Cinemasterworks: "Foodfight!"

I like a good bad movie as much as the next guy.

The Room, Troll 2, Plan 9 from Outer Space, Battlefield Earth, Birdemic, Robot Monster- you name it, I love it.

But sometimes a movie goes beyond so-bad-it's-good. Beyond comprehension. Beyond belief. Beyond beyond.

Foodfight! is such a movie.

Please take two minutes out of your life and behold the trailer.

The whole movie looks like that.

Released in 2012, this film boasts a $45 million budget and voice work by Hillary Duff, Charlie Sheen, Eva Longoria, Christopher Lloyd, Jerry Stiller, Wayne Brady, and several other minor celebrities.

And it looks like a mid-90's CD-ROM video game.

On top of constant video glitches, every character looks and moves in a disturbingly fake way. Their eyes move in every direction and their bodies are constantly twitching. This film turns the uncanny valley into the uncanny Grand Canyon. The chocolate weasel is the only character with any texture, but unfortunately, it's the texture of a glistening turd. Very, very uncomfortable to watch.

The plot: grocery store food label icons come to life when grocery stores close as the whole place turns into an epic fantasy city full of these icons. All is well until the evil "Brand X" company invades the store with their generic products, and thus, the grocery city with their evil "Brand X" icons. As they arrive, they push our "beloved" food icons out of existence. And then there's a food fight.

The "Brand X" icons march and act and talk like Nazis. Horrifyingly like Nazis. Foodfight! presents endless imagery and re-enactments of Nazi rallies and speeches. In a PG kids' movie. Not to mention a final battle between the good guys and the food Nazis that goes on forever and ultimately feels as pulverizing as an overlong battle scene in a Hobbit movie.

It's not clear if there is a dimensional gateway in this grocery store opening up to the fantasy city, or if the grocery store transforms into this city, or if this situation is unique to this grocery store or happens in all grocery stores. We never even see the characters emerge from their labels, so how they come to life isn't clear.

There are actual food icons in this film- Mr. Clean, Mrs. Butterworth, Charlie the Tuna, the California Raisins- but they're relegated to odd cameos. All the main characters are fictional food icons, for some reason.

Not to mention that, unlike the similar Toy Story, we never see these fictional food icons in the film's "reality." Toy Story shows Andy playing with the toys, establishing their identity, and we see an advertisement for Buzz Lightyear to help us understand his deal. These were fictional toys, but the movie made them real within the context of the film with textual clues. No such luck in Foodfight! Example: the main character, voiced by Charlie Sheen, is a McGruff the Crime Dog-looking canine private detective who is apparently the icon for a cinnamon-flavored cereal. We never see an ad for the product. We never hear any humans discuss him. We never even see a box of the cereal before we meet this character in mid-action. It's totally random.

And the main character's catch phrase- "The secret is inside!"- is never explained. Not that this stops the film from using it over and over. Out of context.

There is a disturbing amount of hardcore sexual innuendo that's not technically vulgar, but breath-takingly nasty in its implications. Totally tone deaf. I realize some kids' movies throw adult humor in there for the parents, but this movie forgot to hire a writer capable of subtlety. This film's idea of humor is constant Casablanca references and non-stop lame food puns.

Speaking of the writers, it was written by the two screenwriters behind Mortal Kombat: Annihilation. If you liked Mortal Kombat: Annihilation, you will love Foodfight!

I sat aghast and baffled for the entirety of its 90-minute running time. My friend and I managed a wisecrack now and then, but were mostly left speechless, staring at each other in bewilderment. About every 10 seconds, something happened that made us audibly respond, "Huh?"

There are podcasts and websites dedicating to cataloging the train wreck of a production this movie went through- it's nicely summarized on Wikipedia.

But here's some highlights:
-The filmmakers wanted to do for grocery store items what Toy Story did for toys, solely because they wanted tie-in endorsement deals with food companies.
-Most of these deals fell through.
-Production was completed in 2003, but then the hard drives with the film were allegedly stolen, according to the director, in an act of "industrial espionage."
-The production floundered for years until declaring bankruptcy in 2011.
-It was auctioned off and the buyers invested as little money as possible to assemble the files into something resembling a film and they dumped the result direct to streaming in an attempt to break even.

This isn't a good movie, is what I'm getting at here. Please watch Foodfight! if you ever worry that you're getting too sane or too intelligent.


-Phony McFakename

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Cinemasterworks: "Green Room" and Video Vault

First things first: Green Room is an amazing, brutal, heartfelt, elegantly-made film.

Writer/director Jeremy Saulnier upped his game here from his already awesome 2013 film Blue Ruin, which was a huge step up from his debut film, the dark and quirky 2007 Murder Party.

In a nutshell, it's about a punk band trapped in a neo-Nazi club. No one wants to kill anyone, but both sides are forced to kill each other because of tragic circumstance. The neo-Nazis started it, though.

The violence is jaw-droppingly brutal. It's hard to get a jaded contemporary audience to wince, but this one brought the house down several times. Just- OUCH!!!

I would be in awe of this film even if I knew nothing about who made it, but full disclosure- I am hopefully biased in its favor. It's directed by a fellow who grew up down the street from me and characters in the film are named after beloved friends.

My mommy says that director Jeremy Saulnier's mommy babysat me at his house when I was little, but I have little to no memory of this (other than Jeremy cutting a TV out of a cardboard box and pretending to be on television- he was always a visual artist!).

I do remember meeting Saulnier a couple times in the mid-90's. He had a detached vibe and fifty-yard stare, but was still friendly and cool with dumb little me. His band, No Turn on Fred, was a heavy, hilarious "ice metal" band. Their band name was based on the best-selling "No Turn on Red" signs you sometimes see at intersections. One such sign in particular was tagged in our neighborhood- at a fairly major intersection- with an "F" in front of the "Red." That elegant bit of graffiti stayed up there for years, somehow.

What I didn't know is that the guy was also making backyard gore epics with his home movie camera. I was secretly doing the same! Though I think he was more persistent and took his work a wee bit more seriously than me.

But to my credit- back home and back in the day, I did work at the greatest video store in the history of the world. (I'm no stranger to hyperbole, but believe me- I'm serious here.)

Video Vault.

See kids, before Netflix- we had these things called video stores. History lesson over.

Video Vault was unlike any of those tiny little shops in strip malls, though. This place was a three-level townhouse with a room for every genre. And most great directors had a section set aside for their movies- Scorsese, Truffaut, Romero, Kurosawa, and a pre-Lord of the Rings Peter Jackson.

I was a horror nut as far back as I can remember and before Video Vault, I had to scour independently-owned stores all over the metropolitan area looking for cool and rare horror and cult films. (Never at Blockbuster, though- that place was always pretty weak on selection of cinema bizarro. Good riddance.) You'd score maybe a small handful of gems at each store. It gave you that primal rush of being a hunter/gatherer.

But Video Vault was the place that consolidated every wonderful and impossible-to-find horror movie under one roof. One-stop shopping. They not only had a "Horror" room, but also a "Cult" room, with every conceivable deranged, uncategorizable film you could ever hope to see.

This place was legend.

Our customers were the best. They loved film and loved talking film. We had a revolving door of delightful and interesting characters and memorable encounters with minor celebrities, all of which I would get sued for recounting.

Video Vault also graduated some pretty impressive talents. Obviously, there's Green Room director Jeremy Saulnier- who I can't confirm but strongly suspect learned a lot from the Vault. There's also Jack Bennett, who produced countless great short films and online shows, then directed this Anthrax video, which is probably the grossest thing I've ever seen. (And I've seen some pretty gross stuff.) And Zach Clark has directed several dark, brilliant, and moving films including Modern Love is Automatic, White Reindeer, and the currently-in-festivals Little Sister.

Zach was a co-worker, Jack was a customer, but their names rhymed, so they were equal in my eyes. I no longer have Jack's 2001 short film where he blew his brains out on a Kermit poster, but I do still have all of Zach's high school movies on VHS. Shut Up and Get Functional, A Bad Day for Juan, Citizen Spleen, Frankenstein, Spungville Confidential, you name it. (He's probably gonna burn my house down to keep anyone from getting their hands on these classics.)

To this day, when I meet a serious film fan and casually mention that I once worked at Video Vault- as a God-like Assistant Manager, no less!- grown adults get childishly giddy as they wax poetic about how much they loved that place. It left a mark.

Video stores are extinct. A few of them are still kicking around out there- especially in Alaska and Texas and other places without Internet- but they're mostly curious relics of a pre-Internet age.

That's fine. Their time came and went. Such is life. The only one I was really sad to see go was Video Vault in 2010. (Their website still exists, amazingly.)

Much like Eric Roberts, it was the best of the best.

(Update- CONFIRMED HERE, Saulnier gives Video Vault props.)


-Phony McFakename

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The Best Words: April 2016

Here's the words! If you also want to see what I think was funny on Twitter, here's the link.

“You seem really busy. Let me let you let me run.”

-Pee-Wee’s Big Holiday

“It won’t end well.”

-Patrick Stewart, Green Room

“Half-Vampire... Half-Lycan... but stronger than both!”

“Your incompetence is becoming most...taxing.”

“But what about the covenant? You know it’s forbidden!”

“You may have killed me, cousin, but my will is done regardless.”

“There is a good reason why these rules were created, and they are the only reason we have survived this long!”

“It is the oldest story in the book; he desires the one thing he cannot have.”

  

“It was forbidden, our union.”

“There can be no such union. And to speak of it is heresy.”

“I've bled for you once already. Without me, you'd have nothing. You'd be nothing.”

-Underworld

“Making a record is like making a record.”

-Al Jourgensen 

“The incentive for the outsider was to attack the inside right up to the moment he was co-opted by it.”

-Michael Lewis, Next

“The pleasure of rooting for Goliath is that you can expect to win. The pleasure of rooting for David is that, while you don’t know what to expect, you stand at least a chance of being inspired.”

-Michael Lewis, Moneyball

“Don't worry where I am. I'll tell you when I get there.”

-Michael Lewis, The Blind Side

“The Mormons may be going to Hell, but they really are nice people!”

-Michael Lewis, The Blind Side

“Everywhere you turn you see Americans sacrifice their long-term interests for a short-term reward.”

-Michael Lewis, Boomerang

“In Iran you can vote for anyone for President so long as that person has been approved by the Ayatollah Khomeini. We Americans call that system a dictatorship.

“Voters in America recently discovered that they live under an Iranian type of system and didn’t know it. In the primaries, voters participate in some sort of ritualistic placebo voting while party leaders select the candidates. In the general election, the richest and smartest of the elite use money and psychology to brainwash the masses into imagining they have independent opinions and that their votes matter. We call that a republic.”

-Scott Adams

"How you do matters as much as what you do."

-Person of Interest

“Someday the world will give you a reason to be as grouchy as you are right now. Try to appreciate life a bit more until then.”

-Anonymous

“The one sound power in the world is the power of a hairy muscular right arm!”

“Never Explain Anything.”

“The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown”

“Almost nobody dances sober, unless they happen to be insane.”

“I never ask a man what his business is, for it never interests me. What I ask him about are his thoughts and dreams.”

“The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.”

“Success is a relative thing- and the victory of a boy at marbles is equal to the victory of an Octavius at Actium when measured by the scale of cosmic infinity.”

“I fear my enthusiasm flags when real work is demanded of me.”

“That is not dead which can eternal lie,

And with strange aeons even death may die.”

“A gentleman shouldn’t write all his images down for a plebian rabble to stare at.”

“From even the greatest of horrors irony is seldom absent.”

“The world is indeed comic, but the joke is on mankind.”

“Adulthood is hell.”

“What is anything?”

-H.P. Lovecraft

“You’re a dinosaur...I’m just exercising my right to be the best I can be. That’s what America is all about, okay? That’s what makes it a great company!”

“Country.”

“...What did I say?”

-The Larry Sanders Show

“Aww, Winston. Someday you’re gonna make some lucky girl very uncomfortable.”

-New Girl

“There's a terror in knowing what the world is about.”

“You would think that a rock star being married to a supermodel would be one of the greatest things in the world. It is.”

“This chaos is killing me.”

“On the day of execution

Only women kneel and smile.”

“They know God exists for the devil told them so.”

“I’m an instant star. Just add water and stir.”

“Talking about art is like dancing about architecture.”

“And I’m gone

Like I’m dancing on angels

And I’m gone

Through a crack in the past

Like a dead man walking”

“I don’t want knowledge. I want certainty.”

“I'm always amazed that people take what I say seriously. I don't even take what I am seriously.”

-David Bowie

“Let’s have a party there’s a full moon in the sky

It’s the hour of the wolf and I don’t want to die...

I’m so happy, dancing while the grim reaper cuts, cuts, cuts

But he can’t get me,

I’m as clever as can be!”

“This is my private life

I have no friends to fear

I've got no problems, no cross to bear

If you can find me

Come and get me out of here...  

This is my private place

Everything is neat and clean

The skeletons are hidden in the closet

This is my private place

Come and get me out of here”

-Oingo Boingo

-Compiled by Phony McFakename

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COMMERCIAL INTERRUPTION: Buy My Book!!!

I have a new book out.

It is called Best Sellers.

It is the bestest book ever written.

Future generations will ask you, "Where were you when you read the blog entry announcing the release of Best Sellers?"

If you like (or dislike) fantasy, vampires, romance, zombies, literary fiction, dystopian future YA, mystery, classic literature, fairy tales, bondage fiction, or mainstream thrillers...then Best Sellers is a book.

I guarantee it.

Also Bella Forrest loves this book. Probably. I imagine. I hope and dream.

-Phony McFakename

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Legal disclaimer: Me am on Twitter and Facebook and Instagram and YouTube and even Pinterest if that's your thing. And me books am on Amazon and Barnes & Noble and Kobo and probably some other places, too.

Literateur: "Waterworld" by Max Allan Collins

Novelizations are funny things.

They mostly suck. Theodore Sturgeon coined the principle- "Sturgeon's Law"- that says "90% of anything is crap." With novelizations, it's closer to 99.9%.

You're probably okay to dodge this literary genre.

Now and then you can learn a thing or two from them. The Gremlins novelization reveals Gizmo's alien origins. The Aliens novelization has Newt's origin story. The Dark Knight Rises novelization reveals where Joker was during the events of that film. The original Shaun Hutson Terminator novelization reveals that the Terminator had feelings about what he was doing. (Which was not canon and one of the big reasons James Cameron blocked its publication in the U.S.)

But the most important thing you can learn from novelizations is what not to do.

With the exception of the superbly crafted Orson Scott Card adaptation of The Abyss- arguably even better than the film- novelizations are a debased art form. They are by necessity rushed and sloppy, since the author is given an early draft of a script to work with and is then forced to crank it out in a few days or weeks to make sure it meets the publication deadline.

If you've ever glanced at the spines of a few novelizations, you probably noticed that almost all of them are written by Max Allan Collins (Though Alan Dean Foster wrote all the ones that Collins missed). And the Waterworld novelization is no exception:

I've read a few of Collins' novelizations and short stories and one of his CSI books. They're tolerable. Nothing too amazing, nothing too insulting.

But the thing about this one is...it's oddly good.

It's disarming from the start, with an extremely well-written prologue and solid character development and narrative flow.

He has a great eye for detail on the Mariner's ship right off the bat:
"Wind chimes fashioned from ancient computer boards and printed circuits tinkled and sang a melancholy tuneless tune; a prow-mounted harmonica played its own ghostly nonmelody; and cockpit controls shifted idly with the current."

Everything about that description is great. Effortlessly shows how the highest tech of the past has become the tinkling trifle of the present. And feels trenchant with a longing for the shattered past.

Its main limitation is the source material. Waterworld- when you get past its legendary status for the amount of money it burned through- is still just a generic post-apocalyptic Road Warrior rip-off with water in place of sand. I don't hate it- it's entertaining pulp- but it's not a story for the ages.

And this is about as good as a novelization can possibly be. I have no idea why Max Allan Collins put so much care and effort into this.

My friend got this for me as a joke. We have a running gag where we seek to find the worst possible books and give them to each other on birthdays and Christmas. (e.g. Mortal Kombat: Annihilation novelization, Daredevil novelization, bodice-ripper romance books, Vanilla Ice's autobiography, etc.)

But the joke's on him, because this one wasn't that bad. In yo face!

-Phony McFakename

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Legal disclaimer: Me am on Twitter and Facebook and Instagram and YouTube and even Pinterest if that's your thing. And me books am on Amazon and Barnes & Noble and Kobo and probably some other places, too.

Cinemasterworks: No-Attention Span Reviews Time!

Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice
Some humans made this movie and some humans watched it.

Stung
Killer insect rampage. It has Lance Henriksen in it. I cracked up when Lance appeared on screen, like "Buckle up for some serious suckage!" Because Lance- though a great actor- will appear in ANYTHING. But like his recent film Harbinger Down- it was okay despite Henriksen's normally poor taste in scripts. Some good giant insect goop and gore. Not a classic, but a fun little monster mash.

Spotlight
It's not bad. In any way. Important film. But it feels like it got the Best Picture Oscar for political reasons, the same way Birdman won last year. That movie is irritating and hateful, but Hollywood felt like it was a cool move to reward it. In much the same way, Spotlight is an inflammatory film, so they rewarded it. Still- it's a good film. So hey.

Sherlock: The Abominable Bride
Some cool moments and visuals, but mostly wheel-spinning. Neither a satisfying retro-alternative reality, nor a satisfying follow-up to the last season. Better than nothing, since we have to wait decades between each season of this awesome show.

Willow Creek
This is the only film directed by Bobcat Goldthwait that I didn't love. (He's not just a quirky stand-up comedian; his more noteworthy funny/melancholy/disturbing films include Call Me Lucky, God Bless America, Shakes the Clown, and World's Greatest Dad.) This is Bobcat's found-footage Bigfoot film. It subverts a lot of expectations. And it's not bad. It's well-acted. It's just...SPOILER, but the last 40 minutes is one long shot of people in a tent acting scared of what's outside the tent. NOTHING HAPPENS. It's like that other found-footage "thriller" Europa Report. ANOTHER SPOILER- it ends the same way, with a brief shot of something kinda scary after 90 minutes of aimless buildup. And then it's over.

Kirk Cameron's Saving Christmas
Still a better love story than Twilight.

The Zero Theorem
I need a break from Terry Gilliam. His last few movies have been aggressively difficult to enjoy on any level. Lots of ranting and nonsensical plotting. A few cool visuals don't save it.

xXx
Perfectly ridiculous and stupid in every way. Just a delicious chunk of cinematic cheese. Vin Diesel throws two grenades against a snowy mountaintop, kicking off an avalanche that he outruns. On snowboard. This is Mountain Dew-flavored Doritos in movie form. X-TREME!!!

He Never Died
Henry Rollins gets a lead role in a film! He plays an eternal vampire-type entity who's really tired of existence and just wants to be left alone. But he discovers he has an illegitimate daughter and gets dragged into her life's drama. Rollins nails it from beginning to end and I look forward to his future lead work.

Insurgent and Divergent
Dystopian future YA SF with incredibly forgettable-looking lead female protagonist. Seriously, every time her face isn't on screen, I forget what she looks like.

Finders Keepers
A documentary about a guy's amputated leg and his quest to get his leg back. A true redneck epic.

Turbo Kid
A cake that's mostly frosting. The super-gory, goofy 80's retro vibe is fun sometimes, but can be grating at other times. It's basically one joke. But it's entertaining almost all the way through. So if you like 80's horror and 80's pop, you'll have fun with this.

Death Sentence

This is a pretty solid average-guy-pushed-too-far-by-gang-violence-and-gets-revenge flick. Though I almost punched a wall at the mid-point where Kevin Bacon throws his briefcase full of identifying papers aside while running from the gang outside his office. The movie totally lost me there. It was already iffy that Mr. Bacon went on his first revenge-killing without a mask on and dressed in a suit AND parked his car right in front of the building. But those are believable rookie errors for an average guy gone homicidal. Now throwing the briefcase away- too stupid. And then he just goes back to work afterward. Ugh. Even if it somehow hadn't occurred to the Baconator that the gang members got his home address off his papers in the briefcase- he's got to at LEAST know that the gang members know who he is and where he works and are highly likely to attack him there again. WAY too stupid. Good stuff otherwise. Bacon's final rampage was solid and well-staged. And there were some good character moments and stunts. Better than any of the Death Wish sequels. And probably the first Death Wish.

As Above, So Below
Underrated found-footage horror flick set in the catacombs below Paris. Lots of good delirious spooky imagery. A wild and dark ride to the heart of madness.

Five Dolls for an August Moon
This lesser-known Mario Bava giallo thriller is really not good, but has this hypnotic, awesome music score, and some great use of color. There's this weird scene where Bava shows all these bodies in a meat locker while this lovely music plays over it. A unique and expressive example of the power of weird cinema. Just a transcendent, odd moment.

Cartel Land
Documentary about a group of Mexican citizens fed up with cartels and the refusal/inability of police and military to stop the cartels. They arm themselves, rise up, and take on the cartels. This movie feels incredibly dangerous and I was worried about the filmmakers' safety the whole time.

Bone Tomahawk
Kurt Russell rocks. Great, simple, straightforward supernatural-tinged Western. Staggeringly violent, too. Watch out for some of those scenes near the end. Icky.

Deadpool
Nice Marvel movie about a nice superhero boy.

The Amityville Horror (2005)
Deadpool moves into a haunted house. This is a remake of a 1979 movie that didn't star Deadpool.

A Very Murray Christmas

Some funny moments. But the movie stops cold every few minutes for a musical number. It just feels like they're killing time. Now, I do like some musical films and musicals, but as a rule- they have to be really, really good for me to dig them. And the film's vibe is puzzling- it's a musical that seems to hate musicals, so it often feels like it's insulting the people that would most enjoy it. Mocking your target audience is rarely a good idea. Also it drags. It reunites Murray with his Lost in Translation director. If you liked that movie, maybe this if for you. But for most of us, this is like watching paint dry.

Stir of Echoes 2 
It's odd that this exists. This thing came out almost a decade ago and I'd never even heard of it, despite being a fan of the first film and the book it's based on. Also weird that heavy-hitter Rob Lowe starred in it. They must have got him in that dead period he had between Parks & Recreation and The West Wing. It's got some really generic jump scares and it's generally poorly lit and poorly shot. It has a good message, but it gets muddled along the way. It has almost no connection to the first film. It just misfires all over the place. Stir of Echoes 2? More like Stir of Echoes POO!

Meet the Mormons
Best movie I've ever seen about a mother who's also a mixed martial arts expert.

Tusk
Kevin Smith makes horror movies now. His first one- Red State- was super-divisive and even I have mixed feelings about it. This one is about a maniac who mutilates poor young men, turning them into walruses with bodies made of human skin. If the Clerks movies were too tasteful for you, have at.

Zootopia
Brilliant, thoughtful dissertation on coexistence and understanding in the form of a hilarious kids' film. All the voice actors are delightful and the plot twists like a pretzel. Fun throughout.

Return to House on Haunted Hill

I noticed this one online and- like Stir of Echoes 2- I was like "How did I never hear of this?" I was one of the three people that kinda liked those William Castle remakes from a decade or so ago- 13 Ghosts and House on Haunted Hill. Not great films, but perfectly entertaining, ghoulish, gory fun. This Return to sequel is absolute garbage, though. Boring, badly acted, badly paced, and at its best- gross and offensive, not in a fun way. Return to House on Haunted Hill? More like Return to House on Haunted POO!

What We Do in the Shadows
Magnificent, hilarious, goofy vampire mockumentary.

Soaked in Bleach

I always kind of figured Courtney Love killed Kurt Cobain. And I mean I've believed that since 1994. It's not an "alternative point of view," just a gut feeling. It always rubbed me the wrong way that nobody'd ever heard of her- though I was tickled to later learn that she was once the lead singer for Faith No More- and all of a sudden she put out an album right after Cobain died and it was a huge hit and everyone bought it and she played the martyr- "Someday you will ache like I ache!"- all the way to the bank and then parlayed that into feature film roles and it all rang very, very false. Every interview I saw with her made her come across as an opportunistic junkie who would lie, cheat, or steal to get ahead in the biz. But hey- it's very difficult to prove. It could just be that there's incredibly damning circumstantial evidence against her and that she's actually innocent. The private investigator in this movie makes a good and damning case against her, though.

There was another documentary that theorized Kurt's suicide was staged- Kurt & Courtney- back in the 90's. It wasn't very good. But it had an intriguing scene where El Duce said "Courtney Love offered me $50,000 to whack Kurt Cobain!" And the director is flummoxed, like "Are you really saying that on-camera?" And the guy was like "Yeah, she said to make it look like a suicide!" Then he mugs for the camera, like "What?" and says he knows who killed Cobain, but won't reveal that on camera. Check it out. He was a pretty messed-up dude, so his credibility is suspect, but it's interesting that he was killed by a train two days after filming that interview.

There's some other eerie stuff at work there, too. It sounds like a woman is screaming for help in the background at one point. And El Duce was known for sexual sadism, so it wouldn't be at all surprising for him to have had a woman there against her will. And the "Allan" he accidentally mentions is strongly suspected to be the one who killed El Duce two days after that was filmed. And this is all on film, easily findable. Crazy world we're living in here, folks.

11:14
Brilliantly intertwined drama with various story threads that come together in unique and interesting ways.

Avengers Confidential: Black Widow and Punisher

I wasn't expecting much from an animated direct-to-video movie- what's the term for that kind of movie now? "Direct to DVD"? "Direct to Blu-Ray"? "Direct to Netflix"? "Non-theatrical"? But this one lost me real quick. Black Widow is looking at a headline on her computer that says "The Punisher: Hero or Murder?" That's not how words work. It's "Murderer." The Punisher is not a "Murder." Also why is anime the default animation style in movies these days? It's awful and lazy-looking. This thing is very difficult to enjoy, even if you like both of the title characters.

Deep Web
Alex Winter is a filmmaker to watch. He's best known as Bill from the Bill & Ted movies, but he's directed a wide array of films: comedy (Freaked), thriller (Fever), and now documentary (Downloaded and Deep Web). This is a glimpse into the dark side of the web- illicit underground drug and sex ecommerce and subversive websites and communication techniques for political dissidents. A disturbing look into how governments crack down on dissent, to boot.

Last Days on Mars

A group of annoyed and isolated and argumentative people on Mars is getting to be old hat. But this one's alright. I've seen better Mars dramas, I've seen worse.

The Martian
This one's better.

Unfriended
Great claustrophobic horror thriller. It's one continuous shot of a teenage girl's Mac desktop screen as an unknown stalker hunts her and her friends down. Amazingly effective, given its limitations and unsympathetic characters.

San Andreas
The Rock v. The Earthquake. SPOILER ALERT: The Rock wins. Why wouldn't he? That being said, he's a rescue worker who hijacks a rescue vehicle to save his wife and daughter instead of doing his job and using the rescue vehicle to rescue lots and lots of people. And thus: The Rock is the true villain of this piece. Bad Rock, no cookie.

Final Note! I gave up on the following films after a few minutes. As your favorite writer on the Internet, I advise you skip:

Flight of the Intruder (Cool cast, but boring and sloppy)
The Revenant (2009 version- sloppy, crappy zombie film)
Glitter (NOT so bad it's good, no matter what you heard)
Prophet's Prey (Two misleading statements and an outright lie in the first 30 seconds. Out.)
Not Another Not Another Movie
Run All Night (Liam Neeson's usually great, but this is a drag)
ABCs of Death
Black Mass
Vampire Academy
Man Up (Tired of "romantic comedies" with relentlessly unlikeable characters)
Re-Kill
All Cheerleaders Die
Swimming With Sharks (Kevin Spacey's great, it's very 90s trendy, but nihilistic, ultimately empty)
The Unborn (2009 version)
The Traveler
The Voices
Spongebob Squarepants: Sponge Out of Water (And I LIKED the 2005 Spongebob movie!)


-Phony McFakename

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