What was the last movie you've seen?

[Ack]

2020: Season 1

Yes, I did it. I watched the first 2020 movie from Ghana. For some reason the movies refer to themselves as Season 1 and Season 2 despite being about an hour long each. The poster that Fastbilly linked is actually for the sequel, though don't worry, you could watch them in any order and still have no idea what the heck is going on, despite that this time everybody is speaking in English. In fact I feel like that somehow made it worse, because now we have folks speaking in a language I understand but putting together strings of phrases that make no sense even in context, randomly interspersed with footage from some kind of saw mill where they beat up old people, brief flashes of CG robot fights, and the occasional gun battle or fight scene involving a tire swing for no reason.

So how bad is it?

This bad:

Right, so that's the start of the movie. Well, no, not really. The start of the movie is apparently an advertisement for another movie, followed by an ad for K20 liquor, which is apparently a liquor you can buy in a pouch. K20 must have funded this movie because from time to time it suddenly turns into random characters talking about how great the K20 whiskey pouch is. Look folks, if you're drinking your scotch from a pouch, there is something freaking wrong with you.

And then CG robots show up for like half a second, apparently kill a guy, and suddenly the world's worst CSI team is picking body parts and teeth up off the ground for ten minutes before they finally realize they're standing in puddles of blood. Then dudes with wooden guns shoot at each other for no reason, an old man named Dr. Dre gets beaten up by saw mill workers, and some bad ass martial arts guys get into an argument over some other guy breaking into a pickup truck and stealing a tire iron. Only then they decide they must team up to rescue Dr. Dre!

I'm sorry, but this is the portion of the review with the requisite K20 liquor pouch ad spot. If you don't drink your liquor from a pouch, ladies won't hit on you.

How bad is this movie? It doesn't even have an IMDB page. Shoot, its cast and crew don't have IMDB pages...with one exception: the guy playing Dr. Dre, who was also in 2016. Freaking 2016 parts 1 and 2 have IMDB pages, yet this movie doesn't have one!

Ghana...a mystical place where the movies make no sense and booze comes in bags. Where wooden guns shoot real bullets and robots can apparently explode in the middle of the street and blow people into chunks, yet the local CSI team is baffled over an old tire. I both love and hate your film industry, yet I gotta say, the hand-to-hand fight choreography is surprisingly better than expected. Well, except for the parts where it gets really eye-popping anyway. Somebody obviously spent a lot of time watching kung fu movies.

K20. Because if you buy liquor in a pouch, it'll probably get you drunk. K20.

I hate myself, but I think I'm gonna watch Season 2.

[Ack]

While you guys have been out, being productive, doing things with your lives that don't really matter, I've done the only important thing any of us can do.

I watched 2020 Season 2.



2020 season 2 the final Chapter

Because that is how the title is spelled.

Anyway, 2020 Season 2 takes place immediately following the events of 2020 Season 1, only now it starts with a massive 15 minute long fight scene, complete with bad sound mixing. I don't mean like the occasional punch doesn't have a hit sound, I mean that there are rapid fire hit sounds when nobody is even throwing a punch, and they all sound the same. Imagine someone using audio clips of people punching pillows to make a really terrible techno song with no melody, and then you had to watch some guys who can't hear it try to fight to it. Yep, that's what happens. And then there are people with wooden guns that shoot at each other from odd angles, and nothing that anybody does makes any sense.

And then it becomes a gore film. Well, I take that back. And then it becomes a movie where some lady cries and wails repeatedly over the audio while people try to talk. And then it becomes a gore film.


Yes, that is an enormous chainsaw. No, I don't know why.

And then a dude gets tortured while in his underwear for no reason by the evil mad scientist, who burns his face with a lighter for some reason. Later I realized that this dude happens to be wandering around the whole time as a mummy, and that the timeline for this whole flick was significantly out of order. But that's ok, because apparently half of it was filmed on site with a construction crew next door, and nobody thought to maybe try redubbing the audio in post, so I guess it doesn't really matter what is going on. That said, it does get ridiculous fast.


He's been firing that thing through two whole movies, and this is the first time shell casings have actually appeared.

Oh, and then this movie appears to turn into a different movie, there are explosions, the unhelpful CSI team shows back up, and then boom, everybody has super powers and light sabers. You think I'm kidding?


I'm not.

Unfortunately the producers must have run out of money for CGI right after the start of this fight, because the lighting effects quickly vanish, and you realize that these guys are in fact fighting by using plastic lightsaber toys from when Episode 1 came out. And then the evil scientist dude gets shot in the face by the mummy, and that's how the movie ends...or at least it would be, if not for the music video that then plays afterward featuring clips of the film while folks randomly dance to Ghanaian rap music.

Wait, am I leaving something out? I AM! I didn't tell you about the random train and how some folks apparently now have Dragonball Z powers!


In one scene, a dude even tries for a Spirit Bomb.

It's almost as good as the Ghanaian Mortal Kombat movie.


Almost.

[prfsnl_gmr]

The other night, my wife and I watched The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years (1988). It is a documentary about the Los Angeles heavy metal scene of the late 1980s, and it is both incredibly informative and incredibly funny. (An interview with the winner of a heavy metal dance contest and a sequence on "de-metaling" are stand outs.) The amount of posturing, stupidity, naivete, and unintentional hilarity is staggering, and the whole thing is just a lot of fun (much like late-1980s hair metal). I highly recommend it, and I cannot recommend it highly enough to fans of This Is Spinal Tap.

Best of all, the document is available to anyone for free streaming on shoutfactorytv.com...along with a ton of great MST3K episodes!!!

[barbapapa]

Last movie I saw in the theater: Logan which was A+++
And at home uh Lady Battle Cop which I didn't think was all that great, for y'know, a female RoboCop rip-off.

[Ack]

Exterminator 2

Flammenwerfers werf flammen.

Ah, proto-Punisher characters getting revenge for the little guy against inner city multi-ethnic street gangs with delusions of grandeur. It's a shame the fear of the dirty inner city is gone nowadays since so many of us live in our shining cityscapes with all our clean lines and windows...like a great rat king of humanity. Guys like the Exterminator come in to make sure the refuse gets taken out from time to time, and in this case he does it quite literally with a freaking flamethrower.

No, seriously, in this sequel to Exterminator, our hero John Eastland (played by Robert Ginty) gets a job working with an old army buddy running a garbage truck. He never actually picks up any garbage, but that's beside the point, as he is more than busy dealing with the trash (There's a great line in the movie Traxx about this: "Garbage you dump, trash you kill."). What's more important is that he makes enemies with Mario Van Peebles and his street gang, which gives us the opportunity to watch dudes get reduced to cinders.

And just how does the Exterminator incur the wrath of this evil gang of wannabe-Warriors? Why, his army buddy uses the dump truck to try and stop an armored car robbery the gang performs. What follows is a cycle of confusion, mistaken identity, and revenge, as the gang thinks Ginty and his dancing lady friend were driving the truck. They beat her so badly she becomes paralyzed, which puts a stop to her Broadway dreams and seriously hinders her relationship with our hero. Meanwhile the Exterminator ends up torching Van Peebles' little brother, which leads to a whole lot of bad blood between the two. The end result? A warehouse battle in which Ginty drives an armored garbage truck complete with added machine guns and dumps gasoline on gang members so he can light them like tiki torches. Further hilarity ensues when the burning stunt men start running into each other. But then it's off to the explosive finale as Robert Ginty and Mario Van Peebles face off in a fight to the death over drugs and revenge.

Unfortunately Exterminator 2 isn't quite the nonstop action I want, as much of it focuses on Ginty getting a job, getting to know his girl, and joyriding in a garbage truck, which just makes for an awkward date. As a result, it's not nearly as cool as I needed it to be, even though it is pretty much the vigilante equivalent of Don't Go in the House, which is a slasher flick also involving a flamethrower that you should watch if only because it made the Video Nasty list.

Did I mention I happen to like flamethrowers?

[prfsnl_gmr]

Did I mention I happen to like flamethrowers?

They're actually remarkably easy to make. If you have no regard for your own safety, a BBQ lighter, some lighter fluid, and a Super Soaker 50, you can make one at home! (My younger brother did that when he was in high school, and it was awesome. Better yet, he is still alive today!)

[Ack]

I admit I once participated in a bottle rocket war using PVC tubes for rifles. One exploded in my hand but only left some small burns. We also burned a hole through a kid's shirt.

[Exhuminator]

Finally got around to watching Gantz: O. While I appreciated the quality of the CGI, the well directed action scenes, and a minimum of downtime, the film didn't live up to the anime series. The film adaptation lacked the terrified desperation, pathos, and mystique of the anime. The film also played up the hero and love story angle way too much for my liking, while watering down the gore and treachery. Gantz is supposed to be about stoic resignation in the face of an indifferent master, not wrapping things up nice and clean for a happy ending. 6.5/10

[REPO Man]

Belladonna of Sadness played on TCM last night a quarter after 2am.

Good, but should I haven been on acid while watching this?

[Ack]

I did watch several movies over the weekend: John Wick Chapter 2 and The Death of "Superman Lives": What Happened? I enjoyed both and recommend them, the first to fans of action movies, the second to geeks and fans of superhero movies.

Unfortunately for those of you who also love and appreciate classic movies and who have not heard, the world of cinemaphiles has suffered a terrible loss. Robert Osborne has died.



He was 84.