Film School Rejects » Movies That Suck

Movies that Suck: One Crazy Summer

Danny Gallagher — Wed, 07 May 2008 16:26:37 +0000

Thank Buddha because the summer movie season is finally here!

That means it’s time for big budget movies with huge explosions, large naked breasts, rap stars sipping root beer in skull mugs. Plus all the stars are coming out of the woodwork to appear in these blockbusters meaning all of these huge, explosive and larger than life films are guaranteed to be Grade A, number one…all right, let’s cut the PR cue card talk already. If you want mindless, happy fluff about movies no one has seen, go read Variety or Ain’t It Cool News.

Folks, I’ll level with you. The thought of another summer movie season gives my headaches a headache and the fact that I have to sit through them for work makes me wish for the long loving embrace of the winter when mountains of freezing, blistering snow blocks the road, keep you from leaving your home and close down the movie theaters for weeks at a time.

So instead of going on and on and on about which movies are a waste of time or what movies will suck (here’s a hint: they all are), let’s change the scenery with some “Mashed-Up Movies.” For the unfamiliar, the game was created months ago by myself, my brother and my best friend in a downtown Dallas steakhouse on a hot summer afternoon after several tall cold beers, the fuel for all great things we consider to be modern creations of genius.

The rules are simple: you take two movies that have the same last and first word and mash them together to create a new movie, thereby saving you the time and money of having to watch two crappy movies at once. So this week in honor of another dreadful summer movie season, these “Mashed Movies” will all feature an upcoming movie release. Think of it as an intentionally funny episode of “Ebert & Roeper At the Movies.”

First up, four smoking hot MILF friends come back together to share the trials and tribulations of their lives, their loves and their love lives while driving a herd of cattle across the picturesque southwest with a gruff cowpoke who craps bigger than them. Sarah Jessica Parker and Jack Palance star in “SEX AND THE CITY SLICKERS.” This ride is gonna get bumpy.

A bumbling French detective falls in love with a beautiful maid accused of committing a murder he knows she did not commit, even if she wears silly face paint and laughs like a drugged up clown every time someone dies in “A SHOT IN THE DARK KNIGHT.”

Director Mike Judge tells the story of a depressed office drone who realizes life is too short to spend it behind a three cubicle walls and strives to achieve his lifelong dream of following in his chimp grandfather’s footsteps and returning to outer space in “OFFICE SPACE CHIMPS.” This summer, re-entry sucks.

Ed Norton plays a distraught teen who turns to a hate group for acceptance after his father is killed by two black men, but ends up learning about a huge conspiracy that threatens to tear at the very fabric of national security, government cover-ups and the existence of life on other planets in “AMERICAN HISTORY X FILES.”

Macaulay Culkin plays a kid who everyone thinks is a good little boy but really carries a heinous nature of evil and violence that he uses against his family who teams up with his best friend to make a homemade action movie in “THE GOOD SON OF RAMBOW.” Shoot first, ask questions about whether or not your cousin killed his mother later.

And finally Robert Downey Jr. stars as Tony Stark, a wealthy industrialist who builds himself a state-of-the-art bio suit after a life-threatening experience and decides to fight crime the only way he knows how – by going undercover as a cheerleader coach to protect a group of University of Texas cheerleaders who are the only witnesses in a federal murder case in “IRON MAN OF THE HOUSE.

Movies that Suck: Keeping Up with Our Joneses

Danny Gallagher — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 17:10:27 +0000

All addicts have their favorite hook-ups.

Every alcoholic goes to their favorite bar to get drunk because everyone behind the counter knows their favorite pour before they even open their mouth.

Every junkie goes to the favorite dealer to get high because they know they aren’t a cop.

Every john goes to their favorite prostitute because they remind them of their mother.

Movie addicts aren’t much different. They all have a movie store they go to, sometimes on a weekly basis, where they blow their paychecks on DVDs, posters and other assorted paraphernalia. They do it impulsively, without thinking about what financial responsibilities they will miss, what possessions will be repossessed or what bones will be broken and in how many places, all because they spent $70 bucks on “The Thin Man” box set instead of their student loan.

Their choice in stores also says a lot about themselves and their level of addiction. Some choose to go to the friendly neighborhood rental store, the one owned by the neighborhood hippie whose been there since Laserdiscs went out of style and has anywhere from five to seven screenplays sitting under a corner of the display case since one of the legs fell off years ago.

Some prefer to do their shopping online because you can find everything from the mainstream to the extremely rare if you poke around enough cyber corners. They also save a lot of money on sunscreen and gasoline, which might sound like an insult but given that global warming and oil companies are squeezing our budgets with the vice like grip of a medical tourniquet, we could actually learn something from these people, these pale, pasty, pathetic people.

The most delusional among us go to the big name store chains like Blockbuster and Circuit City, which are now merging to become one giant extremely crappy movie store company. It’s like poop hooking up with puke to become poop-puke.

My store always seems to be on my radar where ever I am. It’s on the way to my Dad’s apartment and there are only two roads to get to him: one is a toll road that doesn’t pass in front of the store and the other is a road that takes me directly to both. My subconscious movie nerd (I call him Bernard because all Bernard’s are nerds, yes I mean you Bernard) always reminds me to bring enough loose change for the ride there, but not enough for the ride back forcing me to take the road that runs directly in front of…hey it’s the movie store! Well, maybe I can stop and just do some browsing.

It’s one of those stores that sells old and used movies they bought from people who needed to sell it because they got sick of watching them, wanted to trade it in for something else or ran out of blood to sell and needed some quick cash before the bar closes. As soon as you walk in the front door, you’re smacked in the face with a cinder block of dusty DVD cover smell, movies abandoned by their masters long ago that have been repackaged, marked down and restocked for your viewing pleasure. For even the smallest of movie fans, the smell can become cocaine for your nose.

Every time I go there, I find something I haven’t seen that I should have or something I know I’ll like even though I’ve never heard of it before and I have to buy it. You can’t walk out of this store empty-handed. The dealers behind the counter are surly and sarcastic, and sigh loudly, even if you ask them a question as they wonder if you’re just stringing them along and wasting their time for someone who’s willing to do what it takes to make the money for their next score. There are no free rides on this rolley-coaster. It’s buy or beat it.

An hour later, I walk out of the place with a plastic bag full of movies and tapes and a wallet that’s as flat and sickly looking as the ozone layer. Addicts always say they can quit any time they want. Not me, I admit to my addictions. I say I don’t want to quit.

Besides, technically Bernard is the one with the problem. Did you know he also smokes crack?

Movies that Suck: Soylent Green is Charlton Heston!

Danny Gallagher — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 16:29:30 +0000

Whether you thought Charlton Heston was a God-fearing man who could actually make God fear him or another crazed gun nut who would shoot his mouth off faster than a bullet-spewing MP5, you have to admit he was a man worth admiring. Even if his opinions made you wish he’d croak just so you could pull his gun from cold dirty stinking paws, the damn dirty ape.

Heston and I wouldn’t get along politically on every issue on the scale. He supported the last three winning Republicans for president, and I consider George Bush and his son getting elected another sign that God may not exist. He was pro-life, and I’m pro-shut-the-hell-up. He supported gun rights and even ran the National Rifle Association, and I choose not to own guns or hunt because anything that involves getting up at 5 a.m. should be outlawed and used as torture on our enemies.

He held some opinions as bold as his voice, and he made no bones about sharing them with the world, whether they wanted to hear them or not. He practically started the celebrity pundit movement. Heston became one of the first celebrities to use his celebrity sway to try and affect public opinion. Without Heston, people with polar views like Susan Sarandon, Barbara Streisand and George Clooney wouldn’t spend every waking minute in front of a camera telling the world what they should and shouldn’t do. Damn you bastards! You blew it out of proportion! Damn you all to Hell!

Now that he’s passed on, a lot of people will remember him for the stances he took, especially those who didn’t agree with him. Those people need to get a pro-life.

Heston was, at his deepest core, an actor and a movie star. That’s what he did for a living. It’s hard to erase some of the images his activism created. Who can forget Heston standing before a group of gun crazies behind the podium with a musket that could rip a hole in a Buick in his wrinkled grip as he hoisted in the air and exclaiming in that deep, baritone voice “From my cold dead hands”? I can’t because all I could think was, “At least give us some other options.”

But that shouldn’t be what he’s remembered for, and even though it was a big part of his life, a lot of the media retrospectives trotted out that very image on just about every airwave that’s shot across the dark American sky. I’m sure a lot of middle aged, Red state Republicans didn’t have to take their Viagra that night, but Heston had a greater impact on the world.

This is the guy whose performances in movies helped anchor them in the rough waters of time like “Ben Hur,” “The Ten Commandments,” “Planet of the Apes,” “Soylent Green” and “Wayne’s World 2.”

This is the guy who told the world that soylent green was people, told Ramses that he would get his ass kicked by God if he didn’t let his people go and told unaware audiences that apes destroyed America, which I’m sure was some kind of thinly veiled rally for intelligent design, but that would destroy my point.

Politics seems to be creeping into every facet of our culture these days like some flesh hungry blob that oozes into every crevice and crack. It’s become so entrenched in our psyche that we let it think for us, speak for us and even act for us, and trying to separate it is like trying to separate coffee and milk with nothing but your bare hands.

Don’t remember him for “From my cold dead hands.” Remember him for “Get your stinking paws off of me, you damn dirty apes.” You can even remember him by combining the two. “Get your cold dead hands off of my gun, you damn dirty apes.” At least it’s a step.

Movies that Suck: Alone in the Dark

Danny Gallagher — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 22:04:04 +0000

Something like this only happens once every two or three lifetimes. It’s the kind of moment that should be reserved for people who find the cure to some horrible disease or prevent an entire African village from starving. People who have so much karma in their spirit accounts, someone in Congress is trying to think of a way to tax them for it.

Alas, it happened to my brother and me. Frankly, we didn’t do anything remotely worthy enough to deserve it. We’re not bad people. We’re just not humanitarian gods. It’s not our fault. It’s hard to wipe out hunger when you have to roll pennies together to eat at Wendy’s just so you can feed yourself.

We got an entire movie theater to ourselves.

This has never happened to me or anyone I know. Then again, everyone I know is a tool so that either means God smiles on people who aren’t the biggest tools or there is no God and we’re all on our own. So if you don’t think I’m a nice guy, then God doesn’t exist. It’s as simple as that.

We were stuck in our parent’s house on the Easter weekend with nothing to do and Paul, my brother, wanted to share the sheer joy of Will Ferrell’s latest movie, Semi-Pro, with me. We had to drive a little out of way to find a theater that wasn’t playing it so far ahead in the day, we could buy, kill, defrost and roast a whole pig and still have enough time to sit down before the trailers rolled.

We got there early, so we picked our favorites seats: high up and right in the middle. It’s the perfect view in any movie theater. Your neck requires absolutely no bending up or down in order to look at the screen and your eyes can take everything in without having to scan back and forth in order to keep every scene in context. I’m sure in 30 years, it will prevent me from having any serious neck or eye problems, but the popcorn and silo sized colas will turn the rest of me into a large lump of flesh who has to shift three layers of fat away just so doctors can feel for a pulse.

The lights went down and the commercials started rolling and we were still the only people in the entire theater. We had the whole joint to ourselves. We were like Will Smith in “I Am Legend.” We could go where we wanted, say what we wanted and do what we want and the only company we had were the echoes of our voices and our shadows on the walls.

I immediately put my feet up on the back of the seats in front of me like the rebel that I am. Paul took it to a whole other extreme. He broke through every conceivable barrier that stands between men and their movie theaters that will earn my respect for years to come. He took his shoes off and plopped them down on the floor, not even bothering to place them together like he just got home from a hard 12 hour shift at the steel mill. Then he raised three pairs of arm rests on the seats next to him, stretched his legs across their cushy goodness and lounged across them like a fat Roman emperor watching gladiators battle to their death for his enjoyment for the entire movie. The manager didn’t walk out of his office/closet to tell us to sit up. The pimply teens who cleaned the theater didn’t call for their bosses. The guy in the projection booth probably didn’t even know he was there. I must have been the theater’s biggest loser of the week sitting in a theater all by my lonesome watching a third-rate Will Ferrell movie on the day Christ died of my sins.

I couldn’t bring myself to do the same. Paul knows an opportunity when he sees one. I’ve always admired people who live life that way. I spend every waking minute worrying about the consequences of my actions. Every cheeseburger I eat is sure to give me a heart attack. Every cigar I enjoy is sure to give me mouth cancer. Every girl I meet is sure to break my heart, wreck my car or leaving me buried in a ditch under 50 pounds of concrete and a plastic tarp.

I admire people who have learned how to turn off their own personal alarms and just enjoy the things life has to offer. It’s just too bad they all like crap like Semi-Pro.

Movies that Suck: It’s Not Easy Being Green

Danny Gallagher — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 16:44:20 +0000

Most God fearing people think of envy as a deadly sin, a mortal blotch on your soul for St. Peter to see on your resume when you’re trying to get that sweet champagne supermodel pool boy gig in Heaven. Not me.

It’s been the reason why I’ve accomplished what I have, reached the plateau I’ve climbed and achieved the goals I’ve set for myself. Envy has been a motivator. It wakes me up every morning with a cold bucket of water, points a finger in my face and screams like Sgt. Hartman from Full Metal Jacket after he catches Gomer Pyle at a Hooters in a wing eating championship.

“What is your major malfunction, numb nuts?” he screams as I’m wiping the combination of sleep and Marine spittle out of my eyes. “Don’t you want to be successful? Don’t you want to be somebody? Everybody else is somebody while you’re practicing to be dead right now! You’re nothing but a lowlife scum-sucking parasite with syphilis that only sucks the life out of other people just to prolong your weak pathetic existence! You make me want to punch a baby! Ahhhhh!”

You can guess where it goes from there. I bolt out of bed and skip my morning pee because I’ve done it already. I brush my teeth with visions of more successful people swirling around my head like a mobius strip and use their success as fuel to further myself. I’m a green Hummer that runs on pure unleaded hatred and only needs a fill up once a day.

Case in point, W. Bruce Cameron. He is a syndicated columnist, writer and author, best known for his book and TV show “8 Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter” and its sequels “8 Simple Rules for Boinking My Teenage Daughter,” “8 Simple Rules For Ruining the Life of My Teenage Daughter” and “8 Simple Rules For Getting My Teenage Daughter Pregnant and Then Getting Your Ass Ripped Off and Beaten to Death with by Me, Your Future Father-In-Law…Daddy.” It was originally titled “Juno.”

We haven’t exactly exchanged friendship bracelets. I’ve run into him at a couple of writing conventions and swapped jokes with him between other writers and he became a personal hero and fan. He also picked up two days worth of bar tabs in Oklahoma City. The man is either an angel or a devil in disguise.

Last week, the Hollywood Reporter announced that a major movie production company with producers who have worked on films like Forrest Gump and The Devil Wears Prada bought the rights to his latest book with plans to turn it into a major motion picture, probably for more money than I’ll ever see unless I take a PR job with Satan.

Everybody else in my little e-mail writing circle was happy for him. They showered him with congratses and good lucks and well wishes, and he graciously accepted them with humor, grace and self-deprication. He deserved it. No one reads anymore since buttons were invented, and this only happens to one man once a generation. Humorists Dave Barry (Big Trouble), Jean Shepard (A Christmas Story), Robert Benchley (the Oscar-winning short How to Sleep) and Dan O’Brien (The Da Vinci Code) have had their books turned into some of the funniest movies ever committed to film.

I didn’t send him word one. Why should I? I’m not his equal. He won’t notice me. Besides, why give fuel to someone I should be trying to surpass? The rest of the day made me feel moody and irritable. Anything that could tick me off did and anyone who slightly got in my way got a cold callous pair of eyes staring back at them that wanted to jump out of my skull and tear their hearts out.

Envy didn’t make the deadly sin list because hate, murder and karaoke got promoted. Envy may not be able to stab, bankrupt or starve someone into death. Envy just lets you to do it to yourself. If you’re tearing someone down in order to pull yourself up, you’re still in the same place you started from and once they get down there, they can probably kick your ass.

That day, I didn’t need to fill my self-loathing envy quotient by going to a gym, endorsing a paycheck or trying to pick up a girl in a bar and getting rejected like a Joe Pesci 3-point shot.

I was already full of it.

Danny Gallagher is a freelance writer, humorist, reporter and crow taste tester living in Texas. His website is www.dannygallagher.net.

Movies that Suck: Indiana Jones and the Last of My Patience

Danny Gallagher — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 10:58:48 +0000

Indiana Jones is without a doubt the greatest movie character franchise in history. Fans of other franchises may argue differently to keep their existence in check and their reason for living on life support, but deep down they know it to be true.

So all you hardcore James Bond fans there can just live and let die.

All you Star Trek fans can take your final frontier and shove it right up your deep space nine.

All you die-hard Star Wars fans can go suck an Ewok.

Indiana Jones has been the movie hero by which all movie heroes are measured. He has a trademark weapon, an unmistakable look, a wicked sense of humor even in the deadliest of situations and a will and a spirit that cannot be broken. He’s even taken on Hitler, the biggest and most evil enemy in the history of the universe, twice instead of some drooling, snarling alien with no sense of personal hygiene or a giant masked Jedi who has to wear a special suit that keeps him alive and makes him sound like the fat kid on a little league baseball team.

Most importantly, he has a longevity that can’t be matched. In the past 27 years, only three Indiana Jones films have been released. Other franchises have had to release, re-release and even re-re-release six, 10 or 20 films just to match the level of quality and style of just one of the Indiana Jones films. E.T. had to be remade and ended up softening it. Alien has implanted its eggs into more film projectors and mutated into sequel after mindless sequel. Star Wars: Episode 1: The Phantom Menace, if that title alone doesn’t make you quiver in your skivves, you need to stop reproducing and chances are if you’re that big a Star Wars nerd, you already don’t.

The time is perfect for another film. So when the trailer for the new Indiana Jones movie hit the web last week, I couldn’t have been more excited than a diabetic kid in a sugar free candy store.

It’s been a long time since I’ve been dying to see something at the theater and the Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull trailer was just the adrenaline my heart needed to pump the life back into me. It was just like the Indiana Jones I remembered seeing the trailers and commercials for as a kid: car crashes, whip cracking, the screams of angry German babes, loud punches that sound like someone is punching celery and cabbage with a giant hand made of granite.

Of course, when I first heard another Indiana Jones movie was coming out, a little part of my brain perked up and fired off a warning shot that this may not be such a good thing.

Another Indiana Jones movie with Harrison Ford in the title role is bound to be good. But what happens when it becomes a success, which it most certainly will? Does that mean we could see a fifth, a sixth or even a seventh installment in the franchise? Ford’s 60 years old. What is Indiana Jones going to dig up after the 10th or 11th film? Himself?

Part of me hates to say this but I hope and pray this next Indiana Jones film will truly be his last crusade. I hope Indy saves the day and then right at the last minute, he gets killed in the final frame. I hope he’s crushed under a pile of collapsed Incan ruins as he tries to keep the Nazis from getting their grubby little hands on whatever artifact threatens to destroy the world. I hope he’s shot cold by some hot German Nazi whose ark he raided earlier in the film. Even better, I hope the giant 20 ton boulder he outran in the first movie finally catches up to him, rolls into the frame for no reason whatsoever and squashes him good, then rolls back and runs over him again just for good measure.

I’m not rooting for his death because I want to see him die. I just don’t want to see something so great and something that’s so sparked so much imagination in so many people run past its prime until people hope that it finally dies. Then where will that boulder be when you really need it?

Movies that Suck: You’ve Lost that Loving Feeling

Danny Gallagher — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 06:00:42 +0000

There’s something missing from today’s movie multiplexes other than quality films, sticky theater floors that don’t feel like the killing floor of a slaughterhouse and money in your wallet after you leave.

It’s hard to describe because frankly the last time it was there, we were all little kids. Going to movies used to be fun. Now it feels like waiting in line at the DMV. You stand in long lines to stand in even longer lines to stand in more, even loner lines and the whole time you’re miserable and hopeless because you know what’s waiting for you at the end of those lines isn’t worth the life minutes you wasted waiting to get to it and both moments end with you being snorted at by some heavyset woman who’s life dreams died the moment she dropped out of community college.

I haven’t been to a theater to see a movie in a long time. Even when I was just going by myself to see something I actually wanted to see, the thrill wasn’t as remotely high as it once was. It seems so uninviting, impersonal and different.

Maybe it’s because my happier days of theater going were when I was a kid, when I didn’t have to deal with the hassle of shelling out cash for movie tickets and junk food that my parents knew was just going to rot my underdeveloped brains and organs before I hit puberty.

Even though I was smaller, the theater didn’t seem as big and mall-like as they do now. I lived in a fairly big city as a kid and the theater I frequented had four screens. The lobby didn’t look like the taxiway of a major metropolitan airport. It was quite small and modest, which made it very inviting as if the building was saying, “Please, come in, enjoy yourself” instead of “I am so massive and huge and big and I will make you feel small and meaningless!” Nowadays, it’s like walking inside The Rock.

As you walked in the doors, the theaters back then felt like a giant hug that greeted you as if they were happy just to see you. It enticed you into the building. They had video games machines in the lobby with my personal favorites like “Metal Slug” and “NBA Jam,” not in a flashy arcade that made it look like a room where doctors test people for epilepsy.

It had one concession stand with a very cheery teenage girl working the counter who always gave you that extra smile when she handed you your nachos and jug of cola. They didn’t have a goddamn army of them lined up in a long trench run by people who weren’t smart enough to discover Clearsil and career counseling.

The movies had zero commercials. The movies realized the reason you paid extra money to see something in the theater was so you could avoid being bombarded with advertisements that guilt you into buying crap you’ll never need, so you can watch movies uncut and commercial free that guilt you into buying crap you’ll never need.

The theater liked you and accepted you for who you were. They didn’t try to flash themselves up or make themselves seem bigger than they really were. They didn’t need to because they just wanted you to enjoy yourself for who you were. That’s right. They didn’t hide their emotions or keep secrets about how they really felt about you for weeks until after you shelled out hundreds of dollars of your own money just to drive into town and see them and dragged you to some stupid bar with her ditzy, drunk friends to listen to some dumb cover band that thinks they can play music, even though they sound like the screams of a helpless baby climbing its way out of the jaws of an alligator.

Oh and Happy Valentine’s Day. Bitch.

Danny Gallagher is a freelance writer, humorist, reporter and owner of a lonely heart living in Texas. He can be found on the web at www.dannygallagher.net.

Movies that Suck: Ashes to Ashes, Dumb to Dumb

Danny Gallagher — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 14:08:44 +0000

There will come a time when our civilization will fall, crumble and turn into nothing but dust and fossilized remains for some future civilization to uncover and put in museums to help their people understand how far they’ve come as a species.

When that time comes, let’s pray archaeologists don’t excavate a 2 million year old Blockbuster.

I don’t know why other people spend so much time complaining about movies and the media. In the big scheme of things, it doesn’t seem like a very big cause to be championing. If the U.S. Department of Defense announced tomorrow they were pulling out of Iraq so they could launch a pre-emptive strike to keep Hollywood from making bad movies, I would be the first one to speak out against it, although it would take five seconds of arguing with myself and I’d need some time to set my TiVo to record CNN before the first missile landed.

Believe it or not, our music, our television and our films define who we are as a culture and as a people. When our media goes out into the universe and some foreign land that has never even seen our country on a map, that’s the closest thing we have to an ambassador. What comes out of the screen tells them a lot about us a people. In a lot of cases, however, that ambassador makes fart noises with his armpits, asks everyone he sees to pull his finger and tells other countries that “We’re number one” because we’re the world’s largest exporter of fart jokes.

Imagine what that image will be in 2 million years when archaeologists stumble upon a dusty laden copy of Meet the Spartans.

First off, he’d have no idea what the movie is about based on the cover. It is about giant fat hairy guys pretending to be robots? Is it about hot half naked chicks pretending to be hot half naked Romans? Is it about bald chicks falling in holes? He might think this is porn and if he watches it, he will be very mad at us, so there’s strike one right there.

Then when they take the time to study it and review it, they will have no idea what it is. It’s not a comedy because it’s not funny. It’s not a drama because it’s hard to take something so ludicrous so serious. They’ll stare at the screen like a dog watching a monster truck show.

After they watch all the movies it is referencing, they’ll still wonder exactly what its purpose was to the audiences who watched it. That’s when the idea will spark in their brains. The people during this time must have been complete idiots.

They’ll do some research and discover the same movie was the highest grossing film at the box office during the week of its release. They’ll also discover the number one show at the time was a game show where people would admit in front of their family and the nation that they stuff their underwear and secretly hate their parents for money, and the number one comedy album is by a man called Dane Cook, the only man in history paid to have epileptic seizures on stage.

They’ll present their findings to the National Historic Archive. They will give them a huge government grant to allow them to continue their research and they’ll unearth even more astonishing artifacts to back up their bleak findings: the Not Another Teen Movie, the Date Movie, the Epic Movie, the Scary Movies. Then they’ll present their findings in a special wing of the Smithsonian entitled, “The Du’h Ages: See What the World Was Like Before Brains.” A copy of Meet the Spartans will be featured right between the “jackass” memorial and the history of Scientology.

So go ahead, if you want to see Meet the Spartans because you think you’ll have a good time, don’t let me stop you.

Let humanity stop you.

Danny Gallagher is a freelance writer, humorist, reporter and fartist living in Texas. His website can be found at www.dannygallagher.net.

Movies that Suck: Just Say ‘Juno’

Danny Gallagher — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 08:00:40 +0000

It’s a very rare time when a movie can bring together an audience made up of people from different backgrounds, neighborhoods and walks of life. Most mainstream movies are obsessed with attracting the highest audience possible, so they suck all the life and uniqueness out of it, which isn’t hard to do since most movie producers are technically vampires anyway.

We are living in one of those times. Juno opened three weeks ago and people are still talking about it as if a screening will help you see the eyes of Jesus Himself. The premise seems fairly ordinary. A teenage girl gets pregnant and has to deal with the rapid changes her life is about to undergo as she struggles with the fate of a human life that didn’t ask to be born. The difference with this film seems to be the execution. Unlike other movies, it’s genuinely funny and unique and doesn’t make you wish you weren’t born for having watched it.

This review isn’t based on my personal viewing of the film. In fact, I haven’t even seen the bastard (no pun intended) yet. This is based on the review of the film from everyone I know who has seen the film and insists that I either see it or suffer the wrath of God.

These people are everywhere. It’s easier to escape from Guantanamo Bay with only duct tape and plastic sheeting than the phrase “You have to see Juno.”

“Dude, you have to see Juno. If not, you should donate your eyes to someone more deserving – like a guy who edits dogfighting films.”

“You haven’t seen Juno yet? You should. How do you sleep at night? On a bed of nails made from the bones of baby elephants? I’m assuming since you’re so unfeeling.”

“You should see Juno because if you don’t, than the terrorists win. The CIA said they’ve seen it and evidently have a better sense of humor than you. That’s right, terrorists are funnier than you.”

I’ve even gotten the “You should see Juno” drop from so-called friends who haven’t seen the movie. They’ve only seen the trailer. They are telling me to see a movie they haven’t even seen for themselves. This is the same reason I never let them set me up on blind dates.

It is for this very reason that I will not see Juno. I’m not saying the movie’s bad or not worth seeing. I loved director Jason Reitman’s take on Thank You for Smoking, one of my all time favorite books and writer Diablo Cody is on her way to becoming an edgy scribe who’s words will echo throughout the world long after her lifetime. It’s probably better than half of the films on the marquee. Why should I see a movie just because everyone else says I should? On the one hand, it’s good to see that something as simple as a movie has managed to touch so many hearts and minds and bring people together on so many different levels. On the other hand, that’s also how Nazi Germany started.

It would be one thing if everyone said, “You might enjoy this film.” That would imply that they like me and know me well enough to recommend something they think I might enjoy. It’s the “You should” that makes me want to claw their eyes out with dull fingernails so they can’t ever tell me what movies I should or shouldn’t see again.

“You should” is a very smug and subtle way of saying, “Hey dumbass, I’m smarter, deeper and more knowledgeable about this than you ever will be.” I know because I used to say it a lot and most of the time, it was a worse idea than letting the Insane Clown Posse open a Wiggles concert.

I said “You should” all the time, especially when it came to movies, and whether or not I was right, a part of me garnished my id with a smug self sense of superiority that made me feel that I was better than them. It was a good feeling, but now that the lampshade is on the other drunk’s head, I couldn’t have looked more pompous if I was French.

Opinions are personal beliefs, not widely held facts. You can share them with others. You can stand on top of a building and shout them to the world until the police talk you down. You can let the people you know your take on the world whether it’s politics, religious beliefs or movies.

When you start a sentence with the phrase “you should,” your opinion becomes a fact whether it’s right or not, and I don’t want to live in a world where people’s personal opinions, feelings or beliefs are pushed on other people as indisputable facts or France.

Movies that Suck: You’re Out of Your Element

Danny Gallagher — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 20:32:09 +0000

Belief is a funny thing. One person may think something is the most brilliant book, movie or song they have ever heard and another person will read, watch or hear the exact same thing and think their head has just been raped by evil spirits.

Part of the fun of movies is showing the people you like (or least want to throw screaming from the top of a building) the films they generally wouldn’t watch if you weren’t in their lives. The other part is full of pain, humiliation and memories that you wish a swift kick to the skull would erase.

I enjoy an eclectic mix of movies. I can watch the popcorn pulp and generally get just as much enjoyment out of it as a snooty art house indie because there is more to enjoying a movie than just what’s being spewed out by the projector. Some of the best movie experiences of my life were during the worst films ever made just because of the people I saw them with. If I had seen them alone, I know I wouldn’t have had as much fun because chances are I would have walked away from the experience with either a face full of mace or a loss of the will to go on living.

Of course, just because you enjoyed a movie doesn’t mean that love will transfer by osmosis to the rest of the people in the room. If the movie sucks to the majority of the people in the group, the evening is not going to turn out good and they are going to blame the whole thing on you. The only way you’ll be able to win them back is if you can control people’s minds or are carrying some sort of a concealed weapon.

Last New Year’s Day while my friends and I were sprawled out on my friend’s couch like war casualties waiting for service in an HMO waiting room, we watched movies to pass the time. This friend has an entertainment system that if he dies, I’m going to insist he leaves to me in his will…that is, if he really cared about me. A plasma television, huge speakers, a Blu-Ray player, a TiVo that acts as his media slut and a satellite hook up with 2 billion channels that will allow him to witness any event in the history of the world as it happens that we end up it to watch loud rednecks pitching pocketknives on the Home Shopping Network at two in the morning.

We’re flipping around for something to watch when he flips past The Big Lebowski. I’ve seen it more times than my own beer gut, but my friends never have, so I insist we watch it. One of them asks me, “Are you sure this is any good?” with a treble of foreboding in his voice.

I insist that it’s funny. Then my friend, like a gerbil walking through Richard Gere’s house, cautiously made his way over toward the movie.

We caught the movie about a third of the way through just at the part when Julianne Moore makes her entrance, so I had to explain to everyone the plot thus far, which is fairly twisted and complicated if you haven’t seen the whole thing for yourself. Moore plays a feminist artist who is the daughter of the rich Jeffrey Lebowski, so to my friends, this film could have been a screening of The Vagina Monologues starring Some Old British Chick You’ve Never Heard of Talking About Her Vajajay. A sense of bewildered confusion hung in the air like a broccoli fart.

Then the film kicks into gear and all of the funny parts fall without a single laugh. John Goodman tells Steve Buscemi “Shut the #&$% up, Donnie.” No one laughs. Jesus licks the bowling ball to the rhythm of a Spanish version of “Hotel California.” No one laughs. The Dude wrecks his car after a joint falls in his crotch. No one even measures a chuckle.

Not even me. I’m too embarrassed to laugh. I felt like everyone in the room was glaring at me and picturing me in a French beret and a black and white striped shirt smoking some fruity sounding cigarette brand and turning my nose up so high at them, I can smell the back of my head.

I wanted to give my friends the benefit of the doubt. I wanted to just chalk it up to a misunderstanding over the fact they didn’t see the whole thing beginning to end. I wanted to just calling the whole thing off as a temporary brain lockdown since just before we flipped the channel over, we were watching the end of Larry the Cable Guy: Health Inspector and trying to get over such horror is like trying to erase the sound of your first born baby’s death rattle from your mind.

I couldn’t because to acknowledge it would deny me what I believed to be true. They were wrong and I was right. End of story. Roll credits.

I just kept it to myself. Everyone walked away from the crime scene where the laughter died quietly and I stay in my comfy cushiony spot on the sofa knowing full well I was able to grasp concepts and emotions far above the heads of mere mortal men. When I see Jeff Bridges taking a coffee cup to the head, I see more than just slapstick humor and comedy that lets us laugh at someone else’s pain. I see the very face of God.

Long story short, it’s good to be me and it sucks to be you. Deal with it dude.

Movies That Suck: Violence on Earth, Good Swill Toward Men

Danny Gallagher — Wed, 26 Dec 2007 05:01:21 +0000

There are a slew of Christmas movies out there, which seems rather unfair because it’s the only holiday where movies are made specifically for it. There are no Halloween movies, only horror movies. There are no Fourth of July films, only historic U.S. war epics. There are no St. Valentine’s Day movies, only porn.

Who knows why this happens? Maybe it’s because Christmas is one of the few holidays with a specific legend and a story. Maybe it’s because Christmas has its own built it marketing scheme that makes it ideal for pitching movies. Maybe it’s because watching a movie on Christmas morning is better than talking to relatives who wait to talk about what the surgeon pulled out of their gall bladder just as you’re biting into a slice of turkey.

My family watches a lot of movies at Christmas time, not because we don’t get along or would rather fend off wild animals than spend time with each other. It’s just the most relaxing thing to do after eating your body’s entire weight in starches and poultry. We eat just enough so that we’ll have enough energy to lift the remote to either change the channel or throw it at the head of someone who talks during it.

Usually we watch the good stuff, but this year a different title came across the TV Guide listing, one that pitted my internal movie geek and movie snob against each other in a mental deathmatch to the death. It was “Home Alone.”

Meet Paul and Pierre. Paul is my mind’s movie geek, the guy who goes to movies that have tons of the three B’s: boobs, big explosions and Berry, Halle. He’s the only person I know who developed a drinking game for “The Crying Game” and didn’t vomit at the end.

Pierre is my mind’s movie snob. He thumbs his nose at the mainstream establishment and prefers films with meaning, depth and a lesson other than “Aliens and robots are inherently always evil” or “U.S.A.! U.S.A.!” He feels the only reasons you should watch any of the “jackass” movies are if you are being tortured for information or you are completely blind and deaf.

When “Home Alone” first came out, I was ravenous for it. I saw it at Christmas time and had to see it again. I think I saw four times during its initial run, which seemed to last well into the summer. Then it came out on home video and I watched it until the machine ate the tape and the machine stopped working, possibly because the machine was so sick of watching it that it felt the only way it could destroy the evil was by sacrificing his own life in the process.

Now that I’m an adult (depending on who you ask), I actually get a little embarrassed that I liked such a mindless, retarded and somewhat bad movie. It’s basically 90 minutes of dull jokes and sappy sentiment followed by 10 minutes of cartoon assault. It’s only considered to be a Christmas movie because it’s set at Christmas time. The only way it could be a true Christmas movie is if the annual holiday tradition involves smacking kids with paint cans as they ran down the stairs to open their gifts on Christmas morning or covering them with spackle and feathers before to commemorate the birth of Jesus.

The movie finally kicked into high gear when Joe Pesci gets shot in the crotch with a BB gun. The sound of Pesci screaming like a girl bolted him out of his easy chair and got his full attention. He was laughing and it was contagious. He’s in my brain. If I ignored him, he would have given me a tumor so big, I could give it a name.

Pierre jumped in between us and starting rattling off the reasons I shouldn’t be entertained by such bottomless tripe.

“One, only monkeys laugh at stuff like this and you’re not a monkey, despite the fact you eat bananas and occasionally scratch yourself in public,” he said while slapping each boney finger against the palm of his other white as White-Out hand. “Two, your mind is capable of digesting healthier forms of entertainment and I’m not living in a brain that’s furnished with wall-to-wall crap, and tres, this is something for little kids who can’t grasp the concepts and the effects of being desensitized to violence.”

Paul jumped in and kicked Pierre square in the sperm basket. Pierre fell to the ground holding his junk like he was afraid he was going to lose it.

“Hey Danny,” Paul screamed. “I found his Achilles’ balls.”

I settled back in my Aunt’s easy chair, just in time for the scene where Daniel Stern does a full foot plant on a pile of glass Christmas ornaments. That’s when I cracked a smile. By the time Stern smacked Pesci in the gut with a crowbar, I was laughing my ass off.

Violence may not solve everything, but I know it solves one thing – humbuggery.

Movies that Suck: The Gift that Keeps on Giving Me Migraines

Danny Gallagher — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 06:00:33 +0000

My Christmas shopping trip was Hell. No wait, that doesn’t really describe it. At least Hell has a lava hot coffee break.

It was below Hell. It was Dante’s Inferno on Ice. It was a trip down a cobblestone path full of spiked rocks, flaming grass and poisonous snakes. It was Detroit.

It’s not that I mind buying my friends and family and their fife Christmas presents. It’s the only fulfilling thing I do with my life. I’m banned for life from every Goodwill store in America since the lawn flamingo incident. I no longer give blood since budget cuts forced them to serve Lorna Doones instead of Nutter Butters. I don’t even give money to charities anymore because since I became a writer, I’m so broke that I’m worried it’s just going to come right back to me.

The experience is the killer part. In fact, the more you care about the recipient, the more you have to suffer on the path to get them a gift that truly shows how much you appreciate them. It’s simple math. The better the gift, the more they love you. The crappier the gift, the less the giver would care if you were thrown from a helicopter and into the Atlantic Ocean.

I buy DVDs for the people I’m closest to because I know what they like and if I make 100 more purchases at Movie Trading Company, I get a free dinette set. Mom and Dad got “The Good Neighbors,” a British comedy they used to watch when I was younger. My brother, Paul, unwrapped the first season of “South Park.” The dog got a copy of Francois Truffaut’s “The 400 Blows.” That only left my sister, Erin, with a blank space next to her name on my Christmas shopping list and a sharp pain forming at the base of my skull that could make a tequila hangover feel like an ice cream headache.

When I left the family nest, Erin was just a little kid who liked “SpongeBob SquarePants” reruns and watched Pixar animated movies until the VCR melted the tapes. Now she’s a teenager. She’s into stuff I wouldn’t screen to federal prisoners. During the summer, we were driving around looking for a place to eat when we passed a movie theater. She took one look at the marque and announced she would someday like to voluntarily see “House of Wax.” Enough said.

I called my dear sweet mother and asked what she might like to unwrap on that cold Christmas morning. She said through a thin wall of cell phone static, “Well, she really likes ‘Phantom of the Opera.’” The sharp pain at the base of my skull started playing Ping Pong with my nerve endings.

I shuffled over to the nearest Best Buy with Erin’s present on my “To-Do Even Though I’d Rather Stick My Hand in a Blender” list. Before I left the house, I slapped on a tan trenchcoat , a porkpie detective’s hat and a pair of sunglasses that were darker than Satan’s heart to make sure I couldn’t be identified in public. Having to wait in long Christmas shopping lines was bad enough. But being spotted by someone I knew clutching a movie that causes tumors could be more emotionally devastating than 9/11, Hiroshima and my high school prom combined.

The store was flooded with people who, like me, were dumb enough to believe that everyone would do their Christmas shopping earlier this year and the lines were be shorter the closer time crawled towards the holidays. I grabbed the DVD off the shelf and held it as close to my body as possible, trying to keep it guarded from any possible line of sight like a fat guy trying to keep the last slice of fat free devil’s food cake for himself at a Weight Watchers’ convention. The pain in my skull worked its way over my head turning itself into a swimming cap of pain.

Just glancing at the cover sent ripples of fear through my skin. In my cobweb filled mind, I could see Andrew Lloyd Webber’s germs of mediocrity seeping out of the box and soaking into the tissues of my body. The longer I held it, the weaker I felt. I had to get to the cashier as quickly as possible so I could double, no, triple bag this thing before the virus spreads to my mind and makes me sell back my “Evil Dead II” and “Creature from the Black Lagoon” box sets for the complete works of Rosie O’Donnell, “Herbie: Fully Loaded” or “Xanadu: The Ultra Gay Edition.”

I stood in a long. tightly packed line that had enough breathing room to operate one side of my brain. I cleverly concealed Erin’s present under my arm. Sure enough, I spotted one of my friend’s doing his last minute shopping just a few aisles down from me. The whole time we were chatting, I tried to keep the DVD out of his field of vision. I held my arm so tightly to my body, I was afraid it might give me a pierced spleen. At least that would have felt nice compared to the throbbing pain in my head that now felt like I was giving King Kong a piggyback ride.

Soon but not soon enough, I paid for Erin’s gift, had it gift wrapped, duct taped and Ziplocked and ran out of the store knocking over two old ladies, a middle aged father and a line of fat nerds who were waiting three weeks to blow $400 an Xbox 360. The day ended on a high note.

On Christmas Day, I passed my gift to Erin and waited as she unwrapped it as I sat all giddily waiting for the evil to be done with me. She ripped the packaging off in a flurry of torn festiveness, took one look at the box cover and said, “Awww thanks Danny, but I’ve already got this movie. Can you return it for me?”

Oh I returned it all right, right back to the fiery depths of Hell.

Movies that Suck: How ‘The Grinch’ Almost Ruined Christmas

Danny Gallagher — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 12:00:50 +0000

(With no apologies to Dr. Seuss, because, hey, he’s dead. What’s he going to do to me?)

Every Who’s Who
Down in Whollywood
Profit off Christmas a lot

But the who-heads
That headed Whoniversal
Had NOT!

The heads hated Christmas! The whole lousy season!
No one had to ask why, they all knew the reason.
Their holiday movies were never quite right.
Their holiday movies made us nauseous on sight.
But I think the most likely reason of all
May have been that their profits were two sizes too small.

But,
Whether the audience,
Felt ripped off or screwed,
They sat in their board room, hearing the boos,
Staring down from their chairs, plotting on towns
To release Christmas films that make audiences frown.
For they knew every Who’s Who in Whollywood, they say
Were making a movie for the Christmas day.

“And they’re releasing their films!” they snarled with a sneer.
“Tomorrow’s Thanksgiving! Christmas is already here!”
Then they growled, with their money stained fingers drumming,
“I must find a way to keep audiences coming!”

For, Christmas, they knew everyone and their kin
Would watch movies all day. They would watch them all!
They’d watch “Scrooged” and “Charlie Brown’s Christmas.”
They’d watch “A Christmas Story” and Dicken’s “Christmas Carol.”

And they’d laugh! And they’d cry!
And they’d sigh! Sigh! Sigh! Sigh!
And the more the board thought of the short ticket lines,
The more the board thought, “We must try to make something!
“Why for years, the film’s we made did all suck!
“We must try to film something!
But what?”

Then they got an idea!
An awful idea!
The board
Got an awful, horrible idea!

“I know just what we’ll do,” the board announced with a grin.
Their secretary was called to send Ron Howard in.
And he pitched and he pitched, “Let’s do a ‘Grinchy’ remake”
And the board licked their chops as Mr. Howard did spake.

“All we need is a doofus
To play the lead role.”
And they live in Whollywood where doofusi are ten-fold.
The board hired Jim Carrey
To dress as the Grinch.
“We’ll have our revenge and makes audiences flinch,”
The board said as they laughed in sheer evil glee.
They wanted our Christmas to not be merry.

Then
They hired some writers
To type up a script
With jokes that are deader
Than Cary Grant in his crypt.

Then the film was complete,
And premieres were abound
On screens near and far
Invading all towns.

People knew it would suck while they stood in long lines
But some had no choice, the book was a favorite for all time
And they had to see why Whoinversal would commit such a crime.
“This is just phase one,” the board members hissed,
“Now we’ll make everyone really feel miffed.”

They made tons of Grinch toys, books and video games
And sold them at prices that were really insane.
The parents all bought them for kids that were crying
That they didn’t love them if they weren’t out for them buying.
They all wanted Grinch goodies for Christmas this year.
It looked like our sanity soon wouldn’t be here.

No one liked watching it, not even the critics
Who gave it no stars, the hateful, old cynics.
But we all ignored them. “They’re wrong!” we all cried.
“They gave ‘Gigli’ two stars, now look how they’ve lied.”
But we’d all get in line, buy our tickets and see
That the ones who were wrong really was we.

Then
They did the same thing
To theaters near you

And sent it
Without care
Of it’s negative view.

But the Christmas season had passed
And ‘The Grinch” was a hit.
God, this movie was lousy
And our asses felt kicked.
Our asses felt beaten and whipped and sore and slapped!
Our asses felt used and abused and tortured and capped!

Thirty million apiece is what the Who-heads had earned
For “The Grinch” and making out butts feel burned.
“Pooh-pooh on all you!” the board loudly had said.
“That’s what we all did! Right on top of your heads.
“We never cared of what our movies you think,
“We know they all suck, that they’re stupid and stink.”

“Losers!,” the board cried out loud.
“That’s what you all are here!
“For seeing ‘The Grinch.’” And the board put a hand to their ear
To hear all the sneers from the people so mad.
But the sound that they heard really wasn’t that bad.

They stared down at the towns.
And much to their surprise,
They could hardly look,
What they saw made them doubt their own eyes.

For every whoever in America, the tall and the small,
Weren’t sad or upset or disappointed at all.
They hadn’t hurt anyone this Christmas it seems.
THEY’RE GLAD!
Somehow or other, they didn’t feel all that had!

And the board stood staring at the towns in the snow,
Stood wondering and thinking, “How could this be so?
“They aren’t looting or rioting or feeling all sad!
“They aren’t screaming or shouting or killing their Dad!”
So they looked far and wide for the cause of their strife,
And learned they were watching, “It’s a Wonderful Life.”
“Merry Christmas movie house!” James Stewart did wail.
“And you Bailey Building and Loan that will soon put me in jail.”

And what happened then?
Well in Whollywood they say
That the board’s raging anger
Grew three sizes that day!
And the minute the vein in their head was to break,
They said to themselves, “Let’s do a remake!
“Of this Christmas movie since we’ve got no soul.”
And they…

…THEY THEMSELVES…
Offered Rob Schneider the lead role.

Movies that Suck: Wanna See Something Not Really Scary?

Danny Gallagher — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 15:41:43 +0000

Everyone has fear. It’s ingrained in our psyche. Anyone who denies it is lying, dead or both.

We all aren’t afraid of the same things, but we still have it. If two people were walking through the forest and happened upon a snake, one person might wet themselves, climb the nearest tree and continue wetting themselves while the other person might pick up the slimy little guy, pet him and treat him like a small child would treat a person. The second person is nearsighted and does a lot of acid.

Some people have very rare fears. For example, coulrophobia is the fear of clowns. This, of course, is a very misguided and unnecessary fear because if they go to a carnival and see some dope in full makeup and baggy pants, he shouldn’t be afraid of it. He should afraid of the carnie inside the clown outfit. They can pass diseases only monkeys have just by handing you a balloon animal.

The point is we all have fear. It’s a fascinating emotion. We’re repulsed by it and yet we seek it out with the same fervor and determination as happiness, an orgasm or love. Some people are actually addicted to it. Clawing at the seats and screaming for one’s very life is the same to them as having the first bite of a chocolate chip cookie after a long hunger strike. These people scare the living crap out of me.

My girlfriend is one of these people. I like horror movies, but she loves them. It makes for an interesting relationship. Usually when I date a woman, I worry about having to compete with other better looking men for their affection and attention. In this case, my competition is Jason Voorhees, Michael Myers and Freddy Krueger and those poor bastards have to wear masks when they go out in public.

The weekend before Halloween, we get together at a friend’s house to watch horror movies. I, of course, get to pick the menu because I make a living writing about and reviewing movies. It’s what I do. One of my other friends is a chef, so he cooks dinner and bakes a cake for dessert. Another friend is an electronics expert, so he sets up his bad ass, big screen TV for the moment. I buy a slasher satire called â€œBehind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernonâ€ and the original â€œDawn of the Deadâ€ because the remake made me wish there was a zombie apocalypse on the off-chance the slow moving zombies would find the geniuses who thought it was a good idea to make stiff, dead zombies world-class sprints and tear them into tiny bite size pieces.

We watch both and there’s not a scream out of any of us, not even a minor jolt or a small jump in our seats. Both movies were excellent, but they weren’t true horror. Eventually everyone wakes up and we go to bed to dream about happy bunnies, rainbows and storm clouds that drop jellybeans on all the happy, shiny people.

I can not tell you the disappointment that permeated in that living room that cold, dark night. It hung on my collar like a cheap, drug store cologne. One friend showed us zombies that were so clear, you could see the maggots crawling around in their eye sockets. The other made a banana nut cake so good that it could make you believe in Jesus. I turned everyone into the Care Bears.

Fear is weird. When it’s there, you feel stiff, immobile and completely helpless and when it doesn’t show up when you want it to, you feel let down, abandoned and disappointed by life. It’s just like watching the â€œDawn of the Deadâ€ remake. Maybe next Halloween, I’ll watch that instead.

======================================================
“Movies that Suck” is written and was created by Danny Gallagher.

To send suggestions, criticisms or threats to the author, drop him a
line online at dannyboythezombie@gmail.com.

Visit him on the web at http://www.dannygallagher.net.

=======================================================

Movies that Suck: Rated Hardcore Triple Ecch

Danny Gallagher — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 17:05:37 +0000

I’m not against movie violence. In fact, I encourage it. I think every movie should be violent because it’s a reflection of our world. If â€œThe Care Bears Movieâ€ had Funshine Bear toting an AK-47 and Tenderheart Bear dying in a gasoline fire, you’d leave the theater and do everything in your power to stop violence.

It’s hard not to be so cynical about it when you see as many movies as I do. Almost every major mainstream film features an explosion, a gun battle or enough fake blood to flood a small Bolivian village. How did such a trend start? Some like to think it started with one big budget action blow’em up blockbuster like â€œDie Hardâ€ or â€œLethal Weaponâ€ or â€œExploding Fist of Fire and Brimstone and Mayhem Magnum Blast Hollowpoint Bullet Force of Ultra-Death, Destruction and Carnage 2.â€

It’s just hardwired into our brains. We’re human and we feel alive when we see other humans in pain. It may sound cruel and unusual and even unnatural, but when you see some pour soul being tortured within an inch of his life in an action flick or a nuclear explosion take out an infected city in a zombie movie, we all have the same thought: â€œman it sucks to be them.â€

Studios are our dealer, and they give us more and more whether it’s good for us or not pushing us closer and closer to the brink of addiction and then we overdose. In this case, overdose means total brain numbness and another Neilsen point for â€œFamily Guy.â€

The violence shouldn’t just be there for the sake of being there. It’s got to be in context to the story. There’s a line we’ve crossed with a new genre with films like â€œHostel I and II,â€ â€œSaw I through IIIâ€ and â€œMassive Head Wound Torture Blood and Sinue Gash Open Knee Cap Stringy Dangling Veins and Arteries Femurs Cut Off in Half and Then Separated and Quartered Individually with Rusty Hardware Implements 4 through 7.â€

These being the ultimate in blood, guts and gore cinema, I thought the masses would eat them up with a wooden cooking spoon. No, they wouldn’t even bother to taste a bit first or blow on it to see if it’s hot. They would just shovel their giant fat faces with the wooden cooking spoon not even bothering to taste the junk crossing their tongues and into their gunked up systems and then when they realized the spoon was too much of a middleman, they would stick their whole head in the pot and begin biting and gnawing and chewing their way through until their teeth struck Teflon.

I knew these movies would suck. I saw the original â€œHostelâ€ of my own volition and no one recommended it to me or said they even saw it, which is something Biblical scholars like to call a divine sign.

But this was basically porno, and not the good kind of porno. It’s the kind of porn that makes you feel unclean and dirty, the kind of porn that can send a whole fraternity into therapy, the kind of porn that makes you wish you could wash out your eyeballs with bleach if it didn’t blind you for life. Director Eli Roth had some underlying message about foreign relations or the depths humanity can sink in the exploration of self-fulfillment, but it was lost with my lunch.

I’m not alone. According to CNN, torture porn is tanking. â€œHostel IIâ€ only made a measly $17 million and the new â€œCaptivityâ€ didn’t even finish in the top 10 on the opening weekend. Who knows why? Maybe there were better things to see that weekend. Maybe the advertising was bad. Maybe they just sucked.

Just maybe we’re starting to get sick on violence in all its forms and we’ve finally started sobering up. See you in detox.

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