Observe and Report was supposed to be the antithesis of Paul Blart: Mall Cop, a product of the Happy Madison machine that goes for cheap laughs and not much substance. However, somewhere along the line Report turned itself into what it never wanted to be, a below average comedy, stooping to cheap, shock thrills to get a laugh, and never really powering up as a comedy. The movie trolls along for just over 90 minutes, throws a few laughs at you, you’ll smile a few more times, but it ultimately falls flat.

With the amount of talent present in this production its really surprising to see the end result fail so hard. Seth Rogen, who’s in just about everything these days, really misses here as the law enforcement obsesses Ronnie Barnhardt who’s delusional nature makes the character almost unlikable for the entire runtime of the film. Just when you think he might finally catch on to how strong he’s coming on, he completely loses it. The jokes that get the most laughs were so played out in the trailers that the theater was completely silent when they finally came up.

It isn’t just Rogen who lays an egg here, the normally charming and impeccable Anna Faris is completely wasted as Brandi the make-up girl. Ray Liotta, taking a stab at comedy, can’t seem to figure out any sort of cohesive timing for the funny lines he’s suppose to deliver. The supporting cast is a collection of one-note, one-joke caricatures that we’ve seen time and time again to the point they aren’t funny anymore.

The weak story only adds to the even weaker whole of the script. When Barnhardt becomes obsessed with catching a flasher at the mall he patrols he eventually takes a magical journey of blaming everyone of ethnicity, then attempting to be a police officer, mockingly blow away a psychiatrist with an invisible shotgun, take down five drug dealers, and finally fall from grace, get his redemption, and ride off into the sunset in a golf cart. The film as a whole is really paint-by-the-numbers at its best, and derivative at its worst.

Again, its incredibly surprising to see such talent collected and distilled into a cheap comedy you expect to see late-night on TBS. Maybe the explosion of Paul Blart earlier in the year turned people off to a mall cop comedy, or maybe it was Observe and Report‘s own undoing by simply not being good enough to run with the big boys, but after the movie is over you just kind of want to completely forget it ever existed.

There comes a point in your movie watching career where you just can’t take it anymore, the inane characters, the poor writing, the movie studios pandering to the lowest common denominator and using silence and big jumps as a reason to go to the movies. Halloween, The Shining, Psycho, Alien and Aliens, these are all iconic suspense, thriller, scary movies that will live on for years to come because they broke the mold, they did something different. They created characters, atmosphere, they were written in a smart way for the audience to grasp on to, for them to enjoy.

Unfortunately suspense movies have taken a decidedly different turn as late, they’ve turned into ways for studios to pad the bottom line by dumping $10 million dollars into a film, making the budget back in the first week, shooting to number one (or in the top three) at the Box Office and then dropping off. Case-in-point: The Strangers.

The Strangers, allegedly only based on an experience by first time writer/director (and former gaffer) Bryan Bertino where some stranger came to his front door looking for someone else, then having his neighbor’s homes broken into, is full of everything that’s wrong with today’s “scary” suspense films. It features unlikable 2D characters whose only purpose in this hack production is to die and to make the audience feel smarter.

James (Scott Speedman) and Kirsten (Liv Tyler) return to a secluded house after a friend’s wedding reception in what was supposed to be a romantic get away, before Kristen turned down a marriage proposal from James. Instead of champagne and rose pedals, we get awkward silences and ugly bridesmaid dresses. After a stranger comes to the door and asks for someone who doesn’t live there, the torture begins. Through the next hour you’re treated to one of the dumbest sixty minutes of moviedom while each of the two main characters makes stupid decision after stupid decision. From the cliché cache we get, “There’s nothing out there”, the person who is there, but then is gone in a split second, the screaming at people asking “Why!”, and the more than brilliant, lets hang around and see what happens.

The movie has no point at all, aside from only having two central characters; we still get nothing to hold on to. Kristen is a chain smoking annoying woman who, like all scream queens, whines and screams a lot, and Speedman plays the everyman who has his heart broken, only to be rewarded with knife wounds to the chest (big surprise, he dies). When Kristen asks why the strangers are doing this, they reply “Because you were home.” Simply amazing, that fleeting line of dialog shuts the door on an unremarkable bore-fest that simply festers in the mind until it ends and receives applause only because the audience is free to leave.

The Strangers offers nothing unique to the genre what so ever, and aside from a few cheap scares has little to nothing going on for a near 90 minutes. You almost feel dumber as the movie wears on, knowing that if you stared in a horror film, it’d be about four minutes longer than it took you to find the shot gun, because you’d have gotten the hell out of Dodge.

It’s nearly impossible to describe how utterly bad writer/director Neil Marshall’s Doomsday is. Words have not been crafted to solidify the magnitude of the sheer disregard for filmmaking in any coherent sense of the word, instead the art form being degraded to the image of feces splattered on celluloid. If anything Rogue/Universal’s marketing department should be given an award for duping hundreds of viewers into seeing this travesty of a film by marketing it as one thing, and delivering something completely different.

What’s built up to be a film akin to Danny Boyle’s excellent 28 Days Later with shades of Mad Max and Escape from NY thrown into the mix actually turns into a collection of skits turning the post-apocalyptic Scotland into a land where Beyond Thunderdome rejects and Army of Darkness extras do battle for no apparent reason other than they don’t like each other.

The now-cliché story starts in Scotland were the Reaper Virus (Marshall saw Blade II apparently) has decimated the population and the country is being evacuated (Marshall then saw the opening scenes of Resident Evil: Apocalypse, which look nearly identical, giant wall and all). After the virus gets lose in the crowd there’s an uprising by the scared public, flash forward to the future in a society where the government is faced with the stigma of its actions. But the Reaper virus is not dead, it begins to spread in London, and the only way to stop it is to find a cure from newly discovered humans living in Scotland.

The film begins to fall apart at this point, it was actually held together with the promise of its trailer up until about 15 minutes in, where a crack team of canon-fodder begins detailing weapons and armaments that will soon provide no protection to them. For an APC capable of sustaining chemical warfare and .40mm shells, apparently all you need to take it down is a strong fist to bust through the windshield and a few Molotov cocktails.

We’re eventually introduced to the two surviving factions in the land up north with one group lead by Sol (Craig Conway) and the other lead by his father Kane (Malcolm McDowell), a former scientist tasked with finding a cure to the virus, now lives in a castle and conducts his group with medieval mania including executions and Gladiator-like battles. The dramatic entrance of a plate-clad man on a horse in a doomsday film nearly brought the audience to tears, and not in the good way.

They say a million monkey’s typing away will eventually write Shakespeare, what we got in Doomsday was one drunk monkey, with broken fingers taking breaks between masturbating to write a movie so devoid of personality and originality that its almost to the point where the films it pays homage to are worse in the eyes of movie aficionados because of their association to this mess.

The film is riddled with plot holes and inconsistencies. At one point a member of Kane’s group is taking a few survivors of the commando group through a fallout shelter stocked with supplies, they pass right by the clipboard each time they go through, however in 20 years, no one has bothered to go through this stuff? At other times a character has seen a bus, a train, and motorcycles, but upon seeing a Bentley for the first time, she asks, “What does it do?” Seriously? Giving someone a “writing” credit on this film is like giving a first-grader a doctorate for putting crayon to paper.

There are no redeeming qualities to this film at all; it’s so laughable at times I honestly thought it was a better comedy than the recently released Semi-Pro. Even star Rhona Mitra disrobing wouldn’t have saved this mess (contrary to the opinion on Editorial Intern Scott Brooks). Films don’t get much worse than this, and it’s a rare feat to have toppled masterpieces such as Rollerball and Hollowman off my list of worst films ever, but Doomsday secures a place at the near-top of the list for being a genuine demonstration of how NOT to make a movie.

Black Christmas, a remake of a 1974 film of the same name, is everything you would expect from the modern Hollywood, a paint-by-numbers horror film that does nothing to further the genre, and in some respects, is so amateurish it may not even quality for credit in a upper-division college course.

There’s so much wrong with this film and it doesn’t even dare to appease the audience by including the three horror staples we’ve all come to know and love: gratuitous nudity, creative deaths, and genuine scares. The only nude scene we get is a girl showering from behind, the deaths are all the same, so much in which they could have used the same death scene over and over again and you wouldn’t even notice, and the scares are all terminally forced.

Even writer/director Glen Morgan’s attempt at a twist is over shadowed by his penance for shooting people from the ankle down and almost blatant attempt to make you feel as though you know who the killer’s sister is. By the time he throws her image on the screen after a flashback you know it can’t be that obvious, and you aren’t that stupid. The prolonged ending to kill off a few more people in non-inventive ways is just a ten minute segment tacked on to a film that’s already 90 minutes too long.

The cast, composed of mostly C-list catty celebrities who can easily pull off being a spoiled sorority girl merely serves as canon fodder as the deaths pile up. Of course, in typical Hollywood don’t-go-in-there-stupid-thinking half of the deaths could have been avoided if the characters had any intelligence beyond painting fingernails and calling each other a bitch. The most notable cast member being Michelle Trachtenberg, who now appears doomed to star in a subpar movie in every single genre possible, but you’ll be hard pressed to put face to name during the end credits.

A few names you will remember are the aforementioned Miller and James Wong who served as members of the crew for the excellent, and genre-defying, Final Destination series, but it seems each has fallen on hard times and will put anything out for any easy few million.

So, in the end, Black Christmas is another Hollywood remake that doesn’t turn out so well. You’ll be hard pressed to find anything you’d like in this entire film, because you’ve seen it all done before, and sometimes better. One can only hope that studio big wigs get a clue, but we all know they won’t as long as there’s more movies from the 60’s, 70’s, and 80’s that people barely remember, they’ll be ready to green-light muck like this. 

If anyone is taking notes on how to do write, direct, and base a movie around a singular actors abilities, let Nacho Libre be the poster child and the butt of all jokes. In fact, it might be the only joke that is funny concerning this dreadfully unfunny affair that neither strikes a cord with Napoleon Dynamite fans or those who have an ounce of humor in their bodies. Nacho Libre is directly at a younger, more pure audience with its PG rating and flatulent humor, but no one is laughing at the film’s tired, reused jokes and disjointed direction.

The star of the film is Jack Black who, like Chris Farley before him, is falling into the pitfall of having movies writing specifically around him because he’s overweight, likes physical comedy, and can get a laugh by merely looking at someone funny. This worked out well in School of Rock, not so much in Nacho Libre. Sans for a breakdown moment channeling his inner Tenacious D, there just isn’t anything that makes you want to play money to see a fat guy wrestle. Millions of Americans do this already, but is far cheaper on TV and just as humorless.

The story revolves around Black’s character of Nacho; a friar at a orphanage in Mexico who has a love for wrestling and begins moonlighting in a Mexican underground amateur league with is local, skinny cohort Esqueleto (Héctor Jiménez). There’s also a love interest thrown into the mix (which seems odd considering she’s a nun) and the standard sports movie devices of quitting, being defeated, and coming back to the ring for one last fight to triumph are once again present and overused. Centering the story about a friar who moonlights as a wrestler is daring and different, but the execution is marred by the pain script.

Having never seen director Jared Hess’ first film I can’t comment on whether or not the script follows the same disjointed, almost sketch like makeup of Nacho Libre, but this film is in utter disarray all the way through. The thin story is only amplified by the fact that each of the day’s events or obstacles seem like a way to get Black to flail around or say something in a high-pitched voice. There’s a certain amount of tongue-in-cheek humor to it all, but it doesn’t go over the edge to make fun of itself, instead stays firmly planted in the middle of the road between mediocrity and boredom.

For being a comedy there isn’t much to laugh about as Nacho seems poised to run around without a shirt and fart. I’m not going to say that this wouldn’t normally be funny, but any film that supports these two comedic devices also throws us in some genuinely funny situations in which to support them, Libre gives us one character’s love for corn.

I suppose the direction and style of the film is an acquired taste by those who found Napoleon Dynamite incredibly funny, but as a movie, standing on its own two feet, Nacho Libre is a dreadful experience that shouldn’t be wished upon anyone. As with most comedies, the funniest bits are in the trailer, and even they aren’t that resounding in their ability to get you to at least chuckle a little bit.

Beware of Nacho, and stay away.

It should be called “Sucks BALLiStic” because that is pretty much all it did for me. The real shame is I read some reviews before going in to see this mess of a movie and I was really hoping that people were just being jaded about the fact that Lucy Lui gets all of the good action roles, but, man was I wrong, this movie was just so stupid, after it was over I couldn’t help but want to take my own life rather than watch the credits and find out who made this questionable piece of trash.

I remember thinking to myself that sanding my penis off with an electric sander would have been more fun and entertaining, in fact, I would probably have enjoyed it more than the aptly titled Ballistic. Which, by the way, has the stupidest name this side of Ghost Ship.

Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever is just as the name implies, it is a pairing of these two agents who are suppose to be real rivals of each other, the real problem comes from the fact that neither of them know who they are until like 40 minutes into the movie when they look each other up on the most poorly guarded government controlled server in the world. If a command like “GetPass[Word]” gets you into a government database this is a sorry country, but what would a movie be without wannabe crackers getting in to where they should be.

So they finally figure out who each other are, but the movie just isn’t equipped for that, you see director “Kaos” (who has the stupidest name in the history of film) only thought to give this movie about 20 minutes worth of meaningful plot, then the rest of it is just stuff happening because he wanted it to…right. So this big bad government guy wants Ecks (Banderas) dead because he is shagging up with his “dead” wife, and he wants Sever (Liu) dead because she stole his son who just happens to be carrying a piece of technology that can give a person a heart attack with the push of a button. How original, these guys must have watched an episode of “The X-Files.”

The problem is that they mini-mechanical little spider-type thing seems so post-production that I think they just added it to give the movie another excuse to blow up more and more stuff. I was surprised when I heard this movie had an R rating, there is nothing here that I haven’t seen worse in PG-13 movies. There seems to be some debate as to what a good movie is these days.

Acting is horribly done. Lucy Liu looks like she just got ripped off at Keanu Reeves’ garage sale and Antonio Banderas looks like he woke up from underneath his trailer.

With a movie like this, which has seen delays due to massive editing in post production, and seen countless other movies pull off it’s plot better and less stupid, it just feels so right to show some spite. Walking out during the retro-80’s love ballad was bad enough, but when I thought that there were others this weekend that had to go through such turmoil I cringed and said to myself,

“I want my six bucks back.”

I feel dumb for two reasons, reason number one is I actually went to see this movie, and reason number two is I didn’t walk out. FearDotCom has to be one of the stupidest movies I have ever seen. The movie isn’t even good enough to be featured on the lovable Mystery Science Theatre 3000, it is just that horrible. While it still isn’t as horrible as the god-awful Rollerball, it comes really damn close.

The biggest hurdle you must tower over when watching FearDotCom is the fact that the movie makes absolutely no sense, and the plot had so many holes a forty guy gang-bang couldn’t fill them all up, it just makes you think so much it is stupid.

Today’s word of the day is: stupid.

The movie’s plot is this. Mike Riley has been chasing a killer known only by the name, “The Doctor” (how original). Apparently The Doctor likes to kill people and record it from multiple angles and play it on the web for all to enjoy, and us silly humans seem to get our kicks from seeing someone killed live and online, so thousands of people watch each and every one of these deaths. There is this “other” site that is “inhabited” by one of The Doctor’s first victims and she wants revenge so whenever anyone logs on she seductively asks if they want to play, flashes their eyes, and they go insane and die within 48 hours. Clever.

The real problem is if this girl wants these people to help her enact her revenge on The Doctor why in the hell would she give them 48 hours only? Most people wouldn’t get off their lazy butts to do anything until it has been like 45 hours or so, it feels like she is defeating the purpose and it is just one of the many times the plot is about as thin as Kate Moss on a diet.

Riley (Stephen Dorff) teams up with a health official, Terry Houston (Natascha McElhone), after several teenagers and adults are killed by an unknown antigen, they think it is a virus, we know it is the “crazy” internet woman. After investigating one murder and ruling out a virus she sticks around when there is really nothing for her to do. Then the story jumps all over the place and even goes so far as to talk to characters that have no relevance in the story at all, it is amazing that someone can write a script this bad, unless you’ve seen A Walk to Remember.

Acting is subpar, and dialog must have been written by a fourth grader with a mental handicap. Stephen Dorff was a bad-ass in Blade, but now he is reduced to crap status with some really bad roles he has picked as of late, like Deuces Wild and this steaming pile. Natascha McElhone does a respectable job, but nothing can save this movie, even if she is really hot.

While FearDotCom does have some cool imagery here and there, and some very disturbing stuff you can’t help but feel “The Doctor” is a freaking wacko and when the movie’s message comes across as “technology is evil, use it and you will be f’ed” this isn’t a movie I am running into the theatre to see.

Surprisingly since I wasn’t looking forward to this film, I am now looking forward to DreamWorks’ The Ring which opens this fall, lets just hope it doesn’t leave a bitter taste in your mouth, or try to jam something else into it.

Image a happy little puppy walking down the street. As he walks along, he thinks of very happy puppy thoughts. Maybe the dog he sniffed while walking down this street, or maybe about the “present” he is going to leave in a certain someone’s dorm room later tonight. The happy little puppy tries to cross the street and…BAM! he is plowed by a two ton truck that reduces his body to a splattered mess all over the road. Bits and pieces are everywhere, and even if you tried, there would be no possible way to construct this tangled mess of entrails into what we would consider a small animal. This relates directly to a new mess I have discovered, it goes by the name Rollerball, and no matter how much of this contraption is left, you could never reconstruct it into anything we would consider a movie.

The biggest problem, is this movie could have been cool if not for the massive editing done to bring it down to a PG-13 rating. Cut away shots, incomplete sentences, and a very obviously blurred sauna scene are so blatantly obvious, a three year old on a iMac could have made a better movie fit together.

The film stars LL Cool J and Chris Klein as two Rollerball greats who are looking for fast cars, faster money, and even faster women. LL gets all three, but Chris has to settle for just two, as his woman, Rebecca Romijn-Stamos, works out in the nude and has a nasty gash above her eye. Knowing the other women in the film, one might think she became critically injured when going for some stick (wink, wink).

Looking back at the track record for the actors and crew, you wonder where in the hell this move came from. John McTiernan directed Die Hard for god sakes. I won’t say that Chris Klein is a good actor, but the very least he had some moments in American Pie, American Pie 2, and maybe Say it Isn’t So. LL Cool J was damn cool in Deep Blue Sea, but any acting career these people hope to have in the future won’t be based on the tagline, “Rollerball’s Chris Klein” or “From the director of Rollerball” because I am turning the opposite way, and running like hell.

In any event, with the low box office numbers garnered by this piece of trash, maybe not enough people will be affected by it, but all I can say is I have been severely traumatized, and Rollerball has shown movies a new low.