Tag: Prison Break Flick

Shitty Movie Sundays: Alcatraz (2018)

Alcatraz (2018) movie posterMy favorite bad movies are ones from outsider filmmakers who pour their hearts and souls into making their films. They may not know what they’re doing, and they usually have resources to match, yet they persevere, often through years of adversity, to get their projects to audiences.

My least favorite bad movies are treated as little more than commodities — something produced to get to market as quickly as possible, with little use for the skills and talents of those involved. In fact, talent is a burden, as it would cost the production more money.

Today’s film is from one of the most prolific shitty movie filmmakers working today, and it falls very much into the category of commodity filmmaking.

From writer/director/producer Andrew Jones comes Alcatraz, a fictional retelling of the so-called Battle of Alcatraz, wherein a small group of inmates attempted to escape the legendary prison in 1946 by taking guards hostage. There’s no reason to go further into the real-life details, as the movie didn’t use them. Continue reading “Shitty Movie Sundays: Alcatraz (2018)”

Shitty Movie Sundays: Chain Gang Women

We have been hornswoggled. We have been bamboozled. Hoodwinked. Swindled. Tricked, and defrauded. A movie with a title such as Chain Gang Women has obligations to be met. There needs to be women. On a chain gang. And there should be, at minimum, two nude shower scenes. A film with a title like this owes its audience genuine exploitative sleaze. This flick is that, to be sure, but to an inadequate extent. Nor does that change the fact that viewers are the victims of shameless misdirection in the pursuit of drive-in dollars. I shall explain. Continue reading “Shitty Movie Sundays: Chain Gang Women”

Stallone Month: Victory, aka Escape to Victory

The Vietnam War wreaked havoc on the United States — its sense of self-worth; its trust in leadership, both civilian and military; and its ideas of what constitute heroism. Vietnam was the first war we fought where the awful violence wasn’t hidden from us. It was also our first tick in the loss column. There are a whole host of complex emotions that war put us through. It’s no surprise, then, that war films made after the Vietnam War ended are quite different than those that came before. There were still a few holdouts, however — anachronisms from the earlier style. Continue reading “Stallone Month: Victory, aka Escape to Victory”

Shitty Movie Sundays: Escape Plan

After a long lull in their careers, it’s refreshing to see Sly Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger unapologetically doing what they do best, which is killing people and blowing shit up, all for the benefit of the movie going public. I can’t speak for the rest of audiences worldwide, but I can attest that in the last thirty years, my tastes have grown more sophisticated, as has my expectation of believability in any film. Unless, that is, the movie is shitty. In a shitty movie, it’s okay for bullets to blow up gas tanks. In a shitty movie, it’s fine with me when bad guys toting M4 carbines can’t hit the good guy, while, at the same time, the good guy is picking them off with little problem using a handgun. In high-falutin’ cinema, it’s bad form to end the climactic action scene with a cheesy one-liner. But in a shitty movie, that’s okay! Continue reading “Shitty Movie Sundays: Escape Plan”

The Empty Balcony: Runaway Train

1985’s Runaway Train is a very unique film. It’s American made, filmed in the white wastes of Alaska, but in a blind taste test, cinephiles would swear it was a Russian film. The film stock, the cinematography, set designs, costumes, etc., all scream that the film was made on the other side of the Iron Curtain. That’s not by design, but a result of the film being helmed by Andrei Konchalovsky, who, until the 1980s, was a Soviet filmmaker. Continue reading “The Empty Balcony: Runaway Train”