Bad Movie Thursday

Starring: John Travolta, Forest Whitaker, Barry Pepper

Date Watched: 8/27/2020

Plot: It’s the year 3000 A.D., and the Earth is lost to the alien race of Psychlos. Humanity is enslaved by these gold-thirsty tyrants, who are unaware that their ‘man-animals’ are about to ignite the rebellion of a lifetime.

Rules

• “Leverage”
• Wipe (scene transitions)
• Psychlos talking about or presenting gold
• Dutch (i.e. skewed) camera angle (advanced rule)
• Slow motion
• “Man-animal” (expert rule)

Quotes

• “As a friend I could forget to file the report… but unfortunately, I’m not your friend!”
• Dog?  Obviously the superior race, having man-animal chauffeur it around.”
• “You sure called that one, sir.  He certainly didn’t find those picto-cameras.”
• “Hope is an admirable quality, but foolish isn’t.”
• “You made me as happy as a baby pcychlo on a straight diet of kerbango.”
• “You imbecile!  What kind of crap-lousy game are you playing?”

Viewer Quotes

• “What do we know about Scientology?”  –  “Well, it’s based around some god… Zathura?”

Things We Learned

• Glass is godstone.
• Dog is the superior race.
• Gold is just dripping off the mountains of Colorado in the future.
• Dutch angles are skewed shots.  Every shot in Battlefield Earth is dutch.
• The great weakness of the Psychlo race is that they can’t move fast at all.

Final Take: This was a re-watch of a treasured favorite, one of the Bad Movie Thursday originals.  It held up pretty well.  It’s still a nonsensical mess, clearly conceived by the mind of a madman.  The rules all played well, especially “Leverage” and the scene wipe.  God help you if you play by the advanced or expert rules. It was a fun trip down memory lane and worth the time.  Just don’t try to read any meaning into it or plug the plot holes.

Viewing Date: 8/6/20

Starring: Meera Rohit Kumbhani, Nick Thune, Adam Busch

Plot: Dave, an artist who has yet to complete anything significant in his career, builds a fort in his living room out of pure frustration, only to wind up trapped by the fantastical pitfalls, booby traps, and critters of his own creation. (via IMDB)

Rules

• Origami
• “It’s bigger than it looks” or other references to the size of the Maze
• “Maze”  (borderline advanced rule

Quotes

• “Did she die or did she just turn into a craft project?”
• “Everyone are assholes!”  “Is.”  “Everyone is assholes!  No that doesn’t sound right.”
• “Hey Brynn.  Thought you were dead.”

Viewer Quotes

• I think we needed mushrooms to watch this.” (several other similar quotes about this movie and drugs)

What We Learned

• It’s an old fort trick to use a towel and tape.
• Life is a series of incomplete moments of which there is no escape.
• When you die in a cardboard maze, your blood and guts become paper products.
• The only thing a minotaur wants more than to eat human flesh is to be free (and eventually go to a bar).

Final Take

This movie has apparently won several independent movie awards and based on the ratings, is very popular.  It was SO close to hitting the checkmarks of a cult classic.  The movie starts out really strong, has some funny moments and bizarre trippy scenes (the puppets, the optical illusion room) that bring me back to the crazy movies that we loved in high school and college (like Meet the Feebles).  Unfortunately, the movie really lost steam from about half way on and the end wasn’t anything special.  Still worth watching, it just falls short of what could have been a BMT classic.