Bad movie night

[trinityvixen]

So far this evening, I've caught the last twenty minutes of Doom and am about as long again into Alone in the Dark, a movie that xannoside swore up and down was like the worst he'd ever seen. I've also noted that Cube Zero, the second shitty sequel to Cube is on, and buzzed that for about six seconds (long as I could stand it, folks).

What I've learned from this masochistic abuse:

1. Karl Urban is fucking hot, no matter how shitty things look all around him or even if he is starring in Doom.
Yes, even when he had the braided mullet-o-doom (no pun intended) in The Chronicles of Riddick, he stayed fairly hot. With short, spiked hair, some injuries, and lots of grunting as he gets beat up, he's even more so. This is no excuse for watching any part of Doom. However, I am really glad that that is as much of the movie as I had to watch before I felt incredibly nauseated. Shooting a movie like it's a first-person shooter? SO NOT COOL. I can't explain how come I can put up with FPSes when I play them, but watching a movie version of that, with the gun bobbing around in the corner and the creatures constantly attacking outward from the screen? I might be sick just thinking about it. I thought it was stupid when I saw the trailers. Now I know: it's not stupid, it's advaaaaaaanced (aka insane).

2. The Rock versus anyone is not a fair fight except in the movies.
He's big. 'Nuff said. Not that it wasn't fun to see him taken down by the scrawny guy, but yeah, the fuck you say.

3. The years have not been kind to Christian Slater's body, but his voice remains fairly distinctive.
Really, he sounds like your ideal reader for certain books on tape. I guess it helps that he was doing a noir-ish reading of what is basically a knockoff of The Relic. From what I've seen so far, I mean.

4. Tara Reid in glasses may look less slutty, but she is still Tara Reid in glasses. Asking anyone to believe that she's smarter than a postage stamp, let alone assistant curator or whatever, is a bit much.
Look, playing to type is okay--hell, people win Oscars playing to type. Tara Reid can play to type, and kudos for letting her act like a bitch because that's almost getting the idea. But you can teach her to say one complicated word with an accent and have it not make a dent in her overall aura of stupidity. She oozes it, and all the "Ooh, look, I'm smart!" lines you throw at here only bounce off her protective buffer of irritating idiocy and make it that much more obvious she can't act, let alone act smart.

5. A great idea for making a sequel: have the new people stuck in the deathtrap rehash the same exact problems as the people who were in the first movie.
It's a cube. It's loaded with booby traps. We get it. Oh, look, coordinates! Because that's obviously what the numbers/letters must be. Let's not even think about it because we saw Cube and we know how this works. Woo!

6. You know what the problem with Cube was? They never answered the question of why the cube existed and why the people were in it. Our sequel is that much more awesome because we do explain it. And our intrepid heroes are going to figure it out so they can stop it from ever being used again!!!
Because movie watchers hate subtlety. It's best you explain it. Using words with fewer than three syllables, please; after all, I just watched Doom and things aren't looking good for my brain to be surviving Alone in the Dark either...

Comments

[moonlightalice.livejournal.com]

See, this is what I was talking about in that meme... :P

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

KWEEHHHH????

[moonlightalice.livejournal.com]

5. If you could change anything about me, would you? I'd probably stop you from watching the plethora of bad movies you often subject yourself to

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

LOL, right, I totally forgot about that. You may have had a point there.

[moonlightalice.livejournal.com]

See, when I watch bad movies I worry that every bad one I see pushes out something good I've seen. Like Homer! "Everytime I learn something new, I forget something else. Remember when I took that wine-tasting course and forgot how to drive?"

[ecmyers.livejournal.com]

Why do you do this to yourself?

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

I have to believe it's because I can appreciate good movies better. Also, there's not a whole lot on, and I'm dead bored at home. Fortunately, I'm also dead tired and won't be doing this for much longer.

[droidguy1119.livejournal.com]

Alone in the Dark wasn't nearly as bad as I expected. It was terrible, but it was more like a "SciFi Channel Original Movie" terrible than a genuinely repulsive movie. I doubt I could subject myself to House of the Dead, though.

As for Cube Zero, I just liked it because it was like the original without the horrendous acting. Not that the performances in Cube Zero are masterpieces of acting, but the blonde woman and the black cop in Cube are two examples of probably the most stupid acting I've ever seen.

Doom was bad. But it was better than Alone in the Dark.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Doom had a budget, and didn't have Uwe Boll, so it's pretty much guaranteed not to suck as much as Alone in the Dark.

I think the acting wasn't great in Cube, sure, but it was effective, and the movie overall worked better. What little I could stomach of Cube Zero bored me to tears and tried to lay out the story, which eliminates the mystery and the pointed pointlessness (which is even noticed by the people in the cube in the movie) of Cube.

House of the Dead was a hundred times worse. As was Bloodrayne. So, within his own distinct ouevre, Uwe Boll has layers of suck.

[droidguy1119.livejournal.com]

I think my problem with Cube's acting was worsened because that one sarcastic guy (I think the actor was David Hewlett) and the disabled blonde guy were particularly good actors, which just resulted in a very bad contrast with the two who sucked. To me, the result was like a movie that would occasionally make good on all of its potential, but then lose it when one of those other two actors spoke.

As for Cube Zero, I don't feel much need to defend it. I watched it once and I've mostly forgotten it. The one part that I did think was hilariously bad was the weird "in-charge" guy they called on the telephone, who looked like he thought he was playing a magician.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

God, I stopped watching in spurts, so I have no idea. It wasn't good enough to keep up with.

[jethrien.livejournal.com]

So what was the excuse they came up with for the Cube's existence?

(I do kind of agree - having actual motivation does defeat a lot of the purpose.)

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Uh, you know, I missed the explicit reasoning. It was explained, but I didn't see it (I couldn't keep watching it, it was terrible). I just took it as granted that they explained everything given that they were observing people within the cube and making the insertions of people into it. And some guy rebelled and got lobotomized and stuck into it like the retarded guy from the first one (which is supposed to be all "oooh, so that's where Kazan came from!" but is just stupid because autism and its quirks are infinitely different from someone who's been lobotomized).

[viridian.livejournal.com]

Wow. That sounds pretty terrible all around.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

It sure was. The scant minutes of Karl Urban being hot don't make up for it. I need another hobby besides self abuse.

Don't know about the others

[arcfox7.livejournal.com]

But I liked Doom. umeyard had bought it cheap for me on a whim, and I liked it. I love the guns with ids. I loved reaper, he was bad ass. I thought it had a couple twists I didn't expect. I actually loved the 1st person shooter part, but maybe it's cause I've played a bunch of Doom previously.

I think you built it up to be better than it was and so you were dissapointed. I thought/expected nothing and was pleasantly suprised.
much aloha,
D

Re: Don't know about the others

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

I built it up to be crap. It managed to disappoint me, which speaks ill for it.

Okay, so I saw the last twenty minutes and had no investment in the "plot" or the "characters" but I got most of the relative interactions. Karl Urban was the hero looking to save his sister, The Rock was the action guy, whoever the girl was was the girl.

I hate the simulation of an FPS. Because you're not controlling it, it feels unwieldy and nauseating. Plus, it's frickin' lazy filmmaking. Instead of shooting tense, claustrophobic scenes, they let someone animate an action game you're not participating in. Doom may be fun to play, but games like that aren't all that fun to watch. There's no background, you can't linger on anything that the character doesn't linger on since his eyes are all you see. Plus, it distanced you from the horror of the monsters by using imperfect human depth perception (as imitated by computer simulation) to imagine how close they were getting. Stoopid.

I'd say, "Hey, maybe I was wrong and should give it a real try again" but it made me too nauseated to do that after twenty minutes. A full movie of that bobbing around, I'd probably blow goat chunks.