Ford_Maverick Reviews

Southland Tales (2006)

No joke, this is the worst movie I've ever seen.

[1/10 · 18 October 2023]

The Room, Manos, Plan 9? All better movies than Southland Tales.

Southland Tales somehow has too much and to little plot at the same time. It careens from one pop-science buzzword to another without elaborating on any of them or explaining what they have to do with the story being told.

The worst thing a bad movie can be is boring, and this movie is BORING. It has no point. What it does have is a parade of decent actors handing in the worst performances of their careers, and it's not their fault. I'm sure they all did exactly what they were directed to do, they were just directed poorly.

It's so bad that watching it made me retroactively hate Donnie Darko, because I can see now that there were no deep questions in Darko. It was just Southland Tales part 1. Say things that sound deep and meaningful, never follow up or elaborate on any of them. I'd call it "style over substance" but Southland Tales has neither of those.

Nostalgia Critic: The Wall (2019) Season 12, Episode 38

Hey Doug.

[1/10 · 7 July 2023]

Hey Doug, The Wall is a great movie. You should try watching it sometime.

I was a huge fan till this video. Now I barely pay attention to Channel Awesome anymore. Hell, I even stuck around after To Boldly Flee, but this 'review' was a bridge too far.

It says nothing about The Wall. It just displays a profound lack of understanding of the source material. I'm only half kidding about suggesting that you've never seen the movie. It's like, you got some of the visuals, but paid attention to nothing else but the music, and even then without listening to more than the chorus of each song and going on that alone.

And what the hell was that crap at the end? The last ten to fifteen minutes have NOTHING to do with The Wall, it's just a 3D animated hellscape with no substance.

Ghostbusters: Afterlife (2021)

Probably the best sequel we could have hoped for at this point.

[10/10 · 18 March 2022]

Ok, so I've been putting off watching Ghostbusters Afterlife because all the other sequels have been some flavor of disappointing or another.

The second one was ok, but all the studio interference dragged down what could have been a much better film. I still liked it though.

Ghostbusters 2016, I didn't hate. I went into it expecting that I would hate it, but I tried to give it a fair shake. The first 20 minutes or so were actually really good. Right up till the new Ghostbusters came into it. I'm not trashing on the ladies, I think they're all funny and decent actors. No, it's the directing that sucked. See, the first 20 minutes that I liked so much were good because they were SCRIPTED. Everything from that point forward was line-o-rama, improv crap. That's not just my opinion either. Paul Feig himself explained in interviews that he would just let the camera run for hours at a time till someone said something funny enough to move on. This is best represented by a scene that he proudly explains they filmed for FIVE STRAIGHT HOURS to get, in which Chris Hemsworth asks if he can bring "my cat" to work. They say no, one of them is allergic to cats and he says "That's ok, my cat is a dog." He has a DOG named MIKE HAT. This is a joke that Paul Feig thought was funny enough to not only put in the movie, but talk about it in freaking interviews, and it only took FIVE FREAKING HOURS to film.

That joke, by itself, is reason enough for me to never watch another Feig movie.

So when I saw the ads for Afterlife I was afraid they were going to spin too far the other direction and be too far up it's own nether regions trying to recapture the magic of the first one. I put off watching it because if it sucked, I'd rather not know that it sucked.

But I decided to watch it a few nights ago and I have to say that it's rare that I'm this happy to be wrong about a movie.

Is it as good as the first movie? No.

Is it the best sequel they could have made?

Probably.

The humor is drier than the first one, but it works for this film. It's nostalgic and sentimental, but only as much as it needs to be.

In any event, if you were on the fence about it like I was, I felt it was more than worth my time.

The Book of Boba Fett (2021–2022)

Nobody hates star Wars more than Star Wars fans...

[10/10 · 24 January 2022]

The show starts out slower than The Mandalorian did, but it builds with every episode. I would imagine the next three episodes will really be wild. Don't let butthurt fanboys tell you it's bad just because it doesn't match the fanfiction they wrote.

Catwoman (2004)

Best left in the litter box.

[1/10 · 25 December 2005]

Simple words cannot express what a truly horrible movie this was. Really. Disregard anyone that tells you this movie had ANY redeeming qualities whatsoever. I don't mean just disregard their opinion, I mean you should cease to associate with them altogether as they clearly have some kind of mental problem.

That's right, if you liked this movie there is something wrong with you and you need to seek help immediately.

Problem #1: The main character is boring. You simply can't feel anything for her. She isn't interesting enough to invest any emotion in at all.

Problem #2: Sharon Stone is the villain. Sharon Stone is famous for only one reason. She showed her naughty bits in Basic Instinct. That's it. Basic Instinct wasn't even a good movie either. Anything that has Sharon Stone in it without her exposing herself isn't worth anyone's time.

Problem #3: The dastardly plot. A company is selling a beauty product that is addictive so people can't stop using it. That's pretty much it. They kill Catwoman to shut her up, but she comes back and gets revenge. In an attempt at a clever plot twist Sharon Stone has super-toughness from using the evil product in question. So wait... the evil beauty cream gives people superpowers? Then why is it evil?

Problem #4: The effects are inconsistent. Some of them look pretty good and some of them totally suck. It looks like they pulled the effects budget halfway through the film and some of the rough animations were passed off as final effects.

Problem #5: The costume. Man did it suck. The outfit she wore early in the film (in the bank heist scene)looked good, it fit the character. The outfit from later on was just stupid, especially the mask/helmet. It made her look like a special ed kid.

This movie isn't even good to make fun of. My roommates rented it and made me watch it thinking that we could have fun mocking it. What followed was three hours of total silence. The movie was like 90 minutes long. For the following 90 minutes we just stared at the blank TV screen in utter amazement at the crap we had just watched.

Anyone that tries to get you to watch this movie is not your friend.

Dumb and Dumberer: When Harry Met Lloyd (2003)

I feel dumberer for having watched it.

[1/10 · 21 February 2004]

So my roommate borrowed "Dumb And Dumberer".

God only knows why.

Anyway, he puts it in the machine and shortly afterward leaves the room to take a phone call.

He owes that caller more than he knows.

See, as I hadn't paid any money for it, nor even gotten my butt up off the couch to load the disc, I had little investment in it. Thusly I figured it wouldn't take much to meet my relatively low expectations for it. After all, the first one was pretty funny, right?

Before I continue, it should be noted that this movie had none of the original cast members, writers, directors, etc from the first film.

No one, at least, worth noting.

Now, back to the story. Where the first movie had laughs galore (most of them cheap lowbrow humor, but hey, if I want Shakespeare, I'll read Shakespeare...) this movie had a sprinkling of "That's kinda funny..." and "Was that funny? I can't tell anymore..." moments.

The most telling thing I can say about this movie is that I DIDN'T FINISH IT. Nay, I COULDN'T finish it.

A friend of mine that had the misfortune of being in the room with me at the time said it best when he said: "At one point I laughed at how painfully unfunny it was and I realized that it (the movie) had pulled me down to it's level."

Of course he also said: "Another reason dumb and dumbrererererrer sucked is that both guys were trying to cop Betty White's "Rose" character from the Golden Girls but neither of them possesses her panache or supple buttocks."

Verily, it is a thing of evil.

Having said that, it's not the worst movie I've ever seen. I would have to give some thought to exactly which movie holds that dishonor. "Batman and Robin" is pretty close. But no, I've actually finished worse movies than this. Thing is, in those movies I held out hope that they would get better before the end. With Dumb and Dumberer, there was no such hope. In fact, there was utterly no hope at all.

I did get a chuckle from a couple moments though. Like when the two titular characters walk down the school hallway with their Special Ed class to the theme from the A-Team, and... well, that's it actually.

Oh yeah, Mimi Rogers made out with a little hottie named Rachel Nichols.

The most notable thing about Nichols, other than her being very attractive, is that she's in the new Bruce Campbell film "The Woods" which is currently in post production.

Apart from that "Dumb and Dumberer" can be summed up by the fact that I actually got up off my couch to remove this ultra-boring, ultra-unfunny piece of cinematic spam from the DVD player.

PS: I did put it back in to check the not-so 'Special Features', but I did not find the apology I was looking for.

Maybe it's an 'Easter Egg'.

I don't recommend checking yourselves, but if someone finds it, please let me know. I feel it's owed to me.

Dead Heat (1988)

The greatest zombie cop, buddy movie ever!

[8/10 · 11 October 2003]

I'll warn you, this is a very cheesy film. It's full of bad jokes and bad acting, but it's a guilty pleasure of mine. It's hailed, primarily by me, as the single greatest zombie-cop, buddy movie ever made. It is hailed by a fair number of those I have subjected to it as the worst movie they've ever seen. I can admit it, it's not Shakespeare, but if you like cheesy 80's horror and watered down pseudo-Lovecraft or even, *shudder* Joe Piscopo, then I encourage you to give it a try.