Category: Film

A Kind of Magic: Highlander: The Source, part one

On By Charlie BrooksIn FilmLeave a comment

Highlander: The Source is the suckiest thing that ever sucked.

Believe it or not, it is worse than Highlander II. It has worse characterization than Highlander: Endgame. It was intended to be the first part of a trilogy of films, but instead stands as one final middle finger to fans. It systematically goes through everything that is iconic about the Highlander franchise and destroys it.

I have a really hard time not calling Highlander: The Source the single worst movie I have ever seen. Triumph of the Will has always stood out as the iconic terrible film to me, with monstrous content supporting the Nazi party and a pace that makes it feel like a week of torture, but it at least had some artful directing to it. The Russian version of Solaris is boring as all hell, but has something thought-provoking and eerie in its conclusion. Even Tommy Wiseau’s The Room, one of the single poorest examples of acting, writing, and directing in modern cinema, is at least so bad it’s funny. The Source isn’t even something I can laugh at. It’s like somebody systematically set out to make the worst movie of all time and proceeded to accomplish that goal with all the precision efficiency of an unstoppable bad movie-making machine.

Between Highlander II and Highlander: The Source, this single franchise has not one, but two of the worst movies ever made. How is that even possible?

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A Kind of Magic: Highlander: Endgame, part three

On By Charlie BrooksIn FilmLeave a comment

So we’ve covered how the pre-release hype for Highlander: Endgame was nothing more than lies to cover for a movie that was unfinished and quite bad. And we’ve discussed how the first half of the film is a muddled mess that asks the audience to do all the emotional investment and hard work that the story doesn’t earn. So let’s finish this hellish trifecta by discussing how the end of Highlander: Endgame is basically nothing more than a series of gut-punches to fans who were conned into watching this movie.

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The Most Game-Tastic Moments in Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves

On By Charlie BrooksIn Film, Role-Playing GamesLeave a comment

After so many years where mention of a Dungeons & Dragons movie meant some of the cringiest moments in film history, it is an absolute joy to have a good D&D movie with 2023’s Honor Among Thieves. That film managed to provide a solid, fun story spurred on by a likeable cast, and it caught a good among of accurate game lore in it as well.

Most remarkably, I found that Honor Among Thieves managed to feel like an authentic D&D session captured on the big screen. Just about everything that happened in the movie could occur in a D&D session, including stuff that isn’t in the rules but which every gamer has experienced. Here are the moments in Honor Among Thieves that really sold this film to me as a game come to life.

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The Absolute Worst Movies that I Happen to Like

On By Charlie BrooksIn FilmLeave a comment

Previously, I did a rant about the best movies that nobody likes. My argument with those movies is that they are honestly good…not “so bad they’re good,” but in fact well-crafted pieces of cinema. For comparison and contrast purposes, here’s the flip side: a list of movies that I know are just plain bad, but which I enjoy anyway. These are the kind of movies that I watch because they’re so cheesy. In my mind, they define the phrase “so bad it’s good.”

I will argue to Hell and back that the movies on the previous list are well made. You might not find them to your taste, but they do what they set out to do and are entertaining for what they are. These films, on the other hand, falter somewhere along the way. They cannot be considered well-made. But, even in their glorious badness, they still entertain.

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My Favorite Movies that Nobody Likes

On By Charlie BrooksIn FilmLeave a comment

Movies, like any other entertainment, are totally subjective. What is great to one person could be hideous to another. But this is the Internet, where billions of people worldwide shriek at the top of their lungs that people who do not share their opinion are bad human beings. And who am I to buck that trend?

What follows is a look at four movies that I swear to God are cinematic wonders, but which everybody seems to hate for some reason. Note that this isn’t the same as movies that I know are bad but which I enjoy anyway; that’s another rant for another time. I am legitimately claiming that the movies below are good. Naturally, you can feel free to insert all the typical Internet acronyms – IMO, YMMV, and so on, as appropriate. This being my corner of the Internet, though, I’m just going to pretend that I’m right and everyone who disagrees with me is a horrible person. Delusions are fun.

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The Failures of the Flash, and Why the DC Extended Universe Flopped

On By Charlie BrooksIn Comics, FilmLeave a comment

The Flash is the latest in a line of movies set in the DC Universe to flop critically, disappoint financially, or both. Despite trying to repeat the success of Spider-Man: No Way Home by giving fans a return of some of their favorite actors, in this case Michael Keaton as Batman, the film has greatly disappointed at the box office, spending a full month to reach the $250 million mark, all but guaranteeing that the film will lose a massive amount of money when all is said and done. It’s symptomatic of broader failures across the DC Cinematic Universe, which tried to replicate what Marvel accomplished with its films but has failed at almost every turn.

There are lots of reasons that these movies didn’t succeed, but I’m going to focus on what I think many critics ignore when they dissect these cinematic misses: the DC movies never took the time to earn the fan buy-in that they think they deserve.

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The Thirteenth Doctor: My Favorite Things About Series 11

On By Charlie BrooksIn FilmLeave a comment

Now that Jodie Whitaker’s three-series (plus some specials) run as the Doctor is in the books, there’s plenty of time to look back on her time in the TARDIS as a whole. A lot of attention gets paid to the Timeless Child revelation and the Flux storyline, since those have vast implications that will impact the lore of Doctor Who for years to come. But, for my money, my favorite stretch of Thirteenth Doctor episodes is her very first series, which featured ten standalone episodes and one holiday special.

The relatively unheralded first series of the Thirteenth Doctor’s adventures with brand new companions gave us a continuity-light approach that allowed new viewers to jump into the show. It also brought back a classic series feel, bringing us some tropes that we hadn’t seen since before the Time War. I like this time in the show a lot, and here are some of my favorite things about it.

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