Category: Popcorn Pulse

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We don’t often get recommendations that we can jointly review. Tim is more than willing to sit down to any abomination put to celluloid, preference given to anything that predates the turn of the millennium. Weltall is tolerant as long as it isn’t mind meltingly stupid and filmed on some liberal arts major’s iphone. So it was with no small amount of trepidation that we approached a recommendation from our most prolific source of emails

Sorceress(1982) is a budget sword and sandal flick. Not that there was any other kind of fantasy film before Peter Jackson demonstrated it was worth investing a few bucks into a fantasy and treat it with a certain amount of gravity. It was made in Mexico, presumably to skirt the guild fees and to stretch their budget dollar further. It features twins who posed in Playboy, back when people cared, a knockoff Gimli before Gimli was filmed and creepy goat man who bleats and runs off to presumably masturbate in the woods. Continue reading “Popcorn Pulse 47: Sorceressuckit”

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It’s the beginning of Winter here in the northern hemisphere. Naturally the snow on the ground and approaching jam packed holidays, pick your favorite, made us think of lawn care. Specifically an ode to the care and feeding of the greenery from the nineties, The Lawnmower Man(1992).

Would you believe that it stars a pre Bond Pierce Brosnan? It also shares a title with a Stephen King short story but was so different from his work that he sued to get his name removed from the film. We’re not experts but we’re pretty sure that’s how you get yourself written into a story where you’re wife is a demon who sucks your soul out via toothy blowjobs while secretly screwing all your friends. Continue reading “Popcorn Pulse 45: Brosnan Blow”

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If there’s one thing we’re good at, it’s making almost seemingly baseless assertions regarding people within the entertainment industry. In this case we tackle Tomorrowland[2015], today, which just came out the other day. In it, George Clooney is a master inventory who needs a spunky sidekick to help him ride an ancient rocket into another dimension so she can fix a scientific magic eight ball.

Because it deals, somewhat, with the theme of exceptionalism it feels right within the wheelhouse of Brad Bird, director of the incredible. We maintain that someone decided to take an un-optioned Bioshock adaptation and staple Disney over the parts of Rapture. Also, Hugh Laurie shows up as Dr Evil House. Continue reading “Popcorn Pulse 44: Todayland”

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Given our track record with flying, you’d think we’d want to avoid films that avoid reminding us of the screaming metal science tubes that propel us around. Not because flying terrorizes us, though it does when we fail to take out anxiety meds, but because we hate dealing with security. Nothing quite like explaining to someone, who may or may not be able to actually pass a Federal background check, that the round of shaving soap isn’t dangerous. It may say glycerin on it and that may, in fact, be a component of nitroglycerin which is another component of dynamite but we aren’t going to pay a visit to the chemistry crafting table in mid flight and turn it into something volatile. Continue reading “Popcorn Pulse 43: TSA Sucks”

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To the movies, ready with popped corn and refreshing carbonated beverages, we go. For our joint discussion, we talk about 8MM(1999). While the title makes it sound like a documentary dedicated to the development of a caliber that just preceeded the more popular 9MM but only just. Continue reading “Popcorn Pulse 42: Nick’s Hot Cage”

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There are rare times when we can be asked to settle on anything consistent. This is one such time where a single person can serve as the focal point of discussion. Though not always a major feature in the respective features in this episode, Gary Oldman is our anchor. Continue reading “Popcorn Pulse 41: Air Force Gary”

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The show has hit forty and decided that it wants to have a bit of a midlife crisis. Along with the attendant trophy wife and convertible sports car, it decided to dip a little into the nostalgia pool. Continue reading “Popcorn Pulse 40: Schwarzenegger”

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There’s…some…thing of a review…going on…today. We’ve decided to talk about The Kidnapping of the President(1980) starring William Shatner. That is to say that Billy got top billing in the movie. He shows up for a lot less screen time that you’d think the ex-captain would be able to get out of in a Canadian budgeted movie. It’s not like he was that famous, almost fifteen years after the Enterprise went off into its final venture. Continue reading “Popcorn Pulse 39: Push the Sleeping”

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We welcome you back to more pulses of popcorn. If you’re trying to imagine it, it works not unlike the scene in Troll 2 where two underpaid actors have popcorn thrown at them from off camera in waves. You just have to watch for the husks ’cause those things will scratch your cornea.

We jointly discuss The Incredible Hulk[2008]. It’s hard to pin down exactly where it fails. Perhaps it’s the complete lack of motivation from the characters. Or maybe it’s the weird shit like the Lamaze exercises Ed Norton does or complicated transformation process to make the Abomination.

Weltall then talks about Last Action Hero(1993). If features the future Governator staring in a very meta film. It’s about a kid who gets sucked into an action movie, which this movie is. Charles “Lannister” Dance is the main villain who escapes to attempt to rule the world. Being self aware, any one who dares watch this will find it basically gives the scream treatment to eighties and early nineties action flicks.

Tim, breaking tradition of dragging ancient eighties movies out of their crypts, brings up Mirrors[2008]. It features Keifer Sutherland as a man who’s just tired of this bullshit. There’s a demon that uses mirrors which is mildly original. That the burned out department store he guards at night was built on an old mental institution is not. At least it’s not as dumb as the sequel which will get a treatment one of these days.

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Give a man a fish and he’ll eat for a day, providing that you offer tartar sauce, breading and fry it first. Teach a man to fish and he’ll probably start asking you when he can go home while promising not to tell anyone that you kidnapped him.

Tim and Weltall free their captive and take on the nameless with John Doe: Vigilante[2014]. It’s a film where a man goes around killing people who are bad, or does he?, while wearing a mask. The movie aspires to ask the question if it’s moral to take justice into your own hands if the system doesn’t work the way you want it to. Then it just starts saying that, yes, it’s awesome to kill bad people for fun as long as you’re sure they’re really bad.

Weltall then talks about Jupiter Ascending[2015] because he wanted to spoil something besides that pound of ground beef he forgot in his trunk for six weeks. It features Mila Kunis as a queen bee who gets abducted by the crystal skull aliens and taken to meet house Harkonen. There she is proposed to be married before being whisked away by an angel werewolf with the flying boots from Star Trek V: The Final Frontier.

Tim then prepares to grapple with a mob of old people by criticizing Frank Sinatra in The Manchurian Candidate(1962). It is the basis for many a parody and knockoff involving mind control and overbearing mothers that don’t cause their sons to stab Janet Leigh in the shower. So if you’ve never seen it and decide to rectify that, you’ll suddenly get a lot of references from that episode of Venture Brothers and it’ll be that much more familiar.