Big Daddy Dispatch: May 2024

 Dispatch Eighty Six April 29, 2024

Greetings WHM Family!

We are KNEE-DEEP in the 2024 Spring Tour! We just got back from Atlanta and man what a great crowd and show! We’re so lucky to get to perform for you folks and then even better, get to meet you all and hear your stories. It is absolutely the highlight of our year, no doubt about it. WHICH IS WHY, if you are in TEXAS you cannot afford to miss the WHM Texas Two-Step! We’ll be doing a live episode in Houston on May the 14th on Robocop 2! Then… the very next night it’s going to be a daaaark niiiight, because we’ll be in Austin doing a live WLM episode on From Dusk Till Dawn! These are going to be a stone-cold blast, so come on out and say hi! And if you’re coming to one…why not both? All ticket info can be found on our website!!

Banner Credit: We Hate Movies Logo by Felipe Sobreiro

Image Credit: We Hate Movies: Spring Tour 2024 by Felipe Sobreiro

LAST MONTH ON WHM

Episode 731 – Major League

Batter up! Sheenpril kicks off on the main feed with the gang heading out to Cleveland to support the best players for the worst baseball team on Earth, along with their tobacco-voiced coach and their psychotic catcher-leader. Why doesn’t Rene Russo call the cops on Tom Berenger at any point? Is it possible to pull a Producers-esque scam in the MLB? Why can’t you put more Wesley Snipes in this? What’s so hard about that? Prepare thyself for yet another Randy Newman opening.

Episode 732–  Wall Street (Patrons Only)

For the Sheenpril WLM offering, the boys head downtown to the big office buildings with stockbroker Charlie Sheen and find out how to trade like an animal under the tutelage of Michael Douglas’ Gordon Gekko. Does anyone understand all this stock talk? Is this the best Michael Douglas performance? Will they ever stop talking about NYC and making NYC-specific jokes? And remember, kids: insider trading is legal as long as you work for the government.

Episode 733 – The Rookie

Finally, some good fucking food! Andrew, Steve, Eric, and Chris head out onto the street with veteran LAPD hard-ass Clint Eastwood and his young rich-boy partner Charlie Sheen to take down the most inept carjacking kingpin in the history of the movies, who is sadly played by the great Raul Julia. Has any police chief been able to contain Clint Eastwood? Would Charlie Sheen’s assault on the bar be enough to get you tried at the Hague?

Episode 734 – Terminal Velocity

 Welcome back to the Skydiving News Network! The fellas get dragged into a vast conspiracy involving former Soviet spies and assassins, FAA enforcers, and the horniest and most irresponsible skydiver imaginable. Can one still hire skydiving strippers or has that time passed? Would you allow Nastassja Kinski to do a crash course and skydive day-of? What exactly was the plan with hiring James Gandolfini to play a secretive government thug who speaks perfect Russian? More frame-ups should involve extreme sports in our opinion.

Episode 735 – The Arrival (1996)

They’re out there...and they have a dumbass disguise machine. The boys follow controversial astrophysicist Charlie Sheen as his assertion that he heard a loud alien radio signal gets him fired, ran out of town, and ultimately chased by a series of undercover aliens with fucked-up knees. Why must there be a child sidekick? Was Richard Schiff not good enough? Is life at a cable and satellite repair job really that bad? No, seriously, how is that disguise machine supposed to work and how does it not kill Charlie Sheen...whose name in this movie is Zane Zaminsky? An early work from notorious hat-wearer and Terminal Velocity scribe David Twohy.

Episode 736 – Men at Work

To round out Sheenpril, Andrew, Steve, and Eric pick up some sanitation work by the beach with Emilio Estevez and Charlie Sheen until they find a dead body and team-up with Keith David. How does a garbage man afford apartments with that much space? Must all criminal schemes be made up of 40% grab-ass? Is Emilio or Charlie the better actor? A cult comedy seen a combined 235 times by the WHM crew is the perfect way to end a full month of rambling about Charlie Sheen! We promise not to cover him again…for a few weeks at least!

WHAT ARE WE WATCHING?

This is a space for us to talk about some NON-We Hate Movies related content that we've shoved into our eyeballs in the last month: TV, Movies, Cartoons, and Sports (maybe?). Just about anything that isn't pornography.

Andrew:  Okay, getting this one in a little early so we can head to Atlanta, so who knows what stuff I’ll cram in front of my eyeballs between now and the end of the month, but here’s some notable selections from the first 20 days of April:

Mute Witness (1995): Found this oddball on Shudder and was pleasantly surprised. It’s a shot-on-location-in-Russia giallo riff about a mute special effects artist who, while working on a horror film, whoops, accidentally stumbles upon a very different kind of film shoot; that’s right, a snuff film! Did it actually happen? Well, the cops and one horrendously annoying film director character don’t believe her. But we all saw it go down! And now she has to spend the rest of the time trying to dodge the guys that did the deed. The movie has some genuinely fantastic sequences, but does kind of suffer from not knowing when/how to end. Still a pretty hearty recommend! 

Baghead (2023): From a producer of Barbarian comes the latest in eerie basement horror, Baghead! It’s the story of a girl who inherits a pub from her father. The place is your classic old bastard werewolf bar, with a twist: there’s a cursed witch in the basement that can allows you to talk to a dead person if you give her a personal item from the deceased. It definitely has its moments, but the film kind of gets lost along the way; it’s a film about this creature in the basement, but a few times there are also ghosts in the pub which distract from the actual horror in the film; just one too many spices in this chili. It’s much better than another recent basement horror film I wrote about in the last BDD (I think), The Cellar. So, yeah, I’d recommend this one, with the caveat that I think it has a terrible, lazy-ass title because “Baghead” isn’t the name of the monster or anything. Just lazy as fuck. 

Wonka (2023): Yeah, not sure what the fuss was about. I mean, I do, but this wasn’t for me. I found each song more forgettable than the last, it’s got way too many characters farting around, and man, Timmy C. just does not look comfortable singing on camera. “Friendly kids’ film character” is not a mode I care to see him in, and seriously, it was awkward watching him sing songs in this. Super-duper not for me.

 Mother (2009): I think Mother is one of Bong Joon-ho’s most under-seen works, so I’ll always take a chance to champion it when I can. I caught a screening of this at the Town Hall here in New York where the film’s composer, Byeong Woo Lee, appeared on stage to play the score live, accompanied by the Harlem Chamber Players. It was the guy’s first concert in New York and he was just elated by the crowd’s reaction. More film scores performed live along with the movie, please! These events are always a delight. As for the film itself, it’s a big time recommend from me.

Chris:  Jinxed: I’ve been watching a lot of Don Siegel recently and most of them involve the stealing or illegal collection of money through violence and fear. In this Bette Midler vehicle, however, violence and fear are not how things go south. In this case, it’s a jinx put on a card-dealer by an enigmatic and boastful demon-gambler played by Rip Torn that causes the money machine to go brrrr. About halfway through, the death of one of the main characters pushes this film into the realm of the demented and then it becomes Midler’s movie and things get difficult to sit through. I’ve liked Midler plenty of times before – Get Shorty and Ruthless People come to mind – but she feels distinctly out of place here. Ken Wahl doesn’t do much better on that front, to be fair, but the film does have the germ of a personal challenge in it. The entire story pivots on whether there’s something that Wahl’s character could do to fix his situation or if it really is just cosmic bad luck that he gets taken by this gambler so often. That has some weight for an artist who had produced hits and flops following his gut instincts. If it weren’t his final movie, I might have just tuned-out, but then there’s the superb cinematography from Vilmos Zsigmond, who worked closely with Altman, Cimino, De Palma, and Spielberg, to consider. Not unwatchable but certainly not something you should watch unless you love one or several elements from the outset.

The Magnificent Butcher/Tiger Cage: Along with Siegel, I’ve been trying to catch up on the films of Yuen Woo-ping, maybe the most well-known fight choreographer in the entire world. More important than even that, Yuen directed and co-directed some of the most inventive martial arts films ever made. My favorite by some measure is The Miracle Fighters, which you can find in a washed-out copy on YouTube, but these two really highlight how vast his talents were. The Magnificent Butcher, which centers on a hyperbolic war of rumors between two rival martial-arts schools that turns bloody, focuses on how rumor and empty boasts can lead to hardened rhetoric in times of scarcity and desperation, and also features some of the best fight choreography of Yuen’s career, and Sammo Hung’s as well, who stars as the titular student who starts the mess. The other, Tiger Cage from 1988, is more in-line with the Hong Kong new wave’s focus on guns even more than fists, following the bloody happenings that follow the realization that a respected police unit has a turncoat amongst them. Here, Yuen’s ability to control numerous volatile bodies within frames is scaled down to riveting chases and thunderous, in-a-second twists of harrowing violence. Probably one of the best cop-action films of the 1980s and, as one would expect, it spawned two sequels that are nearly as good.

Rebel Moon – Part Two: The Scargiver: I assume we will officially get to this someday, but I’m really pulling for that to be after the sun goes supernova. One would think that, having unloaded so, so, so much backstory in the first film, this film would simply take-off and just go action-mode for two hours in the hopes that fans did not completely waste their time on that first one. Sadly, this is not so. I can’t believe I’m typing this but there is somehow so much more backstory and lore that Snyder and his creative team decide to dump in the middle of this pointless continuation. And, as expected, all of it is wildly contrived without ever being wild, and filmed with all the imagistic invention of a mid-range circa-PS2 cut-scene sequence. Also, Ed Skrein’s fuck-blob is nowhere to be found. Get me out of here.

Eric:  Zapped! (1982):  Sometimes I wonder, would you folks like to hear us talk about boob comedies? I know the answer is probably no. This one has Scott Baio gaining telekinesis which results in pretty much him just committing sexual assault throughout. You'll forget that the cast has Scatman Crothers in it to pretty much go, "You zappin', Doc?" Plus, he shares a scene with Albert Einstein. Crothers. Einstein. It happened! Anyway, yeah, not great.

City Heat (1984): The quest to watch all of Burt Reynolds' filmography continues. This one never finds its footing which is a shame because the production and set design is are insane. We're constantly outside using 1930s period cars. Burt Reynolds! Clint Eastwood! Madeline Kahn! Rip Torn as a bad guy! Burt saying things like "you came in second at the snot-ball pageant!" and "I've been doing this since you were pissing your pants!" Yet it all falls flat. Blake Edwards wrote the script, and Richard Benjamin, who has a wild filmography, directs.

Rebel Moon - Part Two: The Scargiver (2024): We're not going to do a commentary on this after all, so I gave it a spin. Christ Almighty. It's pretty much an identical movie to the first one but slower. You'd also think, wow, part one was getting the band together, surely in part two something happens! No. This movie is pure sequel set up. You cannot do a sequel set up movie then make a sequel and have it be a sequel-sequel set up. Do something! Say something! Make a fully realized movie! 

The Toxic Avenger (1984):  Filling in some big blind spots here. Is this the best Troma movie? I'm not a big fan in general because when you crank something to 11 about 1-5 times it rocks but when that's all you do, we're in puff: EXXTREEEMMEEE territory. When you EXTREEMMMEEE constantly it becomes self-defeating. I need the window dressings of an actual movie for anything EXXTRRREEMMEE to puncture through that silver screen veil and hit me. Instead, it all becomes background noise. That said, I like Toxie and his various antics.

Eyes Behind the Wall (1977): Euro sleaze thriller with John Philip Law. Lots of scenes of his landlord watching him have sex through cameras and various peeping devices. He has a giant computer, just for peepin'! But is it worth seeing? Not really. Although I do have to give it points for being a movie with a real actor in it that shows male on male anal sex.

Steve: Yes! We are running around a lot, but I did have some time to squeeze some crap into my eyes. Here they are!

The American Friend (1977): Bought this as a blind buy in a Criterion flash sale months ago and finally cracked it open. So glad that I did. Lushly photographed, tense, with two absolutely killer lead performances. This ain’t yo mamma’s Tom Ripley story, with Dennis Hopper taking the reigns, making Ripley an anxious, opaque, accomplished murderer and manipulator, trying to ruin (a fantastic) Bruno Ganz’s life just because he wouldn’t shake his hand. King shit. I love that this movie revolves around Dennis Hopper spreading rumors around town that Bruno Ganz’s illness has gotten worse, and Ganz is like “Mein gott! I’m gonna die!” It’s a must-see folks.

 Smile: Nope! Not for me! We finally caught up with this very generously rated film and I just couldn’t see what you folks saw in this. As a demon/curse it’s really ill-defined and under-explored, just unspeakable evil for unspeakable evil’s sake. And put up against similar fare (like The Ring or Talk to Me) the lack of mythology and, dare I say, scares leaves this movie with just a bunch of tension and bad acting. No, thank you. Also, FAR TOO FEW CREEPY SMILES IN A MOVIE ABOUT CREEPY SMILING.

 Argylle: How do we make Matthew Vaughn stop? Is there any legal recourse from preventing this shit from infecting the public?  I know hyperbole is king on this show, but this is one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen. Just a D.O.A. concept that changes into another D.O.A. concept every twenty-or-so minutes, so, one can never truly appreciate exactly how shitty the story we’re being told is. Awful performances abound, especially what might be the end of Bryan Cranston’s career captured on camera. The man is beyond slumming it, he has become a slum lord.

PATREON MAILBAG LIGHTNING ROUND

Here's a fun space where folks on Patreon get to ask us Questions directly. This month's entry comes from 

Nathan, from Minneapolis who asks: “What is the best example of a movie that is 2/3 great? Think Sunshine or Pontypool that are really good and then the final act occurs.”

Andrew:  Okay, Nathan, first off, I’m gonna go to bat for the third acts of both Sunshine and Pontypool. Both are batshit movies with fabulous conclusions, IMO. But, to your question, there’s a lot to pick from here. I think one decent example is Bad Boys II. It’s a fun enough, bonkers action movie, but the whole, “Now we’re gonna go to Cuba and straight-up cause an international incident,” has always been a step too far for this viewer. M. Night Shyamalan’s Glass is another one where I was with it the whole time, stunned as I was by that alone, but then the third act is kinda just that fight on the front lawn and I shrugged my shoulders. Lotta build-up for a pretty lame conclusion. As much as I dig this next one, Iron Man also has a crummy conclusion, one where Jeff Bridges, as Iron Monger (gulp), farts his way on screen and fights RDJ’s Tony Stark. Even back in 2008 I was let down by the conclusion of this otherwise great movie. Okay, one last one: Chris Nolan’s The Dark Knight. Now, just hear me out. The whole Harvey Dent-to-Two-Face stuff is rushed as hell. Come on. You know it and I know it. We all wanted to see more Two-Face getting up to no good. And instead he’s got less than 10 minutes of screen time. And every time we’re cutting back to those people on the ferry, I mean, it’s not good now and it wasn’t in 2008. I think we were all just super-blinded by, and understandably so, Ledger’s amazing performance. Hey, still a great movie, but Two-Face was completely wasted. 

Chris: There’s a chance I’ve complained about this before, but my most recent and well-known choice would be Ben Affleck’s Air. Scoff all you want, but not having anyone play Michael Jordan in the end is a massive cop-out in my opinion. I heard an interview where Affleck said he didn’t do it because no one would accept any actor as Michael Jordan because he’s too big a star. That’s just about as dumb a thing as I’ve ever heard. How do you know? Because you wrote Good Will Hunting and then directed a bunch of movies people only remember to make jokes about? Forget the immense cowardice of that statement for a moment. If we’re not going to get to meet and get a taste of the character that they shaped this shoe around, aren’t you just suggesting flat-out that Michael Jordan is God and this is all about faith? If the disciples never get to meet their Jesus, what exactly are we sticking around for in your third act? To find out that they did indeed release the Nike Air? To see how we were saved from having other companies make our basketball sneakers? To see how good Matt Damon is at talking on a landline? You tell me! The only thing it could possibly be about is a young, headstrong, but unchallenged Michael Jordan facing what he's going to become and what these people have seen in him and expressed in the form of what they see as artwork and craft. The people who have been following a distant idea of him and his greatness for a long time finally meeting the real deal. Nope. Nobody would believe it, trust me. And what is the ending? Yay, we made the sneaker! That’s great. Round of applause. I’m sure my ex-girlfriend’s ex-husband who was inexplicably obsessed with Phil Knight despite not especially liking sneakers or basketball was absolutely fucking thrilled.

 Eric: Zapruder Film because it was a real nice parade up until that weird and frankly rushed ending. In all seriousness, folks, I do remember not caring for Sunshine. No idea if it was the ending's fault. I was nonplussed when it hit theaters. I know that I really should go back to it, for all I know I'd love it today! Here's one I do know for sure: Die Hard with a Vengeance. Love almost all of this movie but you'll always forget the drawn out ending in Canada with a helicopter. Canada! It's the Die Hard that’s set in New York, end it in New York! What are you doing?! Canada? Get the fuck outta here!

Steve: Here’s a movie I like exactly 2/3 of, but the pieces I like and dislike aren’t exactly broken up chronologically. Anybody remember the movie Babylon from about 16 months ago? Yikes right? Well, not exactly. I think the Brad Pitt parts just don’t work‑‑ especially his incredibly sweaty speech “dunking” on Jean Smart, which…Sure. And the ending, let’s not forget the ending which EVISCERATES any good will you might have had towards this film. BUT! I do want to remember the good! This might be Margot Robbie’s best performance! The extended sequence of filming her first talkie is probably one of my favorite sequences in the last decade, it just happens to be tied into a movie that ends in the worst possible way, which is …. Lauding Avatar for no goddamn reason in a fucking period piece. Come on, Damien.

MAY SCHEDULE


Say what? The schedule in advance?! It's the least we could do! By subscribing to this newsletter, you get a sneak peek at what we're putting out in May!

Episode 738 – Lethal Weapon 3

Episode 739 – House on Haunted Hill (1999)

Episode 740 – Garfield: A Tale of Two Kitties

Episode 741 – Beneath the Planet of the Apes

Patreon Episodes:

Episode 737 – We Love Movies – Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior

Animation Damnation: Return to the Planet of the Apes: “Flames of Doom” (s1, e1)

The Nexus: TOS: “All Our Yesterdays” (s3, 23), TNG: “Future Imperfect” (s4, e8)

Gleep Glossary: Callista Ming

MelR0210: 90210 “A Presumption of Innocence” (s3, e12), Melrose Place: “In Bed with The Enemy” (s2, e26)

Too Old for This Shit: Episodes 1.4 - covering X-Men ’97: “Bright Eyes” and “Tolerance is Extinction Parts 1 & 2” (available 5/10), and 1.5 - covering X-Men ’97: “Tolerance is Extinction Part 3” (available 5/24).

 PATREON RSS BUG

If you’re having trouble with the RSS feed updating or episodes not appearing in your app, Patreon has acknowledged this bug and they have a fix: "Try unsubscribing and re-subscribing via your app by re-entering the unique RSS feed you were given and is on our Overview section of the Creator page. Or try using a different podcast app or RSS feed reader." 

Please consult this page and contact Patreon Support if the problem persists. We apologize for any inconvenience you’ve experienced on Patreon and truly appreciate your continued support!

UPCOMING NEWS AND PROMOTION

As you heard up top On Screen Live continues to kick ass apace each and every Monday at noon/eastern (mostly)! We are back and better than ever, chatting it up about movie news, reacting live to trailers, and we’ve also got occasional guests! Check it out on our YouTube Channel!.

The channel also has all officially sanctioned VHS Trailer Game episodes up to this point, and Eric has also put out great clip packages like WTF Exorcism with Marc Merrin, Dr. Loomis is the Worst Doctor, Dilf Den, George Bailey as Michael Meyers, John Wick-Mentary,  Toby Jones in Bee Movie, Sausage Claus, David!Muppet Hitchcock Presents, and many more! You can also watch the entirety of our Witchboardepisode, complete with visual gags (most of which are almost funny.). 

You'll find all sorts of cool shit like Mailbags, VHS Trailer Games, full episodes like Rampage (2018),Any Which Way You Can, Bram Stoker’s Draculaand Saw III. Like we said above, these are great for sharing and introducing folks to the show. There's so much content there we can't list it all here. Just go and subscribe already! 

Eric and Ben are back in the the blue and are talking about Turtle Races (?!), Pseudo Doctor Ruth Radio shows and WOMEN KILLERS, when they review “The Surrogate”  Listen here!

If you're a fan of the show and a fan of looking sharp, you should check out the official merch on our TeePublic store! We have some hot off the presses designs by Felipe Sobreiro such as the Too Old For This Shit and Sheenpril logos, as well as A Certain Fat Director enjoying his favorite film filter of all time! We also have "The DILF Den", and a "Crispy Critters" designs from friend of the show, Nathan Hamill! There’s a ton of other great designs like the VHS Trailer Game Logo, Demon-o's Pizza, Egg Lawyer, The Order of the Boop, The Kornkast design and many more, with even more to come! 

That's going to do it for this month's Dispatch! See you next month!  

Take it easy,
Andrew, Chris, Eric, and Steve
We Hate Movies