Absolute Dreck | It's the worst!!!

Jan
26
2012

When Two Become One

Post by James Brotheridge

Jack and Jill
2011

It feels inevitable — Adam Sandler, as both titular roles in Jack and Jill, has to reconcile these halves. They have to realize the other’s worth and eventually accept their role. An unstoppable force brings Sandler to the key scene in this film: the character of Jack must cross dress as Jill.

It’s not like Jack Sadelstein hasn’t been through enough indignities. When his twin sister Jill comes to visit him, things become thorny. The movie wants the viewer to believe it’s a matter of Jill being quirky yet obtrusive. Not quite the case; at varying points, Jill is awkward, offensive, and sometimes straight-up aggressive with her remarks and actions.

Sandler and director Dennis Dugan build a character that almost measures up to Bill Murray’s Bob Wiley in What About Bob? in persistence and pure mania. But director Frank Oz made sure you recognized those characteristics and established a tone of black comedy to suit him.

Jack and Jill is the kind of movie that uses a crane shot to properly convey a poop joke, not the kind of movie capable of such a balancing act.

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Jan
24
2012

Sorority Warfare

Post by James Brotheridge

Sorority Wars
2009

At one point, the appeal of fraternities and, by extension, sororities was unquestionable to me. Thinking back, there was definitely a time before my introduction to things like Animal House but where representations of that particular collegiate experience were leaking in from somewhere and I thought that that was a good idea. Why not live in a house with a bunch of your bros? It resembled a Cub Scouts camping trip but everyone’s living together and they’re old enough that girls want to kiss you and stuff.

These days, I don’t think it’d be my thing and not just because of my aversion to strangers paddling me. (An aversion that’s unproven, mind you, though I don’t see that getting tested anytime soon.) My repertoire of frat and frat-adjacent movies — I’ve seen Old School and Van Wilder, which I know is an incredibly impressive tally — has grown, as has my knowledge of the ugly news stories these places inspire. (Take a look at either of these Smoking Gun stories for examples of that.) Some frats and sororities are probably cool places to be, but at their best they’re at least a little douchey.

Once, some friends and I were driving past a fraternity across from the University of Minnesota. One guy out front was raking the lawn and another was watching him while standing in front of the house drinking a beer. A third walked up to the beer-holder. They bumped fists, talked for a second, and then cracked an invisible whip in the direction of the rake-holder in unison. In that brief moment, observed in an instant from the front seat of a car, I felt I had the whole frat experience.

I’m not sure what experience Katie Parker, the protag of Sorority Wars, expected. A lot about her is tough to divine and not only because Lucy Hale of ABC Family’s Pretty Little Liars plays her with a flat attempt at likability and with a minimum of charisma. Katie is also a character without an arc. The closest she comes to that is eventually realizing that she likes her mom. That’s the most movement Katie makes. Consequently, as she traipses around the world of Sorority Wars, it’s hard to imagine her undergoing any hardship, even the adolescent kind everyone finds to some degree in high school. And without any conflict, what’s there to be made into a movie?

Why she bothers with a sorority or what she expected of it is beyond me. I’m not completely sure Sorority Wars knows either.

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Jan
20
2012

Everything Rewinds

Post by James Brotheridge

My favorite video blog, Everything Is Terrible!, posted the trailer to Rewind This! the other day. Not just out of exclamation point loyalty. They haven’t gotten to the point where they’re posting Panic! at the Disco videos or anything.

They posted it at least in part because it’s a documentary they got interviewed for. That’s them, in the picture above! You can watch it for yourself over at the project’s Kickstarter page.

The documentary is about the rise of home video cassettes. They talk to folks like EIT! and Hobo with a Shotgun director Jason Eisener and a whole lot of others about the evolution of this new technology and how it effected movies. In the filmmakers’ own words:

The film-going public had unprecedented control over their viewing schedule, burgeoning filmmakers had inexpensive tools with which to create, and a new business was formed that expanded the reach of an already exploding industry. Videotape redefined the way modern society interacts with media.

The trailer looks great. You should consider giving them some money, though no need to rush; with 20 days left to go, they’ve already surpassed their $15,000 goal for completion funds by over $3,000 as I write this.

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Jan
19
2012

Quentin Tarantino’s Worst Of The Year

Post by James Brotheridge

Among the bunch of lists he posted to sum up his 2011 movie experiences — including the “Nice Try Award” list — director Quentin Tarantino originally included films he considered the worst of the year. Not long after, he reconsidered and took the list down. Unlike the bad movies themselves, things like this aren’t soon forgotten. The list has resurfaced everywhere for everyone to see.

At the very top is Sucker Punch. I’m not surprised Tarantino hasn’t subjected himself to a true critical bomb like Jack and Jill — that was no-question bad, with no other reason to go see it — and that no doubt effects just what he considers the very worst of 2011. I can only imagine he wound up seeing Sucker Punch because of its director, Zack Snyder, who shows intermittent promise. The film itself was that promise squandered. An attempt at a lady-empowering action flick still wound up objectifying the women at its core, while making an impressively shitty mess of a movie while they were at it.

When I saw Sucker Punch, I honestly thought it was more misguided than anything. Snyder doesn’t have the depth of insight or knowledge of his craft to make a movie with a statement that’s his own. As he took his first steps in auteur-ship, it didn’t seem clear he knew what he was working towards or how to start expressing the vague sense of an idea he was working with. At its best, the film is just muddled.

Sucker Punch is certainly a bad film, but it doesn’t plumb the depths of incompetence that we’ve seen elsewhere in 2011.

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Jan
18
2012

Studying Trailers

Post by James Brotheridge

NPR posted a great rundown of all that goes into the making of a modern, Hollywood film trailer. They roll through the industry side, talking about what the state of the trailer business is like these days:

Of course, if any precocious editor can churn out Hollywood-ready thrills, there’s the question of whether trailer producers are artists or craftsman. Whether they’re merely trafficking in candy –– assembling the best parts from a movie into a flashy clip reel — or doing something more creative.

But they also go through a lot of specific talk about what makes trailers look like they do. You should really read the whole thing for yourself.

It left me thinking of a trailer released online for First Sunday, the Ice Cube/Tracy Morgan comedy that looked really awful. I could watch the whole movie right now; I won’t link to it here, but while Googling, I happened to come across the entire movie posted as one video on YouTube. How could the studio let that happen? Maybe Katt Williams vehicles with 13% on Rotten Tomatoes are low on the rights-protection priority list?

Anyhow, when the trailer was first released on Apple’s site, some things were off. The sound mix for the dialogue and sound effects were weirdly placed, but more importantly, there wasn’t a lick of music in the thing.

I’ve tried tracking down a site that will let me embed that version; no go. Let me just tell you that, stripped of any of jaunty trailer music it’s supposed to have, First Sunday‘s jokes fall flatter than they already do, even getting a bit creepy.

What I will post here is one of my favorite remixes. See, once the music-less trailer — a low-fi version of which you can view here — got out, people started adding their own music and sound effects. The best, in my opinion, was this version, which overlays the pre-existing sounds from the trailer on top of each other, over and over again, turning into a nightmare of near Zaireeka-esque proportions. Consequently, it turns into a trailer for an art film that pretentious beardos like me might enjoy.

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Jan
03
2012

Absolute Trailers! The Pirates! Band of Misfits

Post by James Brotheridge

There’s nothing Dreck-ish about the trailer for The Pirates! Band of Misfits all on its own. We’ve got no problem with the creators of Wallace and Gromit around these parts. (Although I think consensus would say that Pingu is the superior clay creation.)

Instead, this is here because of where and how I saw it. The where is the Southland Cineplex Odeon, and the how is with the audio running backwards.

While I was waiting for Jack and Jill to start up, they started up this trailer. The visuals were running all right — i.e. in proper, chronological sense — but the audio was going backwards over top. I have no clue how they managed this, but they managed to rob me of hearing Hugh Grant’s first animated film gig. Boooooooo.

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Jan
01
2012

This Month’s IMDB Bottom Six

Post by James Brotheridge

1. Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2
2. Daniel – Der Zauberer
3. Manos: The Hands of Fate
4. Dream Well
5. Monster a-Go-Go
6. Night Train to Mundo Fine

Welcome to 2012, everyone! We’ve made it this far –hopefully John Cusack and Roland Emerick will continue to be proven wrong. Speaking of which, I’m surprised to find out we never got around to reviewing 2012 on here. Matthew Blackwell and I saw it with some friends up at the Paradise here in Regina, which is the perfect place to see any movie but a great place to see an awful one. Maybe in celebration of the season, Blackwell will come around and drop some thoughts on the movie. My general impression: thing wasn’t all bad. It was mostly bad. It was absurd and poorly made. But it wasn’t all bad.

Onto the IMDB Bottom. The only change in the bottom five is Dream Well and Monster a-Go-Go switching spots, a dance they’ve been doing for a while. That’s why we’re now looking at the bottom six. I’m nothing if not generous. Please welcome Night Train to Mundo Fine to Absolute Dreck!

Why is Night Train ranking so low? Well, just like two other movies in the bottom six, it was featured on — wait for it — Mystery Science Theater 3000. That, and it features a writer/actor/director, which is rarely a recipe for success.

So next month, will be going to a bottom seven? Will we eventually be in the bottom 25? Or will these be given up before then. We’ll have to wait and see.

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Dec
22
2011

Worst Of The Year?

Post by James Brotheridge

Worst Movies of the Year lists are starting to pop up. A couple I’ve had a look at are those for Time and the A.V. Club. There are some differences between the two — Time‘s is all written by one person, while the A.V. Club is their typical group effort for something like this — but both agree on one thing: Adam Sandler’s latest attempt at comedy, Jack and Jill, is the very worst. Well, OK, the A.V. Club technically has Sandler’s feature with Jennifer Aniston Just Go With It sharing top billing, but most of their contempt goes towards Jack and Jill. “When [director Dennis] Dugan isn’t using his camera to hawk products like Dunkin’ Donuts, he’s often just waiting around for farts,” they write.

Mary Pols of Time takes the awfulness of the movie personally: “The level of anger in his portrayal of an idiotic, crass, needy Jewish lady from the Bronx suggests some deep-rooted trauma somewhere. Or maybe he hates us, the audience. It certainly felt that way.”

The lack of love for the film is no surprise, seeing as its currently sitting at 4% based on 84 reviews over at Rotten Tomatoes. And plus it’s just a terrible film. People make fun of Nicolas Cage for being undiscerning with his roles, but someone really should have had some heart and tell Sandler not to play his unlikeable self in addition to his unlikeable sister.

But where’s the love for Bucky Larson: Born to Be a Star? I’m still a negligent bad movie connoisseur in that I haven’t seen it yet, but all the buzz is that it is impossibly bad. Zero percent on Rotten Tomatoes out of 34 reviews bad. It’s impossible to look at a trailer for this and think you’re in for a good movie.

The A.V. Club ranks it at Number 3. Pols doesn’t list it at all, instead making room for stuff like Breaking Dawn and The Future in her bottom ten. Now, I really enjoyed The Future but I can totally get why some people may not dig it. That said, is it really worse than Bucky Larson?

Maybe she just felt she had met her Nick Swardson quota thanks to his role in Jack and Jill.

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Dec
21
2011

Tidying Up Manos

Post by James Brotheridge

Manos: The Hands of Fate is one of a select number of movies with a rightful claim to Worst Movie Props and with any number of good reasons. Listing even just a few here is unnecessary; they’re all legendary by now.

Just one of those is the visual quality of the film. Film lore surrounding Manos says that fertilizer-salesmen-turned-director Harold P. Warren lit some shots with the headlights of cars, a move certainly not listed in the What Would Michael Bay Do? handbook.

There’s an abundance of cinematographic ineptitude in the movie, but Manos might provide a visual challenge to modern viewers because of a transfer issue. Simply put, the digital version currently circulating didn’t have the lavish care that a classic of its stature deserves.

Florida State grad Ben Solovey is trying to fix that. He’s working on restoring a print which, as he tells NPR’s Monkey See blog, he hopes will eventually be used for a Blu-Ray release. From the post:

“This is just the kind of movie that slips though the cracks,” he says. “Now, it just so happens that we have a chance to really see it in an awesome way that it’s never been seen before.”

The piece doesn’t get into a lot of the specifics — how he’s funding this project or how much of his time it’s taking up, for instance — but I could put one answer to those myself: “More than most think it would deserve.” Throwing resources at film that no question holds a place in the canon, but a place as the worst of the worst, might be a little counter-intuitive.

But then that’s not really what folks like Matthew Blackwell and I believe. There’s so much to be gained from saving movies like Manos. They’re instructive, entertaining, and endlessly fascinating in all their flaws. From the sounds of it, Solovey is a kindred spirit. Best of luck to him.

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Dec
03
2011

Absolute Trailers: Dream Well

Post by James Brotheridge

Despite its current IMDB ranking, I can’t be sure as to just how awful Dream Well is. The trailer for Daniel the Wizard wears its awfulness on its sleeve. The characters might have German words coming out their mouths, but the camera is speaking the universal language of Bad Movie.

That’s not where the awfulness of the Hungarian-language film Dream Well comes from. It certainly doesn’t look well made, but I can’t really know just how bad this movie is without taking language courses. Mostly, this just made me think of how entertaining Bring It On really was.

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