The bad film club

[sam]

Risen. A disaster flick surprisingly not staring the messiah. Aliens come looking for prime real estate which we're of course sitting on. Amazon Prime has thrown me a freebie, and the clock is ticking. This is what I've decided to spend some of it on.



That's Lauren, the Nobel Prize-winning exobiologist whose services are urgently required if humanity is going to get out of this latest fine mess. She's a mess herself, "a character created in the tiresome mold of pop-culture anti-heroes whose substance abuse is mistaken for complexity."



She was kind of mopping around the place anyway, and has nothing better to do.



That's when I realised I was going to like this, and would power through despite the almost universal lack of stellar reviews.

Risen is the rare original idea in a pop-culture landscape riddled by reboots and sequels, however, the movie [the writer/director] has built around that idea is so dull, it’s hard to watch.

As I said, challenge accepted.

Risen is so poorly executed, any interest or suspense that might otherwise be generated by the story is lost to the film’s plodding pace, subpar visual effects, and shoddy construction.

This isn’t helped by the terrible dialogue, which both over-explains anything that’s the least bit technical and under-explains just about everything else.

Seriously, stop.



And this is indeed where I've paused. The only thing that will save me now is if we get that promised power cut.

[sam]

Risen, part II. Funnily enough I ended up quite liking this movie. This was entirely unexpected.

The morgue scene I'd paused at yesterday was utterly compelling once we'd all gotten past the embarrassing special effects, as were

Spoiler

the scenes of the dead having risen (not that that needs to be in a spoiler), leading to the expected utter bafflement and more. IMO it was almost perfectly handled. The dead weren't ravenous for brainz, and there weren't any real jump scares, which nicely subverted expectations. They were just there, quiet, staring, waiting, and at one point heartbreakingly interviewed, a one-sided affair of course.

I even warmed to the lead, though she sort of shared that billing with Mr Blue Eyes for a while. Lauren went from bad to worse to ok to I get it now.

[close]

Here's another review that I ended up agreeing with more than the first, fun one.

When the movie does tie things up at the end, it becomes clear that there is something far more interesting, far more intricate, going on than what we have been offered.

I can accept that Risen was a case of both dashed hopes, and be great sf as far as I'm concerned. Perhaps I just took the idea and filled in the blanks/corrected the shortcomings in my head. At some point the disaster part for me was seeing if it really would turn into the promised disaster of a movie.

This is why I do this to myself: not just to revel in the expected badness, but to hold out hope that's there's good. And often enough, there are bits of good in even the most uninspiring fare, someone in the writer's room having snuck it in.



for screenshots.



God knows we wouldn't want to be disappointed in our quest for disappointment.



If it's good enough for a Nobel Prize winner, it's good enough for me.

Spoiler

Aside to audience: I'm not the monster you're being groomed to expect.

[close]

Memory lane...





Always bikespotting, me.



Couch potatoes.



Oh, you mean my co-workers.



To be fair, my boss does a good Elvis.



Kodak moment.



It's always the Russians. Just Ask Hillary.



Is that the good news or the bad news?



That sounds like a you problem. Tell me it's a you problem.



Sorry, wrong clip.

[Jeff Bridgez]

I started watching Independents' Day, but gave up when I couldn't get the subtitles to sync on my preferred questionable streaming platform.


No I did not mean Independence' Day

It offers 9(?) different choices for English, none of which match up quite right. If the mood strikes I may try again just to see some odd juxtapositions.



Plus the title wouldn't go away.

We begin with a crash landing that used to get the phones ringing at Area 51, but now ends up on YouTube to make Google more money.



Vice President and aide are wondering if a transporter accident will make her/him presidential timber.



If only there were a way to make this more topical.



Klaatu barada nikto.©



"Fetch us Nigel Farage and we'll leave you in peace."



That sounds middling for an alien invasion, Mr President.



Right answer, wrong question.

He actually spoke those words a while ago, but the subtitles caught him at a good time. Someone up there must be looking out for me.



The military are on the case. Unfortunately their best pilots got caught in the Tailhook scandal.



You do realise this is a hot mike, right?



ON SECOND THOUGHT KEEP NIGEL WE HAVE COME FOR YOUR WOMENZ THERE ARE MANY OF US TO CHOOSE FROM



Wrong answer, right question.



Someone got zapped before I tuned out, I wasn't paying enough attention who. With any luck it's Top Gun here.



Is that Klingon? Run it through Querioo Translate.

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