Wednesday, June 3, 2015

F This Movie! - Doomsday

Patrick and Mark Ahn celebrate #Junesploitation with action, cars, cannibals, gore, knights, swords, and an eyepatch. All in the same movie!



Download this episode here. (74.9 MB)

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Listen to F This Movie! on Stitcher.

Also discussed this episode: Ex Machina (2015); The Conversation (1974); UHF (1989); Eaten Alive: The Rise and Fall of the Italian Cannibal Film (2015); Sorceress (1982); Barely Lethal (2015)

22 comments:

  1. When I try to order a dozen eggs it soon nds nothing like Connery and instead comes out like Michael Cain somehow. Speaking of Connery, my bad good sci-fi movie would be Outland, which is one I emailed as a recommendation to cover sometime. But I also recommended The Ninth Gate, which probably why I got ignored. Heh. I really love both of those despite being messes.

    On Doomsday, it just needed a reason for us to care, and never does. Which is why it feels like post-apocalyptic family guy. I really liked that Wez wannabe though and would like to see him in more stuff. Might be too late for that though.

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    1. "Post-apocalyptic Family Guy" is a funny description for this movie.

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    2. My-koh Kane nevah ohduhs ehgz.

      I regret forgetting Outland. Also, Zardoz.

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    3. Jesus, Outland. Is that the worst High Noon knockoff?

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    4. Outland is awesome, so it can't be the worst anything.

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  2. I remember seeing this movie in the theater and the rapid cuts were so distracting that I was completely pulled out of the movie and just started counting every cut that happened in my head.

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  3. Doomsday does suffer from one fundamental flaw; it tries so hard to be like Mad Max, after about 5 minutes I always come to the conclusion of "I should just watch the Road Warrior instead." It's hard to pay homage to the films you really love, without coming off like a ripoff, or losing the director's individual voice (something like the Guest, which takes so much from Carpenter and other 80's directors, yet feels like it's own singular, unique story). Doomsday feels like a lesser version of all the movies it's taking from.

    Awesome trailer tho.

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    1. I was feeling that throughout my viewing of this, except my list of "movies I'd rather be watching right now" was the one of other middling sci-fi fare I said on the podcast. Which is totally not fair, because those movies aren't that much better.

      I really like your point about The Guest. It goes along with what Patrick said about the movie not having a take on anything that its honoring, but just showing a generic example of it.

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  5. I think we need to make a documentary of Kuffs but with Patrick made up as Christian Slater.

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  6. Thanks for the heads up about The Last Witch Hunter, I'm totally going to go see that now. As far as bottom-tier sci-fi goes I thought of: the adaptation of The Giver, the remake of Total Recall, and Battle: Los Angeles, and there's an embarrassing amount of Asylum mockbusters I've subjected myself to that are all atrocious. Great episode guys!

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    1. Battle: Los Angeles always reminds me of that other bottom feeder, Skyline.

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  7. Really fun podcast, guys good job. One thing I thought of while you guys were talking about the synth score, I honestly think that it would have improved the movie if only for the reason that when this was made, that would have been a super novel decision. 80s genre movie fans would have been so excited about that little detail that I imagine people would look on this movie a little more fondly, particularly because that was not a popular thing to do when this movie was made. I think now it wouldn't make that much of a difference simply because we have so many new genre movies using that type of score, but in 2009 people would have been super excited about it and would at least point to that as this positive takeaway from the movie.

    I'm going to hop on to the sci-fi talk train here a little. I'm not THAT well versed in the genre, but sci-fi is such a hard thing for me to look critically at. A lot of the time, I kind of feel like it's because often times sci-fi movies put you somewhere outside of the Earth that we know. And every movie does that to one extent or another, but with sci-fi it can a lot of times be so far removed from the reality that we live in that you have to spend time just kind of establishing the type of world you are in, which is super hard to do, and is why so many sci-fi movies seem so expository to me. And that is one of the things I don't like about a lot of sci-fi movies, often times people just have to sit and explain things to each other and it can get really boring (Ergo the MATRIX sequels). But this is where my quandary comes in when I try to decide what is good and bad sci-fi. If being expository is basically a universal problem with the genre, how much can I fault one individual movie for having the problem that almost every other sci-fi movie runs into at least once? Do I fault the movie for needing that exposition dump? Do I applaud movies that are creating such complex worlds that we need explanation? Or is that actually a bad thing? I don't honestly know. And my questions might just be because I haven't seen enough sci-fi to be able to make up my mind, but I honestly think that these are legitimate questions to be asking. And this might help explain why Patrick and Mark had such a problem naming awful sci-fi movies, and why many of them seem to just be in this middle category where it isn't awful, and it's not great. And I feel too that that is a legit phenomena, so it's not just you guys. Of course, I could just be psyching myself out by thinking way too hard about these sort of questions, but hey, I like writing about movie stuff like this and everybody here indulges me, so thanks for that.

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    1. Always like hearing your (and everyone's) thoughts, Tim. I totally hear you about sci-fi movies particularly struggling with too much exposition, and it made me think some more about what separates good sci-fi from not-so-good, and I think it comes down to balancing what is realistic and what is fantastical. Sci-fi has a unique pressure to really show something never seen before, because if it's not doing that, then it's probably not sci-fi. But it can't go too far off the track or else nobody will understand it (which is where the exposition dump problems come in). The good movies can find the balance in this tension; the bad ones don't.

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  8. The reason why you don't love Doomsday is in the podcast, but you don't realize it. You spend more time talking about all of these other movies ... and that's the issue. Doomsday has its homage to 28 Days Later and other attacking zombie flicks, its nod to Escape from New York, its love letter to Mad Max 2, and so on and so forth. All of which I could be watching, and would rather be watching, because they're all really good, fun movies. Take out the homages, the references, the references, and you get to what Doomsday is, and that is ... wait, there's nothing left. That's why you guys kept talking about all of these other movies. Because once you take out the other movies, there's literally nothing left in Doomsday.

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  9. Great fun guys
    I have seen Doomsday but I can remember almost nothing about it and I don't think you made me a good case to revisit it ;) I enjoyed the podcast though
    I also have the same feelings about The Decent, the monsters don't scare me but getting trapped in those tiny channels makes my palms sweat
    And Battlefield earth was the bad sci-fi on the tip of my tongue, Travolta with wrinkles on his forehead talking about Scientology ;)

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  10. I've always seen Doomsday as being in the tradition of those Italian ripoff movies from the 80s. It's the Italian ripoff the Italians can't afford to make.

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  11. Patrick, I told you those things in confidence! And Mark, I creepily rubbed your leg in confidence! Also, the Canadian accent? Not bad!

    I am going to save another Doomsday rewatch for an aproposploitation day (not many that aren't!) but you haven't given me much hope that it's finally going to hit my sweet spot. And I know my sweet spot is not a myth because Mad Max: Fury Road just hit it a couple weeks ago!

    Also, The Descent truly is the scariest movie I've seen in the past 10-15 years - Mark, if you're going to watch it, I would suggest doing it in the company of an affectionate Canadian with wandering, comforting hands.

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    1. I felt like it ended up being more Minne-soh-ta rather than Canadian.

      I wish wandering comforting hands were a feature in some of our upscale theaters. I need those more than I need chicken fingers.

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  12. Patrick your thoughts on lockout are spot on. Guy Pierce is awesome in this movie. It's a movie that I've went back to a few times expecting to like it only to find out that Guy Peirce is really the only thing I like about it.

    Max Payne and Hitman are both crap. Max Payne is slightly better crap but very much more disappointing because the game lays out a great story and the movie decides to do its on thing. Both movies have shitty action scenes. I've seen better interpretation of both on YouTube.

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  13. One of the few flicks I walked out on (Adventures in Babysitting, From Dusk Till Dawn, others)

    It tries so very hard and lands with the impact of a gnat's first turd.

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  14. Just heard the podcast while driving to work.
    I totally understand your indifference about this movie.
    I hated it...and just like you I also wanted to love it, just because Marshall`s "The Descent" is such a great achievement. I hated everything on "Doomsday". All the references that didn´t work for me, the fast cutting, the score, the camerawork, Rhona Mitra´s bad acting, even the extreme violence, which I usually like in movies, if it serves the story. But here this was just violence for violence`s sake. Everything is over the top and nothing really works.
    I also disliked his next movie "Centurion", despite Fassbender and warrior girl Olga Kurylenko, who by the way was also the female lead in "Oblivion" and "Hitman".
    "Centurion" was visually fine but also had a story that wasn´t very interesting.
    Marshall made some fine TV episodes for "Game of thrones" and "Black sails". Maybe he´s better suited for the small screen.

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