PlanBFromOuterSpace

Worst of all, this was a PREQUEL story. All those years of cartoons and comics, all those cool characters, and they don't really give us anything that resembles the stuff we grew up on. I just wanted to see Cobra Commander and Destro do their their thing. I don't need to see how they fucking got there, only to get the versions of characters we know and love an hour and fifty minutes into a two hour movie. The Joes were always colorful characters too, easily distinguishable, and then they throw everyone in those black jumpsuits so they look the same? Fuck that. This was a feature-length ad for the movie Joe fans REALLY wanted to see, and who knows if "Retaliation" will be just that. I mean, it HAS to be better, right? If we would have gotten something like "Retaliation" the first time out, "Rise of Cobra" would have just been the prelude comic book mini series that no one would have paid attention to.

I think you meant a GREAT Jean-Claude Van Damme movie like Time Cop.

"...an inappropriately sexualized girl rabbit..." Jessica Rabbit it still the hottest inappropriately sexualized girl rabbit, but she's Rabbit by marriage. The inappropriately sexualized girl rabbit in"Space Jam" is the real thing. Mmmmm hmmmm, she sure is...

Have you ever been sitting there watching "Unforgiven" and thought to yourself "This is good, but it's at least two face-painted douchebags short of being GREAT"? At first glance, the cover for "Big Money Rustlas" on Netflix looks like a couple of kids in cowboy costumes in front of a Sears portrait studio background, not unlike the box art for all those straight-to-VHS Olsen Twins movies that polluted Wal-Mart shelves through most of the 90's. Yes, this looks like "How the West Was Fun". If you haven't seen them already, I posted links to the infomercials for ICP's new album and the 2012 Gathering of the Juggaloes in another post. It's either the most ridiculous and stupidest shit you've ever seen or heard, or these guys are brilliant and pulling some kind of Andy Kaufman-level stuff on us.

I know that's coming, that's why I said a proper "Dark Knight Returns". I've liked a lot of the animated DCU stuff, but to a lot of people, it's still JUST cartoons and they won't take it seriously unless something's live action. The fact that these are all made for the home video market kind of makes it hard to look legit too, no matter what the quality, which is a shame.

"Mortal Kombat: Annihilation" (which unlike the first one was a Thanksgiving release) is probably the absolute worst film I've ever seen in a theater, which is really saying something, as I manage a theater and watch all SORTS of shit that I'd never pay to see. Back in 1997 though, man, did I ever pay for it. I remember seeing "Boogie Nights" earlier the same day at the same theater, which has since become my favorite film of all time, so I guess the universe has a crazy way of keeping the balance.

"Forever" was certainly the most re-watchable of the bunch. It's fast-paced and pretty fun, and you can just have it on in the background while you're doing other stuff. It kind of reminds me of "Alien Resurrection" in that way, kind of dumb but entertaining. "Batman and Robin" is toxic. I mean, sure, it's fun to bag on and watch with friends, but there's really no other reason for it to see the light of the day. I remember feeling embarrassed as I watched it in the theater. I watched it for the first time in a while recently as every podcaster and his brother was gearing up to do their Batman series discussions, and I probably didn't remember a good 70% of the film. I'm not sure if straight up forgot it all, or if my mind is just trying to protect me...

The commentary track on "Batman and Robin" is pretty fascinating, as Schumacher owns up to the stuff he WAS responsible for while also explaining how WB really didn't give a shit about the quality of the movie, how they were more concerned about selling merch. If something in the movie looked like a toy, that was the point, because they made so much more on the tie-ins than on the movies themselves. Rather than try to repair a franchise that seemed to be running out of steam, they just decided to go balls out and not even hide the fact that this was a giant commercial. I'm half-surprised that the Batmobile wasn't decked out NASCAR-style. Speaking of the tie-ins, the plastic Alicia Silverstone Batgirl Taco Bell cup was my boozing cup for most of my military career. That thing was fuckin' awesome. It had to be shortly after that that they stopped really making those things to last. I remember in the early 80's having some Return of the Jedi and Star Trek III fast food restaurant pieces that were damn fine glassware.

Really! I expected that Batman would have stayed active, but just wouldn't have had the cops on his side like before! I've been saying to folks how, if they wanted to tell the story they were telling (which was basically two stories in one), it would have made PERFECT sense to make "Rises" a two-part finale. Hell, the second part COULD have been called "The Dark Knight Returns". The first half of the film wanted to be "KnightFall", the story where Bane breaks everyone out of Blackgate Prison and Arkham Asylum, causing Batman to spend a week rounding them up, leaving him an exhausted wreck before Bane easily dispatches him in his own home. The first hour of part one could have been very similar to the first hour that we got in "Rises", the jailbreak could have been the mid-point, and then it would have MEANT something when Bane took out Bats in the part one cliffhanger after he spent half the movie having to fight every criminal and crazy out there. The second half of "Rises" wanted to be "No Man's Land", where the government pretty much gave up on Gotham City after the latest in a decades-long series of disasters involving Batman and his rogues gallery. Again, part two could have picked up with Bruce in Bane's old prison (a nice callback to the beginning of "Begins") just like in "Rises", and it still could have taken him half the movie to get out while everything went to hell back home. Only here, Bruce could have made it back WITHOUT rushing right to the endgame. He could have had time to re-build his rep, gain back the trust of the people, and the support of the cops. As it stands, he shows up at EXACTLY the time he needs to show up, not a moment too soon, and we go right to the end. His return should have MEANT more. "Dark Knight" was also crazy long, but there was so much going on, and it all seemed to mean something. "Dark Knight Rises" was really long, but seemed to rush, and not only was the main character MIA for most of it, but other important characters were out of action for long stretches (Gordon, Catwoman) or downright disappeared (Alfred) as well. Am I wrong, or did Alfred essentially give Bruce the Ben Affleck speech from "Good Will Hunting"?

I would SO like to see Clooney of today given another shot at Batman, like if they ever decide to do a proper "Dark Knight Returns" a few years down the road, where an older Bruce Wayne comes out of retirement, he'd actually be perfect. Speaking of which, how much did a lot of the stuff in "Dark Knight Rises" just NOT mean anything? It had to have one of the greatest anti-climactic beginnings of all time. Bruce went home 10 minutes after the end of "Dark Knight" and hasn't been Batman ever since? The first hour of this movie is spent trying to get him back in the suit, and when Batman DOES return, he's back for a day before Bane takes him out of commission AGAIN for another hour of the film. He beat up a guy that was using a cane to get around 5 minutes ago! How is that impressive?!?! Good thing for Gotham City that he gets back on the DAY that the bomb is going to go off and that we didn't get some time of him rallying the troops and earning the trust of the people back. Like "Batman and Robin", this movie didn't actually have a lot of Batman, but "Rises" sure had a shit ton of Bruce Wayne. Also.... **********SPOILERS********** Is the next Batman movie or (if by the grace of God, some miracle occurs and it actually gets rolling...) JLA going to start off by telling us that 5 minutes after finding the Batcave, JGL just decided "Fuck it, crime fighting isn't for me after all", and just spent the next 8 years sitting on his ass at home? **********END SPOILERS**********

While I believe that 1992-1995 was truly the Golden Age of Van Damme (Sudden Death may have been the last really terrific movie), this was a pretty solid star-making effort. Jeez, I haven't watched this in YEARS...

The same could be said for Roger Rabbit, just an excuse to have cartoon titties on screen, but unlike Cool World, it had things adults could enjoy too...

Maybe he just meant that he didn't think he was a good choice either, but then he always gets busted on for playing those other things, which he's actually really good at. You gotta let him be a peacock! You gotta let him fly!

I worked on this film for a few days when it was shooting in Pittsburgh (which doubled for Newark, and I don't know how to feel about that...), and I wasn't used for most of it. I eventually made it on-camera as an orderly right before they wheeled Sherry Sheperd's (not even going to check if that's spelled right) character out of the emergency room and I did a lot of driving in a sequence that was cut. Still, there are worse gigs to have. I mean, I was still getting paid to not do much more than stare at Ketherine Heigl's ass all day.

25 million bucks equals a million dollars a minute? Whhhaaaa? That is some crazy math. I mean, you can't mean the actual runtime, and I know Arnold HAD to be in the movie for more than 25 minutes. Sure, I know it just FEELS like he was onscreen for about 6 hours of what felt like a movie that ran for 8, but this was less about Batman than any Batman movie before or since.

This scene makes me realize just how much I've grown up in the last few years. In the pantheon of great "People that really love their desserts" scenes, I used to rank Jason Biggs's pie-fuckfest in the first "American Pie" film as the pinnacle of what film could hope to achieve, but seeing Franco go to town on that thing in "Spider-Man 3" again, after not really appreciating it the first time (I was probably all "Men loving pie scenes in a PG-13 movie? That's bullshit! You can't show anything!"), has really opened my eyes. He LOVES that pie. More importantly, he is IN love with it, and I can fill in all the blanks without having it explicitly shown, which is truly the sign of a masterful scene. Behind closed doors, I can imagine him tearing that shit up, but it's much more romantic in the way we see it here.

If you own "Troll 2" on Blu-Ray, you weren't really there.

He doesn't look like a guy that could take JCVD in a fight anyway, but it looks even worse knowing that he's beating up a dying man. Speaking of Mann, Juwanna Mann (and guy that was killed in an outhouse in Friday the 13th Part 5) himself, Miguel A. Nunez Jr., was in this thing! That's never good news for anyone!

And then of course there would be another film based on that musical based on that video game based on that movie based on a video game. I'm dizzy....

How it hasn't spawned a musical by now, I have no idea.

I remember about a year ago how when I bought my Blu-Ray player I told myself I was going to keep my Blu-Ray collection "pure", like only the best movies. Yeah, that idea lasted about a week until I saw THIS on sale at Wal-Mart for 8 bucks...

Oh, it certainly is!

I think "Punisher: War Zone" is an early frontrunner for that one, due to a disturbingly high number of LITERALLY faceless civilians.

Has anyone seen these? Ho-lee SHIT. There is either some serious, next level, Andy Kaufman kind of stuff going on, or it's just the stupidest thing ever made. I'd like to think that they're pulling a Sacha Baron Cohen on their fans to see JUST how blindly they'll go for anything, that they're so amazingly self-aware of how the Juggalos are NOT. These are each about 20 minutes: The 2012 Gathering of the Juggalos Infomercial "The Mighty Death Pop" Informercial I'm a "Red Pop" guy, in case you were wondering, but the 60-minute Ho Flo and Color Me Badd reunion on the other versions are tempting...

I'll do stuff like that once in a while. At work one day, someone asked me what time it was, so I replied with the ol' "Time for you to get a watch!" response. For the rest of the day, whenever anyone asked me a question, that was my answer to EVERYTHING.