Let’s say you managed to make a horror movie using a, then, relatively unknown paranormal phenomenon. You’ve managed to recoup your costs and make a tidy profit to the surprise of everyone. A sane person would pick up their chips and head to the cashiers window, turn it in for a check, then head up to their now comped room for a nice rest before celebrating with a nice dinner. Someone with a gambling problem would say to let it ride and be surprised when the roulette wheel doesn’t land on thirty six a second time.
Which is how we got White Noise 2[2007]. Nathon Fillion replaces Keaton as our dad figure. When he wife and son react to their diner breakfast like they had just sampled from the desert bar at Golden Coral, they get shot to death by a passerby who turns the gun on himself. When Nate tries to kill himself and fails, he can now see auras of people who are about to die. What in the grand hell this has to do with EVP is beyond anyone’s guess.
Tim’s movie is Swiss Army Man[2016]. Daniel Radcliffe plays a corpse who befriends Paul Dano. Which makes it sounds like the autobiographical tale of Michael Cera meeting John Mcain. Dano plays a loser who may or may not get lost on an island who escapes because Radcliffe’s corpse saves him and has odd abilities like being able to snap his fingers and start fires. And the boner compass. Can’t forget the boner compass.
Weltall goes back to Youtube and finds something amazing in that it’s completely politically neutral and awesome. Ants Canada is a channel by a man who own ant colonies that put those silly farms to shame. Episodes are done with a focus on topics like trying to protect them from outsiders, finding them proper food. Getting rid of rogue escaped ants. All done with nature channel quality and enough science to keep the nature minded happy.
We decided on doing something a little unorthodox for us. Instead of settling on a movie that Tim has to scour second hand or that Weltall has just happened to see we picked something in the theaters. And so we choose Upgrade[2018].
Or at least we would have jointly discussed it if Tim had bothered to go and see it. Sure he made some excuse about going on vacation in Tennessee as though they have yet to have received the gift of the motion picture in the south. It wasn’t helped by the fact that the movie was released on June 1st and has vanished from most theaters in just over two weeks. Apparently this movie is Hollywood’s awkward junior high phase and they want to bury it with all of those bad memories. A shame considering that it’s a much better movie than even the trailers make it out to be.
Michael Keaton has had quite an interesting career. Per request, Tim is talking about White Noise[2005]. It’s one of those films that takes a lesser known paranormal phenomenon and has no idea what to do with it. In it, the wife of Keaton dies and starts talking to him through EVP. This leads Keaton to finding a murderer who was also listening to the dead but they were telling him to kill for reasons that no one can even postulate.
Weltall then talks about Death Wish[2018]. One of the few newer movies that Tim has actually seen and was able to comment on. If only he was as prepared when it came to the movie we planned and agreed upon. It features a large measure of restraint from Eli Roth who didn’t turn it into an hour and a half of Bruce Willis practicing street surgery on those anyone within a mile radius of his wife’s death.
Part of one of those things we normally do during the show is take note of what exactly we are reviewing. This is so we can later write up these incredibly professional descriptions. Which we write as the mighty alphabet company told us we didn’t have enough original content to deserve ads. We still don’t have ads but we’ve made this a habit and we’re not stopping now.
So when Tim falls asleep on the job, claiming something about working or some other excuse like the bitch he is, we’re stuck staring at an episode description the same blank expanse of a sheet of paper daring a writer to be creative. It will come down to Weltall then having to comb through the episode and gambling whether or not he can find the titles of what we talked about without having to listen to the entire episode.
Is it possible to make this show into a documentation of violations on cruel and unusual punishment? We don’t think so. What film could possibly be on the Hague convention of banned weapons? Oh look, another Uwe Boll movie.
Tim and Weltal discuss Postal[2007]. The edgiest of edgelord games from the early two thousands got a movie adaptation. This is impressive as there is basically no story in either of the games. This should allow Boll to do something interesting and adapt the loose elements into a story. But Boll is a German who has has been bred for efficiency rather than creativity. At least the guy who played Scut Farkus got a paycheck out of the whole thing.
Tim then talks about Overboard(1987). Or at least he talks about how a single hypothesis about the movie and the relationship between the main characters has spread like an infection across the internet. Being the inarticulate bastard he is this comes across as clear as mud. Which is par for the course around here.
Weltalls movie is Pierrepoint: The Last Hangman[2005]. A movie based on the true story of England’s last executioner. As hard as it is to believe, the jolly old land of tea and chavs used to execute the occasional twat who failed to pay their TV license. As with any film based on reality, a lot of details are fudged and dramatized to make a story.
Looking over the movies we’ve talked about, we have apparently not done a musical. Though Weltall attempted to argue that we could count Spinal Tap. As such we watched Singin’ In The Rain(1952). It’s probably one of the best known movies about the transition from silent films to talkies. There’s a lot of very technically good dancing though some of the musical numbers feel tacked on. In spite of how we had a lot to mock within, we didn’t hate it. Don’t let that take away from the amusement of a robotic Gene Kelly knocking down walls as he is unable to process human imperfection.
Weltall then talks about the film. Dave Made a Maze[2017]. In it a guy named Dave makes a cardboard maze in his apartment that he gets lost in. As such a camera crew and friends go in to rescue him from the maze. It’s reminiscent of Labyrinth in the layout and the childlike atmosphere of cardboard monsters and sets. The lower budget definitely shows at times but well worth a single watch through.
Tim then talks about Cloak and Dagger(1985). Which he describes as one of two films in which Dabney Coleman doesn’t play the antagonist. He plays both the father and the secret agent imaginary friend to the kid from ET. ET kid stumbles into a world of espionage when he gets handed an Atari cartridge that has secret government plans on it, the titular Cloak and Dagger. So it almost serves as a commercial for a game that never quite got released due to the fact that the video game market crashed before the movie came out.
It’s easy to forget now, in the age where decent and just below average video game adaptations are the norm, what the early two thousands were like. If you saw an advertisement for a video game movie back then, chances were it was a fecal pate served on a cat turd cracker by none other than Uwe Boll. Continue reading Popcorn Pulse 84: Nightly Rampages→
Did you know we’ve had a standing request for a movie since before the beginning of Popcorn Pulse? Of course we’ve been so lazy we mostly do things that are within easy reach or recently watched. It’s not like we review most everything out of convenience rather than for content. Which is why we’ve talked about so many Youtube channels, surely. Continue reading Popcorn Pulse 83: Cobbled Theif→
All hail the great leader, Timothy Dalton. For whom the skies part and sunshine bursts forth when he awakens. Without him, the crops would be dry and corn blight would ruin the potatoes. Thanks be to him for holding back the great western decadence from infecting our proud culture. Keep laughing lord Dalton so that the world will continue to turn. Continue reading Popcorn Pulse 82: I Beast→
Dan. Dan? Dan! If you were unfortunate enough to have grown up in the nineties you probably heard a shrill harpy cry that out to in deafening peals to cast and audience alike. It was his stalwart resistance to the sonic assault that earned John, then without surname, his moniker of Goodman. Once he sealed the demon back in the oubliette, he was free to pursue an acting career. Of which we have two particular gems. Continue reading Popcorn Pulse 81: John Goodman→
Let’s imagine you’ve made a multi million dollar film sponsored by a major car manufacture with a goofy family friendly premise and creature? You’ve got some solid character actors, a serviceable plot and no plans to make it into a franchise like so many other studios are doing these days? Do you release it early in the spring and hope to beat the tent pole events for a little extra cash? Or do you sit on it for a year and then release it with as much marketing as a wet fart in a sewer? Continue reading Popcorn Pulse 80: Monster Trucks→
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