Tails-5

An insane crewman is starting a mutiny on a huge colonist spaceship, but the captain and his potentiates must stop him before they mess up the entire mission. But the whole farce ends up being an hour-and-a-half long bore. It features pretty sloppy dialogue, painfully slow action scenes, and tiresome cheap special effects. All in all, it's a great way to waste time and feel scummy afterward.

I know that many of Chuck Norris' movies are filled with cliches and ripoffs of Dirty Harry and other such movies, but this one lays less off of Dirty Harry and instead goes for low immature humor and painfully bad scriptwriting. A pack of stupid kids protect the rainforest from a greedy troupe of redneck lumberjacks, with the help of the ghost of a part-Indian mountain man (played by none other than Chuck Norris) who happens to know karate. The film features a handful of Walker, Texas Ranger regulars, in addition to perhaps the most painful scriptwriting anyone has seen on this planet. But then again, what can we expect from Aaron Norris, who is Chuckie's little brother?? Also, did I forget to mention that the acting REALLY sucked!?

*The following may ruin your appetite for the show. Don't say I didn't warn you!

Well, schlock art is at its sourest in this collection of Walker, Texas Ranger episodes. Here we see an expressionless, bulletproof Ranger Cordell Walker, who is part Indian and part shoe leather. He has a friend/deputy, Trivet, who's possibly supposed to look like Sidney Poitier. To make matters worse, Walker's ugly and shrill girlfriend, Sheree-eeeek Wilson, gets into all sorts of trouble with rednecks, hicks, and general fiends with grandiose plans to take over Texas in various ways. Remember that not even cruise missiles can put a dent in Walker's indestructable Dodge Ram pickup truck, and his gun is radar-guided and has 100% accuracy (and bad guys use blank cartridges.) And don't forget -- if you think you'll be safe at Walker's Rocking-Horsemeat Ranch, you're wrong! If you're dying for a quick laugh and are accustomed to making fun of shoddily written scripts, poorly cast characters, and those dang annoying little conveniences that just have to pop up from time to time, this is your series.

This is perhaps the most haphazard bunch of conglomerate kungfu and badly dubbed lips I've ever seen. It incorporates atrocious, misplaced sound effects and absolutely NO direction whatsoever. It stars a young man who gets a 200+ year old ginseng for his dying father, and the invading Japanese (who look so much like Koreans) have set their eyes on it. Then suddenly, we totally forget about the ginseng and go after overthrowing the government! What happened there!? The choreography was pretty lacking, but the badly written dialogue never failed to make us laugh.

This movie isn't very good. It features a mentally retarded man, Charly Gordon, who undergoes an operation on his brain to make him a supposed genius. Then we watch a handful or so split screen doggerels before we see that Charly can indeed beat the mouse, Algernon in a maze race. Then the story goes haywire from there - he has an affair with Ms. Kinnean, then he's suddenly a hippie-biker in a flash of uncoordinated scenes. Then, he's a great scientist suddenly! What's going on!? Apparently, either the director likes to play with our minds, or he is really bad at directing. Overall, I didn't care for the movie, and I really did NOT like the atrocious, repetitive music and sound effects.

This is a wonderful movie. Perhaps the best Kurosawa film I've seen to date, this stars brilliant acting, wonderful scriptwriting, remarkably good dialogue, and my favorite actor -- Toshiro Mifune. A small Japanese farming village is terrorized by fourty brigands, and the distraught farmers hire a most ragtag group of six samurai, plus a drunken villiager (played by Mifune) who pretends to be one. With well-done action scenes, emotionally charged performances, and impressive cinematography, personally I think this movie is better than all the 90s blockbusters combined.

[Editor's comment: WARNING POSSIBLE MINOR SPOILER AHEAD]

Hmm, what do we have here? An American, high-budget translation of the classic, campy Japanese "Gojira" movies, this time overrevamped with computerized polygonal special effects and an obnoxiously loud soundtrack. The best part of the movie was the taxi that never died - it was chomped by Godzilla, fell off a highway, crashed into walls repeatedly -- and still ran great! That part provided all the amusement. The rest of the movie was substandard -- from the braindead journalist to the horrible comic situations. This movie wasn't quite as bad as "Independence Day", but it came dangerously close.

Uggh! This is one of the nastiest pieces of Hollywood gristle I've ever chewed on. This movie leaves such an ensuing aftertase in your mouth, you might end up watching "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" to free yourself from the trauma. The atrocious dialogue ("It's an organic lifeform!!"), the shoddy acting, and the less-than-impressive CGI effects really make this a movie to clean your catbox with. This piece of cinematic garbage is filled with inconsistencies and scientific snafus (and one teeny tiny computer bug: how can an Apple Mac communicate with an alien server, even though the aliens use a TOTALLY different language and protocol? Jeff Goldblum should have gotten a busy signal!) Another really bad science bug is when the alien screamed, even though Brent Spiner (notwithstanding his lousy Data image) declared it free of vocal chords. Perhaps the saddest parts of the movie come out when Will Smith tries to be funny. All in all, it stinks!

Why the heck are high-tech spacecraft so misty in the interior!? Apparently, the humidity controls on the ship's air conditioning system were set up to maximum; either that or the filmmakers were trying to rip off Alien. Other than the spectre of mist, the action and the acting was pretty lacking and even grinded down to a halt at times. From the laser beam shooting out the side of the gun (bad, bad editing) to the cornball scenes of the headless, decapitated body choking someone, this movie is filled with flaws, but the worst flaw was the awful mist which seems to condense on my television.

Although I know that our well-known dinosaur superstar IS campy and cheap, this particular exploit really falls flat on its face. From the unexplained stills of constellations and stars to the ultra-cheap 70s "animation moments", this movie is filled with painful scenes and appalling execution. But, perhaps the worst part of the movie is the atrocious trumpet music that plays whenever Godzilla throws a temper tantrum. It did have some unintentional amusement, however, like when the huge mirror weapon powers down and the general (using very poorly dubbed lips) spouts "Dammit, why is everything going wrong today!?" out as fast as possible. All in all, this movie was a real stinker.

Yeesh! The attire the actors choose in the movie is so bad, it would make ties with flashing lights seem stylish. And check out the gaudy pants on this one chump who looks like Jim Carrey, when he's riding the bicycle and the killer in the jeep pulls him over. They seem to conflict with my color recognition! Anyway, the movie was pretty slow and had some horrible electronic organ music. Another waste of time....

I personally like this movie a lot. It has a lot of funny acting and a delightfully well-written script. Anyway, I particularly like the spoofs, such as "Conan the Librarian" (where the Conan, posing as a librarian, grabs a patron by the hair and screams "Don't you know the Dewey Decimal System!?") I also really liked the spoof of Spatula City, where this one "customer" (obviously reading off a card) says plainly, "I liked spatulas so much, I bought the company!" A great film to watch if you have a bag of Doritos and a hour-half of free time!

Hmmm, what do we have here? Another one of those "demon auto" horror movies, like "The Car" (which was ripped off the Stephen King book) and "Trucks". This is just like those other movies, and the formula's pretty tiresome. However, it did have a fairly solid cast, and some pretty funny scenes (e.g. the flaming car, and the car when it's smashed down); yet I'm not sure how funny they were supposed to be. All in all, it's not exactly a good way to waste the 2+ hours this movie lasts.

Two bullets. Twoooo bullets. Interesting? Two bullets. That just about describes the wonderful dialogue in the movie. This movie has something in common with "The Sicilian Clan" in the sense that both try to be tense thrillers, but inadvertently end up being awkward comedies. The movie's potential was severely hampered by Martin Ritt, who possesses the worst table manners in the world. He never hesitates to show the world what his food looks like after it's chewed up. Other than that, all the clumsy direction never fails to pull a chuckle or two out of you when it tries to be intelligent (e.g. when the car comes crashing off the highway. It twirls over in slow motion, then lands on the cab and makes a hilarious, synthetic crash sound.) All in all, for me the movie ranks lower than "The Sicilian Clan".

This is one of my personal favorites. Stanley Moon (Dudley Moore), a down-and-out Londoner who has a miserable job at the local Wimpy Burgers and has the hots for a beautiful waitress named Margaret Spencer, tries to hang himself, but then the Devil has to come in and save him. The Devil (played by Peter Cook) isn't all red and horned, but dressed in a nice tuxedo and wears Ray-Bans. He is interested in Stanley for the sole fact that George (the name he goes by) made a deal with God to get a hundred billion souls first before the other. In exchange for his soul, Stanley gets seven wishes, and of course George has to twist them all into nightmares, just for a cheap laugh. ("You just left me one little loophole. I had to take advantage of it, doctor's orders!") One of my favorite scenes is where Stanley and George are passing by as police officers, and with the snap of George's fingers parking meters expire, old ladies' grocery bags tear apart, and fires start in trash bins. Definitely a good movie if it's rainy outside, and you're all depressed -- it'll lift you up in no time!

Apparently, the beach movie "Beach Blanket Bingo" was very successful with the wasted minds of 60s teenagers, for green-eyed exploiters were quick to copy it just for a part of the cash. This movie stars Jayne Mansfield, who is the daughter of a megabuck businessman who goes on a quest for the Black Rose (aka "The Fountain of Youth"). Very unfunny indeed, but it is a lot more enjoyable than "Beach Blanket Bingo", because it had only 1/18 of the energy in it. Be careful of the music!

The sound is terrible! Not until Dr. Zhivago did I ever hear such a hellishly awful soundtrack! Anyway, Jayne Mansfield plays a back-to-back role as a queen of Greece (in a red wig) and an evil Amazon queen (in a black wig.) Mickey Hargitay plays the burly demigod Hercules, who must save the good Jayne from the evil Jayne. Meanwhile, the villagers act like babbling simps. Overall I didn't care for it.

Somewhere in Sicily, Vittorio Manalase (played by Jean Gabin) plays the father/leader of a criminal family clan who hires a rather prestigious outsider, Roget Sarte (played by Alain Delon) to plan a heist of a Paris jewelry show. But Roget isn't exactly trustworthy, and he's captured the eye of LeGoff (played by Lino Ventura), who is a determined police chief that will stop at nothing and break every regulation in the book to get his man. The movie had some really strange music that sounded like it was left over from a spaghetti western, and the acting was a homogenous mixture of overacting and underacting. Yet, there are a handful of unintentionally funny scenes, like when LeGoff busts Malik, a shadowy photographer. After screwing up a handful of negatives of Roget's face, Malik comments heartily with "Dammit, they're exposed!" even though his plan to protect Roget was bloody obvious. Another good scene was when Rivelle, a junkie who was surprised by LeGoff's sudden raid on his house, blurts "I was sound asleep, and they burst into my room and turned everything upside down!" His voice was so high pitched and manic, it's always funny, no matter how often I watch this movie. Near the end, however, the enjoyment factor grinds down to a halt, except for a minor spark when Roget was in a phone booth screaming at Vittorio after an unsuccessful attempt by LeGoff to bust him in an airport. All in all, it wasn't a bad movie, but it had some flaws that turned it into an awkward comedy instead of a thriller.