Author Archives: The Saddest Clown in the World

REVIEW: The Rover (2014)

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The Rover

The Rover: A

Have you ever thought “I’d like to see a movie that:

  • Takes the best parts of “Of Mice and Men” and
  • Combines it with “The Road Warrior” and also
  • Throws in some nods to T2? And then
  • Adds a touch of Old Yeller and is also
  • Smart enough to include a midget throwing rocks at dogs just as HI-larious background atmosphere? And also has
  • The molesty vampire from “Twilight” playing a dumb fuckin hick from the southern part of the great USA? And also
  • He has comically bad teeth and is also
  • Dying of a gunshot wound.”?

I know I have.

Well somebody else did too and some Australian film executive did enough blow one day to agree to finance it. And it turns out pretty good.

It’s set in Australia “ten years after the collapse”. The main characters are Memento (from Memento) and (as I said) the molesty vampire from Twilight. First, Memento gets his car stolen and he really wants it back. For a good reason actually but telling would spoil it. When he’s looking for it, he runs into Twilight.

Twilight might be playing a mentally challenged guy, or maybe the writer thinks that everyone from the south is that dumb or that might just be the way Twilight is in general because I’ve never seen one of his movies.

But…brass tacks: Twilight’s a real dumbfuck, and Memento takes Twilight under his wing and helps Twilight with the bullet that’s in him (which is NOT good for him). Then Memento also teaches Twilight how to do some things that ARE good for him. And Twilight’s good at some things like getting a broke car running, and they bond some.

It’s a cat and mouse chase across the nuclear desert and Memento is totally fuckin relentless going after the car thieves and there’s lots of very logical interesting twists and turns. Then there’s a big brouhaha at the end which is actually pretty emotionally taxing because the characters are drawn so well that you sympathize with everyone.

And it’s hella badass too. Like guns and stuff going off and people hiding and having multiple stand-offs and double-crosses and people are crying and flinching when they pull the trigger on the people they kill because it makes them sad to kill but they have to kill because they’re sick of being treated this way and they love the person they’re killing but the guy they’re killing is a total fuck and they finally just have to accept that and kill the fuck.

Yep. All that happens. And the above is a grammatically correct sentence.

So to sum up: This is Memento in the Nuclear Outback except Memento has his memory and is searching for a car and has a bleeding retard (or maybe just a southerner) as a side kick.

And the end-end’s pretty clever too. We all love Shaggy Dog stories!

REVIEW: Annabelle (2014)

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Annabelle C-

The Clown is back with you for Halloween week and went to see The Annabelle Movie!

The Annabelle Movie is a movie about a doll with a creepy face that seems to be able move around and do dastardly shit. It also gets mad when you try to throw it away. I’ve never seen this idea before, so I was thinking okay…how bad can it be? Also, something about having The Annabelle in your house makes the machines in your house (like the sewing machine, the TV and the stove) come on and turn off by themselves and be dangerous. Another classic brand new idea.  So I was really impressed by the writing of whoever wrote it and just kept thinking “man…this guy was really in the Zone!”

So it’s supposed to be like kind of a prequel to “The Conjuring” which I reviewed HERE. But what’s weird is “The Conjuring” was based on a 100% true story, and this seems totally made up.  Well, more than likely I’m missing something because those two things don’t make sense together.

But anyway, it’s never really clear who’s “in” the doll because there’s this lady named Annabelle at the beginning who kills her parents and then draws a blood symbol on the wall and then dies ‘cause the cops shot her and she bleeds into the eyes of the doll. But also, there’s a demon who’s trying to use The Annabelle get a soul or something.

Then there’s this lady who just had a kid. Her name is Mia. She names the baby Lia. And she goes around and several times actually says “I’m Mia, and this is Lia”.  And Mia and Lia and her doctor husband who works too much end up with The Annabelle in their house for some reason. He’s working all the time so Mia and Lia are alonesies with The Annabelle a lot.

Weird dangerous things happen but (luckily) there’s a wise older black lady that owns a bookstore who (luckily) lives in the same building and (really luckily) knows about demons and shit. And they figure out that (if they want weird shit to stop happening) they’re supposed to kill the baby so that The Annabelle can have a whole life force and the demon can be free.

But they don’t want to kill the baby and that’s the conflict, which is a real important part of making the plot in a story. I told you this writer is good. He should write more movies…maybe something about a weird guy on an airplane who sees some shit.

See The Annabelle Movie if you REALLY have nothing else to do. But I bet you could think of something if you tried, you fat fuck.

 

REVIEW: Carrie (1976)

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Carrie (1976) B+

So this chick gets her first period. Right in the shower at school. And then she starts screaming because she has no clue what a period is. Her weird religious mom never told her.

Then all the other girls start throwing these cotton balls and shit at her and yelling “plug it up” over and over again while the Period Girl screams and cries and gets hella traumatized. I think it’s kind of a commentary on mob mentality and the cruelty of crowds, because even the one who turns out to be the Nice Girl participates almost in like a trance. That is until Abby from “Eight is Enough”, who plays the PE Teacher, tears into the locker room and smacks her in the face. Ok, I said…I’m on board.

Then Abby tries to help the Period Girl by hugging her hot naked bloody body while she screams and then the light bulb explodes and everyone pretty much is like “Fuck!” Then they chill out and put on their clothes and wander away.

Also, Ed Rooney’s secretary is one of the Plug It Up Girls, which is also a band someone should start right now if any women read these reviews.

Then the PE teacher has to explain menstruation to Carrie (The Period Girl). Carrie…White. Heh. But it was good for the audience because apparently this happens to all women like several times each year. And not everyone knows that. Edu-tainment!

But Carrie is not like all women, and that’s when this movie goes from sexy to weird.

She apparently has menstrual-onset “tel-uh-kuh nee-sus”, which is how she pronounces it. It means she can move stuff with her mind.

All the Plug-it-Up Girls get punished and some of them can’t go to prom and that makes the Mean Girl want revenge on Carrie. But the Nice Girl inadvertently sets Carrie up for this revenge by getting her boyfriend, Greatest American Hero, to take Carrie to prom and to rig the voting so that Carrie can be Prom Queen.

Now leading up the climax at the prom, you got a few things going for you.

You got Danny Zuko bludgeoning some pigs. You got a music montage while the Greatest American Hero and his buddies guy try on tuxedoes and some of it’s in fast motion and funny. You got the “they’re all going to laugh at you” scene.

Then there’s prom and Carrie White wears a white dress. Then there’s blood, fire, fire hoses and explosions and crashing cars and crucifixions, and more fire.

It’s pretty scary.

It’s also funny how it’s called “menstrual” when men don’t get them.

 

REVIEW: The World According to Dick Cheney (2013)

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The World According To Dick Cheney:  B

This is a mockumentary in the vein of Spinal Tap-so seemingly close to reality that it’s indistinguishable, from something that might really happen in the real world.

This movie asks some probing questions. It uses old video and pictures of historical figures into which several fictional characters that have been seamlessly CGI’d. It really is impressive work. The questions the film posits:

  • What if a dumbass with no clue and no interest in having a clue and who thinks he’s chosen by God became the US President?
  • What if the Vice-President was a soulless disgusting pig of a man whose alcoholism and greed and insecurity led to him to paranoid actions that caused the death of hundreds of thousands of people?
  • What if a big, bald fat-fuck with a heart condition got to treat the world like his own personal D&D board make money doing it?

Because all this, in the film’s continuity, happens. And the saddest part is…no one in this fictional America can or will try to do something about it. Which is the realest part of all.

The guy playing Dick Cheney has this sideways smile-subtle…but scary…and not caring that everyone knows he’s lying…because he has the power. If a man with no heart had secret control of the US government, he’d smile like that for sure.

And the end is so ominous-you see this Dick Cheney guy perfectly CGI’d into President Obama’s 1st inauguration. He’s sitting there wearing black in a wheel chair-still up on the stage in a place of honor. It leaves you with a feeling that the villain is still out there…most likely in an underground bunker near Denver with access to an Earth Quake Machine ™.

Which is just where I would believe he is now if he existed.

 

REVIEW: Creepshow 2 (1987)

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Creepshow 2: D

Have you ever seen a sad clown cry?

Well, you would have if you were with me while I was watching this turd. Or when I try to pee during a “flare-up” (the pills don’t always work).

I would beat up this movie in the park if I could. It is just horrible hack-work with a gold-seal pair of names attached to it-and that gold seal is a fucking lie. I hate this movie so much.

It’s marketed as an actual sequel to the God Damn awesome Creepshow. That film was actually written by Stephen King and directed by George Romero. This movie was marketed as “from Stephen King and George Romero”.

But that’s a lie. This infectious bloodworm of a movie was directed by some fucking hack and only has three stories. 2 of them say they’re “adapted” from “story ideas” by George Romero. Then a significant part of the running time is taken up with weird cartoon interludes between the stories.

I think what happens in the cartoons is that a little boy gets a delivery from a zombie mailman and then the town bully tries to take the package and the boy kicks the bully in the balls and that makes the bully want to rape him so the bully’s gang chases the boy but the boy has giant man-eating flowers in a vacant lot for some reason and the flowers eat the bullies while the boy laughs.

Only one story comes from Stephen King-and it’s in fact one of his best short stories- “The Raft”. And they do it pretty well until they fuck up the hopeless scary as hell ending for some shock value that I think they just needed for the trailer. But what’s the fucking point of giving away the new shock ending in the fucking trailer. That fucks up your whole shock thing, Hollywood.

If I worked for the Hollywood, I wouldn’t have done that.

One thing I did like was the “sharing body heat to stay alive” scene in “The Raft”. It’s also got a good amount of people getting scalped for the history buffs out there. And a gigolo for the ladies.

Fuck this movie. Go read “The Raft” instead. And if you don’t like reading, then play with your butt awhile. That would be better for you than watching this movie.

REVIEW: Creepshow (1982)

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Creepshow A

This is another Stephen King anthology film and was directed by George Romero.  It has 5 stories. It’s an homage to horror comics from the 50’s. In fact, the first time I encountered the stories in this film was in the tie-in comic book (drawn by the great Bernie Wrightson) that was published at the time the film was released. I found it in a Safeway magazine rack while my Dad was taking his blood pressure at that free thing Safeway has. The comic and the movie are both on my list of favorite things (at # 57 and 58, respectively. # 56 is making crack heads do footraces for crack I don’t really have).

Anyway, he best films are the ones with characters that have desires and motivations the audience can relate to. Creepshow has that in spades.

For instance:

  • A ten-year-old boy who wants to voodoo doll his dad.
  • A put upon daughter who wants to bash in her awesome father’s head
  • A dirty hillbilly who wants $200 for the meteor he found.
  • A rich guy who likes videos of drowning people.
  • A college professor with a loudmouth wife and access to an abominable snowman.
  • An old man who hates people and bugs, but not in that exact order.

I know I’ve felt all of these exact feelings, and if you’re being honest with yourself you know you have too. What I like about Creepshow is that it delves into these everyday human desires and fleshes out what would happen if only we had the freedom to indulge in them. You know…a FREE country. Not “Obamerica”.

This film might seem dated to today’s douchebag viewer like you. It was cheesy for its own time-but that’s intentional. The comic-booky visual scheme works well. It provides an otherworldly feel that makes the outrageous events more acceptable and makes the 80’s seem less lame.

This movie is perfect example of how enjoyable the fun/scary thing can be when done properly-with respect and affection for the genre and its history. It’s not even too scary for kids. You should buy it and watch it. Then you should leave it out so that your 9-year-old can find it with minimal effort and then show it to your 7-year-old. They’ll watch and end up just sort of traumatized. But more importantly, they’ll feel like they got away with something. Occasionally, you just have to give kids these little victories.

Why? Because if you don’t they’ll voodoo doll the fuck out of you. The prologue/epilogue of this movie makes that clear.

But even if your kids don’t have voodoo dolls, you have to let them win a few. If you don’t, the next thing you know your son wants to be a nurse and your daughter’s dating outside her race.

You listening, Dr. Loomis?

REVIEW: Baby Geniuses (1999)

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Baby Geniuses- UV because it’s too scary.

This is the scariest movie I’ve ever seen. It’s about people doing science to babies, which is cool, but then the science gives the babies superhuman intellect. They become like malevolent stand-up comics who can do science themselves but still have speech impediments.

These geniuses also still wear diapers, like that black hole guy in the wheelchair. But these diapered sociopaths don’t need wheelchairs. And there are lots of them. And they start to make plans and talk shit to adults. Because they don’t care.

There is one guy who wants to stop the baby geniuses, but only for his own selfish ends. So, its one of those movies with no good guy-and everybody is totally merciless.

Kathleen Turner is in this movie, by the way. She used to be hot but hoo-boy…this is the movie where she really hit the wall. What wall? That wall all actresses eventually hit…the too-old wall. Some aging ingénues can survive hitting the wall. They ease into roles more suited to them and don’t end up disgracing themselves-like Oscar winner Jane Fonda in Monster-in-Law or Lindsay Lohan in Machete.

But not Kathleen Turner…she hit that wall hard. And her eyebrows tell you that she didn’t expect it. Or maybe she’s just scared of the babies.

Because watching these CGI babies walk and talk and tell bad jokes …is horrifically disturbing, so much so that I’ve started preparing for when this movie becomes a reality. And so should you.

Because just imagine: baby hands…stopping your breath. Too small to detect…too smart to get caught. And as you fade away, alone in your bed with your shitty life flashing before you….

…while the baby that killed you sits on your floor shitting his diaper, playing with your keys and laughing like a grown up.

Scares you, doesn’t it? Well it should. Don’t see this movie.

REVIEW: The Conjuring (2013)

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The Conjuring B+

Take my word for it-whenever you round up a bunch of 8-year-olds and sit them around a table to do a dramatic reading of The Crucible, they will all mispronounce the word “conjure” and all of its variants. They all put the emphasis on the second syllable: “con-JURE”. It’s infuriating and they do it every time the word comes up, every time I have one of my table-reads!

So I…correct…them.

I can only imagine that all over this great nation, there are young Americans telling each other: “Let’s go see The Con-JURE-ing! It looks scary”.  They will have no realization just how dumb they sound. But not the ones whom I helped; they know better.

So I DID do some good. Take that, Officer Beetleson.

Why am I writing about The Crucible? Because Fuck You, that’s why. But there are some things that connect both works. First, they’re both true stories with real people and events shown EXACTLY AS THEY HAPPENED. Second, the ghosts and demons in The Conjuring are tenuously connected to the Salem Witch Trials, which lends credence to the “true story” claim.

Norma Bates and Nite-Owl are demonologists.  They get a request from the wife of the Office Space guy. She wants them to check out their fucked-up new house. Weird things started happening the first day they moved in. Things like: the dog won’t come inside, there’s random fart smells at night, and other stuff. And the mom has been getting weird bruises (all over) which she first assumed came from banging Office Space too hard. But they didn’t. Then things got worse.

This is a solid haunted house movie. It’s creepy, disturbing and has some non-telegraphed scares and smartly puts the lives of Office Space’s 5 daughters in mortal danger. I suppose I shouldn’t say “smartly” because that credits the writers and director but they didn’t have to do shit because this really happened.

One thing I like to see in a movie is something I’ve never seen before. We’re all familiar with that hallmark of American cinema called the “musical montage”. Like the “training montage” or the “learning montage” or the “they’re going to bang after this song is over” montage. You know.

Well this movie has a “setting up the scientific paranormal investigation equipment all over the house” montage. And it makes that seem exciting. There’s lots really involved equipment like black lights and bells on all the doorknobs so they can be heard opening. Now I realize why all my neighbors hang bells on their doors at night. They’re scared of ghosts!

I have some silly paranoid neighbors! This movie would freak them out!

This movie is nothing great, but there’s nothing it fails at either. See it if you like haunted house movies. You won’t feel cheated or pissed or ashamed or ugly on the inside if you do. Now, if you feel that way going in, you’ll probably feel that way coming out. Movies don’t solve your problems. Believe me.