Awesomely Shitty Movies: Regarding Henry

Welcome to another edition of Awesomely Shitty Movies, here at Enuffa.com!  For those who haven't joined us for one of these, I take a movie with both good and bad aspects (or awesome and shitty ones), and separate them from each other.  Put each of them in "timeout," if you will.

Today's subject is the 1991 melodrama Regarding Henry, starring Harrison Ford and Annette Bening and directed by Mike Nichols.  Regarding Henry is the story of a hotshot jerk lawyer who's the MVP of his firm but who doesn't have much of a relationship with his wife or daughter.  Henry is the victim of a shooting, which leaves him with retrograde amnesia and a childlike personality, and he has to put his life and relationships back together from scratch.  Feel-good feelies ensue....

The film has elements about it that work and most certainly some elements that don't.  It received mixed reviews and failed to make much of a splash at the box office, but it's still affectionately remembered as one of Harrison Ford's more touching roles.

So here I am to lay out the pros and cons of this intriguing but very flawed film....



The Awesome


Harrison Ford

I'm a huge Harrison Ford fan.  Always have been.  I'll watch just about anything with him in it, and in 1991 I made it a point to do so.  His natural, effortless performance in this film carries it a pretty long way.  Had a lesser actor (Bill Pullman for example) been cast in this role the movie would've fallen right on its stupid face.  In the first act Ford plays a very convincing self-important asshole (which makes me wonder why he hasn't been cast in more villainous roles), and after the shooting he slips right into the simple-minded version of Henry.  We care for him a great deal in spite of his earlier transgressions.  Ford does more with facial expressions than just about anyone in the business, and he makes the material work about as well as it can.

For you wrestling fans, CM Punk's slicked hair was inspired by Henry's.

Annette Bening

Bening was an emerging star at this point and her turn as Henry's wife Sarah is fully believable and heartfelt.  When Henry's a successful, unscrupulous lawyer Sarah is basically a kept woman who seems at ease with this business-like relationship, and later she takes on the burden of becoming the breadwinner/caretaker of the household.  We feel this new, overwhelming stress weighing on her and the performance rings true.  Bening and Ford have great chemistry that holds the film together, even when the script shortchanges them.

For you wrestling fans, AJ Styles' soccer mom hair was inspired by Sarah's.

AEW All Out 2024 Review: Uncomfortable Violence

As I predicted, AEW All Out overshadowed All In for the second year in a row.  This show was on its way to maybe being the best top-to-bottom wrestling PPV I've ever seen, and for the first five matches nary a bout was below a four-star affair.  As it turned out the show didn't quite get to that level but it was still one of the best shows this company has ever done and an all-time great PPV, with a running theme of hatred and escalation, in the form of uncomfortable violence (that thing CM Punk promised going into SummerSlam before losing because of a friendship bracelet).

The show began with an absolute banger of a grudge match between MJF and Daniel Garcia.  These two got nearly 24 minutes (a few too many I thought, but that's a nitpick) and filled them with stiff, aggressive action.  Both guys were out to maim each other and targeted heads and necks throughout.  Late in the match they traded submissions and counters, and MJF eventually locked in a Zack Sabre Jr.-style multi-limb hold but Garcia got to the ropes and locked in a guillotine.  The ref went to check MJF's arm but Garcia stopped him and went for a second-rope piledriver from which Max escaped.  The ref was momentarily distracted and MJF hit a kick to the groin and a cradle for the win.  Post-match Max shook Garcia's hand and went to nutshot him again but Garcia blocked, kicked Max in the nuts, and gave him a second-rope piledriver to write Max off TV for a bit.  I'd have had Garcia win this (though he hasn't signed a new deal yet for some reason), but at least he stood tall at the end.  Excellent opening match.  ****1/2

AEW All Out 2024 Preview & Predictions

Well I wasn't sure All Out 2024 would upstage All In 2024 like All Out 2023 did All In 2023, but after watching Hangman Page BURN DOWN Swerve's childhood home, and with how many absolute bangers are on tap this Saturday, AEW might pull it off a second time.

AEW returns to Chicago for All Out, two weeks after their second annual Wembley show, and once again, while this lineup isn't as stacked as All In, I could see All Out being the superior PPV.  Danielson's first title defense, Ospreay vs. Pac, two really strong women's title matches, an MJF-Garcia grudge match, and the mother of all blood feuds, Hangman Adam Page vs. Swerve Strickland, in an unsanctioned cage match (Dammit, how cool would it have been to see that happen at Wembley?).  This show is going to slap, as the kids say.

Not all the matches have been announced yet, so maybe after Friday's Collision/Rampage shows I'll update this piece.  But for now we have eight matches to predict.

Chicago Street Fight: Willow Nightingale vs. Kris Statlander

I'm not sure if this is for the CMLL Women's Title or not.  I thought their previous match was an eliminator; maybe CMLL didn't agree to putting their belt up in a street fight or something.  Anyway, this should be excellent as Willow and Kris have great chemistry and Willow's delivered in No DQ matches before.  I think Willow wins this since she's CMLL Champion and Kris beat her last time.

Pick: Willow

WWE Bash in Berlin Review: Well It Was Better Than SummerSlam

It's a few days late, but here's my review of WWE Bash in Berlin.  This was a much better show than SummerSlam and the crowd was white-hot like at Backlash France but unlike that crowd they weren't just there to chant shit the whole time, they actually responded to the action in the ring.  Except during the main event when they broke into the wave for some reason.  The company though decided to make it cringe by showing a decibel counter every so often.  Didn't WCW do that in the early 90s?  Can WWE for once NOT make something lame?  Nothing on this show was bad, though nothing came close to MJF-Ospreay or Swerve-Danielson from six days earlier.  For the record I went 5 for 5 on my predictions, which I only posted to Twitter.  You can go look if you don't believe me....

Cody Rhodes vs. Kevin Owens opened the show and was a very good championship match that built throughout.  It was undermined a bit by the need to cram in "cinema," where Cody went for a springboard cutter (I think) but his injured knee buckled and Owens refused to capitalize on the injury because as Michael Cole put it he didn't want a "tainted victory."  Uhh that's not tainted guys.  Tainted would be if Owens had cheated to inflict such an injury.  This was just a pre-existing condition.  If Owens had worked over Cody's leg during the match and injured it, he'd capitalize on it, right?  How's this different?  Anyway they traded all their big moves, Cody hit a pair of CrossRhodeses and went for a third but Owens countered into a stunner for a nearfall.  Owens went for a swanton but Cody got the knees up and hit a third CrossRhodes for the win.  A very fine match but Cody as champion still feels like Goldberg 1998, where the company cares way more about the top heel stable and their drama than finding something meaningful for its babyface champion to do.  Cody's just fighting guys for the belt without a dramatic feud to hold it together.  Hey if WWE wants to be known as The Land of Storytelling, I'm gonna judge them on that basis.  Tough titty.  ****1/4

AEW All In 2024 Review: Bryan Danielson Gets His Flowers

AEW All In 2024 is in the books, and like its predecessor it was a helluva spectacle.  Though they only sold about 55,000 tickets compared to last year’s 81,000, the presence of Taylor Swift’s massive stage and the adjacent ramp actually helped make Wembley look just as full as it did last year.  And the crowd was mostly very hot.

I would say this show was less consistently good than 2023 but the two best matches here topped anything on that show.  Let’s get into it….

*NOTE: I’m on vacation this week so this review will be a little less in-depth than usual.*

The main show opened with the four-way trios ladder match, which consisted of the usual party match stuff.  Lots of standard ladder spots, lots of time for everyone to get their stuff in.  The most memorable spot was Nick Wayne hitting a tope to the outside, which he then converted into a destroyer on Malakai through a table.  Crazy spot.  Killswitch set up a ladder at the end and put Christian on his shoulders to climb, but Pac cut him off, knocked him to the mat, and retrieved the belts.  Christian then berated Killswitch to yet again tease a babyface turn.  Fun opener.  ***1/2

Next up was Toni Storm vs Mariah May in a very dramatic match.  Started off a bit sluggish with Mariah dominating and Toni seeming reluctant to engage, but it picked up once Toni made a comeback, and built to a nice crescendo.  Mariah’s mother was in the front row, and Mariah slapped her at one point, but Toni comforted her with a hug.  Mariah tried to hit Toni with the shoe.  Toni took the shoe away and considered using it but couldn’t bring herself to.  Mariah then hit a pair of knees and Storm Zero to win the title.  Toni seemed to have a mental breakdown after losing, dancing to the back while crying.  Great character work, solid wrestling.  ***3/4

The weakest bout of the night was Chris Jericho vs Hook.  This was FTW rules so Bryan Keith and Big Bill interfered copiously, but Hook overcame the odds.  Jericho brought a bag of cricket balls which didn’t cooperate since they rolled around.  Hook got a bat from under the ring and hit a couple balls off Jericho.  Hook kept locking in submissions but Jericho’s friends broke them up.  He finally locked in Redrum and Taz pulled Bryan off the apron and locked in the worst ever Tazmission.  Jericho submitted.  This was fine.  **3/4

The first excellent match was Young Bucks-FTR-Acclaimed, in an energetic party sprint filled with nonstop action and inventive spots.  Matt and Nick’s gear paid homage to Sgt. Pepper-era Beatles.  The Bucks played the buffoon heels who eked one out as always.  One of the most fun moments involved FTR and The Acclaimed doing each other’s finishers in tandem.  The Bucks eventually won with BTE trigger on Dax.  Grizzled Young Veterans showed up after the match and confronted the Bucks who bailed, then attacked FTR.  That should be phenomenal.  ****

The most pleasant surprise of the night was the Casino Gauntlet, a super fun match with some good surprises including the in-ring return of NIGEL MCGUINNESS.  Once he entered I was rooting for him so we could finally have a Danielson-McGuinness rematch.  Also Ricochet made his debut and ran wild.  Hangman Page and Jeff Jarrett interacted a lot, setting up a singles match together.  Jarrett took him out with a guitar shot.  Okada and Zack Sabre both looked great and each almost won.  Christian entered unexpectedly and then Luchasaurus (not Killswitch), who choke slammed Kyle O’Reilly and put Christian on top to win.  Odd choice for a winner but really fun match.  I wasn’t that excited about this but it way overdelivered.  ****1/4

The first of two instant classics was next, Will Ospreay vs MJF.  MJF’s gear paid homage to both Apollo creed and Lex Luger.  This was an awesome match, though not quite as good as the hourlong one.  Loads of suspenseful nearfalls led to a ref bump when Ospreay hit a Hidden Blade that knocked Max into him.  MJF tried to use brass knuckles (his diamond ring was legit stolen over the weekend) but a mystery man stopped him and unmasked to reveal Daniel Garcia.  MJF attempted the Tiger Driver but Ospreay countered with his own (scary as fuck spot) to regain the title.  Daniels then presented him with the proper International Title.  Fantastic stuff.  ****3/4

Mercedes vs Britt was unfortunately asked to follow this, and thus the crowd wasn’t that into it.  Still it was a very good match if a little messy in a couple spots.  Mercedes worked Britt’s back for the first third, Britt made numerous attempts at lockjaw but couldn’t get it on.  Late in the match Kamille saved Mercedes by putting Mercedes’ foot under the ropes.  Mercedes tried to hit Britt with the belt but the ref stopped her.  Kamille tried to use the strong belt but Britt took it, threw it back to Kamille and fell down as though Kamille had hit her.  The ref ejected Kamille, Britt went for lockjaw but Mercedes bit her hand.  They jockeyed for backslide position but Mercedes finally hit the Mone Maker for the win.  ***3/4

Second-to-last was Jack Perry vs Darby Allin, a match that was cut short and was shockingly one sided.  Perry beat the bejesus out of Darby for a lot of this.  Darby had thumbtacks glued to his face.  Jack brought out a bag that turned out to be broken glass, eliciting a “cry me a river”chant.  Marvelous.  Darby dropped Jack in the glass, which cut him up.  Jack taped Darby’s hands together and then tied Darby’s belt around his ankles and threw him off the stage through a table.  Jack put him in a body bag and into the coffin, then hit a running knee and closed the lid.  The Bucks came down with a can of gasoline.  The Elite tried to light the coffin on fire but Sting came to the rescue.  Very good car wreck.  ***3/4

Finally we had Swerve Strickland vs. Bryan Danielson in an absolutely fantastic main event.  They started with rugged back and forth offense, but Swerve got the upper hand after a Death Valley Driver on the ring bell, and Danielson bled.  The match built in intensity and led to loads of near falls after finishers.  The final ten minutes were spectacular.  Hangman tried to interfere but was dragged away by security.  Danielson hit the knee but Swerve kicked out.  Swerve went for the Flatliner but Danielson cut him off with another knee, then the LeBell Lock.  Swerve broke the hold but Danielson snapped Swerves fingers and locked in a Rings of Saturn variant for the tap out.  BCC and Danielson’s family celebrated with him.  I had mixed feelings about this whole situation and still do, but this match and moment were epic.  The followup needs to be on point.  *****

So yeah, another great AEW PPV in front of their second-biggest crowd.  I’d say this show was on par with last year’s, though more uneven.  All Out needs to be another great sequel.

Best Match: Swerve vs. Danielson

Worst Match: Jericho vs. Hook

What I’d Change: The gauntlet could’ve been a few minutes shorter so Jack-Darby didn’t get so shortchanged.  I’d have swapped the TBS and Coffin match slots so the women had more crowd engagement.

Most Disappointing Match: The Coffin match was fun but too short to reach the next level.

Most Pleasant Surprise: The Gauntlet was fun like a good Royal Rumble

Overall Rating: 9.5/10

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AEW All In 2024 Preview & Predictions

AEW's biggest show of the year All In is this Sunday, and while for the first time I have kinda major issues with the booking and build for parts of this show, it should be a pretty stunning PPV, as only AEW can deliver.

Yes, when it comes to Tony Khan's booking and his flaws in that area I'm generally much more forgiving than even most AEW fans (at least from what I see on social media), largely because this company's big shows always live up to and often exceed the hype.  And that will likely be true with All In as well, but ever since Bryan Danielson (my favorite wrestler of all time, don't @ me) upset Hangman Page in the Owen Cup tournament to take the main event slot at Wembley, I've felt Tony went in the wrong direction with this title match.  And judging from the crowd reactions to what little Swerve-Hangman interactions we've gotten since Page returned, I'm certainly not alone.  Swerve-Hangman is AEW's answer to Austin vs. Bret.  Two mortal enemies who switched places, one a former heel who was so cool he became a babyface, the other a longtime babyface so destructively obsessed with vengeance and justice he turned heel.  How in the blue hell does this match not take place for the title at the biggest show of the year?  Yes I know Danielson is retiring from a full-time schedule and this might be the last chance to give him an honorary title run, but since when are honorary title runs more important than paying off a fantastic story?  AEW seems to have sacrificed a great long-term title feud for a fleeting feelgood moment, and in the bigger picture that's a major mistake from where I sit.  Couple that with Danielson constantly doing interviews saying he's ready to hang it up and isn't that interested in being champion and it's like, if the challenger doesn't care about this, why should I?

My minor gripes with this lineup are the fact that two tag title matches came about because of a draw between the two top contenders - pretty lazy booking - and the absence of Kazuchika Okada on this card unless he's in the gauntlet match despite already having a title (Was Tony hoping Kenny would be back by now?).  Aside from that though, this show has numerous bangers on tap.  So let's get into it...

Zero Hour: Willow Nightingale & Tomohiro Ishii vs. Kris Statlander & Stokely Hathaway

So it's already been announced that Willow and Kris will duke it out at All Out for the CMLL Women's Title (which was supposed to be won by Stephanie Vaquer until she backed out of numerous committed dates to sign with WWE - gotta love their predatory business practices).  This match will determine who picks the stipulation for that match.  It's odd that Hathaway is Kris's partner as opposed to an actual wrestler.  We'll obviously get to see Ishii and probably Willow beat the snot out of Hathaway and I'd be surprised if the babyfaces lose here.

Pick: Willow/Ishii

AEW All In 2023 Review: A WrestleMania-Sized Spectacle

***ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED 8/29/23***

AEW's biggest show of all time is in the history books, and it was a doozy of a PPV.  While not quite on the level of their greatest shows for me (Full Gear 2021, Revolution 2023), this show was pretty spectacular overall.  By my count seven of the nine main card bouts reached **** or better, which is a new record.  We had rock-solid old-school wrestling, we had wild, chaotic multi-man matches, we had a couple bouts full of intense violence, and above all we had an epic, story-driven main event that kept the company's most successful angle going a little longer.  This was a WrestleMania-sized spectacle in front of a white-hot live crowd.

After a pair of pre-show matches, the latter of which apparently led to yet another backstage altercation involving CM Punk (less serious and may not have been Punk-instigated this time), Punk himself opened the show with a "real" World Title defense against his old rival Samoa Joe.  These two had a fine opening match that fell somewhere between their classic ROH encounters and their rather forgettable Collision one.  It only went 14 minutes but they packed a lot into it, including homages to Hulk Hogan and Terry Funk.  At one point Joe swung Punk through the bottom half of the announce table, breaking the front of it apart and causing Punk to bleed.  Late in the match Joe did his sequence of submission holds, softening Punk up for the Muscle Buster, but Punk escaped and hit his old finish, the Pepsi Plunge, to retain his fake title.  Very good opener in front of a pro-Joe crowd.  ****

Next up was the Golden Elite vs. Bullet Club Gold/Takeshita trios match.  This got twenty minutes and was a lot of fun, with tons of athletic exchanges, building to a strong peak and a logical finish meant to set up a singles match (Why I didn't see such a finish coming when I did my predictions, I'm sure I don't know).  Kota Ibushi was sadly still the weak link here, as he has more ring rust to shake off.  There was a moment where Ibushi and Omega did their stereo springboard moonsaults and Ibushi slipped off the second turnbuckle and had to do the move from the bottom one, and another moment where he seemed unsure where he was supposed to be.  Hopefully with time he'll come close to the quality of work he was putting in two years ago.  Anyway this match built to a tremendous peak, with Page and Omega hitting big moves on the heels, but suddenly out of nowhere Takeshita scored a rollup pin on Omega to win the match.  It was announced after the show that Kenny Omega vs. Konosuke Takeshita is official for All Out, and man is that gonna be a good one.  ****1/4 for the trios bout.

All In: Cody Rhodes Pulls Off a Coup

***ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED 9/5/18***

Well I wasn't sure what to expect with All In.  I was pleasantly shocked when it sold out in under an hour and really happy for Cody and The Young Bucks for actually pulling off such a feat; the biggest-selling non-WWE show since WCW.  But would the show deliver with such an eclectic roster and matches that were mostly inconsequential in the traditional sense?  Turns out, yeah.  It delivered big.  And all that variety worked in the show's favor.  Lucha spotfest?  Check.  ECW-style hardcore match?  Check.  Traditional old-school wrasslin'?  We got it.  NJPW match?  You bet.  Dream match spectacle?  Sure.  Comedy match?  Yup.  I can't remember a show that pulled off so many divergent styles so well.  All In took a little while to really get going, but from the fourth match on there was nothing below ***1/2.  I didn't see any MOTY candidates, but the last six matches for me either approached or exceeded four stars.  When was the last WWE PPV that accomplished that?

Anyway, let's get to it.


Things kicked off with Matt Cross vs. MJF, a fun if superfluous little opener with Cross showing off his acrobatics and MJF doing good character work.  Cross won in nine minutes with his shooting star press.  A nice bit of fluff to warm up the crowd.  **

The weakest match on the show for me was Christopher Daniels vs. Stephen Amell.  This was okay, especially considering Amell's inexperience, but wasn't quite as tight as it could've been.  Amell clearly loves doing this and has picked up the basics strongly, and wants to be taken seriously as a wrestler.  If nothing else you have to applaud his enthusiasm.  There were a few miscues and Daniel's BME was off the mark both times, but this was fun.  Amell did a couple big moves, a coast-to-coast dropkick a la RVD, and a missed elbow through a table.  This should've been a little shorter but it wasn't bad.  Daniels picked up the win on the second BME.  **

The lone women's match featured Tessa Blanchard (who has the same "it" factor as Charlotte Flair), Chelsea Green, Madison Rayne, and Britt Baker, in a sprint with slightly messy action in the first half, but that gelled pretty well in the second when everyone started hitting their big moves.  It was a tad unwieldy but an easy match to watch overall.  The finish was kinda out of nowhere as Tessa hit the hammerlock DDT and barely got the pin before it was broken up.  **3/4

The first big match of the night was Nick Aldis vs. Cody for the NWA Title.  Pretty shocking how early this went on considering Cody was the mastermind behind this show.  With cornermen on both sides and Earl Hebner doing formal ring instructions, this felt like a big-fight main event.  As a match it was very good, heavy on the sports-entertainment with DDP getting involved, Cody teasing being unable to continue after being busted open by an elbow, and Brandi diving on top of Cody to protect him from a top-rope elbow drop.  But the storytelling was strong, with Cody playing the babyface in peril to perfection and going on to win the big one for his dad.  It was a nice moment to pay off a swell old school NWA Title match, and the crowd really made it feel special.  ***3/4

Movie Review: Alien: Romulus (2024)

***SOME SPOILERS AHEAD***

Everyone's favorite sci-fi/horror monsters are back for another romp through Ridley Scott's grimy truckers-in-space universe, in Fede Alvarez's new film Alien: Romulus.  Set about twenty years after the original film, Romulus stars Cailee Spaeny as Rain, a young colony worker attempting to flee the harsh, sunless conditions of the mining settlement she and her friends grew up on.  She and her adoptive "brother" Andy, a reprogrammed synthetic, meet up with four fellow orphaned settlers and hatch a plan to capture a block of cryo-tubes from the deserted, orbiting space station Romulus so they can make the nine-year journey to the much more habitable planet of Yvaga.  But it just so happens the station houses dozens of xenomorph facehuggers, grown from DNA taken from the original Nostromo alien recovered from deep space.  And of course, all hell breaks loose.

As with all the films in this franchise, Alien: Romulus is superbly atmospheric and technically marvelous.  The world-building is on point here; Alvarez remains true to the dingy, lived-in look Ridley and his collaborators created 45 years ago.  And unlike Ridley Scott's two awful prequels, the technology in this world is actually consistent with that of the original Alien.  No fancy LED screens, no three-dimensional cave-mapping drones.  We're back to clunky CRT monitors and Christmas light circuit boards.

The characters as usual are pretty crudely drawn - Rain is a plucky, caring lead character, Andy is a damaged and pretty fragile android who's been programmed to take care of Rain, Rain's ex-boyfriend Tyler is a brave and capable group leader, his pregnant sister Kay is....there too, his cousin Bjorn is a jerk who hates synthetics, and Bjorn's girlfriend Navarro is the cargo ship's pilot.  The script gives us just enough to care about the characters before picking them off, much as the original film did.  

Movies of Disbelief: Alien Covenant (2017)

Welcome to another edition of Movies of Disbelief, where I talk about a film containing plot elements I find simply not credible.  Today it's Ridley Scott's latest entry in the Alien franchise.....

Alright, time to talk about some issues I have with Alien: Covenant.  I'm a diehard fan of the Alien series and-- well wait, I guess I'm a diehard fan of the first two Alien movies and that's it.  Oddly, despite being a huge Alien fan I think the vast majority of these movies suck.  Covenant is sadly one of them; like Prometheus there's a good film in here somewhere but they didn't find it.  There's basically no point to Covenant at all, except as a stopgap between the events of Prometheus and the events that led directly to the original Alien (events which aren't at all necessary to understanding or appreciating the classic first film).  Covenant is basically just a way to get us from the monster introduced in Prometheus to the familiar xenomorph we know and love.  Super, David experimented with these creatures until he got this one.  Did we really need a two-hour Alien's Greatest Hits movie to arrive at the xenomorph?  Covenant relies so heavily on tropes from the other films in the franchise there's nary an original sequence to be found here.  Except maybe the one robot teaching the other robot how to play the flute.  Spiffy.

That's nothing, you should see him play the skin-flute.

So despite being a gorgeous-looking and well-acted film I consider Covenant (and Prometheus) to be a pretty pointless attempt at creating a backstory for a great film that never needed one.  I had my share of nitpicks about this movie to boot, but there's one item in particular that flat-out pissed me off, one piece of information that makes exactly zero sense and undermines the only narrative thread that even remotely justifies the film's existence.

Before we get to that though, a few minor gripes:


-In the first scene we see the android David conversing with his creator Peter Weyland.  Weyland lets him choose his own name and he goes with David because Weyland's sitting room has a giant statue of David that's so tall its head goes up through a hole in the ceiling.  Why the hell would you ever put a statue in your living room that you can't see all of?  Legit, unless he's standing right under it, Weyland's only view of this statue is obstructed in such a way that he can't see the head!  Before agreeing to purchase this piece of art he probably should've brought a tape measure.

How'd he even know what statue it was if he couldn't see the head??

Awesomely Shitty Movies: 300

Welcome to another edition of Enuffa.com's Awesomely Shitty Movies, where I pick apart a beloved cinematographical (is that a word?) feast and shatter its aura of watchability for everyone.  I'm probably overestimating my influence, but you get the idea.

Today I'll be dissecting the 2007 battle epic 300, directed by Zack Snyder and based on the graphic novel by Frank Miller.  300 recounts The Battle of Thermopylae, where the Spartan King Leonidas, along with 299 of his ruthlessly tough soldiers, stood against a massive Persian army led by King Xerxes.  And, well, that's it.  That's the entire plot of the film really.  In flashback we learn that, like all male Spartan children, Leonidas experienced a childhood of intentionally-inflicted cruelty designed to harden him, that he might one day be a great king and soldier.  There are also subplots involving a corrupt religious cult called the Ephors, who order Leonidas not to move against the Persians, plus one of the Spartan Council is revealed to be in Xerxes' back pocket.  Other than that though it's basically an extended two-hour battle sequence.

So what are the pros and cons of this Frank Miller-inspired film?  Let's take a look, because.....THIS! IS! ENUFFA!!!  See what I did there?


The Awesome

Visuals

Like Robert Rodriguez did with Sin City, Zack Snyder took Frank Miller's stunning comic book panels and recreated them for the screen, assembling an almost shot-for-shot adaptation that looks absolutely gorgeous.  The colors are almost exactly like the graphic novel, the characters have been brought to life in painstaking detail, and the action is stylized to reflect the over-the-top movements depicted in the book.  The film adaptations of both Sin City and 300 proved to be very influential in creating these impossible comic book worlds.  If you're going to make a CG-heavy film, this is how you do it.

Whatever the movie's flaws, this is a gorgeous shot.

Battle Scenes

As I said above, the combat is heavily stylized to echo Miller's drawings and give the characters and events a sort of mythic quality.  The blood and gore are turned way up as well, mimicking Miller's explicit visual approach.  It's a good thing the battle sequences work so well, because this film has a lot of them.  A LOT.


Costumes

Snyder has literally translated Miller's artwork in the costume department as well.  All the characters are dressed exactly like their two-dimensional counterparts, and they look great.


Effects & Makeup

There's a theme going on here - when it comes to the visual aspects of the film, everything is first-rate.  The special effects and makeup are no different.  Snyder uses CGI not as a substitute for reality, but as a way to heighten and distort reality.  The backgrounds are murky and flat, bathed in yellows and browns, just as Miller drew them.  The Spartans all have CG-enhanced six-pack builds and brandish perfect bronze shields.  But when practical effects were called for, Snyder used traditional prosthetics as well.  The Ephors are wart-covered and repulsive, the deformed Ephialtes is a grotesque hunchback, the Executioner is an enormous, clawed being resembling the Cenobites from Hellraiser.  The makeup and effects perfectly capture Miller's bizarrely-rendered characters.

Give that man a Baby Ruth!

Awesomely Shitty Movies: Face/Off

Welcome to another edition of Awesomely Shitty Movies, here at Enuffa.com, where I'll examine a movie that is horribly entertaining but also entertainingly horrible.

Today's entry in the series is John Woo's 1997 action thriller, Face/Off! 

Face/Off stars John Travolta as FBI agent Sean Archer, whose son was killed by his arch-nemesis Castor Troy, a manic, sadistic terrorist played by Nicolas Cage.  Six years later Troy announces to the FBI that there's a bomb hidden somewhere in Los Angeles which could potentially kill millions of people.  The FBI attempts to capture Troy in an ambush but Troy ends up in a coma before they can learn the location of the bomb.  After unsuccessfully interrogating every member of Troy's gang, Archer reluctantly submits to a radical new procedure wherein his face will be removed and replaced with Castor's, allowing him to impersonate his enemy and infiltrate the maximum security prison where Castor's brother/accomplice Pollux is being held.  Archer's subterfuge fools Pollux, who reveals the bomb's location, but before Archer can arrange his release from prison, the real Castor Troy emerges from his coma, forces the surgeon to apply Archer's face to his, and then kills everyone who knew about the procedure.  The real Sean Archer is now trapped in prison as Castor Troy, while the real Castor Troy takes over Archer's life.

This is one of the most convoluted premises of any action movie I've ever seen, but somehow the filmmakers managed to pull a pretty entertaining piece of crap out of what probably should've been a disastrous effort.  So let's take a look at what worked and what didn't.



The Awesome

John Travolta & Nic Cage

First and foremost, the two leads do an excellent job in this film of convincing the audience that a) this scenario is at all believable and b) that for most of the film's running time they are each playing the opposite character.  Travolta plays Archer as a spiritually broken man, haunted by the death of his son and consumed with catching the bastard who killed him.  His relationships with his wife and daughter are in shambles and the only thing that will bring him peace is taking Troy down.  Cage plays Troy as a high-wire act - oozing evil charisma and relishing his own depravity. 

When the ol' switcheroo occurs, each actor gets to explore the other character.  Cage as Archer brings an even greater sense of melancholy and develops a rather tender relationship with Troy's girlfriend Sasha (Gina Gershon), while Travolta's Troy rekindles the romance with Archer's wife (Joan Allen), and is actually able to identify with Archer's troubled teenage daughter (Dominique Swain).  He also becomes an FBI hero when he locates and diffuses his own bomb and uses all the Bureau's resources to chase down "Castor Troy."  Both actors are fantastic in both roles and have a lot of fun imitating each other.

Awesomely Shitty Movies: Timecop

Welcome one and all to the fifth edition of Awesomely Shitty Movies, here at Enuffa.com!

Since last installment dealt with the Back to the Future sequels, I thought while we're on the subject of time travel movies, why not examine the tremendously entertaining but pretty terrible Jean-Claude Van Damme vehicle Timecop?
 

Timecop was released in 1994 and stars the aforementioned Van Damme as Max Walker, a police officer for the futuristic government agency known as the Time Enforcement Commission.  See time travel has been invented and predictably exploited by criminals for either financial gain or to alter the timeline to their advantage, necessitating the formation of the TEC.  Walker stumbles onto the case of Senator Aaron McComb (Ron Silver), who has become head of the Commission and is abusing his position by stealing money from the past to fund his future Presidential campaign.  What follows is a pretty intriguing-but-not-good sci-fi action thriller as Walker travels back and forth between 1994 and 2004 to thwart McComb's plot and retroactively prevent his own wife's murder at the hands of McComb's agents.

The movie was directed by Peter Hyams (who helmed the Sean Connery sci-fi western Outland, as well as the sequel to Stanley Kubrick's 2001) and is loosely based on a comic book story.

So let's take a look at what was good about this movie, and then we'll look at what wasn't.


The Awesome

Time Travel

As I said last time, I'm a sucker for time travel stories.  I find the whole concept fascinating and by using that as a backdrop there's instant sci-fi credibility in my book.  Of course it's also a very delicate line to walk, given how easily a plot-unraveling paradox can ruin the film.  But as long as the characters are interesting and the overall story works, one can forgive a certain degree of time-travel plot holes. 

In Timecop we see the villains traveling back to the Civil War era and the Great Depression to take advantage of lesser technology and a vulnerable economy, respectively, coming away with a fortune.  Even though these scenes were brief, I enjoyed seeing these different time periods depicted and found the thievery inventive.  We also see the main villain McComb interacting with his younger self to alter his own future, and we see the hero Walker trying to evade the baddies while trying not to be seen by his own younger self, lest the timeline be unnecessarily tampered with.  This is all neat stuff.

Awesomely Shitty Movies: Popeye

Welcome to another edition of Awesomely Shitty Movies, here at Enuffa.com, where I discuss, in much greater detail than interests anyone, a film with very mixed virtues and faults.  Today's subject is the 1980 Robert Altman-directed adaptation of the beloved cartoon/comic strip, Popeye!  

Starring Robin Williams, Shelley Duvall and Paul Smith, Popeye came about after Paramount and Columbia Pictures had a bidding war over the film rights to Annie.  When Paramount came up short, they mined for similar ideas and one executive came up with the idea for a feature film treatment of Popeye.  Originally the studio (now co-producing with Disney) wanted Dustin Hoffman and Lily Tomlin as the two leads (Tomlin would've been swell, Hoffman probably not so much), but fortunately newly hired director Robert Altman opted for the perfectly-cast duo of Williams and Duvall.  An unconventional choice for a movie of this type, Altman lent his signature style of satirical humor, richly detailed settings and colorful supporting characters, to try and create a three-dimensional world around these two-dimensional characters.  Filming took place in Malta, on a lavishly constructed set, and the budget ballooned to a then-extravagant $20 million.  The studio panicked and ordered Altman to finish up and bring home what footage he had.  The film was released in December 1980 to mixed reviews and less-than-stellar box office receipts; although it grossed $60 million worldwide, it was not the smash hit the studios expected and has since garnered a reputation as one of the great box office bombs.

But Popeye has a lot going for it, and sadly a lot working against it.  Let's take a look at the pros and cons of this unusual comic strip adaptation....



The Awesome


Cast

Pretty much everyone in this movie is spot-on.  Robin Williams (making his feature film debut), while not exactly disappearing into the role, makes a splendid Popeye - likable, matter-of-fact, humble and downtrodden by nature but gallant and heroic when he needs to be.  I'm not sure anyone else in 1980 could've brought this character to life as effectively.  Ditto for Shelley Duvall as Olive Oyl, who does a note-perfect live action translation of the gangly damsel in distress.  Most of the film's funniest moments involve Duvall's stylized mannerisms, and as someone who's used to seeing her either in hysterics in The Shining, or as Steve Martin's straight-man best friend in Roxanne, it's refreshing to go back and see her in a subtly comedic turn.  She might be the best thing about this film, actually.  Paul Smith also makes a fantastic Bluto, looking exactly like you'd expect this character to appear as a flesh & blood person, terrifying as he glares about the room growling like an agitated lion.  Smith is a helluva lot better in this movie than in Dune, I'll tell ya that much.  Ray Walston is the other standout, as Popeye's long-lost father Poopdeck Pappy, AKA The Commodore, conveying a front of cold, dryly amusing gruffness toward his son, which later gives way to genuine pathos as he bonds with Swee'pea.  So if nothing else, this film has a strong ensemble cast that's fun to watch as they make believable characters out of these cartoon archetypes.

WWE SummerSlam 2024 Review: I Just Want Good Wrestling But WWE Only Sells Bad "Cinema"

Well WWE smashed a whole bunch more records at this year's SummerSlam - not that tough to do when you keep jacking up ticket prices and the city pays you to hold your event there - but as I suspected the card itself was steeped in mediocrity, concerned more with bad drama than good wrestling.  WWE's audience is so bought in to the idea that wrestling matches don't have to be good as long as they advance whatever ongoing melodrama is behind them, that the company no longer cares about making any outside-the-box choices inside the ring.  To them wrestling has to either be about action or about storytelling and they can't seem to understand that it can and should be both.  There numerous times watching this show I found myself thinking "Christ, Vince booked numerous recent SummerSlams better than this one."

After yet another Triple H "Don't forget who's in charge now" moment to kick off the show, followed by a Jelly Roll performance, the opening match was Liv Morgan vs. Rhea Ripley for the Women's Title.  They started out playing cat and mouse, with Ripley chasing Liv in and out of the ring until finally outmaneuvering her and going on offense.  After a few minutes of Ripley dominating, Liv sent her shoulder-first into the turnbuckles, which popped Ripley's injured shoulder out of socket.  Liv took over and worked the dislocation until Ripley finally got some space and slammed it into the announce table, Lethal Weapon 2 style.  Ripley made a comeback but Liv brought a chair into the ring and tried to use it.  Ripley flattened her with a boot, picked up the chair herself, and was about to swing it when Dominik on the outside grabbed the chair and reminded her she couldn't win the title this way.  Ripley let go of the chair but Liv knocked her into Dom and hit Oblivion for a close nearfall.  Dom then threw the chair into the ring for Liv to hit a second Oblivion to win the match.  The announcers sold this like Dom's plan backfired, but then Dom helped Liv up from the floor and kissed her, betraying Rhea.  Solid opener.  ***1/4

WWE SummerSlam 2024 Preview & Predictions

This weekend it's the 37th annual summer spectacular (and for this lineup I use that word very loosely), WWE SummerSlam!

Yeah, this lineup sucks.  I continue to be at a loss as to why this company is as hot as it is, with phoned in crap like this on their third biggest show of the year.  Seven matches, six for championships, only three with any real story to them, one of which makes the company's top champion an afterthought in his own main event.  I legit need it explained to me why everyone loves WWE so much.  Oh, and there's gonna be a three-hour pre-show to fuck over AEW's Collision rating as much as possible.  Because WWE is run by predatory shit weasels.  Anyway, let's get to it....

WWE Women's Championship: Bayley vs. Nia Jax

Jesus H. Christ, this is what you came up with for SUMMERSLAM?  True to WWE form Bayley had a huge babyface title win at 'Mania and she's been coasting ever since with an ice-cold reign.  And then for some reason Nia Jax of all incompetents got to win Queen of the Ring to earn this title shot.  Absolute drivel.  I guess Nia wins, god help us.

Pick: Nia