Friday Night Double Features Vol. 56

 by Adam Riske and Patrick Bromley

Cure your Dog Days of Summer Blues with these new double features!

Reserved Seating: Lumps of Coal 2023

The review duo (with special guest Patrick Bromley) who celebrate three underappreciated 2023 movies.

8-Bit World

by Melissa Uhrin

I belong to an elite group, with an entire “secret language” at our disposal, whom many find to be alien gibberish. No no, it's not Klingon, although I do love me some Star Trek TNG! The secret language to which I refer can most famously be summed up as this: UP, UP, DOWN, DOWN, LEFT, RIGHT, LEFT, RIGHT, B, A, START, SELECT. Elite group = NERDS.

I'll Watch Anything: Patrick Watches Super Mario Bros.

by Patrick Bromley

The poster says it: This ain't no game! Yes, but it's also not quite a movie.

F These Video Game Movies

This weekend sees the release of only one major studio film: Resident Evil: Afterlife, the fourth (fourth!) in the series of movies based on the Resident Evil videogame. Because when something is the worst, there should be more of it. That's how come there's Applebee's.

Let's F some video game movies. Spoiler: they all suck bad.

1. Street Fighter (1994) - Not the badass Sonny Chiba movie, but a Jean-Claude Van Damme vehicle based on the video games of the same name. Die Hard screenwriter Steven E. DeSouza "directs" this ugly, stupid imitation of a movie. This was Raul Julia's last film, which is maybe the most embarrassing final credit since Orson Welles bit it after playing the voice of Unicron in Transformers: The Movie. This thing made almost $100 million at the box office, because we're fucked.

2. Doom (2005) - Is the point of making video games into movies to make the movies as much like video games as possible? I thought that was the point of video games. Fuck this movie up its stupid ass.

3. Super Mario Bros. (1993) - Bob Hoskins IS Mario. John Leguizamo IS Luigi. British and Hispanic makes Italian. This movie has kind of a cult following, because parts of it are sort of dark and imaginative. Don't be fooled, though. It's mostly the worst. Dennis Hopper's portrayal of King Koopa is what ultimately killed him.

4. BloodRayne (2005) - Any of Uwe Boll's "movies" could go on this list, but BloodRayne is especially hilarious thanks to Michael Madsen and Meat Loaf and every single person in this barf. Also, it quickly ended the movie career of Kristanna Loken, which is also very funny.

5. Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li (2009) - Because Chris Klein as Nash.

6. Hitman (2007) - I want to make fun of this movie so badly, but I'm getting bored just thinking about how bored I am. Timothy Olyphant bald tattoo head naked Olga Kurylenko confusing this with Max Payne.

7. Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (2010) - The best movie about time sand ever made. Also the worst.

8. Double Dragon (1994) - Somehow manages to be worse than Super Mario Bros., because Never Forget.

9. Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001) - Someone decided to make a Lara Croft movie because they could cast Angelina Jolie as the big boob'd heroine. That was a good idea. It was the only idea anyone had, because this movie is death.

10. Mortal Kombat (1995) - Paul W.S. Anderson has a terrible reputation as a filmmaker, and shit movies like this one (which is about people fighting) are the reason why. Incidentally, he's also responsible for Resident Evil: Afterlife, so the suck has come full circle.