator.

Also, in light of the fact that February is only 28 days, Tom won't be able to get his full amount this month.

YNTE Movie Night: February Edition

Today I am debuting a new feature I've had in my head for a while: YNTE Movie Night. The idea is that it's like a book club, only less lame. Everyone who wants to participate watches the same movie and then afterward we discuss it's merits.

However, with YNTE Movie Night, there likely won't be many merits: because I will be choosing exclusively BAD movies. Some may be so bad they're good, some may just be bad. I will have no way of knowing until I see them.

Participation is simple: just watch the movie before the end of the month. Then, write about how bad it is and if it had any redemptive qualities or if it could have been improved if it were created by raccoons. If you're a contributor to the site, just post it up! If not, drop your review in a comment or email to evan@jimmyandthehammer.com and I'll parse them all together and post it. This is an opportunity for readers of the blog to become writers of the blog. Pretty cool!

That being said, say something interesting, or I won't post it.

Without any further ado, this months TERRIBLE movie:Far Cry, by Uwe Boll.

Uwe Boll has a history of taking beloved video game franchises and turning them into TERRIBLE movies. His filmmaking style basically revolves around somebody explaining a video game to him in 7 words or less and he makes up the rest of the details. For example, Bloodrayne (the game) could be described as "Half-Human, half vampire chick, who fights nazis" Unfortunately, that was 8 words, so based on the first 7 he set it in the dark ages and it makes no sense at all.

The plot for Far Cry is "Man on an island with a gun". How can that go wrong?

Luckily, here in America, Far Cry got the straight to DVD treatment.

But it remains to be seen: will this be so bad, so removed from the source material it will be funny? Or just painfully bad? You decide on YNTE Move Night!

EDIT: I just checked, and for those of you with Netfilx, it is available through Instant Streaming.