Action movie guilty pleasures

[matt]

The talk of blockbusters made me curious: What's everyone's favorite critically panned action movie?

I think my wife and I would have to answer Priest. Did anyone see that? It got a 16% on Rotten Tomatoes (worse than all the Transformers movies). It was a box office disaster, but to some extent, I blame the studio's marketing. Basically they thought it was going to be a failure, and sat on it for a while and then released it with a whimper...

Priest has:
Vampires
Cowboys
Catholic priests
Awesome jet powered motorcycles
Maggie Q

What's not to like?

Anyone else have guilty pleasures? I also *love* Snakes on Plane, but since that is tongue in cheek, I don't think it counts. (Also, it got a 68% on Rotten Tomatoes). I think I can be seen wearing a Snakes on a Plane shirt in like 10% of all developer diaries. hahah

[gagaplex]

Ghosts of Mars, a John Carpenter movie. It has:

Uma Thurman as a matriarchal law enforcer.
A slow, somewhat spooky beginning.
Aliens. Ghosts. Alien ghosts.
"Fast zombie"-like action scenes.
Hints towards an interesting historical background (of the aliens), though never fully explored.
Apocalyptic implications lending themselves to a "Land of the Dead"-like scenario.

[RightClickSaveAs]

Ghosts of Mars has some great scenes, but I've never gotten around to finishing it.

I like the first Resident Evil. Not that I played the games or anything, it was just a fun zombie movie with a weird laser trap scene and some entertaining action.

[matt]

Have you seen the movie Cube? I quite like it, and I feel like the laser trap was kind of ripped off from it. Don't see the sequel or prequel though. They are awful.

For some reason the first Resident Evil didn't quite register with me, but I enjoyed many of the sequels. I quite enjoy Paul W.S. Anderson's video game movies (I think Mortal Kombat is one of the best adaptations in terms of staying true to the source material) and of course Event Horizon.

I also have a soft spot in my heart for Stephen Sommers movies like the crazy pygmies in Mummy 2 and the hilarious brides of Dracula in Van Helsing. hahaha I think Deep Rising is my favorite of his films though.

[ranger_lennier]

I enjoyed the first Silent Hill movie, which sits at 29% on Metacritic. I didn't realize until I looked that up that there was a second one released in 2012, which scores 5%. Ouch!

[JPrice]

I can think of two.

The first is a comedy movie called "Don't Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood". It's basically a movie in the similar vein to the Scary Movie series but about 90's Gangster movies, has about 29% on Rotten Tomatoes and I can understand why. It is pretty juvenile like the Scary Movie franchise but call it nostalgia from when I watched it when I was younger or whatever but I still find it pretty amusing. Sure there are some jokes that don't hit but it's pretty solid throughout, a nice movie to just have fun with hahaha.

The other I don't know if I should count because it is technically awful but it's brilliant in how bad it is, an opinion that is shared by a lot of people who have seen the movie. It's called "Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky" and it's about a man who gets put into prison that has been corrupted. So he fights his way through all of the shit that's thrown at him really, it's a pretty basic and barebones plot to say the least but what makes it brilliant and awful is the dialogue and action scenes. All the dialogue is dubbed really badly, to the point where it is hilarious at times. Also the action is just so OTT at times that you can't help but just ask yourself "What the hell was that?" I encourage those who like cheesy martial arts movies to give it a watch, I mean the full movie is on Youtube to watch so it's not hard to track down haha

[Harry Sunderland]

Without hesitation, I answer my favorite action movie guilty pleasure is the "Super Mario Bros" film. It's a nostalgia film for me, and to this day quotes from it still pop in my head now and again.

"You went troo da bone and a da rock an found what?"
"Iridium"

"And Koopa, you're a lowsy leader!"

I think it just amazes me in how many ways it deviates from the source material, but in such creative ways. Yoshi as a velicoraptor, the mushrooms in the game as a fungus choking the entire city...the jumping ability coming from rocket boots...John Leguizamo as Luigi.

I found it for $5 at Walmart a few years ago and had my wife watch it. She was puzzled why I enjoy it.

Such a good movie.

Matt

I love the movie Cube! I once worked with an insane person who thought the secret message of the movie was that they shouldn't have helped out the autistic guy because of survival of the fittest/every man for himself. I felt like he missed a big point of the plot

Jprice

BTW +1 for Riki Oh! That movie is wonderful.

[matt]

I haven't seen Riki-Oh yet. It's been in my netflix queue for a while. I'll have to check it out. I liked Silent Hill: Revelations (the sequel) although it was basically followed the story of Silent Hill 3 and was kind of a mess that would only appeal to a Silent Hill fan.

The first one was pretty good although it followed "video game logic where people say here's a clue, solve a puzzle, and I'll meet up with you later, which seems strange in a movie even though it works so well in video games.

The Super Mario Bros is amazing how bad it is. You forgot to mention that they use guns that look exactly like the Super Nintendo Super Scope 6. hahahahah

[ranger_lennier]

Getting off topic, but too hilarious not to mention...

There's a pornographic parody based on the Super Mario Brothers movie, starring Ron Jeremy--"Super Hornio Brothers". And Nintendo bought the rights to it, just so it would never see the light of day. (Someone did track down a copy many years later.)

Scott Bromley made a video about it, which is not pornographic, but is funny.

[RightClickSaveAs]

Wow ranger, that is something! I know that picture of Ron Jeremy in a Mario outfit has made it's rounds on the internet, but I had no idea it was from a real parody movie.

Have you seen the movie Cube? I quite like it, and I feel like the laser trap was kind of ripped off from it. Don't see the sequel or prequel though. They are awful.

I forgot about Cube, I haven't seen it in a long time, but I loved the movie.

I enjoyed the first Silent Hill movie, which sits at 29% on Metacritic. I didn't realize until I looked that up that there was a second one released in 2012, which scores 5%. Ouch!

I also liked the first Silent Hill, even with some of the corny scenes, I thought it did a great job of capturing some of the mood and atmosphere of Silent Hill. The director said he was a huge fan of the games. Although that might have hurt the movie some, because it seems like he just jammed scenes from the games and characters such as Pyramid Head into the movie when they didn't necessarily fit with the movie storyline that well.

The second Silent Hill movie was not very good. It's on Netflix, that's how I caught it, but they miss the point of a lot of the story. Like Pyramid Head again, he shows up once more and it felt like they did it because they were obliged to for the fans, rather than serving any real narrative purpose. I did like that it loosely followed the 3rd game, they got a few good visuals out of it at least.