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Reviews
The Guardians of Justice (2022)
6 years
I just found out this steaming pile of... has been sitting in the can for six years (originally it was called Gods and Secrets, scheduled for a late 2016 release). I wish they'd given it the same respect that really good scotch receives: 18 years. That way I might've not lived long enough to suffer it.
Co-ed Call Girl (1996)
So Aaron Spelling cast his daughter as a whore
I'm not sure what seemed further divorced from reality-that Aaron Spelling continued to give his daughter slutty roles, or that I was expected to believe that people would pay for sex with the thing under the bridge. Either way, suspension of disbelief can only be taken to a certain point and paying for sex with Tori Spelling went well beyond that point.
I love things that lack any redeeming quality because they're so easy to laugh at, and this movie made me cry. Even still, it was awful so I can't give rate it higher than a middle rating. So be warned! That five I give this has nothing to do with being mediocre, but so far from it that I couldn't help laughing at it's failings.
If Lucy Fell (1996)
I hope you enjoy it as much as I did!
No mistake, I hope you enjoy this movie as much as I did, and I gave it one star. But it's a gold star! A big bright shiny-no wait, that's a finger. Definitely one finger. A middle finger, belonging to me. A long time ago two friends of mine told me they'd just gone to see it, and I made fun of them. Mind you at the time I knew little about the movie other than it had an incredibly stupid name and that Sarah Jessica Parker still looked human. They both told me to shut up because at least I hadn't suffered the movie. Well I never felt really good about my initial response to being told they'd seen it (I literally laughed at them) so when it came on a movie channel last might I decided to check it out. I'll say that I was impressed. Not with Sarah Jessica Parker, who was moving away from pretty (Honeymoon in Vegas pretty) toward the thing from Family Stone. Nor was I impressed with Eric Shaffer (don't know if I spelled that right, don't care-he doesn't' deserve the consideration), who first wrote this horrible movie, then made it, and worst of all cast his own ugly stupid ass in the part that gets Elle Macpherson (I think I spelled that right, checked on her IMDb page and it looks good). And I wasn't impressed by Ben Stiller's moron because, while he did a fine job of playing an idiot, the character lacked any redeeming quality and came across as a prick who tried to act like an artist but who didn't understand art (like the writer/director). What impressed me was that Scarlett Johansson was pretty good at a very young age, that Elle Macpherson acted attracted to an idiot and managed to pull it off a bit and that there was someone in the movie (the old guy) who felt the same way I do about the clown who made the movie. This movie sucked about as badly as a movie can, right up until the cliché 'realize what they're looking for has been staring them in the face' ending. At that point it fell into that brown, stinky, steaming pile of filth, one of which actually IS the worst ever, the rest being serious contenders.
What this movie is missing is something vital to a good date movie. The two leads make a pact to jump off the Brooklyn Bridge. A good date movie develops characters that you could potentially like in real life and so you'd rather see them end up happy. Both leads in this suck. They're zeroes, completely lacking in value. I wanted them to jump.
One other thing-when I was in college a friend of mine was an art major. Every art major had to exhibit their work openly for anyone who wanted to see. I went to my friend's show and was really surprised. Not because of how good his stuff was (it was and he's made a career of it for almost 15 years now). No, what surprised me was that his wasn't the only exhibit, and that the subject of the other exhibit was---a kid that lived in my dorm. Every picture this chick made (and I think they were all chalk) was this kid in my dorm. Just like in the movie! And when I went to make fun of him for it I couldn't because he thought it so weird and frightening he was afraid to leave his room! Just like in the movie...oh wait, she liked it. I forget that in movies obsession is an appealing quality, peeping is admired and stalking is cool.
Having thought about it I think if I ever see Eric Schafer I'll have to give him a good slap.
Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985)
Redefines "Suck"
Every time I've seen this movie I get the same impression: some parts of it are so amazingly stupid/bad that they crack me up, they aren't intentional, and there are a lot of them; the rest is just plain bad, stupid and/or irrelevant. A movie like Evil Dead gets credit for being bad at it's own expense because it's the intended result-it' stupid and cheesy because Sam Raimi succeeded at what he was trying to do. This movie doesn't have that excuse, it's stupid and cheesy because the filmmakers failed so miserably. The crap result gets heaped on top of the crap writing and crap performances to make it a shame that the lowest rating a movie can be given is one for 'awful.' Watching this movie has the same effect as listening to a Billy Madison essay--"Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it." I should be able to give this movie something around a -5.
Caligola (1979)
Adultery wasn't exactly punishable by death
In the review on the main page, it is noted that, "adultery was an offense punishable by death." This is mainly misleading, but also wrong.
Adultery really was an offense punishable by death but certain conditions needed to be met. First, though not a condition, was that adultery was an argument by a citizen used as a defense of murder, not to bring someone to trial. The most important condition that was that adultery was defined as sexual relations between a married woman and a man not her husband. The marriage had to be recognized by the state, which required citizenship. Women were rarely granted full citizenship, almost never to any woman born outside the highest levels of the nobility. Finally (not actually finally but enough to make the point) full citizenship was pretty uncommon in ancient Rome--Rome is estimated to have had at it's height a population of over 1 million people (around 450,000 by some estimates) but no more than 60,000 citizens (by any estimate). Foreigners and slaves had no citizenship, and residents of allied cities could be granted various rights below full citizenship with marriages that weren't always recognized.
So, you might ask, what does all this mean? Adulterers weren't put to trial, they were killed on the spot, which provided both vengeance to the one whose rights were violated (the spouse of the adulterer) and proof of the crime. It was nearly impossible for women to charge for adultery since they were granted full citizenship so rarely. It was almost as difficult for male Roman citizens to be charged with adultery since no more than 60,000 of 600,000 women in Rome could be married to Roman citizens (military service and a frequent state of war created a tremendous imbalance in population balance between the sexes, and while the 60,000 is a fair estimate, the 600,000 could be quite low). Last (again not last, just the same as above) is that there was a massive women's population available for the act of adultery where the crime didn't apply.
If you were a female in Rome the crime only mattered to you, except in rare cases, if you married to a citizen and you were guilty of the crime. If you were a male and noble-born, it was a defense for the murder of your wife and her lover, except in rare cases. If you were male and not noble-born, it was a crime that you could be involved in and for which you would be killed on the spot (again, except in rare cases).
It's more accurate to say that 'adultery was an offense against noble-born males which gave them an excuse to kill their wives and lovers.'
Oh yeah-the only reason to watch Caligula is to see what all the fuss was about. Without the fuss it would have been forgotten long ago.
Kill Bill: Vol. 2 (2004)
Tarantino rips off someone new
I don't know why people think Quentin Tarantino is good when all he does is rip off other people. Everything in Kill Bill 1 and 2 came from Hong Kong cinema, including Uma Thurman's track suit and shoes. The closest he ever came to an original movie was Jackie Brown-at least in that case he was making a movie from a book rather than copying someone else's work shot-for-shot and passing it off as his own. I used to like his work and thought Pulp Fiction was one of the best movies I'd seen when I saw it. Ironically I was going to school in England when it came out, back when Hong Kong was owned by the Brits. It was pretty weird to walk out of a theater thinking I'd just seen something great only to hear people in front of rattling off the movies that; the Walken scene came from, Bruce Willis character, and the whole Eric Stoltz/Uma Thurman/John Travolta storyline. Plagiarism like his doesn't deserve to be rewarded.