sillstaw

Two planks of wood fall in love. Not the plot to Pixar's next short, but rather the impression you'll get of the lead actors in this movie. This movie is so confusing, even the title is mystifying (is it "Dragon Wars," like the poster says? Or "D-War," like the title card says?). $75 million. "Dragons" named Buraki and Good Imoogi. Robert Forster kicking three random guys' asses. Netflix Streaming.

I'm going to make a prediction and say that this will be worth covering when it comes out. Why? 1. It's a "Lone Ranger" movie that reportedly will focus on Tonto. Apparently, having your name as the title of the movie doesn't make you the star. 2. It's going to cost over $200 million. For a Western. 2A. It's going to cost that much likely because it reportedly involves werewolves. Quick--find an old person and ask how many episodes of "The Lone Ranger" had werewolves in it, or really anything supernatural. See if they don't get confused, smack you with their cane and tell you to get off their lawn. 2B. And it's going to involve werewolves, in spite of how few people ended up caring about the previous sci-fi/fantasy/what-have-you and Western hybrid, "Cowboys and Aliens."

Leonard Maltin's review of this is classic:

The crazy thing about this movie is that the director is Nicolas Roeg, who did some of the most acclaimed films of the 1970s: "The Man Who Fell to Earth," "Don't Look Now" and "Walkabout." And then in the 90s he did this. The 80s were not kind, needless to say.

At first I didn't think this movie would be anything special. It looked like a terrible kids' comedy with dumb fart jokes, lots of actors who should know better (Will Arnett? Really?), and a premise that knocks off "Miss Congeniality" but with dogs. Then I read that there's a plot point in the movie that the undercover dog* has to learn that it's okay to let strangers fondle its junk. I'm not kidding. They literally have a plot point, in a kids' movie, about how it's okay for people to touch your genitals. This has naturally led people to accuse the film of normalizing child grooming by pedophiles. Unfortunately, I'm now learning that the controversy about this particular plot point is enough that the distributor is recutting the movie for its second weekend and beyond in theaters. (Haha, like it'll have a third weekend in theaters.) So much as I hate endorsing piracy, it might be best to find an illegal copy with this WTF plot point in it if it wants to be featured on HDTGM. * Is it really necessary to send a police dog undercover in a dog show? Wouldn't it be easier to use an actual show dog for whatever undercover shenanigans they need to engage in?

This was also the subject of a lawsuit by director Robert Fiveson, whose 1970s film "Clonus" (also known as "Parts: The Clonus Horror," especially to MST3k fans) has the same plot. They settled out of court for an undisclosed sum. A bad movie website writer said that, on the commentary track with Michael Bay, he was able to guess things Bay would take credit for because they were the only things that weren't directly ripped from "Clonus."

I recall when we were forced to watch this in history class, and the assistant teacher asked us what we learned from it. My response was, "Child labor is okay, as long as you pay them enough."

I think they just decided that "Alan Smithee" was too famously a fake name to use anymore. So they decided that, if a director wanted his name off a movie, the fake name used would be decided on a case-by-case basis. The first movie to use this new rule was "Supernova," ostensibly directed by one Thomas Lee but initially shot by Walter Hill, then reshot by Jack Sholder and Francis Ford Coppola.

There are so many things I could point out to you that I think would make you want to check out "Freejack." There's the plot, about a man being yanked out of the past for use in the future (2009, to be exact) as a body for a recently deceased man. There's how we're supposed to buy that people would automatically hate someone who's been taken out of the past and escaped from his captors. There's how we're supposed to buy that 18 years have passed and the only thing that's changed about Rene Russo is that her hair is slightly different. But quite simply, the thing that will hopefully convince you are the three names 'above the title.' In order: Emilio Estevez - Mick Jagger - Anthony Hopkins I mean, how many movies can boast having a cast that random?

Not technically true. He directed one more movie after this ("The Rainmaker"), then took a ten-year hiatus before starting to make a film once every couple of years.

They'd been collaborating for years before this movie, actually.

Somebody bumped a thread where "Boxing Helena" was recommended with two other films, and now it's dedicated to only one of the others. But this film's reputation seems to suggest it needs consideration. I haven't seen "Boxing Helena," but come on. It's a movie about a guy cutting off the limbs of the woman he's obsessed with. It's from the daughter of David Lynch, but by all accounts lacks any of the mystery and obliqueness that made him so beloved; the symbolism in particular is so obvious and first-year English, it makes you wonder if Lynch looked at his daughter afterwards and said, "Honey, no." Also, let's not forget that this is the movie Kim Basinger almost starred in, then reconsidered, which led the producers to sue her. She lost and declared bankruptcy, forcing her to sell at a loss the small Georgia town she bought. If there were a HDTGM for court cases, that would be a prime candidate.

When I heard there was going to be an emoji movie, I thought it would probably be bad. I never imagined it would be 0% on the Tomatometer bad.

In fairness, it's not like the movie doesn't realize how absurd that is.

You want a movie with an obviously large budget? $12 million in 1967 money (about $77 mil now), for a comedy! (And all of it is on the screen.) You want big stars? Peter Sellers, David Niven, Woody Allen, Orson Welles and Ursula Andress in major roles, with cameos from Jacqueline Bisset, Deborah Kerr, John Huston, George Raft, Jean-Paul Belmondo and William Holden! You want insanity? It's all but guaranteed when you have SIX credited directors, who knows how many writers, actors joining and leaving the production at random, and no coherent plot for over 2 hours! It's practically made for "How Did This Get Made"… or it's what "How Did This Get Made" was made for, either one. And it's on NetFlix streaming!

"Cat Ballou?"

It's going to be a live show at the Now Hear This Fest!

The way I think of this movie is that it fucks your eyes and ears with amazing visuals and music, all the while making excuses to your brain about how it has to work late. And I say that as someone who actually liked "Only God Forgives."

There's also a horse that gets killed in a stunt in "The Fall," and apparently a horse gets similarly hurt in "Immortals." I think in an interview around the time of "Immortals," Tarsem said he wasn't going to injure a horse in his next movie (which ended up being "Mirror, Mirror," where a horse killing would have been completely inappropriate).

From Roger Ebert's review of "Godsend":

This received quite possibly one of the best headlines ever in its AV Club review: "Despite all the Rage, it's a lackluster Nicolas Cage."

There was, but it was a straight-to-DVD release in 2006, long past the point when anybody cared.

From a USA Today article promoting "The Drop":

I recall somebody writing that the moral of the film is "You should never go back in time because you, Ashton Kutcher, are an idiot."

Not to mention that the "Dark Knight" trilogy was pretty highly acclaimed; the lowest Tomatometer rating for any of the movies was 85% for "Batman Begins." And Marvel movies tend to do all right for themselves, as well. I recall seeing a similarly sour-grapes thing from the producer of "Wild Hogs" about how critics don't know what audiences like and how nobody should trust them. At the time, I did some quick research and found that, of all the top-grossing movies (not adjusted for inflation), pretty much the only one in the top twenty or so that had a rotten score was "The Da Vinci Code." Currently, the highest-grossing-worldwide film with a rotten score is "Minions," at #11; the top ten, with movies ranging from "Avatar" to "Furious 7," all have fresh ratings, with the lowest one being "Jurassic World" at 72%. I mean, it's almost like critics tend to be people who enjoy a good popcorn flick as much as they like weirdo French films about nothing.