Written Reviews

War Of The Worlds (2025) Is Fucking Horrible

War Of The Worlds is fucking horrible.

No, I’m not talking about the original HG Wells novel. That’s a classic. No, I am not talking about the 2005 adaptation with Tom Cruise. Not what I would call a classic, but it had its moments. Nor am I talking about the Asylum equivalent, which I’m sure is about as high-brow as all the other Asylum films that have come and gone ’round these parts.

No, we’re talking about the Ice Cube starring vehicle that escaped the Amazon mines last year. Shot during the prevailing circumstances of 2020 when everyone was stuck at home and we had to make due with our own limited means, this new take on the novel involves lots of webcam footage, lots of screenshots of social media platforms, and also most prominent of all, endless Amazon product placement. And this was sitting somewhere in the Amazon warehouses until someone found it and decided to put up on Prime Video. And somehow I sat down and watched this thing.

And it sucks.

Everything is terrible. The acting is beyond atrocious, with bit players giving off listless, almost life-draining performances while the major characters are… well, I guess they’re happy to be getting paid and are only willing to do just the barest bare minimum of the bare minimum of effort one is willing to put into a work in order to justify whatever pay they earned from their participation. The editing is awful; everyone is doing Zoom calls, facecams, we get capture footage of people’s phones and social media. And whenever we have special effects of the invaders, they look like the cheapest of the cheapest cheap end of the old Lucasfilm table scraps that were abandoned long after the Phantom Menace wrapped production. And while we’re at it, let’s pump in every social platform under the sun and make sure it gets facetime. Let’s pump in Amazon’s presence. The product placement is dreadful and I hate it.

Some people have a tendency to call some of these bad movies “so bad it’s good.” In that you can find things to poke fun of and that’s usually where the entertainment comes from. And if a film can do that for you, then that makes it entertaining in a way that wasn’t intended by the filmmakers, but that’s on them. And granted, I’ve seen my share of bad films that I could poke fun of or at least draw out some morbid entertainment value out… but when it comes to this… thing that Amazon dared call a movie, there’s no entertainment to be found here. This was probably the closest I ever came to hate watching a product because it took about five minutes to hate this film and I willed myself through the rest of it, just so I can say that it sucked.

This is an example of a movie that deserved to be shelved and filed as a tax write-off. There is no redeemable quality to be found in this movie. There is no reason for it to exist, much less be released for consumption. Everyone involved in this piece of crap should be made to take a long, hard walk off a high clifftop and land headfirst into the pavement below to destroy whatever defective brain matter possessed these people to make this film in the first place. And no, I’m not being harsh in saying that. If anything, that’s being fucking kind.

However, if you want me to say something nice about this movie… yeah, sorry, I can’t do it. I just can’t. This may very well challenge Ready To Rumble as the absolute worst movie in human history. It’s neck in neck. I’m on the fence as to which one I actively hate worse.

Every so often, someone will ask what it would take for me to give the Paul Feig Ghostbusters a watch since it’s going to be a decade old and I still haven’t watched it.

To quote a legendary and disgraced wrestling promoter…

No chance in Hell.

And you’ve got War Of The Worlds 2025 to thank for that.

Fuck this movie.

COMIC REVIEW – MMPR: Zord Quest #1

Zord Quest is a story that treads on fairly familiar territory; after an incident separates the Rangers, each one goes through their own personal trial to prove their worth as heroes in order to overcome the latest monster of the day from Lord Zedd. Chances are you’ve seen some variation of this story when it was called Alien Rangers and the little kid Rangers each went on their own personal journey to recover a piece of Zeo Crystal that would set up the next incarnation of Power Rangers.

Zord Quest almost follows that same template, but doesn’t quite hit the mark. It’s a one-shot story that gets resolved quickly. The trials that the individual Rangers go through serve only to reinforce their teamwork and apply their newly learned lessons to use in order to defeat the latest monster of the week. The trials themselves are resolved fairly quickly with no real substance behind it. There’s a sense that Zord Quest wants to say something, but fails to actually say anything.

On top of that, the continuity snafus are hard to ignore. The story supposedly takes place during the second season (or Year Two, as the book calls it), but they’re still using the Dinozords, which were mostly inactive and replaced with the Thunderzords. (Funny how all these MMPR Boom comics that wasn’t their main series always default to using the old Megazords and not the later ones despite timeline placement.) Lord Zedd is at least the main baddy. but his characterization is inconsistent with what was established during that time. It’s a story that neither fits with TV or comic continuity and as someone who followed this franchise since the very beginning, things like this do grate a bit.

Still, I’d be hard-pressed to call this bad. At worst, it’s a fairly ho-hum story with some questionable continuity snafus that almost harken back to the Hamilton Comics days, but on the other hand, it’s also straightforward in its storytelling that leads to the very obvious resolution and on that count alone, it’s more than fine. I do appreciate the much grittier artwork that’s at least a fair departure from the usual bland artwork that I’ve seen in some of these Mighty Morphin comics during that series run. It’s not quite perfect.

Zord Quest doesn’t offer much in terms of substance or anything that hasn’t been done before, but it makes for a quick read if you’ve got nothing better to do and can forgive the continuity gaffes. I’d call this “merely okay” and move right along.

COMIC REVIEW – JLA: Act Of God (DC, 2001 3-Issue MiniSeries)

This comic book is a questionable piece of shit… I say questionable because the premise that it presents on paper is intriguing and could serve as a potential dramatic piece, but the execution of that premise ends up making the concept less so.

A three-issue Elseworlds mini-series published in prestige format (fancy cardstock cover and premium paper pages), Act Of God begins with a wave of black light that permanently depowers all the super-powered beings, rendering them normal humanoids or equivalents. That means you get stuff like Superman suddenly acting like a drunkard, Green Lantern obsessing over that guy who beat him up, and other heroes being hopelessly lost before some of them decide to be trained by Batman so that they can keep fighting crime or something. Every affected hero reacts differently to their new circumstance, but most of them react so poorly and their reactions are often in conflict with their traditional portrayals.

Somewhere in the thought process lied an interesting idea that could have developed into an interesting story. What was the cause of this Black Light event that depowered the heroes? How do the heroes cope to their new circumstances? How does this affect the overall power structure and hierarchy? Is this just an Earth thing? There are so many ways you could go with this thing and Act Of God approaches this in the most banal way possible that it almost comes across as parody.

The only real positive to be found is in Dave Ross’ artwork. While there are some panels of questionable quality that might have slipped through the cracks, I thought the art was really well done here. I only wish that it wasn’t tied to three issues of utter rubbish that could have easily been confused for something that was written today.

Absolute garbage. Avoid like the plague.

COMIC REVIEW – Star Trek: Red Shirts (2025 Miniseries, IDW)

For anyone who has sampled my Winners And Losers Of 2025 list, you already have a pretty good idea on what I think of this series, but for the rest of you folks – particularly you folks who are disenchanted by modern Star Trek television properties – might I recommend that you give Redshirts a shot?

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The Late Shift Is A Bad Movie Based On A Good Book

30 years ago on this day, HBO released a little film called The Late Shift, a television film adaptation of the Bill Carter-penned book of the same name chronicling the David Letterman/Jay Leno battle over the Tonight Show after the departure of longtime host Johnny Carson. I recently got the chance to read the book for the first time in years and for what it’s worth, it’s a superb chronicle of all the details surrounding this rather convoluted mess of a situation as a result of pure, unadulterated arrogance and incompetence on the part of NBC… something that would be just as readily apparently over a decade later with the Conan O’Brien situation.

As for the film in question… well, you can watch the movie on Youtube; there’s at least a couple uploads of it that you can check out for free… although I would implore you not to do it and just go for the book. Naturally, there’s only so much you can do to adapt a book into a 95 minute film, but more to the point, the movie is just plain bad.

Why am I celebrating the film’s thirty anniversary if I’m calling it a bad film? Well, I can think of no other time in which it would be appropriate to talk about this film that it doesn’t feel… what? Timely? Something to that extent… but really, with all the noise of late night of the past year – the Colbert cancellation and Kimmel suspension – I can’t help but think of the days when late night’s worst controversy was Jay Leno holding onto the Tonight Show by staying in the lobby while Conan O’Brien fumbled. And while I had missed out on the initial Tonight Show noise in the early 1990s, at no point did I figure that I would get to live this nonsense live and in living color.

And at some point, should HBO or whoever decides to give this late night scene another movie of sorts, I pray that it is yards better than the utter tripe of a film that is The Late Shift.

Basically, it boils down to the portrayal of its two biggest stars; David Letterman and Jay Leno, which comes across as comically bad to the point of farce or parody. I know that Jay had a huge chin, but maybe the make-up crew probably overdid it a bit with Daniel Roebuck, who looks more like a poor man’s Jay Leno cosplayer than he does a poor man’s Jay Leno… and his performance here is obnoxiously overexaggerated Italian stereotype and less funny man trying to be a good guy by waiting in the lobby. As for John Higgins’s take on Letterman, other than the obnoxious red hairpiece, he almost kinda, sorta looks the part, but again, the performance is what turns me off on the whole deal. I can see why Letterman himself didn’t care for the film.

Ironically, the noteworthy performances of this film are the secondary characters. Kathy Bates puts on a good showing as bullish producer Helen Kushnik – even if the portrayal is tame compared to the real deal – the late, great Treat Williams is slick and suave as Michael Ovitz, and hell, I even felt some sympathy for some of the network people, even if they were – technically – the antagonists and instigators of this whole deal… well, except for Howard Stringer; he’s wonderful… and also wonderfully played by Babylon 5 regular Peter Jurasik.

The Late Shift is the sort of thing that deserved to get run over with a steamroller… or dropped from a high-rise building and exploding into a blissful red mist upon impact… or simply smashed with a hammer… it’s essentially one big 90-minute Stupid Human Trick in slow motion… even Big Jaw deserves better than what he got here.

This whole deal is obnoxiously bad. Stick with the book.

THE BITE COMMENTARIES #11 – The Force Undead

So, if all goes according to plan, today’s post should publish on the very same day that, ten years ago, the first Star Wars film of the Disney ownership era as well as the start of a new Star Wars sequel trilogy – The Force Awakens – hit movie theaters to usher in a new era of Star Wars that is new and different… although you wouldn’t have been able to tell from watching the movie.

At the time of release, people considered it to be a return to form after the polarizing prequels. For some, it felt like Star Wars again… for others, it felt too much like Star Wars; to the point of almost being a carbon copy of the original film from 1977.

And then The Last Jedi came along and pretty much shat the bed that The Force Awakens set with its dogged insistence in subverting your expectations; something that has become a meme over the years in and of itself. Regardless of your opinion on the film – and I’ve made my feelings perfectly clear – the fact is that the second chapter of the new trilogy was a divisive film and brought about an air of uncertainty among the Star Wars faithful. And then Solo came along… and finally, The Rise Of Skywalker ended the sequels and any subsequent hope for further annual Star Wars feature films, relegating the franchise to limited series runs on Disney+.

What began as a sign that things were going to be okay… turned out to be anything but… and when one revisits The Force Awakens ten years removed from its initial release, with all these other films out there and everything that has happened, is the movie as good as it was? Has it aged poorly? Was it ever that good to begin with?

The answer is… complicated.

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THE BITE COMMENTAIES #10 – Sith At 20

This past May marked the 20th anniversary of the third Star Wars prequel film, Episode III: Revenge Of The Sith, which finally paid off its long-running story of how Jedi Knight Anakin Skywalker fell to the dark side and eventually became Darth Vader. And if you want to me to tell how I felt about the film at the time, I thought it was the only really good film out of the prequel since everyone died. And I wasn’t the only one who thought that because a bunch of people I went to see the film with thought it was the only really good prequel out of the bunch because everyone died.

Now we all know that statement is a bit of a fib. Not everyone died, obviously; this isn’t Rogue One, for cryin’ out loud. But the cast of characters that were introduced in prior prequel films were either killed off or cast aside to make way for the characters that people actually cared about to come along and have the adventures they had back in 77 and the circle would be complete or some deal like that.

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Legend Or Rehash – Some Thoughts On Karate Kid: Legends

Karate Kid: Legends is a movie that came out of nowhere.

Not necessarily in the sense that nobody saw it coming because we’ve already had a couple trailers for it and I’ve even commented on the film a couple times… but rather in the sense that a couple weeks ago, a buddy invited me to join them and some pals to watch the new Karate Kid movie and my immediate reaction was “What new Karate Kid movie?”

Yes, despite having made a mention of this thing once or twice on this blog, the news that this movie was out in theaters threw me by surprise. Regardless, though, I said sure. They were kind enough to pay for all the tickets while I offered some drinks from the concessions which may have cost more than the tickets, but I digress. So after having seen this movie, what were my initial impressions of Karate Kid Legends?

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QUIET! (or… Why Cobra Kai Works)

Cobra Kai ended its six-season run last month… and while the possibilities exist for further stories to be told with these characters, the main story – for all intents and purposes – has come to a close.

For those unaware, Cobra Kai is a spiritual successor to the original Karate Kid trilogy of films – by which I mean the first three films. There’s also a fourth movie with Hillary Swank and a “remake” of sorts with Jackie Chan and Will Smith’s kid, but neither of those are referenced or even touched upon in this series. In any event, the main character of this series is Johnny Lawrence, former All-Valley champ who once ate a crane kick in the face at the end of the first film and his life has gone downhill since then. So the crux of this series is basically Johnny getting his life back on track by bringing back the old Cobra Kai dojo and… stuff happens, afterwards.

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25 Years Later And Ready To Rumble Is (Still) The Worst Movie In Human History

Twenty-five years ago, on this very day, Ready To Rumble was unleashed onto the world.

I never watched this thing in theaters, but even back in 2000, I’ve heard about how bad this film was. Not just in terms of being a bad wrestling movie, but also just a bad comedy in general. It wouldn’t be until a couple years later that I’d eventually get around to renting a copy of Ready To Rumble from the video store and see for myself what I was missing. After pressing PLAY, I bore witness to what everyone else had been raving (or raging) about these past few years. Shortly afterwards, I opened up Frontpage on my computer, started a new document, and proceeded to write the words “Ready To Rumble is the worst film in human history.”

This would have been back in 2003-2004 when I was still renting videos and also when I was first putting up stuff on the IMDB site. At some point, I was going to post this little write-up on there until I realized that I had more than whatever the usual word limit was for IMDB user submitted reviews… and also there was more than a fair share of colorful metaphors… so it never saw the light of day… well, until the move to this blog, which you can find here.

About a decade later, I’d revisit the movie as part of my Slideshow Movie Review series and I’m not quite sure that I truly vocalized my disdain for this film. So now, here we are and… listen, I am not going to try and convince you that this is a misunderstood masterpiece. That much is obviously when the title of this post is “25 Years Later And Ready To Rumble Is (Still) The Worst Movie In Human History.” And to this very day, I have yet to see a movie that I would consider to be worse than Ready To Rumble. I’ve seen plenty of juvenile films in my day. I’ve seen plenty of utterly terrible films. But none of them were as bad as Ready To Rumble.

Hell, if the day ever comes and I break my long-standing moratorium on Ghostbusters 2016 to give that a watch, you know what? Yes, that movie is gonna suck, but I can guarantee you that it won’t be as bad as Ready To Rumble.

(Maybe that’s why I don’t want to watch that movie now that I think about it. Imagine the horror I’d feel when the possibility exists of a movie that is WORSE than Ready To Rumble. I don’t even want to contemplate that.)

Look, I’m sure there are movies. People can come up and tell me that the Deuce Bigelow movies are the nadir of comedy films. And yeah, those are bad… but you already know going in that those movies are aiming for the lowest common denominator. Ready To Rumble aims a little lower than that. It’s a terrible movie that is so unfunny and yet reprehensibly stupid that it somehow makes you stupider with each passing second that your eyes and brain are exposed to this vapid piece of garbage. Now would I have had this same kind of contempt for this film had I not been a wrestling fan? And the answer would invariably be yes. In fact, if I had not been a wrestling fan or if I had downright hated wrestling, I probably would’ve despised this movie even more.

Look, I just rented a painfully dull and unfunny film called Leonard Part 6 from Amazon for the expressed purpose of watching a movie other than Section 31. Yes, the one with Bill Cosby… and yes, it is every bit as bad as people made it out to be. But you want to know something? The worst thing that I could say about this movie was that it was BORING. None of the jokes landed. None of the bits worked. All the actors were phoning it in. It was deathly dull. And yes, I would have considered this a big ol’ waste of time… but on the flip side, I did not walk away from Leonard Part 6 with the same kind of contempt and utter bile that I got from watching five minutes of Ready To Rumble.

Some time ago, F4WOnline guy Bryan Alvarez teamed up with former wrestler Lance Storm and indy wrestler/former MMA guy “Filthy” Tom Lawlor to review this movie. Alvarez, a former wrestler and a normally intelligent fellow, had claimed that this movie is not the worst film ever made. When pushed to name a worse one, he admittedly couldn’t name one, but maintained that this was not as bad as people say that it is. This proves that Ready To Rumble has the capability of rotting brain cells of any person who willingly exposes them to repeated viewings of this thing.

Anyhoo… here we are.

Twenty-five years later AND STILL the absolute worst movie in human history… Ready To Rumble.

See you all in another twenty-five where we get to do this shit all over again.