As I have slipped out of capasity to blog the cluster of movies I've seen while sick, I see JP has took the reigns of this blog and documented them along with his 2 cents. I noticed that we are masochists for bad movies. I'm not entirely sure why that is but I think its a vice we developed somewhere in our relationship.Its a compulsion, an addiction to work in at least one movie we know is going to be horrible. Thats the fun of it. Its the fun of satisfying our masochistic curiosty and cracking jokes all the way through. Its our own MST3K and we have a blast. There's bad movies and then there's bad movies. The bad movies I crave are the kind that give you all that fun stated above. Cheesy one-liners, ridiculous premise, blood, gore, erotic sex scenes with lots of saxophone, over-the-top cheese. Classic examples would be Basic Instinct, Dead Alive, Showgirls, Dawn of the Dead part 2 and the often referenced Ginger Dead Man. Movies that spark weird looks and question from the Blockbuster clerks "So...how WAS that movie?" Then there are bad movies that are just...a godawful waste of time. Movies that are bad and not even bad in a good way. Movies like Step Up, Pearl Harbor,American Psycho 2, Swept Away, and A Scanner Darkly. Sometimes they trick you and make you think that they will be awesomely bad in that good way. You're thinking, this is going to be hilarious. Then they disappoint you and waste your time and make you regret giving up 2 hours of your life to that movie, it was so bad.
I think JP, being the movie-whore he is, has a little trouble recognizing the difference between the 2 kinds of bad and he ends up coming home with Step Up and A Scanner Darkly. Lately, I havent even been able to defend myself from being sick. and sometimes its my fault. I am fooled by what I think a movie will be like or fall into a rut of straight-to-video horror movies that will wear down JP after a while if he doesn't stop me and insist on a quality movie like Capote or Brick or something to break up the rut. But seriously, I thought I was going to have to watch The Dukes of Hazard or Fantastic 4 because of JPs whorish ways and he still thinks that just because people put up a bajillion dollars to make the movie, that it will be worth watching. That is I think what blocks his vision of what makes a bad movie fun and confuses him of good-bad and bad-bad. He's enticed by the damn budget. Typical accountant-ish JP.
Anyway, the reason I address this bad movie business is that there is a cluster of them recently viewed by us while I am recovering from being sick. Movies so bad, they dont even deserve their own posts. I dont have the strength.
2 comments:
That reminds me, we still need to see Fantastic Four....
Seriously, I take exception to some of that. It's not just the budget that makes me give it a try, it is curiosity. The ambition involved in getting dozens of people together and spending $75 Million dollars and 6 months to create something... you just have to satisfy the curiosity of seeing it.
Odds are it just your average, popcorn, big-budget blockbuster. But maybe not. What if it's a hit? What if it's a quirky self-aware sleeper? Maybe it's something great I don't even know about.
The truth of the matter is that I want to see what the hell Ashton and Costner were doing hanging from that helicopter, even if it is a recycled Top Gun-meets-Cliffhanger with a splash of saltwater for taste. let's find out.
And, well, They can't all be winners can they?
And usually there is something to take away from the film. Part of the point of this blog is to tease out the meaning and the value in seeing a movie- even if on the whole it is a bad movie. See the Scanner Darkly review for possibly the best example of this so far (a category 2 film by your standards). It was flawed, but I'm glad we saw it. It had redeeming qualities. So did X-Men and Click and Scoop and a bunch of other movies that were less then 3-star efforts.
If we only ever watched good movies, think of all we'd miss.
I'm not talking about watching all good movies. Sliver and Heart Stopper aren't "Good Movies". They are bad movies. Bad in a good way, which is my point. Fantastic 4 is bad in a bad way. I dont know why you even want to see it. Yes, they spent a lot of money on it but if it was a "hit", you would have heard good things. NOBODY liked that movie. EVERYBODY who saw it, told us not to waste out time. Wanna know what its like? Look it up on Rotten Tomatoes and see how the green tomato splats outnumber the fresh red ones. Save yourself some time.
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