Everyone has a few movies that they love but are scared to admit to. Whether it’s a love of Rogers and Hammerstein musicals beloved by an iron-pumping bodybuilder or a nun with a secret love of the Rambo trilogy, we are all equal in the fact we harbour fondness for movies that are seen as too immature, too stupid, too badly made or too inappropriate for us to enjoy without being mocked.
I have a real love of old 1950s SciFi films (Earth Vs The Flying Saucers, etc.), but I think that Mystery Science Theater 3000 has bludgeoned the irony out of them. Actually, I really enjoy MST3K, having done similar commentary and voice-overs with friends long before I found the show. I think that such films make too easy a target (often bad acting, poor scripting and low budget effects combine to create something far greater than the sum of its parts), so I’ve had a think and come up with a new list of Ten Top Guilty Pleasures – I hope you like them as much as I do!
Hackers:
I work in the digital realm and this film should be a total anathema to me – poorly thought-out techno-tripe written by someone who obviously has difficulty checking their email, let alone describe the intricacies of Denial Of Service attacks, Spoofing, Phishing, Worms (don’t get me started on the movie Swordfish – “let’s use a Hydra, it’s a multi-headed Worm!”) and other such technical jiggery-pokery.
The fact is, though, that it stands out as a pretty good attempt to capture the Cyberpunk counter-culture of the 1990s. Matthew Lillard, in particular, gives a great performance as an obviously intelligent, moral teenager who is trying to create an identity as a slacker disaffected with society (his character, “Serial_Killer”, is really called Emmanuel Goldstein – the name of a real-life prominent figure in the hacker/phreak culture, who published a magazine for hackers and has so-far avoided prosecution).
Ok, Johnny Lee Miller looks about 35, not 17, and Angelina Jolie’s character doesn’t bring anything to the party other than to act as a romantic interest, but the close-knit group of schoolkids who happen to identify their clique by their computer skills is actually pretty well-observed – hackers are defined by their need to boast of their exploits in order to gain kudos amongst their peers, whilst simultaneously being socially awkward – generally speaking, hackers, geeks, phreaks (or whatever else you may call them) can only relate to others of their kind – be it via Star Trek conventions, role-playing games or, as per this case, a common love of technology and shared distrust of the “straight” society which ostracises them and fails to recognise their obviously superior computer skills.
Speaking as one who was a teen in the early 1990s that was into computers (I lusted after Silicon Graphics workstations when most kids lusted after Ferraris), I can say that my friends and I were probably out of step with society as we thought in digital terms, our heroes being the demo crews, hackers and literary icons like William Gibson – his novel “Neuromancer” and the sequels, “Count Zero” and “Mona Lisa Overdrive”, pretty much defined our world view – vaguely nihilistic, sarcastic, obsessed with technology and information. We spent lunch breaks coding or hacking the school network for fun (yet jealously guarded “our” computer lab against unwanted abuse by non-technical types), our conversations centred on the latest demo, the best piece of new kit we couldn’t afford or even dismantling old machines to see how they had been put together.
Actually, in hindsight, it’s hardly surprising most of us ended up working as programmers, as IT support or in the digital creative realm, as most of us were hoping for the millennium to usher in the days of flying around the ‘Net/Matrix using our Ono Sendai decks and were a little disappointed by the reality, especially as the internet is now basically brochure-ware and porn. I tend to feel that Tim Berners-Lee was correct in saying that the Web as it stands is not fulfilling it’s potential (he said of the Web 2.0 hype frenzy, “Nobody really knows what it means...If Web 2.0 for you is blogs and wikis, then that is people to people. But that was what the Web was supposed to be all along.") – his original proposal to CERN in 1990 showed much more collaborative community-based architecture than the content-server model we ended up with on the World Wide Web. In fact, a lot of experts critics the term Web 2.0 as nothing more than marketing jargon, whilst I certainly feel that the flat page model of the internet is both user-unfriendly and the wrong paradigm for navigating what is essentially a 4-dimensional realm of information, but I digress.
So, cheesy CGI aside, this film is essentially a teenage-gang prevents heist affair, but it does explain the ethics of true hacking (it’s about data liberation, not financial or criminal gain – true hackers believe that governments should be open and so should big business. It’s when the doors close that the corruption begins, so keep the doors open) and shows that Matthew Lillard is sorely wasted doing (admittedly good) Shaggy impressions for the rest of his life.
It’s a bit of a no-brainer, but it is the first film I ever saw that tried to approach this culture in anything other than a “petulant kid hacks computer, gets into trouble and learns his lesson” kind of way (see Wargames for a prime example) – in fact, it actually goes so far as praising the ethos of keeping data transparent to all, which is a refreshing change!
Johnny Mnemonic:
If ever a film defined the term “failing to meet expectations”, this is it. A film, made at the height of the Cyberpunk era (Hackers, Lawnmower Man, Virtuosity, The Net – all were made around the same time, give or take), based on a short story by William Gibson – the Godfather of Cyberpunk – and the initial screenplay was even penned by him. The tale of woe that followed (arguments with the studio and dissatisfaction with the film eventually ended up with Gibson walking away, the director was, if I recall, fired and the film re-cut by a panel of studio producers creating a shorter film with a happy ending) led to an end product that wasn’t by any means going to challenge Bladerunner in the all-time classic stakes. However, this is a much maligned film and I think it’s unfair.
Sure, the vision of the internet is cheesily quaint today, but back in the 1990s it’s exactly what things like Apple’s HotSauce, VRML and the Silicon Graphics 3D file system (FSN) were promising and, in some ways, it makes sense from a navigation point of view. Without getting into a lecture on web semantics, the current model pushes flat data at a user and has led to very low interactivity and an even lower fulfilment of the internet’s promise of being a true digital nation. The nearest we have come are things like Second Life and those, like the depiction of the internet in this film, is in 3d – it’s how we navigate in real life and how we make sense of our environment – having a 3d web interface, even if the end result of your journey is a flat document, makes sense. So, let’s not scoff quite so much at this concept, eh?
So the technology is a bit dated now, but at the time it was using cutting-edge concepts (virtual reality, etc) and the idea that media saturation could control society is something scarily prophetic – look at the way Fox News and other pro-Bush outlets were so vitriolic towards those who questioned the Iraq war, or the lack of consistency in the story being told about 9/11 – even now, the US populace lives under government control with restricted civil liberties due to a terror “threat” that is only known about via the media. Think of the LoTeks as a cyberpunk version of Michael Moore and the Daily Show – punching through the fog of crap to get people to open their eyes and things make some more sense.
The film is, undeniably, stunningly produced – the sets are well dressed, well thought out and small details are right. Ok, the casting is a bit hit and miss, although I do think Keanu does a good job, I think Ice T looked uncomfortable and wonder if Henry Rollins wouldn’t have been better in his role. Or, given the fact that in Gibson’s universe, the Cowboys (hackers) and hustlers are always quite young due to short life expectancy, maybe a younger actor with more nervous energy (like Lillard in Hackers) would have been more appropriate. And, yes, I understand the reasoning behind the Dolphin, but Gibson’s universe is post-Nuclear and animals are all but extinct – I think that it’s possibly things like this that caused the rifts at the studio…
All in all, though, it’s actually not a bad film. If it had a £100Million budget, it would have been the Matrix, but then again it stands up far better than the sequels in that trilogy. The script is a bit patchy, but it’s trying to communicate an awful lot and even Bladerunner has its flaws, and I speak as a dedicated fan of that film – I actually feel that the studio-added voiceover added a lot of depth to the film, but who am I to argue with Ridley Scott? In fact, if you like Gibson’s books and the Matrix, then forget the reviews and your preconceptions, forgive the fact that time makes some of the “future concepts” look quaint and you’ll find yourself enjoying this a lot.
Tremors:
What can I say, I think it’s just a good, funny, tongue-in-cheek homage to the B-Movie creature flicks of the 1950s. It’s not trying too hard to be anything other than a fun couple of hours and Fred West and Kevin Bacon are a great pairing, too – not much else to say, really.
Judge Dredd:
As a kid I loved 2000AD. I was a British kid, in the 1980s, who liked technology and dystopian sci-fi, so of course, Dredd and Hershey’s antics were of interest to me. I always liked ABC Warriors, had liked some of the Rogue Trooper stories and always really enjoyed Slaine. So when I heard that Dredd was going to be a movie, I was psyched. Then I heard Stallone was going to play him. Given that this was before films like Demolition Man, where he’d show pretty good comic instincts and things like Daylight, where he’d actually shown he could act and I was understandably nervous: Rambo as Dredd? We’d lose all of the dark humour as it was Americanised beyond belief and it would just become a crappy vehicle for a steroid freak with a half-paralysed face!
Thankfully, whilst the film is inevitably more US-centric in tone, it is actually pretty good. Rob Schneider is good as the light relief and the overall feel of the Megacity is good, although it has to be said some of the effects shots are a bit Picard-era Star Trek in feel (too clean and pristine) – the Megacity is supposed to be a huge hive barely able to sustain its populace, yet some of the shots look like a rainy shopping centre (or Mall, to our colonial cousins). That said, it’s a good, if a little hokey, action film that is worth an afternoon’s viewing. A popcorn movie, if you will.
The Ringer:
Ok, I’m supposed to be mature and I’m supposed to be politically correct, but the fact is that this Johnny Knoxville vehicle makes me laugh very hard indeed. What’s nice is that, while it makes fun of the special kids involved, it makes fun of them in the same way as it’s making fun of everyone – in fact, they often come out of things looking smarter or more compassionate than the “normal” folks. This film has possibly the best training montage I have ever seen, although I wouldn’t let these guys make my protein shake…
The 13th Warrior:
Let’s start off by heading off the obvious arguments – no, this is not as good as “Lord of the Rings” and, no, it’s not a brilliant adaptation of “Beowulf”. However, as a standalone film it’s very enjoyable. I know that the original cut had a much longer, slower, darker storyline and that it had a different soundtrack, but unlike a lot of film geeks, I wouldn’t rush to see that original version – it was screen-tested and universally hated, which is why they cut out 45 minutes or so and made it zip along.
It’s not perfect – there’s an unexpectedly Celtic Norseman and, at times, Antonio Banderas looks alternately lost and wooden, but the fact is that it’s a pretty good story (based roughly on Michael Crichton’s book “The Eaters of the Dead”, which itself was based loosely on “Beowulf”) – there’s a grim humour amongst the Norsemen and a strong sense of honour and Brotherhood-in-Arms, which leaves you feeling rather buoyed up and very emotional when Bulliwyf meets his fate.
It’s not all plodding script, though – there is some good old Saturday-morning-matinee action and some very nice set design, especially the besieged settlement that forms the location for the dramatic climax. I also like the clever way the director gets around the language barrier – slowly words you understand start to creep into the Norwegian (or possibly Finnish) that the Vikings are talking, until in one scene, Antonio Banderas’ character (nicknamed “Eben” due to a misunderstanding over his real name: Ahmed Ibn Fahdlan Ibn Al Abbas Ibn Rashid Ibn Hamad) suddenly answers the Norsemen’s jibes in their own language (which is now all spoken as English) – it’s a very clever way of doing this and I really think it adds a lot to the understanding of Eben’s journey to get to know the wild men of the North and to also grow himself from petulant court lackey to true Hero.
It’s one of the go-to films I have for rainy days or when I want to get in the mood to paint a battalion of wargame miniatures, or even if I just need a good dose of stirring action. No, it won’t be likely to win an Oscar, but it’s good fun and I love it to bits.
Dodgeball:
It’s really a toss-up between this and Zoolander, but I think that Dodgeball edges it because it just feels more fun. The premise (run-down owner of a run-down gym decides to enter a dodgeball tournament to pay off his mortgage and save his slacker lifestyle along with the bunch of social outcasts that form his clientele) is pretty thin, some of the dialogue is cringe-worthy (especially some of Ben Stiller’s lines), but I can’t help but laugh at this film. From the stupid “learn the 5 D’s of dodgeball – dodge, duck, dip, dive and…er..dodge”, to the ridiculous (“if you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball”), to the unexplained presence of a pirate, I cannot help but chuckle like an idiot.
This film is even better for the cameo by Lance Armstrong when the hero (Vince Vaughan) is thinking of bailing out on his team-mates when things get tough (“when I was diagnosed with brain, lung and testicular cancer, I thought about quitting, but I got back on the bike and won the Tour De France five times…what life-threatening illness are you dying from?” “Right about now, it feels like shame…”), which adds an odd endorsement to an idiotic parody of the usual triumph-over-adversity sports movie.
National Treasure:
Ok, it’s not Indiana Jones (but let’s be honest, the last Indy film wasn’t perfect), but it’s not as bad as people make out. Yes, it borrows a lot from the aforementioned fedora-wearing archaeologist, takes a dash of The Da Vinci Code’s conspiracy theories, adds in a smattering of The Goonies and turns the blender on. The fact is that, whilst not breaking new ground, this is a perfectly acceptable afternoon’s viewing. Hell, people watched Sahara and, whilst it was based on a successful series of books, that film was truly diabolical.
National Treasure sits somewhere above Relic Hunter, but below Indy or even Romancing The Stone’s comic adventure. I think the nearest analogy I can find is a film called The Librarian, which appears to be a made-for-TV/straight-to-DVD effort starring Noah Wyle (and also seems to be part of a series) – it’s an enjoyable hour and a half, with a reasonable, if hokey, script, some good set pieces and it makes a good run-up to Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade or Raiders Of The Lost Ark in a B-Movie sort of way. Don’t give it headline status, but it’s worth adding to the DVD collection as rainy-day filler, I think.
Hudson Hawk:
Where to begin? Ego-trip for the Bruno that fell flat on its face, dated badly and which Mr Willis now hates to even hear mentioned. Or, as others would have it, cult hit that has a huge dedicated fan base and to which a sequel, if done right, would probably make a bundle of money. This film is rather like The Princess Bride, which bombed on release and was slated in reviews, only to become one of the biggest hits in the VHS rental market, subsequently becoming a huge seller on DVD and a cult icon.
Hudson Hawk is stupid, chaotic, an over-long setup for one-liners and shots of Bruce Willis smirking knowingly, whilst wearing shades, but Moonlighting was huge and that series basically revolved around exactly the same thing – script was always secondary to the charisma of Bruce (and to a lesser extent, Cybil Shephard). It’s hard not to enjoy the scenes where Bruce and Danny Aiello sing “Singin’ On a Star”, or the crazily over-the-top performance by Richard E Grant. Hell, I can even forgive Sandra Bernhardt for being, well, Sandra Bernhardt. It’s like Marmite – you’ll either love it or hate it, but I am one of those who love it. It’s a truly guilty pleasure.
Chain Reaction:
So dumb it slaps you in the face. Keanu Reeves, still sporting his Bill and Ted “bogus” hair-do and “bodacious” wearing of hooded top under plaid shirt, is a physics PHD working on Nuclear Fusion. Except he’s not a student, from what I can tell – he’s more like an idiot savant. It’s never really explained, but basically he’s the rebellious dude who does physics his way and doesn’t follow the rules…of physics. Well, you get the idea.
Having taken part of what would be a multi-million dollar top-secret experiment home with him one evening, he stumbles across a solution to the projects’ problems and essentially creates a cold fusion reactor where dozens of the top minds have failed. Cue shady government project sponsor killing everyone and framing Keanu and the up-tight by-the-rules student, played by Rachael Weisz.
What follows is a game of cat-and-mouse with Keanu trying to avenge his dead mentor, clear his name and, obviously, get Ms Weisz into bed. I’ll be honest, it’s crazily dumb in places – out-running a nuclear blast on a 1965 Norton motorcycle is one example; being able to survive falling into icy water by wandering around a bit whilst wearing nothing warmer than a woolly shirt is another. Basically, don’t try to follow the logic – leave your brain at the door and it’s not a bad film. Of course, as a qualified scientist, the lab scenes make me want to scream, but I long ago accepted the fact that Hollywood can’t use real science as it’s rarely exciting enough to make for a good movie.
So, there you have it – my top ten guilty pleasures, or crappy films I enjoy watching but feel pressured to slate when in public. I’m sure that you have your own list – just admit it!
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