The Last Movie You Watched

[Rev. Rye]

[Fake Messiah]

Last movie I watched was "North Country". It is a movie about small bigoted Christian town's learning process of how women are not lower beings and mostly sluts, as their holy book would lead them to think, but somewhat equal partners.

"Hank, she had a baby, she didn't rob a bank".

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

'Aftermath' (2017) with Arnold Schwarzenegger attempting to be an actor and (mostly) succeeding.

Arnold's wife and pregnant daughter are killed in a plane collision, due to the errors of an air traffic controller. He declines the airline's offer of a settlement because what he wants most of all is for someone to apologize for killing his family.  The film is really quite an interesting look at how grief affects people.  It isn't your typical Ahnold vehicle - not a revenge flick by any stretch.  No car crashes, no explosions, no gunfights, no fistfights - one stabbing scene (no, no spoiler).

7/10

Boru

[Rev. Rye]

This week in the Deep Hurting Project is Furry Vengeance

• So, a prairie dog is standing on pavement minding is own business, when a businessman in a red sports car yells "I do what I want!" just as he ALMOST runs it over. Instead of running away, It just stands there with this clearly composited-on CGI screaming face. Why do I get the feeling this is going to set the tone for the rest of the movie? 
  
• Also, mustelids have apparently mastered the art of the Rube Goldberg machine.
  
• And now it turns out that Brendan Fraser's in the middle management of a green construction company. His antagonists are going to be the animals who live in the surrounding forest. Creatures who can't communicate in any meaningful way, so during the plotting scenes, we're subjected to... remember the scene from the Star Wars Holiday Special where we're subjected to Chewbacca's family having some argument and we have no idea what's going on because they're  speaking in Chewbacca's normal dialect, and there's no subtitles? It's basically that. To be fair, a few scenes in, they resort to translating it into thought bubbles that display clips corresponding to what they saw, but still. And it doesn't exactly last.
  
• So, Fraser's living in a model home? So, my knowledge of this sort of thing is limited to Arrested Development, but are model homes supposed to be reasonably livable or was the deterioration of the model home in that one just a function of Bluth's shoddy worksmanship?
  
• "Tyler is Missing His Old Life" Why does he refer to himself in the third person in his Facebook updates? I like to think the actor is so alienated that he no longer identifies with his character in any meaningful way. Must be why his performance is so flat.
  
• Mom can talk to wild turkeys? Of course she can.
  
• So, I have the subtitles/captioning on by default and when the Asian boss speaks his native language, it says "[Speaks Gibberish.]" Could they not bother to get someone who speaks Korean to write some proper dialogue for Ken Jeong? Or at least Spanish, since he played Senor Chang?
  
• How is ripping out the forest good for the environment? That's a good fucking question.
  
• And despite the fact that the raccoon was there for the pivotal meeting where Ken Jeong convinced Brendan Fraser to help tear down the forest, they decide to latch onto him and not Ken Jeong.
  
• They're really proud of that CGI horned owl's head turn, aren't they? And they're clearly reusing the scene of the animals setting up that Rube Goldberg trap from the first sequence!
  
• Is Brendan Fraser looking so haggard just the standard ravages of time because he looks really fucking haggard in this film. Well, if his interaction with Brooke Shields' feet is any indication, at least he's a foot fetishist in this movie so I guess that's something.
  
• Chasing crows? Those are fucking magpies.
  
• Hot damn, he recovered from getting tossed from his treadmill, plunging head-first into the wall, and having his TV fall on him pretty fucking quick.
  
• Also, skunks are solitary animals and I'm legitimately surprised to see that they managed to gather more than half a dozen into a car voluntarily.
  
• Is this going to be all the movie is from now on? Just a set of elaborate set pieces of tired slapstick centered around Brendan Fraser getting humiliated by these animals who think fucking with him will keep their home from being destroyed?
  
• That senile teacher's hitting me a bit too close to home. She reminds me of that woman who taught my Women Writers' class, spent three weeks covering the same chapter in To the Lighthouse. And not even different aspects of that one chapter. It was like a Groundhog Day loop. I barely passed that class.
  
• Is that an albino vulture? And one that looks like an Old World Vulture that doesn't even live in the Americas? Also, since when do vultures have voice boxes? Or have any interest in attacking living things? Look, just watch this and be educated; they're fearsome-looking, but they're actually very docile, especially by the standards of birds of prey:
  
• They're really milking the "dots vs. feathers" Indian ambiguity for all the cringiness they can milk from it.
  
• And why is Ken Jeong speaking gibberish to Brendan Fraser all of a sudden?
  
• Also, this scene:
  
• Fun Fact: this afternoon, Alison and I just watched the Rifftrax Live version of Birdemic and literally the only positive this movie's execution has on that is that this time, when the love interest shows her feet, the leading man's feet aren't also in the frame.
  
• No, that Rorschach blot looks like an angry Raccoon, not an angry squirrel.
  
• And somehow, despite looking so haggard, he recovers goddam quickly after all the shit he went though the previous day. And, of course she doesn't believe him after all the massive shit he's done.
  
• You know, it's nice to see some acknowledgement of the Vikings' brief tenure in North America, but somehow, I doubt that they ever reached that far.
  
• Wait, this is supposed to be both the Rocky Mountains and Washington State? They're two different parts of the country!
  
• So, the steps inside his home are close to where he was sitting when he saw the grizzly bear, and yet he runs into a portapotty? And of course it tips it over. Of course. Well, at least it had the decency to wait an hour before playing the "toilet humour" card.
  
• And what's with that forest ranger who keeps trying to confront Brooke Shields over her husband's potential murder?
  
• "Does anyone have some Purell?" Well, this was a shitty week to watch this movie.
  
• And she still doesn't understand that he might be right when she fishes him out of an upside down portapotty in the branches of a fucking tree?
  
• Wait... that's a domestic turkey, not a wild one. They can't survive in the wild. Hell, they can't even reproduce on their own!
  
• And don't tell me he's actually missing the fucking animals that have been fucking with his life for the past hour.
  
• And fucking hell, they're treating him like the bad guy for wanting to get these creatures into cages AFTER THEY REPEATEDLY MAULED HIM. And he comes around to their point of view after finding out the raccoon has a family... even though they were never seen until now. 
  
• Also, is there a reason the bad guys (besides the animals) are Asians?
  
• And why did Ken Jeong's lady friend say "you complete me" after the albino vultures decided to shit all over her?
  
• Why do they end on a Sugar Ray-sounding version of "Insane in the Membrane?"
  
• And why do they have Subterranean Homesick Blues-looking cue cards with the lyrics? And why is it that, of all the movies that use that device, the Lars von Trier serial killer movie that was an hour longer and had a protagonist with a body count of 67+ people and had half the audience of its premiere walk out was a far easier watch?
  

Next week, I'm going to do what I can to make sure I watch the CGI remake of The Ten Commandments. In a sane world, I'd be going to the library to get it. Of course, that's no longer an option, what with the pandemic. Of course, it looks like it's on Youtube, and I really hope it fucking stays that way. After that, there's Disaster Movie on Hulu, Woody Woodpecker on Netflix, and, hopefully, I'll be able to find some of the other pieces of shit on the TVTropes list on Youtube. Or the library will reopen.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

‘Bloodfather’ (2016) Mel Gibson, Erin Moriarty

Easily Gibson’s best work in years. He plays an inked-up ex-con biker badass who has to save his daughter from a drug cartel. Sounds a little like ‘Taken’, but it isn’t. Apart from one heavily improbable motorcycle chase, it’s much more realistic than anything in Neeson’s franchise, and the father-daughter relationship is much better developed.

Say what you like about Gibson as a person (pretty much all bad, I agree), but there’s no denying his screen presence or his acting chops. He’s terrific and so is this film.

8.5/10

Boru

[Rev. Rye]

[Rev. Rye]

[Kitan Etos]

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

'Mad Dog Morgan' (1976)

An absolutely execrable ozploitation film with Dennis Hopper as real-life bushranger Daniel Morgan.  This piece of poo should serve as an object lesson of how not to make a biopic. The acting is awful, the editing confusing, there's no real continuity from scene to scene, and Hopper switches accents effortlessly from Irish to Aussie to Middle American and back again.

People have a right to make bad films, but the rest of us should have the right to punch them in the throat for making one THIS bad.

0/10

Boru

[Rev. Rye]

This week in the Deep Hurting Project: Woody Woodpecker. It's a cartoon that's barely been airing since I've been alive (to the extent that I'm fairly certain I've seen Woody Woodpecker more in online encyclopedias of hate groups than on TV), and yet Universal still had the idea to do a movie based on him? This would seem to be a new low in the "Reviving old properties for nostalgia" well, but it makes sense when you consider that the Woodman is really fucking popular in Brazil, to the extent that sometimes, airing of his shorts have been known to preempt the Olympics. Odd that they'd try to pander to the Brazilian market, but there you go. And it explains why the baddie's girlfriend is Brazilian.

• "The Hell Kind of Bird is That?" That's a legit question.
  
  
• "Poachers: This will be fun." You know, this really sets  up one of the big problems with Woody here: he's a fucking sadist and the makers haven't figured that out. He sees people only as creatures to fuck with (or maybe get free food from; after he tries to befriend a teenage boy, he explicitly states he's just doing it for the peanut butter treats). And since none of the supporting cast from his other media appear, he just looks like a big gaping asshole, and you might as well just call him Goatse the Woodpecker. You know what, fuck it, I'm just going to call him Goatse for the rest of the post. Funny thing is, if I recall correctly, they had a similar problem with him early on in the Lantz era, and they solved it by him only fucking with people who were antagonising him.
  
• "Home, sweet home, and noone around to bother me" And then he looks around sad, and then belches. What was the point of that?
  
• You know, the sad thing is the bad guy in this is actually better at being the exact same type of character Brendan Fraser was trying to be in Furry Vengeance. He's an asshole, we at least get some catharsis from the animals fucking with him. Or at least we wouldn't if Goatse wasn't, well Goatse.
  
• Are they seriously talking about building a 5000 square foot home in the middle of what looks like a national or state park, IN FRONT OF THE PARK RANGERS? You know what, fuck that, are they allowing it?
  
• Springsteen allegedly playing a Les Paul? Since When is The Boss a Gibson person?
  
• So, Goatse attacks the bullies attacking the kid, by pecking them and their clothes, then they're left in their underwear, and then he tells them "it's time to go commando!" First off, they're in their underwear, which is exactly the opposite of going commando. Second, isn't that a bit too adult for a movie for kids? Okay, so, looking at the trope page for going commando, it looks like there are examples of kids' shows making light of the issue, but, then again, Goatse makes a Tinder joke at one point.
  
• So, one of the poachers shat on the other's trunk?
  
• Also, apparently, the kid's joined a band and their setlists are exactly what you'd expect from a Woody Woodpecker movie. Including this song:
  
  
• And he attempted to start a fire in a Winnebago that STILL HAD A PERSON IN IT. Fortunately, she's back to normal in the next scene.
  
• Are they saying the poachers are dumb enough to build a giant shed/shrine to their crimes against wildlife IN THE MIDDLE OF THE FUCKING PARK?
  
• Why is Goatse kind of fooled by such a shitty arts and crafts project as this
  
  And why does it look like the poachers centered their cage so poorly?
• And what was the point of the sock on a stick the villain uses while trying to appease Goatse.
  
• So, the moral of the story is corruption is A-OK.
  
• Why does the banjo sound like a mandolin?
  
• Also, apparently, Goatse can do a good impression of drums with some pencils and tin cans. And he saves the day, despite easily being the weakest part of the performance and nobody even knowing he's there.
  
• Does he seriously think they're going to release Goatse back into the wild? He was already living in the wild for all his fucking life.
  
• The credits are starting and there's over 10 minutes left in the film. That's rarely a good sign.
  
• And the reason the credits started so early is they decided to play one of the actual shorts, specifically "NIagara Fools." I was ready to rip into this for daring to show one of the classic shorts and showcasing why what they were doing was wrong. Then I looked it up: this is one of the later shorts, one where it's generally acknowledged that the shorts dropped massively in quality, and given that it revolves around Woody repeatedly tricking a Niagara Park ranger into going down the falls in a barrel, often with very limited animation that doesn't even have the excuse of looking interesting. In fact, I'm convinced the first five times the ranger goes down, they just repeated the same fucking scene. And yet, in Brazil, it's apparently the most popular short. You know what, here's the Reverend's response to the entire Brazilian Woody Woodpecker fanbase:
  

Are there any redeeming qualities to this movie? Well, Eric Bauza's performance is fairly decent, even if it is held back by this goatshit script. Maybe if there's actual legit Woody Woodpecker media after this, he'd be a good voice actor. And since I've run out of So Bad They're Horrible films available on Netflix, I'll have to rely on YouTube for that until the quarantine is over. Fortunately, a few films on the library list are actually on YouTube, and, of course, quite a few that weren't as well. So far, I'm thinking something like Kinky, Who's Your Caddy?, If Footmen Tire You, What Will Horses Do?, and Food Fight. I should point out that, naturally, this hinges on whether or not they're actually available, and since three of the four are still under copyright and may have been taken down in the interim.