The Millennium Bug was something that I hadn't heard of, not that me not hearing about something isn't about par. I do discover stuff on my own but of late I've been driven by the British tv bug and my video explorations have taken another path. No matter. Since I don't need to see stuff when it comes out I can wait for it to pop up. I didn't have to wait too long to see this new comedy horror movie that uses no CGI as a selling point. TMB was made in 2011, released in 2012, and and I saw it tonight. The movie takes place on New Years Eve 1999, which, for those that remember, there was a scare about the 1999 to 2000 year change. It was thought that we'd have some chaos from all the computers going nutz when they couldn't deal with the time change. Nothing much happened, except businesses spent over 3oo billion dollars on possibly unneeded software protections.
A couple, dad and step mom, and their teenage daughter are all traveling to some remote abandoned town in some forested area. They camp out in the woods and are attacked by some hillbillies. The family are beaten and kidnapped, brought to the hillbillies filthy, and mold covered, house in the woods, where the daughter is going to be the bride for the hillbilly family's son. In the forest around the house a guy is looking for the millennium bug. It's a rare species that only comes out of hibernation once every thousand years to lay eggs and die, all after one day. Sounds like a really lousy life, huh. Mind you, the bug is huge and it can crash through the forest, eating people, so, it's got that going. Back at the house the kidnapped family fights back and there's plenty of punching, shooting and gore. Soon as the millennium bug appears more of them get chomped.
The movie is the work of a small group headed by writer, director, producer Kenneth Cran. It's his first movie and he did a pretty good job. Speaking of jobs, Kenneth had his hand in the art direction, set production, costumes and editing. The movie is fairly low budget but they manage to spend their money very well. The monster is done with puppets and large props. It's not perfect but it fits the rest of the production. The script is funny, a nice mix of redneck mutant charm, ludicrous violence and giant monster action. It made me laugh more than once. Glad I seen it.
I'm not so happy having seen Sharknado. It has to be one of the worst of the films from that crappy film company The Asylum. Over the years they have repeatedly gone out of their way to make some drek. Our previous film is proof that a low budget film can be well done. Sharknado certainly doesn't live up to the hype it got before and after it aired on the Syfy channel. I saw a few minutes in the middle on Syfy and some bits on YouTube. It would have been good to leave it at that but I was stupid. interested in seeing what I missed. It was nothing. Visually the movie is a train wreck. They had a budget of a million bucks and it just seems wasted. It was four times the budget of The Millennium Bug which looked a whole lot better. I can understand that the stock footage used in the film might not match what the film makers actually shot but much of what they shot doesn't match what they shot. In one shot the hero is hanging off a bridge over a raging torrent of water. He's there to rescue some stranded kids in a school bus. How he got there was one heck of a poorly written scene. In the wide shots of the bus you can see the water rushing by but in the shots of the hero rappelling down the street is dry. It's the laziest sort of film making.
The director, Anthony C Ferrante, summarized the plot in Uproxx's Danger Guerrero te "There’s a flood. And a storm. Don’t worry about it." Thing is, you need to worry about it some, or people start to compare you to Ewe Boll. Scriptwriter Thunder Levin doesn't seem to care much about his script either. I could be wrong, maybe he's just a poor writer. The script is poor, the dialog lame, it made us tired hearing it. We weren't digging the movie and the users on the IMDb are somewhat in agreement. They give the movie a 3.5 and well below average is about what it is. The users on Rotten Tomatoes give the movie a 41% which is a bit high but acceptable. The critics reviews on Rotten Tomatoes were 79% positive. What the fuck did they see?
I read this bit on the Wikipedia:
Reviewer Mary McNamara, writing for the Los Angeles Times, mentioned that the plot holes are "the whole point of movies like this" and that they are "fabulous in-home commentary. Often accompanied by the consumption of many alcoholic beverages."
Somehow, I bet I couldn't consume enough alcoholic beverages to make me like this movie. It does remind me that people look at movies in different ways, though I can't even imagine seeing plot holes as being the whole point of movies like this. There should be no encouragement for plot holes. Especially ones where it's obvious the writer didn't even try. I always assume some folks are drinking while watching, and writing. Since drinking impairs the brain, I've always felt that it explains a certain number of 10's on the IMDb, and several scripts. There are comments on movie sites that talk about the movie as being low budget camp and that it was meant to be like that. It just seems wrong to me to intentionally try making camp movies. It seems like an excuse a crappy film maker would use when he couldn't do something well. At least I now know that I won't need to see Sharknado again. Sadly I'll probably forget how poor this was when Sharknado 2 comes out next year. Hopefully, someone will remind me not to watch it.
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