Bad CGI – Page 6 – Missile Test

Shitty Movie Sundays: The Blackout, aka The Blackout: Invasion Earth

Just to prove that the United States and China aren’t the only nations that can produce a jingoistic alien invasion flick, Russia has given us The Blackout, wherein an alien invasion blacks out power over the entire planet, except for a circle centered around Moscow.

From screenwriter Ilya Kulikov and director Egor Baranov, The Blackout follows a small group of Russian soldiers as they try to stave off the invasion and keep Moscow safe. This flick didn’t have much of a budget, but Baranov and company still managed to put together a film with an expansive plot and some decent explosions here and there. Look closely, and one will notice how few real locations there really are, but that’s not worth bothering about, especially with all the other shit thrown a viewer’s way.

The main focus, if this scatterbrained flick can be said to have a focus, is on Oleg and Yuriy (Aleksey Chadov and Pyotr Fyodorov), a pair of world-weary soldiers who are on the front lines of the invasion. The filmmakers also crammed in some love interests for the pair, in TV journalist Olga (Svetlana Ivanova) and army doctor Alyona (Lukerya Ilyashenko). It’s these four that garner most of the screen time, so potential viewers should be prepared for some poorly written romance. The good news is, all that nonsense is on the periphery. What this movie is really about, is throwing every plot idea they had against the wall and seeing what sticks. Continue reading “Shitty Movie Sundays: The Blackout, aka The Blackout: Invasion Earth”

Shitty Movie Sundays: Speed Kills

Last week Missile Test heaped praise upon William Shatner, for his lifetime contribution to shitty cinema. This week features a different flavor of shitty movie actor — one whose star shined brightly in Hollywood, but whose latter career has been spent in direct-to-video schlock. Who could it be? Bruce Willis? Mel Gibson? Samuel L. Jackson? Morgan Freeman? Denzel Washington? All of those men, some with Academy hardware, have seen their careers drift away from the type of blockbusters that made them famous, but they are not the star of today’s reviewed film. Today’s film stars John Travolta, the one and only 21^st century shitty movie actor who can give Nicolas Cage a run for his money. Continue reading “Shitty Movie Sundays: Speed Kills”

Shitty Movie Sundays: Road Wars

Road Wars movie poster The Asylum is shameless. When they’re not churning out giant monster flicks starring washed-up TV stars for SyFy, they’re taking advantage of blockbuster movies, attaching themselves like remora and feeding off scraps. They have taken the idea of the mockbuster, cinema’s short con, and elevated it. Not to art, but it’s definitely something they’ve honed.

I like that The Asylum has no shame. It’s different than what a filmmaker like Roger Corman has done throughout his career. Corman was a filmmaker with talent, and he threw it all away to chase the cheap buck. The Asylum, by contrast, has always been a house of shit.

Road Wars was in the can and ready to release direct-to-video early in May of 2015, timed to match the upcoming release of Mad Max: Fury Road. That’s the film Road Wars is ripping off. From the mishmash black leather outfits and shoulder pads (my favorite accoutrement was a bicycle reflector attached to an epaulette), to old muscle cars with all sorts of metal shit welded on to them, to the desert setting (California City, take a bow), to the derivative title, this is almost enough of a ripoff for the rights holders of Mad Max to sue. That makes this shitty flick a proper mockbuster. Continue reading “Shitty Movie Sundays: Road Wars”

Shitty Movie Sundays: Virtuosity

We here at Missile Test love a big budget flop. We love it when A-list stars and up-and-comers bound for greatness show up in a film that has big ideas and tiny payoff. We love it when Hollywood pretensions and conceits come back to bite them in the ass. It’s even better when the whole package is absurd — when a film makes a viewer wonder, “what were they thinking?”

Virtuosity is one of Hollywood’s earlier attempts to parse the Information Age, and its effects on the wider world. Released in 1995, its assumptions about the future can be laughable at times. What doomed this movie in 1995 was that its vision was somewhat laughable back then, as well. Continue reading “Shitty Movie Sundays: Virtuosity”

Shitty Movie Sundays: Beyond the Trek, aka Teleios

This is something of a nothingburger movie. Originally titled Teleios, at some point after a few film festival showings and before it was released to DVD, the title was changed to Beyond the Trek to take advantage of the release of Star Trek Beyond. This flick even uses a title font similar to Star Trek’s, all to chase that sweet mockbuster cash. But, this isn’t a mockbuster. Rather, Beyond the Trek is a magnum opus from writer/director Ian Truitner. It’s a film with profound depth in its ideas, and about a nickel’s worth of budget to bring those ideas to fruition. Continue reading “Shitty Movie Sundays: Beyond the Trek, aka Teleios”

Shitty Movie Sundays: Sci-Fighter, aka X-Treme Fighter

This flick is a dog. A lowdown, dirty, mangy, half-starved, living under an old sheet of plywood out back in the alley dog. It’s a flick that was made for the souvenir table at the All-Valley Championships and the dollar DVD bins at the gas station. Selling five copies probably recouped the entire production budget. It’s also something of an in-house production for martial arts pros — a way to get their faces outside of the dojos and exhibitions, and maybe make a couple bucks doing it. Continue reading “Shitty Movie Sundays: Sci-Fighter, aka X-Treme Fighter”

Shitty Movie Sundays: 2036 Origin Unknown

2036 Origin Unknown movie poster Shitty movie fans are a tolerant bunch. We put up with bad scripts, bad direction, bad acting, and all-around incompetence, all in the search for the one shitty film out of a dozen that scratches our peculiar itch. For every Road House, there is a pile of films like Driven; for every Anaconda, a passel of Ghosts of War; and, for every expansive adventure like Spacehunter, there are an abundance of one-location bore-fests like 2036 Origin Unknown.

It’s the future! 2036! And space scientist Mack Wilson (Katee Sackhoff) is alone in a room talking to an AI called ARTI (voiced by Steven Cree). The two of them are mission control for a Mars rover expedition, sent to the red planet to find out what happened to a manned mission that crashed there some years earlier. The rover reaches the crash site and discovers a giant cube, origin unknown. Before they realize what is happening, the cube is gone, having teleported itself to Antarctica. What follows is some nonsensical claptrap, inane conversation between Mack and ARTI, and an ending that is supposed to make one think, I think. Continue reading “Shitty Movie Sundays: 2036 Origin Unknown”

Shitty Movie Sundays: 2307: Winter’s Dream

I’m glad that filmmakers are still making flicks like this. It’s schlock from the ground up, and the only thing that harms its shitty movie cred is the fact it was filmed in digital HD. Pardon a short rant that is going to make me sound like the old man I am steadily becoming, but shitty movies in the age of celluloid had an extra sheen of cheapness that has been lost. In the past, shitty filmmakers had to rent cheap cameras and lenses, and buy substandard film stock and processing, to get their films made. The difference in visual quality was stark, compared to big time productions. These days, however, a movie can get made with a digital SLR that costs a few thousand bucks, or even a smartphone, and the visual quality is much closer to what one gets from proper, high-end digital cameras. Part of the joy of watching an old shitty movie is bad film stock, and that is gone forever. Too bad. Anyway… Continue reading “Shitty Movie Sundays: 2307: Winter’s Dream”

October Horrorshow: Boar

I love a bloody, gory horror flick. Especially one with a monster that oozes and drips foul disgustingness. Not every day, mind you, but no October is complete without a film that makes a mess out of its cast.

Boar, the 2017 horror flick from Australia, did very well scratching that bizarre itch. My biggest criticism is that, although it delivered the nasty goods, it was kind of a bummer. A film where half the cast is brutally killed, a bummer? Who would have thought, right? But, if horror flicks weren’t a good time, for the most part, they wouldn’t be so prevalent and so profitable. Maybe we viewers are just diseased. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Boar”

October Horrorshow: Inmate Zero, aka Patients of a Saint

Inmate Zero is a pretty generic title for a zombie flick. But, it does have the benefit of not only fitting the story, but letting any potential viewers know what they’re in for. It’s a much more honest approach than giving a movie an evocative title and then failing to deliver, à la The Thirsty Dead. That’s just a con. Either way, Inmate Zero, as basic a title as that may be, is still much better than Patients of a Saint, the title under which this film was originally released. That is just awful. This is a zombie flick, not some agonizing Jane Austen romance. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Inmate Zero, aka Patients of a Saint”