nthurkettle

Rescue Rangers NES Game:Duck Tales NES Game::This Movie:The Warriors

I love this movie, but I feel like you made a glaring omission in overlooking that Tom Cody ends the movie as a MUCH bigger villain than Raven, and the residents of The Battery are actually much more upstanding than the supposedly "innocent" part of town. Yes, Raven kidnaps Ellen. A crime, we can all agree. In a normal movie, though, you can imagine that the heroes' plan would involve infiltrating Raven's hideout, rescuing Ellen, and maybe, MAYBE if Raven provokes a showdown, you take him down. And all along the way, you work to spare innocent lives and stop the violence from spreading or escalating, because that's what you expect movie heroes to do. In "Streets of Fire", though, Tom Cody's "plan" isn't even a plan, he just opens fire indiscriminately on anyone riding a motorcycle, causing massive death and destruction. He unilaterally raises the stakes from kidnapping to mass murder. What's even crazier is that, when Raven swears revenge, you can imagine his gang coming out of the Battery on a killing spree in the name of all his dead gang members. But instead of a vengeful massacre, he requests for a fair one-on-one fight with Cody. Raven is the only character in the movie who ever tries to contain the escalating violence between the two sides of town and keep the focus on the one responsible - Cody. To punctuate this, when the townspeople all draw their guns on the bikers, you realize that everyone in the supposedly "nice" part of town has the same problem as Cody of crazily escalating a tense situation to the point where murder is much more likely to result. Which takes us completely through the looking glass to realize that when Raven and his gang stole Ellen to begin with, all her heat-packing hometown neighbors LET IT HAPPEN.

Another movie that tried its damndest to make "hacking" sexy by adding guns and naked people and sexy lighting and Hugh Jackman to try and cover that so much of hacking is just typing, and typing is super un-sexy. There was a big trend in action screenwriting in this era that, if you were trying to sell an action script on spec, you needed to put your biggest, craziest stunt in the first five pages, because you couldn't count on a studio executive reading any further than that; which led to these story structures where you'd open with a giant, crazy WTF stunt, then flash back to everything that led up to it, since blowing your biggest stunt in the first five minutes is nice for short-attention-span readers, but a terrible way to make a movie.

For a movie that was supposedly all about Xander Cage's TOTALLY XTREME MACHISMO BROUGHT TO YOU BY SOBE LIFEWATER, there were some really bizarre details to his character. Like, they're trying to make him the anti-Bond, and Bond drinks martinis, so when he's in a bar he orders...a cranberry and club soda? I know this movie is the epitome of 60-year old Hollywood white guys thinking they know what the kids are into, but did they really think a cranberry and club soda was going to be the signature rawkin' drink of the new millennium? (Or Willennium? Can't remember which one we're in right now.) Then there's the scene where he's sneaking around Castle Von Evilstein in...a big foofy fur coat. I'm all in favor of masculinity expressing itself in many different ways but that was a...surprising detail in the middle of this giant would-be franchise launch. And weird gear to be using for stealth mode. Maybe he thought if guards came he could just crouch down and they would think he's a bean bag chair. Also, the way he kisses Asia Argento is absolutely the strangest kiss an action man has ever given an action lady. It really looks like he's trying to mouth her head like a Tootsie Pop.

I think the reason this probably hasn't been proposed yet is that basically nobody even heard about it - but I swear it was actually in movie theaters in 2009; my girlfriend and I went to the theater and there was nothing else we wanted to see and we hadn't heard anything about this so we went. It's almost exactly the same plot as "Eagle Eye", which was out around the same time - in that a rogue A.I. is manipulating people using TECHNOLOGY (June will LOVE this). Only in this case, an IT guy receives a magical new cell phone that text alerts him to not board a plane that ends up crashing, then helps him win a fortune at slot machines. Then there's a whole lot of chasing and bullsh*t and Russians and actors cashing B-movie checks (Ed Burns! Ving Rhames! Martin Sheen!) Jonathan Pryce shows up and delivers this monologue about falconry that is Christopher Walken-level demented. And then the hero saves the world with his belt. For serious. Also, there's a hilarious coda scene where we learn that the RUSSIANS were the heroes all along - somberly hoping we Americans can be steered towards peace and goodness! It even achieved the rare and coveted 0% Rotten Tomatoes rating: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Echelon_Conspiracy

I remember laughing out loud in the theater when, after they went through the crazy wormhole thing, they immediately identified their location... Meaning they were NO LONGER LOST IN SPACE. Why did they do that? Yeah then it's all time travel bullsh*t and Gary Oldman as Bram Stoker's Digital Spider Monster.

This movie is like peak Arnold - in that it's not his best movie by far, but it is the movie that is most completely and solely propelled by the essence of Arnold in its purest form. I love the tree-carrying scene, that's basically subtle 80's filmmaking for "BEHOLD HIS MONSTER COCK". I recently re-watched The Running Man, where there's a scene of him in prison carrying a giant girder, and I thought "man, it must have been in his contract back then that he has to have a scene where he carries something really long."

Since it was pointed out after the "Lifeforce" minisode that Paul's Nintendo knowledge is lame, this seems like the movie they need to do so he won't be lame anymore. He'll be... (wait for it) ....A WIZARD!

This deserves a bump for having such an insanely top-shelf cast of actors - none of whom seem to be acting in the same movie (or even bothering to try to sound French), and all of whom are fighting against dialogue which is trying to be heightened and romantic but is really just jaw-droppingly inane. Watch Gabriel Byrne try to sell the line: "I know to love you is a treason against France. But not to love you, is a treason....AGAINST MY HEART." Meanwhile, John Malkovich clearly gave up as soon as the check cleared. Listen to the listless way he mumbles "we feared the mask would destroy you..." This was the writer of Braveheart making his directing debut and he clearly thought he could make the ultimate literary romantic action epic, and it is just SO HOWLINGLY BAD.

True story - I had a meeting with a literary manager who was trying to recruit me as a client not long before this movie came out. He was basically doing the Hollywood rep's version of negging me by trying to tell me that the missing piece in my script arsenal was a truly killer high-concept spec script - and THIS was the script he considered the perfect example. He even e-mailed it to me so I would have it for reference. I started reading it and stopped, thinking "this is dumb". Then I went to see the movie and thought, "No, wait, this is SUPER dumb." Although every time Jim Carrey as his growly-voiced fantasy noir counterpart says the word "Fingerling", you can tell the tension between his desire for this to be a super-serious thriller and his subconscious awareness that this is SUPER dumb is tearing him apart.

I think Escape from L.A. has more out-and-out insanity in it; but for that reason it's also much more fun to watch. Carpenter's Ghosts of Mars is just skull-bludgeoningly stupid, and built around a premise that, once you pay attention to it, just makes every minute of the movie worse than the previous one. So the idea is - the evil spirits let loose from their tomb infect people and turn them into crazy sub-GWAR fan snarling creepos. And they stay in those bodies until those bodies die. Killing the bodies does nothing to harm the spirits, it just sets them free to find a new host. So our heroes spend the ENTIRE movie gunning down hoards of these things and shouting catch phrases at each other about what badasses they are, when all they are doing is enabling the spread of the ghosts to the entire planet and participating in the gradual genocide of the whole human population. No search for a cure, no attempt to quarantine the infected or search for a means to block the spirits. Just PEW PEW PEW AW YEAH THIS IS GREAT WAIT WHY ARE THERE MORE OF THEM NOW? The heroes literally NEVER FIGURE THIS OUT.

I used to work for one of the producers of this movie. He saw me looking at the poster once and sighed: "That's the worst movie I ever made. Got to buy a house, though."

The actor who played Frankenstein's Monster, Shuler Hensley, ended up playing Frankenstein's Monster again - in Mel Brooks's Young Frankenstein on Broadway. Pretty fitting, given the number of times in Van Helsing he seemed to want to burst into song. Basically, the whole movie should have been a musical. Dracula was already camp enough for a Rocky Horror Picture Show screening.

I feel like sci-fi and space odysseys really bring out the best in the HDTGM team. Jupiter Ascending, After Earth...this definitely should happen.

I will jam "Tonight is What it Means to be Young" while driving. No irony at all. It's written by Meat Loaf's long-time collaborator Jim Steinman and is epic:

Highlander 2 has to be all like "But we had hoverboards, too! Where's OUR nostalgia, huh? Where's OUR viral videos?" This seems like such a no-brainer, but what really makes it such memorable garbage is setting it in the context of how radically (and unnecessarily) it re-writes the backstory of the first movie. So it feels like at least one of Jason, June, or Paul would need to be well-versed enough in the first one to explain why all this "Planet Zeist" stuff is so insanely random.

Even though this movie came out in 1990, it has a prime example of what you'd call the "ostensibly-hilarious 80's car chase" that goes on and on...and on...and on...with lots of squealing tires and loud terrible music. Come to think of it, that terrible "Dragnet" movie with Aykroyd and Tom Hanks had one too. Maybe too many crappy-ass filmmakers who loved "The Blues Brothers" mistakenly believed that Aykroyd + Car Chase = MONEY.

I love that NASA has seemingly invented a learning-capable robot with FEELINGS who apparently can access anything in the facility, and for some reason this isn't considered a scientific breakthrough. They just treat him like some kind of cute pet instead of the obvious beginning of SkyNet.

Mechanical bees, an inexplicably shape-shifting house, and Uma Thurman playing both Emma Peel and an evil Emma Peel clone; this movie is painfully crazy nonsense and perfect for HDTGM.

As well it should be. It's like one of those old Star Trek episodes where the crew would land on a planet entirely inspired by a historical period on Earth but re-interpreted by aliens - this story takes place on the Greaser Planet.

When they asked the question "how would a dog go undercover with white supremacists?" an answer that was both obvious AND a better movie occurred to me immediately, which is...to combine "Top Dog" with "Face/Off". In "Top Face/Dog Off", Chuck Norris is a badass cop who finally captures the beloved dog of a dangerous white supremacist, and decides to CHANGE FACES with the dog in order to infiltrate the gang and learn about their bombing plot. So a dog with a KARATE FIGHTING CHUCK NORRIS inside returns to the white supremacists and gains their trust to destroy them from within, while the faceless dog WAKES UP AND STEALS CHUCK'S FACE, so a snarling, rabid Chuck Norris WITH THE SOUL OF A NAZI DOG starts wreaking havoc in San Diego. "Top Face/Dog Off": It's a face waterfall...with a dog paw.

My favorite thing about this movie is how 99% of the dialogue in the last twenty minutes is just screaming. It perfectly predicts where the audience will be at by then, emotionally.

It's the best "rich people hunting the poor for sport" movie to ever star Jean-Claude Van Damme.

Bump for Jacked Spader in SPAAAAAACE.

I remember the moment where Kate Beckinsale struck a sexy pose and boasted "NOTHING can outrun Transylvanian horses!", immediately followed by a chase scene in which EVERYTHING is outrunning the Transylvanian horses. For the sheer spectacle of watching a movie studio take a pile of money that could bring clean water to Africa and just light it the f*ck on fire, this one's hard to beat.