Empty Balcony: War for the Planet of the Apes

This film is excruciatingly inane, and at the same time an achievement. It is a story of stark moral black and whites, the contrast so palpable that it could blind were one to stare at it for too long. It is an epic that will take up 140 minutes of a viewer’s time, but it is also a flat desert plain stretching to the horizon, the only hint of depth merely a mirage. Continue readingEmpty Balcony: War for the Planet of the Apes”

Shitty Movie Sundays: Strike Commando

Who wants to watch some bottom-feeding trash? I do! And we all should. Films like Strike Commando, the 1987 shitfest from Italian filmmaker Bruno Mattei, make serious film and art house fodder all the better. How would we be able to gauge excellence were it not for films like Strike Commando giving us a baseline of inferiority? Continue readingShitty Movie Sundays: Strike Commando”

Trumpster Fire Day 363: The Sky is Falling

This past Sunday, residents of Hawaii were sent an emergency alert to their phones. It stated, “BALLISTIC MISSILE THREAT INBOUND TO HAWAII. SEEK IMMEDIATE SHELTER. THIS IS NOT A DRILL.” Understandably, this caused some consternation among the Hawaiian population. It was a false alarm, but a message stating so wasn’t sent out until 38 minutes after the initial alert. So, for over half an hour, a whole lot of people in our 50th state thought that they were going to die in nuclear fire. How very retro. Continue readingTrumpster Fire Day 363: The Sky is Falling”

Empty Balcony: Atomic Blonde

Atomic Blonde is an aggressive title for a movie. By that, I mean it’s the type of title that can make a viewer immediately prejudge a film. I’m guilty of that. My expectations going into this film were that, at best, it would be a mildly entertaining, yet brainless, action flick. I was hoping for a shitty film, but was prepared for a just a plain old bad one. But, just as one shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, the same applies to film titles. Continue readingEmpty Balcony: Atomic Blonde”

Cocksuckers Ball: Courts to the Rescue

A three-judge federal panel on Tuesday voided North Carolina’s congressional map, on the grounds that the gerrymandered districts were ‘motivated by invidious partisan intent.’ In other words, the Republicans in North Carolina engineered congressional districts following the 2010 census in order to ensure most of the state’s districts were won by Republicans. Redrawing districts to partisan advantage has been a legal grey area ever since the advent of partisan politics in this country. But the panel has now set precedent that such practices are unconstitutional, and that’s a good thing. Continue readingCocksuckers Ball: Courts to the Rescue”

Shitty Movie Sundays: Summer City

Summer CityThis flick is a bad one. This is one of those zero-budget plodding messes that would have found a ready home on Mystery Science Theater 3000. It’s one of those flicks that lacks most endearing characteristics, and only survives because it featured a future Hollywood star.

Summer City, from way back in 1977, is the first feature film on Mel Gibson’s IMDb page. He’s one of four main characters, all friends, who head out from 1950s Sydney for some fun and sun at an Australian beach.

How do I know the movie takes place in the 1950s? Director Christopher Fraser and producer/writer Phil Avalon helped us viewers with that, by providing an opening credits stock footage montage of scenes from the 1950s. This extensive sequence is amazing, because so much of the footage seems to have been chosen at random — the only prerequisite being that it looks like it was shot in the ’50s. How else to explain the repeated use of footage of a long-distance runner in training? It has nothing to do with the plot. This movie is about surfing blokes. Continue readingShitty Movie Sundays: Summer City”

What Rotten Luck

The United States has just about the only government left in the world that is hostile to the realities of global warming. The scientific consensus, that the globe is warming due to human activity, has been embroiled in party politics. There’s no false equivalency here, either. Turning global warming into a political fight is solely the responsibility of the Republican Party. Resistance to action to combat global warming is almost exclusively a Republican disease, and it affects everyone from donors, to legislators, all the way down to conservative voters. This is a huge problem considering that, until recently, the United States was the world’s largest producer of greenhouse gases, which are responsible for global warming. Continue reading “What Rotten Luck”