Fear of clowns is scientifically called coulrophobia, but I call it having a brain and survival instinct.  I thought I would try to prove my point to Jason and all the other people who think I am weird for this and list my 10 Scariest Clowns of All Time.

10.  Ronald McDonald-I think the first time I realized how evil clowns were was when I was a kid and visited a McDonald’s.  Out front they had a park bench with a statue of Ronald with his arm out so you could sit down and take a picture like a moron or something.  My friend sat there and all of a sudden I got the creepiest feeling ever.  In looking back as an adult I realized that the pose and look was straight up child molester.  However, if you want to count the evilness of clowns based on how much damage and despair they have brought upon the world, from a dietary point of view Ronald McDonald is the Hitler of clowns.  How much garbage has he helped shovel into the waiting maws of future obese diabetics?

9.  Violator from Spawn.  The fat clown that turns into a horrid demon was bad enough in the movie, but trust me when I say he was way worse in the comic book.

8.  the Joker-I am of course a Batman fan and the Joker is my second favorite villain (Two Face is my first).  However, part of the reason he is such a good villain is he is horrible!  I don’t care which one; Jack Nicholson, the cartoon, the comic, Heath Ledger, even Cesar Romero from the TV show.  They are all scary as hell.  (Joker image courtesy of the Batman T-Shirt category)

7.  the clown doll from Poltergeist-ugh.  Thank god I never saw this movie as a kid.  I never would have slept again.  This clown was scary as hell, kept showing up in unexpected places, and never spoke.  Plus, it was a clown.

6.  Sergio from the Last Circus-I don’t think any of you saw this Spanish film, but if you do and don’t suffer from coulrophobia, you will.  In my mind clowns are scary sociopaths anyway, and to see one that actually is a sociopath is god awful.

5.  the zombie clown from Zombieland-this is a nice convergence for my best friend and I.  You see, I fear clowns and he fears zombies.  Works out nicely.  I think part of the reason I loved this movie is the main character shows the rational sense to have a healthy fear of the “c” word.

4.  Captain Spaulding from the Devil’s Rejects and House of 1,000 Corpses-Rob Zombie learned early on how well clowns work in horror films with Halloween and put that experience to good use when he created this character.  Talk about messed up.

3.  the clowns from Killer Klowns from Outer Space-not only are they clowns, but they are from outer space, have huge freaking clown heads, and are here to capture humans in order to encase them in cotton candy and drink their fluids with a crazy straw!  I saw this movie at a friends house and I think my hand print is still impressed on the armrest of his couch.

2.  Sweet Tooth from Twisted Metal-yes, Jason used to make me play this game and always force me to watch the intro showing how Sweet Tooth came to be.  Can you imagine anything scarier than a clown with glowing red eyes and flames for hair driving an ice cream truck armed with enough guns to sink a battleship?  Well, actually I can since Sweet Tooth is only number 2 on my list.

1.  Pennywise from Stephen King’s It-no, not the band.  Only the scariest clown in the history of the universe, who spends his times killing children and not with laughter.  Seeing this guy on screen might have been what pushed me over the top from being kind of creeped out by clowns to full blown terror.

Sorry, but Patch Adams didn’t quite make the list, although it was close.  That’s pretty much it.  I think I am going to see an indy film tonight, so look for a good review tomorrow.  I need to go have a couple drinks and punch Jason in the head for making me relive all this.  Post comments here or follow me on Twitter @NerdKungFu.  You can also email me at david@nerdkungfu.com.  Thanks for reading.  Talk to you soon.

Dave

This will actually prove a nice challenge for Tony Stark.  Does his suit even work underwater?  I don’t expect it to rust or anything dumb like that, but is it truly water proof?  Do the repulsors work underwater?  How long of an air supply has he built into the suit?  In the first movie the thing flared out in the upper atmosphere, so maybe there is no air supply, just some kind of filter.  I am really curious.

Of course, the very first Iron Man as seen in this image I found in Dave’s comic book t shirts was really primitive, showing there is an evolution of the suit technology.  Maybe the movie will start off with the suit not really able to do anything under water and Tony having to modify it into an aqua suit.  That would be cool.

Of course, in my comic book recollection the Sub-Mariner was always more of a Fantastic Four villain, but maybe I missed a few issues.

Jason

I am in all ways a man of my word.  I didn’t do as well as I had hoped at the Warhammer tournament and as I promised in punishment went last night and saw the Mysterious Island.  This movie is actually one of the hardest for me to review, as from a cinema point of view it is the movie equivalent of blunt trauma to the head: painful and potentially brain damaging.  However, as I scan a few other reviewers I respect the phrase “good for what it is” keeps cropping up like a returning herpes sore and I have to admit, taken in the context of “moronic entertainment for kids with a story that won’t have parents wanting to kill themselves” it definitely qualifies.

I did not see the first one but honestly, I don’t think I missed much.  I have read a lot of Jules Verne and watched a lot of Scooby Doo, which seems to be the basis for this movie.  The problem is of course how to review it?  If I treat it like a kids movie I won’t have a lot to say.  If I treat it like an adult movie (and based on how much the camera lingers over Venessa Hudgens (Sucker Punch, High School Musical) very skimpy outfit outfit an argument could be made that it is an adult film) I will be dumping all over it but be revealing to the world what a bitter and horrible soul I am at heart.

I think the answer is, like most bad comprises, to jump both ways.  I will review it like a childs film but raise a lot of the points I would have raised if it were an adult film, thus creating more work for me but in truth probably writing something a little more entertaining. I will try to keep my complaints about the really, really, horrifically bad science to a minimum.  Sufficed to say science and technology will have been set back 10 years when the generation of kids watching this film grows up to become scientists and have the items in this film rolling around in their subconscious (anyone else remember Idiocracy?  Brawndo shirt image courtesy of the Movie T Shirt category).

So the story.  Sean (Josh Hutcherson-American Splendor, the Kids are All Right, Journey to the Center of the Earth) hates his stepfather Hank (Dwayne Johnson (NOT the Rock)-Fast Five, the Rundown, the Scorpion King) and wants to decode a secret message in Jules Verne code from his missing grandfather Alexander (Micheal Caine-Batman Begins, the Dark Knight, The Prestige, Children of Men).  Turns out Hank is a construction worker who also is an expert code breaker and he and Sean solve the complex code in about 14 seconds.  It is a map and coordinates of a mysterious island of some kind out in the Pacific near the island of Palau, a small country who’s official language is happily English.  In an attempt to bond with his stepson Hank agrees to take Sean out there to find this island.  Once they land they find that the only person crazy enough to take them to “the most dangerous part of the oceon” is the incredibly goofy Gabato (Luis Guzman-Boogie Nights, Anger Management, Carlito’s Way) and his incredibly hot daughter Kailani (Vanessa Hudgens).  They board the most decrepit helicopter in the history of aviation and in the 7th worst decision in the history of the world (after the decision to air the Star Trek episode Spock’s Brain but before M&M’s decision to not let their candy be featured in E.T., passing it over to Reeces Peices) opt to fly into the mother of all storms.

They crash, of course, and wash up on the beach of some mysterious seeming island completely uninjured.   At that point the adventure begins and they travel the island, coming across many wonderfully stupid and impossible creatures (I know I said I would avoid bitching too much about the scientific impossibilities of the things in this film, but there is a phenomenon known as scaling and strength of materials that tells us why giant ants and tiny elephants couldn’t exist.  For the most part they wouldn’t be able to breath).  They find Alexander in about 2 minutes and it turns out they are all experts of one type or another in tectonic plate activity, biology, archeology, and jungle survival.  They find out the island is sinking (and does so ever 140 years.  Sorry to be a pill but do they really think an entire complex ecosystem can develop that quickly?) and have to get out.  The only way to leave is to find the hidden Nautiless, the submarine from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea left hidden on the island 140 years ago (again, sorry about this, but the fact is my dad once left a car on a driveway for two years and when he wanted to move it had to replace the battery, tires, and about half the hoses.  I don’t think a 140 year old abandoned sub would really be seaworthy).

Anyway, from a child’s point of view this movie is fun, with cool giant creatures running around on and some funny, dopey dialog.  Visually impressive, and will probably make a ton of money both here and overseas.  I think what I object to in this and a lot of other children’s movies is the missed opportunity to enhance rather than degrade a young persons education.  Would it have been so hard to write in a few actual scientific facts that were based on reality, thus making this film slightly more less worthless than the giant sodas sold at the concession stands?  I understand that Jules Verne took a liberal hand when it came to science, but still.  A movie for children should, in my opinion, have something other than empty calories.  That being said the kids in the audience seemed to be loving it, and I can’t argue with that.

However, if I were to treat this as an adult film I would give the film the following stars and black holes:

Stars: Vanessa Hudgens is super hot, and the movie apparently had a limited wardrobe budget when it came time to buy her shorts as there wasn’t a lot of material in them.  One star.  Some entertaining moments between the characters, especially the dislike and needling that Hank and Alexander had at first for each other.  One star.  I am a big fan of Michael Caine.  One star.  The CGI and camera work, while not really state of the art, worked well together and delivered some pretty impressive images.  Also this is one of the few movies I have seen wherein the 3D actually enhanced the film and didn’t just leave me with a headache (actually I was headache free from this.  Weird).  One star.  Total: four stars.

The black holes.  For the most part the characters were all pretty flat and two dimensional.  One black hole.  As a fan of science and technology I found concepts offered here to be really offensive, and hate to imagine teachers dealing with kids thinking that you can ride a giant bee in school for the next few weeks.  Three black holes.  I don’t know if I can call what I perceived as plot holes plot holes, as they all seemed to derive from the concept of “we are here to make really bad decisions” (for example: Alexander is trapped on the island and makes a radio out of coconuts or something.  He can only transmit every two weeks and so when he has the chance he sends out his message in a code that only one human on the planet, assuming he is even listening, will understand.  Why not just send out a regular SOS and get rescued?  The castaways on Gilligan’s Island would have taken him out back and beaten him with a 2×4), but the plot holes were annoying the crap out of me.  One black hole.  For the most part the characters were all in a secret contest to see who could be the most annoying movie character of 2012 (Luis Guzman won IMO, although Dwayne Johnson was a close second).  One black hole.  At one point we are forced to listen to Dwayne Johnson sing while accompanied on a ukelele.  One black hole.  Total: seven black holes.

So a grand total of three black holes, which is shockingly less that I thought I would give walking into the movie, assuming I were treating it like an adult movie.  Should you go see it?  As an adult absolutely not.  If you have kids they will probably enjoy the hell out of it, but understand that you are opening their brains to all kinds of oddball future theories, such as aliens, Bigfoot, the government orchestrated 9-11, flat tax is good for everyone, or creationism.  Odds are pretty good you will want to own a copy as it will keep your rugrats out of your hair for 94 minutes.

Thanks for reading one of my most disjointed reviews.  Not a lot of new stuff right now, but next weekend is looking really good.  In particular I am looking forward to Acts of Valor and dreading Wanderlust.  Follow me on Twitter @Nerdkungfu and feel free to post a comment here.  If you don’t tweet and want to ask me something or make a suggestion privately email me david@nerdkungfu.com (email me in particular if you are in any way associated with an upcoming movie and want to invite me to an advanced screening in the Bay Area.  I would like to get these out before they are released if possible.  I promise I will buy popcorn and not text).  Talk to you soon.

Dave

Ah, McG.  I knew one day you would resurface dead in my sights like the bloated corpse of a cow drowned in a stagnant pond.  In case you are unaware of Mr. “I’m too cool to have a name”‘s qualifications as a terrible movie director check out the rant I want off on him in my description for this Terminator: Salvation t-shirt from the Sci Fi T Shirts.  He mostly does mediocre television.  In fact the only other movie credit I am finding is Charlies Angels Full Throttle, so you know he is qualified.

While watching this (for lack of a better word) movie there was a distinctly familiar greasy smell to it, like the odor lingering in the family bathroom 45 minutes after your grandfather used it, and as the credits rolled I realized it was the ridiculously improbable action and refusal to do the slightest bit of actual research that is McG‘s signature style.  And with that I sharpened my claws and dove into my keyboard.

Fortunately McG has thrown me a lot of chum to chew on.  I won’t say this movie is not entertaining.  It definitely has some funny moments.  However, the scripts looks and feels like it was written by a 12 year old who has seen a couple romantic movies but secretly thinks his English teacher is going to show up to school with the hots for him (or her).  It is a true mash up of genres: a healthy mix of really bad action film with a really bad (and creepy) romantic comedy.

I think  it safe to dismiss the action plot entirely, as in terms of doing anything for the script I think an organ grinders monkey armed with a minigun would have been about as believable and a hell of a lot cuter.  30 seconds research or a high school diploma would have told McG that the US Central Intelligence Agency has no jurisdiction inside the United States and furthermore does not have fabulous Los Angeles offices that look awfully like a multi million dollar Apple store.  Another 10 seconds research (that is literally what it took me thanks to Google) would have told him that most CIA agents make between $30-60K a year and specifically do not live like rock star millionaires in LA (one guy had a swimming pool for a ceiling in his fabulous bachelor pad).  I don’t know if any kind of research would have told him that the CIA does not look kindly on wasting massive amounts of taxpayer money stalking girlfriends, but an ounce of common sense would have.

What action there was was laughably ridiculous.  Two guys apparently can take out any number of armed men in a crowded club with no collateral damage.  There was some kind of bad guy (Til Schwiger-Inglorious Basturds, Rabbit Without Ears, Knockin’ on Heavens Door) who wants revenge for the death of his brother or something, but that whole story thread only appears periodically and reluctantly, like someone suddenly remembering to take the medicine they hate for a social disease they wish they could forget about.  The story focuses on the romance between Reese Witherspoon (Legally Blonde, Walk the Line, Water for Elephants), a successful product testing executive (not sure what kind of executive job lets you play with a flamethrower, but sign me up) who in spite of being insanely hot is bitterly single.  She runs into her ex with his new fiance and suddenly feels the need for romance.  Meanwhile CIA operatives and best friends (and possibly related somehow.  The story was vague) FDR (Chris Pine-Star Trek, Unstoppable, Just My Luck) and soon-to-be-Bane Tuck (Tom Hardy-Layer Cake, Inception, Warrior, RocknRolla) are both single.  Tuck opts to check out online dating and sees a post Reese’s best friend posted for her.  They meet up and really hit it off.  Meanwhile, FDR is trolling local video stores to pick up bimbos (he’s supposed to be the sleazy ladies man).  He meets up with Reese and attempts to pick her up.  Somehow in spite of being single for years and so inept in the world of dating she goes to her married best friend for advice her character (Lauren, for the record) suddenly sees right through him and gives him a lecture on what a dirtbag he is.

At that point the movie takes a turn down Creepy Lane (and later merges onto the Creepy Onramp to travel down the Creepy Memorial Freeway) as both CIA operatives make massive illegal abuses of their powers to find out what she does.  Tuck is the (slightly) more innocent one and is only kind of stalking her, while FDR is literally stalking her, going to her work to more or less browbeat her into dating him.  The two guys find out about it and opt to compete for her affection without letting her know they know each other.

About that time the speed limit on the Creepy Memorial Freeway goes from 55 to 75.  They both break into her home to find out more.  Each of them assign other agents (who obviously have nothing better to do.  Threats from foreign organizations is so overrated) to follow her and bug her apartment with both cameras and listening devices (what part of this really says romance?).  They listen in on her talking to her best friend and from there construct complete lies in order to woo her.  FDR, on hearing that she likes artist Gustav Klimt, takes her to a private showing where he has another expert whisper facts into his ear.  Tuck learns she loves some kind of car (the type escapes me and I don’t care enough to look it up) and takes her driving in one.  Upon learning she thinks he is shallow and self centered (a fairly accurate perception in my opinion) FDR pretends to volunteer at a animal shelter and adopts a dog, while Tuck, upon learning he is too safe and not dangerous enough, takes her to play paintball where he beats the hell out of a bunch of kids.

Bottom line, when at the end of the movie she does choose one of these guys the entire relationship will be built upon an entire foundation of lies.  I know I’m not an expert on women, but is this the kind of romance story you all want to see?

Anyway, its at this point that the movie actually gets kind of funny, as Tuck and FDR totally try to screw each other up.  I will admit to laughing several times and were I to take these episodes out of context (you know, kind of like an aforementioned TV show that rhymes with “dunked”) I probably would have enjoyed the hell out of it.

The stars.  In spite of the horrible script and direction, the cast was actually really talented and did the best they could do.  Unfortunately they were all trying to lace their shoes with wet spaghetti.  One star.  I honestly did laugh at some of the hijinks.  One star.  In spite of the blizzard of black holes I am about to inundate the film with, it was somewhat entertaining.  Two stars.  Four stars total.

The black holes.  A complete lack of research and fact checking from the writers or director.  I understand the need to suspend disbelief in a movie, but would it have really been that hard or damaged the story in any way if they had substituted the letters “FBI” for “CIA”?  Or made the field office slightly more functional and less amazing?  One black hole.  In spite of a talented cast of decent actors, all the main characters were pretty two dimensional.  One black hole.  There was literally more chemistry on screen between Chris Pine and Tom Hardy than there was at any time between Reese and either of the two guys.  Honestly, the romance scenes looked like a little girl pressing the lips of her Ken and Barbie dolls together.  One black hole.  The whole illegal abuse of power and super stalking thing.  Two black holes.  The fact that the action plot literally went nowhere and added nothing.  One black hole.  The action scenes were so dumb and ridiculous that I wanted to start something with a stranger (or possibly the projectionist) on the way out just to be reminded of what an actual fight looks like.  One black hole.  In the end, Lauren chose the sleazier and faker of the two instead of doing what any rational woman should have done and booted them both out with a restraining order pinned to their shirts.  One black hole.  Overall a stupid and fake story that I found really annoying.  One black hole.  Total: nine black holes.

A total of five black holes.  Suck it McG.  I said you were an incompetent director when you screwed up Terminator: Salvation and I am happy to see that time has not improved your skills.  Is this movie worth seeing on any level?  Yeah, I guess so.  It is funny at points.  None of the camera work really needs a big screen so feel free to wait until you can see it at home.  I can pretty much guarantee that if you get drunk and/or stoned before and during this movie you will laugh your ass off and probably think it’s great.  If you see it sober you will probably feel like you just lost 98 minutes of your life and run home to write a bitter review for it.  Date movie?  Maybe.  If your date is into a rom com built around the Three Stooges, can look past stalking that would terrify her in a drama, or just wants some brainless entertainment it might do.  However, there is very little chance you look better than either Chris Pine or Tom Hardy so you will most likely lose a lot to the comparison factor.

Thanks for reading.  If I get a chance I might still see Mysterious Island, but there is a pretty good chance that film might slip my net.  This has been a weekend of mediocre movies.  Warhammer tournament tomorrow.  Follow me on Twitter @nerdkungfu or send comments or questions to david@nerdkungfu.com.  Of course, feel free to post comment here.  As long as you keep it clean I will most likely allow it and try to respond.  Talk to you soon.

Dave

Then I read that they are considering making the new Zorro a futuristic post apocalyptic story and my second thought was how dumb.  Why mess with something that has worked for decades?  Does there really need to be a re-imagining of Zorro?

But then I combined those two thoughts and came up with my final thought on the matter, how freaking cool could this movie actually be?  I love post apocalyptic anything and this could possibly take care of a lot of the costume and sword issues that have plagued the story from the start.  I think this could possibly be one of the best Zorro movies ever.

This children are the future image was the closest I could find for a post apocalyptic image.  It comes from the funny t shirts Dave carries.

Interesting trivia: the Mask of Zorro was the movie Bruce Wayne was watching with his parents right before they got killed.  I suppose I could have pulled a Batman image pretty easily.  Oh well.

Jason

The really funny thing is the only thing they took from the book and movie was the title.  The reason it was called I am Legend was the one remaining human survivor wasn’t really a scientist.  He was a guy who would go out every day and kill the infected humans as they slept.  What he didn’t realize was that over time they were regaining control of their higher brain functions and were reforming society, just a sort of vampire/zombie can’t stand the light sort of way, and he was becoming a legend as a supernatural mass murderer.  Very cleverly done in my opinion.  This movie was total crap and the fact that it made serious money means the movie going audience is comprise of morons.

Dave doesn’t have any I Am Legend merchandise so I lifted this image from his zombie t shirts.  He says I should put in an image for each post.  It’s not really an infected human like in I am Legend.  More of a classic zombie.  You get the idea.

Jason

This movie was actually slightly improved over the last one, but honestly it is on the level of being held under water for 10 minutes instead of 20.  At the end of the day you have still drowned in a lake of plot holes, bad acting, and eardrum damaging dialog, which is unfortunate as Ghost Rider is one of my favorite comic book characters and I feel he is really cool with an interesting story.  (Ghost Rider image courtesy of the Marvel Comic T Shirts)

Before getting into the meat of this flick I thought it worth looking into the two directors, Brian Taylor and Mark Neveldine, and seeing if they had produced anything worth anything.  The answer is more or less a resounding no.  They are attached at the hip and have almost exactly the same film credits: Crank, Crank II, Gamer, and Jonah Hex are considered their premier releases.  The funny thing is other than that they seem to have only technical credits.  Brian Taylor in particular is mostly listed as a camera man on a bunch of documentaries.  I am all for giving up and coming directors a chance, but given that this film had a $75 million dollar budget this sounds like the equivalent of getting the guy who mops up the operating room floor to perform a heart transplant.  If this is how Hyde Park feels they need to flush their money give me 1/3rd the budget and I can probably make something at least as good.

It is rarely a good sign when a movie starts in the first two minutes with a gaping plot hole, and at first I was surprised at something so dumb so early in.  However, within 40 minutes I realized the entire script was composed almost entirely of plot holes, like Swiss cheese without the flavor.  The plot holes kept growing and spawning new plot holes like a fast acting virus, and by the end of the movie my brain had been so inundated by them that I stopped noticing them as they flew past the screen (actually, in a strange way kind of a brilliant movie making strategy.  If your writers are too dumb (Scott M. Gimple-El Tigre: the Adventures of Manny Riviera (???  A cartoon I guess), Filmore!, Pepper Ann.  That’s three “major” credits since 1997 and Seth Hoffman-Prison Break, Prison Break the Final Break, House M.D.) to avoid gaping craters in the script just add more until they all kind of blur together.  I just don’t credit the directors of making an active decision to pursue the plan.  Looks like a happy coincidence).

If I had the energy to keep score I think the one thing this movie would have had to compete with the massive number of plot holes would be the also massive number of completely worthless and non contributing scenes.  They seem to fall into the two categories of either showing how cool Nicholas Cage is on a motorcycle or burning up the remaining special effects budget with extra CGI.

And of course the final nail in the proverbial coffin would have to be the monotone drone of Nicholas Cage (Con Air, Face Off, Season of the Witch, Drive Angry).  Most of this movie he does in his trademark deadpan robot like (for lack of a better term) acting.  To be fair, there are a couple scenes where he does seem to emote a little, but they both seem like he is doing them under protest and they were both CGI enhanced.  I think I figured out why his last few roles have been so bad in comparison to earlier movies like Raising Arizona and Kiss of Death: he can only really act when he doesn’t play tough good guys.  When he is a hardened lone wolf hero something twitches in his brain and he thinks the way to manifest the character is to pretend he is a corpse.  Honestly, Chuckie emotes better.

I will say the camera work was impressive, but by that I mean it was impressive for a skateboard video.  In fact, the whole film felt like an action sports video with big action explosions interspersed with a montage of guys drinking beer and yelling at each other.  There were a couple really cool camera shots, but not enough to make things up for all the jumbled low camera YouTube worthy filming.  Some of the action was also pretty cool, but when it is established in the first action scene that the Ghost Rider is more or less impervious to any kind of attack or weapon it exhausts all the excitement in the scene like a Roofie colonic.  At that point it really doesn’t matter how many hundreds of armed mercenaries you send at him.  The audience knows all the bullets, grenades, and bunker buster rockets are going to pass right through him with all the impact of a wet fart.

The story, from what I could discern by looking past all the obscuring plot holes, is once more Johnny Blaze (now apparently not stopped by daylight) cursed with being Ghost Rider.  The Devil (Ciaran Hinds-the Road to Perdition, Munich, There Will Be Blood, The Debt) has had a kid (Fergus Riordan-I Want to be a Soldier, Fragile)  and wants him to take over the family business or something.  Instead of simply using his powers to, you know, just take him away he hires a crew of mercenaries who attack a monastery and start the long, long chase after the boy.  An alcoholic priest named Moreau (Idris Elba-you might remember him as Hiemdall from Thor.  Also the Losers, the Office) shows up to rescue the child but his mother Nadya (Vilante Placido-the American, Moana, Sleepless) manages to escape with her son.  Turns out she used to date the head of the mercenaries.  Moreau finds Johhny Blaze and convinces him if he helps the kid then the curse of Ghost Rider can be lifted (speaking of plot holes, being Ghost Rider is the curse and power the devil gave Blaze.  How is it he can then operate to stop the devil?).  Thus the chase that dominated the remainder of the movie trundles its way through the next two hours.  The mercenary gets transformed by the Devil in Blackout, a pretty cool villain from the comic.  Flaming skeleton hijinks ensues.  Lots of stuff gets blown up, along with lots of guys.

The stars.  Comic book movie that managed to stay closer to the actual story than the last crappy Ghost Rider movie.  One star.  A couple action sequences and a couple of camera shots were impressive.  One star.  The transformation sequences were seriously goofy, but once he transformed the CGI for Ghost Rider was pretty cool.  One star.  Ghost Rider had chains this time, not a shotgun.  One star.  Total: four stars.

The black holes.  Multiple gaping plot holes each big enough to park a small fleet of Winnebagos in.  Three black holes.  Deadpan, deadish acting from Nicholas Cage and pretty much everyone else.  Two black holes.  Pacing was really off.  It jumped right into action with no transition and then made us sit through long sequences of nothing to get to the next one.  One black hole.  Multiple scenes that added nothing to the film and really should have been carted off with the rest of the deadwood.  One black hole.  Did I mention that the directors felt the best way to highlight Nicholas Cage’s acting ability would be to have him also deliver some really dopey monologs (you know, the lazy directors way of avoiding figuring out how to explain things to the audience) accompanied by some cartoons that looked like they had been created by some high school kid using MS Paint?  One black hole.  The entire movie was supposed to be set in Eastern Europe but everything looked and sounded suspiciously like West Texas.  One star.  Dialog from Hell (haw!).  One black hole.  Making me pay $11 for a action video I should have been able to see for free on YouTube (glad I didn’t spring for 3D).  One black hole.  Overall kind of a waste of time.  One black hole.  Total: twelve black holes.

A grand total of eight black holes.  It’s been a while since I really blasted a movie like this.  Honestly, the feeling I got from this movie is the two directors really couldn’t care less about Ghost Rider and just used this as a vehicle to make an action video they should have done for about $1,000.  Worth seeing at all?  Maybe if you are a huge GR fan and/or are easily amused by explosions and moving skeletons.  If you are that type of person you had best see it on a big screen.  If not, just NetFlix it in two months and have a shot of Jamison every time you spot a plot hole.  Within 20 minutes you will be wasted enough to not even care about them and should be able to enjoy the film.

Thanks for reading.  Lost of movies to see this weekend, but I will be spending a lot of time at a gaming convention playing Warhammer.  Wish me luck.  If I do well in the tournament and get a chance I will try to see This Means War and The Secret Life of Arietty.  If I do poorly I will punish myself by seeing Mysterious Island.  Follow me on Twitter @NerdKungFu.  If you don’t like tweeting and or making comments here feel free to email me with questions or suggestions david@nerdkungfu.com.  Talk to you soon.

Dave

Anyway, I read this morning that they are rebooting the movie series, and Michael Bey will be filming it.  Unlike Dave I don’t really have a problem with Bey as long as he doesn’t keep putting in whiny little girls as the male protagonists.  My hope is that he manages to bring the turtles back to when they were kind of kick ass and dangerous, as seen in this image from the Comic Boot T-Shirts.  With the advances in CGI and Beys skill with it the action could be pretty good, and odds are he will find some brainlessly super hot girl to have his camera linger over every scene.  However, if he caves into the modern pressure to produce inoffensive crap expect to see a lame PG film with nothing actually resembling blood or drama.

Jason

The reason this is funny is the video game Twisted Metal, which I played the crap out of, has some of the coolest and scariest clowns of all time.  These are clowns possessed by Satan and amped up on crystal meth.  Sweet Tooth was my favorite, but Doll Face was cool and of course, who can’t but love Calypso?

The other part about this that is funny is Dave sucks at pretty much all driving games and I have kicked is ass at Twisted Metal many times.  He is better at RTS and point-and-click MMORP crap like WOW, but can’t touch me on anything with a steering wheel.  I think I will go to this movie with him just to see the blood drain from his face.

Jason

Remember the glorious cartoon where the only humans were Spike and once in a while his father, and really their only job was to ask stuff like “Why would Megatron do something like that?” just so Optimus Prime could explain what was going on to them and the audience?  How the movie was about the Autobots and the Decpticons, not about Sam Witwicki trying to find a job and his parents shopping for matching jogging outfits?  You know, pretty much what Transformers are supposed to be about?  How about that for a movie?  Human suck, robots rule.  Do that and I will totally be cool with any amount of explosions Micheal Bey wants to shove into his movie.

By the way, apparently Dave doesn’t have any Transfomers shirts on his site, so I found this cool robot image in the Vintage T Shirt pile.  I think it’s pretty cool.

Jason