Category Archives: Reviews

Movies, Reviews

Guyver: Out of Control (1986)

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It's the phallic symbols, right? Chicks dig the phallic symbols.
It’s the phallic symbols, right? Chicks dig the phallic symbols.

In 1998 I sat watching the Prince of Space episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000. I heard Tom Servo ask if the Satellite of Love’s weekly experiment was going to be a “hyper-violent porn cartoon” and immediately flashed back to the Guyver. And there goes the last otaku in the room. He was willing to put up with me until now, but that one was just over the line. Bye, dude! ‘Least he left before I started talking about Evangelion.

But first: based off a long-running, serialized manga series with some of the same characters and a similar name, Guyver: Out of Control took a long time to reach the U.S. But when it got here, in the dark year of 1993, it spread far and wide. Like a tentacle monster, it crept into the orifices of North American geekdom and, for better or worse, colored a generation’s perceptions of what anime was and could be.

But mostly worse since, as we’ll see below, it’s pretty crappy. Continue reading Guyver: Out of Control (1986) →

Movies, Reviews

X-Men: The Last Stand (2006)

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Oh crap. I put in a Twilight movie by mistake.
Oh crap. I put in a Twilight movie by mistake.

Doc Psy’s Journal: May 26, 2006. Shitty movie in theaters this morning. Finger pints of meddling executives all over the remains. This entertainment industry is afraid of me. I have seen its true face. Its corporate boardrooms are blood-stained abattoirs where good ideas go to die, tortured by bean counters and business school graduates even more cynical than I am. If that’s possible.

The hatred I feel now’s been a long time coming. For two movies, I watched as fanboys and -girls the world over sang the praises of X-Men. They jumped for joy when X2 managed to avoid outright sucking. And then it happened. Bryan Singer jumped ship to do Superman Returns. Wouldn’t you? Yes, you would. You would abandon the franchise you’d spent half a decade building for the chance to do Superman. I don’t blame Singer for taking the opportunity to make that film. I blame him for the crappy film he eventually made . The rest of the blame is fitted for the shoulders of 20th Century Fox, the movie company that can’t pass a shark without jumping it. Continue reading X-Men: The Last Stand (2006) →

Reviews, Television

Godzilla the Series: An Exercise in Over-Analysis – Part XI

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Episode 12 – DeadLoch

Funny how many of these episodes open up with some member of the Humanitarian Environmental Analysis Team sitting on their ass, watching television. Team lead Dr. Nick Tatopoulos has “monitor duty” this week, joined by recovering Larry Cohen fan Dr. Elsie Chapman. The two watch a video from Dr. Hugh Trevor of the Pisces Research Institute…in Loch Ness, Scotland. Per the usual cryptozoology cliches, Dr. Trevor’s only managed to catch a fleeting glimpse of Nessy after the creature’s alleged attack on the Institute.

“They should’ve hired a real actor,” Dr. Nick says. “This guy’s embarrassing.” And when a 90210 vet craps on your ability, you really should go back to drama school. “And is that thing made of…rubber?” Har-dee-flippin’ har, doc. Making things even funnier, the “actor” Dr. Nick’s critiquing is played by the realest “real” actor this series has seen so far: Roddy “Cornelius” McDowall, in (no, really) his last screen role. Continue reading Godzilla the Series: An Exercise in Over-Analysis – Part XI →

Movies, Reviews

A Murder of Crows (1998)

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Yeah, I felt the same way, watching Pearl Harbor. It's alright, man. It'll pass.
Yeah, I felt the same way, watching Pearl Harbor. It’s alright, man. It’ll pass.

After the Pearl Harbor review – which I should’ve reposted for Bayhem, but ah well – some of you requested I review a “good” Cuba Gooding Jr. movie. Well, the jokes on you there, since Pearl Harbor wasn’t a Cuba Gooding Jr. movie at all. Not even a bad one. But how did the Academy Award Winning star of Jerry Maguire wind up slumming in a Michael Bay movie, anyway? What sad, twisted tale of modern Hollywood kept this rich young black man down?

Well, to answer that, we have to look at A Murder of Crows. Released three days after Armageddon, in July, 1998, it promptly sank into obscurity, one of the first films to discover Michael Bay’s shadow is actually the manifestation of a trans-dimensional void, a howling vacuum of Suck from which no good can possibly escape. There’s the film’s main problem, right there. Everyone who might’ve been interested in seeing Cuba’s post-Oscar follow-up held onto their money and went to see Lethal Weapon 4 (released the following weekend) instead. We were all suckered, myself very much included, and Cuba (for all his money, talent and money) got screwed right along with the rest of us. Was a time when Jet Li’s presence would get me anywhere, I confess. Continue reading A Murder of Crows (1998) →

Movies, Reviews

No Retreat, No Surrender (1986)

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Our Hero, ladies and gentlemen. Fear him!
Our Hero, ladies and gentlemen. Fear him!

In 1984, director Corey Yuen sat down and watched The Karate Kid. Like a lot of other people, myself included, he felt the flick was alright but the fight scenes kinda sucked. Yuen figured, “Why not go Chinese Opera Academy on this boy-gains-self-respect-through-martial-arts bullshit?” Two years, $400,000, and one (almost) all-American cast later, he gave us No Retreat, No Surrender.

It’s the best kind of awful movie: the kind that’s so bad, it’s honestly endearing. The story, the casting, the acting, the editing, the character’s motivations, and especially the tacked-on resolution…everything in this movie is wrong. And the result is glorious. Kneel before this movie, son of Jor-El, for it is the perfect combination of rip-off and cliche. It’s a Bad Film for the ages, because it manages, in spite of it all…to actually…kind a work…in all the wrong ways. Continue reading No Retreat, No Surrender (1986) →

Reviews, Television

Godzilla the Series: An Exercise in Over-Analysis – Part X

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"You're watching the PSN: the Plot-Specific News Network."
“You’re watching the PSN: the Plot-Specific News Network.”

Episode 11 – Freeze

…begins in an Antarctica well-known to followers of sci-fi television—the kind of Antarctica where a wool-lined parkas are all the protection you need from screaming, sixty-mile-an-hour, sub-zero winds that want for nothing more than to turn your face into an ice sculpture.

Seems an everyday, garden variety international oil company, ComOil, has dispatched a team to the southern wastes (complete with their own flag). Because if there’s one thing that would improve the hell out of Antarctica, its an oil pipeline. Everything’s going well, even their satellite video link to the home office, so it must be time for a mysterious, subterranean force to (literally) undermine their campsite, sucking many a parka-clad Redshirt down to their icy graves. (Yeah, right…raise your hand if you expect them to be miraculously found alive sometime near the end of the show. Everyone? Good. You’ve been paying attention.) Continue reading Godzilla the Series: An Exercise in Over-Analysis – Part X →