Bride of Frankenstein (1935)

Bride of Frankenstein (1935)

Directed by: James Whale

Starring: Boris Karloff, Elsa Lanchester, Colin Clive

The second Frankenstein movie is the one where all the really good stuff about the classic Universal movies comes from, with the exception of “IT’S ALIIIIVE!!” The blind dude with the fiddle, the monster learning to speak… this is a cool movie.

Everybody thinks that Frankenstein’s monster has been killed in a burning windmill, but he manages to escape out from below. Meanwhile, a crazy guy named Dr. Pretorius approaches Dr. Frankenstein and wants him to cooperate on an attempt to make another monster out of corpses. He doesn’t want to, so Pretorius kidnaps his fiancee and the Monster stops by to tell them to make a wife, and they do. The bride screams whenever Frankenstein gets close, and he realizes that he’s not even good enough for a woman of his caliber. With a tear in his eye, he blows up Frankenstein’s castle, killing everyone but Dr. Frankenstein and his fiancee, who escape.

This is a great science fiction film where our main character is the monster and he learns and grows and gets his heart crushed and has a heroic sacrifice at the end. It’s such a completely backwards way to work from the original film, while still not being quite on the level of the book… in any case, it works out perfectly.

A Bug and a Bag of Weed (2006)

A Bug and a Bag of Weed (2006)

Directed by: J. David Gonella

Starring: Chris Cuthbertson, Drew Hagen, Nico Lorenzutti

So I know sometimes I review these little cheapo shitty movies and I get people replying angry at me because they worked on it and are defending it. If any of you were involved in making this movie, especially if you’re writer/star Chris Cuthbertson, could you please let me know so I can request reparations.

A guy who works a shitty job in a computer store gets involved in a WACKY caper involving a big bag of weed and this idiot and his friends selling it at the store. He also gets back together with the girl he liked in high school and beats up the guy who bullied him in high school and gets back at the guy who broke up his high school band.

This was the most disgustingly opaque series of cheap wish fulfillment thrown into a film format. By which I mean it was terribly unfunny, and was just plain terrible on the next level beyond that. None of these people are actors, and they all manage to be uncomfortable around each other all the time. Even if the jokes were written semi-competently, these people would find a way to deliver it in a matter where it would remove more comedy out of the world than it would give.

Bratz: Genie Magic (2006)

Bratz: Genie Magic (2006)

Directed by: Mucci Fassett

Starring: Dionne Quan, Olivia Hack, Tia Mowry

My friend and I watched another Bratz CGI movie a while ago, and it made it to our list of the worst movies ever, so OF COURSE we had to watch more of them. Because we’re… I don’t even know what we are. We aren’t 9 year old girls, the target market for this movie, I can tell you that much.

A bunch of identical-but-hue-switched friends that may or may not be a band or some sort of dance troupe meet a teenage genie. A teenagenie. Teenie? Geeteeneme. Anyway, the girl genie is on the run from her adoptive dad who works for the government, and she wants to have friends and go shopping and stuff. The downside is, anytime anyone around her says the word “wish”, that wish comes true! How wacky!

Okay, so I’ll give the otherwise terrible piece of shit that is this movie one thing: Having a genie that compulsory grants wishes if it can hear them is a unique idea. Not even Rod Serling would be so mean as to have something like that exist. What if someone just walked by her and yelled “I WISH THE SUN WOULD EXPLODE!” and then she would do it, and that’s the end of all life on earth, human and djinni alike. It’s horrifying in my world.

The Cruise (1998)

The Cruise (1998)

Directed by: Bennett Miller

Starring: Timothy ‘Speed’ Levitch

I recently watched through a show on Hulu (it’s actually original content made by them) called Up To Speed, which is a travelogue show with an extremely interesting ex-tour guide named Speed Levitch. This movie about his tour is basically that, but longer.

The Cruise is an unstructured documentary of sorts about this weird tour guide and his fascinating shows he gives via double-decker bus around New York City. It also has monologues of Speed talking about what’s shaped him into the weird hippy guy he is and he has just a very strange and unique view of things.

Had I not already watched Up To Speed and gotten used to Levitch’s… let’s say “quirky” way of talking and thinking, I would’ve probably hated this. It doesn’t have as much of the cool history facts like Up To Speed did, as it was more about him than his actual tour guiding. It is directed by the same guy who did Capote and Moneyball, so that should tell you about the kind of interesting person Speed Levitch is.

Babylon 5: A Call to Arms (1999)

Babylon 5: A Call to Arms (1999)

Directed by: Michael Vejar

Starring: Bruce Boxleitner, Jerry Doyle, Jeff Conaway

This is a tie-in movie for the Babylon 5 spin-off show, Crusade. Also, it’s the last one of these damn things I ever have to review, unless JMS starts digging up corpses to try and squeeze some more life out of and they make another B5 movie.

A servant race of the Shadows, an alien race we just beat in a war, starts making plans for revenge, but a “techno-mage” (a guy who uses technology to replicate the effects of magic) pulls three influential people together to mount a defense and save Earth from their planet-killing plague.

All in all, this isn’t terrible. It’s pretty much on the low side of Babylon 5 stories, but at least it feels like one of them, as opposed to almost every other B5 movie. It uses the techno-mages (which are dumb) and dreams and prophecies and all that dumb shit, but… I dunno, it’s an okay story.