Better than "Citizen Kane" and "Casablanca" combined.
"Force of Execution"
They put an overweight, over-the-hill Steven Seagal on the poster for this to give you the illusion that it's not really about a no-name actor that Seagal's character sends on a boring mission. Illusion didn't work on me!1
"Wild Wild West"
Everything about this film is wrong.
"Brick Mansions"
This is the last completed movie starring Paul Walker, the white guy from the "Fast" and/ or "Furious" movies. It's decent. Some cool suspense, nice gritty urban Detroit landscape. Feels more like a throwback to 80's near-future paranoid action films like "Dead-End Drive-In" than a modern action romp. And that's fine.
"Furious 7"
Perfect.
"Without a Paddle"
Burt Reynolds' cameo as D.B. Cooper's partner-in-crime was awesome. And when the hillbillies attacked, I was like "Hey, that's Kubiak from 'Parker Lewis Can't Lose'!" Absolutely nothing else in this film connected. Every character arc was contrived and forced. And it's just not funny.
"Scary Movie 5"
Unwatchable. I tried. It refused to be watched.
Superb documentary about professional debunker James Randi, showing the conflicts he faced in his own life along with the lies he exposed all around him.
"Leprechaun: Origins"
If you thought they couldn't make a worse "Leprechaun" film than "Leprechaun: Back 2 tha Hood," you thought wrong.
"The Haunting" (1999)
This is a remake of one of my favorite films from the 60's. The CGI was gratuitous and 90's-level bad. But they tried.
"Penny Dreadful"
The Frankenstein monster was well-portrayed and there were some fun moments here and there. But every episode felt like a dull rambling slag periodically interrupted by ridiculously over-the-top obscenity. Ironically, if it hadn't been so obscene, the rest might not have seemed so dull by comparison!
"Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit"
It's okay. Kudos to director Kenneth Branagh for getting Mikhail Baryshnikov to play a villain.
"Atari: Game Over"
Tries to defend legendarily bad "E.T." Atari game. No dice. Just because it maybe wasn't THAT awful compared to games of its time...doesn't make it good.
"TMNT" (2014)
Not as bad as "Transformers 2."
Brilliant unmaking-of and making-of an absolutely bizarre film. Hypnotizing, on a level with "Jodorowsky's Dune," another making-of documentary about a movie that never got made.
"Jurassic World"
Bizarrely cruel, sexist, and it collapses in the third act with a stupid ending that sounds cool when you describe it but makes no sense in action. Entertaining, though.
* * *
1. Now I'm ASSUMING Seagal never appears again after the first 10 minutes because I stopped watching as soon as his character exited. I've seen enough low-budget trash to know when I'm being swindled by that "get a celebrity to briefly appear in your movie and then say he stars in it" trick. And I reject that ol' sunk cost fallacy that tricks us into watching the whole movie.
-Phony McFakename
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