The Church of TCM, plus a few words about Adam's Rib

There are many fine Religions out there. Take Sufism, for example, an ancient mystical sect of Islam whose followers believe in a return to the "primordial state of fitra," a word than translates roughly to mean "insight" or "intuition."

For instance: my intuition telling me to stop reading about Sufism.

Growing up, my folks were both fairly religious, but thankfully this didn't translate into going to church a lot. I say thankfully because as all of you who go to church regularly know, there's nothing a physicist can teach you about relative time you can't learn by going to a one and a half hour church service that clearly lasts four hours.

In my house we had another religion. One we worshipped and pledged ourselves undyingly to. And it's one I've followed to this day.

The Church of TCM

Pictured: Jesus crossed with Mr. Rogers

Since it launched on this day (April 14th) in 1994, Turner Classic Movies has become a dominant part of my family's life (I'm pretty sure we tuned in the first day). Of the 1200+ movies I've seen, it's a reasonable guess I saw 400-500 or so for the first time on TCM, and chances are if you had a time machine and picked a random day these last 16 years and walked into my parents house, a TV somewhere inside of it would have TCM on.

It's quite frankly the Indispensable Channel, and it's programming is so wide and varied you can enjoy it on multiple levels of movie knowledge, from the casual fan who wants to watch Casablanca once a month... or, like they did last month, wants to watch every Akira Kurosawa movie ever made (in honor of what would have been his 100th birthday).

But despite all of that watching, now and then I come upon a widely beloved classic that for some reason I've never seen. So, as part of this TCM anniversary I'd like to talk about how I did this recently with a beloved classic and why I, uh... hated it.

Hated Classic #1: Adam's Rib

A vehicle for Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn, who if they had lived in this day in age probably would have probably had their relationship dubbed "Hep-C", Adam's Rib is the story of married attorneys who end up on the opposite sides of an attempted murder trial.

The case: a woman has shot at and wounded her husband, who she thinks is cheating on her.

The way the movie presents the facts the whole thing seems pretty open and shut. The woman is caught at the scene, there are two witnesses, it's her gun and she admits to stalking him up to the apartment and pulling the trigger.

All is well. That is, until Hepburn installs herself as the woman's lawyer (Tracy is given the case as a prosecutor) and proceeds to throw the movie for a vomit-inducing loop.

Hepburn works herself into a real lather, gets into court and throws the following bombshell of a case at a jury: my client (the admitted shooter), a) was just trying to protect her family, and b) if a man had shot his wife under similar circumstances, no one would have a problem with that.

No really, read that again. She admits her client not only did the crime, but had motive and premeditation. Her argument is that if a man had done it, he'd go free. Therefore this woman should go free.

Obviously, Hepburn's tactics lead to marital strife, as Tracy objects to Hepburn trying to shove a traffic cone into the butthole of justice, and Hepburn not understanding why Tracy would want to stand so intolerantly in the way of a woman's right to shoot her cheating husband.

Even in the light of the O.J. trial, where some black people openly rooted for O.J. to go free just because he was black, Adam's Rib cannot be endured as anything approaching the way the justice system works. Johnnie Cochran might have been manipulative and occasionally full of shit, but even he didn't say that O.J. should go free because if it had been a white athlete killing his black girlfriend and her black lover, he'd get off no problem.

Also, that defense strategy doesn't rhyme, which would have been a problem.

Adam's Rib is not really pitched at the level of realism, though. The court scenes are not believable in the slightest and sort of treated as farce (Hepburn at one point puts a series of "accomplished" women on the stand, one of them a circus strongwoman who does backflips in front of the judge before lifting a protesting Tracy in the air with one arm).

But make no mistake, it's farce with a message: women should be equal in the eyes of law and society.

And that's a case worth fighting for... unless you cache it in a legal strategy so dangerously stupid you could use it to justify anything from speeding to, you know, actual murder.

The movie's final kick in the head? Hepburn wins the case. Maybe you guessed that by now, but it still floored me.

Yup. She wins. She fucking wins!

What a profoundly dumb movie.

The Worst Movies... Ever -- Wax and the Discovery of Television Among the Bees

I suppose it is inevitable that there have been many more bad movies made in the not-so long history of cinema than good ones. After all, being good at something takes time, dedication, skill and luck. Not too many people have those things, and even the very best fuck up every once in a while.

Making a piece of shit, though, is easy. I should know. I mean, look at this blog.

So I suppose the point is that I will probably never run of out movies to write about for this series. And even if I managed to write about every shitty movie that has ever been made (which of course is impossible), they're still cranking out new ones every week.

So far I've tried to be selective, to weed out those well-meaning hacks whose only sin was to get caught in the buzz saw of their own inescapable hackitude. After all, who but a bastard enjoys kicking an old, sagging dog in the balls?

What I've tried to focus on, rather, is people who either had some sort of really fucking evil/stupid intent, or were just trying to make an easy, exploitative buck, or who managed to fail on such a grand scale of every level of moviemaking it makes you wonder if they'd ever watched a movie in their life... and if they have, whether they've had poisoned dog shit injected into their brain stem since then.

Today's movie is like that. And man oh man, is it a doozy.

It's....

Wax or the Discovery of Television Among the Bees (1991)

Go ahead, read that title again. I'll wait.

Doesn't help, does it? Believe me, I can sympathize. I watched this movie in college for a class called Writing Through Media, one of those classes that's supposed to be easy but ends up, in my case, being taught by a 95-pound grad student who I'm sure went home every night and smashed his shriveled nuts between biographies of Ingmar Bergman.

So anyhow, he sat us down at made us watch Wax, and I'll be damned if it wasn't one of the most befuddling experiences of my life.

This is the first image that comes up when you do a Google search for "befuddling."

Anyhow, the movie starts with James Maker, a member of the Supernatural Film Society (motto: fuck you, audience!), whose goal is to film the spirits of the dead walking among the living.

Because clearly this isn't a subject that's been covered before.

Suddenly we cut away from James Maker and are introduced to his grandson, Jacob, a flight simulator programmer who also moonlights as a beekeeper of Mesopotamian bees he inherited from his grandfather.

With me so far? At least sort of? Good, because this is where things sort of go sideways.

One day, Jacob's bees decide to drill a hole in his head and insert a television.

Seriously.

The bees start using the television to show Jacob various things (though I'm willing to wager it isn't things freakier than this movie). For instance, Maker has a statue of Cain and Able on his front lawn. The bees show the Cain statue murdering the Able statue and then being branded with an X, forcing you to wonder: what really counts as dead for a statue?

This next part I'll just quote directly from a summary of the movie I found:

"Then at work, Jacob wonders why his co-workers never wonder what happens to the missiles they launch that don't come back (never mind that a programmer probably doesn't deal with missile launches), and he realizes that they turn into flying saucers which fly to the moon where the dead live."

At about this point, sitting there, wondering what the fuck is going on, realizing I'm going to have to write about this thing and get a grade, I began to wonder whether someone was going to burst in and tell me I was on Candid Camera.

Sadly, this didn't happen. And by "sadly" I mean, on Candid Camera they usually stop whatever shitty thing is going on.

Wax just went on and on. And on and on, and into (if you can believe this) ever weirder areas. The bees start showing Maker what are supposed to be very strange images, but what are actually just piece-of-shit computer effects that look as though they were rendered in CorelDraw. These are then crossed with stock footage of bombs crossed with stock footage of bees crossed with stock footage of audiences burning themselves to death rather than continuing to watch the movie.

At some point, Maker decides to make a pilgrimage to the Garden of Eden Cave. And by pilgramage I mean like really long, totally inexplicable shots of Maker walking across the desert. In his beekeeper's uniform.

Don't believe me? Click this, if you dare. And yes, you can use this link to watch the entire movie. Speaking as your attorney, I would advise you to avoid this and do something more worthwhile, like clubbing baby seals.

Back to the summary, whose matter-of-factness betrays the sheer insanity of the movie better than anything else possibly could:

"When arriving at the cave, Jacob learns that the cave is actually the entrance to a planet inside of our planet where the bees live. There, he dies and goes to join the world of the dead. For a while, he becomes the X symbol. Then he becomes a poem in the language of Cain. Then he travels to some other planet, including the Planet of Television. Next he decides it's time to fulfill his destiny, which is to kill someone. So, he becomes a bomb and blows up two Iraqi soldiers in a tank. Then he becomes the X symbol with himself, his grandfather's arch enemy, and the two soldiers he blew up."

I've discussed/made fun this movie so many times with friends it's been at different points suggested to me that the movie must have some sort merit to be have been at least so memorable.

These people are wrong.

I mean, I'm sure the director, David Blair -- who spent six years making this filmic equivalent of dead babies -- was trying to make some really serious, deeply felt points about missile launchers, the after-life, and, you know, beekeeping.

But seriously, the thing makes absolutely no sense at all. Watching it, you realize the magnificence of it's ineptitude can only be topped by those rare, majestic turds that rise ever so gracefully out of shitty toilet water.

I wish I could find the essay I wrote that night about the movie. The only thing I remember was that I wrote it in this very Baroque English style, like Dickens, and was bursting at the seams to control myself from what I've been doing right now, and then went downstairs and got drunk with my chums.

Other than that, I don't have the slightest clue what we did that night, but of this I'm sure: a movie about it would have been a lot better than Wax.

A few words about Avatar

Note: contains spoilers. Namely, that Avatar is pretty much a hunk of shit. But seriously, I'm going to reveal a few plot points. Especially any that I can make fun of. Which would be most of them.

As I write this, Avatar has an 83% positive rating on Rotten Tomato's famed Tomatometer. A few days ago, it was 95% (the ratings from the "Cream of the Crop" reviewers is still 94%). For the past two weeks, every guest on The Tonight Show (whether they were in the movie or not) has raved about it. Everywhere you go, magazine articles, TV reports and the general buzz have told you this movie is so fucking amazing it will revolutionize the way we watch movies. To call it a quantum leap, indeed, would be to diminish it.

Perhaps not surprisingly, none of these things ever get around to mentioning what the movie's actually about. All the trailers indicate is that there's lot of explosions. And, uh, blue people. Oh, and that this movie is so fucking amazing it will revolutionize the way we watch movies. To call it a quantum leap would be to blah blah blah.

Sitting at home, we absorb all of these stray pieces of information (James Cameron hasn't directed a movie for a while because he's been doing this) and that makes our brain go, "hey, this thing might be a work of genius." And of course we take this into the movie and it makes us more likely to like it. It's been a truly brilliant marketing campaign, executed at the level of the best political campaigns, and someone somewhere should get a medal for it (or a punch in the face... either way).

So okay. With all that out of the way I'll say right here at the top that as spectacle -- in terms of the effects -- it's a very good movie. Top quality effects. Movie changing or even mind blowing? No. We've seen it all before. Imagine a bunch of Golems from the Lord of the Rings movies -- only blue and tall and heroic -- and that's what it is. They haven't crossed that threshold toward making it look actually real, but there's a reasonable chance they never will, so who cares?

Either way, that's not what I'm going to talk about. My issues were with the story.

We start on a spaceship that has traveled 4.3 light years to Alpha Centauri in the year 2154. Nevermind how it got there going the speed of light looking, well, like something that can't go anywhere close to the speed of light.

Does it at least come with a supercharger?

Anyway, once we arrive at Pandora, it's time for the Incredibly Obvious Metaphors to start flying around. Pandora is populated by the Na'vi (Native Americans), who use bows and arrows (um), engage in mysticism (yeah), and at one with their environment (yep).

Sadly, Pandora is rich in the hilariously named fake element unobtanium (standing in for oil), which is necessary toward solving the economic and energy crisis on Earth (a crisis you would imagine might be somewhat less severe if we hadn't spent all that cash to built spaceships that can fly at the speed of light to Alpha Centauri and hold what seems to be an almost limitless supply of helicopters, gunships and men, though of course no one asks me about these things).

Anyhow, the most concentrated source of unobtanium on the entire planet happens to be right under the home tree of the Omaticaya Clan of the Na'vi (and no, I can't believe I just typed that). Obviously, they'll have to be moved.

Or won't they? I mean, you just flew a spaceship at the speed of light part way across the galaxy, and you have the technology to establish a perfect telekenetic link with a Na'vi whose DNA has been combined with that of a human and then grown in a test tube. You can do all that, and I'm supposed to believe that you still have to strip mine this ore out of the ground like we're back in West Virginia (strip mining here standing in for strip mining)?

At the center of all this is a disabled marine named Jake Scully, whose identical twin brother was a scientist specializing in the Na'vi and who managed to get killed just before the mission (and this is really only a minor quibble, but is it really all that common for one identical twin to end up as a marine and the other identical twin to end up as a scientist who, if I remember right from the flaccid dialogue, had a few Ph. Ds?).

Anyhow, Jake's brother's specially grown Na'vi just can't go to waste, so they let Jake use it, and of course the first thing that happens on a mission after he plugs in telekenetically (and it really bears pointing out just how ludicrous the whole idea of that is), is that he gets separated from the group.

Of course he meets a Na'vi woman, of course she hates him (but not for long!), and of course he'll have a rocky introduction to Na'vi culture, but of course eventually he'll get the hang of it, and of course he'll eventually get everyone's respect and pass a ritual and marry the Na'vi woman and become part of the tribe and begin to hate his original employers and fight on their side of what's right against the imperialist blah blah blah.

I mean honestly. This movie is supposed to be so fucking amazing it will revolutionize the way we watch movies. To call it a quantum leap, indeed, would be to diminish it.

And it can't do any better than to completely rape the plot of Dances with Wolves, The Last Samurai and like, 50 other movies? Give me a break. The plot, the motivations, the villains and the resolution are all totally obvious from, well... from 4.3 light years away (25 trillion miles or so). I mean, the main villain even has a bunch of scars on his head. How much more un-revolutionary can you get that to copy just about every Bond villain ever created? Did Cameron have to be physically restrained from putting an eyepatch on him, too?

Here's another example of what I mean. Late in the movie, Sigourney Weaver's character is wounded. The Na'vi tell Jake they might be able to transfer her consciousness into a Na'vi body, making her a Na'vi permanently. Only, it doesn't work. She was too wounded (big shock). Can anyone guess what will happen to Jake at the end of the movie? Will he become a Na'vi permanently?

And can anyone guess what will happen when one character says a huge flying beast has only been mastered by five Na'vi since recorded Na'vi time began? Yup, here comes Jake Scully. He's been a Na'vi for a few months. Clearly he's the best guy we have. If anyone can master the un-masterable beast, it's the guy with the funny accent who just got here a little while ago.

And you know what makes it that much worse is that there are actually serious issues at play in Avatar. Gross over-miliarization, deforestation, the Iraq war and the destruction of native peoples are real things. Many of the indigenous people of the Earth have been systematically wiped out by people in need of land and resources who were greedy enough, as one character says in the movie, to make anyone who stands in their way an enemy, and thus justifiably wiped out.

That's a real truth of history, and a hard one. And the destruction of the natural world, even for someone like me, who's far from an ecologist, is a tragic thing.

But by sticking to the most cliched of plots, the movie cheapens the issues to the point of demeaning their seriousness, rendering it, say, an open letter for peace and conservation written in crayon and filled with internet slang.

And about those robots...

1.) Was I the only one who laughed out loud at the bi-pedal robot, controlled by a human, who was carrying what looked like a huge machine gun? Carrying it in it's arms, like a human would, rather than having it as part of the design? What kind of bumblefuck would expect us to believe that?

Oh.

2.) And as bad as that was, they managed to top it by having the robot pull out a fucking knife and engage in hand-to-hand combat! I mean, a knife! Who designed this goddamn robot? Who looked at the plans and said, "yeah, this is a pretty cool robot.... but, it's missing something. Hmm. Oh, I know! It needs a two foot bowie knife and a knife sheath! Why? Because at some point, I envision this robot getting into a situation where the gun will be knocked out of it's 'hands' and it's 'hands', which are apparently just 'hands' and don't do anything, will really need to grab a knife and start stabbing something. No no, don't make the knife just come out of their hands, like Fulgore. Are you an idiot? Make it have to hold the knife, like we do. Waaaaay cooler that way!"

The Worst Movies... Ever

You generally only have the misfortune of watching a truly terrible movie once. Sometimes, if you're lucky, you're able to figure out what you're watching is a mangled pile of rhinoceros shit in time to turn it off and do something valuable.

But then there are movies like this one, the kind of movie you loved as a kid and one day saw coming up on TCM and went "awww" and decided to record and watch. Well, I did this recently. And the result?

So yes, today's unendurable shit fest, hate crime to celluloid and embarrassment to Volkswagen Beetles everywhere...

Herbie Goes Bananas (1980)

Right up here at the top, I would like to mention that to both my and my brother's credit, this was our least favorite of the original four Herbie movies (the others being The Love Bug, Herbie Rides Again and Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo).

But, you know, to our not-so credit, we probably watched the movie 10 or 15 times anyway.

This particular entry into the history of the irascible, anthropomorphic Beetle and former race car focuses on two dimwits (played by Stephen W. Burns and Charlie Martin Smith), who've inherited the car from Burns' uncle and original owner, Jim Douglas (Dean Jones).

Quick tip that the movie you're watching probably sucks: they couldn't get Dean Jones to be in it.

Anyhow, our two dimwits have traveled to Mexico to retrieve the car, since as we all know, Mexico is where all legendary and magically "alive" race cars eventually end up. There they meet street urchin stereotype Paco (no really, that's his name), who cheerfully steals their wallets while snorting cocaine, eating a taco and vomiting violently from food poisoning (okay, so not those last parts).

Paco also manages to pick the pockets of a few bad guys (played by Animal House's John Vernon and The Godfather's Alex Rocco, humiliating themselves), one of which contains microfilm that is important to the plot, though don't ask me how.

Herbie Goes Bananas educational traveling tip: When traveling in Mexico, don't keep your secret microfilm in your wallet.

In a sequence that should be more legendary than it is for being, you know, fucking stupid, Herbie and Paco cause a lot of trouble on the cruise ship bound for Buenos Aires. In response, the captain (a desperate looking Harvey Korman) sentences Herbie to walk (well, slide) the plank.

That's right. Herbie Goes Bananas expects us to believe that if you cause trouble on a cruise ship, you can be fucking executed.

Or sort of. Herbie is rescued from the ocean by Paco and drafted into service as a taxi.

Thereafter follows the Inca gold stealing portion of the movie (no seriously, there is one, featuring those microfilm guys from before), a sequence where Herbie gets into a bullfight (!), and Herbie being covered in bananas as a "disguise" to hide him from the microfilm guys, who are still pretty mad at Paco.

No, really, it's a great disguise. Nothing suspicious here.

This leads to the final sequence of the movie, when Herbie foils the Inca gold stealing by flinging bananas at the bad guys, who slip and fall down (seriously). Then, when they try to make their escape, Herbie repeatedly smacks into their plane until it's left with no tail or wings. This leads to a chase between Herbie and the tail-less, wing-less plane.

Don't believe me?

I'd give a lot to have been at the story meetings where they dreamed all of this up.

So at this point I know what you're thinking:

"Dude, it's a movie about a car that thinks and can drive itself. Since when does it have to be logical?"

And I get what you're saying, even though you're kind of being a douche about it. But the fact is that while the universe of the movie is one in which Herbie can be "alive", the rest of this shit is just stupid and ridiculous.

I mean seriously. The car gets in a bullfight. If you're asking people to sit there for two hours, do better than that.

Either way, Herbie Goes Bananas proved to be the end of the line for Herbie. At least for 17 years, when Bruce Campbell starred in a TV remake of The Love Bug, and then in 2005, when booze professional and acting enthusiast Lindsay Lohan starred in the almost certainly horrible Herbie: Fully Loaded.

In case you're wondering: no, I haven't seen those movies.

Watching Herbie Goes Bananas so many times growing up taught me my lesson.

The Worst Movies... Ever

Congratulations, May!

If you know me at all, you take one look at that poster and say, "Joe, why the fuck did you watch that movie?"

And that's a pretty good question. After all, I don't particularly like horror movies. And when I'm not laughing at them, I can't say I think too highly of goth people, either (though to be honest, that's why I'm laughing at them).

So why did I watch this monumental piece of shit? Well, take a look at this picture.

This is Natasha. No really, that's her name. Once upon a time, Natasha and I were roommates, sharing an apartment at one of the worst apartment complexes in Gainesville (which is really saying something).

The story of my time living there with Natasha as my roommate is a incredibly weird, vaguely fucked up affair, but for purposes of this story only one thing really matters.

May is her favorite movie.

Of course, I'd never heard of it, and when she asked me whether I'd like to see this "really awesome movie," I should have said, "uh, no fucking way," but instead I said "sure". And man did I fucking live to regret it.

The Plot

May is the story is a lonely, awkward girl (named May) with a lazy eye whose only friend is a freakishly weird-looking doll named Suzy.

Yeah.

Anyhow, May works at a veterinary hospital and becomes infatuated with a local mechanic named Adam, played by Jeremy Sisto. She's particularly interested in his hands. Strangely, a magical pony does not at any point show up.

May and Adam begin dating, and at some point he shows her a movie he's made for school called "Jack and Jill" about a young couple who go on a picnic only to end up eating each other.

As you can imagine, that makes May's special parts all tingly, and when the movie's over she attacks him, biting his lip to the point of drawing blood. May apologizes, blaming her doll. For some incomprehensible reason, Adam is surprised by this behavior, freaks out and leaves.

At this point, May gives in to a lesbian colleague played by Anna Faris. Sadly, this promising sequence does not particularly go anywhere.

But Wait, it Gets Worse

I won't bore you with too much more of the minutiae of the plot. The basic idea is this: May accidentially kills a cat given to her by the Anna Faris character. Instead of burying it, she keeps in her freezer. When some skater punk comes over, he makes the unforgivably stupid mistake of looking in a freaky person's freezer and finds the cat. He freaks out, and May stabs him in the head with a pair of scissors.

What happens next really deserves to be quoted from the plot summary:

At Polly's house, (May) and Polly carry on a normal conversation about work until May pulls out a couple of scalpels she stole from the animal hospital and puts them in each side of Polly's neck. Polly laughs at her, thinking this is a joke and stating that she knows that May would never hurt her until May actually starts cutting her neck, much to Polly's astonishment, before dying.

Yeah. Anyhow, May keeps killing her friends, believing that if she just takes parts from each of them, she can create some kind of horrific "super friend."

So she kills a friend of hers with long legs and cuts off the legs. She kills Adam and cuts off his hands. And at home, she assembles her, uh, friend, calling her Amy.

And then this happens.

(Once it's) finished, (May) realizes that Amy can't actually see her. So, in a rush of misery, she gouges out her right eye (the lazy one) with the scissors. Crying in pain, she puts in on Amy's head and sobbingly begs for the toy to look at her. Exasperated and in pain, May leans her head against Amy's shoulder. May sees her friend suddenly come to life and touch her face lovingly, with Adam's treasured hands. May smiles, and the credits roll.

So imagine for a second being in my shoes. The movie has just ended, and you look over at your roommate, the person who recommended it, a freakish goth person named Natasha.

This is her favorite movie.

The main character, who she clearly identifies with, just butchered and mutilated a bunch of people.

Oh, and you just spent the last two hours of your life watching an incredibly shitty movie.

Yeah.

I remember just sort of backing away slowly and making a note to lock the door to my room. Natasha and I weren't roommates for much longer. I moved out with three months left on the lease.

The Worst Movies... Ever (with a Miscasties on top!)

Congratulations, Batman and Robin (1997)!

When I started making a mental list of movies to include on this series, Batman and Robin was, of course, one of the first that occurred to me. But despite that, I've avoided it until now.

Why? Because making fun of Batman and Robin is almost too easy.

Talking about this hunk of monkey turds is more than anything an exercise in superlatives. I mean, exactly how many ways can you say "it sucks" before you run out of ideas?

For instance: does it suck "like a starving Ethiopian whore"?

Or is it's terribleness better expressed by the notion that if movies were US presidents, Batman and Robin is probably Stalin.

I distinctly remember the experience of watching Batman and Robin in the theater. I was 15 and had really liked Batman Forever, and even though they had replaced Val Kilmer as Batman, you know, who gave a shit? Val Kilmer was a mediocre Batman. I remember reading a story where some actress said all you needed to play Batman was great lips, and "George has great lips."

Yeah, not so much. From frame 1, you could tell Clooney had realized he'd made a mistake and had decided to phone it in. Hard. If Rule #1 of acting is to believe every line of dialogue you give... well, Batman and Robin proves George Clooney's capacity to be a terrible actor.

In retrospect, it should have been obvious he'd be terrible. Clooney's chief attribute as an actor is his ability to display a kind of ironic amusement. His entire performance in Ocean's Eleven is built on this.

As Batman, this is all wrong. After all, Batman is an inherently ridiculous concept. If you don't sell it, you make everyone in the audience sort of realize, "hey, that guy's wearing a rubber bat costume!"

This is not to say, of course, that even Laurence Olivier could have made Batman and Robin into a good movie (though I'd have paid good money to watch him try), or that Clooney is the only one terrible in it. I mean, the truth is that almost the entire cast of Batman and Robin could be given one of my coveted Miscasties.

After all, we're talking about Alicia Silverstone as Batgirl. And also Uma Thurman, as Poison Ivy, who clearly didn't learn her lesson from appearing in this piece of shit.

And then, of course, there's Arnold Schwarzenegger, as criminal supervillain Mr. Freeze.

On paper, casting Arnold as Mr. Freeze made some sense. After all, the script calls for Mr. Freeze to deliver a lot of cheesy one liners, and if there's one thing Arnold's good at, it's one liners.

But on Batman and Robin, they forgot something pretty important: the one liners have to be, you know, good.

Upon busting in:

Mr. Freeze: Ice to see you!

After hearing Poison Ivy's plan for them to rule Gotham together, despite the fact that one of them wants to turn the Earth into an iceberg and the other wants to turn the Earth into a giant greenhouse:

Mr. Freeze: Adam and Evil!

To his henchmen:

Mr. Freeze: Let's kick some ice!

I realize at this point I haven't even described the plot. Do I need to? By this point, you get the idea. The whole thing's a shit sandwich. And all of us who went and watched it in the theaters? Well, we all had to take a bite.

What do we get in return? Well, this.

The Worst Movies... Ever

Congratulations, The Thin Red Line (1998)

Pictured: a piece of shit

The Thin Red Line is that incredibly rare breed: the intolerably boring war movie. Why? Because the director, Terrence Malick, took his superb cast (Sean Penn, George Clooney, John Caviezel, Adrian Brody, John C. Reilly, John Cusack, Woody Harrelson, Nick Nolte, and John Travolta), and the WWII battle on Guadacanal and used them to ask a bunch of lazily philosophical and totally unsubtle questions about the nature of war and existence.

Take for instance this snippet of voice over from Caviezel's character:

Private Witt: This great evil. Where does it come from? How'd it steal into the world? What seed, what root did it grow from? Who's doin' this? Who's killin' us? Robbing us of life and light. Mockin' us with the sight of what we might've known. Does our ruin benefit the Earth? Does it help the grass to grow, the sun to shine? Is this darkness in you, too? Have you passed to this night?

Uh, what? And how about this:

Japanese Soldier: Are you righteous? Kind? Does your confidence lie in this? Are you loved by all? Know that I was, too. Do you imagine your suffering will be any less because you loved goodness and truth?

I mean, yeah. This is the kind of pretentious rambling brain diarrhea you expect to find from a freshman year philosophy student doing mushrooms for the first time, not a war movie that's supposed to be, you know, entertaining.

The making of the movie itself is one of the great fucked-up stories of the cinema.

The story of the movie begins in the late 1970s, when a pair of producers, Barry Geisler and John Roberdeau, approached Malick (who had made a name for himself with Badlands and Days of Heaven) with an offer of $250,000 to write an adaptation of James Jones' book The Thin Red Line.

Malick agreed, but his first draft, delivered five months later, was more than 300 pages (translating to about five hours of movie), and featured research Malick had done on pacific reptiles, Japanese drummers and Navajo code talkers.

Instead of realizing they were clearly dealing with a crazy person, Geisler and Roberdeau (neither of whom, it bears noting, have produced a movie since, though in Roberdeau's case it probably has something to do with dying in 2002) jumped in with both feet, spending long hours discussing the film with Malick.

According to Barry Geisler, who we imagine to be a well meaning but naive sort of guy:

"Malick's Guadalcanal would be a Paradise Lost, an Eden, raped by the green poison, as Terry used to call it, of war. Much of the violence would be portrayed indirectly. A soldier is shot, but rather than showing a Spielbergian bloody face we see a tree explode, the shredded vegetation, and a gorgeous bird with a broken wing flying out a tree."

For some reason, no one bothered to ask whether the audience would know what the fuck was going on if you did that. Speaking as someone who's seen the movie: yeah, they do that. And yeah, it's baffling.

The project languished for a few more years, during which time Malick worked on other projects for Geisler and Roberdeau, eventually pocketing more than $2 million for his efforts. By 1995, Geisler and Roberdeau were broke, and Malick was off somewhere alternating between laughing at them and crying himself to sleep on books of teenage poetry. Finally they went to Malick to ask him to just fucking choose something.

20th Century Fox eventually agreed to put up $39 million for The Thin Red Line as long as Malick would cast five movie stars from a list of ten who were interested. As Malick's previous movies were apparently artsy fartsy, but good (not that you could pay me enough to watch them at this point), movies stars, sensing a reclusive "genius" in their midst and not wanting to miss an opportunity to get up all on 'dat, lined up 10 deep in every direction to do whatever Malick said.

"Give me a dollar and tell when to show up," Sean Penn, for example, told Malick. At various times, everyone from Kevin Costner to Leonardo DiCaprio to Brad Pitt to John Depp showed interest. None of them would end up in the movie.

Pre-production went slowly, as Malick, in a move pretty consistent with a guy who hadn't made a movie in 20 years at this point, had a tough time making decisions. Eventually they settled on the North Australian jungle as the location. But when it came time to shoot, Malick, in a hilariously dickish move, told Geisler and Roberdeau -- the two guys who had gone broke trying to get Malick's movie made -- that they weren't allowed on set, apparently over a dispute they'd had with other producers on the project over whose name would go over the credits.

The shoot itself ran for 100 days, which Wikipedia described this way:

"Malick's unconventional filming techniques included shooting part of a scene during a bright, sunny morning only to finish it weeks later at sunset. He would make a habit of pointing the camera away during an action sequence and focus on a parrot, a tree branch or other fauna."

The original cut of the movie, as you can probably guess, ran five hours. It took (and I'm not making this up) more than two years to edit it down to just three hours, during which time parts filmed by Billy Bob Thorton, Martin Sheen, Gary Oldman, Bill Pullman, Lukas Haas, Viggo Mortensen and Mickey Rourke were completely cut from the movie, and other appearances (like Clooney's and Travolta's) were trimmed until they were essentially cameos. Adrien Brody, told his character would "carry the movie", instead saw his part cut down to two lines and five minutes of screen time.

The end result was a seriously fucked up mess, wherein you have moments of extended voice over, shots of animals walking around, snippets of battle scenes and movie stars popping up and disappearing for no reason (like, say, Jennifer Garner showing up in Catch Me if You Can, except a whole movie like that).

I suppose, as much as anyone, I should blame the reviews, which were actually inexplicably good (79% on Rottentomatoes.com). Martin Scorsese actually called it his second favorite film of the 1990s (behind what, Cool As Ice?). Based on them, I bought the movie without having seen it or talked to anyone who saw it (ugh). And I still have it. A few days ago I rearranged my DVD collection, and there it was, laughing at me.

But through all of this, the movie does have at least one redeeming quality.

In one scene, Woody Harrelson gets his ass blown off. Literally.

@2:30

I was in a Student Movie

This was back in 2001, in those heady days when I was studying journalism at the University of Florida and the spaceship Discovery was flying to Jupiter to make contact with the monolith. 

I was walking through the journalism building when a piece of paper taped to a metal gate caught my eye. It said something like, "Would you like to act in a movie?" And, being both attention starved and quite stupid, I sort of muttered, "Yeah, I guess I would." So I took one of the little slips of paper and called the number that night. The director of the movie answered, a small Asian man whose name I can't for the goddamn life of me remember, so for the purposes of this story we'll just call him Sergio Leone. 

"Uh, hi," I said. "I saw the ad for the movie." 

"Oh, yes. Uh huh." 

A pause. 

"And, you know, I'm interested." 

"Wonderful," he said. We talked for a minute. Then he said, "Would you be free to audition tomorow?" 

"I guess." 

"Wonderful." 

Sergio and I arranged to meet in an abandoned classroom on campus. 

"Hello," he said as I walked in. He turned to a ridiculously beautiful blonde behind him. "This is Kim." 

I shook Kim's hand and grinned stupidly, admiring her figure. I might like this acting business after all, I began thinking. As Kim and I chatted, Sergio began looking through the scripts. 

"Ok, here's the deal," he said. "The movie is actually broken down in sections, each with a different director and script, but with a unifying theme -- the morning after a one night stand." 

I looked over at Kim. I'm definitely going to like this acting business. 

Sergio handed me the script. 

"You, Joe, are auditioning for the role of Victor." 

I leafed through the script, suddenly puzzled. Victor seemed to have all the lines. Not that I minded, but...

"Victor has had sex with a deaf girl." 

Ah. 

"Only, he doesn't know she's a deaf girl until the morning after." 

I did a double take. Seriously, I remember doing it. 

"He doesn't know she's deaf?" 

Sergio leaned back, a supremely satisfied look on his face. 

"No." 

I turned to the end of the script and began reading a scene where Victor starts yelling at her, still totally unaware she's deaf. I was suddenly fidgeting. Maybe I won't like this acting business after all. I gave a serious thought to leaving. 

But shit, you know. You only live once. I looked up at Sergio and Kim and shrugged. 

"Okay." 

"Wonderful," Sergio said. "Shall we begin?" 

Victor's lines were the worst kind of stupid trash. First he can't believe she's still in the house the morning after all. Then he can't understand why she's being such a huge bitch by not even talking to him. Then he figures out she's deaf, realizes he's a douche, and apologizes. 

THE END 

Seriously. 

Sergio called me that night to tell me I had gotten the part. He specifically cited this scene from Chasing Amy as the reason he cast me, saying he could see me doing that scene (to this day I think it's because at the time, I wore a goatee). Not wanting to point out the mountain of fucking difference between confessing your love to a lesbian and hollering like a dingleberry at a deaf girl you banged without knowing she was deaf, I simply thanked him for giving me the part. 

"The shoot is next Thursday at 9 a.m. See you there, Joe." 

THE SHOOT

The day of the shoot my alarm didn't go off and I overslept. I had gotten a friend to agree to give me a ride, and I quickly called him. 

"Yeah, yeah," he said groggily. "I"m up." 

Then I called Sergio. He seemed perturbed, but only slightly. 

"It's okay," he said. "We've been having problems with our equipment anyway." 

I made a hair and makeup choice and decided not to shower. Besides, I thought, bed head is in character. Then I leapt into some previously arranged clothes, met my friend, and zoomed off to the location -- a shitty house Sergio and his friends had borrowed for someone. 

I walked up to the door and knocked. A bored looking girl with a book in her hand opened. 

"Hey," she said. 

She walked away from the door and back over to a coffee table, where she continued reading. To this day I assume she was the girlfriend of one of the other guys on the set, but I honestly don't know. I never talked to her. 

When I came in, the Director of Photography (DP) and the Sound Guy where having an argument about something while Sergio leaned up against a fireplace, talking to Kim. Suddenly Sergio saw me. 

"Ah, Joe. Wonderful," he said. 

I apologized for being late, but Sergio brushed it off. 

He walked Kim and I into the bedroom, the site of the first scene. 

"Okay," he says. "So you're both sleeping, then she get's up, and she's topless, then she stares out the window and walks out of the room." 

The word -- topless -- hung over the room like a John Goodman fart. I was suddenly too dumb for speech. I looked over at Kim. She laughed. 

"Yeah, they got this thing for me to wear," she said. She held up two wide strips of flesh colored tape. 

"Ah, yes. Of course," I said. "Of course." 

Then the DP came over and started discussing the scene with Sergio. It was very quickly apparent that the DP had done this before, because he started rejecting all of Sergio's ideas. 

"No no no," he said. "It's much better if we do it this way." 

Finally Sergio just gave up. The DP set of the first shot -- Kim getting out of bed "topless" (sadly, I was told to face the opposite wall and saw nothing). For the next shot, when Kim, now in a robe, leaves the bedroom and starts walking around the house, I found myself in a bathroom with Sergio. 

"Uh, shouldn't you be out there?" I said eventually. "I mean, you're the director, right?" 

Sergio sighed. "No, he's got it. It's a long tracking shot. I'd just be in the way." 

I didn't bring up the issue after that. 

The next scene was me getting out of bed -- not topless, but in my underwear -- and walking out of the room and into the kitchen. I was told to play this scene tired and hungover, which frankly didn't take a lot of acting. Then, suddenly, in probably the world's worst ever two-shot, I realize Kim is still there in the apartment and mutter something to the effect of "what is that bitch still doing here?" 

Then I had a few lines where I actually ask her what she's still doing in the apartment. When she doesn't respond, I start yelling. Eventually, I walk right up to her and continue yelling. 

We actually had a hard time figuring out how to convey to the audience that Kim was deaf. I mean, honestly, how do you do that without her literally holding up a sign that says, "I'm deaf, fuckhead"? 

Anyhow, I'm sorry to say I was the one who figured it out: a series of POV shots. First, from my angle talking to her with the sound of my rant ON, then a shot from her POV -- on my face -- with the sound turned OFF.

Seriously, figuring that out took like 45 minutes. 

After that, the only thing left was my "oh sorry, I'm an intolerant jackass, aren't I? I really shouldn't act like this anymore" speech, and then everyone packed up and went home. Kim gave me a ride back to my apartment. She had a very nice car -- a BMW, I believe -- equipped with the first navagation system I ever saw in a car. Before she dropped me off, she invited me to her birthday party, which was going to be on the day of the movie's "premiere." 

"Sure," I said. "I'll be there." 

THE PREMIERE

The premiere was something like two weeks later. Sergio sent me an email. When I went downstairs to put on my shoes one of my roommates, Ryan Wills, was there. He asked me where I was going and I made the mistake of telling him. 

If you read this, Ryan: yeah, sorry. I didn't want you to come. I knew the thing was going to be a fairly serious piece of shit, and I wanted to save you the trouble of smelling it and me the embarassment of having to hear about it. 

But as soon as I told him, he started putting his shoes on, so I knew I was fucked. I distinctly remember having the instinct to run out the door, but I decided against it. So we walked down to the lecture hall where the premiere was and sat down. Kim was a few rows ahead of me, flanked by friends. 

Watching the movie was, for two different reasons, one of the most surreal experiences of my life. First of all, as you can probably guess, it was a phenomenally shitty movie. My own segment was bad enough, but all of the others were just as bad. It is, to this day, one of the shittiest movies I've ever seen. Full of heavy-handed moralizing, bad writing, worse acting (yours truly included) and production values that make Troma movies look like Lawrence of Arabia. 

Secondly, it was incredibly surreal to see myself be part of this oozing cinematic flesh wound. I mean, it's bad enough for something to be bad, but it's another thing entirely to know it's bad and you helped make it bad. You're partially responsible. When it came time for my big, silent close up, I sunk down into my seat and wanted to disappear, sure than someone would see me and point and say something like, "there he is, that guy who sucked!" 

But none of that happened. When the movie was over, Ryan was incredibly diplomatic, because after all even sadists don't kick old, sagging dogs in the balls. 

I left without saying goodbye to Sergio and went to Kim's party. She got incredibly drunk and introduced me to her fiance, a ripped preppy kid. Her mother had come into town for the premiere and I was introduced to her as well, a fit older woman who regarded me suspiciously and didn't mention the movie. 

And then, finally, I went home. Sergio had promised me a copy of the movie, but he never sent it, and to this day I've only seen it that one time. 

Oh, well. It exists better in my memory... one of those weird times where you venture blindly out on a limb for the hell of it... only to have it break and find yourself racing toward the ground, shitting yourself the whole way down. 

The Worst Movies... Ever

Congratulations, Blues Brothers 2000!

 

Eagle-eyed readers might notice that I have a particular distaste for bad remakes and sequels. And well, here's another one. 

The Blues Brothers 2000 is a phenomenally shitty movie. Watching it is truly makes you wonder whether they intended for it to be that bad, or whether someone switched out the script for something some jackass wrote on the back of a snot rag.

Following the old Hollywood adage: "a sequel should be the same movie as the original, only shittier," the Blues Brothers 2000 is the story of Elwood Blues trying to get the band back together (again) on a Mission from God (again) with the help of Mighty Mack (John Goodman), the Kid (J. Evan Bonifant), Cabel Chamberlain (Joe Morton) and The Band (no, not that one). 

The only difference is Elwood has to do this without the help of Joliet Jake (John Belushi) who had the good sense to die rather than appear in the movie.  

Oh, and the whole time they're being pursued by Nazis (again), eventually making their way to a battle of the bands contest against possibly the greatest Fake Band ever -- the Louisiana Gator Boys -- featuring Eric Clapton, B.B. King, Steve Winwood, Bo Diddley, Issac Hayes, and Lou Rawls. 

Well, big surprise, the Blues Brothers lose (as would any band up against the Gator Boys not featuring, you know, actual deities), and Elwood asks if the Gator Boys whether they would like to jam. Because neither that scene (nor much of the movie, really) is not on YouTube, here's a video that seems appropriate. 

 

When you look at it, it was sort of inevitable that Blues Brothers 2000 would suck. It was written by Dan Aykroyd, who five years before had written the crappy Coneheads movie, and directed by John Landis, who four years before had directed Beverly Hills Cop III (a movie so bad it might one day work it's way into this series). 

Plus, it was released in 1998, not 2000. This forces you to imagine what must have been an actual conversation 

Studio exec: What are you gonna call it? 

Aykroyd: Well, it's going to be released in 1998, so we thought we'd just call it, you know, Blues Brothers 1998. 

Studio exec: What are you, a fucking idiot? Nobody's going to go see a movie called Blues Brothers 1998. 

Aykroyd: Well, okay. What do you think we should call it? 

Studio exec: Blues Brothers 2000, of course. People will think it's awesome if we call it that. 

Aykroyd: You know, I think you're right! 

The Worst Movies... Ever

Worst Movie #2: Planet of the Apes (the completely unnecessary remake)

The rationale behind the making of this movie has never been fully explained. After five orginal Ape movies, each with significantly (and eventually, pathetically) diminishing returns, you would figure that the powers that be would decide that people had had enough of heavy handed social commentary hidden behind, you know, gorilla masks. 

"Oh my God, so when that Ape says he's tired of being a second class citizen, he's really talking about minorities, right? And when a group of Apes lay down in front of an advancing column of infantry, they're really talking about the Vietnam War, right? And when a race of genetically deformed humans worships a nuclear weapon, they're really talking about...."

Zzzzzzzzzzzz.

You get the idea. Not unlike Star Trek, the Planet of the Apes franchise used a thinly veiled sci-fi concept to discuss socially relevant issues. And hey, I'll be the first (by which I mean, probably not the first) to say it was effective. 

The first one? The one with Charleton Heston? I dug it. Totally awesome. Seen it 20 times at least. The one after that, with Charleton Heston look-a-like James Fransiscus. Well, you know, it was okay, I guess. 

Everything after that? 

Not so much. 

Which brings us to the remake of the Planet of the Apes, directed by Tim (my soul is so black and troubled I have a fleet of publicists and a standard $5 million pay or play deal) Burton and starring Mark (no baby, that wasn't actually my penis in Boogie Nights) Wahlberg. 

Reading over the plot summary again, I actually sort of wish I could just post the entire thing here, since it's filled with so many "what the fuck" moments it's fundamental shittiness should have been apparent to anyone who bothered to read a synopsis on the script.  

For instance: 

"A familiar vehicle descends from the sky and is identified immediately by Leo (Wahlberg). It is the pod piloted by Pericles, the chimp astronaut. Pericles was pushed forward in time as Leo was, and had just now found his way to the planet. When Pericles lands, the apes interpret his landing as the return arrival of Semos, the first ape, who is their god. They bow, and hostilities between humans and apes disappear."

Yep. That's what happens. Meanwhile, in the audience, a pregnant woman miscarries. 

The horribleness continues as Leo decides he'd rather not be in such a ridiculously conceived and executed future, and boards the only pod available to travel back to our time (leaving behind the pet chimp who just saved his life), through the same incredibly stable and plot convenient electromagnetic storm. 

After crash landing in Washington DC, both Leo (and the audience) get a final big wad of shit stuffed in their mouth, as we discover, with no goddamn explanation at all, that somehow Apes now control our time as well, complete with a monument to what surely has to be called "Apebraham" Lincoln. 

Yeah, they went there. 

Suffice to say: The Planet of the Apes remake is a movie so terrible it makes me want to throw feces at the screen. 

Why? Because they took an awesome movie, with a cool premise, and turned it into a hundred pounds of rotten mangoes. 

The last time I did one of these features, I compared watching Hollow Man to getting your nuts caught in a toaster. Well, as bad as Planet of the Apes is (and it's a genuine shit sandwich), it's not quite that bad. I'd compare it more to the experience of watching someone you like (say, Charleton Heston) get mangled by a wheat thresher piloted by an ape who looks suspiciously like Tim Burton. 

What's the proper response to this kind of travesty?  

Well, how about this: 

The Worst Movies... Ever

So as I look back on the last month or so of this blog, I see some good things and some bad things. Some funny things and -- let's face it -- some extremely funny things. 

But besides my recurring "Celebrity Birthdays" thingy, what you can't say about this a-here blog is that's it's in any way about Hollywood. 

And well, there's a reason for that: I still live in Chicago. It's hard to write a joke about stepping over a sleeping crackhead in West Hollywood to get to the front door of the apartment you share with an out-of-work bikini waxer if that's not your actual life. 

So as a substitute for that horrible possible future, I've decided to start writing a series of features about what are -- to me, your Humble Narrator -- the worst movies ever. 

My exceptionally creative title for this, picked after a grueling deliberation lasting two seconds?

"The Worst Movies... Ever." 

Worst Movie #1: Hollow Man (2000). 

As Roger Ebert (whose birthday, coincidentally, is today) would say, I "hate hate hate hate hate" this movie. Why? Because it's a piece of shit shit shit shit shit. 

For those of you don't know, Hollow Man is the story of brilliant, arrogant but stupidly named scientist Sebastian Caine (Kevin Bacon) who after years of work has finally discovered a procedure that can make a person invisible. Instead of reporting his success to the government, who hired him and funded his project (complete with a cool underground bunker in the middle of a city), he does what any scientist who wants to further the plot along does: he tests it out on himself. 

And, well, it works. He's invisible. But when they try to return him to visibility after three days, they can't. 

Oops! 

This totally predictable outcome does not make Sebastian mad at himself for causing his shitty situation. Nope, it turns him -- for no reason at all -- into a raging psychopath and murderer. First up, he rapes his neighbor. Seriously. Then he kills a dog. 

Then, instead of just escaping the lab and going into the city (where his chances of being found -- as an invisible guy -- would be pretty slim) he just decides he'd rather kill his entire team -- a group of people, mind you, that are his best friends at the beginning of the movie. 

So this he does, killing everyone except for two people -- Matt (Josh Brolin) and Linda (Elizabeth Shue) -- who he locks in a freezer. To no one's surprise, they escape, using an electromagnet modified (I shit you not) from a defibrilator. 

Then, and I quote from the Wikipedia plot summary: "she (Linda) makes a fire to warm Matt then gathers the parts needed for a flamethrower." 

Don't laugh at this. Flamethrower parts are actually standard issue in medical laboratories. After all, who knows when you'll be forced, between tissue analyses, to root out a bunker of dug-in Japanese soldiers.  

Now if you're thinking: well, he's invisible. Maybe he does all of this because no one will know it's him. No, I'm sorry. Everyone in the movie knows instantly it's Sebastian. Why? Because he talks (and talks and talks) the entire movie, venting a streaming of megomaniacal bullshit from his mouth like a volcano. 

Sample dialogue: 

Sebastian: "How many times do I have to tell you, Frank? You're not God. I am." 

Yes. Despite being a brilliant scientist, Sebastian apparently never learned the first rule of sneaking up on someone: shut the fuck up. 

So yes. Hollow Man is the cinematic equivalent of getting your scrotum caught in a toaster. If I'm destined to go to hell, Hollow Man will be the only movie on, every day, all day long, for eternity. 

And I'm not the only one. Hollow Man was so badly reviewed that, in an effort to find a reviewer who would actually say something nice about the movie, Sony was forced to make someone up. 

So why does Hollow Man rank as one of the worst movies... ever, rather than just as a piece of silly bullshit? 

Well, because the idea of becoming invisible is actually really cool. Any random halfwit could come up with a better movie from that basic idea than the crap I've described above. But no. Instead of exploring the psychological and metaphysical implications (and also interesting stuff), the filmmakers decided to make a really shitty formerly-normal-guy-becomes-a-serial-killer-for-no-reason movie (with, you know, invisibility thrown in there for kicks). 

And for that, well... let me just say that certain persons (for instance, and I'm just picking randomly here, Hollow Man director Paul Verhooven) should be forced to stand on a stage and have rotten fruit thrown at them.