Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
Directed by: Steven Spielberg
Starring: Harrison Ford, Karen Allen, Paul Freeman
What can I really say about Raiders of the Lost Ark? It’s a great movie. Indiana Jones is one of the most iconic action heroes of our time, and every other scene in this movie is so ingrained into our cultural memory that it’s like revisiting an old friend every time you watch it. Seriously, I can’t even imagine needing to summarize this film. Get lost.
Directed by: Courtney Solomon
Starring: Donald Sutherland, Sissy Spacek, Rachel Hurd-Wood
This movie totes itself as being based on a true story. An American Haunting is about a poltergeist. A real poltergeist. You lost me at the tagline, movie.
The movie starts in present day… somewhere, where a woman is reading a note she… has. Immediately we flash back to the 1800’s, where we meet the Bell family, father Donald Sutherland, mother Sissy Spacek, daughter Rachel Hurd-Wood, and about forty other little kids who don’t get any lines or screen time. We learn that Sutherland has made a shady deal for an old lady’s land (he charged her 20% interest… which BREAKS CHURCH LAW!) and she curses him and his daughter. Soon after the daughter starts being stalked by a ghost that messes with her blankets at night and slaps her around.
There’s a lot of scheming and whatnot to try to get the ghost to leave, but to no avail. About an hour in, everybody starts having flashbacks within dreams within visions and we get to see just about everything from the first part of the movie again, only this time with a stupid lightning ball effect around them for absolutely no reason. Turns out that the ghost is just trying to get the daughter to remember a repressed memory of when her father sexually assaulted her, and once she does remember, she poisons his dimetapp and he dies. The ghost was actually a spirit that came about to get revenge on her dad. In essence, it was the ghost of her “innocence” that she lost that night. Watch out, girls, if you give your flower to a man you regret later, it will come back to haunt you. Not in the abstract sense that happens to EVERY SINGLE PERSON EVER, but in a real sense that drags you up stairs and slaps you in the face until you kill.
So this is based on a true story. A true story about a girl who’s virginity turns into a ghost and beats her up until she kills her dad. True story.
Directed by: Paul Feig
Starring: Lewis Black, Wilmer Valderrama, Dyllan Christopher
Wow, combining a ‘kids alone and being mischievous’ movie and a Christmas movie. Not that it hasn’t been done before. In fact, I’m pretty sure the Home Alone movies took place during Christmas. I’m also pretty sure this movie was originally called Home Alone 4: Airport TERMINAL.
Lewis Black is the evil airport administrator who constantly chases after the wacky kids as they run around destroying things in a cute and independent way, and he’s a little too good at this role. I mean, Lewis Black is a hilarious guy. I’d just really hate to see him become the go-to guy for ‘angry old guy who chases’ kids around. He deserves better than that. I guess if it pays the rent. There’s also a bunch of minor roles for minor actors from prime time comedies like “The Office” and “That 70’s Show” and there’s even three guys from “The Kids in the Hall” in there. There’s a meal ticket cameo. Poor guys.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III (1993)
Directed by: Stuart Gillard
Starring: Elias Koteas, Paige Turco, Stuart Wilson
As a child of the 80’s, I loved Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles growing up. Had the toys, watched the cartoon, loved the first two movies, I even got a horrible plastic tent with their image on it that literally suffocated kids if they fell asleep inside it without ventilation. It was good times. The third installment in the live action Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series is the reason I stopped liking TMNT and decided to move on to bigger and better things. Like Ghostbusters.
In TMNT 3, the turtles get transported back in time to feudal Japan via a magic lantern. Originally they go to save April O’Neil, their reporter friend, but once they get there they are recruited to fight for the villagers against their oppressive Daimyo. They do all this with their classic grace and humility, failing to understand even the slightest thing that happens around them and then laughing at their half-assed jokes. Oh, the turtles.
Besides the drop in quality of the script and even the banter between the turtles, the most obvious difference between this movie and the first two in the series are the turtle suits used. In the first two, the Henson company was used to design the animatronics, and with good reason, since Henson is the leading company when it comes to all things puppets. For TMNT 3, they apparently threw away the old suits and replaced them with Chuck E. Cheese dancing animals. The facial motions are clanky and ridiculous, and Splinter himself looks like a cheap Halloween prop. Why would they do such a thing? I have no idea. Maybe it was cheaper?
Anyway, if you ever see a VHS copy of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III, you can be happy in the knowledge that by not buying it you’ve saved yourself 75 cents that you can instead spend on a frozen burrito, money much better spent.
Directed by: Dave Kim
Starring: Joe Alaskey, Sean Hart, Tom Kenny
This movie is nothing short of pure, unadulterated hell. I’ve seen a lot of movies, but I don’t think I’ve ever made anything that left me feeling physically ill before. This is apparently based on a cheap computer bowling game where Santa bowls and the elves are the pins. Someone decided that was a good thing to turn into a movie, I guess. That person was Satan.
The ‘movie’ starts out with Santa and his evil brother Dingle as pirates. Please, save your incredulous outrage until the end. There’s so much more to get worked up about. Yes, Santa is a pirate and he steals toys. Also, his favorite pastime is bowling. After Dingle cheats at a game of bowling, the two fight and are thrown overboard in the Arctic Ocean where they immediately freeze. Some time later they are found by a colony of elves who unfreeze them and herald Santa as their foretold leader Whitebeard. They coerce him into delivering toys all over the world and then 1400 years pass by until we reach present day.
So… Santa was a pirate… in the Arctic Ocean… sometime BEFORE 600 AD. Anyway, it turns out the elves enjoy being bowling pins for Santa to knock them over, and they make armpit farts when they’re happy, and you have to keep them happy or they stop making toys and… I… I can’t do this any more. It’s too painful to even think about. Why would any benevolent god allow such a thing as Elf Bowling: The Movie to exist? The only explanation for this video is that it was designed to be shown to inmates at Abu Ghirab.
I’m getting PTSD from this already. I gotta go. Puke.
Films in Boxes 