Tag Archives: Haiku

Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off

Posted on by

I thought it might fun to usher in the new year by watching the film 2012.  Neither my wife nor I had seen it, and since this year has been purported to be the end, why not?

We had a great time.  It’s Hollywood by the book, but oh, the carnage!  I couldn’t get enough, and was so inspired that we kept going with more doomsday picks.  As always, haikus to the rescue.

It ends with a bang:
an orgy of destruction
and it’s fun to watch.
A procedural
in planetary wreckage
‘Nauts to the rescue.
It begins like art
light, funny, then turns Lars-dark
Yes, depression sucks.

The Bad, the Worse, and the Worst

Posted on by

I suppose I was in a vegetative mood, because I spent an inordinate amount of time watching bad movies this past week. Some were chosen for their badness; others just turned out that way.

Road House

Dalton the bouncer
does tai chi without his shirt
and kills half the town.

The level of acting in this movie is just incredibly bad.  I’m not talking about the leads, Patrick Swayze and Ben Gazzara, but the folks who have three or four lines.  A movie like this made today would feature better secondary actors, which leads me to believe that the acting profession has markedly improved in the last twenty years or so.

I was surprised at how violent this film got towards the end.  I guess I shouldn’t have been, but ratings do tend to soften with time (like Midnight Cowboy bearing a ridiculous X rating).
  ShowgirlsDog Chow and Ver-sayce
Cavalcade of T & A
This is not acting.

The lines are ridiculous, the acting is so over-the-top that it would clear Mount Everest.  But one thing you cannot say about this movie — it is never boring, and therefore, I’d highly recommend it.
  MacGruberWhat this film needed:
toothpick, tube sock, bubble gum
and a few more jokes.

There were a few moments where I laughed, but the movie just isn’t funny enough.  The highlight without a doubt is Ryan Phillippe paging through MacGruber’s journal.
  Legend of the Fist: The Return of Chen ZhenClick the Fast Forward
when watching this non-action
film in record time.

Jet li’s Fist of Legend is my favorite Chen Zhen story.  I’m a huge Donnie Yen fan — if you haven’t seen Kill Zone or Flash Point, they’re absolute gems.  This one had a few nice action sequences, but the rest of the film is forgettable.
  Batman: Year OneBryan Cranston makes
a gruff Lieutenant Gordon
to a weeny Wayne.

A faithful adaptation of the Frank Miller graphic novel.  It’s a decent film, but the guy who does Batman’s voice is wrongly cast.
  The Wicker Man (2006)Some films are so bad
their ineptitude is good.
I wish this were worse.

The scenes of this movie that are on YouTube, such as Cage beating up Leelee Sobieski in a bear suit, are funny, but the humor unfortunately is derived from their lack of context.  There’s no question the scene is silly, but within the movie, it makes more sense, and therefore, not really funny.

This actually was not a bad movie for the first half of its runtime.  And even the latter half isn’t a total failure — it was more along the lines of being ill conceived.  Let’s just put it this way: it’s no Showgirls.