Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983)

You unlock this door with the key of imagination...a series that was possibly the greatest TV show of all time, and the inspiration for a whole generation of filmmakers. That's right--I'm talking about The Twilight Zone.

No...not that!! I mean Rod Serling's classic tales of morality with unrelated characters and plots. So, how do you make a movie out of that? With four different directors. Yes, this movie is cut into four different segments, and the directors (in order) John Landis (An American Werewolf in London), Steven Spielberg (needs no introduction), Joe Dante (The Howling), and George Miller (Mad Max).

The movie opens with a Dan Akroyd cameo that takes an unexpected twist, in probably the best part of the movie. After that, the four segments are modern day retellings of episodes from the series: A racist douche (Vic Morrow) gets his comeuppance through some unusual time travel, several retirement home residents get the chance to be children again, a schoolteacher (Kathleen Quinlan) is finds herself in a house ruled over by a powerful child (Jeremy Licht), and a paranoid traveler (John Lithgow) suspects that a gremlin is on the wing of his plane.

What was wrong with creating original scripts for the movie? It probably would have been better than reusing old ones. But nevertheless, the movie...a bit hit and miss. Segment 1 was good, segment 3 was good, but had a weird obsession with Looney Toons, segment 4 was good, even though it seemed sort of brief, but segment 2...was the weakest. Which is really odd, considering the director. OK, so it's not really very bad, but the plot is a little too similar to Cocoon and the kids in it bring back bad memories of SuperBabies: Baby Geniuses 2 (more on that on Friday). Also, this isn't necessarily bad, but the contrast between this and segment 1 is a bit weird--we go from a bleak ending involving a Nazi concentration camp to this upbeat and lighthearted story being young again. Well, I guess that's just The Twilight Zone.

Another thing--I really don't like the theme song replication they made for this movie. Couldn't they have made it look like it did in the show instead of an 80s CGI demo reel. What is this, Steve Job's Twilight Zone? But anyways, this is a pretty good movie. It doesn't always live up to the source material, but it's not bad either. If you haven't seen it, see it.

Dark City (1998)

Most of the movies I've given a positive review on this site so far, such as Super Mario Bros. and Dante's Peak, haven't been, per se, thought provoking. But Dark City is philosophical and original. It asks questions about the human soul, morality, and...well, a lot of things. How can it be described? It's sort of a new age science fiction thriller set against a film noir backdrop. It also has a lightning-fast pace that never slows down. So why did it bomb so hard at the box office?

Many years ago, a race of omnipotent beings with the power to reshape the physical world with their minds came to this solar system and built a gothic metropolis of perpetual nighttime known as the Dark City. It was part of an experiment to learn more about humankind. One day, John Murdoch (Rufus Sewell) wakes up in the city with no memory of who or where he is, only to find that the police are after him on account of several murders. (Like a slightly darker version of The Hangover, isn't it?) After meeting the nightclub singer who claims to be his wife, Emma (Jennifer Connelly) and a mysterious scientist named Dr. Schreber (Kiefer Sutherland) John learns that even the ghoul-like alien beings known as "The Strangers" are in pursuit of him. He'll have to find out what really happened in his past, why none of the other citizens can give him a solid answer on anything, and if there is any way to escape from Dark City.

Let me just say that the aliens in this movie really outdid themsleves on architecture. Every set piece and special effect used for the city here is amazing, and would probably be even more so in the Blu-Ray version. It owes much inspiration to the cities of the 1940s, and fans of the BioShock games will no doubt love this movie. Of course, it goes beyond good art direction. The script is so complicated and fast moving that you have to watch the movie more than once to take in everything. The only thing that gets a little annoying after a while is Kiefer...Sutherland's...Adam...West...style...stuttering, but that's a minor issue. It's a movie that leaves the viewer stunned, and it's always a good topic for debates. For example, I've always thought the Strangers were symbolic for the Nazis. Or, they could be anything. The director, Alex Proyas (I, Robot) has a talent for mixing questions about the unknown with mind-blowing action, but he'll probably never make a movie this good again. It's like a really good Twilight Zone episode with a big budget and a really good Twilight Zone style ending. What is it? I'm not saying. But the overall moral of Dark City is that people can achieve anything as long as they believe in themselves.

And, yeah...that's pretty much all you can say about this movie without giving something away. Oh, wait! One question that's been popular over the years is whether or not 1999's The Matrix stole from this film. And the answer to that question is...possibly. I can't make an entirely accurate since I haven't actually seen all of The Matrix (I know, I know, crucify me), and while the theme of computers is completely non present in Dark City, there are some similarities. Namely, the idea of humans unknowingly living in a realm controlled by nonhumans. Heck, even something that looks like the famous bullet-dodging sequence from The Matrix is in D.C., more or less with a knife. Also, a rooftop set piece from this movie was used in the opening of The Matrix. It's almost as if the Wachowski Brothers' action-adventure epic was a more well-marketed version of D.C....only this one might be better.

Oh, and one more thing--Richard O'Brien, who played roles in campy cult classics like The Rocky Horror Picture Show and Flash Gordon is extremely straight-faced and eerie as one of the alien Strangers here. Of course, now, he's the voice of the Dad in Phineas and Ferb.

Forgettable Movie Files - SuperBabies: Baby Geniuses 2 (2004) Part 1

I'd like to say this movie is forgettable. I'd like to say it's just another bad movie you don't care about after watching it. But, I can't. This is a movie that haunts your mind until the day you die. It's that bad. From the top 3 of the IMDB Bottom 100, SuperBabies: Baby Geniuses 2 brings up many burning questions. Who thought this was a good idea for a motion picture? What actors would actually choose to be in it after reading the script? And how could filmmaker Bob Clark go from directing A Christmas Story to this? The movie, which is about a child superhero and his friends, stars a plethora of young actors and Jon Voight. Yes, that's right, Jon Voight. Academy Award Winner Jon Voight.

It begins in an average American daycare center, where a story is being told about how the superpowered child hero Kahuna (played by no less than Miles, Gerry, and Leo Fitzgerald) once helped dozens of kids escape from Communist East Berlin during the Cold War (I am not making this up.). The storyteller here is a tot named Archie (Max and Michael Iles), whose friends Rosita (Maia Bastidas and Keana Bastidas), Finkleman (Jared and Jason Scheiderman), and Alex (Joshua Lockhart and Maxwell Lockhart )are skeptical. But it turns out that Kahuna is real (and apparently doesn't age), and that one of the villians from the East Berlin story, Bill Biscane (Jon Voight) is now a major media mogul who plans on controlling the minds of children through television. Now, from Kahuna's secret playhouse located beneath the "H" in the Hollywood sign (again, not making this up), the babies are going to have to team up in order to save the day.

Poor Bob Clark. The only thing more tragic than him dying in a car crash back in 2007 is the fact that the last two movies he worked on were "The Karate Dog" and this. What was he thinking at the time? During many scenes in this movie, it's like he's not even trying to make a good movie. In fact, roughly the first thirty seconds of this movie is just the four main babies babbling nonsense. Really. Of course, then we find out that baby gibberesh in this movie is actually a secret language amongst young kids and...oh, does it really even matter?!

I could make a list of everything wrong with this movie--the terrible stunt sequences, the jokes involving diaper-related topics, the fact that Kahuna's secret lair rips off the candy room from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory--but for me, the acting is the worst part. And I'm not just talking about the acting from the SuperBabies themselves. All the adults in this movie make the kid who played Anakin in The Phantom Menace look like Dustin Hoffman--that includes Jon Voight, especially in the scene where he's about to take over the world and is most concerned about his glass of soda pop not having a little umbrella in it. Now that I think about, the actors can also blame their horrible performances on the horrible script. Like in the middle of the movie, when Kahuna goes to a "communication station" in his secret layer and talks over the computer to Whoopi Goldberg. Yes, that's right. Supposedly it's because it has to do with some children that were saved, but I think it's just because the filmmakers had a couple hundred thousand dollars they felt like wasting on a pointless cameo. After that, Kahuna calls up the now-forgotten early 2000s boy band O-Town, who proceed to write a song about him: "Mister K to the Rescue! Mister K to the Resc-u-u-u-u-e!" Kill meeee...

I really can't take this movie in one sitting. Plus, there's just too much awfulness to cover in one post. So, I'm splitting this review into two halves. Tune in next Friday...if you dare.

Super Mario Bros. (1993)

Super Mario Bros. never had a kindly reception. Actually, it had a terrible reception, and to this day Nintendo fanboys still bash it on the claims that it's nothing like the games it is based on. Yes, well, I ask them this: How could you make a straightforward version of the Mario games in the first place? It's just Mario jumping on a bunch of turtles and occasionally shooting a fireball. Now, this movie is far from perfect--very far, that is--but it's not supposed to be. It's an entertaining and sometimes creative adventure comedy.

Mario Mario (Bob Hoskins, riding on his Roger Rabbit coattails) and Luigi Mario (John Leguizamo) are two colorful Brooklyn plumber brothers who must save a college paleontologist named Daisy (Samantha Manthis) who Luigi befriended when she's kidnapped. They follow the abductors into an underground cave and through the rabbit hole to a parelell universe where some of the dinosaurs escaped from extinction and continued to evolve into humans in a Blade Runner-esque city. But it turns out that Daisy has more connections to this world then she thinks, and the tyrannic King Koopa (Dennis Hopper) wants the chip of a meteor rock she wears as a necklace because it has the power to merge the human and dinosaur worlds together in order to acheive total domination and...this is all pretty much just the first twenty minutes.

Yes, large chunks of this movie make no sense. Dinosaurs evolving into humans? Are you kidding me? And it's never really explained what all "merging" the two worlds together means. Koopa says that his world is dry and practically out of resources (Preachy Symbolism!!), so what exactly would ccombining it with Earth do? Anyways, that's not important. Just like the Washington Post says in those big orange letters that look even bigger than the title, this movie is a blast. But could it have been more faithful to the games? Probably. For example, King Koopa doesn't look like a huge dragon/turtle, he's more like just Dennis Hopper in some Max Headroom makeup. Oh, and he de-evolves people to become his slimy henchmen called Goombas. Everyone says that the Goombas are funny, but I don't kno, man--they kind of creep me out. And weren't the Goombas in the game just brown and yellow mushrooms?

But Mario and Luigi, despite having a rather awkward 30 year age gap for brothers, are a great comedy duo in all the weird as heck situations they go through. They also have some great one-liners (Mario: (looks at tower coated in fungus) "Great, a building with athlete's foot."). This credit all pretty much goes to Bob Hoskins, who just might be the life and soul of the movie. And speaking of comic duos, there's also Spike and Iggy, who are sort of like the Abbott and Costello of evil henchmen. They're sent by Koopa into the human world to get Daisy and her rock. But that brings up a huge plothole: why kidnap her in the first place if all you need is the space rock? Sure, it adds drama, but "Missing Brooklyn Necklace" is much less suspicious than "Missing Brooklyn Girl". And if you take her, you just might be followed by two squabbling plumbers who will overthrow your whole fascist civilization in just a few days...life is funny that way.

The early 1990s special effects range from good to loathsome, the script has as many holes as Mario's prostate, and several scenes just have the characters walking around with no direction whatsoever, but that's not important. Super Mario Bros. is possibly the ultimate guilty pleasure movie. It's got cool action. It's got wonderfully cheesy humor. And it's got a score by Alan Silvestri that you can never, ever get out of your head. OK, so it's not The Grapes of Wrath. But I definitely would call it underrated. Bring on the Nintendo fanboys' hatemail.

Top 10 Doctor Who Cliches

Doctor Who. The show long since considered Great Britain's Star Trek. In it, a 900-year old alien named the Doctor travels the universe with his companions in a time machine shaped like a blue police box. After a long hiatus, the show was brought back and reinvigorated in 2005. But what are the screenplay cop-outs most commonly used in the series? Here's a list.

10.The Doctor's Tardis (Time and Relative Dimensions in Space) only breaks down when it's a key plot point in the story.

9. The more grating an alien's voice is, the more evil the creature is.

8. Evil alien planets are always the same--one religion, one culture, one philosophy, one language, one climate, identical aliens, and often identical clothes.

7. The Doctor, along with many other aliens, have British accents.

6. The skeptical character is always the first to die.

5. If the Doctor decides to revisit a certain point in the Earth's history, it will be the exact same time and place when an evil alien species is secretly planning to take over the world.

4. Often, and for no apparent reason, the Doctor will start running to dramatic music. This is to give the illusion of a big budget. These scenes are often filmed in the suburbs of south England.

3. People in the future (as well as many alien species) talk, act, dress, and look just like normal humans in 21st Century Britain.

2. London is the center of the universe. It's where aliens always come to invade, and it's where the Doctor always comes back to.

And, finally...

1. No one ever notices a blue phone booth suddenly materializing out of thin air. Ever. The Doctor can always find a deserted street in London to park his Tardis on, and even if he goes back to the medieval era, no one will think twice about it.

Pee Wee's Big Adventure (1985)

Another movie from director Tim Burton, this was actually his first feature film. And it's funny, how you can compare some of his extremely dark movies with the upbeat family comedy Pee Wee's Big Adventure, the hit that jump started his career. And who is Pee Wee, you might ask? Well, he's a childlike character played by Paul Reubens, and...that's pretty much all that's known about him. But the unimportant things don't matter. This movie kicks @$$.

Pee Wee Herman (Reubens) is an oddball child in the body of a man whose favorite possession is his bike. But when it gets stolen, he must go on a journey to retrieve it, which takes him from his small town to the Alamo to Hollywood. Along the way, he meets many interesting characters, and often offers them his unusual advice.

This is a weird movie in that it can be both hilarious and terrifying to children. Along with the comedy there's some dark atmospheric scenes, the "Large Marge" character who morphs into a ghoul, and a surreal dream sequence where clown doctors tear apart Pee Wee's bicycle...all "humorously presented", of course. Actually, my favorite scene has got to be when Pee Wee invites all his friends over to try and find out where his bike went. It's so dark and moody, it feels straight out of a murder mystery.

How can you describe Pee Wee? Well, it's like the world from the eyes of a child, and that's why it's awesome. Another great part is the climax, in which Pee Wee finds his bike at Warner Bros. Studios gets chased by a bunch of security guards through the sets for different retro movies--a Godzilla flick, a Christmas movie, a beach party film--and accidentally messes up all the filming. Actually, that's another way to describe this movie: retro. Everything has a weird 1950s ambience that Tim Burton's usually known for. Also, there are some really cool filming locations used in this movie. I won't spoil it, you'll have to see it for yourself.

And another thing...what does Pee Wee do for a living? He lives in every child's dream house, full of all sorts of gadgets and toys, and he has a cool bike, but it's never explained how he has the money for them. Is he an inventor? A telemarketer? Did his parents die and leave him a big fortune? If so, that's kind of morbid.... But also, Paul Reubens played a drug dealer in the movie Blow, so that might hold part of the explanation.

With fun humor, good special effects, and a memorable protagonist, Pee Wee's Big Adventure is truly underrated. However, not everyone thinks that. The movie's whopping 100% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes.com has dropped by nine points, and the Tim Burton-less 1988 sequel, Big Top Pee Wee, left a sour taste in everyone's mouth. But it's about time for Tim to make a return to his low budget comedies and bring back Pee Wee in some way. And if anyone tells him that the character is too childish for modern audiences, he can respond like this: "I know you are, but what am I?"

Ed Wood (1994)

Sometimes people become so fixated on their dreams that they don't realize they might not be entirely talented. Now doesn't that sound like a good basis for a comedy? But somehow, Tim Burton's Ed Wood manages to be a tale of both failure and success, and sorrow and hilarity. For those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about, the movie is a (mostly) true story set in 1950s Hollywood about Edward D. Wood, Jr., the eccentric man named the worst filmmaker of all time.

Writer-director-producer Ed Wood (Johnny Depp) isn't always the sort of person you would want to be around. He makes unpopular movies that waste investors' money, his habit of cross-dressing irritates his long suffering girlfriend (Sarah Jessica Parker), and his incredibly cheesy horror-thrillers often feature aging actors such as the former Count Dracula himself, Bela Lugosi (Martin Landau). But he's determined to make movies, even if it means writing scripts about giant octopuses and alien zombies. Will he ever be happy?

Granted, this movie did sort of make up one or two things that didn't really happen. And granted, it's not exactly underrated. It won two Oscars and is in the IMDB Top 250, but not many people seem to remember it or know about it. Which is too bad, because it really is a funny and moving film. One of the best side characters has got to be Tor Johnson (Pro-wrestler George "The Animal" Steele ), the 500-pound Swedish wrestler who would go on to appear in many of Wood's movies. (Ed Wood: "How would you like to be in movies?" Tor Johnson: "Movies? You mean like the Mickey Mouse?" Ed Wood: "Sure.") Of course, the snappy dialogue is where most of the humor comes from, like in the scene where Ed and friends get baptized in order to convince a church to fund one of their movies (Priest: "Do you reject Satan and all his minions?" Ed Wood's Friend: "Sure.") But I could fill several paragraphs with lines from this movie. Which reminds me: "It's the worst movie you've ever seen? Well, my next one will be better!"

It does start to get a little slow in the middle, but the best part is definitely in the third act when Ed Wood starts making his most infamous movie, Plan 9 From Outer Space. Using spaceship models on string, an indoor graveyard set with cardboard tombstones, and his friends as actors, Wood made what is considered the worst film of all time. And Ed Wood ends on a triumphant note, as Mr. Wood feels completely reinvigorated about his life and his career ("This is the one...this is the one I'll be remembered for."). And that's the moral of the story: to always follow your dreams, even if those dreams sort of turn out crap.

Forgettable Movie Files - Merlin's Shop of Mystical Wonders (1996)

Merlin's Shop of Mystical FAIL

Merlin's Shop of Mystical Wonders. A happy, joyous, family friendly romp through fields of bright pink daffodils and bumblebees...or IS IT?? Yes, that's right, this is a horror movie marketed for kids. Well, actually, more like two short horror stories connected to Merlin. Well, more like two short horror stories in a story in a movie. Got that? Good. We're about to enter one of the worst family films of all time.

When the power goes out in a suburban household, a Grandpa (Ernest Borgnine) decides to tell his Grandson (Mark Hurtado) a story. Fortunately, he remembers a script he once wrote for TV called Merlin's Shop of Mystical Wonders, about the famous wizard (George Millan) traveling to our time and opening up a store of "magical enchantments" (must be an adults only store). The story then focuses on two encounters with gifts from the shop. The first short story (within a story) is about a selfish newspaper critic (John Terrence) who goes power mad when he gets a book of Merlin's spells. The second story features a family who come across a toy monkey that kills people by banging its two cymbals together, which causes disastrous events. Enjoy, kids!

So...why would Merlin even have that toy monkey? Did he think "Hmm, I should have a monkey that kills people just in case I want to traumatize an entire family" or something? And the strange thing is, the film begins with the Grandson watching a movie on TV where a gypsy living in a fairly obvious miniature model house is killed by the toy monkey right before the power cuts out, so what is that supposed to mean? Actually, there is one partial answer. The director was so cheap that he took footage from a horror movie he had made twelve years earlier and used it as the second story. Wow. And on top of that, didn't Stephen King once write a story about a toy monkey who kills people with its cymbals? That's a really bad sign when you start ripping off Stephen King in a FAMILY movie.

Now, let's talk about the first story. In it, the snooty newspaper columnist takes the spellbook home after Merlin gives it to him as a free gift and finds spells that allow him to breathe fire and control animals...you know, spells that no one would ever use for evil! In one scene, a spell put on the cat backfires, and he viciously attacks his owner. But the critic fights back by roasting Mr. Mittens alive with his fire breath. OK, that's both unintentionally hilarious and disturbing at the same time.

But wait, there's more. The man starts to age rapidly, because doing a lot of magic drains your life force. Well...of course!! Everybody knows that! But how does the man learn this? Well, the devil appears to tell him so. What the hell?? (no pun intended).

The only thing one thinks of while watching this festering feces is "Who on Earth was this made for?" It often revolves around adults instead of kids, it's a horror movie, and yet that's how it's marketed. It just sucks. As a matter of fact, the only time I would recommend this is if it was with the hilarious Mystery Science Theater 3000 commentary.

Dante's Peak (1997)

The movie Dante's Peak failed at the box office for a number of reasons: 1) It's a disaster movie that doesn't take place in a major city; 2) The title "Dante's Peak" makes it sound less like a volcano thriller more like a coming of age comedy such as, say, Saint Elmo's Fire and 3) It was a big budget summer blockbuster released in...February. But the truth is that the film, starring Double 007--er, Pierce Brosnan--as a scientist who gets caught in a disaster only a screenwriter addicted to caffeine could conceive, is blast.

Thomas Crown--er, I mean, Harry Dalton--is a volcanologist whose girlfriend was killed in an eruption in the Philippines four years ago. Now, he's being sent to the small mountainside community of Dante's Peak to examine some unusual geothermal readings. Then two people die in an overheated hot spring, but as the town has recently been named one of the most desirable places to live in America, the local government is still uneasy to start evacuating. ("You say 'barracuda' and everyone says 'Huh? What?' But you say 'shark', and we've got a panic on our hands on the Fourth of July"). As more researchers come in, Harry befriends the town mayor, Rachel Wando (Linda Hamilton). Will their relationship grow? Is Dante's Peak going to erupt? Is the sun going to rise tomorrow? I think you know the answer to all these questions.

Now, granted, the movie really starts to slow down in the middle. It's mostly just scenes of people driving around the beautiful forests of Dante's Peak and drinking coffee. Yeah...coffee. This movie has a strange obsession with the stuff. In what seems like every other scene, someone is consuming or mentioning a cup of joe. Maybe it was supposed to be a movie about coffee before the script was changed to accommodate a volcano? I don't know. But anyways, when the volcano finally blows its top, it's fantastic. From what I've heard, it's a pretty accurate representation of an eruption...except for the fact that the main characters manage to survive everything nature throws at them. Really. That's just another disaster movie cliche.

Speaking of which, I love how Mayor Wando, her two kids, and Harry find the family dog unharmed by all the lava nearby and are able to save him. In fact, just about every disaster movie has a dog that miraculously survives everything. That's like saying, "Hey, tens of thousands of people are dead, but if the dog lives, everything is okay!"

So this definitely isn't a movie to be taken too seriously. In fact, one of the things in it I found most silly was the Wando family's grandma (Elizabeth Hoffman). She's skeptical to leave her cabin house even when lava is surrounding it. Also, she at first despises Brosnan's character ("Oh, you're one of those folks who was sent to Mount St. Helens. Well, nothing happened there...and nothing's happening HERE!") One of my favorite scenes has got to be when Granny and the other characters find two squirrels killed by volcanic gases. "There must be some sort of squirrel epidemic...they're dropping like that all over the mountain." For some reason, I just find that line hilarious.

That's pretty much all you can say about Dante's Peak, that it's entertaining and often funny--despite the fact that thousands are dying in the eruption. Does it have a happy ending? Yes, but actually, it's kind of weird--Dalton and the other characters are all smiles and hugs as they escape from the burning rubble of their once-beloved town. But hey, don't question Dalton's logic. As Mayor Wando says: "A man who looks at a rock must have a lot on his mind."

Forgettable Movie Files - Jack Frost (1998)

FAIL Frost


Hello and welcome to the first episode of the Forgettable Movie Files. At the end of each week, I shall break the norm and talk about a movie that actually deserves to disappear in the sands of time. Enjoy.

Now that Old Man Winter is going on vacation and we've all got spring cleaning to look forward to, I've decided to talk about Jack Frost. This pile of yellow snow does for the holidays and snowfall what the Black Plague did for Europe, it just SUCKS. In it, the once-great Michael Keaton stars alongside Kelly Preston in this family film about a man who comes back from the dead as a snowman. I am not making this up.

Jack Frost (Keaton) is a musician with little time for his wife (Preston) or son (Joseph Cross) until a drive home from a gig with his band in a blinding snowstorm causes a fatal crash. But one year later, his kid plays a magic harmonica or something like that, and Jack's soul comes back inside a snowman. Now, "he's only got one chance to prove he's the world's coolest dad." Groan.

Now is it just me, or does this sound like the perfect premise for a low budget horror movie? Oh, wait, maybe it's because there WAS a low budget horror movie with the exact same premise and title that came out just one year before this...how original. Gee, the screenwriter for this movie should have gone on to write Friday the 13: Jason goes to Kindergarten.
Anyways, I feel sorry for Michael Keaton. He was Beetlejuice and Batman and now...this. He needs to get his life back on track! Well, he's doing some voiceover in the Pixar movies now, so I guess he's redeemed himself. Sort of. But he's unbelievably bland in this movie...I mean, it's a bad sign when the creepy looking snowman puppet is a better actor than you are.

This whole movie is comparable to snow in that it's so lightweight and full of air. Since the premise is rather simple, the filmmakers add in some pointless suplots to fill in time. For example, there's the school bully that every kids movie is required to have, a rather long chase scene, and a pointless subplot about a former member of Jack's band played by the enormous Mark Addy. Really, this guy looks like he ate twelve dozen cheeseburgers and the director before going on set.

Now you're probably wondering, how does it all end? Well, Jack starts to melt in the rising temperatures (take that, republicans! If global warming can melt a reincarnated snowman, then it is real!), his son tries to save him, but Jack realizes that it's time to go. Wait...why now? Couldn't you just move to Alaska or something? I mean, it's not every day your father comes back from the grave! But no, Jack abandons his child and wife in a flash of bright swirling energy, because the special effects artists wanted to show off. Though don't worry about those two. As Jack says "If you love someone in your heart, you can never really let them go." GAAAAHH!!! Too...CLICHED!!

You know what else I hate about this film? The dialogue. Lines like "Snow dad is better than no dad!" and "My balls are freezing! ...I never thought I'd say that with a smile on my face" are actually allowed into the movie. That's another reason why Jack Frost is more like Jack...no, I'm above that joke.

The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997)

Well, it's a Steven Spielberg movie, so it has to be good...right? Alas, this sequel to Jurassic Park hasn't stood the test of time in many people's opinions. The main reason most people remember the original is because of how it totally revolutionized digital effects, and it's hard to top that (will the sequel to Avatar go down a similar path?). Anyways, this film finds Dr. Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) from the first movie returning to Jurassic Park's island breeding facility with a team to document the roaming dinos and gain public support for them. Gee...this couldn't possibly go wrong at all, right? But it does, in more ways than one. Corporation workers show up, attempting to put the dinosaurs in a San Diego theme park. As the head villain says: "You already know San Diego for animal attractions. SeaWorld, the San Diego Zoo, the San DIego Chargers..." Um, okay, when I think of "animal attractions", I don't exactly think of the San Diego Chargers...

Many people have pointed out the logistical plot holes in this movie, and the truth is...they're not wrong. The villains actually think that bringing T rexes and raptors into a highly populated city will not go wrong whatsoever. Geez, haven't these guys seen any movies?

But the worst thing in this otherwise enjoyable movie was Ian's girlfriend, played by Julianne Moore. This crazy lady endangers everyone multiple times and most likely causes the deaths of several people by doing obviously dangerous things. For example, she gets close to a stegosaurus baby in the middle of a herd to snap some pictures and brings back a young wounded t rex child to bandage and care for in a small trailer right next to a cliff. Yeah. Does she have a love affair for baby dinosaurs or something?

But I'm getting off track here. My main point is that, despite all the things I just listed, this is one extremely fun movie. I loved the action and special effects, and one thrilling scene where the main characters are trapped in a trailer slowly dangling over a cliff (as implausible as that sounds) is absolutely amazing. But the most entertaining part of The Lost World by far is when a big momma T Rex gets loose on the mainland and tears much of San Diego apart. There's even a Godzilla homage thrown in, with Japanese businessmen screaming "This is why I left Tokyo!!" And that's pretty much what the whole movie is: a fun adventure. And on a side note, at least Ian, who didn't have much to do in the first film, is more written out this time. Though no one really cares about the character development in a movie about giant man-eating lizards, but oh well.

Welcome

Hello and welcome to The Underrated Movie Files. As your host, I will guide you through the lost land of forgotten movies to show you which ones deserve more recognition, among other things. I hope you enjoy it. I also hope I can learn how the heck to use a blog in time.