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I saw this years ago and rewatched it last night.
This is one of THOSE sequels that tries to do a bunch of stuff the first movie did for no reason other than the first movie did it.
Characters are bland or annoying, the plot is a muddled mess, and somehow the effects are worse 8 years after the first movie.
Buried in there is a potentially interesting story, but way too much of the film just meanders around.
The original Donnie Darko was a surreal experience that left alot up to interpretation. This movie tries to do that but the passion and creativity just wasn’t there.

@ponypony221  
No, the movies themselves have to be crappy (4/10 or lower). This is where you give a synopsis of movies that are crappy.

@ponypony221  
I guess it could be either.

I just realized that I misunderstood the meaning of this thread. I thought it was a crappy synopsis thread for movies, not a thread for crappy synopses of movies.
 
The first would have been more fun, really.

 
This is a really weird parody dub of The Chinese Connection.  
It’s extremely low quality, the new voices don’t try to match the mouth movements, there’s no sound outside the new dialogue and droning jazz soundtrack. Once in a while, there are some sound effects, but not always. During fight scenes, you can hear some of the actual audio, but most of the time it’s muted.  
This one scene, where the Japanese guy calls Bruce “sick man of Asia”, is changed to the guy just saying “look at this guy, he’s funny looking.”
 

 
Honestly the funniest part of the movie, along with the scene where Bruce is leaving the karate dojo and hits the wall, and the Japanese guy jumps up and yells “who’s breaking shee-it?!”
 
The plot is altered to he about a rival gang stealing Bruce’s “master pimp’s” Cadillac keys.  
A narrator pops in to explain occasionally that the gangs have resorted to martial art because there aren’t any guns after the LA riots.

Solar Impact had a budget of $35 million.
 
Raiders of the Lost Ark had a budget of $20 million.
 
“Ackshually, accounting for inflation, Raiders had a budget of $71 million in 2022 dollars.”
 
Fuck off. Even so, Solar Impact doesn’t look half as good as Raiders, it looks about a thousand times shittier at half the budget.
 
A far better zombie movie, 28 Days Later, was made for $8 million in 2002 dollars. That would be $13 million today, about a third of the budget, and yet it too looks a thousand times better than Solar Impact. It has better writing, better makeup, better effects, better characters, better dialogue, better music, a better story, just better everything.

Here’s another crappy movie called Solar Impact (2019) Might as well call the movie “Women Get Men Killed: The Movie” because that’s what happens. Women do stupid shit, men tell them to stop doing stupid shit, women do stupid shit anyway, zombies appear, men save women from zombies, and men get killed by zombies, and women don’t learn the lesson to stop doing stupid shit and get more men killed.
 
In case you’re wondering there’s a channel called This that plays crappy movies, that’s where a bunch of these reviews come from.
 
I didn’t see the opening but I don’t have to because the trailer gives everything away, including the very last scene.
 
Basically a Mercury capsule with astronaut Tom (who is in communication with “ground control”) is in orbit 60 years after the program ended and it gets hit by meteors of “solar matter” that were ejected by a solar flare. These meteors hit London and maybe other places, maybe not, since a post-credits scene shows New York, Moscow, Shanghai, and some other city totally unharmed. The radiation from these solar meteors causes normal people to turn into zombies but electronics are all fine since cars, radios, lights, and elevators all still work.
 
If someone gets bitten by a solar zombie their skin begins to melt like alka seltzer within minutes (because that’s how they do the effect) and they turn into a zombie.
 
Four people, two men, two women, leave from London to Cardiff for some reason. There’s guy in open jacket, guy in closed jacket (his name is Jim I think), girl with two tone hair, and girl with black hair. They reach a building that I think is supposed to be a hospital. The women are like “We have to go in for some reason, maybe there’s people inside we can save,” and one of the guys says “No, we shouldn’t because it’s obviously a shit idea and we’ll get killed.” Chicks are like “Nah, fam, it’ll be fine. We’re going in anyway.” And they go in and the guys have to follow. Inside the hospital guy with open jacket gets bit protecting two-tone hair. He wakes up later in a hospital bed and asks two-tone to marry him before turning into a zombie and locking her out of the room before he’s turned completely so he can’t eat her.
 
In another room black hair and Jim meet up with a doctor who is tending to his dying daughter who we don’t see since the budget can’t afford that many actors, so she’s hidden behind a curtain and doesn’t say anything. He tells them a million times they have to leave and black hair doesn’t listen to reason. “I have to find my sister.” “Well,” says the doctor, “she’s not here, it’s just me, the others left.” Black hair says “I don’t care, I haven’t gotten anyone killed yet so I’m not leaving.” But they do leave and meet up with two-tone who tells them open jacket was bit. One or both of the women tries to talk to him through the window and we see the alka seltzer on his face bubbling and the incurable blood dripping from his nose.
 
They leave and go into the woods that don’t exist in England because they cut them all down. The women are crying and are just fucking useless, and I have zero sympathy for them because they got the other guy killed for no reason.. In the woods black hair has a hammer and the others have no weapons at all. One of them wants to stop and Jim wants to keep going, so they stop and two-tone gets attacked by a zombie. Jim beats the zombie to death with a stone and they look at two-tone who is crippled now or something. She’s on the ground snarling at them, trying to grab them but she can’t. They abandon her in the woods.
 
They make it to Cardiff that night despite it being 150 miles away from London. They find black hair’s sister alive and well at the house of some hippie guy with long hair and a beard. She was never in the hospital, she wasn’t even in London, half the party was killed for zero fucking reason.
 
Hippie guy is an alcoholic but he’s smart. He’s a high functioning alcoholic. Black hair takes a bath because the water system is working too and she almost drowns. I had a hope spot for a moment there. The car alarm goes off because Hippie Guy’s neighbor set it off. He turned into a zombie last week (how long has this been going on?) and Hippie Guy didn’t kill him because he wasn’t a danger until now. The alarm isn’t want woke up black hair, she heard Hippie Guy’s wife moving around tied up in the bedroom. She was bit or turned from one of the sun meteors and Hippie Guy is waiting for a cure to be invented. He tells the others that they’ve been going around murdering people for fun and he only kills zombies who attack him first, and he’s right. He’s never gotten anyone killed.
 
The next morning loads of zombies arrive and somehow Hippie Guy’s wife gets untied from the bed and bites him so he has to shoot her with his illegal UK gun that’s totally illegal. He goes outside, sets off the car alarm, and kills as many zombies as he can while the others escape. This guy has been alive and well for a week, maybe two, and it’s not even 24 hours after these women arrive that he gets killed. They are the villains of the movie, not the zombies. They’re walking disaster areas.
 
The three survivors head off to a church somewhere and lock themselves in but surprise surprise the zombies followed them there. Jim holds them off while the women run up to the roof to contact people with a wireless radio they have from the Hippie Guy. Jim manages to survive after being swarmed by 12 zombies and runs up to the roof. He’s the only man who lives.
 
The three of them are on the roof when we hear a sniper team say the lines from the trailer “There’s 3 people on the roof, awaiting orders to rescue or shoot them.” And it ends there with a WHORE-OR!! edgy cliffhanger ending that I really hate.
 
Speaking of the title, here’s a block quote I won’t be able to see of a review on IMDB that says exactly what I said:  

 
It was shite. And for a budget allegedly of $35 million they really could have done a whole lot better. That’s not some B-movie budget, that’s a good chunk of change. But it’s not the effects, the acting, or cinematography that sinks this, it’s the writing. I just can’t stand the characters and want them to die, and when you want to see the characters die and it’s a horror movie (unless it’s like Final Destination where the whole point is to kill assholes for your amusement) that’s a fatal flaw because there’s no reason to get invested in the characters.
 
Not as bad as Pines, but Solar Impact is still another F.

@UrbanMysticDee  
What appears to be an official channel uploaded the full movie for free on youtube if you want to torture yourself for 80 minutes

Listen my children and you will hear the tale of a film of which you should steer clear.
 
It’s called Pines and it was filmed in 2011 but not released until 2022 for some reason.
 
It stars Una Blade who also produced and directed it. She was in 5 movies in the same year and hasn’t appeared in anything since.
 
Pines is a C-movie about fuck all.
 
Claire, our perfectly average looking star, is like a social worker or something. She’s helping some old guy who’s dying of lung cancer from smoking like a chimney like every single character in the movie does except for Claire. He lives in like a nursing home or something with a ticking clock that I guess symbolizes that he’s dying. He seems like a genuinely nice guy.
 
Claire has a sister who I don’t think they named. She’s a drug addict or something and has like literal shit in her refrigerator or something. She leaves a note to Claire saying “stop taking my car keys” and “stop buying me food”, but Claire doesn’t listen. She throws the shit out and replaces it with some oranges and takes her sister’s keys because she has to look for her boyfriend Jack who we never see until the last 5 minutes and he’s already dead. We never see the sister, we just hear a recording of her voice and it’s the same as the 911 operator (the credits tell us the same person played two different roles). The 911 operator hates Claire for some reason and constantly makes snarky belittling comments and makes it sound like she’s working for the killers when she says that “we will find you”.
 
There are killers in this movie. I’m not getting ahead of myself because it keeps jumping around. They took what could have been a decent B-movie and chopped it up into a million pieces and rearranged the pieces in a totally random order, turning a decent movie into a shit movie for some reason. Probably because it’s “”“art””” to have not only scenes out of order, but to take scenes, cut the scenes themselves up, and put the pieces of scenes out of order too with no transition between them.
 
Claire goes to some hillbilly house in the woods that’s full of drugged up rockers. Now she’s in a motel and the rockers are stalking her. It’s nighttime. Now she’s back at the hillbilly house and the least evil rocker gives her advice never to return. We see him in a later “scene” bragging about how he murdered someone in prison with a pen. It seems Jack has gotten into debt with the rockers and least evil rocker is tired of paying off Jack’s debt so he plies Claire with liquor and gets her to agree to pay off the debt. They’re at a trailer park now. It’s night again. The evil evil rocker with the widow’s peak intimidates the least evil rocker and Claire before leaving. Least evil rocker brings Claire upstairs and opens a door where we see someone sitting on a toilet or something. The room is bright orange.
 
Cancer man asks Claire to get him a cigarette and jokes about marrying Claire. She leaves to get him a cigarette.
 
Claire wakes up in the woods near a fire and a pile of teeth. She’s bleeding.
 
Now she’s in a car she stole on the highway. It’s raining and the 911 operator is mocking her. It’s night.
 
Now it’s day and she’s in the woods somewhere and she hides in the car as three guys get in and magically don’t see her or notice her phone which she plugged into the cigarette lighter to charge it. There’s a tarp in the back seat and it’s covered in blood.
 
Now it’s night again? I’m not sure.
 
Now it’s day and the car pulls up to a large abandoned building. The guys go in.
 
Now she’s driving somewhere, I think. She ends up back at the abandoned building and see’s Jack’s truck abandoned. She gets a light and a baseball bat from out of his truck and heads into the building. Jack’s not there but least evil rocker is chained up behind a door and she has to break the lock off with the bat. Some more cars pull up and widow’s peak and his goons arrive. Claire looks at them out the window and when she returns least evil rocker has been kidnapped from behind the locked door somehow. She runs back to the window and some guy with hair down to his ass crack chops his head off with a kukri after he tells them that Claire is in the building and doesn’t know anything about Jack.
 
Did I mention someone carved an X into her foot at some point? We didn’t get to see it until now. Least evil rocker tells Claire that means she has to pay off Jack’s debt with her life.
 
Asshair chases Claire throughout the building but she smashes his fucking face with the bat until he dies. That’s the one good scene in the movie. She then runs down into the crawlspace and is chased by CGI black smoke, I think, and drops the bat when she climbs out a manhole to the surface. It’s night now even though it was day a second ago.
 
She’s on the highway again in the rain. Another car has followed her and she was just sitting there and the other car was sitting there with the lights on until they go off. 911 lady mocks her and tells her to get in the other car that was following her. It’s nighttime, did I mention that? Claire goes in the abandoned car but oh noes, least evil rocker kidnaps her and takes her to a cabin in the woods. I thought he got his head chopped off. He tells her to wait in the cabin while he goes out to find whoever is stalking them both. For a split second we see all the evil rockers holding torches standing outside.
 
Claire is now back in the abandoned building. She’s running around all the rooms and all the evil rockers are dead and their bodies are laid out on the ground with their hands over their chests like mummies. A car has it’s headlights on pointing at the front door and a dead guy is resting on the horn. She goes out and picks his head up to stop the sound. She then goes back in the building, finds a dead body out of the bunch of bodies, and gets the keys to the other car she originally came in where she was hiding somehow, goes in a circle through the building, gets in the car and drives off. I think.
 
She’s talking to cancer man. He gives her a book. He says it’s okay since he gave it to her, she didn’t steal it.
 
Now he’s dead. Claire’s sister says (over the phone) it was assisted suicide and it’s her job to attend the funeral.
 
Now she’s following least evil rocker up the stairs into the room where the guy is on the toilet again.
 
Claire is back at the cabin. She gets a 2x4 and beans the least evil rocker and duct tapes him to a chair and then escapes into the woods at night. She finds Jack’s dead body in front of a 7 foot tall pile of burning candles with a skull. It’s not a deer, it’s like a gazelle or something. She runs and trips and breaks her leg so bad the bone sticks out. There’s also a dead rabbit there. We saw the same rabbit alive in several earlier scenes. The CGI mist appears and towers over her and she shouts at it that it’s not real.
 
There’s a flash of light. She’s walking down a road in daylight for about a second. Then there’s a Dostoevsky quote and it’s the end of the movie.
 
What the fuck did I just watch?

Grand Budapest Hotel: A straight gay guy fights Nazis using the power of hospitality management.

If you remove the birds and expand the romance subplot of Birdemic into a full movie it would have been a whole lot better.

 

 
Annoying people screaming nonstop for an hour.  
This is an enormous step down from the previous three TCM films. The characters are all stupid, irritating idiots I just want to die already.  
A bunch of quotes and elements from the previous films pop up here, though not in any meaningful way, they’re just there to be shallow callbacks.  
The biggest disappointment of this one is Leatherface, no longer an imposing but twistedly sympathetic monster, he’s just a whiny non-presence. He could be completely cut and nothing would change.  
This movie also appears to have a low budget, many scenes that feel like they should show a gore effect happen offscreen or there’s a cut away.  
There’s a massive tone issue, trying to recapture the quirkiness of the 2nd movie, while also trying to play things straight.  
The one good thing in this movie is the sets and locations. Interior scenes keep the cluttered, claustrophobic feel of the past films, while giving this one it’s own identity.  
Definitely the weakest of the original series.

@UrbanMysticDee  
You don’t even need to see the director tbh, the fact that it’s a sequel to a popular movie coming out over twenty years after the first one already says so many terrible things. There’s very few ways to recover it from there.

Ridley Scott is doing Gladiator 2. I’m just calling it right now, this will suck.

I watched Mimic (1997) again today. I saw it when it first came out. I didn’t like it then and I didn’t like it again now. The director, Guillermo del Toro, fucking hated it and disowned it.
 
The movie begins with flashing lights and newspaper clippings popping up on screen. They’re trying to give me vertigo or something. I had to look away.
 
A horrible disease is killing all the children in Manhattan. It’s caused by roach droppings or something. Despite the outbreak raging for two years it hasn’t spread off the island somehow. They set up this incredible idea and go nowhere with it so it’s really short on details. Supposedly this is the next great plague that will wipe out an entire generation but we don’t get to see anything so it doesn’t hold any weight. Roaches supposedly can’t be killed with poison so the hot science lady has to frankenstein a new type of bug that secretes chemicals that both attract the roaches and kill them (I thought chemicals can’t kill roaches?) by speeding up their metabolism, making the roaches starve to death within hours. It works, the disease is cured, there’s a press conference in which hot science lady makes jokes that piss off old science man and he leaves.
 
Skip ahead three years (I think). Hot science lady is now married to CDC man who has unlimited power and can close places down whenever there is a disease outbreak. This movie is eerily familiar to real life. CDC man likes to piss off the police by closing places down and opening other places up he’s not supposed to be because the CDC gives him unlimited power to go above the heads of the police. And yes, his name in the movie is Dr. Mann, so CDC man is technically his name.
 
A priest of some unknown ethnic extraction is chased on the roof of his neon church by a giant bug. He falls off the roof and a giant bug (maybe the same one, maybe a different one) drags him into a manhole. A boy with some disease watches and immitates the clicking sound of the bugs with the spoons he likes to play with. That’s his entire character, he plays with spoons and can identify the size and style of any shoe from 200 yards away. The priest is hiding maybe 20 people who have yellow fever inside the church. Yellow fever is only transmitted by mosquitoes. There hasn’t been an outbreak in the US in a very long time and yet somehow a whole building full of infected people catches the eye of CDC man who pisses off the police by getting the church closed down.
 
Two boys bring hot science lady a cereal box with a giant bug inside and she pays them $20. She gives them a lecture on termites because it’s foreshadowing for how they kill the giant bugs at the end. The giant bugs are all female except for a single male who fertilizes all the eggs. This ensures that they are an evolutionary dead end because if anything happens to him they will all die out. Movies think this weakness is a strength because this is at least the second time they pulled this (the other being Reign of Fire, which had dragons instead of bugs). Hot science lady does some test on the giant bug and discovers that it is the frankenstein bug she invented three years earlier. This is impossible because they were made sterile but somehow they managed to find a way to breed because porn finds a way. Movies like to have sterile creatures find a way to breed and scientists are all shocked pikachu face even though it’s happened a thousand times already. While hot science lady is distracted by something a full-sized giant bug comes in the window, which had previously been shut by her alternative girlfriend, and giant bug steals the baby giant bug because insects now care about their children.
 
There’s a subplot where hot science lady and CDC man are trying to have a baby. It goes nowhere.
 
Hot science lady, alternative girlfriend, and CDC man go to the subway where the two boys found the bug and they break in a utility closet while ghetto talking black cop is getting his shoes shined by disease kid’s father, who shines shoes for a living. Hot science lady drops some beads (pills?) off a shelf that go under a cabinet and CDC man drops his light in a pit behind the cabinet trying to find out where the beads went. Hot science lady sticks her hand under the cabinet and is about to get it bit off by a giant bug when ghetto talking black cop walks in and stops them because they’re not supposed to be there. CDC man is pissed because black cop doesn’t respect his authoritah so he threatens to come back tomorrow with a permit that will make black cop his bitch. He does.
 
The next day Hot science lady gets a call from alternative girlfriend about some shit that was dug up out of the sewers by her friend who’s in a band. Hot science lady goes to the sewage plant while CDC man goes to the subway with some guy I swear wasn’t in the movie before but they need one more person to get eaten so they wrote him in last minute. CDC man, new guy, and black cop move the cabinet away and the whole wall is missing. They descend seven stories underground looking for bugs. They come to a room filled with shit and black cop makes a “joke” about “elephant motherfuckers” sticking shit on the ceiling. When I saw the movie in the theater everyone except me burst out in hoots and shouts for like ten minutes straight (gay) thinking this was the funniest thing that has ever happened in the history of comedy. I didn’t think it was funny then and I still don’t think it’s funny.
 
At the sewage plant hot science lady, alternative girlfriend, and boy in a band look at the giant bug that was found in the sewers. It has a human face because why not? That’s the whole name of the movie, it mimics humans for some reason. We never see alternative girlfriend or boy in a band again. Hot science lady goes to the subway where her husband has already been for hours and she’s waiting for him! She runs into a giant bug and it abducts her. It doesn’t abduct anyone else, just her.
 
Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, disease boy goes into the church and follows the bugs to their lair because they speak with spoon clanks just like him so they think he’s one of them. Also the two boys who sell hot science lady bugs go down the subway and are eaten by giant bugs.
 
CDC man, new guy, and black cop finally find a bug and black cop steps on it which causes the wooden scaffolding to collapse and he and CDC man fall down into an old underground army base and have no way out. New guy is still up top and he goes to get help. He gets hopelessly lost, runs into giant bugs, climbs up a tube to a workshop or something with a sewing machine, and the giant bug stabs him in the leg and blood shoots out his mouth as if his body was a giant tube of toothpaste filled with blood instead of toothpaste and squeezing any part of his body makes blood shoot out his mouth. He dies. I don’t think they even gave him a name (the Internet.com says he’s Josh Brolin who plays a character named Josh but I don’t think they ever say his name in the movie).
 
CDC man and black cop spend maybe 40 minutes standing around doing nothing when they find an abandoned subway car that black cop says is invincible and will continue to run forever because it was build in Coney Island. CDC man asks if he can hotwire the train to take them to the surface and black cop says it’s impossible, he’s just a cop, he has no idea how to hotwire a train. Of course if the train could go all the way to the surface why didn’t they just follow the tracks instead of standing there doing nothing for 40 minutes? There were no bugs around the whole time, they were perfectly safe. Don’t know.
 
Oh yeah, I forgot, disease boy’s father goes looking for him with a cigarette lighter and a straight razor. He finds hot science lady who is beneath a manhole that in one scene is looking directly up onto street level with people walking over it and in the next scene is seven stories under ground near the army base. Father somehow finds black cop and CDC man and they help hot science lady out of the manhole just as a giant bug is flying up to get her. It chases all of them into the abandoned train and black cop shoots it 31 times (I counted) without reloading. He says he “emptied two clips” into the bug but we never see him reload. Okay, the Glock 17 does hold 17 rounds so if he did reload that would cover all the shots he took, but we never see him reload. I’m still calling bullshit on this one. It stabs black cop in the leg before dying. Remember this, it’s a major plot point.
 
The giant bugs are attracted to human blood, because they eat people. Hot science lady cuts the scent gland, which is covered in rubber cement like everything in the movie, and it makes the sound of crinkling cellophane like everything in the movie, and they rub it all over the windows so the giant bugs don’t smell the blood.
 
Oh yeah, there’s a scene somewhere where hot science lady talks to the old science man about bugs and they reconcile or something. I didn’t think it was important.
 
In the train hot science lady is explaining that “insects mimic their predators” which is why the giant bugs have human faces. Only we never see humans predating giant bugs, only the opposite. Every single encounter between humans and giant bugs it was the giant bugs who are the predators, so they are mimicking their prey for some reason. Also, if they communicate by scent and sound and live in near total dark subways how do they even know what a human face looks like? Don’t know.
 
Hot science lady explains that since the frankenstein bugs had super fast metabolisms rather than making them starve to death quicker it made them evolve quicker, and they evolved into people for some reason. They are living in the subway and can travel all over the city, and the country, but they haven’t left Manhattan yet for some reason in three years but hot science lady is scared that they will.
 
Black cop says he can hotwire the train and get them out of there, even though an hour earlier he said he couldn’t and got pissed when CDC man implied that he could. He needs father and CDC man to go and switch the tracks and reconnect the power. He can’t go because his leg is bleeding and the giant bugs will eat him, and hot science lady can’t go because she’s a girl. The two guys need to cut the scent gland in half and wear it so the giant bugs can’t tell they’re human. Again, if a bug can’t tell you’re human when it’s right on top of you because of your smell then how do they know what a face looks like? Don’t know.
 
CDC man restores the power by bridging the gap in the broken wire with his glasses. Father finds his son but the scent gland stops working because plot and the giant bugs eat him. Hot science lady has to go out and find him and she finds the boy and brings him back.
 
The train is moving again but it stops after a few feet. Oh noes, what will they do? CDC man found a dumbwaiter that can take them to the surface. Why didn’t he find it during the 40 minutes he was in the room with black cop doing nothing? Don’t know.
 
Black cop has to distract the giant bugs with his blood. He shoots one several times with his infinite ammo but it still kills him.
 
Despite living with the giant bugs for a few days and literally being incapable of fear because of his disease, we see disease boy afraid for the first time because he has to waste time to allow the bugs to get there because plot. CDC man pushes the boy and hot science lady in the dumbwaiter and pulls the cable making it go to the surface. He then runs and distracts the giant bugs. One of the bugs is climbing up the dumbwaiter and hot science lady kicks the door shut and it falls on the giant bug and crushes it.
 
CDC man finds a room full of all the eggs and it’s full of flammable gas. He breaks the gas cylinders open and the giant bugs start attacking him. He creates a spark by banging metal against metal which causes an explosion. The explosion instantly kills the nearby bug but despite being at the very center of the explosion because he’s the one who caused it CDC man is able to dive into a pool of water and survive because plot. The explosion is so powerful that it destroys the entire subway and shoots the manholes off the surface seven stories up, taking out an entire city block, at least.
 
Not on the surface because where the fuck does this movie take place again? They play fast and loose with how many levels the subway has. Hot science lady cuts herself to distract the king bug - wait, did I explain that part yet? There’s only one male who fertilizes all the eggs. That’s why there’s so many, because all the females lay eggs and one male goes around and inseminates them all, which is not how bugs work, but plot. Now their greatest strength is their greatest weakness since the king bug is going to kill disease boy. Hot science lady gets it to chase her into the path of a speeding subway train which comes out of nowhere and crushes the king bug. The train then disappears conveniently because disease boy was standing on the track and didn’t move out of the way because he doesn’t know any better. He’s not afraid of the speeding train because he’s not afraid of anything, so they had to make the train hit the bug and then vanish so it didn’t hit the boy too. Somehow they didn’t notice the huge explosion.
 
Hot science lady and disease boy finally, finally make it to the really real surface and old science man appears there for some reason and says “The entire subway is cooked, nothing could have survived there.” Just at that moment CDC man walks up the subway steps to the surface and old science man looks disappointed he was wrong. He then disappears because CDC man, hot science lady, and disease boy hug. It looks like they get to adopt him because their first attempt at having a baby failed so now they have a 10 year old kid because his only living relative has died. Happy ending.
 
Or is it? If CDC man can survive that means the bugs can survive too. Also the idea that there’s a single male is just some hypothesis by hot science lady, it’s never confirmed nor denied in the movie itself, opening up the possibility of two direct to video sequels.
 
I think the movie we got was a whole Swiss cheese of holes and uninteresting giant monster tripe. I would have much preferred a movie about the disease in the beginning, where it came from, how they discovered cockroaches were the cause, and how they eliminated it. That was my opinion in 1997 and that’s my opinion today.
 
Mimic still will get your attention and keep you mildly entertained if you shut your brain off. I give it a C-.

@UrbanMysticDee  
You know, one of the main reasons why the original plot of Lord Of The Flies made sense is because the boys were stranded without any adult supervision by complete happenstance. Here they just purposefully did that because no one can think ahead. That’s just kind of sad.
 
Also the boys in the book were like… 12 years old. Another one of the reasons why things turned out why they did. I sincerely hope they didn’t try to make them that young in the movie, because if you were told a bunch of 12 year olds were going to be our big hope for establishing a colony on another planet any reasonable adult would’ve just cancelled the project right there and then.

@UrbanMysticDee  
I only know of this movie because it comes up whenever I try to look up Star Trek Voyager.

I saw the last 20 minutes or so of a 2021 movie called Voyagers, which had a budget of $29 million and only made $4 million back. That makes me feel good. The poster looks like a porno, but I missed that part.
 

 
The story is The Lord of the Flies in space, so you already know what is going to happen. The trick is to take an old idea and do something interesting with it. But that doesn’t happen here. Kids are sent in space because the voyage is too long to send adults. Only it’s a multi-generation ordeal, so the kids have to be artificially inseminated at age 24 to have new kids who will themselves be artificially inseminated at age 24 (why 24? Don’t know) for as many generations as necessary until the ship reaches its destination. Okay, so why not send adults in the initial crew if several generations were going to be born and die on the ship? Because we need to set up a conflict, that’s why.
 
These kids are genetically engineered to be smarter, stronger, faster, and better looking than ordinary humans, but they still fuck up like normal kids so you wonder why they went through all that trouble in the first place. Also, you’re sending people into space who are grown artificially so they have no concept of sex. What are they supposed to do when they reach the planet in 86 years? Don’t know.
 
We jump ahead to the part I saw. The kids are engaged in interpersonal violence to establish a dominance hierarchy and the one kid who has the least inhibitions about killing easily becomes the de facto leader. He’s a white boy who looks like a young Christian Bale. I thought they de-aged Christian Bale at first but it turns out to be someone I’ve never heard of named Fionn Whitehead. He’s 24 fucking years old playing a kid. Meanwhile we have real kids in a porno released by Pedoflix. Think about that.
 
Discount Christian Bale has a best friend who’s Chinese played by another unknown named Wern Lee, who apparently started acting in 2020.
 
All the other “kids” who are in their mid-20s and yet act like they’re fucking 7 years old follow Discount Christian Bale except for Johnny Depp’s daughter and some guy Tye Sheridan, who I’ve actually heard of. He looks like Andy Samberg. The two rebels run away and are chased down an endless maze of corridors (it’s a space ship, why is it so huge inside?) by Discount Christian Bale and his goons who have guns with infinite ammo. During the chase they manage to kill one of the goons with a blow to the head from a fire extinguisher and a mystery injection. Then, despite being genetically engineered to be smarter than ordinary mortals they somehow fall for an obvious trap and are now running away from Discount Christian Bale.
 
They run down the only straight (gay) corridor in the ship sealing off the doors behind them like in Alien 3. Just like in Alien 3 they neglect to see if there’s any back entrance to where they’re going. It doesn’t matter, since the alien is smarter than the genetically engineered genius “kid”, and he doesn’t bother looking for another way past the doors; he has infinite ammo so he just shoots them open.
 
Why do they have enough guns on the ship for an entire army when they know the only people who will be on the ship are dumb, reckless children with no adult supervision? Don’t know.
 
Eventually Johnny Depp’s daughter and Andy Samberg lock themselves into the air lock while Discount Christian Bale shoots his way through all the doors. He sees his enemies are locked in the air lock. What does he do? He has two options:
 

Here’s two.
 
Saw the movie The Girl on the Train. It was probably the boringest movie I’ve ever seen. Fuck butt nothing happens until the last 10 minutes, and absolutely nothing before that makes any sense. It’s like diarrhea the movie. Calling this movie shit is too big a compliment. Shit can be kind of pleasant. This is the movie equivalent of diarrhea, the worst kind of shit there is.
 
This is one of those “art” films that probably got fifty awards for being nothing but pretentious, incomprehensible horseshit with people standing around staring directly into the camera and not saying anything, jumping through time infinity billion times so that you have no idea when any scene takes place, and having no likable characters except the baby who doesn’t really do anything because babies don’t do anything really.
 
Everyone breaks into everyone else’s house all the time, and no one thinks to lock their doors because the first time someone locked the door the movie wouldn’t exist.
 
Also, and this is probably a first for Hollywood, they used makeup and effects to make everyone look ugly for once instead of impossibly beautiful. I don’t like looking at ugly people. Ugly people make me sad.
 
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(for some reason a dashed line appears but a line of equal signs is invisible, so here’s two dashed lines)
 
I saw a “preview” for something called The Maze Runner. It’s a movie series for people who like unnecessary trilogies. I think they were trying to cure death or something, and the cure is in the blood of this Chinese kid, because they kept focusing on him. He’s in a Nazi white supremeist cattle car being taken away because I guess he’s not white. There was this action sequence involving a train and some Mad Max style vehicles that looks like it was taken directly from the latest bullshit Mad Max sequel combined with the latest bullshit Star Wars sequel.
 
So there’s this train and this Mad Max style car covered with some diamond plate because a few mils of steel is enough to stop an infinite number of bullets.
 
As a side note, Mad Max takes place in a desert so you would think that water would be the most precious resource, not gasoline.
 
As another side note, gasoline is so precious in the world of Mad Max that everyone has to attach flamethrowers to EVERYTHING to waste as much gas as possible.
 
So there’s this like Jeep or something covered in thin steel on the cab and parts of the engine but not the fuel tank or the tires, and it drives up along this train full of non-white people. Some guy covered in shit is driving and there’s this little girl with an illegal assault-style gun with a bump stock who climbs up on top of the Jeep, totally negating the whole point of adding fucking armor, and she shoots the evil white driver of the train perfectly with a single shot. Then several evil white Nazi supremeist guards shoot at the car and miss every single time because in the Real World® the military wants to employ the people who can’t hit anything to save their lives.
 
Then this other Jeep comes along and there’s an old ex-hippie driving with the Hero® kid, some non-threatening looking dude with scraggly hair. They get on the back of the train and it’s the most obvious thing in the world the way the camera keeps focusing on the tire that it will have a blowout and you’re not the least surprised when that happens and it’s all DRAMATIC!!! and the ex-hippie almost falls to the ground but he’s saved by the Hero® kid who looks like he can’t even make a fist but he’s apparently strong enough to haul this Boomer’s fat American ass onto the train anyway.
 
The Hero® kid walks, no, saunters along the top of the train and finds the car with the non-white people in it. It is coincidentally right next to a car filled with tanks of propane designed to explode DRAMATICALLY!!!! The Hero® kid puts a sparkler between the two cars while evil Nazi white supremeists come and try to shoot at him. Armed with only a pistola the Hero® kid kills like six people before the sparkler sets off some sparks and the trains decouple. Five train cars, probably about 100 tons of metal and wood, INSTANTLY come to a stop for some reason even though the train was moving at a good 40 mph when the cars decoupled.
 
Meanwhile, the Jeep with the little girl and the other dude is being chased by something that can’t decide whether it’s a jet or a tiltrotor aircraft (it has both). This obviously computer generated vehicle shoots at the Jeep with exploding spark ammunition, because dirt doesn’t spark when you shoot it otherwise in the Real World®, and even though the jet has advanced fire control systems and has multiple machine guns, it misses EVERY SINGLE TIME, miraculously hitting directicly to the left and right of the Jeep simultaneously. The Jet does a maneuver and comes in front of the Jeep and the Jeep stops. Instead of fucking shooting the Jeep the jet lands and evil Nazi white supremeists come out with illegal assault-style guns with bump stocks and they go to arrest little girl and the dude, who taunt them Laurel and Hardy style before some shit shoots out of the ground somehow and non-white people with illegal assault-style guns with bump stocks pop out and apprehend the evil Nazi white supremeists.
 
It was so stupid. Sadly, I CAN believe people paid good money to see this.

Not a “movie” technically, but I did the book of a movie once so a episode of a TV series is close enough. I watched this show called Medium. I have no idea what genera it falls under because it was two totally different shows smooshed together. The A story (I guess, it’s hard to tell) is about this girl’s first crush and her older sister helping her understand her feelings. It had to be the main focus of the plot because it took up about 60% of the run time. I’m guessing it’s like a family drama series. The B story (maybe, it took up less time and it would be a pretty strange choice if this was the primary focus of the plot) is about this girl faking being schizophrenic to get away with murder and this actually kind of plain middle aged woman seeing visions of murders in dreams, like a supernatural mystery or something.
 
“Allegedly” according to these dreams her brother was the real killer. But the case was already closed and the judgment already handed out, so it literally doesn’t matter because legally there’s nothing that could have been done. Frumpy Dumpty keeps having visions and the head police guy doesn’t believe her and doesn’t care because there’s legally nothing that can be done. She has no evidence, she would need a confession and even that wouldn’t matter because the only person who could confess is legally insane so her confession wouldn’t be admissible in court. Frumpy Dumpty lost from the very beginning.
 
Well it turns out that brother and sister are tag team murderers and one or both of them are able to murder sister’s roommate, dismember the body, and (this is crucial for the end) take just the roommate’s hand and use it to plant fake fingerprints. Brother doesn’t take the whole body with him because that’s the ass pull deus ex machina solution to the crime at the last minute.
 
In her stalkerish obsession to force a confession out of sister Frumpy Dumpty goads her into murdering brother (how again does Frumpy Dumpty get unlimited access to the psychiatric hospital?) in broad daylight and with a perfect alibi provided by Frumpy Dumpty! I’m not a lawyer but I’d think Frumpy would be on the hook for being an accessory to murder for pushing someone who is legally insane off the edge into committing a murder, but I’m not a lawyer.
 
At the end a video tape of the dead roommate repeating ambiguous statements allegedly made by sister shows up, but both dead roommate and sister have been declared legally insane so I’d hate to be prosecutor trying to use that tape as evidence of anything. It doesn’t even constitute a confession, it could be taken in multiple different ways, including the ravings of a lunatic. This is somehow super duper convincing to the police guy because protagonist centered morality. We the viewer knows these visions are correct, it doesn’t matter if the evidence is tissue thin, we have to end this show in two minutes, just go with it.
 
In the very last minute Frumpy Dumpty is still trying to coax a confession out of sister, who has won. Let’s be totally honest, legally she’s won. It doesn’t matter if the visions of Frumpy Dumpty are correct, they are not admissible as evidence in court, everyone else involved in the crime is dead, the only new evidence would be thrown out or easily discredited by any competent defense attorney, a sentence has already been handed out and time is almost served for the only crime that could be pinned on anyone, it’s done. Frumpy lost.
 
But THE ““GOOD”” GUYS HAVE TO WIN!!!!!!11 So police dogs are allowed inside the psychiatric hospital based on nothing more than a vision that is legally inadmissible as evidence, they find roommate’s chopped up body missing the hand, and somehow, even though we know brother was the one who used the severed hand to commit a murder outside the hospital, a murder for which sister has an airtight alibi, somehow, deus ex fucking machina, sister is guilty and goes to prison at the last fucking minute because THE ““GOOD”” GUYS HAVE TO WIN!!!!!!1ELEVEN and the writers wrote a story, no they wrote half a story and the other half was filler, the writers wrote half a story and they wrote themselves into a corner from which there was literally no way to defeat the villain so they made something the fuck up!
 
I hate that so much. Fuck off Medium writers.
 
It reminds me of this cop show. Cop shows like to have deus ex machina endings. They also like to have cops beat up suspects during interrogations, which would automatically have any confessions thrown out and the suspects exonerated even if they really did commit the crime. The WORST offender is Law and Order SVU (especially anus crimes are referred to the SVU), where the police antagonized an innocent person to the point of suicide and they’re the good guys. There was another episode where they basically said the police are justified murdering the boyfriend of a woman who happens to be really short because he must be a pedophile and she should never ever date anyone or the police will murder them too. SVU probably has the absolute most abhorrent morals I’ve seen in any TV series. Most of the cases the SVU brings to court would be thrown out or the defendant acquitted and, oh look double jeopardy! Can’t try them again!
 
There was one cop show, I don’t remember which one, they’re all bullshit. The villain was this evil religious person (NOT a Muslim, can’t ever portray them as evil or that’s racist) and he got this girl pregnant or something but there was literally zero evidence and she refused to testify against him so he’d won. He had the stupid lady cop cornered in a fire and chains factory that exists as the final setting of action movies and the girl was going to shoot her with no witnesses. He’d won. And then in the last 45 seconds this super genius who had run the police in circles for an hour and had committed the perfect crime all of a sudden became brutally retarded and had the girl shoot him dead instead because the villain has to lose at the end and the writers had written themselves into a corner where there was literally no way he could lose.

@Dex Stewart  
He’s the head man of the alien operation.

@Anonymous #2297  
 
I’m guessing goofy looking aliens trump a minimalist robot.

@Dex Stewart  
It still mystifies me that Mystery Science Theater 3000 selected the underrated This Island Earth for one of their mockfests, when it’s vastly better written and has a vastly more interesting premise than the hamfistedly preachy, overtly political, smug The Day the Earth Stood Still. It must have been a matter of obtaining the rights. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m building an interocitor.

@Dex Stewart  
That’s far from the strangest mashup I ever heard of. But this one doesn’t belong here because, despite appearances, it’s not crappy. Nothing about it is taken any more seriously than the premise merits, and everyone appears to be having great fun.
 

@Anonymous #2297  
 
And Tom and Jerry watch.