Planet Terror: A bad review of a movie that I couldn’t be bothered to watch.

Released:  April 2007

Directors/Producers: Quentin and his mate Rob

Stars: Josh Brolin, Bruce Willis and Rose McGowan

For more info on this cinematic masterpiece (if you care) Click link below:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planet_Terror



I tried. I really did, but I could only make it into the twentieth minute of this movie before I was so bored that I couldn’t stand watching another second of it.

I know that the politically correct feminist liberal geek crowd (who hate me anyway) will dismiss everything that I say about this movie, but what can I do? I try things out, but if they completely and utterly suck how do you expect me to react?

Ho-hum

Am I supposed to waste two plus hours of my life and squirm, yawn and sleep throughout the entire movie? Am I supposed to treat it like a bloody film school project and write an essay about it? What’s the point?

You might not believe this about me, but I actually have a completely worthless BA in film studies from some crappy UK university, so I know all about sitting through boring movies in order to write essays about them. Battleship Potemkin and the stupid bloody steps anyone? Anybody up for a marathon session of Hitchcock analysis focused on his creepy obsession with blondes and his seagull metaphors? Thought not. I’ve been there, and let me tell you this sad truth- the boredom factor that comes with analysing what has already been analysed to death is only matched by the abyss inducing pointlessness of it all.

Anyway, talking about useless film degrees and yawning middle-class students, let’s get back to the world of Quentin. Twenty minutes of fake grainy movie, deliberately bad acting, testicles being crushed up and a crying stripper is too much for me in 2014. I can’t even be bothered to talk about Quentin film student boy and his references to references to references. Yes, we know, he liked crappy old movies from the 70’s. Yes Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs were really cool when they first came out, much like Fatty Smith and his Clerks stuff. I’m boring myself now by even referencing these things, and that’s the problem. It’s just references to dead things, references to a dead past, there’s no connection to what is happening now.

I noticed that one of the characters in Planet Terror was doing something on the Internet. It looked weird, out of place, like the director had stuck it in there by mistake. It was like seeing a digital watch in a movie about Roman gladiators. It takes you out of the moment, you remember it’s just a silly movie, and the magic is gone. I thought this was set in the 70’s? Oh, it’s not? Why does it look like it was set in the 70’s then? This is confusing, and silly, and worthless, and why am I wasting my time here?

There was something painfully fake about the movie as well, and yes I know it’s supposed to be fake, but where’s the enjoyment in watching gross out scenes and bad acting, but all done with a Hollywood budget of millions of wasted dollars?  There’s something depressing and grotesque about the whole vanity project, because that’s what it is, a vanity project from an already comfortably successful man.

I like Bruce

The whole feel of the project was just too jarringly inane for me to enjoy. If I were some kind of stumbling comatose old drunk, then perhaps it would be watchable, but I don’t drink. Why the Hell would I want to watch a purposefully bad homage to low budget movies that some guy has overly romanticised from the distance of his uninteresting suburban childhood?

I’ve heard that Tarrantino is going to retire after his next movie and I don’t blame him. He must have a big mountain of cash by now, so why stay on the stage when you have run out of material, when you have nothing left to say? I give him credit for that; at least he knows that it’s time to go.

But as for Planet Terror, I can’t sit through this movie. It made me so sad to see Bruce Willis in it. Oh dear, that’s not cool, or retro, or whatever, it’s just sad. I don’t want to watch something that is just going to make me feel sad, and not a good sad in a Bambi or Bicycle Thief kind of way, just sad in a politician lying to get us into their latest corporate war kind of way.

I warned you that this would be a bad review, and I wasn’t lying was I? And yes I know that Robert Rodriguez was credited as director, but this movie has Quentin’s sweaty paw prints all over it. And yes I know that this review was terrible. I give myself a lazy and low 2:2 for it. I’m sorry, but I can’t put the effort in to actually watch, and then do a proper movie review of something as pointless as Planet Terror. There’s no fun to be had here, no fun at all.

Movie rating: N/A 

Comic review: The Humans #1- From the back-pages of a very old school book

Writer: Keenan Marshal Keller
Artist: Tom Neely
Publisher: Image Comics
Released: 5th November 2014

How do you rate a comic book that is deliberately trying to be silly, childish, dated, irrelevant, amateurish, and just very, very stupid? After all, when those objectives are achieved doesn’t that make it the perfect book?

Deliberately bad art?

Writer Keenan Marshal has done exactly what he intended to do here, so all criticisms are kind of pointless. It would be like criticising a Jackson Pollock painting as a load of silly squirts and squiggles haphazardly thrown onto a canvas by a raging drunk. Err yes, that’s exactly what it is. That’s what’s it’s supposed to be. It’s a big drunken mess, and therefore, it’s art.

How then to review a comic book about a 1970’s monkey biker gang? A comic book where the art is basic, amateurish, like it was put together by a fourteen year old boy, but then again it’s perfect for the book because the entire story also reads like it was put together by a fourteen year old boy, well a fourteen year old boy living out a beer, fights, girls and motorbike gang fantasy in the 1970’s.

The narrative content is funeral of deceased gang member; a fight with a rival gang and a closing revelation designed to hook us into buying the next issue.  There are no zombies yet, but give it time. A couple of the characters are introduced. They read like something a kid would dream up in the back of his maths book. That’s not a criticism, as that’s what writer Keenan Marshall is going for. The question then, why?

It's all very school-boy

I’m not sure why. Is it a nostalgia thing for a childhood of drawing monkey biker gangs back at school in the 1970’s? Probably, so does it work? I’m a 1980’s school-kid, all grown up, and still reading comics, for some reason, and I can see one of my old schoolmates putting together this comic after watching the planet of the apes and a 70’s biker/drugs movie. They would think it was all very adult and cool. I would just think it was a bit silly.

I don’t really understand who the audience for this book is supposed to be? Is it guys over the age of fifty who want a bit of schoolboy nostalgia, perhaps? Could it be the dreaded ‘hipster’ who is into ‘retro’ 1970’s stuff in a Quentin Tarantino way? I guess so. Is that a big audience in 2014?

I read the book in five minutes, had a bit of a laugh at how deliberately stupid it all was, and that’s it for me. I’m not going to keep on reading. Why should I? It’s just a case of, oh so that was daft then, next. No deeper thoughts come to mind. It’s a stupid book, but it’s supposed to be a stupid book. Do you want to read a deliberately stupid retro book for hipsters? If so, this will be something you’ll want to check out. For the rest of us however, it offers a momentary giggle, and no reason to buy issue #2.

Rating: 6/10 (for the laugh factor)