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chuckroA Knight’s Tale, aka “Renn Faire: The Movie”. It’s a 90s teen sports movie, just about jousting knights in Anachronism Stew Europe. The hero is a moron, but that’s okay, because the love interest is clearly moronsexual. At 2+ hours, the movie is too long for what it is, and Jethrien complained of being bored and successfully predicted the entire last act with 45 minutes left to go. Also, I love getting Alan Tudyk a paycheck, but this was clearly before he hit his stride and they don’t give him quality material.
Venom - I can see why this movie spawned so much fanfic. The CGI is decent and the action scenes are fun, though cartoony in a similar way to the Transformers movies. (Though Riot really should have been a different color from Venom; it would have made the fight sequences with the two of them MUCH less confusing.) And it was bold of them to make Venom without Spider-Man. Really though, Tom Hardy holds the entire damn thing together: This movie wouldn’t have worked without him, because he’s one of the few actors who can sell a love story with an alien symbiote.
Dora and the Lost City of Gold - Dora has been living in the jungle with her parents and a monkey named Boots her whole life; at age 16 she joins Diego at a proper American high school and is, unsurprisingly, a giant weirdo. It works out, though, because she’s kidnapped by mercenaries who want to use her to steal her parents’ discovery of a lost Incan city (on the wrong side of the continent for Incans). This is hilarious and, while I’m not quite clear who the audience was, it works as long as you have a passing familiarity with the original show from when you or your child was a preschooler. I also found it amusing that, until the very end, the entire thing could have been “real” except for the presence of Swiper, because the mercenaries inexplicably have a talking, masked fox working for them. Jethrien’s theory is that Dora hallucinated everything after eating a ten-year-old candy bar. A Tumblr review called this “the best worst thing since Spy Kids”, and I can get behind that.
Evil Dead - The original, non-comedy low-budget baby Bruce Campbell extravaganza. Honestly, while I give them credit for making something that lasted out of a schlocky, trope-filled concept and no money…it’s not actually very good. The acting is wooden, the special effects are pretty awful, and somebody gets raped by a tree. This makes me wish there was a filmed version of the musical, though.
But I’m a Cheerleader - A bright and cheerful satire of gay conversion therapy camps, and it’s really, really queer in all the best ways. (I mean, “girl doesn’t realize she’s gay until she’s sent to ex-gay camp” is a pretty solid basis for satire, here.) This is a late-90s star-studded movie…in retrospect. Natasha Lyonne and Clea DuVall are the official stars (as is RuPaul) but Michelle Williams and Dante Basco are standouts in retrospect. I remember seeing this when it came out, and despite being a ridiculous mélange of stereotypes, it holds up remarkably well 20 years later.
Jennifer’s Body - This feels oddly 90s to me for a movie made in 2009; or at least the early-aughts era where indie punk rock was a thing and some people (but hardly everyone) had flip phones. I hadn’t realized Diablo Cody wrote this, but it fits very well with that I’ve seen of her style: The plot is a hacked-together mess of well-worn tropes, but it’s littered with solid dialogue and there’s probably a women’s studies thesis to be plumbed from the metatext. And while I’m not qualified to write that, I suspect it would note that the movie only needs a little light editing (basically, a ten-second scene of each murdered boy being a douchebag) to completely change the audience’s sympathies. The choice to make Needy the protagonist and Jennifer the antagonist defined the style of horror in the movie: The victims were “innocent”, so Jennifer was a monster. But at the end, no less a murderer, Needy is a hero.
The VelociPastor - Now that’s what I call schlock! It’s as terrible as you could hope for and clearly made on a $10 budget, and some of the dialogue has to be heard to be believed. That said, I’m not sure (and I don’t think the filmmakers were sure) exactly how bad they were expecting this to be, and I think that kinda hurts it. It definitely feels like something drunk college kids would make and think was brilliant enough to try to sell, but are they trying too hard or are they just right? I don’t know, that’s a decision for hooker-doctor-lawyers and the velocipastors who love them.
Venom - I can see why this movie spawned so much fanfic. The CGI is decent and the action scenes are fun, though cartoony in a similar way to the Transformers movies. (Though Riot really should have been a different color from Venom; it would have made the fight sequences with the two of them MUCH less confusing.) And it was bold of them to make Venom without Spider-Man. Really though, Tom Hardy holds the entire damn thing together: This movie wouldn’t have worked without him, because he’s one of the few actors who can sell a love story with an alien symbiote.
Dora and the Lost City of Gold - Dora has been living in the jungle with her parents and a monkey named Boots her whole life; at age 16 she joins Diego at a proper American high school and is, unsurprisingly, a giant weirdo. It works out, though, because she’s kidnapped by mercenaries who want to use her to steal her parents’ discovery of a lost Incan city (on the wrong side of the continent for Incans). This is hilarious and, while I’m not quite clear who the audience was, it works as long as you have a passing familiarity with the original show from when you or your child was a preschooler. I also found it amusing that, until the very end, the entire thing could have been “real” except for the presence of Swiper, because the mercenaries inexplicably have a talking, masked fox working for them. Jethrien’s theory is that Dora hallucinated everything after eating a ten-year-old candy bar. A Tumblr review called this “the best worst thing since Spy Kids”, and I can get behind that.
Evil Dead - The original, non-comedy low-budget baby Bruce Campbell extravaganza. Honestly, while I give them credit for making something that lasted out of a schlocky, trope-filled concept and no money…it’s not actually very good. The acting is wooden, the special effects are pretty awful, and somebody gets raped by a tree. This makes me wish there was a filmed version of the musical, though.
But I’m a Cheerleader - A bright and cheerful satire of gay conversion therapy camps, and it’s really, really queer in all the best ways. (I mean, “girl doesn’t realize she’s gay until she’s sent to ex-gay camp” is a pretty solid basis for satire, here.) This is a late-90s star-studded movie…in retrospect. Natasha Lyonne and Clea DuVall are the official stars (as is RuPaul) but Michelle Williams and Dante Basco are standouts in retrospect. I remember seeing this when it came out, and despite being a ridiculous mélange of stereotypes, it holds up remarkably well 20 years later.
Jennifer’s Body - This feels oddly 90s to me for a movie made in 2009; or at least the early-aughts era where indie punk rock was a thing and some people (but hardly everyone) had flip phones. I hadn’t realized Diablo Cody wrote this, but it fits very well with that I’ve seen of her style: The plot is a hacked-together mess of well-worn tropes, but it’s littered with solid dialogue and there’s probably a women’s studies thesis to be plumbed from the metatext. And while I’m not qualified to write that, I suspect it would note that the movie only needs a little light editing (basically, a ten-second scene of each murdered boy being a douchebag) to completely change the audience’s sympathies. The choice to make Needy the protagonist and Jennifer the antagonist defined the style of horror in the movie: The victims were “innocent”, so Jennifer was a monster. But at the end, no less a murderer, Needy is a hero.
The VelociPastor - Now that’s what I call schlock! It’s as terrible as you could hope for and clearly made on a $10 budget, and some of the dialogue has to be heard to be believed. That said, I’m not sure (and I don’t think the filmmakers were sure) exactly how bad they were expecting this to be, and I think that kinda hurts it. It definitely feels like something drunk college kids would make and think was brilliant enough to try to sell, but are they trying too hard or are they just right? I don’t know, that’s a decision for hooker-doctor-lawyers and the velocipastors who love them.
no subject
Date: 2020-09-22 04:48 am (UTC)Evil Dead: Saw it in high school, wished I could un-see that tree scene. Sadly, I can't. :(
But I'm a Cheerleader: I haven't seen this, but I saw the name Dante Basco and had to think where I knew him from. And was super excited to recognize that he voices Zuko from Airbender! I kinda want to watch this just to see him act in-person. :)
I wrote that and then I took a closer look at his IMDB page. Holy. Fuck. He played Rufio, the leader of the Lost Boys, in Hook!!!! I mean, am I a weirdo that that gave me chills? Because I watched that movie a lot when I was little, and I suddenly connected his voice with Zuko's voice... wow. So there you go. a little mini-drama in this DW comment, for your amusement.
Also you kinda make me want to see Venom.
no subject
Date: 2020-09-22 12:32 pm (UTC)For the record, Hook is my second-favorite Robin Williams movie. (Good Will Hunting is the first.)
Regarding Venom: Does the idea of Tom Hardy, sitting in a restaurant's lobster tank looking around for answers that will never come, appeal to you? It's a middling superhero movie overall. Michelle Williams is in it (and my circa-1998 crush on her never really died), but she doesn't really get enough good material. Tom Hardy is the reason for the season.
no subject
Date: 2020-09-23 02:38 pm (UTC)