Monday, July 1, 2024

BACK TO THE FUTURE (1985)

“If my calculations are correct, when this baby hits 88 miles per hour... you're gonna see some serious shit.”

1980’s California teenager Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) has a pretty normal life. Drunk mom, airhead dad, nerd siblings, girlfriend who actually seems to care if he’s alive or not, a stack of tardy slips and a rock band that’s just too motherfuckin’ loud. The only thing unusual about his life is his best friend, Emmett "Doc" Brown (Christopher Lloyd), is the smartest man in human history. You see, Doc Brown has invented a time machine. And it works too. As long as you got the 1.21 gigawatts it takes to power that bad boy.

Outside of THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW, BACK TO THE FUTURE is my most watched film. I still remember the magic of seeing it for the very first time as a child and being so excited and so stressed out over Marty’s predicament. And then the entire idea of time travel just blew my mind up!  Watching it honestly changed my life.  And how I looked at the world and the endless possibilities of storytelling.  So, that said, as hard as I try to focus my handsome noodle on it, it’s very difficult for me to look at BACK TO THE FUTURE objectively. To me, it’s one of the greatest achievements in movie history. But, since I am the world’s highest paid movie critic, I do need to be realistic about it and understand that younger audiences probably don’t give two womp rat farts about BACK TO THE FUTURE and think it’s a dated piece of shit. I saw BTTF in the theater last month and noticed some middle-aged nerds dragging their kids along. By the time the film was over, the kids look like they wanted to commit ritual suicide, seppuku, with a bamboo sword.

Dated or not, it’s hard to top BACK TO THE FUTURE for pure 1980’s American storytelling.  If I had a Happyotter Film School, there would be a class just on the first BACK TO THE FUTURE film.  Easily one of the Top 10 Greatest Films ever made.

Part 2 - Back to the Future Part II (1989)
Part 3 - Back to the Future Part III (1990)

Sunday, June 30, 2024

MORITURIS (2011)

Fucking awful.

As with most of the stuff I watch, I went into MORITURIS without knowing anything ahead of time. And goddamn it if I didn’t piss a pickle with this motherfucker. The mental and visual torture starts with a completely unneeded opening scene that darn near made me give up on this turkey altogether. Ninety minutes later, I wish I had watched some German in Venice videos on YouTube instead.

Two female geniuses decide it would be a good idea to take a road trip with three creepy male strangers (who definitely don’t give off rapist vibes literally the first minute they’re on the screen) to an illegal rave in the woods. After thirty minutes of stimulating conversations about how the moon can be drawn by drawing a circle, a bear is not a horse and how “the first thing aboriginals learn are names of genitals”, our heroes arrive at their secluded destination. Eventually, around the 56 minute mark…gladiator zombies attack. Slowly.

The idea of zombie gladiators is okay, I guess. Kinda goofy, but whatever, I’m willing to give it a chance. I mean, hey, the skeletons in JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS were awesome. But nope, these dudes suck. There’s literally nothing cool about them. They all move like they’re wearing an invisible 1800's diving suit and look like they’ve been evenly sprayed with some kind of fake dust powder. Plus, the kills were silly.

Cast populated with characters that I hated, night scenes that look like they were filmed inside Satan’s asshole, multiple uses of the n-word that should have gone in the trash can along with the multiple rape scenes, cringe dialogue that made me feel sorry for the future of humanity, extremely slow pace, multiple moving corpses (breathing, toes wiggling, arms moving), many nude scenes but it was all mean-spirited and during rape scenes so I'm not posting any of that shit.

Honestly, I cannot think of a reason why anybody should ever watch this film. I wish I never had.  Skip it with a vengeance and never look back.

Sunday, June 23, 2024

THE BEEKEEPER (2024)

"Who the fuck are you? Winnie-the-Pooh?"

The Beekeeper just wants to live a quiet life. He rents a small space from a nice older lady on her sleepy little farm where he can raise his bees in peace. Then some bustas ruin it by fucking with the old lady. So now Beekeeper’s gotta split some wigs. At first, he tries to do things peacefully by simply beating 20 people half to death and then burning down their building, but nope. They’re still mad. It’s war! So now, before you can say “Catch me at the cemetery visiting my enemies.” Beekeeper goes full red rum on these fools. No more playin', no more sayin', just Beekeeper sprayin' lead. Blood streamin', they fuckin' with a demon. Dial 911 and reserve you an ambulance cuz the Beekeeper is gonna give you a new car to ride in, known as a hearse. Sucka busta fuckas tryna run they game, but this shit ain't gon' stop. Beekeeper steady sending fools to the mortuary.  Have DoorDash deliver yo last meal to the cemetery. Killin' suckaz and droppin' bustas, makin' them scream in pain until his casket drops. Beekeeper has gone insane on these cheeky tossers.

You remember that scene in Wet Hot American Summer, season 1, episode 4 where the assassin The Falcon beats up the punk kids at the gas station then tells them “You kids stay in school.”, then kills them 4 seconds later? THE BEEKEEPER is kinda like a movie length version of that scene. Early on the Beekeeper claims that he only wants to get revenge on the scumbags who wronged his friend. Then he spends the rest of the movie injuring and killing everybody. Henchmen, FBI agents, Secret Service agents, various random people who just happen to be in the area. It’s awesome. Just violence piled upon violence with very little reason given. Honestly, if the filmmakers were going to go that far over the top I wish they had just gone full psycho and made every single scene even more insane than the previous scene.

As it is though, THE BEEKEEPER is silly as fuck and a lot of fun to laugh at. I’ve done zero research into it and knew literally nothing about it before I watch it, but I’m pretty sure the script (if there even was one) was written by A.I. or just a group of children. It doesn’t even make any sense or even try to make any sense. It’s awesome! Who needs logic or consequences, just have an indestructible dude go bonkers then jump off a cliff and walk into the ocean like Godzilla. The End. My only complaint is the lack of nudity and it wasn’t violent enough. Don’t fuck around, just full send it.

Writing challenge for myself: I’m about to go to the movie theater to see Ghost’s RITE HERE RITE NOW (again...I saw it last night also), but I still have 5 minutes before I need to head out. So, without any previous thinking about it, I’m going to write a BEEKEEPER sequel. Here we go!

Using the same beach as the final scene in the first movie, the Beekeeper walks out of the ocean. Next scene, he’s living on a small farm in Kansas with a kind family. He lives in the barn and tends to their bees. One weekend, the family goes to a local video store to rent THE BEEKEEPER on DVD, they are simple farm folk and don't have blu-ray. A gang of buttheads (that work for a local drug lord) talk shit to the mom and beat up the dad. Beekeeper finds out and spends the next 85 minutes murdering the motherfuckin’ crap out of everybody on the drug lords estate (think the end of COMMANDO). After killing all of the bad guys, the gore-covered Beekeeper hands an autographed copy of THE BEEKEEPER DVD to the family and walks off. Next scene, same beach as first movie, he once again walks into the ocean just like Godzilla. Fin. (haha. My heart is beating from typing so fast. Haha.) A Beekeeper / Jigsaw crossover would be awesome also. Gotta go-goat! I don't want my fangs too long. The moon to the left is a part of my thoughts.