Category: Movie Reviews

So I had originally intended this to be an extended vlog – about fifty minutes or so, but due to a variety of technical issues including Vegas crapping out on me multiple times during the rendering process, I ended up having to do a much shorter vlog, which in hindsight, may have been for the best. However, someone wanted the full version and while the chances of that happening now is slim, I did have the original text (or script, as the kids call it) for what the intended vlog was supposed to be… and so here it is, with some minor fixes and edits to make it readable at most.

Continue reading “MOVIE REVIEW – Angry Video Game Nerd: The Movie (2014)”

Highlander: The Source is a piece of shit.

What’s that? You want me to tell you how I really feel? Okay, how about this?

I fucking HATE this movie.

How’s that? Better? Good.

I could end it right there because this movie genuinely hurts my soul. It hurts that I actually forked over REAL MONEY to buy a retail DVD copy of this piece of shit. It hurts that the box is sitting on my shelf among all the other DVDs that I’ve collected over the years. It hurts that THIS EXISTS. And let me tell you people something; in all the years that I have been on this earth, having seen countless movies from the highest of highs to the lowest of lows, not one time have I ever come across a movie that made me genuinely, physically ill as much as The Source. This may have been the movie that gave me Crohn’s disease. That’s how much I hate this film.

But you’re not here to read the baring of my soul… you’re here to read a review of this thing… and I will do my best to provide you with one… but seriously… all you need to know is that if you’re a diehard fan of Highlander, the movies, the series, the lore, and all that stuff, you owe it to yourself and your clansmen NOT to watch this filth. This deplorable load shits on everything you ever knew about the Highlander series. Every character that they bring back into the fold is violated in ways that even Endgame wouldn’t stoop so low to doing. I am telling you – both as someone who enjoy the Highlander series in earnest as well as someone who enjoys their share of schlock – this thing posing as a movie is not worth your time and effort. After watching this thing, you may want to dig out your own broadsword, head down to your garage or basement, and in a fit of depression, cut off your own head.

Please… don’t do that. Don’t watch this film… But anyway, here’s the review… for whatever that’s worth.

Released in 2007 as a Sci-Fi Channel Original Movie – good lord, that tells you everything right off the bat, doesn’t it? So it’s another dystopian future, things are looking bleak, and the few remaining Immortals have decided that rather than fight for the Prize – which has been the key thing in all these fucking Highlander movies and shows – they’re going to band together and find “the Source.” But they’ll have to deal with the Guardian of the source, who can kill immortals and break all the rules. Not only that, but as they get closer to the source, these immortals lose their mortality and what the fuck am I watching?

Everything about The Source is shit. The storyline is shit. The settings are shit. The fight scenes are horrifically bad and that’s even before you slap on the utterly craptastic special effects that is worth of the now-defunct Sci-Fi Channel. The acting is absolutely subpar. Guys like Adrian Paul, Peter Wingfield and Jim Burns – the cast from the Highlander show – were mostly winging it and probably doing this for the paycheck. I’ve only seen a handful of episodes from that show and I know they’ve done better than this. Even Endgame was a better showing for Duncan MacLeod and friends than this tripe and I even said as much in that review.

The new characters they got for this movie are shit… and then there’s the Guardian, a guy in a goofy costume with goofy dialogue and a goofy voice. For someone who is supposed to be the ultimate big bad, he comes across as a total fucking geek and makes me long for the days of Michael Ironside as General Katana. And I offer my deepest apologies to Mr. Ironside for even indirectly associating his name with this tripe.

Highlander: The Source is a wretched film. At least with Highlander II, there was stuff I could laugh at. The Source doesn’t even that much going for it. Instead, it was such a lousy movie that I had gone to the garage in a fit of depression and anxiously looked for a sword so I could cut off my own head, much like that Fasil person in the first movie.

A disservice to both the films that came before and the television series from where these characters came from.

They haven’t made another Highlander film since this one. Thank fuck for that. Let the series rest in peace. I don’t want another sequel, prequel, reboot, remake, or whatever that’s going to suck worse than what came before. I’ve got the original film, I’ve got the TV show… I can give or take the previous films… yes, even Endgame. Just let this be the last one.

Happy New Year. Fuck this movie.

Ready To Rumble is, without question, the worst movie in human history.

Released in 2000, it stars David Arquette and Scott Caan as two wrestling fans who set out on an adventure of sorts after their favorite wrestler was screwed out of the title and they’re gonna get him back on top. The favorite wrestler in question is a character named Jimmy King, played by Oliver Platt. The title that Jimmy was screwed out of was the WCW World title.

Once upon a time, there was a wrestling company called World Championship Wrestling. And for a couple years, they were the hottest thing in the wrestling world until the WWF got its shit together and kicked their asses. Somewhere along the way, WCW decided that they needed a movie to boost their popularity even further and THIS was the end result. To make matters worse, this was released during a time when WCW was producing some of the worst wrestling programming ever conceived and, in case some of you are wondering if this movie did anything to help WCW’s image, the movie failed to make bank at the box office, it was critically panned, and a year later, WCW would be shut down and its assets purchased by WWF.

The sad thing is that at its core, Ready To Rumble’s plot isn’t all that bad. Top wrestler in a company is screwed and exiled from the top and with the help of his two biggest fans, he eventually regains the confidence and his prestige, while being a bit more humble along the way. In the hands of competent filmmakers, this could have been the basis for a nice, feelgood comedy of sorts. Alas, in the case of Ready To Rumble, we don’t have competent filmmakers at the helm… but that’s okay. The one thing that this had in common with WCW was the lack of competent acumen present in producing a quality product.

Ready To Rumble fails on multiple levels. It fails as a comedy movie; it’s all low-brow, scat-based humor. Some of the slapstick bits are somewhat embarrassing. They somehow got a big time actor like Martin Landau to play an old-time wrestler and made him look like a loon. None of the actors in this movie come across as particularly good and a lot of that is less due to their performances (which aren’t great, but they tried to make the most of this garbage) and more due to the pisspoor writing. None of the jokes are funny. None of the action bits are particularly good. And then we get to the main bits of the movie, which is the wrestling bits.

And that brings up another point; Ready To Rumble fails as a wrestling movie. I understand that wrestling is largely seen as low brow entertainment, but considering that this featured WCW wrestlers and talent and Time Warner still owned WCW, you’d think that they would try to make a movie that depicted wrestling in a semi-respectable manner… or at the very least, didn’t make WCW look like the biggest shithole in the world. Wasn’t the point of this thing to try and get people interested in WCW? How did that work out?

Oh wait, it didn’t.

The fact of the matter is that Ready To Rumble treats wrestling like a joke. It depicts wrestling fans as being a bunch of retards who have no life whatsoever. It is a movie about wrestling that is so embarrassed to be a movie about wrestling that it doesn’t try to disguise that fact and does whatever it does to make wrestling seem like a joke. And hey, I understand that there are those who share that mindset. Wrestling is seen as low-brow entertainment and given the kind of shit that WWE puts on television these days, it’s hard to argue that point.

Here’s the thing, though; once upon a time, WWE did put out a movie; a little thing you may have heard of called No Holds Barred. And yes, it’s largely a live-action cartoon – it’s a Hulk Hogan movie, for fuck’s sake. Of course, it’s a cartoon… BUT when it comes to the wrestling aspect of it, at no point is it treated as a joke. Hogan plays the World Champion and a rival network wants Hogan to jump ship, so they start their own show, find their own tough guy, and sends challenges to Hogan to fight their guy Zeus. And the climax is a wrestling match where lots of stuff happen that probably shouldn’t, but within the context of the movie and the story that they’re telling, it works.

Now I’m not going to tell you that No Holds Barred is a GOOD movie – again, it’s a Hulk Hogan starring vehicle – but it does a far better job of treating the wrestling bits as straight as possible within the context of the story they’re telling. Ready To Rumble, on the other hand? Wrestling is a joke, everyone involved in the business is a joke, everyone who enjoys this stuff is a joke, and this whole thing becomes a self-fulfilling waste of time. Now does this film offend me as a wrestling fan? No, but it does offend me as a moviegoer. If you’re making a movie about this thing and you’re not going to take it seriously, why should I? The wrestling aspect is buried in shit and everything around that central piece of business – the “funny” bits – fails even harder.

The fact that WCW had a hand in this movie’s production and would allow their brand and wrestlers to be treated like total goofs while hoping that this would raise awareness in their own product… dude, who’s gonna watch this and think “This WCW looks stupid, but I WANT MORE?!” Ironically, the depiction of WCW in the movie isn’t that far removed from the product that was being presented on WCW television at the time of release.

But even beyond that, Ready To Rumble is just trash all around. You have talented actors who have done good stuff elsewhere reduced to scat jokes and juvenile humor that even the juveniles would consider too juvenile. I’ve seen David Arquette do good stuff elsewhere (Scream, that movie with the dog, whatever those Collect commercials were), Oliver Platt’s been in some good stuff, and again… they somehow dragged MARTIN LANDAU into this piece of shit. These are talented actors who have done good work and they are WASTED in this piece of shit.

I’m no fan of Hulk Hogan. At no point will I ever watch a Hulk Hogan movie and call it a good film. A good Hulk Hogan movie simply does not exist in this world. Even so, I would rather watch every single Hulk Hogan movie under the sun ten times over than suffering through another sitting of Ready To Rumble, which I have no problems in declaring the absolute worst movie ever made in human history. And I don’t need to have seen every movie ever made in human history to make that determination because I REFUSE TO BELIEVE that there is a movie out there that is worse than this.

This movie is trash and deserves to die.

“Ever wonder how Uwe Boll feels when people crap on his video game movies without ever having watched them? He should try and sit through the J’Lo/Affleck mess called Gigli.

“I rented this movie once, hearing all the bad rap. Then I popped it in. Five minutes into the movie, I rewind the tape and brought it back to the video store. Five minutes into a movie and I hated it… what does that tell you about the rest of the movie?

“As years went on and I grew more of a spine, I eventually decided to sit through the entire movie… and after that, arranged for an immediate lobotomy so that I can purge all memory of this drivel.”

That’s how I started my imdb review posting back in October 2003… the movie came out in August… how could I have rented the video? Through the magic of instant cassettes… or a bootleg copy that I saw at a friend’s house. And yes, after watching more of this garbage, I certainly FELT like I’ve aged years. However, the last paragraph in that review holds very true.

“Gigli is pure garbage. There is not ONE single, solitary positive aspect to be found anywhere within this picture. There is not ONE aspect that can deem Gigli one of those “so bad it’s good” films that I’ll find enjoyment out of. If there is any high point to be found, it was ultimately sucked into the black hole of ineptitude that is Gigli, a film with an unlikable cast of “characters” or lack thereof, a convoluted storyline, terrible pacing, and an utter lack of chemistry among any of the cast. It’s just a mess of a motion picture that somehow got approved and shipped out for public consumption, reaffirming my lack of faith in humanity.”

I know what you’re asking. “Ah, Dave. Aren’t you being overly dramatic? It’s just a rom-com.”

Oh, you poor bastards. I’m not being OVERLY dramatic… if anything, I’m being OVERLY nice.

Gigli plays out like a shitty parody of a mobster movie. Ben Affleck has been in better stuff, he has done better performances, and this is neither. The same can be said for Jennifer Lopez or anyone else in this film. Was this a vanity project for the Bennifer couple or just something everyone was doing for the money and they weren’t even going to try. You can try and convince me of one or the other, but there’s no reason to believe that BOTH can’t be true at once.

There is no reason to watch Gigli. If you’re one of the many who skipped on this movie when it came out, continue to do so. And if anyone suggests that you need to watch this movie as a rite of passage, disown them. They don’t deserve to be part of your life… or any realm of existence for that matter.

Fuck this movie.

Alert the medical profession – the cure for insomnia has been found!

Everyone knows Kelly Clarkson, right? That chick who won that American Idol ages ago and made a career for herself with a couple decent-selling albums? She seemed to do fine as far as I know. Don’t really follow her all that much (not my kind of music), but she’s making a career out of it, at least.

Lucky for her too, because Justin has been off the radar somewhat as of late.

In 2003, Kelly (the first Idol winner) and Justin (the first Idol runnerup) were shoehorned into a movie called From Justin to Kelly, without a doubt the best movie that ever put me to sleep… I’m not joking. I have rarely seen a movie which bored me to tears, but this takes the cake.

Maybe it’s because I’m not a big fan of the movie type where every one breaks into song for no apparent reason, but I’ve seen Grease and that didn’t put me to sleep. It probably wouldn’t help the movie’s cause any way, as it has a cliché plot, uninteresting characters, and acting that makes pre-school make-believe sessions seem like Shakespeare in comparison.

The only thing that could have saved this movie is Simon Cowell showing up after every song and berating the cast and crew for such a dreadful number. Oh well.

Moral of the story: when starring in rubbish like this, having a rack helps. Someone should have clued that Justin fellow in on that trade secret.

Please don’t watch this movie. It’s not worth your time.

Space Jam was a movie I saw in an empty theater with my brother and someone else. It was one of the first times I’ve been to a movie that has (almost) no one in it. That kind of memory sticks out more than the movie itself.

But as far as the movie goes… I thought it was alright.

Story goes that the Looney Tunes characters are being challenged by alien basketball players who want to beat the past out of the ‘toons, so they enlist the help of one Michael Jordan, who was in the middle of a baseball career in between stints in the basketball court. The movie is done in the same way as Who Framed Roger Rabbit, where Michael Jordan himself would mingle with the ‘Tunes in their hand-drawn cartoon world and eventually vice versa would happen. Obviously, years of technological advancement has made the technique a bit more seamless than before, but it’s not the only film to pull it off. The whole thing looks fine as a result. The animation is pretty smooth, the voice acting is true to the characters, and Michael Jordan… well, he’s Michael Jordan and he does Michael Jordan better than anyone else… even Michael Jordan.

Space Jam turned out to be a pretty enjoyable film and Bill Murray even shows up to share some of his comedic magic… because you sure as shit ain’t gettin’ it from ol’ MJ. Still, fun for the whole family and all that. Well worth a revisit these days.

Rollerball is a remake of an old 1975 film starring James Caan. I wasn’t remotely aware of that until I came across a VHS copy of the film at a video shop somewhere. While I never saw that original film, I have – unfortunately – seen this remake.

There’s no way ’round this. This movie absolutely sucks.

It’s an EXTREME sports movie involving a variation of roller derby (you know, that sport that airs on the ol’ NASHVILLE NETWORK) and a ball. I generally don’t care for these sorts of films, which makes you wonder why I’d even watch the damn thing, let alone review it. But even if I’m not interested in the sport, I can get into a sports movie if it’s compelling enough. I enjoy good stories more than anything. I get none of that here.

The acting is absolutely abysmal. Like the cast seems to be phoning it in and are just there to collect a paycheque. I suppose I can’t blame them if they had a shit script to work with. Let me put it to you another way. The two best actors in this entire film was Shane McMahon in a two second silent cameo and also Paul Heyman, who plays the bombastic announcer. Those are your best actors in this film and one of them is barely there for a cup of coffee. I sat through this whole movie for THOSE two. Something is seriously wrong here.

Visually, this looks like a mess. There’s nothing visually appealing here – even the token post- apocalyptic features have some reasonable visuals. More emphasis is spent on close-ups and horrible acting than on the sport itself. In fact, the pacing is so bad that I often lose track of what’s going on, but I’m too scared to go back and rewatch because that means subjecting myself to this horrible mess. This is just really ugly. An eyesore to say the least… especially in regards to those HORRENDOUS night vision sequences. It seems like the longer I watch this, with each passing moment in time, I can somehow feel my soul wither away as I attempt to follow the excruciatingly awful storyline.

Rollerball was a dreadful film to sit through. I need to stop watching movies based on the fact that people I know from other properties will appear in them, especially if those movies are going to suck the proverbial meat missile. Avoid at all costs.