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.