211: York Alec Shackleton

To read this review, go to: https://www.theyoungfolks.com/review/121367/211-is-a-heist-film-by-a-director-who-cant-direct-action-and-actors-who-wont-act/.

2/10

Radio Mary: Gary Walkow

Wow. The heck was Gary Walkow's Radio Mary doing on mubi? That's a channel for good and/or distinguished films. Radio Mary is neither. It's this cockamamie piece of rubbish about a woman who becomes a "human radio" after getting touched by an evil guy who may or may not be a space alien. What's ridiculous is how the film treats it like this solemn event; the lead actress almost never raises her voice above an annoying whispered vocal fry, even when she's picking up the inner thoughts of terrible people or trying to escape the villain who makes her an accessory to murder. The film takes itself too seriously--it allows itself to have no fun with its subject matter. And this is the kind of subject matter you need to have fun with. Also, the film has one of the most unnecessary topless scenes I've ever seen. I think Walkow just wanted an excuse to look at his actress' boobs.

2/10

96 Souls: Stanley Jacobs

To read this review, go to: http://www.audienceseverywhere.net/96-souls-is-preposterous-and-boring/.

2/10

Gymkata: Robert Clouse

You know what's ultimately the worst part about Robert Clouse's Gymkata? There's very little actual gymkata in it! There's a whole mess of poorly choreographed, poorly filmed, and poorly acted fight scenes, most of them little more than white people in ridiculous brownface madly flailing weapons about. But there's only a couple of scenes where the main character, an acrobat/spy, actually uses gymnastics to fight the forces of evil! It doesn't help that the main character has all the charisma and acting talent of soggy newspapers. This might sound like an odd nitpick, but the editing is atrocious. The story goes so fast in the first fifteen minutes that it felt like I had watched two whole movies! Tempo, people, tempo!

2/10

Drifter: Chris von Hoffmann

To read this review, go to: http://www.audienceseverywhere.net/drifter-manages-to-take-all-the-fun-out-of-post-apocalyptic-cannibals/.

2/10

Killbillies: Tomaz Gorkic

To read this review, go to: http://www.audienceseverywhere.net/killbillies/.

2/10

Fire at Sea: Gianfranco Rosi

To read this review, go to: http://theyoungfolks.com/review/nyff-review-fire-at-sea/88608.

2/10

Staying Vertical: Alain Guiraudie

Alain Guiraudie's Staying Vertical may not be the worst film I've seen this year at the New York Film Festival (it looks like that dubious honor will be going to Alison Maclean's The Rehearsal), but it's easily the stupidest. There's a scene in this movie where a straight man lovingly, tenderly sodomizes an old man to death. I just...what? I can't understand a single creative decision in this film. I think I get what it was going for: a slightly absurdist, deconstructionist view of the idea of humanity vis-à-vis the cycle of birth, life, death, and whatnot. But I don't know. It just doesn't work. Is this film comedic? Tragic? Serious? All three? What's the significance of any of it? Why do the hobos rob the main character naked? What literary agent would allow their client to shirk their writing responsibilities long enough to conceive and father a child while still financing them? Why did the same 2-3 characters keep popping up in everybody elses' houses? Why the constant shots of the main female character's vagina? Seriously, I think we may see more close-ups of her vagina than her face! I wasn't alone in thinking this film ridiculous, the other critics laughed at it, too.

2/10

Little Dead Rotting Hood: Jared Cohn

Let me get this straight...there's an army of killer woods terrorizing a nondescript American town that can only be held at bay by some kind of "protector." Jared Cohn's Little Dead Rotting Hood begins with the current protector helping to kill and bury her granddaughter before performing a suicidal ritual which passes on her powers to her. Of course, I don't understand why she needed to pass on her powers: she seemed to still have plenty of life left in her. What's worse, the granddaughter doesn't seem particularly good at her new job. She has a nasty habit of only showing up to stop the killer wolves after they've killed people. Man, this is a stupid movie. The lore makes no sense. Why is there a pack of killer wolves there? Where do they come from? What do they want? How do the protectors get their powers? Why is the town next to a place called "Jawson's Creek?" Why is there an old-time hillbilly with a custom-made shotgun/flamethrower who seems more at home in a) the 1890s, b) the set of Tjardus Greidanus's The Final Sacrifice (1990)? I know the film's from The Asylum, but man...this one's just bad.

2/10

Grimsby: Louis Leterrier

Louis Leterrier's Grimsby has one good idea: an untrained civilian who gets their hands on a gun and finds themselves completely nonplussed by their first acts of murder. It's a surprisingly effective piece of comedy. But everything else about Grimsby was just inexcusable. There's good bad taste and bad bad taste. But this film? This is stupid bad taste. Most of the jokes aren't even funny, they're just shocking. The jokes feel like set-ups for punchlines. But you know what the worst part is? The way it degrades amazing, talented actors and actresses of color. Gabourey Sidibe and Barkhad Abdi all get turned into grotesque stereotypes for the sake of half-baked comedy. Penélope Cruz acts out one of the most boring heel-turns in recent cinema. She feels under-utilized. Maybe if this film was just a little bit funny I could give these things a begrudging pass. But they aren't. So I can't.

2/10

Vigilante Diaries: Christian Sesma

To read this review, go to: http://theyoungfolks.com/review/movie-review-vigilante-diaries-offensive-and-offensively-bad-on-every-level/81680.

2/10

Dirty Grandpa: Dan Mazer

I hate the cliché of the romantic comedy where somebody gets left at the altar because their significant other had an eventful 2-3 days with an old flame. Of course, that's not the only reason why I hated Dan Mazer's Dirty Grandpa. It's almost nothing but horrifically unfunny cringe humor that almost never connects. This is the kind of film where everybody is an asshole to the protagonist because he has the audacity of being contented with a boring life. I don't like watching people act like jerks...unless they're the Marx Brothers. The film's attempts at being emotional and meaningful in the third act with De Niro coming through as a good grandfather and father feel hollow and unearned.

2/10

Martyrs: Kevin Goetz, Michael Goetz

To read this review, go to: http://theyoungfolks.com/review/movie-review-martyrs/71254.

2/10

13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi: Michael Bay

To read this review, go to: http://theyoungfolks.com/review/13-hours-the-secret-soldiers-of-benghazi-michael-bay/70719.

2/10

Maidstone: Norman Mailer

If I had wanted to watch a two hour ego trip, I would have watched an Orson Welles film. At least then the film would have been artistic, interesting, and had a point. The same can't be said for Norman Mailer's Maidstone which, unless I've missed my mark, has primarily gained notoriety since its release for its general terribleness. Only in the world of Art could a bad film be valorized as a good film just because it had a significant director. Maidstone is just two hours of self-indulgent film vomit. Even the infamous fight between Norman Mailer and Rip Torn can't redeem this film. Am I the only one who thought it was kind of sick to include footage of his wife and kids freaking out and wailing over him getting attacked?

2/10

Zombie Lake: Julian de Laserna, Jean Rollin

Julian de Laserna and Jean Rollin's Zombie Lake is...just precious. A film about a French village terrorized by Nazi zombies, it seems to put more stock into titillating its audience with nudity than with violence. I think a better title would have been Vulva Lake: there are multiple scenes of beautiful women getting naked and swimming in the eponymous lake before getting munched on by zombies. The most preposterous is when a female volleyball team shows up in a van and inexplicably decides to go skinny-dipping together. There is literally no good reason why they showed up. Many of these scenes are downright gynecological. Perhaps the directors were trying to distract us from the fact that the gore effects--the few there were--are laughably incompetent. During one early scene where a zombie bit down on a victim's neck in order to drink their blood, I could swear that the actor playing the zombie literally had a blood pack in his mouth, burst it, and smeared it all over the other actor's neck with their lips and tongue. However, I will applaud the film's effort in trying to communicate the scenes with the lead Nazi zombie and his long-lost daughter via purely visual language.

2/10

Cheerleader Ninjas: Kevin Campbell

When I saw Kevin Campbell's Cheerleader Ninjas on Netflix streaming, two thoughts immediately went through my mind. First, I can't believe that I've found another Troma film I've never heard of before. Second, I have to watch this. Having now seen it, I have two more thoughts. First, that definitely wasn't a Troma film. Second, I really, really, really wish I hadn't watched it. This film has its tongue so firmly in its cheek that it's broken through, wrapped around the entire circumference of the earth, and plopped back into its own mouth. There isn't an opportunity missed for a eye-rolling pratfall, inappropriate joke, and deliberately terrible, over-the-top performance. And that would be alright if the film actually was funny. But with only a few exceptions (which admittedly were so good they saved this film's score from a 1/10) Cheerleader Ninjas didn't make me laugh. There's this running obsession with fart and poop jokes. At times random farting sound effects will pop up that have nothing to do with what's going on onscreen. It made me feel sick; and not in an entertaining way like in Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead (2006), but in a I-want-to-unironically-throw-up kind of way. And yet, I have no doubt that all of this was intentional. This film was SUPPOSED to be blindingly stupid and over-the-top like in Troma films. But whereas even the most inane Troma films seem to carry some level of irony or political commentary, Cheerleader Ninjas is just...dumb.

2/10

Some Kind of Hate: Adam Egypt Mortimer

To read this review, go to: http://theyoungfolks.com/review/movie-review-some-kind-of-hate/62500.

2/10

Dirty Weekend: Neil LaBute

To read this review, go to: http://theyoungfolks.com/review/movie-review-dirty-weekend/61232.

2/10

Home: Tim Johnson

To read this review, go to: http://theyoungfolks.com/review/movie-review-home/53168.

2/10