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Underground > Film, TV & Theatre >

Appalling films

Whisky Priestess

10:05 / 08.04.09

I searched for a thread specifically about bad films and there didn't seem to be one, so let me begin.

Two days ago it was my birthday. Having celebrated alcoholically over the weekend I decided to spend the evening itself on a quiet cinema outing with my sister. However, it being half term, the only films on a Monday night were pretty uninspiring - Deception, Two Lovers, The Boat that Rocked, something else that sounded lame, and Knowing.

Eventually my sister and I decided on Knowing, me on the basis that it looked sci-fi/disastery and she on the basis that it starred Nicolas Cage, whom she had not seen in a bad film yet. (This principle was meant to ensure that it was a good film, not that she could pop her Nic Cage in Bad Film cherry).

Oh my God it sucked. It started quite well, with a spooky little girl in the 1950s writing numbers which turn out to be predicted disasters on a piece of paper which goes into a time capsule.

50 years later, the deaf-but-not-really son (bear with me) of bereaved astrophysicist Nic Cage (bear with me) gets the piece of paper, and his father while staring at the news and accidentally pouring himself an entire tumbler of Black Bush to indicate his desperation, loneliness and incipient alcoholism (bear with me) sees the numbers 9/11 (out of about 1000 numbers on the page) in the whisky ring (BEAR WITH ME) and naturally leaps to *and proves* the conclusion that the numbers relate to major disasters.

There follows:
- spooky albino men following his son
- not nearly enough blowing shit up
- a wasted and pointless family back story with dead wife, nurse sister and pastor father
- a potential romance that goes nowhere with the daughter of the 1950s girl (now dead)
- a bunch of unexplained leaps of illogic on the part of Cage, involving solar flares and latitudes etc.
- gratuitous use of sentimental sign language (You. Me. Together. Forever.)
- lots of shiny black stones which are significant but again, not explained
- some aliens
- some bunnies
- the shittest ending ever

What happens when the numbers run out? So does the script, because I have rarely seen a more join-the-dots piece of formulaic rubbish as this (Faintheart excepted), so I just had to vent (and warn you all).

11:31 / 08.04.09

What got me was the terrible 'THIS IS A CHRISTIAN ALLEGORY' shit they start hittingi you over the head with about halfway through the film. Cage as the GODLESS SCIENTIST who must be reconciled with his FAITHFUL FAMILY; the Von Daniken meets Left Behind angaliens; and the fact that until the prophecy is interpreted nobody notices the massive solar flare that's building - it was bullshit, really, televengelical christian science fiction from writers who understand neither christianity, science or, indeed, fiction.

The 'typical user comment' n the film's IMDB page reads 'wafer-thin religious claptrap', and I couldn't agree more.

Whisky Priestess

13:03 / 08.04.09

Do you know what, even though the aliens grow glowy ethereal wings LIKE ANGELS, I totally missed the Christian allegory part?

I think I must have a blind spot for religious references, for which I'm actually quite grateful. I managed to read the whole of the Chronicles of Narnia without getting that it was an allegory, Aslan was Christ etc.

19:28 / 08.04.09

Nicolas Cage, whom she had not seen in a bad film yet.

She doesn't get out much, does she?

alex supertramp

21:16 / 08.04.09

The Day The Earth Stood Still with Keanu Reeves was particularly bad. It had about 5 minutes of actual plot, with an hour and 20 minutes of cool looking CGI.

00:03 / 09.04.09

Nicolas Cage, whom she had not seen in a bad film yet.

She doesn't get out much, does she?

I thought, she's not seen ninety percent of Cage's work then, obviously. I have a hard time understanding some actors who can be decent or even good at times, and then in so many truly terrible movies. I understand a paycheck for an actor can be hard to come by (looking at Gary Oldman), and sometimes they don't know that something will be as bad as it ends up being, but you know if you're getting into a Bruckheimer, it's a Bruckheimer.

Which reminds me of one of those people who makes bad shit. The one I most hate, who for some reason is admired, is Brian De Palma. Fucks sake, that guy makes some horrible movies.

03:20 / 09.04.09

See, I thought John Cusack could do no wrong. Say Anything, High Fidelity, One Crazy Summer... I thought he could stroll through the set of a movie he wasn't even in, and make it better just by his presence alone.

But then he was in Con Air. With Nicholas Cage. And I was sad.

The thing about Nicholas Cage, I think, is that he is Nicholas Cage in every movie. When the movie calls for him to be Nicholas Cage, it works. When it wants him to stretch his boundaries a bit, the movie falls on its face.

06:37 / 09.04.09

Wow. The Planet of the Apes 2001 remake was pretty bad, but one should look at the wiki and read up on its development history to see exactly how awful it could've been.

The words "apes skiing" are mentioned, and a Fox Executive by the name of Dylan Sellers proposed the following scene:

"What if Robinson finds himself in Ape land and the Apes are trying to play baseball? But they're missing one element, like the pitcher or something." Sellers continued. "Robinson knows what they're missing and he shows them, and they all start playing."

07:16 / 09.04.09

Con Air is an amazing film. It should be in the thread for amazing films. It has no place here.

08:47 / 09.04.09

The second X-Files movie was somewhat soul-numbing. I actually felt like I wanted by 88 minutes back.

10:54 / 09.04.09

I feel I should nominate Grease 2 in this category. With the possible exception of the song 'Reproduction' it's truly, truly awful. It tries to cash in on the success of the first film, despite having pretty much nothing to do with it and fails dismally. If you haven't seen it, don't. Just don't.

11:11 / 09.04.09

As part of my film degree I watched Birth Of A Nation by DW Griffith. While innovative in his use of cinematic techniques it's offensive in pretty much every other way. A story about how black people were much happier as slaves, with the Klu Klux Klan as heroes, right down to a dramatic sequence at the end where they prevent a white woman being attacked by a black man, coming to the rescue accompanied by 'Ride of the Valkyries'. Its release actually led to a resurgence in the popularity of the KKK.
And yet it's still not as bad as Swordfish, starring John Travolta and Hugh Jackman...

11:49 / 09.04.09

The thing about Nicholas Cage, I think, is that he is Nicholas Cage in every movie. When the movie calls for him to be Nicholas Cage, it works. When it wants him to stretch his boundaries a bit, the movie falls on its face.

An inability to stretch one's boundaries in as much as stretching one's boundaries in this case means "acting like somebody other than who you are" strikes me as a problem for someone who is, by profession, an "actor".

Kali, Queen of Kitteh

12:14 / 09.04.09

I second the second X-Files movie. While I am still appalled that I paid five dollars to see it, I am glad it was only five dollars.

01:18 / 10.04.09

For staring in disbelief for an hour and a half I've found John Leguizamo's The Pest hard to top.

02:45 / 10.04.09

Oh Shit.

ONLY NICE THINGS

09:20 / 10.04.09

Come on, people! Let's get some positivity going here! These are all things that creative people went to considerable effort to create.

10:24 / 10.04.09

Well, mistakes are an absolutely essential part of the creative process. But there's a reason they're mistakes.

For my sins, I have seen The Pest on more than one occasion.

ONLY NICE THINGS

10:45 / 10.04.09

You guys. So negative.

Nicholas Cage saying "I teach astrophysics at MIT" is now one of my fondest memories.

Whisky Priestess

11:15 / 10.04.09

You've got to love that scene in the classroom where for the purposes of the plot he throws model planets at students' heads and asks them to explain what determinism is.

My favourite character was his mate who wanted to introduce him to a female friend "Ph double-D". Another character and plot strand that went nowhere ...

16:18 / 10.04.09

I think the worst film i have ever sat though (well, the first 20 mins in this case) was a test screening in London last year of a film called The Fighter or something like that. It was the typical 'young man gets taken from the streets by dodgy gangsters to perform for them at underground fighting club' type thing. It was bloody awful. I'd had a few before hand and unfortunatly was sat next to the clipboard wielding producers or something. I don't think i've laughed at the wrong moments so hard and out of sync with the rest of the, admittedly mostly 15 year, audience in my life. Comedy Russian baddies with semi naked strippers in every scene really. I had to walk out and get to the pub after 20 minutes or so after telling the clipboards loudly what a load of shit it was (um..like i said, i'd had a few). My 16 yr old son came out 10 mins after that shaking his head in dismay at the film industry.

The best bit though was that the 6ft 2, impossibly handsome, blond, homeless hero who gets picked up to fight was actually scraping a meager living on the streets of New York BY SELLING FAKE HARRY POTTER BOOKS OFF OF A BLANKET IN THE STREET! That was classic though i admit.

20:00 / 10.04.09

These are all things that creative people went to considerable effort to create.

Yes, things like "Hart's War" and "The Jackal".

15:46 / 11.04.09

Con Air is an amazing film. It should be in the thread for amazing films. It has no place here.

To agree with the 'boss! I feel like I don't even know the rest of you anymore.

Con Air has contains, pulp action, Steve Buscemi as a serial killer who wears heads like hats, John Malkovich as a vicious Lex Luthor, a frozen corpse postal service, plane crashes, a punch-out on a firetruck, and more!

12:53 / 18.04.09

I don't think i've laughed at the wrong moments so hard and out of sync with the rest of the, admittedly mostly 15 year, audience in my life

That was like my reaction to the 'Everyone Else!' scene in Knowing. The rest of the audience had this sharp, shocked intake of breath - 'OMG, everyone is going to die! - and I just laughed my head off for thirty seconds straight at the sheer stupidity of it.

14:16 / 18.04.09

Shut up, heathens. Nic "The Cage" Cage is one of the damn finest actors of his generation. A true entertainer in the old tradition, his entertainingness can't be confined to the screen, but comes across regardless of the medium.

By now someone in the industry should have already realized the need for a special contract that allowed Nicolas Cage - demanded of him - that he should appear in every movie made until his death (to be continued then by the available digital simulacrum of choice).

19:38 / 18.04.09

Nuke, don't forget machine porn. Con Air, like all Brukheimer/Bay movies, loves some machine porn.