D!CKSHARK!!!!!

Dickshark~ 2016, Bill Zebub, USA

And so here we are again…

Bill Zebub has again put out a movie with a title so batshit crazy that my instincts briefly had me convinced that it just had to be at least a LITTLE BIT entertaining… >sigh<…. One watch and it’s deja vu all over again, folks; Dickshark truly is the second coming of Antfarm Dickhole (REVIEW), and that’s a bad thing. Once again, this is a movie that SHOULD have been a sure thing, I mean, it’s called DICKSHARK for fuck’s sake! How could that not be good for a few laughs, at the very least?! I’ll TELL YOU how…. BILL ZEBUB, THAT’S HOW.

His hats not bad, though.

Bill Zebub is downright supernatural. He can take anything, any idea, and fuck it unwatchable with boring and pretentious bullshit. He’s like Clickbait in the form of a director, he gets your hopes up with a catchy title and an insane premise, only to then bamboozle your ass with the worst movie you’ve seen in decades (or in my case, hours). The experience of watching his movies is exactly what Charlie Brown goes through when that chick yanks the football out from in front of him at the last second, head trauma included. Fool me once, shame on you, Bill, fool me twice, shame on me. Never again, you son of a bitch.

THE PLOT~ When some creepy dude and his inexplicably attractive, alt-model type girlfriend bed down in what is probably a Holiday Inn for some red hot hanky panky, things take a turn for the worst, dickshark style. You see, this weird dude (Who I had hoped would be the star of the film because he ISN’T Bill Zebub) has stolen a mysterious bottle penis enlarging cream from his maverick scientist roommate (fucking Bill Zebub), and he has chosen right here and right now to apply this cream to his genitals. Much to his delight, it seems to take effect immediately, but it also gives his wedding tackle a “clay like” consistency, something that bothers him a lot less than it would me. “Shape it into something useful,” his girlfriend calls out. Um, alright. Naturally, he chooses to mash an incredibly crucial part of his anatomy into the shape of a fucking shark, because who wouldn’t? For reasons that are never explained (and which do not exist), this also gives his now sentient wang the behavioral characteristics of a shark, and within minutes it separates from his body and escapes, thereby becoming a small shark, and not really a dickshark at all. Over the course of the film, this creature slowly morphs into larger shark, but it’s still pretty much just a shark, albeit one that likes intercourse with human females and has multiple dong-like protrusions on it’s exterior. it’s also not in the film enough. Almost the entire movie is just director Bill Zebub, who is also the star (shocker), babbling on and on and on about who the fuck cares what as he gropes away at a slew of beautiful women who would, evidently, do just about anything to be in a movie. I’m serious, the Dickshark is almost not even in the film, it’s probably about 65% Bill Zebub babbling with secondary characters who indulge him for no reason, 25% slow motion shots of softcore sex and/or monster attacks set to shitty metal songs, and 10% other characters babbling with one another. Almost nothing of substance happens, and anything that you would hope to see in a film called ‘Dickshark‘ is here in such short supply that it doesn’t even matter. And that’s another thing, this movie is TWO AND A HALF HOURS LONG!!!! What is this, the Desolation Of Fucking Smaug!??! Zebub’s as a director is as self indulgent as they come, but making a film called “Dickshark” two and a half hours long is SO self indulgent that there should be legal ramifications. It’s so dragged out that if a competent editor got his hands on the raw footage, they could probabky craft a funny movie out of it, but that movie would last for about 4 minutes.

That was supposed to be about the plot, wasn’t it? Well, against all odds, there is a plot here, but the titular Dickshark is an afterthought in the grand scheme of things. The film is really about hubris, Zebub’s wacky, grungy, implausibly educated scientist is super irresponsible with the work he conducts, and he never acknowledges or takes seriously the consequences of his actions, even when these consequences are horribly dire for everyone around him. Ultimately, this is his undoing, but we don’t care, because Zebub can’t tell a story and really, we just want it to finally be over.

It’s worth noting that in a film about a killer penis turned shark monster, the most unrealistic thing about this movie is how freaking accommodating this universe is to the character Zebub portrays. Why would anyone like this guy? All of these films exist in a world where every patch of land, no matter filthy or out of the way, boasts an average of one nude or nearly nude woman sprawled out on a blanket or towel every eight feet, and all of these women are eager to speak to and/or be groped by Zebub for as long as he wishes. In addition to these willing females, Zebub world is also the home to a small population of males, but they exist mostly as dialogue punching bags, here to offer just enough intelligent conversation for Bill to showcase his ego, but never enough to challenge his intellect in any significant way. I don’t know what would motivate a person to craft an entirely separate universe wherein they are some sort of ultra genius, heavy metal sex god, but clearly Zebub felt he needed to do just that, and here it is… And it’s a horrible, horrible place….

According to his films, Zebub spends roughly 70 hours a week taking a knee to chat with towel lounging randos. Livin’ the dream, Bill, livin’ the dream!

And speaking of heavy metal, holy shit is there a lot of that here. Dickshark is basically just an unsolicited mix-tape made to look like a monster movie. It’s filled, start to finish, with awful, awful metal songs, each of which Zebub offers a written synopsis about at the end of the film, in an effort to further insult you with the suggestion that his taste in music may be better than yours. In fact, part of why the run time is so excruciatingly long is that these songs are so often played in full, which helps no one, least of all the audience. Dude, I LIKE metal music, but I don’t want someone else’s iPod playlist crammed down my throat, least of all Zebub’s. Sitting through these songs is a heinous chore indeed. It’s like the guy in your friend group who always wants you to watch ten minute long youtube videos that you’re not the least bit interested in. I’m like… damn, can’t I like… go to the dentist, or have a golfer whack me in the nuts with his club instead? I’d sooner die than check out these fucking bands, Bill. I’d rather be trapped in a coffin that blasts sewage stench and Babymetal tracks through hidden speakers until I clawed my own throat out and die slowly than listen to your fucking bands. For fucks sake, Bill. FUCK.

This one is really taking a lot out of me, but if we’re being fair, I think I actually like it slightly better than Antfarm Dickhole. At least Zebub is poking fun at himself more or less the entire movie- that’s not to say that it isn’t perfectly clear from the get-go that the man is a raving egomaniac, because he makes that real obvious, but he’s also apparently secure enough in his undeserved arrogance that ripping on himself in a fruitless attempt to amuse isn’t out of the question. So that’s good.

Additionally, the film benefits from a few other familiar faces, I actually caught myself feeling somewhat relieved to see actor John Giancaspro, star of Ron Atkin’s Schzophreniac: The Whore Mangler, before I realized what a truly terrible, bleak sign that was for my psyche.

This was the best and least offensive picture I could find of him with a google search… So…

I guess it’s kinda like how you would feel if you were being rounded up into some sort of torture camp with a bunch of strangers, but then you spot a guy from work that you don’t really get along with. He’s not your favorite dude, but just seeing a familiar face in a trying time is somehow comforting anyway. Plus, Giancaspro definitely gives it his all in every role he plays, so he deserves some cred.

Additionally, softcore starlet turned makeshift scream queen Erin Brown, AKA Misty Mundae,has a pretty significant role in Dickshark, and it’s kind of nice to see her.

Sure, pretend you don’t recognize her.

She’s good at what she does, she’s likable, and next to the other actors, seeing her feels like watching Meryl freakin’ Streep. While Bill really just drags the film down,  I found it a lot easier to root for these two other actors, even if I  wasn’t supposed to. Sadly, they don’t even come close to salvaging the movie as a whole,  because that’s basically impossible, but is there anything else nice that I can say about this thing? Well, it does have some nice looking girls, most of whom show plenty of skin, and I’ll admit to enjoying that. Realistically, they’re the real main attraction here, so thelat warrants a mention. Beyond that, I think there were one or two jokes that I didn’t hate, and that’s really about it. There’s really not a lot you can say about this that isn’t just ultra negative.  I mean damn, I’m trying!

I almost resent being forced to hate this movie. Are you kidding me? A movie called Dickshark? By nearly any stretch of the imagination I should be entitled to enjoy this. I really, really want to, but it’s out of my control. Billl Zebub has once against shat on birthday cakes of every man, woman, and child in the entire world. Nothing new about that.

Now, I recognize that this review has been pretty generous with the personal attacks against Mr. Zebub, and typically I try to avoid that. You might think that these jabs have been pretty tasteless and inappropriate of me, but hear me out… I do feel bad about it, but in this case… I think they’re well justified. Ya see, these movies are just drenched in Zebub’s ego, and it’s a particularly belligerent, arrogant, ugly ego, which marches right up to your face and asserts a misplaced sense of superiority in the most aggressive ways possible, and I truly believe that this needs to be a part of the conversation. It’s this element in particular that is the most detrimental to this film, and indeed, every Bill Zebub film that I have ever seen.  Now, I follow a lot of no budget directors, and I’ve seen a lot of films which objectively are pretty horrible, but if done correctly, the urge to root for the underdog kicks in, and these blemishes become endearing. This phenomenon could easily save Zebub…  if he didn’t make that completely impossible. Bill Zebub truly does believe that he’s better than you, and he make certain to say as much in every way he knows how. In order to better illustrate my point, I want to do something that I’ve never done before. Let’s take a look at the actual DVD case and Jacket design that came with my personal copy of Dickshark. Behold;

THE DICK SHARK HOME VIDEO EXPERIENCE

This is the DVD, in my hand. Don’t worry, I have lots of Purel, and my soul is irredeemable anyway. Now, let’s have a closer look at the cover.

You’ll notice the tagline. Yep. That’s the kind of wit you can expect from this little gem. You’ll also notice that Bill Zebub is not listed as the star of the film, thereby failing to warn us how much of his bullshit we’re going to have to deal with. Very sneaky, Bill. Okay, now, let’s move onto the back of the case.

The first thing that will catch your eye (Okay, maybe not the FIRST thing) is a warning printed in a red rectangle. It reads:

“WARNING: Contains scientific concepts, a story that makes you think, proper grammar, and boobs.”

The balls on this guy, huh? Yeah, be forewarned, this is not one of those STUPID movies like you normally watch, you idiots. This is an intellectual film about Dicksharks. There’s science and grammar in this one, and it makes you think! It makes you think “wow, how is someone who is so bad at what they do still so arrogant?” And the truth is, I don’t have the answer! We may never know.

Next we have the synopsis. It reads:

NO, this is NOT Porn! Porn does not look like this!

I remind you, this is what the back of the box looks like:

(…Let’s just continue.) If you equate nudity with porn, you are immature.  (And there’s nothing Bill Zebub, aging director of Antfarm Dickhole, hates more than immaturity. Also, is the back of your Dickshark DVD really the proper forum to call people out on their puritanical sensibilities toward sex?  There’s a time and a place, Bill. Maybe start a blog or something.)

“Dickshark” is the most absurd movie that directo (Yes, it says “Directo”) “Bill Zebub” has ever made. It combines tragedy, comedy, science fiction, exploitation, and surrealism (so do most kindergarten crayon drawings). Don’t let the vulgar title fool you. (That’s actually good advice.)

Yes, there is abundant nudity, but there is also a bizarre mixture of concepts that make for quite an experimental film. See what can happen when creativity has to replace a big budget.

So, first of all, that’s a very clumsily worded synopsis. Whoever wrote that is not a good writer. Who was it? Was it you, Bill? Because I thought you were some kind of genius. Secondly, Creativity?! Bill, if you want to overcome your financial disadvantage, how about you learn to let go of your arrogance and fucking try harder? Learn how to tell a story!  Take some classes!  Advance yourself in literally any way. Try! Are you even trying? If you are, it’s not showing up on the screen, so there’s a problem that needs to be addressed there somewhere. And how about the writing? The plot of this film is a fucking nightmare, it’s winding, boring, self indulgent, and completely pointless. It’s just a showcase for a monster that doesn’t live up to a tenth of its potential, nobody learns anything, we don’t care about anyone, and the resolution comes in the form of a brand new character who is introduced for no reason but to conclude the film. That technique is called Deus Ex Machina, and we learned why that was a lazy and poor way to write on literally the first day in my college screenwriting class.

 It’s really pretty astounding just how much of this jacket design is devoted solely to telling you that you’re stupid. The arrogance this man demonstrates is jaw dropping on its own, but when you juxtapose that with the inferiority of his work, you get into some next level shit. Again, were it not for the smugness, the self indulgence, and the apparent contempt for all non-Zebub life forms that he exudes constantly, maybe I could deal… And honestly, I want to. But Zebub just doesn’t let me. Bill… Your movies suck, these songs suck, and Dickshark sucks. Worst of all, though, it’s this is all your fault, and you’re kind of a dick about it. What makes your work so hard to enjoy isn’t the budget, it’s not the resources, it’s not the limitations facing an artist who has to struggle to hack it on his own, it’s you. There’s one thing holding your movies back, and it’s you, and you alone.

If you ever see a copy of Dickshark in real life, pick it up and put it in the trash.

Still a better movie than Sucker Punch.

F

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Slaughtered Vomit Dolls

Slaughtered Vomit Dolls ~ 2006, Lucifer Valentine USA (TRAILER AND INTENTIONALLY OMITTED… Obviously.)

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The synopsis for Slaughtered Vomit Dolls reads as such;

“Mercilessly abused by her parents and routinely molested by a deranged priest, young Angela Aberdeen (Ameara Lavey) pledges her soul to Satan in exchange for his protection and help in exacting revenge on her tormentors. But soon Angela’s pact leads her down a sinister path overflowing with blood, guts, gore and vomit. This outrageously over-the-top gross-out film from director Lucifer Valentine contains graphic images of sex and violence.

Well, sir, I have seen Slaughtered Vomit Dolls, and none of that ever happens. As a matter of fact, nothing happens! There is, in fact, no plot, and no story. ‘Lucifer Valentine’ must have forgotten to include one. Embarrassing!

Let’s get serious, Slaughtered Vomit Dolls is terrible, just terrible, horrible bull shit, as bad as a movie can be. It’s boring. It sucks. It’s the kind of loose narrative, artless garbage that anyone with a camera is capable of crafting, and which is defended as being somehow so artistic that any naysayer who didn’t like it simply must “not have understood it.” Sorry, that’s a cop out. I understand your movie, it’s just not good, I don’t need some union of the pretentious AND the ignorant trying to explain to me how I missed the boat on your puke montage. In fact, it’s worse than that.

 Slaughtered Vomit Dolls is a very frustrating film to criticize, because of it’s apparent connection to Satanism and the Church of Satan. We need to tackle that chestnut right here and now; For some reason, there are a number of self proclaimed Satanists who tend to be offended by the suggestion that this movie isn’t a masterpiece. Sorry, guys n’ gals, it may very well be the Citizen Kane of puke porn, but that’s as far as it goes. In fact, I want to you imagine something… Imagine that some Hallmark Channel movie about the life of an obscure Biblical character get’s made. The craftsmanship is lousy, the story is boring, and it’s clear that you’re not a part of the film’s target audience. Imagine that, for some reason or another, you actually watch this thing, and of course, you totally hate it. Naturally, the next thing you do is to proclaim how bad this movie sucks via your chosen social media platform, because this is 2016, and your opinion requires broadcasting to the entire globe at all times. Before you know it, you’re being blitzed by a legion of pissed off Christians, all of whom swear up and down that this movie is excellent, even though it clearly sucks. How obnoxious, right? Well, that’s exactly what we have here with these fucking Satanists. Really, it’s no different. You’ve traded one religion for another, but the behavior is identical. Let’s hammer out some truth:

Attention; Satanists, and/or self proclaimed Satanists who don’t actually understand what Satanism even is: This movie is terrible. It just is, you need to just accept that. If you want to have decent Satanic movies, then I guess you guys need to recruit more talented directors to join your flock, because this just isn’t it, man. I don’t even have a problem with Satanists, but this behavior is obnoxious. In my research, I’ve seen far too many of you defend this film by stating that”If you’re not a Satanist, you just don’t get it.” Okay… Well, I’m sorry, there’s nothing here to get. I’m glad you like your little puke movie, I hope you can all go watch it and have fun or whatever, but back here in the real world we have to have an objective means of assessing artistic merit, and your individual, ultra-niche perspective doesn’t completely rewrite the rule book. That’s just the end of it, and by any and all unbiased criteria, this thing is a complete piece of shit, end of discussion.

Now, let’s move on to hating on this thing a little more.

So, it has no story. So, what does it have? Lots of exploitative nudity, horrendous production value, fetishistic violence, and so, so much throwing up. For some reason. A lot of people throw up. Like, a lot. Also, I typically reject the term “torture porn,” but it feels appropriate here.

Slaughtered Vomit Dolls is awful. As mentioned before, it’s boring. A film that loads itself with wall to wall full blast shock value but forgets to give you a reason to give a shit can run the risk of having no one give a shit, and that’s what we have here. It’s also startlingly pretentious, but that’s sort of what you’d expect from a man cliche enough to pretend his name is ‘Lucifer Valentine.’

If you’re into psychotronic films and feel compelled to hunt down the weirdest and wildest cinema out there, please… I beg of you, DO NOT see Slaughtered Vomit Dolls as like, another mountain that you must to climb to prove your mettle. There’s nothing here to justify a viewing, and you gain nothing from enduring this. I want to explicitly discourage anyone from watching Slaughtered Vomit Dolls for any reason. Unless you’re really into vomit, I guess. Or boredom. If either of those things are just like, right up your alley, then I guess this is the movie for you. I imagine that’s a pretty small minority, however, so for everyone else, avoid.

Still a better movie than Sucker Punch.

F

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The Thrill of a Kill

The Thrill of a Kill~ Lars-Erik Lie, 2011, Norway

the-thrill-of-a-kill-wild-eye-raw-dvd

Remember the foreign exchange program from high school? What a great idea, right? Your school sends off it’s best and brightest to be immersed in a foreign culture for a full year, and in exchange, that country would send some exotic baddass from their ranks to come hang out in your boring town for a while, and everyone would be super psyched about it. Usually. Sometimes it didn’t really work out so well. Sometimes, you’d send off the third hottest cheerleader you had, and in return, you’d get some attic dwelling troglodyte who wrote Lego-land fan fiction. I can almost hear Belgium laughing their, deep, guttural, Flemish guffaws, even now. They’ve made a fool of you… You just know they could not wait to drop that kid like a burning sack of garbage the first chance they got.

That’s sort of how I feel about The Thrill of a Kill. At first glance, this promises to be Norway’s answer to Violent Shit, and damn, is that ever overdue. But then you dig in, give it a watch, and you quickly find out that that isn’t what you have here at all. Somehow, Violent Shit is like…. BETTER. Very much so. The Thrill of a Kill is a very specific kind of disappointment. It’s the motion picture equivalent of the foreign exchange student that your principal tried to send back.

THE PLOT~ Kimsy is whatever passes for “Goth” in Norway, which somehow is even lamer than the Domesticated American Goth. She’s a snotty, miserable little shit who mopes around the house all day, wretched and unemployable, and I’m assuming is really into Japanese cartoons. Feels like a safe assumption. Anyway, this is your main character. Aren’t you just elated? It’s unfortunate for Kimsy that her mother is about as big a fan of her as you and I are.

thrill-kill9

As seen here.

Basically, mom’s had it up to her Nordic nostrils with Kimsy’s bullshit. “Why can’t you get a job like your equally gothy, yet somehow less worthless older sister?” Mom yells. “Fuck this,” thinks Kimsy, no longer able to tolerate her mother’s reasonable exasperation with her lifestyle choices. In a fit of rage both childish and boring, Kimsy, simple minded and angry at the world, grabs her nerd headphones, cranks up her unlistenable jams, and trudges out into the picturesque Norwegian forest to blow off some steam. We all know, however, that no steam is to be blown off today. No, rather, Kimsy is about to bumble into a situation which will do little to alleviate her stress level, for it is here, deep in the wilderness (I guess) that Kimsy falls into a deadly game of cat and whatever Norwegian cats eat with our film’s exciting movie murderer; Just Some Dude.

Untitled-1

As seen here.

Yep, our killer is truly nothing to write home about, folks. He’s just some pudgy, Norwegian dork who basically looks like the assistant manager of your local geek squad. He’s the kind of guy who, at the age of 42, likely has nothing whatsoever in his 401K, but who probably owns three replica swords from the Highlander movie series. This is perhaps the film’s most confusing shortcoming, it gives us a protagonist we can’t stand, and an antagonist we won’t even remember. Not off to an ideal start, Norway. Really expected better.

Anyhow. We spend sort of a long time learning the ins and outs of this loser’s back story, which is far from thrilling, but at least they’re trying. Turns out, our weird, murderous loser was the son of a single mother, who basically abused and neglected the shit out of him throughout his entire childhood, because she really wanted to focus on her career (prostitution.) Over time, this unhealthy environment transformed what might have been a perfectly adequate D&D dungeon master into a ACTUAL dungeon master, and our bad guy eventually learns to embrace a lifestyle of murder and misanthropy, as so many of us do… So I guess it goes without saying that Norwegian CPS really screwed the pooch on this one.

Anyway… Our pig nosed, weasel bearded, woman-butchering forest nerd stalks and menaces Kimsy for a while, until he decides that it’s time to kick things up a notch and drag her back to his freak ass Norwegian murder shack for the most uncomfortable scene in the movie. It get’s rough, and you’re gonna hate it.

So that happens for a while, but apparently Kimsy can only be missing for several hours without the rest of her family taking notice. “Hey, where’s that annoying creature we don’t love very much?” Her mom and sister begin to wonder, eventually realizing that there could be legal consequences to letting Kimsy be eaten by trolls once the sun goes down. The two conclude that they had best set out to find her and bring her back home, and we’re into act 2. For whatever reason, this phase of the movie starts off looking sort of promising. We sort of get the impression that Kimsy’s mom and sister are going to embark on some detective quest to track their missing family member down, and perhaps unearth more information in the process that could further flesh out the film and make things more interesting; but if there is one thing The Thrill of A Kill loves to do, it is to fall puzzlingly, frustratingly short on promised potential that should be relatively effortless to deliver upon. Kimsy’s mom and sister talk to a whopping one person on their quest, which provides them with no leads and no clues of any sort whatsoever, and then, they just bump into Kimsy at a gas station. Really. They stop for gas and see the murderer there, and as he drives away, they spot Kimsy tied up in the back of his car. Then they just follow him home. That’s it. Pretty easy.

What happens next is dumb, too. Basically, in an effort to rescue Kimsy (I know, what for, right?) a bunch of people die, Kimsy escapes and is recaptured more than once, and a penis get’s severed somewhere in all the commotion. You know what, whatever Norway. I don’t even care anymore. This is not a good movie.

if you wanna talk shop, The Thrill of a Kill is fraught with blatant inferiority in every aspect of its execution, and it never tires of finding ways to disappoint, even when expectations are astoundingly low to begin with. The music is garbage, the photography is boring, and the narrative only holds together because it’s so fucking cookie cutter that it would require creativity to screw up.

And let’s talk about this killer again. Really?!? This is what you’re prepared to offer? I know you’ve got better than this, Norway. You can’t scare up one ghost viking, or maybe some black metal kids or something? How in the fuck is it even possible that to date, Norway, a culture with such a rich history of brutality and violence, can’t do better than the office IT guy? Are you trying to piss me off on purpose?

In summation, The Thrill Of A Kill is a truly flimsy imitation of a specific type of splatter film, which are typically known to be very low quality, but are embraced regardless. However, this film’s inability to live up to these astoundingly modest requirements makes it very, very difficult to recommend to anyone. Basically, you would have to have already re-watched all the movies that The Thrill Of A Kill wants to be so many times that you’re sick to death of them, and are desperate for something, ANYTHING new. If you’re in that boat, then A) I kind of don’t understand what a day in your life must be like, and B) I guess I have a recommendation for you. it sucks ass, have fun. For everyone else, I really can’t imagine why you’d want to waste your time.

Still a better movie than Sucker Punch.

D-

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Batman versus Superman : Dawn of justice

Batman V. Superman: Dawn of Justice~ 2016, Zack Snyder (ugh), USA

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Imagine that one day you’re browsing social media, and you come upon a photograph of some people playing joyfully in the snow. They’re smiling, laughing, having the time of their lives. They’ve even made a snowman, and you can see a kind of happiness in their faces that you remember from your childhood, but which you haven’t experienced in what seems like forever. This picture is getting mad ‘likes’, tons of shares, and everyone is commenting about how much they enjoy it. Meanwhile, the last photo you posted is a damn ghost town, initially ignored, and now forgotten, today it stands as a nagging illustration of your many failings in life, forever enshrined digitally and available worldwide. These people in the snow… Their popular photograph… This is an experience you must have for yourself. This need consumes you.

But there’s a problem; you don’t have snow. You look outside, and there’s not a single flake to be had. You NEVER really get snow, you live in Arizona, and it’s dry as a bone year ’round! I’ll tell you what you DO have, though: DOG SHIT! You have PLENTY of that! Enough to build a house!

So, you spread it all around your property, sprinkling it on your car, on the house, you make sure the ground has an even coat, and soon, it’s just like the picture! It’s a different color, it smells different, but such details are lost on you. To you, this looks great! A perfect reproduction! For the finishing touch, you even build a dog shit snowman, but you take the liberty of updating the no longer relevant snowman design that everyone else doesn’t seem to understand is broken, and after you’ve outfitted him with some wrap around shades and a trenchcoat, you have made a superior snowman that you fully believe will be embraced as the new standard in anthropomorphic snow mounds for all time. And now, the preparation is complete. You stand in your shitscape, and briefly, you feel pride… Except… Then you notice that you are alone. There are no people… No laughing children… And you don’t understand. Why?! What happened? You even went on Conan and showed everyone your sweet tribal arm tattoos, so what went wrong? You shake it off. “Hold it together,” you tell yourself, “the fans just need some time to process this…” Quickly, you upload your photo to Facebook, knowing that an avalanche of ‘likes’, comments, and shares is sure to come crashing down upon you, quickly elevating your photograph to one of the most treasured destinations on all of Facebook, and finally filling that emptiness inside that eats away at you every waking moment of every miserable day. This photo is your salvation, and you cannot wait for the people to embrace it.

But then they don’t. In fact, people don’t really seem to like your photo at all. You get a couple likes- but these are just the people who like anything you post no matter what. The rest of the world tries to ignore you, and the people who comment… Well, some of them actually seem to dislike what you’ve done. What happened?! How did your dream become a nightmare, and why can’t you have your own moment of happiness in the snow? Why? WHY!?

This emotional journey that I have taken you on is exactly the experience that Zack Snyder has experienced with the production and release of his latest (last? a guy can dream) motion picture; Batman V. Superman: Giant Hunk of Bullshit– oh, wait. Sorry. Batman V. Superman: Dawn Of Justice. But hold up, dear readers, do not feel sympathy for Mr. Snyder, there is a corner booth reserved for him in the darkest corner of hell, and I assure you, he’s earned it. The real victims here are the fans. To them, I would like to extend my most heartfelt condolences. Honestly, I’m really sorry this happened to you.

THE PLOT~ Ugh. I want to skip this. We don’t need this. It’s bad, just take my word for it.

So, here’s the skinny: We KNEW this would suck. I knew it would suck from the moment that Snyder was named director (and therefore de-facto architect of the entire DC Comics Cinematic Universe,) but funnily enough, the WAY it chose to suck was entirely unexpected. For a comic book action film, this fucker is SO, SO, SO unforgivably slow and boring. The title of the fucking thing is “BATMAN VERSUS SUPERMAN“- there are not one, but TWO of the biggest superheroes of all time in the damn name of the movie– so why is it that if feels like four hours of slow, boring, clumsy exposition before we even get see anything remotely superhuman go down? The “fun” is kept on a tight leash throughout the entire film until the third act, which attempts to wad about nine storylines into 45 minutes of motion picture, dropping the most extreme overdose of superhero bullshit on you ever in one radically condensed portion of the movie. The structure of the film is basically this: ACT ONE: No where near enough, ACT TWO: No where near enough, ACT THREE: WAAAAY WAAAY TOO MUCH, The end. And why!? What’s the motivation here?! To catch up with Marvel, of course, but do they not see how foolish this is? This literally could have been like, eight movies, and with OTHER directors behind the camera, there could have even been some good ones in there. But instead, DC tries to match Marvel’s eight years of painstaking work to establish a well nurtured universe that fans will want to come back to time and time again with a single movie, and we end up with an overly long, horribly written, convoluted shit show. I can’t believe it, but even Man Of Steel was superior to this. Batman V. Superman is just as bad as we feared.

I feel like what must have happened here is that Snyder, knowing he is routinely criticised for being all shine and no substance, badly overcompensated, and tried to hold back on the action, mistakenly thinking that people not dressed in tights and talking was the same thing as character development. He knows he has to really bring the thunder sometime, though, so in the third act he drops the beat like crazy, and it’s so out of balance that the whole ship sinks. Batman V. Superman has a long list of problems, but I think this might actually be the single biggest flaw in the entire picture.

But what else wrong with the film? Well, ALL of the dialogue is bad. All of it. Jeremy Irons and Jesse Eisenberg especially have some lines that are just embarrassing, one that sticks out for me is even in the trailer:

Lois Lame: You’re psychotic.
Lex Luthor: It is a three syllable word for any thought too big for little minds.

That sounds like it should be printed on the front of a Wal*Mart T-shirt, and then worn by the most hopelessly socially awkward high schooler ever during an all night Deviant Art Marathon, not a piece of dialogue deemed suitable for inclusion in a major motion picture. Nobody smart would ever say that. That’s the dumbest, most embarrassing shit I’ve ever heard. Who wrote this? You did a bad job, you should feel terrible about yourselves.

Additionally, the plot is awful. There’s way too much going on here, predictably, so we end up wasting storylines which could have been their own movie, if handled by a more capable studio. It feels like the scripts for nine movies were just copy and pasted together into one overly long mess and then nobody bothered to proofread the results. We spend the first two thirds of the film trying to establish our character’s motives, and yet when things finally start to happen, nobody’s actions make any sense. Superman winds up being easier to manipulate than a senior citizen lost at the wrong bus stop, and Batman, in the act of murdering Superman, pulls a full 180 when he discovers that both of them have moms named Martha. That ends up being a major plot point. I’m serious. They go from nemesis to BFF in an instant, and learning the name of Clark Kent’s mom is what makes the difference. Imagine what’s going to happen when he meets the Hulk!

At the end of the day, millions of desperate people are going to pretend that this a good movie no matter what, and it’ll make money. It’s disheartening, but it’s true. We’re at a funny point in human history, these days we’ve become so dependent on media to dull the aches and pains of modern life that we’ve developed a kind of Stockholm Syndrome for bad artists. People want to love this so badly that they would have accepted absolutely anything. The whole film could have just been Zack Snyder in Superman tighty whities rolling around on the floor of a public restroom and humming the theme song to the 1960’s Batman TV show for three hours, and it still would have been defended to the death by legions of sad DC Comics fans who just want to have a good time at the movies. As it is, we have a film so critically reviled that it currently rests a full five percent more rotten that The Room on Rotten Tomatoes, and honestly, that’s where it belongs. Batman V. Superman: Dawn Of Justice is a stinker I would not wish on my worst enemies.

Still a better movie than Sucker Punch.

F

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THINGS!

Things – 1989, Andrew Jordan, Canada

Things-Poster-14

Things is what I like to call a “worst case scenario movie”…

image

I’m sure you can see what I mean.

…Because at the end of the day, a movie is just the culmination of countless decisions; some large, and some tiny, but all important in one way or another. Everything from “What’s the movie about” to “what ‘door slam’ sound effect do I want to use in this scene?”, each and every one of these choices must be made, and all have some measurable impact on the finished product.

Now, a “worst case scenario” movie happens when every single decision made throughout the entire process was 100% wrong, but somehow, the movie just exists anyway. It’s hard to accept, but this IS possible; somehow, in isolated cases, people have been able to finish an entire film and never once make the right call on any single decision throughout the entire process, start to finish. It does happen, my friends, and it DID happen; with Things.

Things Gillis Intervision Picture Corp DVD 13People like to throw around the term “worst movie of all time” an awful lot these days, and by now, the phrase has become so overused that a lot of it’s impact is sorta lost, but Things absolutely is one of the worst movies ever, and it always will be. This isn’t so much a feature film, it’s more a case of people standing in front of a camera correctly. Not well, mind you, but they are in front of a camera, so if it’s a pass/fail, they pass.

THE PLOT~ Some dude’s wife can’t get pregnant, so they attempt some sort of experimental, artificial insemination procedure, and as a result, she births a litter of murder bugs. So far so good, right? Well, that’s where the good news stops. After that, we are immediately thrown into a universe where two morons drink beer and act like unintelligent, aimlessly hostile children for an eternity while absolutely nothing ever happens, and absolutely no one reacts to anything, ever.

things-01Acting is reacting? Think again. Things is here to refute that hypothesis.

Periodically, there is news footage intercut with our “narrative,” but like the rest of the film, these are both stupid, and entirely incoherent. People do eventually die, but it fucking sucks so hard, and it takes a thousand years before anything happens. If you accidently hit “record” on your smartphone while it sits around in your pocket for 90 minutes, there’s a strong likelihood that the result will be a more entertaining, and more artistically valid film than this one.

things-2It’s basically this for two hours.

You should see the notes I took for this review; they go on for pages and pages, and while I could probably write a five thousand word review outlining just a couple highlights, it feels like a bad use of my time. The truth is, every critic in the world could go at this film full blast until they collapse from exhaustion and still not even scratch the surface. It is, simply put, as bad as a movie could possibly be. I can’t imagine how this film wasn’t just thrown right into the garbage the first time someone watched it.

163837420_640I’m all for the preservation of art, but this film just screams “destroy me.”

Movies aren’t easy to make, I acknowledge that. Actually, in my mind, that just makes this whole thing even more confusing. How could anyone be capable of actually creating an entire film and still lack even the most basic grasp of what a film should be? It’s a mother f’in’ enigma, you guys. Seriously, NOTHING in Things is done right, well, or even good enough. This movie is, and I speak with complete conviction, one of the single worst movies ever made. Probably in the top five, maybe the top three. Frankly, I don’t expect this title belt to be challenged anytime soon, and probably the worst thing about it is that is isn’t even fun. When we watch other worse case scenario films, like Birdemic, or The Room, we laugh…. When we watch Things, we groan. My recommendation is to avoid this travesty at all costs, for it is terrible… so, so very terrible.

Still a better movie than Sucker Punch.

F

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Crimes Against Humanity: Zack Snyder

Uber douche

Ugh. ZACK SNYDER. What a piece of trash. Snyder is that guy you know who just doesn’t get it, but couldn’t be more enthusiastic. He’s just smart enough to figure out what smart people are into, but not smart enough to have a legitimate interest himself. If you asked him what he thought about The Mona Lisa, he’d probably say it was “tight.” If asked why, he might assert that her expression was “hella funny.” He might then invite you to Carl’s Jr.

Zack Snider is the guy who shows up to every party on time, but no one is happy about it. Zack Snyder produces mindless, bottom of the barrel, opiate of the masses level popcorn entertainment for people who would rather die than suffer subtitles, and what makes him especially bad is that he seems to prefer doing this to intellectual properties that could actually be really great in the right hands. Zack Snyder is a machine that ruins other people’s good ideas. He assassinates potential. He’s really, really good at that.

  • Dawn of the Dead Now, on the surface, this movie wasn’t horrible. At the time, I actually liked it… It had a good script (James Gunn). The thing is, however, that this movie is the reason zombies suck so hard now, and now that we know more about Mr. Snyder this movie seems pretty pernicious in retrospect. This was Snyder saying “You know, I like Dawn of the Dead… But obviously I can make it better.” This was the gateway drug the X-Box/Monster Truck Rally crowd needed to get them into zombies. Horror, dread, psychology, existential terror, all this wasn’t going to work for today’s youth. They needed zombies that could run fast and make monster noises. Some might try to pin the blame on Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later, but that argument won’t stand. That movie may have sped zombies up, but this one dumbed them down, and this is the movie that defined what path these movies were going to take from that point forward.
  • Watchmen In an interesting way, Watchmen is actually an incredible accomplishment, because it is at the same time an incredibly faithful adaptation of the comic book and also the exact opposite of the authors intention. How can this be? The devil is in the details, it’s not what Snyder says, but how he says it that causes this phenomena. He’s like a parrot; he repeats faithfully, but always in a strange, uncomfortable monotone and with no actual grasp of what his words mean. This is a great illustration, because that’s Snyder to a T, he’s a huge fan of a lot of great things, but like a child he appreciates and is aware of only the most superficial layer of any composition. Any subtext or statement is over his head by miles, and he couldn’t care less because he’s too busy imaging it in slow motion with techno music and explosions. Just like Dawn of the Dead and The Man of Steel, Watchmen has Snyder taking an idea with some complexity to it and reducing it to it’s most simplified, shallow form, and then dumping sugary gloss all over it to jazz it up. The comic book version of Watchmen was ground breaking, and is beloved for taking old ideas and subjecting them to unheard of levels of stark realism and complexity. Mangling that into a generic, cookie cutter, super hero film complete with every age old stereotype and no intentional irony is a pretty Herculean example of missing the boat. Where great artists look for new ways to say more, Snyder is a master of finding old ways to say less, or nothing at all.
  • “Saving” Watchmen from the Terry Gilliams of the world- Though past his prime as an artist, Terry Gilliam remains an incredibly respected and admired director by film buffs the world over. This is a respect he has earned, and which Zack Snyder has not. There was a time when the studios courted Gilliam to produce a Watchmen film, but these negotiations obviously never went anywhere. In a recent interview, Zack Snyder, creator of jaw-droppingly shallow media, stated that part of why he made Watchmen was to, and I f’ing quote, “save it from the Terry Gilliams of this world.” The impact a statement that over-whelmingly out of line is impossible to measure. Snyder’s lapse in judgment regarding his own self worth is at this moment the most staggeringly incomprehensible thing in the universe. I struggle to even find an appropriate analogy. Saying that this is like Einstein’s scientific contributions being criticized by a used diaper with a sixth grade science text book is giving Snyder too much credit.
  • Sucker Punch- Sucker Punch perfectly captures the experience of watching your little brother play Playstation 2 for two hours. Solitaire, the card game, has more character development. It’s one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen, and I devote most of my spare time to actively seeking out the worst movies known to man with frenzied desperation. After Sucker Punch, though, you’re just chasing the dragon. Nothing will ever be this bad again.You’d have a better time watching your own snuff film. Sucker Punch is a piece of garbage strung together by a man who lacks the attention span to achieve anything. Does Zack Snyder have children?! What happens when they ask him to make them a bowl of cereal? He get’s half way to the pantry, is distracted by a moth and runs out into the street pretending to be an airplane? How did the creation of this blisteringly vapid piece of dog shit lead to this man being in charge of the DC cinematic universe?! Only the most deranged and depraved collection of soulless money vampires could have seen this and not demanded a public suicide of Snyder in an attempt to reclaim honor. I view the creation of this movie the same way that The Terminator franchise views the creation of artificial intelligence. Time travel must be researched so that this wrong can be completely erased from Earth’ history. What if there is intelligent life elsewhere in the universe and they find Sucker Punch?  Did you ever think of that? That’s like your mom finding your porn collection, but on a scale where the consequences are human extinction. They’d show up with the death ships, we’d make our case, they’d say “We saw Sucker Punch.” And mankind would grow silent, knowing it had no leg to stand on. “Make it fast,” we would request, though we knew we didn’t deserve it.
  • Sucker Punch Again – If I was entered into the Witness Protection Program, and the false identity the FBI created for me had a Netflix account associated with it that had given Sucker Punch a passing grade, the shame would be so burdensome that I would just contact the Mafia and inform them of my location immediately.
  • The Man Of Steel – Clark Kent is the reason Superman is a great character. That’s the depth that people respond to, and good writers have always known that for Superman, the best stories are not the ones reliant upon Superman facing physical challenges. Those struggles are best left for other characters, for Superman, his whole shtick is that he readily and easily dominates the physical world on an almost God-like level. The path to writing a great Superman story is by exploring what it means to someone to have that level of ability and responsibility, and to be a complete outsider, when in reality all you want is to be a good person with a normal life. The speech David Caradine’s character Bill gives in Kill Bill Vol. 2 is right on the money, Superman is great because the false alter ego he adopts is not his super hero persona, but rather the shroud of normalcy he tries to cloak himself in when he steps into the role of the clumsy, bumbling Clark Kent. The Clark Kent/Superman dynamic is 100% the key ingredient in crafting a great Superman story. What’s that, Zack Snyder? You’re not even going to do the Clark Kent thing? You’re going to do it super half-assed, and have Lois Lane know from day one, because you don’t fully appreciate or understand why Superman works? Well, what are you doing instead? Explosions and buildings falling over, huh? People getting killed? Great. I thought that’s what you would say. And on that note….
  • Batman VS Superman- I’m just glad I’m a Marvel comics guy. I have to take a break and write about this another time. This idea is so bad that I need a full eight hours of sleep and two weeks preparation to adequately hate on it. I’ll come back and do this later.Okay, I’m back.

    DC and Warner Brothers want Marvel movie success, but they don’t have Marvel patience or foresight. It’s like someone noticing their neighbor having a really nice Thanksgiving Dinner and wanting to experience that for themselves, but then refusing to take the time to cook any of the food, or even remove it from it’s packaging. When the time comes they pile a huge mound of rotting garbage in front of their guests, only to become upset when nobody enjoys the evening. That’s DC and Warner Brothers right now. If you want a massive film universe, establish it. If you want a massive crossover film, establish properties that you can then crossover. Yes, it means you can’t enjoy the box office of a major cross over film as soon as next summer, but you can milk each specific character for their own film franchises,  making more money in the long term anyhow, and it’s really important to take the time to do something like this the right way, or else it’s just going to fall flat on it’s face. Instead, this new movie is going to be absolutely crammed full of poorly imagined, underdeveloped new characters like a damn clown car, which is just such a bad plan. Part of the issue is that they have no confidence in their product, because most of these guys have very little potential for solid, stand alone films in the first place. We all saw how The Green Lantern went down and most of these guys all have much worse problems, DC is just campier. For instance;

    1. The Flash…. He runs light speed, and his main villains are Captain Cold, Professor Zoom, and a talking, psychic super gorilla from space or the future or something… Sounds like The Flash is going to be a challenge.
    2. How about Wonder Woman? She’s made out of clay and lightning, and her only villain is a Cheetah girl… Called Cheetah. The DC Universe also has a character who is a Cyborg, with the super creative name of: Cyborg. Good job, DC.
    3. Aqua Man? (crickets chirping….) How are you going to film the underwater scenes?! Just make his voice sound really bubbly?

    We could write for days about why the strategy that DC and Warner Bros is using is stupid and destined for failure, but that’s a conversation for another time. What we’re talking about right now is Zack Snyder. The hurdles facing DC wouldn’t be the looming, insurmountable road blocks that they are if we had someone at the helm we could trust to do a good job and find new ways to enjoy these characters without mangling them too badly. But we don’t.

    And I don’t want to hear any “You can’t judge a movie that isn’t out yet” crap, because of course we can. If a man comes at you with a knife and clearly states his intention to stab you, do you refuse to react on the grounds that you cannot properly judge a wound until you’ve experienced it? This is that stab wound. Dodge it, run, anything. Or don’t, this movie is getting made no matter what we do. The era of good DC movies died with the conclusion of Christopher Nolan’s last Batman film, so make peace with that and brace yourself for all the nerd drama that’s going to be meme-ing up your newsfeed left, right and damn center for the foreseeable future.

    This has been my presentation. I hope now you all understand that Zack Snyder sucks in a way that is vibrant, striking, and utterly devastating to the human spirit. He’s like some kind of coiling, farting viper lurking in the shadows, waiting to strike and kill something beautiful, all the while clouding the air with shameful gasses. Also, I imagine this snake to have blunt, bucked teeth, one of those propeller hats stupid people wear in cartoons, because Snyder is apparently also stupid. Everyone have a nice day.