Wyrmwood: Road of the Dead, Sabotage

Wyrmwood: Road of the Dead

Maybe it’s because I’m not into the whole zombie thing, but Wyrmwood didn’t do much for me. It’s a low-budget Australian movie that takes up the fight against hordes of the undead. Despite the meager budget, the film itself looks pretty damn good. You can tell it’s low-budget, but it looks good enough, at least like a made-for-TV movie, and you aren’t distracted too much wherever they had to cut corners. What occurs is the standard zombie movie plot: humans try to escape zombies, learn to kill zombies, repeat ad nauseaum. The only thing that sets the plot apart from other zombie films is the female lead can control zombies with telepathy. It’s a cool gimmick that I haven’t seen in a zombie film before. Unfortunately, it’s introduced way too late in the film, and is severely underutilized. The movie prefers to mire itself in genre clichés instead of working up its most promising angle. Oh well, better luck next time, Australian zombies.

Verdict: Average

Sabotage

“LISTEN ALL OF Y’ALL, IT’S A SABOTAGE!”

Arnold Schwarzenegger’s return to film hasn’t been a good one. Other than the decent if unmemorable Escape Plan, he hasn’t been in anything remotely entertaining since he retired from being Governor of California. This time he plays the leader of a team of undercover DEA agents who are assassinated one by one. Schwarzenegger’s investigation leads him to discover to culprits are some of his own. The film is rather plodding, and completely devoid of anything exciting. It’s got a good cast, but gives none of the actors anything interesting to do. The best part of the film was the final shootout, which takes Schwarzenegger to Mexico, and has nothing to do with the main plot of the film. This is a movie that didn’t need to be made, and was totally boring and inept.

Verdict: Shitty

I Liked The Hunger Games Better When It Was Called The Running Man

The Hunger Games is a best-selling franchise of books and movies, which has taken the world by storm in recent years. After watching the first movie, I thought to myself, “You know, I liked The Hunger Games better when it was called The Running Man.”

I’m referring to the 1987 movie starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, which is the exact same fucking thing. It feels like whoever made The Hunger Games was just doing a shitty fan-fiction set in the same universe as The Running Man.

Let’s do a head to head comparison:

Round One – Premise

The Running Man takes places in a dystopian society under marshal law, in which the public is pacified through the use of a televised game show where criminals are murdered for sport.

The Hunger Games takes place in a dystopian society under marshal law, in which the public is pacified through the use of a televised game show where children kill each other for sport.

OK, so, they’re basically identical. But what’s more fun, watching criminals die gruesome deaths or children? Obviously, it’s children.

Winner: The Hunger Games

The Wolf of Wall Street, Blue Ruin

The Wolf of Wall Street

This movie trolls you right out of the gate. Matthew McConaughey shows up as the head of a big Wall Street firm, and positions himself to be Leonardo DiCaprio’s mentor. I was all pumped for some sweet, sweet McConaughey/DiCaprio action, but it turned out to be a bait-and-switch. McConaughey disappears completely. DiCaprio takes center stage as the loathsome central character. What follows next is a completely tiresome, three-hour-long masturbatory fantasy. DiCaprio engages in illegal activities to make himself the king of Wall Street. He and his compatriots party hard and often. There are probably a hundred scenes of them banging hookers and doing cocaine. Now, I’m as big a fan of cocaine and hookers as the next Hollywood executive, but once or twice would have been sufficient. I didn’t need to see it over and over again. The SEC investigates and eventually busts DiCaprio, but they don’t show up until the final hour of the movie. An entire hour of worthless party scenes could have been cut, and nothing would have changed. The only interesting part of the film is near the beginning when DiCaprio discovers he can get rich suckering people into buying Penny Stocks. Otherwise, nothing of interest happens. Other than the tits. Lots and lots of tits.

Verdict: Shitty

Blue Ruin

I like my revenge movies like the Arnold Schwarzenegger classic, Commando. I don’t like them to be about boring, mopey homeless guys. Blue Ruin is about a boring, mopey homeless guy who goes on a killing spree. He murders an ex-con, a dude who served time after killing the homeless dude’s parents. The dead con’s family takes the fight to the homeless guy’s family. The homeless guy, in turn, decides to kill all of them. But don’t mistake this for an action-packed thrill ride with cool explosions, shootouts, and hilarious one-liners. No, the boring, mopey homeless guy acts sullen as he trudges his way through a dreary life. The pacing is languid, and the tone is brooding. There’s very little here to entice a viewer, and the story is entirely forgettable. Good production values are about the only thing this movie has going for it. I wouldn’t recommend it.

Verdict: Bad

Escape Plan is the 1980s Most Disappointing Dream Come True

Escape Plan is the movie the 1980s desperately wanted, but, sadly, came about 30 years too late. I’m talking about Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone finally teaming up. They did briefly team up in The Expendables 2, but that doesn’t count because Arnold’s role was pretty small. Here, though, they share the screen equally, playing off one another, and finally bringing a team up that has been decades in the making.

Unfortunately, if they had been waiting 30 years for “the right script,” this one wasn’t it. Now, don’t get me wrong, Escape Plan isn’t really a bad film, but it isn’t the 1980s wet dream/action star team-up movie we’ve all desperately waited for. No, it’s one of those films that actors do just to pay the bills.

For having the two biggest 1980s action stars as the leads, there is surprisingly little action in this film. The movie is a prison escape film. Generally, those kinds of movies work on building suspense and have very few fights, explosions, shootouts, etc. Right off the bat, this movie is not playing to the strengths of its two lead actors.

Terminator Genisys is on Trial

Bailiff: Hear-ye, hear-ye, this court will come to order. The dishonorable Judge Brikhaus is presiding.

Judge: Today’s case is the People of Good Taste versus Terminator Genesis, no, Genysis, no, Genisys, oh for fuck’s sake, why did they give this movie such a stupid title? From now on, it’s Terminator 5. Anyone calling it otherwise will be held in contempt.

Defense: Objection!

Judge Brikhaus: You can’t object, the trial hasn’t even started yet.

Defense: I’m sorry, your dishonor.

Judge Brikhaus: Very well, let’s hear the opening statements.

Prosecutor: Ladies and Gentlemen of the jury, I stand before you today as a representative of mankind. All of humanity craves good entertainment. And we were all cheated out of good entertainment when this new movie, Terminator 5, was shat into theaters. By this time this trial is over, you will agree that this movie is a rancid piece of shit that should be wiped off the face of the planet.

Let’s Terminate This Film Series

I decided to do a marathon of the Terminator movies. I’m not sure why, other than the fact I’m a big Arnold Schwarzenegger fan. After all, he is the star of the greatest movie ever made. I remember enjoying the first two movies as a kid, but as an adult these things rarely hold up to scrutiny. Plus, I had never seen the fourth movie. So, I decided to watch one a day, and write a mega-review trashing them all.

The Terminator

The original Terminator is a 1984 cheese fest. Watching it today, you can see just how incredibly dated it is. Now, I know what you’re thinking, “LOL BUT BRIK ITS A MOVIE ABOUT TIME TRAVEL SO OF COURSE EVERYTHING IS GOING TO LOOK DATED LOL!” Technically, that’s true. But the cheesy 80s synthesizer music certainly doesn’t give The Terminator a timeless quality. The music is so fucking bad, I cringed every time it started up. I suppose the main titles theme is alright since it evokes the monotonous, single-mindedness of the titular killer robot, but other than that, the music sucks major ass.

The acting doesn’t fare much better. The only person who turns in a good performance is Michael Biehn as Kyle Reese. Arnold is good, I suppose, but he just acts like a robot, which isn’t much of a stretch for him. Linda Hamilton as the main character Sarah Connor is a disaster with her ridiculous shrieking and forced line delivery. She looks like she’s still stuck in rehearsal. Her line “You’re terminated, fucker” is so bad, just try not to laugh out loud when you hear it. The typically good Lance Henriksen is criminally underutilized. The rest of the cast (cops, Connor’s roommate, people with a line or two) are generally terrible. They were barely passable by 1980s acting standards, and completely suck by today’s.

The Expendables 2, Get Carter (1971)

The Expendables 2

We wait decades to see these guys in a movie together, and this is the best they could do?

Sylvester Stallone’s original Expendables film was a complete misfire. Meant to be an homage to 80s action films, it was a pathetic attempt at recapturing the glory days of a bygone era. I couldn’t believe it when I heard there was going to be a sequel. Wasn’t one film enough? Apparently not, because Hollywood doesn’t have any original ideas anyway, so why not make a sequel to a one-off homage film?

The second movie adds a bunch of new characters, none of whom do anything important. The only new actor worth mentioning is Chuck Norris. He shows up, mid-film, like an indestructible god of war who obliterates everything in his path. He even has time to throw in one of those Chuch Norris Internet meme jokes. The most bizarre part wasn’t Norris himself, but the fact they used the theme song from The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly as his character’s musical theme. Umm, last time I checked Norris was never in that film. They probably wrote the part for Clint Eastwood, but Eastwood wouldn’t agree to be in such a shitty film. Since they had already paid licensing fees to get the theme song, they said “Fuck it” and used it with Norris instead.

Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger get upgraded from cameos and partake in the action this time around. Even Jean-Claude Van Damme comes out of his cave to deliver a totally one-note villain. There isn’t anything else worth mentioning about this movie. The whole thing is about stunt casting. Stallone wants to get as many old movie “stars” as he can into these films at the expense of a decent story. It’s really quite a shame.

Verdict: Shitty

Get Carter (1971)

An average day in England.

Get Carter is a weird movie. Really weird. I guess since it took place in the early 1970s, everyone involved was as high as fuck while making this movie. The movie begins with a bunch of dudes hanging out, watching a porn slide show. Next, Michael Caine, who plays the titular Carter, learns his brother has died and goes back home for the funeral. He finds his dead brother stuffed into the smallest coffin imaginable, in a bedroom of his house. Um, lolwut? Is that what they do in England, keep dead bodies in the house until the funeral?

Later, Caine spends some time with the corpse, shaving and chatting on the phone. Caine doesn’t believe his brother died in a drunk-driving accident, he suspects foul play, so he begins to investigate. His investigation leads him to chase down bad guys in the cleanest, most-brightly lit nightclub on Earth where he interrogates a dude hiding on a toilet. Caine eventually sleeps with a nasty old bed-and-breakfast owner to prevent her from calling the cops on him for his violent ways. Caine gets into some more trouble, drives around town in a sports car, sleeps with some more women, and ruthlessly murders some other people. Caine plays a complete sociopath, displaying virtually no emotion whatsoever as he leaves mayhem in his wake. The only hint of emotion he shows is satisfaction after clubbing someone to death with the stock of a shotgun.

To say this movie is weird is an understatement. The characters exist in a bizarre waking-dream world that looks like England, but doesn’t actually take place anywhere on planet Earth. It’s also incredibly slow with all the interesting bits comprising about 15 minutes of the 2 hour runtime. It isn’t as boring as The Italian Job but only because it’s so goddamn strange, you somehow can’t stop watching it. Weirder still is the total lack of music except in the beginning and ending of the film. Whatever these guys were smoking when they made this film, it must have been some powerful shit.

Verdict: Bad

Brik Hates the Academy Awards: 90s Edition

It’s no mystery that I hate the Academy Awards. Hollywood spends half the year binging on cocaine and hookers and the other half praising themselves for it. No other industry exerts so much energy and spends so much money on self-congratulatory masturbation than the film industry. These sick fucks have the cushiest, easiest jobs in the world, and they act like what they do is some kind of goddamn accomplishment. “LOL OH LOOK I JUST RECITED SOME LINES SOMEONE ELSE WROTE FOR ME AND SHED A TEAR AT THE SAME TIME! I’M A FUCKING ACTING GOD! QUICK SOMEBODY GIVE ME FIFTY AWARDS LOL!” In theory, I could get behind the awards if they actually awarded things that were deserving. You know, giving a Best Picture award to the best movie of the year. But the Academy rarely gives that award to the best movie of the year. Hell, they don’t even give it to the most popular movie of the year. Usually, they give it to whatever cool person produced the movie, or to the most obscure, independent, foreign piece of shit they can find. Typically, no one in the mainstream public will have even seen the winner. They’ve been pulling this shit for years. So, I decided to analyze the past years, offer my own nominees, and declare new winners. Best movie isn’t the one that makes you cry or makes you think. Best movie is the one that you want to revisit over and over again. A movie you watch once and never again isn’t good. It’s only good if you can’t help but watch it a million times. Rewatchability is the hallmark of something great.

This time around, I’ll be taking a look at the Best Picture winners from the 1990s.

Brik Hates the Academy Awards: 80s Edition

It’s no mystery that I hate the Academy Awards. Hollywood spends half the year binging on cocaine and hookers and the other half praising themselves for it. No other industry exerts so much energy and spends so much money on self-congratulatory masturbation than the film industry. These sick fucks have the cushiest, easiest jobs in the world, and they act like what they do is some kind of goddamn accomplishment. “LOL OH LOOK I JUST RECITED SOME LINES SOMEONE ELSE WROTE FOR ME AND SHED A TEAR AT THE SAME TIME! I’M A FUCKING ACTING GOD! QUICK SOMEBODY GIVE ME FIFTY AWARDS LOL!”

In theory, I could get behind the awards if they actually awarded things that were deserving. You know, giving a Best Picture award to the best movie of the year. But the Academy rarely gives that award to the best movie of the year. Hell, they don’t even give it to the most popular movie of the year. Usually, they give it to whatever cool person produced the movie, or to the most obscure, independent, foreign piece of shit they can find. Typically, no one in the mainstream public will have even seen the winner.

They’ve been pulling this shit for years. So, I decided to analyze the past years, offer my own nominees, and declare new winners. Best movie isn’t the one that makes you cry or makes you think. Best movie is the one that you want to revisit over and over again. A movie you watch once and never again isn’t good. It’s only good if you can’t help but watch it a million times. Rewatchability is the hallmark of something great.

This time around, I’ll be taking a look at the Best Picture winners from the 1980s.

Conan the Barbarian – Probably the Greatest Movie Ever Made

Conan the Barbarian is probably the greatest movie ever made. I recently rewatched it on Blu-Ray for the 11,000th time. The sheer bliss I experienced while watching all that cinematic sex and carnage led me to realize that this is probably the pinnacle of human creation. No one will ever make a piece of art more endearing, more inspiring than this film. So why is Conan the Barbarian the greatest movie ever made? Let’s take a look at some of the reasons.

1.) Sword Fighting – Whenever you include sword fighting, it ALWAYS improves the quality of your movie. Just try to think of one movie that wasn’t improved by sword fighting. You can’t. It doesn’t exist. A movie with sword fighting is going to be better than one without, every single time. Take a look at this picture from 500 Days of Summer.

JGL and Zooey: an indie match made in heaven.

It looks fine and all, but compare it to this picture from Conan the Barbarian.

Bloody swords improve everything 100 fold

The improvements are obvious. Clearly, the addition of the sword makes Conan the better film.