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  1. #21
    Quote Originally Posted by BD80 View Post
    Actually, the movie title is Piranha 3-DD. Hardly a subtle warning for what is in store.
    There are actually two. Piranha 3D was pretty good and had the R/T's score of 72 while Piranha 3DD was badly good with a R/T's score of 13%. These two films alone should help with this thread. Piranha 3D was that B-movie done humorously with gore and ridiculousness. Piranha 3DD was the over the top, terribly bad movie which was so bad, it was tough to walk away from.

    I personally enjoyed both movies, but Piranha 3D was the actually enjoyable one while Piranha 3DD was just so bad and ridiculous that it was entertaining.

    I don't know any websites with reviews but Sy Fy has sort of taken the mantle for these horribly good movies like Mega Shark versus Giant Octopus. Here is an article about their rules for these bad movies.

    http://jillcon.wordpress.com/2011/02...iginal-movies/

  2. #22
    Quote Originally Posted by JasonEvans View Post
    Whaaaat? Piranha is at 72% on Rotten Tomatoes. Maybe it was a bit higher at some point, but I find it very hard to believe that it was once up in the 90% area. In fact, if you look at the RT review by the date they were submitted, the page with the oldest reviews has 4 rotten reviews and 11 fresh ones, for a rating of 73%. I see no way this film was ever up above 90%.

    It is also worth noting that there is nothing wrong with critics reviewing movies within their genre and what they are trying to be. Heck, I think that is far preferable to pretending that every movie is striving for Oscar-winner standards. By that logic, The Avengers and The Hunger Games, which will not even begin to be in the running for any non-technical Academy Awards, would get bad reviews.

    You need to know what kind of movie you are getting yourself into before you buy a ticket. I believe people should look at what critics (and friends and other people) are saying to gauge whether a movie is of quality WITHIN THAT GENRE. Heck, most critics are falling all over themselves over The Master, but if you are someone who likes action, sci-fi, and horror films you probably are not going to like it. Just because the critics say it is good, does not necessarily make it a good movie for you unless it falls into the realm of films you seem to like.

    Of course, to me the irony of all this is that I know CF quite well... we were at Duke together... and Piranha is his kind of movie. I am sorta surprised you did not like it at least a little bit. If you left early, you got to miss the gratuitous scenes of the little toothy fish gobbling up Jerry O'Connell's... well... member... as well as his character's reaction to said munching. It is one of the finest schlock moments in recent movie history.

    -Jason "if you want to see a good Piranha movie, check out the 1978 one. If noting else, it served to launch the careers of John Sayles and Joe Dante" Evans
    J - I kid you not - a 93 the week it opened. I'm sure that in the 2 years since then, including the release on DVD, enough real reviews have come in to get it knocked down to the 72. But really, a SEVENTY-TWO from critics should still be an indicator of a quality movie. And, while I agree with you that, in a vacuum, a reviewer should be allowed leeway to say "look, this movie is a B movie. If you like B movies, you will REALLY like this one." But Rotten Tomatoes has a SCORE - one that is supposed to represent a collective rating. I can't tell you the number of B movies that have been given - er - BAD - reviews because they were a B movie - from action flicks to torture porn. Some of those were 10 x the movie Piranha was. As a marketing guy, the only thing I can think of is they went out and promoted it as campy to the critics, while promoting it as a real thriller to the rest of us.

    And Ash, I'm talking about the first one, not 3DD, which I have not seen.

  3. #23
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    Listen, I love being inappropriate, but you have to earn it. This paint-by-numbers picture with false drama and middling action has next to nothing to justify its very existence. “Red Dawn,” on a fundamental level, is garbage.


    Jordan Hoffman reviews "Red Dawn". http://www.film.com/movies/review-red-dawn-2012
    Q "Why do you like Duke, you didn't even go there." A "Because my art school didn't have a basketball team."

  4. #24
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    One of my favorites is Ebert's review of The Village. The conclusion...

    Eventually the secret of Those, etc., is revealed. To call it an anticlimax would be an insult not only to climaxes but to prefixes. It's a crummy secret, about one step up the ladder of narrative originality from It Was All a Dream. It's so witless, in fact, that when we do discover the secret, we want to rewind the film so we don't know the secret anymore.

    And then keep on rewinding, and rewinding, until we're back at the beginning, and can get up from our seats and walk backward out of the theater and go down the up escalator and watch the money spring from the cash register into our pockets.

  5. #25
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    Quote Originally Posted by mph View Post
    One of my favorites is Ebert's review of The Village. The conclusion...
    I love Roger Ebert's reviews, but especially before his surgery. Ever since his hiatus due to the salivary gland cancer and resulting surgery, I think he's gone soft and is less willing to write the stinging prose that so many bad movies deserve.
    JBDuke

    Andre Dawkins: “People ask me if I can still shoot, and I ask them if they can still breathe. That’s kind of the same thing.”

  6. #26
    OP - stop what you're doing right now and head over to Amazon and read the reviews for a movie called The Room

    Then find it and rent it (Netflix has it). It is, by far, the hands down worst and best movie of all-time. I cried 4-5 times throughout because its so bad its hysterical.

  7. #27
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    Quote Originally Posted by JBDuke View Post
    I love Roger Ebert's reviews, but especially before his surgery. Ever since his hiatus due to the salivary gland cancer and resulting surgery, I think he's gone soft and is less willing to write the stinging prose that so many bad movies deserve.
    I never read Ebert any more unless I have already seen the movie. He insists on giving away huge chunks of the story, often even giving away the ending. While there may be some times where this is necessary in a review and won't serve to lessen the moviegoing experience for viewers, Ebert often does it for no reason whatsoever. I think he has gotten a bit lazy in recent years and I suspect he zones out in movies some times.

    For example, if you read his review of The Bourne Legacy, he wrote the following:

    The motorcycle chase takes place in Manila, after Cross and Shearing steal a cycle, the police give chase, and one particularly determined undercover cop with dark aviator glasses persists beyond all reason. Since he doesn't have a single word of dialogue, it's impossible to say if he has any idea how important Cross and Shearing are, but he keeps coming like the Energizer Bunny.
    First of all, he is talking about the final, climatic scene of the movie here. Thanks for giving away how it all ends, Roger! Secondly, he completely misses what was happening in the scene. This was not a "determined undercover cop" chasing them, it was another Supersoldier who had been ordered to kill Bourne and who accepts his orders without question (a bit like a Terminator). Ebert completely misunderstood the entire climax of the film! I am telling you, he had to be asleep to miss what was going on because it was pretty darn obvious to me and even my 12-year-old son got it just fine.

    In fairness, Bourne Legacy was a pretty darn mediocre movie and falling asleep in it would hardly be a sin, but I see this kind of thing often enough from Ebert for me to really not trust his judgement on films any more. Look at his site, he gives almost everything between 2.5 and 4 stars. There just isn't enough variety in his reviews for me to be able to tell what is really worth seeing and what should be skipped.

    My go to reviewer these days is Matt Goldberg of Collider... who happens to be a friend of mine... but who also happens to be a wonderful reviewer who really sees the importance in films and the nuance that makes a movie good or bad or great.

    -Jason "it is pretty rare that Matt likes something that I don't also like" Evans
    Why are you wasting time here when you could be wasting it by listening to the latest episode of the DBR Podcast?

  8. #28

    Tom Shales of The Washington Post

    Somewhat related to the original post, one of life's guiltier pleasures: reading Washington Post tv critic Tom Shales skewer something bad on television. He had one piece on Brittany Spears singing on the Mall before a Redskins/Jets season-opening game ...

  9. #29
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    The last Twilight is actually getting more good reviews than bad, I guess after 5 tries they had to figure out how to do something right. I did like this comment though from Bruce Kirkland.
    This is a rousing climax to the series. But, if you hated it from the beginning, there is no reason here to change your mind
    http://jam.canoe.ca/Movies/Reviews/T...sentertainment
    Q "Why do you like Duke, you didn't even go there." A "Because my art school didn't have a basketball team."

  10. #30
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    Q "Why do you like Duke, you didn't even go there." A "Because my art school didn't have a basketball team."

  11. #31
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    It looks like the Hobbit isn't coming in with rave reviews, but for the most part they have been positive. This one, however, wasn't. I love the last line.

    Offering very little we haven't already seen and a horrible decision to use a frame rate that makes much of it unwatchable, this is less a faithful adaptation of Tolkien's "The Hobbit" as much as Jackson trying to recapture the magic of the "Lord of the Rings" movies and failing miserably. In other words "An Unexpected Journey" may as well be "The Phantom Menace" and God help us all if the next two movies aren't better than this one.
    Eek...

    http://www.comingsoon.net/news/reviewsnews.php?id=97646
    Q "Why do you like Duke, you didn't even go there." A "Because my art school didn't have a basketball team."

  12. #32
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    A new candidate!

    Whew, you have got to read the total trashing that Variety gave to Grown Ups 2. Yikes!!

    The review starts like this...

    The first scene in “Grown Ups 2” depicts a deer urinating directly onto Adam Sandler’s face. The penultimate scene (spoiler alert) depicts the very same deer apparently castrating Taylor Lautner. These bookends are not only the film’s highlights, they also represent the closest it comes to establishing any sort of narrative throughline. Among the slackest, laziest, least movie-like movies released by a major studio in the last decade, “Grown Ups 2” is perhaps the closest Hollywood has yet come to making “Ow! My Balls!” seem like a plausible future project. It is all but guaranteed a strong opening weekend.
    How awesome is the final line of that paragraph!?!!??

    And Variety is not alone. At this moment, Grown Ups 2 is at a sterling 0% on Rotten Tomatoes. 18 reviews in, 18 reviews that hate the film. Among the better lines --

    Though Grown Ups seemingly left nowhere to go but up, Grown Ups 2 speeds downhill in a hurry.
    Like most Adam Sandler movies, it's exactly like most Adam Sandler movies.
    In the first five minutes, a deer walks into the star's bedroom and urinates on his face. It's all downhill from there.
    Yes, it's time for another visit to the Adam Sandler Death-of-Cinema Fun Factory, the big-screen version of a terrible sitcom where laugh tracks are replaced by the co-stars chuckling at their own awful material.
    -Jason "I almost want to see this train wreck... almost" Evans
    Why are you wasting time here when you could be wasting it by listening to the latest episode of the DBR Podcast?

  13. #33

    Ow, My Balls

    “Grown Ups 2” is perhaps the closest Hollywood has yet come to making “Ow! My Balls!” seem like a plausible future project.

    I thought "Ow! My Balls!" was the alternate title for the Jack*ss movies, which apparently consist of 90 minutes of idiots getting hit in the balls

  14. #34
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    Quote Originally Posted by JasonEvans View Post
    Whew, you have got to read the total trashing that Variety gave to Grown Ups 2. Yikes!! ...

    And Variety is not alone. At this moment, Grown Ups 2 is at a sterling 0% on Rotten Tomatoes. 18 reviews in, 18 reviews that hate the film. ...

    -Jason "I almost want to see this train wreck... almost" Evans
    But, but, but ... it has Salma Hayek!!!!!! It just can't be that bad!

    But, it has Taylor Lautner, I guess they cancel each other out, and we're left with an Adam Sandler movie.

  15. #35
    Quote Originally Posted by BD80 View Post
    But, but, but ... it has Salma Hayek!!!!!! It just can't be that bad!
    With you on Salma Hayek (usually), but there was Wild Wild West too.

  16. #36
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    Bringing this thread back for a moment -- this review of the latest Nicole Kidman offering is worth reading just for the chuckles:

    http://www.theguardian.com/film/2014...dman?CMP=fb_gu

    "It's traditional for Cannes to start with something spectacular. This is certainly no exception. It is a film so awe-inspiringly wooden that it is basically a fire-risk. The cringe-factor is ionospherically high. A fleet of ambulances may have to be stationed outside the Palais to take tuxed audiences to hospital afterwards to have their toes uncurled under general anaesthetic."

  17. #37
    Sorry, as I always have to say when Ebert is brought up... he really based on Beverly Hills Cop because he felt that Eddie Murphy was terrible and miscast in that role.




  18. #38
    Sorry, meant to say he BASHED on Beverly Hills Cop.

  19. #39
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    Quote Originally Posted by Lord Ash View Post
    Sorry, as I always have to say when Ebert is brought up... he really based on Beverly Hills Cop because he felt that Eddie Murphy was terrible and miscast in that role.
    I know that Stallone was originally considered. I wonder if Rog would have approved of that flick.

  20. #40
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    Quote Originally Posted by Lord Ash View Post
    Sorry, as I always have to say when Ebert is brought up... he really based on Beverly Hills Cop because he felt that Eddie Murphy was terrible and miscast in that role.



    Quote Originally Posted by Lord Ash View Post
    Sorry, meant to say he BASHED on Beverly Hills Cop.
    Okay, let's deal with this.

    Here is Ebert's review of "Beverly Hills Cop" - http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/be...hills-cop-1984

    To me, that doesn't read like he's bashing Eddie Murphy as terrible and miscast. He calls Murphy "an enormously talented person" in the opening sentence. And in the closing paragraph, he says "Murphy is one of the smartest and quickest young comic actors in the movies."

    As for the movie, Ebert says that they took a potentially great fish-out-of-water storyline of a tough Detroit cop working among the posh surroundings of Beverly Hills and chose to treat the plot like something out of a trite TV drama. Here's the key couple of sentences:

    At this point, the movie can go in one of two directions. It can become a perceptive and pointed satire about American attitudes, showing how the ultrachic denizens of Beverly Hills react to this black cop from Detroit. Or it can go for broad, cheap laughs, and plug into a standard plot borrowed from countless TV crime shows. "Beverly Hills Cop" doesn't pause a moment before taking the low road.
    I tend to agree with Roger here, although I think the movie works better than Roger did. I think I had been more exposed to Murphy's SNL bits and his recordings, so I recognized and enjoyed his shtick - like the bit when trying to check in to the Beverly Hills Hotel. Ebert misses the joke, but I got it. The thing that makes "Beverly Hills Cop" a good movie for me was Murphy's energy and humor. The crime/action movie plot elements were boring and predictable, just like Ebert says. Roger gave it 2 1/2 stars. I'd probably bump it up to 3.

    Ebert certainly missed the boat on some of his reviews - all critics do from time to time - but I don't think he was THAT far off the mark here.
    JBDuke

    Andre Dawkins: “People ask me if I can still shoot, and I ask them if they can still breathe. That’s kind of the same thing.”

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