This Film is Not Yet Watchable – August 2024, Part Two

I must begin this unprecedented continuation of this month’s column, as I often do, with an apology. At the end of the previous installment, I promised that I would conclude this week with the remaining trailers that have created a record-breaking 21 entries into this monthly project, as well as the “Redemption Reel” and the delayed “Worst Trailer in the World” video. Unfortunately, the last part of that pledge must be rescinded.

There will be no video this month. I mentioned last week that I was quite sick in the wake of wrapping up my latest work assignment. Just about everyone on the crew fell ill at one time or another over the course of the shoot, including at least four people getting full-on COVID. I’m pretty sure I avoided that extreme of an outcome, but whatever bug I got, it hit me HARD. I’m still not 100% as I write this, but today was the first day in a week that I’ve even felt human.

I had actually planned to work this surprise illness into the video. Initially I was going to dog sit for a friend of mine this week while she visited family. The idea was that I would open the video by saying that I was “sick as a dog,” and then decide, “so here’s a dog,” plop the little fellow in front of the camera and then do a cutesy voiceover while he looked at whatever grabbed his little puppy attention for a few minutes. It turns out that my friend’s relatives also got massively sick this past week, so the trip was scrapped. By the time I learned this, I basically had no time to change my jokes, much less shoot and edit, so I just had to admit defeat on this one.

So, as we begin the wholly depressing Part Two of the August rundown, I’ll start with what I’ll still declare as “The Worst Trailer in the World,” and you’ll just have to imagine the comedic heights I was sure to reach. It’s not August at the movies without at least one massive disappointment. Hopefully, this is the worst one you face.

Borderlands – August 9

There was only one thing running through my mind the first time I saw this trailer. THIS IS GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY! WHY IS ELI ROTH MAKING A VIDEO GAME INTO GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY!?

This was going to be the thesis of the video, the fact that this preview is a straight up ripoff of the one MCU trilogy that never wavered in quality. Almost shot for shot you can see how Borderlands copies it. Team of intergalactic outlaws? Check. Diminutive CGI, trash-talking sidekick? Check. Setting the whole thing to a beloved classic rock track? Check. Treasure hunting for MacGuffins? Check. Characters jumping into a giant monster’s mouth? There are so many checks you could make a checks mix for your next party.

This is inexcusable, and given that we have Cate Blanchett (what poor man’s Spirit Halloween did they get that wig from?) and Jamie Lee Curtis in this thing, that means we’re squandering three Oscars on something that just shouldn’t exist.

I’ve never played the games in the Borderlands series, but I assume they’re quite fun given the massive fan community, but their existence proves why this can’t work. Those games (I’ve seen footage) are cartoonish and bonkers, and that doesn’t translate to a semi-live action film (again, that wig… and the stupid bunny ears that make Ariana Greenblatt look like post-apocalyptic fanfic of Louise Belcher). But more to the point, we’ve seen plenty of examples of just how hard it is to make a good movie based on a video game. We’ve been trying for 30 years and have only come up with a handful.

This is because modern games have more world-building and sprawling narratives. If you’re doing anything beyond Sonic or Mario, you’re setting yourself up for failure because there’s just too much that needs to get across in order to be satisfying, especially in a series that isn’t self-contained. However, these stories do work really well as TV series. Look at all the acclaimed shows based on games we’ve gotten over the last decade – The Witcher, The Last of Us, Fallout, Twisted Metal – they’ve all been able to properly pace their stories and truly experiment with the themes and artforms of the games they’re adapting. Here, Eli Roth has two hours to make some PG-13 neutered shenanigans. It just can’t reasonably compare.

And just for a final nail in the coffin, this film comes out on Friday. As I’m typing this, it’s 8pm on Wednesday in Los Angeles. Starting tomorrow local theatres will start playing the movie, because for some reason we just do that on Thursdays for studio films these days. There are no reviews or scores on Rotten Tomatoes. The first audiences will get to watch this thing in less than 24 hours, and not one critique is available. That typically means one of two things: A) the studio has embargoed reviews until after release, usually a signal that they have no confidence in the film’s quality and thus must rely entirely on their own marketing to sell tickets; or B) they didn’t screen it for critics at all, which is even worse. Does this mean the flick will be terrible? It’s not always the case. Twisters somehow got over the “Certified Fresh” line last month despite holding reviews until 48 hours before release. But more often than not, the result is shit. If people know it’s awful, they won’t spend money, so make sure no one can know until it’s too late. How that’s legal when in every other industry it would be a felony is anyone’s guess (imagine if a car company got tons of reviews citing major safety issues in one of their models but didn’t allow publication until the cars themselves were sold), but that’s the system we’re in.

So yeah, sorry there’s no video, but sometimes the realities of the world get in the way, like a director who knows better than this using one IP to rip off another. Now back to the rest of the fuckups for the month.

***

The Crow – August 23

Can we ever just leave well enough alone? Can we ever just let something die? Especially in a series that’s about death where the star literally died making it?

No, apparently we can’t. Even though the cursed Brandon Lee original was the only film in the series to get positive reviews (the other three have an average RT rating of 10.67%, including a sick-inducing 0% for the most recent abomination), the Hollywood ghouls figured we just had to resurrect this nonsense, mostly because Bill Skarsgård can effortlessly look creepy and emo, with or without makeup.

Sorry, that’s not nearly enough to justify bringing this crap back. And at this point, it’s just in bad taste.

Blink Twice – August 23

Well isn’t this one big pile of nothing? So a woman gets the hots for Channing Tatum in “Billionaire Tech Bro” form, goes to his private island where all his rich peers indulge themselves to the extreme, and then gets super scared when her friend disappears? Isn’t this the plot of, like, every cheap Most Dangerous Game knockoff in history?

I mean, what are we supposed to make of this? Is this some sort of statement on capitalism? Race? The patriarchy? Stupid, impulsive people who don’t think things through? Why nepo babies who can barely act shouldn’t be allowed to direct or cast their betrothed in films? Exactly what am I supposed to latch onto here, Zoë Kravitz? ‘Cause I got nothin’.

The Killer – August 23

Not to be confused with last year’s movie, The Killer, which was quite good. This is just some second-rate John Woo bullshit (HE’S REMAKING HIMSELF!) and a waste of Nathalie Emmanuel.

And if you’re wondering why I’m keeping these capsules brief, just watch the trailer. I mean, what more needs to be said about this festival of clichés? Even if I wasn’t still recovering, I’d be numbed by all this idiocy to the point of drooling like I’m in a completely drug-addled state. Ah NyQuil: Nature’s High!

Incoming – August 23

On behalf of every person who ever enjoyed a teen party comedy, let me just say this.

Ahem.

FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK

YYYYYYYOOOOOOOOOOOOOOUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU!

You know you done fucked up when you make me feel nostalgic for the likes of American Pie and its realistic depiction of high school house parties. I honestly don’t get why movies keep trying to escalate this shit into the completely asinine and absurd. It robs us of any attempt to give a shit about the characters. Yes, a lot of the stuff that goes on isn’t exactly a good lesson, but when done right (Superbad, Booksmart, Good Boys) it still gets the anxiety, anticipation, and ultimate fun of well-intended rule-breaking and exploration of hormones.

The kind of things depicted in the preview alone make that connection impossible. The moment you decide that there are going to be fights, people breaking bottles over other people’s heads, and this really creepy and quixotic quest to bang one girl who clearly will have no agency in this process, you’ve lost any chance at making something resonant. This is just a low-rent Project X with dorky freshman, and the original didn’t work out that well either. When do we get to throw movies like this back in Netflix’s face and demand that they never raise our rates again if THIS is what they’re going to spend the extra cash on?

Also, you gotta love that the trailer for a movie about minors is age-restricted. It’s almost as if even the YouTube algorithm knows this is inappropriate or something.

The Forge – August 23

How many black stereotypes can we cram into another Jesus propaganda movie made by white guys? Let’s count them off!

1. Absentee father
2. Directionless black youth
3. Mother who threatens eviction through one side of her mouth then asks for “prayer support” out the other
4. “Tryin’ to holla at a shawty”
5. Being late to stuff, aka CPT (how is he late when his alarm goes off; does he not know to set it before he’s due somewhere?)
6. Sassy granny

And all of that is before we get to the bullshit of a regular young adult male being considered a lost cause until he finds religion. Fuck entirely off with this racist garbage. “Whoever wants the next generation most will get them,” says the movie in tagline text. That is just fucking scary. So you’re literally saying that the church has to commandeer an entire generation rather than just letting them figure their own stuff out. Oh, and give them swords, too! This is why Jesus Camp remains one of the most terrifying films I’ve ever seen.

Afraid – August 30

SIMPSONS DID IT!

Nothing further, your honor. At least AI is the bad guy for once.

Slingshot – August 30

It would be one thing if this was just a movie about Casey Affleck going into space after playing a character in Interstellar who was adamantly against space stuff. I could probably get over that. I mean, it’s been 10 years, and no one is obligated to maintain character consistency across unrelated projects, though it does look weird in this case.

What I can’t get past is yet another cabin fever in space story that relies on America’s space program and everyone involved being incompetent at their jobs. This is the same shit that pissed me off about Gravity and any number of other subpar stellar voyages depicted in cinema. I’ve met astronauts. I’ve worked with astronauts. The amount of education and training they have to go through to even get a sniff of a mission would make your head spin, and they would have prepared for every foreseeable contingency, like, say, hallucinations resulting from whatever hibernation tech they invented for this flick. They also would have accounted for the math and physics required to reach Titan, titular gravity swing around Jupiter or not, to the point that the deadly obstacles we encounter that will surely kill Laurence Fishburne (just like they did in fucking PASSENGERS!) would almost certainly never come up.

But I guess we can’t have a spacefaring adventure without completely ignoring science to put people at risk right? Except Apollo 13. And The Martian. And 2001 (which this movie heavily cribs from for its design aesthetic). You know what, I think this might be crap!

1992 – August 30

I don’t know what’s more racist, The Forge employing just about every regressive trope in the name of evangelizing, or 1992 using the L.A. Riots as the backdrop for a heist movie. Seriously, this is fucked up on A LOT of levels.

Reagan – August 30

It’s never been a secret that Dennis Quaid is a conservative. He’s still a compassionate guy and a terrific actor. Just because he votes for the other side doesn’t make him a bad person. That said, I lost a lot of respect for him when he referred to Donald Trump as “An asshole, but he’s MY asshole,” which means he’s not only well aware of how horrible a person Trump is, but he condones and endorses it.

So how does he redeem himself? By making a movie where he sucks Ronald Reagan’s dick for two hours in an attempt to lionize the only person more responsible than Trump for the horrid state of our society. I mean, I get it. He was a senile old man who justified atrocities in the name of fighting communism, committed treason, and occasionally had a good soundbite. No wonder Quaid loves him so much.

I pray that the use of a somber, low tempo cover of “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” is meant to be an ironic wink to the audience.

You Gotta Believe – August 30

No, you really don’t.

Look, I love Little League, and it’s cool that they’re putting their name on this. One of the most fun memories of my time at ESPN was getting to watch the regional finals for the Mid-Atlantic division in person a few years ago, as Bristol, CT is home to the official LLWS qualifying tournaments for the Mid-Atlantic and New England regions. It was between a team from Pennsylvania and the Newark National Little League from Newark, DE (pronounced new-ARK, not new-URK; we’re the first state, we get dibs on proper pronunciation), the very league that I played in when I was a kid. One of my coworkers played in the PA league on the other side vying for the title and the berth in the World Series. It was so much fun reminiscing about those three wonderful seasons where I never came close to the level of talent that these kids have nowadays. It was fun to playfully trash talk a friend and colleague, knowing we were all rooting for good youngsters having their moment in the spotlight. And it was really fun looking back on those years and knowing that for all of these players, there are still so many positive things they can do because of this game, even if they never make the big time. My friend and I were living proof that the love of the game can take you in so many different directions.

You know what no one would have found fun? An entire movie framing a miracle season around the coach’s terminal illness. Yeesh, way to bring the room down!

Oh well, at least it has a nice bit of meta casting in the form of Patrick Renna, aka Hamilton from The Sandlot.

***

We made it! We’re finally through all 21 horrible trailers! God I’m exhausted. And I’m also still sick, so I want to go to bed. So what do you say we put a bow on this puppy with a real quick “Redemption Reel,” eh?

Between the Temples – August 23

I could say a lot about this, but there’s no need. You’ve got Jason Schwartzman. You’ve got Carol Kane. You already know this is going to be something special, a tragicomic festival of dark humor and sneaky joy. I’ve been waiting with anticipation since Sundance for this to finally come out. I hope it’s every bit as good as advertised, and even if it’s not, you know it’ll at least be interesting.

***

That’s all for this month, finally. Again, massive apologies for having to ditch the video, but I’m sure I’ll be back on my feet for September. As always, enjoy yourself no matter what you see at your local multiplex, and take extra care of yourselves so that you don’t hack up more phlegm than I’ve had to over the last week-plus.

Join the conversation in the comments below! Do you plan to see any of these films? Was I too hard on any of them? Seriously, even if it’s somehow in the game, who thinks a robot shitting bullets and getting off on people watching it counts as comedy? Let me know! And remember, you can follow me on Twitter (fuck “X”) and YouTube for even more content, and check out the entire BTRP Media Network at btrpmedia.com!