Hackers

CAN YOU FEEL THE EXCITEMENT.

"Hack The Planet!"

Hello everyone, welcome to a fresh week of excitement here at The Tagline! Last night, in a moment of weakness I asked my Facebook for movie suggestions, and I don't know why I was surprised at the outcome. While there were a fair number of varied suggestions (many of which you will most likely see over the coming weeks) there was also a public outcry for me to review Hackers, a thing that I desperately did not want to do (as you may remember, earlier this year I reviewed another 90s cyberthriller, Sandra Bullock's The Net). Still, as reluctant as I might have been, the people spoke, loudly, and some of them said cusswords at me to emphasize their point, which I returned in high volume (which is to say I swore loudly, at my computer screen). The end result was that I decided I had to watch Hackers, in all its mysterious computers of the early 90s glory, only not actually because I question whether the people who made this movie had ever seen a computer. If you were not around in the 90s, or just suppressed this part of them feverishly when trying to craft an idyllic picture of your past, cyberthrillers pretty much had their day at the early to mid section of the 90s, when computers and the internet were just common enough that people knew they were a thing, but had no idea how they functioned or what mad wizards operated them. People mostly STILL don't have any idea, but they know at least what computers look like and that you can browse Facebook on them. Hackers stars Jonny Lee Miller (who mostly went on to a career in TV, but remember him in Aeon Flux?) as Dade Murphy AKA CRASH OVERRIDE, a high senior with a past as a hacker (when he was like 10) that gave him both a record and a reputation. Despite his bad history with the law and the net, he can't stay away from those tasty, crispy cyberwaves, or what the fuck ever they decide is thematically appropriate slang in this movie. Dade immediately falls in with a group of hackers upon moving to NYC and arriving at his new school, and that's when things start to get complicated. He finds himself quickly caught up in a complex web of plots and futuristic looking 3D animations, as his friends become the targets of a set-up that will allow inveterate asshole Plague (Fischer Stevens who was most notably also in The Super Mario Bros movie ouch) to steal 25 million dollars from the company he works as security for. Everyone needs a scapegoat I guess!

Aeon Flux

I know I personally keep my gun in that
spot on your back you can never scratch.

"The Perfect World Meets The Perfect Assassin."

Hello everyone, after a brief hiatus welcome back to THE TAGLINE. I'm sure you were all terribly distraught in my absence, but rest assured, I'm back to give you the thrilling movie commentary that you have craved over the long hours of this past week, and to provide the cutting insight that makes your day bearable, because I'm sure my contribution to your afternoon is THAT ESSENTIAL. Unfortunately for you its all garbage in here today, as I threatened last week I'm going to be talking about Aeon Flux, a movie so spectacularly bad in such a specific and peculiar way that it almost defies belief. The movie doesn't really have to do with the original animation at all, or anything that makes sense, but because it bears a passing similarity I will talk about it briefly anyway. Aeon Flux was initially a six part short animation aired on MTV. Later it was given five more short episodes, and eventually in 1995 a full season of 10 half-hour episodes was aired. The show was the product of Peter Chung, whose bizarre art style is immediately recognizable (if you have ever seen Reign: The Conqueror that was also him). Chung, having previously worked on, if you will believe this, Rugrats, was frustrated with that shows character limitations, and so Aeon Flux was his outlet presumably for those impulses. As a result, Aeon Flux focuses on a character of the same name, who is basically a fetish dominatrix scarecrow skeleton, who is also a secret agent in a bizarre future dystopia. There's this whole thing with two cities and her sexy antagonistic relationship with Trevor Goodchild but I won't go into that because LITERALLY NONE OF THAT IS IN THIS MOVIE. It is important also to mention that there's a hyper amount of violence in the original animation, and a healthy dose of fetishy sex stuff. Now that I've established what the original animation was about, let me attempt to elucidate what happened in the movie, and I say attempt because even after seeing it a total of three times I'm still not entirely sure.

Mazes and Monsters

This is a really misleading cover.

"Danger lurks between fantasy and reality."

Good morning boys and girls, it's that time again! Time for me to relay to you my latest foray into the danger that lurks between good actors, bad movies, and role-playing games! Well, at least that is what I will be doing today, as I explore the exquisite garbage that is Mazes and Monsters, a 1982 film based on a novel written by Rona Jaffe, during the height of Satanic D&D pandemonium. Am I referring to how Dungeons and Dragons is a tool used to recruit children into covens of Satan worshipers, using non-Christian ideologies and REAL MAGIC INCANTATIONS to twist their minds and souls to do the work of the devil? Why you bet I am! A quick primer for the uninitiated. Back in the 1980s, when liking nerd things didn't have a sitcom about it and basically made people regard you with a mixture of pity, suspicion and fear, a number of groups, particularly religious ones, put forth that D&D, and to a lesser extent all fantasy role-playing games, were tools of occultists and devil worshippers. By getting individuals to play these games, they were introducing them to real satanic rituals, and using the guise of a game to get these impressionable minds tied up in a pursuit of power and riches, making them servants of the beast. Of course no one ever had substantive proof that any of these cults existed, despite claims that their members numbered in the hundreds of thousands AT LEAST, but that didn't stop every hack on the block from blaming D&D for all the wrongs of the youthful world. It also didn't seem to encourage any of these people to actually discover what kind of game D&D WAS, given that none of the things they talk about actually happen in a D&D game or any game ever. There is also of course the very real possibility that these groups were simply full of liars and reprobates, but NO surely that couldn't be possible?

Star Wars Holiday Special Nightmare

Feel the magic! and the fear.

"A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away..."

Yeah that's right, I'm going there. Even though it is not a movie, technically speaking, it altogether runs for about two hours, and it is...holiday themed I guess, so I'm going to make you all sit there and listen to me recall a dark thing that happened to me one time when I was young and foolish in college, and thought it would be funny to watch the Star Wars Holiday Special. Back then the full extent of internet proliferation had not quite taken root, and so it was actually kind of tough to find a digimal version of the Holiday Special. This is principally because it only ever aired once. Eventually though I did manage to secure a copy and what I found filled me with regret. As it turns out, for a fan of Star Wars, or indeed any other creature that could perceive their surroundings, it was not so funny. What it was, in fact, was one of the most traumatically bad segments of television I have ever experienced, and it is generally regarded as being one of the worst pieces of television ever created. You see Christmas is a special time, when we celebrate with our families, but I think sometimes it's important to be given a grim reminder of things past, and so I'm here to be the ghost of Life Day Past, and remind us all of the holiday that was.

The Bling Ring

Excellent choice of font.

"Living the Dream, One Heist at a Time."

Proving again that dreams can be at LEAST as boring and stupid as real life! Welcome to a new week at The Tagline, as we are rounding out the spookiest month of the year with a movie that was certainly a horrifying experience after a fashion. That is to say, I was horrified that I was watching it, and that a 90 minute run time could feel like and unending prison sentence, which is funny considering the subject matter. Today I'm going to talk about director Sofia Coppola's The Bling Ring, what is described as a "satirical black comedy crime film" based on true events revolving around a group of teens who burglarized the homes of a number of celebrities including Paris Hilton (They actually robbed her half a dozen times if accounts are to be believed). The movie stars mostly unknown young actors as the members of the eponymous Bling Ring, with the exception of Emma Watson, who trades being brainy Hermione for being maybe the dumbest human being alive, Nicki (Also if you watch American Horror Story Taissa Farmiga, who was the daughter Violet in season 1, is in this movie). The cast is rounded out with cameos of people who were robbed, Leslie Mann who plays Nicki's mother, and Gavin Rossdale (the frontman for Bush) who portrays a scumbag who helps teenage robbers fence Rolex watches. The movie is shot jumping between scenes of the actual crimes and of the burgling teens being interviewed after the fact. Either way.... I wasn't especially impressed.

Transformers: Dark of the Moon

Oh dear god no.

" Mankind's finest achievement. Our nation's proudest moment. A secret hidden for forty years."

Hey everyone, welcome back to the Tagline! I normally wouldn't bother to even address how shitty a Transformers movie is, but while watching a Rifftrax of the third Transformers movie, I came to realize that it was maybe one of the single worst movies I'd ever had the misfortune of experiencing. It was so unspeakably shitty, that indeed, it was hard to even watch with the MST3K crew making jokes over it (If you do not know about Mystery Science Theater, then learn you some here. Rifftrax is what Mike Nelson, Kevin Muphy and Bill Corbitt do now). I can also mention that I didn't care for the first Transformers movie either. I can admit that it was an average action movie at least, as opposed to the epic level train wreck that is Dark of the Moon. I'm now going to attempt to summarize the movie, but I expect that's going to be challenging because I'm not 100% sure about any of it. I'm going to open the wiki page about the movie and we can discover the plot together!

Garbage Truck Hat Trick: M Night Shyamalan

Why can't they just SEE how great I am?

Hi everyone! I thought I'd do something a little different today, and talk about a specific block of movies, rather than cherry-picking the worst. Now I admit, the director in question pretty much did my job for me in that regard, by going 0-3 in a row with the last 3 movies he directed (arguably the last four movies he directed, but I'm giving some leniency here). I'm talking of course of the illustrious M. Night Shyamalan, a living example of the consequences of tremendous hubris, as if he were trying to make ancient Greek myths come alive before our very eyes. After his career making film The Sixth Sense (spawning bad spoofs and "I see ___ people" jokes for the rest of eternity) Shyamalan had a run of two more movies that I thought were good, those being Unbreakable (which I think is largely forgotten by most people, but not me because come on Bruce Willis) and Signs (definitely NOT forgotten by anyone). Those were pretty damned good movies, and things were looking bright for the future of a new director. Alas, like the child actors of the 80s and 90s, perhaps M. Night got a little bit too big for his britches, and that began to manifest in his demands for 'artistic leeway' in the production of his later movies, and his absolute rejection of any criticism of himself or his movies, ever ever ever. Before that point, he made The Village which... okay. So I didn't like The Village. I thought the whole premise, and again its "twist" ending, were not very interesting, but I'll allow that it wasn't a simply horrendous movie. It was terribly marketed, as a scary movie that was really just a sort of unusual drama movie with some occasional jump out at you moments. So I can at the very least, forgive The Village. What followed... not so much.

Now we get into it for real:

The Postman

Apparently next year's really gonna suck.

"It is 2013. War has crippled the Earth. Technology has been erased. Our only hope is an unlikely hero."

Happy Thursday everyone! As promised today I will talk about the post-apocalyptic epic The Postman, and in the process probably get really angry as I talk about the variety of stupid reasons people hated it.

The Postman is a nearly three hour long movie, based on a David Brin novel of the same name, about a man traversing the wasteland left behind by the collapse of modern society (It is implied that it is a combination of nuclear war, plague, and social unrest brought on by a sect of hypersurvivalists known as Holnists). This man (Kevin Costner) is just trying to survive, and in the process he sets about a course of events that change the world. He does this by posing as a postman, for a fictitious reformed government that he makes up. By doing this he gives the people of the scattered remaining settlements hope and a banner to flock to, in opposition of the army of General Bethlehem (the Holnists I mentioned above, named after their philosophy's founder, a writer named Nathan Holn).

Game Movies: A Retrospective (Part 1)

It's Saturday, and you know what that means! It's time for a special post, and as promised today I will be discussing movies based on games! I was originally going to do the top 7 worst movies based on video games, but there were just so many bad movies that I decided I would break it up by decade. There are so few examples of good video game movies that I will probably do a post devoted just to those at some point in the future. So here is in order, the top 5 worst video game movies of the 1990s.

THE WORST 90s VIDEO GAME MOVIES

Prometheus

"They went looking for our beginning. What they found could be our end."

Giant Evil Head

     The much anticipated and long delayed prequel to the original Alien (which ultimately seemed to be more of a reimagining/reboot) has finally hit theatres. Was it worth the wait? Ehhhh I don't know. This movie, while visually stunning, well paced, and full of the sorts of things you'd expect from say, Alien, is just that. This movie more or less IS Alien, in every single god damned way. Only this isn't 1979, and Alien has already been made. I think viewing this as a remake is the only way to redeem it, but even then all it does is set up for a movie that maybe I'd want to watch.

Resident FUCKING Evil

I'm going to try and stay calm. Try.

"A secret experiment. A deadly virus. A fatal mistake."

Yeah, that's the God's honest truth man. Let me clear those things the FUCK up.

"George Romero writes a script to Resident Evil. Paul W.S. Anderson writes one too. They scrap Romero's script and go with the much more idiotic one."

So let's talk about that. We can assume, from the title, that Resident Evil is a movie based on a long lived, and relatively acclaimed game series of the same name, which basically started the survival horror genre of video games. Sounds ok so far. Video game movies aren't exactly known for being... less than the worst crap ever, but still, we can be hopeful. Then, something that is similar to God reaching down and slapping Hitler in the face happened. Capcom and Sony Greenlit a Resident Evil movie with GEORGE FUCKING ROMERO writing the script. For those of you just joining us on the planet earth, George Romero is the man responsible for Night of the Living Dead, and the subsequent movies. That's right, the guy who gave us the modern zombie movie, and also the premise around which THE ORIGINAL RESIDENT EVIL GAME WAS BASED. This could still go bad if the script didn't really follow the game. I mean, Romero is known for his movies having strong social commentary in the undertones, maybe he'd go overboard with that? No kid, he wrote a script based around the Arklay Mansion incident, which was the basis of the first game. It included Chris Redfield and Jill Valentine as the main characters (same as the game) and such characters as Barry Burton, Ada Wong, Rebecca Chambers and Albert Wesker (All of whom were present during these events in the game). This sounds great from where I'm sitting. But no. That movie never did, and never will happen. Why? According to the Capcom producer, "Romero's script wasn't good. So Romero was fired".

Well la dee fucking da. I'm not ruling out that possibility, but if the final movie directed by Anderson is a reflection of what they think is good well maybe Romero's script was the best script ever written. Let's talk about that. Instead of the earlier mentioned script, we get that world viewed through the lens of a TOTAL MORON. There's still a mansion, only it has a ABSURD JOKE CITY UNDERNEATH IT. Ok Resident Evil is replete with shit like that, so we can forgive it. Umbrella still controls this facility. Fair enough. All the original characters are axed.

um... ok.

Instead we have Alice. Milla Jovovich is Alice, a lady who wakes up in said mansion, which is not actually all that big. She has no memory and everything is dreeeaammlike. She accompanies a team of the Umbrella Corporation's Commandos into their compromised facility, along with some other guy who also doesn't remember who he is. The facility is controlled by a evil little girl hologram computer... thing, called Red Queen. You guys following this clever subtext? ALICE IN WONDERLAND IF YOU ARENT GETTING IT. So the team enters, seemingly totally oblivious to what the hell is going on in this place, and they meet some zombies. Like 8 million of them. In the ensuing sequences, some of the dumbest crap happens. These guys suffer from the standard 'no one in a zombie movie ever saw a zombie movie' problem.

"hey Im rough and tumble latina michelle rodriguez. Theres a survivor!"

-obvious zombie-

"Fuck she bit me!"

-surrounded by zombies-

"Im the stupid team captain, AIM FOR THEIR KNEESSS"

I'm not kidding he really gives that suicide order. Way to go champ. Then plot twist WOO Alice and other Amnesia Guy were both working for Umbrella! Only Alice was gonna betray evil Umbrella, and Other Guy was going to kill her. Slowly they remember, and then he tries to screw everyone over. Only he dies cause he's a jerk. Everyone slowly dies over the course of the movie, except for Alice, and cop Matt Anderson, who's looking for his sister in some demented inverse Ada Wong situation. The one guy who almost survives, struggling all the way, BAM killed by a licker right at the end of the movie. Super time guys, glad we were waiting for the end of the movie so he could be killed like a punk. That's how I felt at the end of the movie to be honest. sort of like this:

Ouch.

     Thanks a lot fot the awesome movie guys. I had a great time, and an even better time imagining the great movie that could have not involved half an alice in wonderland allegory, part of a 2001: a Space Odyssey reference, and a lot of supremely dumb plot. A+ assholes.