Five Good Things about Masters of the Universe: Number 1, Skeletor

Every Masters of the Universe review, contemporary and retro, will include 2 points. One, it's a piece of shit. Two, Skeletor is fabulous.

After hiring Ivan Drago, Tom Paris, TV's Monica, Noodles MacIntosh, and Major Dad's boss, schlock kingpins Golan and Globus decided they'd better hire an actual actor for at least one role. And, like another genuine actor surrounded by stiffs so wooden they had to fend off beavers throughout the shoot, Frank Langella understood exactly what kind of performance this movie needed and gave it a great one. I don't have much use for children, but thank God both Langella and Raul Julia had rugrats who convinced them to star in a shitty children's movie, because each actor's pitch-perfect camp is desperately needed to keep the audience from slipping into a coma.

Langella, slathered in what has to be the most immobile face make-up in the history of movies (that as a bonus makes him look nothing at all like an animated skeleton), still manages to give a performance that overshadows the entire movie. How the hell he can emote at all using only his eyes, voice, and barely imperceptible chin movements I can't pretend to know, but he creates a genuine comic book villain that no amount of low-rent stormtroopers or bad synthesizer music can contain. When Man-at-Arms responds to Skeletor's threat to kill the Sorceress by defiantly shouting "You dare threaten her life?" and Skeletor thunders back, "I dare anything. I am Skeletor!", you see that Langella, if only at that moment, really believes he's an evil animated skeleton wizard. And for that same moment, so do you.

Great villains, if there's nothing to balance them, warp the movie around them. So if you're going to have Hannibal Lector in your movie, you'd better have Clarice Starling, too. If you don't, then Lector takes over the movie and you realize you'd rather have the psycho villain win and kill everybody. As wonderfully entertaining as Langella is in the role, it's also irritating, because these clods don't deserve to oppose Skeletor. When Skeletor brings He-Man back to Eternia in chains, leaving He-Man's idiot friends behind on a primitive and tasteless planet, that's how the movie should end. Skeletor ought to win, if only because he's the only one having any fun at all. Kind of like Alan Rickman in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves.

Actually, exactly like that.

The best scenes in the movie, it's no surprise, are between Skeletor and Evil-Lyn. I could write about them, but thankfully I don't have to. Instead, I'll just end this review with El Santo of 1000 Misspent Hours and Counting doing it for me.

"Frank Langella looks like he's having the time of his life as Skeletor, unleashing all the Big, Hammy Evil...[Meg Foster] and Langella are so good at playing off of each other. Watching them, you get a much stronger sense of their characters' history together than anything in the script itself even faintly suggests, an impression of two people (for lack of a better term) who have known each other for years and have whatever passes among the diabolically evil and thoroughly untrustworthy for a strong and stable on-the-job friendship. Indeed, Langella and Foster get the best moment in the whole film, right after Skeletor interrupts an unexpectedly gentle interlude with Evil-Lyn in order to vaporize Saurod in the usual arch-villain 'making an example of failure' bit. Evil-Lyn, standing beside Skeletor’s throne, offers her opinion on how best to deal with the others, at which point Skeletor grabs her, drags her down to stand with the surviving bounty hunters, and informs her that she’ll be in command of operations on Earth from now on. 'I was not suggesting that I go,' she says, to which Skeletor retorts, 'Then you should not have spoken.' It doesn’t sound like much, but it's all in the delivery: Skeletor's sternly affectionate confidence in Evil-Lyn and her ability to accomplish what Karg could not, Evil-Lyn’s complete lack of confidence in the very same thing, the enormous danger inherent in having someone like Skeletor believe that you're good at your job."

So there you have it, Five Good Things about Masters of the Universe. There are any number of smaller things, too, like the fact that it provided James Tolkan a paycheck. (I hope you're sitting down, but he plays the role of a gruff, belligerent authority figure who bullies the young protagonist.) But these are the top 5, which are almost enough to redeem the whole misbegotten enterprise.

Movie still sucks ass, though.

Five Good Things about Masters of the Universe: Number 2, Evil-Lyn

Everything about Evil-Lyn is right: the costume, the hairstyle, the performance, the voice, the smoldering sexual tension with Frank Langella, those eyes. Evil-Lyn is the only character the filmmakers got exactly right. He-Man's a stiff, Man-at-Arms and Teela are unrecognizeable, the Sorceress is old and English and doesn't turn into a bird or even wear a bird on her head, Skeletor's make-up is terrible, Beast Man is a mute lion furry, Karg and Blade and that...lizard...guy aren't even from the series, Battle Cat doesn't even get to be in the movie--but they got Evil-Lyn right.

I don't know who decided to cast Meg Foster in the role, but that person deserved a raise. And to think the filmmakers seriously considered making her wear contact lenses to hide her eyes. All the other things I mentioned help, but it's really her eyes that set Evil-Lyn apart. She doesn't seem to belong in the movie, which is why the character works. She's truly otherworldly, in a way that the lion furry, the lizard man, the goofy muppets, and the guy with an immobile mask for a face aren't. She's mysterious and sultry, and totally believable as Skeletor's dark companion. I mean, she's got evil right there in her name!

Her best scene is every scene she's in, but my personal favorite is when Skeletor gains the Power Cosmic and totally doesn't share it with her: She leaves. That's right, she's all, "Smell ya later" and jets. No scream of rage, no continuing to fight He-Man even though she has no quarrel with him at this point, no foolish attempt to charge at possibly the most powerful being in the universe at that point--she just blows the joint. Now of course, there was no sequel to this movie, because it blew harder than an episode of The O'Reilly Factor. But it was a great sequel set-up, with Evil-Lyn abandoning Skeletor to his fate, still out there, waiting for the time to strike, in a way far more subtle and devious than ol' Bonehead ever managed.

And then they fuck it up with a post-credit sequence showing Skeletor not dead. Hel-lo! You already set up the sequel, dipshits. Evil-Lyn. She left when the heroes were incapacitated and Skellie was having a space orgasm, remember? Oh that's right, you don't remember, BECAUSE THIS MOVIE IS FUCKING STUPID!

I can't believe there's no scene of Evil-Lyn trying to seduce He-Man. Probably because nobody would buy him turning her down.

Five Good Things about Masters of the Universe: Number 3, Eternia

Apart from the faux-Stormtrooper armor of Skeletor's guards, the look of the movie's planet Eternia is pretty rad. For not much money (and with no CGI), they create a rather interesting alien planet and pull off some snazzy shots. French artist Moebius, who lent his considerable artistic talent either directly or indirectly to the visual designs of Blade Runner, Alien, and Dune, did some impressive conceptual work. The film opens on a nice matte painting of the exterior of the iconic Castle Grayskull, and most of the first act takes place within, on what is really a neat set. Think the Emperor's throne room in Return of the Jedi, complete with a dangerous and highly unnecessary bottomless shaft for the black-robed, white-faced lightning-shooting evil wizard to fall into, combined with the Emperor's throne room in Dune.

He-Man gets a great introduction. Skeletor, having taken Grayskull, believes he has won. (And, were it not for the contrivances provided by the screenwriters' trusty Plot-O-Matic 3000, he has.) This being the case, he occasionally makes bombastic announcements to the "people of Eternia" as their new ruler, in which his giant face is holographically projected (presumably) all around the planet. Against the background of Skeletor's colossal face declaring that "Those who do not pledge themselves to me shall be destroyed!", He-Man appears in the foreground, tiny and alone on a rocky outcropping, his ripply muscle-y Dolph Lundgren back to us, staring grimly (I assume) at this evidence of Skeletor's seeming victory. This shot says everything we need to know just by the visuals. Rebels, Empire. We get a sense of how small and ill-equipped the Rebels are and how large and powerful the Empire Skeletor is.

They then immediately ruin this nice moment by showing He-Man fighting men in reflective padded armor shooting laser guns while he uses his sword to deflect their blaster fire back at them. Hmm...where have I seen that before?

But hey, if you're gonna steal, steal from the best, amirite?


Of course, because this movie sucks, we almost immediately leave Eternia and spend the rest of the movie on boring old Earth, that primitive and tasteless planet. But for a few early scenes, man, they were really onto something.

Five Good Things about Masters of the Universe: Number 4, He-Man gets captured.

It's so cliche even Austin Powers made fun of it. Roger Ebert gave it a name: The Fallacy of the Talking Killer. Not only does it appear on the Evil Overlord list, but it appears several times.

The villain has the hero dead to rights. All he has to do is pull the trigger. "Bang. Dead." to quote Scott Evil. But he doesn't. He has to kill the hero in some elaborate way. Or he has to kill him after he has destroyed all that he holds dear. Or he has to explain his plan first. Or he has to kill him after he attains ultimate power in the universe.

Which is to say, he has to let the hero put his escape plan into action so we can have a crowd-pleasing end-of-the-movie fight scene.

The wrong way to do this is how it's down in every James Bond movie ever: a naked plot contrivance. The villain can't kill the hero because then the hero would be dead and the movie would be over. The right way is to give the villain a reason to keep the hero alive.

Now if you're a hack fraud, you'll say, "But Carl Eusebius, you just gave reasons! The villain can't kill the hero because of his hubris. He has to triumph in such a way that blah blah" shut the fuck up. "The villain is arrogant" is not a reason, it's a plot contrivance. A reason comes from a character. It's called "motivation". Every character in your story has to have it, else your story isn't about human beings or anything like them. If a villain is so arrogant that he'll risk his own life due to his arrogance, you have to set that up. It has to emerge from the villain's character. Let me give you two examples from movies that don't suck. One movie is great, and the other is good in a schlocky action kind of way, just to show you that "action" doesn't mean "dumb".

In Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, the titular villain doesn't personally have Kirk in his sights, but he has a man who does, Captain Terrell. Terrell informs Khan that he has Kirk at phaserpoint and also has possession of the Genesis device, so that Khan is free to take the device at any time. Khan, being a villain in an actual movie, immediately orders Terrell to execute Kirk, since, as he puts it, "First thing's first." Terrell is too good a person to gun someone down in cold blood, even under mind control, so he fails to do so. Kirk then taunts Khan, demanding that he face him personally. Khan, being a villain in an actual movie (did I mention that part?), correctly suspects that he has nothing to gain by doing this. At this moment he is in control; going to Kirk's location means fighting on Kirk's terms, not his own. Instead, he can destroy Enterprise and leave Kirk permanently stranded. This victory would be poetic (and we know Khan is a cultured man who would appreciate the poetry of his vengeance, since he quotes Milton and Melville at the drop of a hat), because Kirk has earlier abandoned Khan and his wife. What better way to revenge himself upon Kirk than to consign him to the same fate?

At the end of the film, Kirk is back on Enterprise, which in its current state is much weaker than Khan's Reliant. To make up for this, Enterprise flees into a nebula, where both ships will be crippled to the same degree. Khan rather wisely again refuses to fight on Kirk's terms. But Kirk knows Khan, the kind of man he is. Because The Wrath of Khan is a great film, it now inverts the earlier situation that led to Enterprise being crippled in the first place. In that situation, Khan approached Enterprise as a friend, since Reliant is a fellow Starfleet ship, while refusing to make contact to avoid giving the game away. One of Kirk's officers quoted a regulation requiring defensive action against any ship, even a Starfleet ship, that has not been successfully contacted. Because Khan knows Kirk well, he correctly guesses that Kirk will ignore this regulation and instead rely on his own judgment. This allows Khan to cripple Kirk's ship by firing without warning on a defenseless Enterprise.

But now, at the end, it's Kirk's knowledge of Khan that will in turn lead to Khan's crushing defeat. Kirk gets on the line and taunts Khan, this time not angrily, but mockingly. "I'm laughing at the 'superior intellect'", he says with barely concealed mirth, purposefully using Khan's own language to goad him. Khan then makes the fatal decision to enter the nebula, where he finds only defeat and death.

The second film I've already talked about, but fuck it, here it is again. In Commando, the villain Bennett has Matrix at gunpoint, as he holds the latter's daughter hostage. Matrix plays on his knowledge of Bennett's psych (they were in special forces together for many years) to get Bennett to discard both the gun and the girl and fight Matrix as an equal. In a shitty action movie, this would work because villains are dumb. But here it works because Commando carefully lays the groundwork for it to work. Bennett is shown to take pleasure in killing with knives rather than guns, so he can see his victims' eyes as the life oozes out of them. Bennett is repeatedly shown comparing himself to Matrix, claiming they are equals and superior to the common soldiers around them. Even if no one else were around to see it, if Bennett defeated Matrix only because he had his daughter as hostage and the gun, he would always have that doubt: Was I really better than him? Because Bennett has been measuring himself against Matrix for a long time, only by beating him "fairly" can he be sure, in his own mind, that he's really the best. Even then, Bennett's no fool. Once he realizes Matrix is winning and he manages to locate the discarded gun, he doesn't hesitate to use it. Wanting to be the best is one thing, but he's not dying for it.

So it is for Masters of the Universe. As the film opens, Skeletor has won. He's captured Castle Grayskull and the Sorceress. All he needs to do is to drain her power and wait for the stars to align and he gains ultimate power in the universe or whatever. The forces of good have been reduced to a ragtag resistance force, with He-Man as its charismatic leader. When Skeletor sends his forces out to capture He-Man, his right-hand woman Evil-Lyn inquires why he doesn't order them to kill him. Skeletor replies, "If I kill him, I make him a martyr, a saint." Instead, he plans to capture He-Man, utterly break him, and parade this shattered and dejected enemy leader in front of the world, to demoralize all his followers and discourage anyone else from being one. See, that's a reason not to kill the hero, at least not right away.

Five Good Things about Masters of the Universe, Number 5, No Prince Adam.

Maybe they realized how moronic it would look to have the same live-action actor playing both Adam and He-Man, or maybe they didn't want to pay for the special effects required to portray the transformation sequence, or maybe Dolph Lundgren refused to wear pink and white tights. For whatever reason, there's no Adam. He-Man is just He-Man.

This deprives us, of course, of the homoerotic transformation sequence: Surrounded in light and projected against the imposing background of the ominous Castle Grayskull (that way they can use the same sequence no matter where Adam is at the time), mild-mannered Clark Kent Prince Adam holds his sword aloft in the most phallic way possible as his clothes disappear and he turns into a ripply muscle-y barbarian with a killer tan. He then bench-presses his sword while shouting, "I have The Powerrrrrr!" to no one in particular. This seems to be a necessary step in order to turn his mild-mannered tiger companion into the monstrous Battle Cat, a tiger that isn't mild-mannered. Which, you know, is better for fighting evil. He-Man does this by pointing his iron-hard rod--the Sword, I mean--at him, shooting a white-hot stream of lightning that transforms him into BC. I don't know why He-Man has to bench press the sword first, but there you go. Actually, he does it even when BC isn't around to be transformed, so I officially have no idea why he does this.

As for the movie, at its climax, He-Man finally, finally holds aloft The Sword and shouts "I have The Powerrrrrr!" as he's enveloped in light, and...it doesn't make any sense. He never did that before and never does it again. It just comes out of nowhere, because it was in the show...even though the movie doesn't follow the show, since he doesn't transform. He just shouts and glows in light while Skeletor stands there thinking, "The fuck is he on about?" It goes back to how Cannon tried to have it both ways. The "I have The Power" line is so iconic they felt they had to include it, even though it doesn't make any sense in the context of their adaptation. (Think the last-minute nonsensical never-referenced-again "By your command" line in the Battlestar Galactica remake.)

Still, there's no Prince Adam. And we're all happy about that.

Five Good Things About Masters of the Universe

Masters of the Universe is one of the worst theatrically-released action movies of the 1980s. It's so bad it sunk its production company, the unparalleled masters of crap known as Cannon Films, a company that even The Apple and 17 Chuck-Norris-in-Vietnam movies couldn't destroy. But MotU managed it.

Masters of the Universe began as a toy line, whose only "story" consisted of mini-comics included with each doll action figure. Not a lot of depth there. This is a toy line in which the muscle-y barbarian hero is named "He-Man" and the villain, who is an animated skeleton, is called "Skeletor". A skeleton. Named Skeletor. They must've spent upwards of minutes coming up with that one. The Filmation cartoon series added more depth, but it was actually worse because the added elements made even less sense. The dumbest thing of all was giving He-Man an alter ego in the form of the meek and ineffective Prince Adam. In order to "transform" into He-Man, Adam had to pull the Sword of Power from his back and hold it aloft in the most phallic way possible, standing as erect as his iron-hard sword allows in order to become a real man. (It's not quite on the order of Thundercats, in which the hero's sword literally grows longer and stronger as he cries out for a lady of the evening, but it's not far off.) Never mind the fact that Adam is wearing pink and white tights, so there's no way he could carry a sword strapped to his back without its being visible, yet it doesn't appear until he reaches for it, and never mind that Adam looks exactly like He-Man, only paler and wearing clothes. Superman at least wore glasses. He-Man...loses his tan. Surely Skeletor will never penetrate this cunning disguise! And even when yer old pal Carl Eusebius was a wee tot 3 years of age and therefore dumb enough to like this crap, he wondered how Adam could be a weakling when he has exactly the same ripped physique as He-Man.

I guess it's still better than Battle Cat, the tiger He-Man rides (really). BC transmogrifies from a green-and-yellow-striped tiger into a green-and-yellow-striped tiger...wearing a hat. It takes the Sword of Power to put a hat on a tiger? Was The Sword designed by Siegfried and Roy?

So MotU sucked from the beginning, making it a real challenge for Cannon: Make the film too similar to the show, and it'll be terrible, but make it too different, and you lose the built-in audience of dumb kids that presumably were the reason the film was made in the first place. Being the kings of bad decisions, the people at Cannon decided to go for broke and do both. Following the comics and not the TV show, the movie left kids who only knew the show baffled (almost all of them, since the comics had long since been discontinued by 1987 and the show was the closest MotU had to canon at that point), while the adults who didn't know anything about the series guffawed at every mention of the name "He-Man" and sat bored out of the their skull-bones until the credits rolled.

Still, before I rip into this piece of shit, I wanted to point out some good things about it. Because as bad as it is, there are some really, really effective parts. And that just makes yer old pal Carl Eusebius even madder. This good stuff, wasted here in this pile of crap. It's enough to make you want to stop purposefully watching shitty movies and writing a terrible blog about them. So, over the next five days, enjoy Five Good Things about Masters of the Universe.

Your Movie Is Meh And You Should Time Out

Your old pal Carl Eusebius has seen a lot of crap, but most of it doesn’t make the cut for this blog. For something to end up here, it has to be bad. Real bad. Like, Lady Gaga’s latest outfit bad. Rob Ford apology bad. Keanu Reeves emoting bad. 95% of the garbage I see just don’t rate.

But there are a few bad movies that are so infamous that they deserve a brief mention, if not a full-on review. (At least, not yet.) So behold: single-sentence capsule reviews of some of the word shit ever put on film.

88 Minutes—A strictly-in-it-for-the-money Al Pacino runs around Vancouver while on the phone with a Ray Liotta fangirl for 88 fucking minutes.

After Last Season—A psycho killer’s ghost doesn’t do much while people blow their lines repeatedly and/or get their heads examined in an MRI machine patently made of papier-mâché.

Air Collision—A passenger airline collides with Air Force One. Hilarity ensues.

Alien vs. Predator—Aliens and Predators run around Vancouver and occasionally kill people and/or each other.

Alien vs. Predator: Requiem—Aliens and Predators run around Vancouver and occasionally kill people and/or each other, only this time it’s filmed so dark you can’t see a goddamned thing.

Alone in the Dark—World-famous Jack Nicholson impersonator Christian Slater stars as a self-proclaimed paranormal investigator who teams up with Tara Reid as the least credible professor this side of Denise Richards and Stephen Dorff as that guy who came this close to having a career to battle hordes of demons that you can’t see unless you look at them. Also, at no point is anyone ever alone in the dark. (Uwe Boll Count: 1)

The Apple—A highly ‘70s musical about the temptation of hippy Adam and Eve by the corrupt pop music industry, man.

Birdemic: Shock and Terror—Still drawings of birds menace people who couldn’t act surprised at their own birthday parties.

Bloodrayne—Michelle Rodriguez and the Terminatrix have a hot lesbian fling and then go on set to shoot scenes for this movie, while a villainous Ben Kingsley goes Full Costner. (Uwe Boll Count: 2)

Body of Evidence—Willem Dafoe defends a stone-faced Anna Nicole Smith Madonna from the charge that she humped an old man to death for his money.

Cool As Ice—Some black people stand in the background behind Eminem Vanilla Ice so we know he’s "down with it" while he steals a 30-year-old high school student away from her 1950s preppie boyfriend. Yep, yep. Word to ya mutha. Drop that zero and get with the hero!

DOA: Dead or Alive—Animated plastic muppet Devon Aoki and a merry band of nobodies battle an unstoppable Eric Roberts until they remember that his powers are entirely due to his magic sunglasses and knock them off his face, ensuring his defeat.

Dragonball: Evolution—A villainous alien named “Piccolo” with hilariously bad make-up battles weaboos.

Flesh Wounds—Stop me if you think that you’ve heard this one before: Hercules leads a team of elite Imperial commandos on a mission to rescue some of our people only to find out they weren’t told the real story just as they realize they’re being picked off one by one by a technologically-advanced hunter who detects them by means of their body heat and and uses an invisibility screen to blend into the jungle--oh, you’ve heard this one.

Gigli—Ben Lopez and Jennifer Affleck are tough-as-nails mobsters who kidnap a sub-Rain Man performance and encounter first the Walken and then Pacino at approximately Devil’s Advocate-level overacting.

The Happening—Mark Wahlberg and that guppy-faced woman are menaced by murderous wind.

House of the Dead—Heavily-armed ravers fight off hordes of zombies and editing mistakes. (Uwe Boll Count:3 )

The Howling 2: Stirba, Werewolf Bitch—Saruman the White and Yor, Hunter From the Future go to Transylvania to stake through the heart dozens of vampires werewolves extras with crepe fur hastily pasted to their bodies while Sybil Danning reveals her ample talents.

In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale—A not very Statham-y Jason Statham joins up with Hellboy to defend the titular king, a nearly-catatonic Burt Reynolds(!), from a scenery-chewing Ray Liotta and the king’s treacherous nephew Matthew Lillard(!!), while John Rys-Davis, Leelee Sobieski, and Will Sanderson collect paychecks. (Uwe Boll Count: 4)

Jumper—Androgyn Crywhiner stars as a punk nobody who undeservedly lucks into success himself, trying to elude the completely understandable attempts of Samuel L. Jackson’s bad hairstyle to kill him.

The King of Fighters—Maggie Q and a few other non-Japanese Japanese run around Vancouver after Darth Maul crashes the Chan Centre to steal a magic sword that will allow him to take over the world. Canadians are apathetic about this.

The Last Sentinel—Dragon "The Don" Fancypants McWilson mows down so many dozens of robots/androids/soldiers/whatevers that he almost changes his expression. Starbuck guest-stars as a woman guest-starring in The Last Sentinel.

Legion—Rogue angels lay siege to a gas station to prevent the birth of John Connor of Nazareth.

Rollerball (2002)—When his NHL career doesn’t pan out, extreeeeeme sports enthusiast Flavor of the Month joins Washed-Up-Rapper-Turned-Actor and Mystique to play a slightly beefed-up version of roller derby crossed with the WWE that’s actually less violent and dangerous than the NHL.

The Room—A creepy, indeterminately European man is devastated when his air-headed gold-digging girlfriend cheats on him with—oh hai, Mark.

Street Fighter—Mealy-mouthed Jean-Claude Van Damme gets blown off the screen by a villainous and terribly charismatic Raul Julia.

Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun Li—A young Chinese girl grows up to become the emphatically not Chinese Kristin Kreuk, who runs around her hometown of Vancouver while things happen that absolutely no one gives a shit about.

Zardoz!—A giant floating stone head intones that "The Gun is Good, The Penis is Evil", prompting Sean Connery in a bright red diaper to do righteous battle against immortal hippies.

So, I ask you, my legion of loyal fans, is there any among these that you would see as the next review? Leave your request in the comments. I won’t actually pay any attention, but at least you can feel a sense of accomplishment pretending that I read your comment.

I’m kidding about that, of course. I don’t have any fans.

How to Save Hollywood

It's no secret that the Imperial film industry is sinking. Budgets are higher than ever, fewer tickets are being sold, and the money stream of DVD sales and rentals that has sustained Hollywood's current model is drying up. The Olympics and crazy people with guns are getting the blame, but where does the fault truly lie? The system is in danger of collapsing under its own weight, but fear not, my little droogies! Your old buddy Carl Eusebius is here with a plan to save Hollywood. Follow these simple steps, rich studio executives, and you'll continue to produce a steady stream of godawful films for the undiscriminating masses to eat up like the cinematic pigs they are.

1. Free Wesley Snipes
Okay, I know he didn't pay his taxes, and that's all, like, illegal and stuff. And yes, he defended his non-payment by claiming to be a non-resident alien even though he was born in Florida. But he must be released, and that now! Not because he's a celebrity and therefore the law doesn't apply to him. No, because the man could be making awful sequels in the Blade franchise and painful Woody Harrelson collaborations at this very moment. But no, he's locked up in prison, his prime years of crappy action movie-making being squandered away behind bars. Hollywood, just pay off whatever Mitt Romney shell company owns Snipes's prison and Let My Daywalker Go!

2. More Nicolas Cage Insanity
Overacting is a dying art. These days, bad actors are schooled in the cutting-edge technique of "not acting". Your Hayden Christiansens, your Zooey Deschanels, your Channing Tatums--their method of sucking is to impersonate a department-store mannequin whenever the camera is on them. The Al Pacinos, Faye Dunaways, and Ray Liottas of the world will soon be lost to us, and then whom can the next generation look to for training in the hallowed traditions of rampant scenery-chewing? Let us drink in the euphoria of the Madness of Nic before it's too late! I accidentally watched Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance, and the filmmakers blessed us with but one scene of that patented Nic Cage crazy. And not even one scene of him punching out women while wearing a bear suit. Get this man $10 million and a director with no ability to rein him in! HADDAGEBURN? HADDAGEBURN? HADDEGEBURN, HADDEGEBURN!

3. Ban Peter Jackson
Sure, his movies suck, but not in a fun way. Every film he makes now is seventeen hours long. Who wants to see that? Nobody. The Hobbit has ballooned up to not two but three films. New rule: Peter Jackson is to go back to New Zealand (alternate name: "Australia's Canada") and live off the blood of the young virgins he sacrificed to make people think his Lord of the Rings is any good. All movie cameras everywhere are to be wired with self-destruct devices and proximity fuses to detonate whenever Jackson comes near them. Seriously, even if you like Jackson's Rings--and God help you if you do--please ask yourself if we really need three Hobbit movies.

4. Enough With the Remakes
Wait, I'm not complaining about how Hollywood isn't original anymore. Hollywood was never original. I know better than to ask for an innovative story, a new take on character, or a fresh perspective. All I'm asking, Hollywood, is that when you rip off an old idea, change the name. That's it. How long does it take to put words in a configuration into which no one has put those exact words before? The next time you decide to steal from Philip K. Dick (by which I mean, oh, tomorrow), have the decency to try to hide the lack of creativity behind a slightly different name. Instead of doing a remake of a beloved classic like Fright Night or Conan the Barbarian, just do what you used to do: Steal the story and characters but slap new names on them. No fresh characters, no plot that avoids cliche--just take 5 minutes to change the names. You know, like Avatar. Xerox the exact same movie as Dances with Wolves, but like, the title's different. Creativity! Oh, and don't let Kevin Costner be in it. Because, really, Kevin Costner eats more than Rosie O'Donnell at a Golden Corral.

5. Pander to a Different Demographic
Wait, you thought I was going to say stop pandering to the audience and green-lighting movies based on demographic "research"? Puh-shaw! This list isn't about making movies good. It's about making them entertainingly bad. So instead of pandering to 13-year-old boys and making every movie Transformers, start pandering to 13-year-old girls and make every movie Twilight! Let's have more Blood and Chocolates, more Snow White and the Huntsmans, more Red Riding Hoods. I can't get enough of pale teen-agers staring moon-eyed at each other and occasionally mustering up enough energy to stammer out a half-formed sentence before sinking back into Hot Topic-induced lethargy! Give me half-baked alleged rip-offs of Romeo and Juliet or give me death! But mostly give me the rip-offs.

There you have it, my ideas for how to save Hollywood from a mortal slide into the failure of utter mediocrity. Follow these suggestions and...well, you'll still fail, but your implosion will provide some damn fine entertainment! Forget the whimper and go out with a bang! What do you say?

Everybody Loves Lists!

Due to my recent relocation, I've been unable to finish this week's Twilight update. So, in the meantime, I thought, well, everybody loves lists! They're meaningless and people always think they're wrong, but we keep making them anyway. They generate discussion, at least, and if there's one thing this blog needs, it's decent writing and something insightful to say. Sorry, that's two things. Well, amongst the things this blog needs is discussion, so I'm putting forward a number of my own personal top five lists. You'll note that, with the rare exception, all choices are mainstream with (allegedly) A-list talent. The obvious reason for this is it's hard to get discussion going when I'm tossing out people and films no-one's heard of. The less obvious reason is that, especially for the "worst of" lists, it's no fun beating up on small fry with no money and lots of heart. I mean, if I didn't have this rule, the Five Worst Movies could be any random sample of Uwe Boll films. I thought it would be more interesting to take the piss out of films with millions of dollars made by people from whom, rightly or wrongly, we expect better. So here goes:

Best Movies of All Time, Ever, Objectively True and Correct:
5. Blade Runner--Possibly the most visually influential film of all time. (Yes, I've seen Citizen Kane.) Also has the dubious honor of popularizing the "director's cut".
4. The Road Warrior--The template for seemingly every post-apocalyptic genre film of the last 40 years. Only The Road Warrior's apocalypse looks more likely with each passing decade.
3. Dr. Strangelove, Or, How I Learn to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb--For years, I heard this was the greatest satire of all time. It is.
2. The Godfather--The Mafia never looked so cool. Brando gives the greatest performance of his career, and his isn't even the strongest in the film.
1. Memento--Great acting, great mystery, and a twist ending that's both shocking and unexpected and completely believable and in keeping with the rest of the film. Seen it eight times, and every time I caught new nuance. Even the Gap-Toothed Woman of CSI fame can't ruin this movie.

The Worst Movies of All Time:
5. Wanted--An adolescent male fantasy for sociopaths. Forces Morgan Freeman to share the screen with Angelina Jolie's lips.
4. Princess Aurora--If your child is murdered as a result of your neglect, you're perfectly justified in killing everyone the child encountered that day to assuage your own guilt.
3. The Constant Gardener--A morality play about how if your politics are right, you can't do anything immoral.
2. Goodfellas--Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci playing gangsters? You don't say! I wanted the main character to die throughout the film. He never does.
1. Southland Tales--See my review here.

The Worst Movies I Had the Best Time Watching:
5. Lady Terminator--A blurry photocopy of The Terminator, only the Terminator is an Indonesian sex demon who humps men to death with her serrated sawblade-vagina. Or shoots them. Both methods work.
4. The Room--You're tearing me apart, intarwebs!
3. Dragonball: Evolution--Definitive proof that crappy anime should never be done in live-action. Shockingly offensive example of Lead Actors are White. I laughed at the villain's bad make-up job every single time he appeared onscreen.
2. Birdemic: Shock and Terror--Hands down, the worst acting you've ever seen. And special effects. And everything else. Deserves to make the next list, but it's just too funny.
1. The Happening--Who knew tree-induced suicide could be so hilarious?

The Most Incompetent Excuses for Movies That Hardly Deserve to be Called Movies:
5. The Last Airbender--See my review here.
4. Any of those Resident Evil things--The only entertainment to be had from this abominable series is figuring out which real movie each entry is ripping off. Subsists entirely on young boys obsessed with somewhat-attractive women in tight black leather shooting machine guns. (See also the Underworld series. Better yet, don't.)
3. Redline--Made me appreciate the care and craft that went into The Fast and the Furious films. Yes, I'm fully aware of what that statement entails.
2. Jack and Jill--Less a movie than a scam to bilk investors out of $70 million. More product placement than The Price is Right. A worse Adam Sandler movie than Going Overboard.
1. Disaster Movie--I only intended to watch maybe 15 minutes of this but resolved to continue until I saw a scene that wasn't worse than the previous one. I finished the whole movie.

The Most Overrated Directors:
5. Quentin Tarantino--A screenwriter of talent, if limited range. Would love to see a screenplay of his directed by anyone but himself. Wait, that was True Romance. Never mind.
4. David Fincher--Disowned Alien 3, easily the best film he made. Yeah, I went there.
3. Oliver Stone--Revealed by the films he makes to be insane. Allowed Kevin Costner to be in his film.
2. Peter Jackson--The Frighteners was decent, but everything else he's made has been the worst piece of crap ever produced (Bad Taste) or unbelievably dull (Lord of the Rings) or that godawful King Kong remake (Godawful King Kong Remake).
1. Martin Scorsese--Making films dirty does not make them good. Michael Mann does everything people keep telling me Scorsese does, only Mann doesn't suck. Best work of his career: Michael Jackson's "Bad" video.

Three-Name Actors Who Earn the Right to Use Three Names:
5. HBC--The best there is at playing the role of HBC.
4. Jada Pinkett-Smith--I have three words, one for each of your names: Fire your agent.
3. James Earl Jones--I'm a big fan, even if he did assassinate Martin Luther King, Jr. Makes even a Tennessee Williams play watchable.
2. Tommy Lee Jones--Is there anything the man can't do? (Answer: He can't be bad in a role, even when directed by Joel Shootmenowmacher.)
1. Edward James Olmos--God walks among us.

Three-Name Actors Who Haven't Earned the Right to Use Three Names:
5. Sarah Gellar--Even fans tell me she's the weakest part of Buffy. (What? Like I'd watch that.)
4. Catherine Jones--Gives a good performance as an elitist socialite who isn't half as brilliant or witty as she thinks she is. But any actor can play herself.
3. Richard Anderson--Who needs charisma to headline not one but two TV dramas?
2. Stiffler--This is the only role he plays, so why not credit him as such?
1. Jennifer Hewitt--"Love" isn't the four-letter "L" word that explains her career.

The Worst Actors to Pollute My Movie Screens:
5. Sam Worthington--See any of his films--Whatever of the Titans, Terminator: Enough Already, pick any one you want--and see if you can distinguish him from the CGI backgrounds. Ha-ha! I'm kidding, you can't.
4. Clooney--I refuse to use his full name. Plays the role of "smug, vaguely handsome jerk" in Every Film Clooney Has Been In. Thinks smiling and nodding constitutes acting. Is generally a horrible person.
3. Sean Penn--Someone tell this man that shouting your lines is not the same thing as giving a dramatic performance. Also generally a horrible person.
2. Kevin Costner--Will be remembered long after his death for delivering the worst Robin Hood of all time. Russell Crowe weeps nightly that his awful Robin Hood will be forgotten while Costner's lives on. "Because I'm a survivor" indeed.
1. William Hurt--This man won an Oscar. That sound you hear is the award's credibility going down the toilet.

The Bestest Actors Ever:
5. Guy Pearce--From action hero to insurance investigator to dopehead to Andy Warhol, he just oozes screen presence, sex appeal, and sensitive-guy machismo. American accent was so good I got the vapours when I found out he's Australian. Oy!
4. John Malkovich--He's weird, he speaks fluent French, and he starred in Being John Malkovich. Oh, and his surname is Malkovich. Come on, that's just evil-sounding and wicked.
3. Samuel L. Jackson--Known for shouting, obscenities, and shouting obscenities, yet he can deliver subtle performances in great films (Unbreakable) and terrible films (Sphere), no matter how badly directed he is. Well, okay, except by George Lucas.
2. Jack Nicholson--Yeah, I'm a sucker for Jack doing Jack. Still, for the haters, see Wolf or About Schmidt. He's capable of subtlety when he bothers to act. (See also Brando, Marlon.)
1. Christopher Walken--Does just fine giving a normal performance, but for my money, give me that old Walken Weird! How many times has he walked into an otherwise crap film and Walkenised, giving the audience a respite of awesome for that brief moment he's on screen? (Answer: Uncountable.)

Most Underrated Films:
5. Cube--An English-language Canadian film that's taut, suspenseful, chilling, and thought-provoking. Hey, where are you going? Yes, this is a real film! Oh, come on, get back here! It's got Ezri Dax not sucking!
4. Save the Green Planet!--Features a towering performance from Paek Yun-sik. Pays homage to a number of different films--both good and bad--yet still has its own voice. A truly subtle and fascinating ending.
3. The Ref--Stars Kevin Spacey as Kevin Spacey, Denis Leary as Denis Leary, and Judy Davis as HotSexyAwesome!!!. A funny black comedy about a couple that hate each other. (Alternate title: The Movie The War of the Roses Tried to be And Failed.)
2. Prophecy--Christopher Walken as the archangel Gabriel, lots of Bible-quoting, an almost-priest with a crisis of faith, and Amanda Plummer? How could I resist? (Hint: I couldn't.) I was happy to see this movie ripped off by that atrocious Ghost Rider sequel. Hey, it means somebody saw it besides me!
1. Demon Knight--Great performances from William Sadler, Billy Zane (stop laughing), and Jada Pinkett-Smith Pinkett. Also okay are Thomas Haden Church, Dick Miller, and CCH Pounder. The demons look good, the backstory is straightforward and clear, the villain's motivations are suitably nefarious and simple, and the final showdown shows some moxie from a sassy heroine.

Most Overrated Films:
5. Se7en--M0rg4n Fr33m4n i$ gr34t 4$ 4lway4$, but th3 r3$t i$ ju$t unr3m4rk4bl3. Oh, and the "twist" is as shocking as a closet homosexual Republican. Remember what I said about the twist in Memento? Yeah, this is nothing like that.
4. Equilibrium--Noteworthy if you've never encountered dystopia. For everyone who has, the only fun is figuring out the sources the film's pilfering from. Oh, and Sean Bean dies (by which I mean, Sean Bean is in this movie).
3. Jacob's Ladder--The ending not only renders the entire movie pointless, but it's cheap and derivative. Plus, Tim Robbins sucks.
2. The War of the Roses--Thinks it's a sharp, witty deconstruction of marriage, but it's really just a crass exercise in misogyny and unfunny. An utterly unbelievable exercise in ludicrous violence and Michael Douglas "acting".
1. Every film Martin Scorsese has ever made. Yes, including the ones I haven't seen (i.e., most of them).

There! I hope you enjoyed this installment of "Things I Like or Dislike Arranged into Groups of Five". If you agree with any of my choices--and God help you if you do--please leave a comment. If you don't, then I kindly invite you to leave a long, angry rant explaining that I'm fat and stupid and probably gay and/or a furry that in no way addresses anything I said. And for the one reader out there for whom making lists like this accounts for approximately 42.7% of our conversations--and you know who you are--I know you're thinking, "Alas! What will we bicker pointlessly about now?!" Fear not! Print a copy of these lists, along with your own annotations, and bring them to our next meeting for further pointless bickering.