Catwoman

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Oh my god. This was the worst movie we have ever seen.

Let’s get the plot out of the way. There is this woman. Patience. She is a graphic designer for a cosmetics company. She somehow finds out that the cosmetics are addictive and damaging. Then while she runs away from the security, a cat burps on her face and she becomes a CGI Catwoman. For some reason the wife of the boss of the cosmetics company knows this and kills the boss and frames her. So now she jumps around until he gets the wife alone in a room and then kills her.

So 2004. What was going on? DC’s last movie was a fuck up. It was 1997’s Steel.  Marvel is winning. They made the Spidermans, Blade, X-men, Hulk, and some other shit. So DC probably thought that they should double their efforts. There are seven writers attached to this movie. One woman wrote a few series episodes but nothing too big. One guy wrote The Core in 2003. Another four wrote The Game with Michael Douglas and The Net with Sandra Bullock and a bunch of other good movies. Another wrote a few shitty TV series. Then there is the last guy, Bob Kane, that wrote the characters for the Nolan Batman and tons of DC shows. He really fucked up here. Catwoman was not the same Catwoman of the Batman franchise. She was not Selina Kyle and she was not in Gotham and not a cat-burglar. This was written to have nothing to do with the actual DC universe but retained the name Catwoman to attack some audience.

The Director was Pitof. His only other movie before this was Vidocq. A successful French sci-fi movie. He wouldn’t make another feature film after this movie. He seems to be known for visual effects. He worked on Alien 4 and a few other middle of the road movies.

Halle Berry was in Monster’s ball in 2001 and won all the awards. The she was in a James Bond movie as eye-candy. Then Gothika in 2003. Probably as eye-candy as well. Prior to these she was in good-ish movies with good-ish roles and she did well. How the hell did she manage to find this shit movie? Its not like she needed the money or had no other offers. She can be awesome if there’s a good director.

Sharon Stone wasn’t running out of work either. Her movies before this weren’t total shit-shows but they weren’t major hits either. Maybe this was a vanity project where she gets to show off her looks instead of working hard at her acting skill? Maybe she thought that only her looks can get her good movie reviews.

Benjamin Bratt was in a ton of good movies as ‘some third guy in charge that doesn’t really matter who the fuck he really is’. This movie got him closer to being a lead character. Too bad Ben.

It costs $100m to make this movie and it made about $82m back. That sounds ok but its still about $20m down the tubes and that doesn’t even account for the cost to market the movie to people. People always blame studio meddling when it comes to failed movies. No one really knows what could have been. Apparently this was tested with a small audience bore release and was so bad that it had to have reshoots. Maybe the studio knew its bad but wanted to at least be good enough to recover some of the $100m. Maybe the original cut would only have made $10m instead of $82?

Bad cast choice. Bad acting. Not an actual Catwoman movie. Bad, really bad CGI. Stupid story. Really obvious continuity mistakes. Bad dialogue. Bad photography. Fuck. Just don’t watch this shit OK?

Steel

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The movie’s name is Steel. The main guy is Irons. The sidekick is Sparks. But none of this matters because Shaq is a likable guy. Even the bad guys like having him around.

This movie is about a guy that makes weapons and doesn’t like what the buyers of the weapons intend to do with the weapons. He quits, he makes his own weapons in a junkyard, he finds out the buyers are bad guys, he stops the bad guys with his magic weapons. The only thing that could make this movie more 90’s period-correct is if they were fighting to protect demolishing a ‘rec’ centre.

So its 1997. This movie is forgettable as ever. Why was it made? Its a superhero movie in the DC universe. A bunch of Supermans were made, some Batmans. Both were moderately successful. Marvel was pumping out junk like Punisher, Fantastic Four, Captain America and all were turds. This was less of a shit-show than the 1997 Batman and Robin. The one with the bat nipples and butt-shots but it actually got a lower IMDB score. Cruel.

I think the only memorable parts of the movie were the flimsy rubber costume that Shaq had to wear. It was supposed to be a steel plated armored suit but ended up folding and deforming like rubber or foam every time he moved his face.

The Director is Kenneth Johnson and he’s written and directed a bunch of TV stuff like Alienation and V. At least he tried to make a feature film. He went back to TV after this. Someone learns a lesson.

Shaq is likeable and made Kazaam in 1996 which was just as bad as this movie. Maybe they thought they would try again to make a professional bouncing baller cross over into movies. In later movies, Shaq plays Shaq. Another person learns their lesson. According to IMDB trivia, Shaq was still a ball player during this movie. Maybe he didn’t give a fuck? But who in their right mind would be pissed off at Shaq.

It made about $2m or $3m but the budget to make it was about $16m. All that DC and Warner money being flushed. They don’t learn their lesson. Their next movie would be Catwoman and would be the worst movie ever made on Earth.

Watch it. Because it has Shaq.

Gigli

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This movie was so bad, I almost broke my TV.

It costs $54m to make this movie and all it could bring in was $6m. This Director stopped making movies. The two leads that were in a relationship off-screen even broke up.

This 2003 movie is about a gangster that steals a special-needs kid. I don’t know if it was for ransom because he doesn’t get a payout in the end. During this theft, he meets another gangster, a woman, and they team up to complete the task. The rest of the movie is about silly situations that ensue where they need to act like they know the kids very well and they act like a couple.

You never get the impression that they are bad people and have done bad things. They don’t do any bad things during their time in the movie. The dialogue is also extremely annoying and unnatural. One person says or asks something. Second person responds vaguely with one word. First person tries again and get the same result. First person goes into a five minute soliloquy that looks like they prepared the speech months ago and it wasn’t directed at the second person.

So this movie was terrible. The story is supposed to be about a thug with a heart of gold. But you don’t see him being a thug and you don’t see him doing good things either. The cast don’t seem to have a good chemistry. You never see them slowly warming up to each other. Its cold, cold, cold, cold, cold, hot. For no reason.

The cast is bad and the story is shit. Why was it made? Martin Brest was the Director and everything he made before this was amazing and a critical success. Meet Joe Black, Beverly Hills Cop1, Scent of a Woman. He gets Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez were successful in their movie and music career and were already in a relationship with each other. Surely the on-screen chemistry would have been a non-issue? The guys paying for everything looks like Revolution Studios who seems to have money from Sony and Fox. They get Martin to quickly hack his script about thugs to be more about thugs that are romantic with each other. Martin doesn’t like the idea but he does it anyway. Money money money. So its Martin’s fault.

Should you watch this shit? Its two hours long and you don’t like anyone or anything about this movie. But who am I kidding? You read this entire review when you could have said “duh” and closed the window.

Glitter

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This movie is so bad it gave me cancer.

Glitter was made in 2001. This was the historical year where no one cares about anything. It’s a vanity project for Mariah Carey where she details her rags to riches story. Her mother is a singer of a shitty bar and then she sings a bit and likes singing and then gets discovered because she was a background singer thats better than the lead singer. A guy that looks like a discount Mark Wahlberg says he buys her out of her contract and becomes her manager. They show all the trivial details of how business people treat her like a business asset and not like a person. Didn’t anyone tell her that this is how the industry works? Why is she surprised by all of this? It ends with her singing at a big concert and before she sings, she finds out that her boyfriend, discount Wahlberg, died. She is a bit sad and carries on to sing. It ends with her going to find her mother and they hug and cry.

Her name in the movie wasn’t Mariah. It was Frankie or something like that. Why? Was it because she knew she’s taking liberties with her own history? She can now add in more fake scenarios that will make the audience more sympathetic to her unrealistic story. Pandering and filled with clichés should be the description.

She also was in charge of music of the movie. This was a terrible decision. She manufactures scenarios so that she can play she own music as the sound track of the movie. This makes the scenes not logically fit into each other. Some scenes makes sense but the music doesn’t fit. Then there are other problems with really bad dubbing where it is very obvious that a person’s mouth doesn’t match the voices that you hear. Then its all set in New York but its always quiet. You don’t hear the cars or trains or people shouting in the background.

The cinematography was the worst we’ve seen in a long time. Every scene lasts about five minutes and its repetitive to the point where we saw the formula about 30 minutes into the movie. Each scene starts with an aerial shot of New York. It lasts about 5 seconds. Then its footage of the busy traffic and the taxis driving by the location. Then a side character says a line or two. Then Mariah can talk or react for the next four or so minutes. Repeat until its over.

So this movie is terrible. Why was it made? Vanity project? Yeah, maybe. But it costs $22m to make it. Who knows how it was marketed? Mariah didn’t pay for it. Someone else did. Fox. Maybe Fox thought that they could take a successful singer and make a buck on a cross over. Mariah had a mental breakdown in during this movie and regrets making it. Thats how bad it was. She started working on this movie since 1997. Five fucking years go by and all they can show for it was $5m in revenue.

Should you watch this movie? Only if you want to ogle Mariah’s body while watching it on mute.

 

Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles

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This movie was so bad that it didn’t even want to be made.

This was made in 2001. The first two were made in 1986 and 1988. Paul Hogan is 63 here. His real life wife and co-star wife is 20 years younger than him. He has a limp like he went for a prostate operation. Wait a minute. Thats it. This movie was supposed to be his ticket to pay for his medical bills.

So the plot. He’s in LA because his wife needs to make a movie. The movie maker is a bad guy. Drugs or something. Dundee steaks the movie lot out at night and foils the baddies.

Simple plot made so that you could hang all the ‘hey look at the crazy outdoorsman’ gags. Here’s are the gags

  • He talks to a chimp.
  • He grabs a gun talking about animal reaction time.
  • He confuses Mel Gibson with Mal Gibson.
  • He stops traffic to save a dog. The dog was a skunk.
  • He smacks a bug and turns on a light thats sound activated.
  • He goes to a Wendy drive through and calls the lady in the speak Wendy.
  • He stabs an anaconda.
  • He predicts the attack of the lions to the bad guys.

Dundee also has a friend in the movie as an excuse to repeat shitty fish-out-of-water jokes that he did in episodes 1 and 2.

This movie is awful. Avoid.

Mitchell

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This was an awesome movie.

This 1975 gem was great. Joe Don Baker was Mitchell. A cop that takes down drug dealers. He first finds that a guy shot a thief in the guys house. The guy claimed made it look self inflicted but Mitchell knows whats up. He could recreate the scene based on how the thief fell and the placement of the gun. Then he gets assigned to get a drug dealer to confess. He befriends the dealer and makes it look like he’s a dirty cop. There are very long chase sequences that end up in some quarry and a car explodes.

There is a subplot of a prostitute that is servicing Mitchell and then he busts her for it. Mitchell also likes porn and hates kids. He also lives in a tiny apartment with a single sleeper couch. But thats normal for raging alcoholics.

The thing about this movie is that Mitchell isn’t a young tough guy. He’s an old fuck up gets the bad guy. Not because he’s good at his job. No, he’s terrible and no one likes him. He gets the bad guy because he never gives up.

The ending is especially good. He’s in some shitty helicopter and the only way to stop the bad guy is to hang a gas tank to the helicopter and swing it at the boat to demolish it one plank of wood at a time.

Watch it. Its funny.

After Earth

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“How can mirrors be real if our eyes aren’t real?” – Jaden Smith

There’s these humans. They left Earth a few thousand years ago to a new planet. Now Will Smith is in an army and he is traveling somewhere with family. For no reason, his spaceship is hit and he land on earth. He is injured and so his son needs to run around the planet and do things. Will is play the part of a father that hasn’t been with his family for a long time. He plays it well. Almost too well. He treats his son like a soldier and the son is fucked up because of it. The son tries so hard to impress that he almost dies in the process of going from one place to another place. The is mention of a battle technique called “ghosting” where you pretend that you have no fear because, for some reason, the animals can literally smell or see fear. If you have no fear, you’re invisible. This is retarded. Why aren’t the animals walking into walls all the time? Do walls fear animals? How would someone scientifically test for fear? Its not a chemical. You probably have a higher heart rate but thats it.

Then the kid has these Oreo shaped asthma pumps. Why isn’t asthma cured in the future? The pumps are single use and the size of an Oreo. Why isn’t it smaller? Why isn’t it embedded into the suit? Why does the suit have only 4 servings? The only explanation is bad screen writing.

The names are also needlessly foreign. Kitai Raige and father Cypher Raige with sister Senshi and mother Faia. What the hell. They could have been called Will, Jaden, Willow and Jada and the movie would have not been worse. Probably would have improved because when you introduce strange names from people that were based off earth people, you need to explain how the names evolved from Latin or Roman or whatever names to this strange world.

From IMDB, it looks like M Night Shayamalan and Will Smith met up one day decided to make a movie for the heck of it. Ok, thats on them then. The plot is simple but you have shot after shot of Jaden running and jumping and shouting the father and getting asthma and it goes on. They could have made the story better but they probably didn’t think they needed help. This is what happens when you’re too rich. You think you’re too good.

It made $60m and costs $130m. Bit of a stinker. Where did the money go? Sony probably paid for it. Probably to build Jaden’s career as a green screen expert. Because all of this movie was made in a green screen. M Night probably was paid a shit-ton. He normally makes his own scripts. This was made by Will using Sony money.

This is a stupid 2013 movie with no redeeming qualities. Avoid it.

The Neverending Story 3

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This movie is so bad, it will ruin its predecessors.

I watched Episode 1 and 2 about 20 years ago so the story was a bit blurry. I remember that there was a main kid named Bastion and he had a book that put him in a fantasy land and he had to save it from some bad person. The bad person tried to trick him buy making him swap a memory for some arbitrary wish. I was very young.

This piece of shit is way worse. Bastion goes to the same store and finds the same book and rereads it but gets a different story. Because thats how this shitty book works. He jumps into fantasy land, fucks around, jumps out and leaves the book in a place that can be stolen and exploited by some school bullies. The bullies seem to only want to bully him. For no reason, they also live in a parking lot of a shopping mall. And this hideout has fans, TVs, couches, and other shit. How did they bring it there? Did anyone see them? What if the mall wanted to expand the parking lot? So many questions on this point. The bullies opened the- book and saw that it was being written in real time. This tipped the main guy off that he can exploit it somehow because he was able to think of something, it gets written, it materializes. Yes, this is retarded. Why not imagine wealth and disappear? Why not imagine world peace or something? Why is this book unlimited in wishes? What happens when you wish? Is it like fantasy land where you slowly lose your memory? So many questions. Then fantasy land is in turmoil because the real world can affect the fantasy land. The bullies own the book and they were playing loud music so naturally this translates into thunder in fantasy. Then there was a bad guy again in fantasy land. I cant remember.

There’s a strange subplot with Bastion’s father marrying some woman with a daughter and this girl manipulates Bastion and somehow gets hold of some necklace that does magic wishes as well. She gets the book in the end, imagines the end of the story and the problem is solved and the movie ends. I don’t know what the fuck was going on. We’re never told that the marriage is shit and the end has the little girl running to the step father and telling him not to go while he’s packing his car.

There’s more problems. The flying dog in episodes 1 and 2 looked healthy and sounded like he’s full of energy. This dog was put in the washing machine too many times and was fed heroine for a few years. He was missing the thick coat of fur and maybe said about three words in the whole movie.

The rocks creatures in the first two were the size of mountains and were not the type of creatures to get involved in anything or care about anything. They sat and chowed rocks all day. Cannibals. The rock creatures in this movie were the size of humans and they watched TV and curled their rock hair and had a kid wearing rock diapers. What the fuck is going on?

Then there is a stupid couple of dwarf fairy characters that find ways to travel to different places where bastion is. They make annoying fart noises and have stupid-people dialogue.

The cast was a strange choice. The leader of the bullies was Jack Black. He’s not scary. The mother looked like a horse. The daughter was evil. The princess didn’t look like herself in episode 2. Bastion was a different actor. I think everyone beside the father was played by a different actor.

Why was this movie made? The original was made in 1984 and the writer sued the producers for making such a shit movie. The second movie was made in 1990 and that had terrible reviews. This was 1994. Third time lucky? Nope. The child-like empress is also no longer a child and she’s looking to score some dudes. Bastion should have grown up too in this time but is the same age as the first two movies. It costs $17m to make and brought in about $2m. It’s got a 3.4 out of 10 on IMDB. The kids that watched these movies would also have grown up to an age where these types of movies are not appealing. There doesn’t seem to be a reason that this movie should have been made.

Do not watch.

 

 

 

Kick or Die

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We’re back in 1987 and back in South Africa for a fight movie.

The movie is pretty competent. It starts with a couple parking in the dark for some private time and then a bad guy kills the guy and rapes the girl. This is on some school and guess what’s the only way to stop this? Get security? No. Get cops? No. Teach the girls self defense? Yeah, but not so fast. You first hire a music producer and get him to hire the defense instructor. So teach the girls to fight. They hire Kick or Die guy to do the teaching and he ends up killing the bad guy. He is Don Potter.

Obviously there is a biker gang causing mayhem but they are a subplot that starts about halfway into the movie and then concludes. It added nothing but runtime.

We never see a montage of women learning karate or women beating up bad guys. For this reason, the movie fails in its premise. You didn’t even need him to be a karate instructor.

Oh, and the boom mic in almost every scene is in the camera frame. Drinking games are fun with this.

The accents are supposed to be American but every now and again they drop back into the good ‘ol South African accent.

This is like Scooby Doo where the real bad guy is the music producer and Don finds out and kills him in the end. The reason he found out was through his girlfriend that wanted to be a singer. Don gets her to meet music producer guy who is all about rape. What the fuck? Ignore the fact that rape is retarded on it own, he and Don are friends. Why would he come on to his friend’s girl? He also knows that his friend is a karate master guy. Was music guy not expecting to get his ass kicked? He is probably the dumbest villain in movie history.

If you’re wondering about the girlfriend, shes a 6/10 and a terrible singer.

So why was this movie made? I have no idea. Its South African and hardly anything is written about it online. Its distributed by AIP (Action International Pictures) that did about 70 movies between mid 80’s to mid 90’s. Kick or Die guy, Kevin Bernhardt, is a a good karate actor and was in tons of movies with pretty much the exact same role.

Watch it. It extremely OK.

 

Code Name Vengeance

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What do you get when you cross Rambo with Indiana Jones with a low budget?

Its 1987 in South Africa and everyone is exploiting everyone else. Except for the victims, who are everyone.

The Director is David Winters who probably lost a bet and had to come to South Africa for two years as a penalty. He made this movie in 87, Rage to Kill in 88, Space Mutiny in 88 and Mission Kill in 86. All four movies star Cameron Mitchell for some reason. This movie and Mission Kill have Robert Ginty. Space Mutiny had Reb Brown. James Ryan was in Rage to Kill and Space Mutiny.  Ginty was very busy in this time too. He made six movies in 1986 and 7 in South Africa, UK, US, France and I think in Turkey.

So what is this movie about? There is this family that rules some African country. No mention of the name. The daughter and the wive of the president get kidnapped by Arabs. Some American thinks he can save them if he releases a kick ass Ginty from prison to do this job. That pretty much it on plot. Not too bad here because everything else is bad.

The screenplay. Long boring chase scenes. Then playing cops and robbers in some abandoned warehouse. There are three skirmishes that could have taken place in any order. Come to thing of it, this is Space Mutiny before it was shot. Ginty only meets Mitchell half way through the movie and Mitchell is running a bar. Who would have thought that Cameron Mitchell would be near alcohol in his role. The helicopter scene was all done while it was on the ground. The rail carts in the mine were done slowly and the footage was sped up. At some point we’re told that this is Qatar. I don’t know anymore.

Shannon Tweed, a Playboy model was Ginty’s love interest. Of course Ginty gets all the ladies. He does it in every movie. Its his trademark, along with not having much dialogue.

The bad guy was pretty shit as a character. James Ryan the actor was awesome. The bad guy name was Tabrak. It sounds just like you can imagine with a South African accent.

Watch this movie. Its mostly fun and sometimes boring.