Category: Popcorn Pulse

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Video game movies are kind of like corn blight. They’re things that devastate whole crops of but only ever seem to effect monocultures. We’re not even sure if that thing lands or not. Our joint review is for Doom[2005]. It’s one of the early crop of game adaptations which continued to add evidence that no one in Hollywood has ever touched a controller.

Continue reading “Popcorn pulse 108: Doom Rock”

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Deep in the heart of every video rental store of the nineties there were a few VHS tapes that were ubiquitous. These were the movies that were not ordered by the owners. They simply appeared on the shelves complete with worn stickers and suggested rental prices that were incorrect. One such film is Ice Cream Man(1995).

Continue reading “Popcorn Pulse 107: Ice Scream”

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What happens when a crazed Australian teams up with the director of Superman(1978)? You get a wacky cowboy adventure flick that’ a remake of the a TV show from the fifties. We are talking about Maverick(1994).

Continue reading “Popcorn Pulse 106: The Mav”

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There’s nothing quite like watching an actor pretend to lose their mind on screen. Especially when they’re the kind of person who already comes across as unhinged. That’s why we jointly reviewed The Beaver[2011].

Continue reading “Popcorn Pulse 105: Meaver”

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Wouldn’t it be crazy if everything was a simulation and we were all just programs in it? Not really as it wouldn’t change your day to day goings on. Thankfully that’s not the question asked by the nineties in Virtuosity(1995). Because there wasn’t a lot of room for movies in that era asking if we lived in reality or not and most of that space in pop culture was reserved for the Matrix with a small corner carved out for The Thirteenth Floor.

Continue reading “Popcorn Pulse 104: Denzel Vu”

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We jointly review Mortal Engines[2018]. It’s a “young adult” novel so of course it’s post apocalyptic. Cities in Europe chase down and consume each other for reasons that don’t make any sense. London has basically picked the land clean of smaller towns and now wants to attack Asia. Hugo Weaving is planning on doing this by reviving the weapon that ended the world.

Continue reading “Popcorn Pulse 102: Mortal Pulse”

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Comedy is probably one of the few genres we don’t often bother to review as it’s far too subjective for a fair review. Joe Dirt may be one of the dumbest things David Spade was involved with outside of letting Chris Farley die alone but, apparently, it had some sort of a cult following which earned it an illegitimate sequel years later.

Still, we decided to do Big Stan[2007]. All because it’s our second movie pairing David Carradine and M Emmet Walsh. It’s a Rob Schneider movie and falls on its face harder than the Rob himself. He plays a sleazy land developer who gets sent to jail. Determined not to get assaulted, he decides to learn martial arts from Carradine. Tim says that, of the two parts that he laughed, one was Rob being punched for saying ‘that’s what she said’.

Tim then gets to a request, Run the Tide[2016]. It star Taylor Lautner in yet another desperate attempt to keep his film career from petering out. It’s about as effective as a homeopathic cure and brings Lautner a step closer to doing bachelorette parties for the rich. He’s a high school dropout who’s taking care of his brother while mom is in prison. Tim at least has a lot to say about how much he dislikes it.

Weltall then talks about First Man[2018]. The movie based on the first moon landing by the USA. It does decent job of conveying some of the lesser known aspects of the astronauts like their intelligence and that they’re adrenaline junkies. It’s very difficult to saying anything about a historical movie when they don’t drop a six ton weight on their balls.

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We had a plan for this. Thanks to the kind of ineptitude which is the hallmark of the show, we completely failed to do the movie we set out for. So we had to settle on the Ben Affleck movie, The Accountant[2016].

Ben plays an accountant who’s on the high functioning part of the autism spectrum. A role that seems custom tailored to Affleck’s brand of acting. He makes his money getting called to audit accounts that are too complex for the average bear. Also, he’s trained like a special ops agent because he dad decided that he wasn’t going to let a learning disability block his aspirations of raising two contract killers.

Tim then talks about Jurassic World[2015]. Having held off on seeing it until well after the sequel has come and gone, he figured it was time. It’s more self referential than a modern comedy and hangs enough lampshades to stock a Pier 1. Half the cast is given the role of Malcolm from the original in that they trash talk science and the park for no explained reason. The monster was apparently give a copy of the script which informs it of exactly what to do in order to drive the plot. But audiences appeared to like Chris Pratt’s mugging and all the dinosaur scenes.

Weltall then talks about Sandy Wexler[2017], and Adam Sandler film. Being as it wasn’t the kind of movie which received an oil tanker load of sponsorships and was promoted by tie ins with Burger King, it’s not quite the usual garbage. He plays a Hollywood agent who’s personal success is hampered by his genuine good nature. This is put to the test when he ends up representing a talented singer. Weltall believe it’s worth seeing if only to show Adam we don’t hate him when he stops putting together the cast of his friends and taking them on vacation while calling it a movie.

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The horror genre is perhaps one of the genres that abuses concepts and settings more than academy bait movies. Which means writers and directors are desperate to come up with a bankable character or premise. This allows them to stand out and try to milk a franchise for a paycheck. Assuming it resonates in anyway with the audience.

So we have Candyman (1992). Which would make you think it has to do with an evil version of Willy Wonka that murders adults with confections. Instead it’s about an urban legend about a man who was murdered by having his hand cut off, then covered in honey and stung to death by bees. This somehow allows him to be summoned by saying candyman in the mirror. You can hear us completely butcher the plot, according to the live chat, more deep in the show.

Tim then talks about Maniac Cop 2(1990). It picks up where the first leaves off. Using some recycled footage of Bruce Campbell in order to avoid paying him his lofty salary of gas money to be replaced by someone who’d work for a credit. The titular maniac cop teams up with a serial killer and proceeds to murder more cops. He’s stopped by the mayor admitting the cop was set up and murdered in prison. With him laid to rest there’s a confusing stinger where the undead cop punches through his grave because the series hadn’t yet become unprofitable.

Weltall then talks about Skyscraper(2018). The movie that clickbait pricks did their best to try and stir up controversy because Dwayne Johnson has the audacity of playing an amputee without being an amputee. In the end, no one cared and the movie was nearly unnoticed. It’s about an advanced, computer controlled office building taken over by a terrorist organization. This turns out to be part of a plot to recoup insurance. Which is surely the easier option of recouping your money rather than just not investing it.

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Ryan Reynolds success in movies lately makes it hard to remember that he was involved in a lot of terrible super hero movies. So we decided to dig through it and review one of them. No, not Blade 3. Not Woleverine Origins. We decided to drive a steam roller over the corpse of the buried and, the studio hopes, forgotten Green Lantern[2011].

Reynolds is perhaps the worst cast choice of Hal Jordan with perhaps the exception of Ron Jeremy. He’s a cocky test pilot who watches his dad explode in a plane crash as a child and says “yeah, I’d like to go the same way.” There’s evil yellow energy used by Parallax who is a Watcher gone bad. Hal’s childhood friends include his romantic interest and a guy who gets converted to the henchman for Parallax. Sinestro is there but he’s not evil, or is he? At least the big bad can be defeated by tricking it into leaving earth and crashing into the sun.

Tim reviews Super Fuzz(1980). An Italian take on the superhero genre where an Italian actor, playing an American cop, goes out to deliver a warrant on a parking ticket gets hit by an atomic blast being set off by NASA. This gives him a gamut of super powers like strength, speed, ability to wish a stadium of people into the corn field, and super vision. Pretty standard things. His weakness is the color red. Not red dye, ink, or blood. Just someone wearing a red sweater is his kryptonite.

Weltall then hits Mile 22[2018]. Mark Walhberg is some sort of soldier who is tasked with helping a cop from Indonesia who has sensitive information. Most of it is an excuse to go from one action set piece to another. Made a little less believable by Marky-Mark’s constant expression of mild confusion which doesn’t really befit an intelligence officer. Even the bang bang shooty parts are lack lustre considering the previous work of those involved