A Week Of Uwe Boll #6: The Demented Encyclopedia #13 - The One About Uwe Boll.

With 1 minute to spare! Uwe Boll week has come to a close as Travis and I record our 13th episode of The Demented Encyclopedia, dedicating it to the man, the mystery, the legend... Uwe Boll.

Basically, after a couple unrelated recommendations, we go through his entire catalog and discuss his movies, give our thoughts, and wrap it up with the D-Bag.

From there, we move on to one of our newer segments, Film vs. Film. I attempt to argue that BloodRayne is a more entertaining film than Far Cry, as Travis tries to argue, well, the opposite.

And, finally, we end with the Mono-Dialogues of the Week. And that's about it!

Thanks goes out to Kevin MacLeod's Imcompetech Website for the music. As always, you can use the player above to listen to the podcast, or you can search iTunes, where we are also available for download. The earlier episodes are being removed from the player for space, but you can still always download them on iTunes. Also, please become a Fan on Facebook... then you can give us your input for the podcast and will probably end up on the show during the D-Bag segment, as well as vote for which film in Film vs. Film won for the week. But as for now... enjoy!

A Week Of Uwe Boll #5: Seed.

I'm not even going to give this movie my time or effort in giving it a full-out review. So here are my basic, straight-forward thoughts:

Ahem.

Fuck the animal violence footage.

Fuck the nearly non-existent yet simultaneously confusing-ass plot.

Fuck the illogical actions by the zero-dimensional characters (seriously? No backup? No 'officer down!'? Oh, and WHY NOT try to execute him one more time before you faked his death anyway? And more... so much more).

Fuck the "you can't see shit because it's too fucking dark" cinematography through the entire fucking movie.

Fuck the editing.

Fuck the characters who you don't care for because you don't even know their names much less anything else about them.

Fuck the incredibly pointless hammer scene.

Fuck the ending.

Fuck Jodelle Ferland's agent for allowing her to be in this movie, as she's the only talent in this piece of shit, and she was only about 12 at the time.

Fuck Uwe Boll, who lost any semblance of respect he had garnered from me over the last few days after watching this "movie."

Fuck Uwe Boll again for making me actually say the following: this movie makes Hostel seem like the fucking Godfather. And we know how much I loathe Hostel and its stupidness.

Fuck anybody who thinks there's any minute of this film that's good or entertaining, even if it's in a "so bad it's good" way, because it isn't, and they're wrong, and they lose any kind of credibility as a movie commentator by saying otherwise. And finally...

Fuck. This. Movie.

Peace out.


She's Gone From Suck to Blow!

(And no, it wasn't because I found the movie "hard to stomach" or anything like that. We all know I love horror and gore. After the PETA footage at the beginning, I was fine. It's just a really, really bad movie.)

A Week Of Uwe Boll #4: BloodRayne.

Travis is probably gonna hate me for this one. Let me start off by saying out of all the Uwe Boll movies I had up to watch, BloodRayne was my most anticipated. Why? For a couple reasons. First, it's considered by many to be up there with Alone in the Dark as one of Boll's absolute worst films, and I couldn't wait to see this for myself. Second, I remember when it came out in theater and when the trailers first came out; I remember how fake it looked, and I often said that a Sci-Fi Channel Original looked more convincing. Combine that with a completely bizarre cast and a scene where you get to see Kristanna Loken's boobs, and I was in. And no, I've never played the video games the movie is based on.

The movie is about a Dhampir (where the P is pronounced like an F)--a half human/half vampire--named Rayne (Kristanna Loken). Many years ago, her vampire father, Kagan (Ben Kingsley), raped and murdered her mother. Ever since, she's been out for revenge. Then we also have the members of a vampire-killing society--Vladimir (Michael Madsen), Sebastian (Matt Davis), and Katarin (Michelle Rodriguez). Katarin's father, Elrich (Billy Zane), was in charge of this society... that is, until he became a vampire himself. Anyway, this society protects powerful objects/body parts that can make any vampire super powerful, and--of course--Kagan is after them. But Rayne will get these objects herself if it means finding a way to get to Kagan and kill him.

The movie's story is all over the place. Half the crap in this movie doesn't make sense, and that's being generous. Hell, Billy Zane's character ends up having absolutely no point. He's in maybe 3 scenes which go absolutely nowhere, and then he's never heard from again. It wasn't necessarily confusing as it was just laughably bad. There's even a sex scene that comes out of nowhere, which is the infamous scene where we get to see Kristanna Loken topless. And then it's never mentioned again.

The acting is atrocious, as well. The majority of the cast is incredibly out of place. Ben Kingsley doesn't even phone it in; Hell, he doesn't even sleepwalk through it. He gives us what is probably the most boring villain in any vampire story, not to mention one of the laziest performances of his career. Michael Madsen is obscenely out of place, and his pauses in between his monotone speech makes William Shatner look like Alan Rickman (oh yeah, I went there). As for Michelle Rodriguez, let's just say I pull off a more convincing British accent than she does, not to mention I can keep it going longer. Half the time she talks normal. Kristanna Loken is guilty of the same, but it was more noticeable with Miss Rodriguez. I mean, Jesus, when Billy Zane gives the best performance in your movie... though I should have realized this when the opening credits actually said "With Special Appearance By Billy Zane." Yeah. Billy Zane actually gets the "special appearance" tag for this movie. That tells ya something.

I never find reason to talk about props and costumes in movies. If you're a regular reader of mine, you'll know that. But I have to comment here. The costumes, primarily the wigs, are so bad they're ridiculous. From Ben Kingsley's to Meatloaf's (yes, Meatloaf is in this movie. You know what they say, some Meatloaf Aday keeps the doctor away... or something like that). And the weapons? Never have I seen duller swords. My Sword of Gryffindor (don't be jealous) could do more damage than Rayne's arm swords. And Ms. Loken moves so slowly with them, she gives you plenty of time to take it all in.

This leads in to the action. This movie was a gore fest. Granted, the blood was incredibly fake, as were any damaged body parts (sliced limbs, bashed heads, cut torsos, etc.). The camera stayed on them long enough that you could tell how fake they were. And the bright fake blood didn't help. There's actually one scene that's pretty funny when there are a bunch of guys beating a ripped open corpse with their swords, but they're doing it so slowly and with such bored looks on their faces. It's like they were trying out for the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disney World. Just going through the motions. But besides the gore, the action wasn't half bad. Sure, it was slow and not very fluid, as if the actors were too scared to play with their fake weapons, but it was still entertaining.

On top of all this, the script is terrible. Now, to his credit, Uwe Boll didn't write it. A woman named Guinevere Turner did. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the same Guinevere Turner who was partially responsible for the screenplay of American Psycho. And it. is. bad. The conversations are jilted, mainly for 2 different reasons. First, everything is expository. There is no character building conversations. Every single sentence has to to with moving along the plot, even to the point where transitions in scenes make no sense and are forced. The second reason is that there are absolutely no contractions. This movie is apostrophe-phobic, I guess, because every little syllable of every word must be said. And as I said earlier, the story makes no sense part of the time, giving us unnecessary moments of story (Billy Zane's character... or Meatloaf's character).

All of this being said, I have to say that I actually enjoyed the movie. Some will say it's painfully boring. Some will say it's just bad. And some say it's a total rape of the video game. But I haven't played the video game, and I think this movie is actually so bad it's good. With bad acting reading the words from a bad script with actors wearing bad wigs and doing bad action scenes with overtly fake gore, all to further a plot that nobody really cares about? It's just so bad it's hilarious. And yes, I did laugh at points from the badness. And the reason I think I enjoyed BloodRayne more than some of Uwe Boll's other works thus far, such as Postal or Far Cry, is because of its consistency. Postal actually has some truly good moments in it, so its inconsistency to be either good or bad made it hard to watch. Far Cry just tried too hard; it had good ideas, but a really poor execution. BloodRayne is just bad all around, a bad that is so bad you're not sure that it wasn't made like this on purpose. Even the cinematography is bad, which is why I had the initial thought from the trailers that it came off as a really bad Sci-Fi Channel Original. So what did I think of at the end? That I was wrong. I actually think it would have made a pretty decent Sci-Fi Channel Original, though it was still at that quality and did not deserve the theater run. The only reason it did was the star power, I'm sure.

If there was anything I didn't like about the movie, even in a so bad it's good kinda way, it was the ending. There's about a 2-3 minute flashback montage of a bunch of bloody/violent acts that occurred throughout the rest of the movie (some of it in slow motion), just in case you had tried to forget it by this point. And it is a bloody montage, indeed. Still, it serves absolutely no purpose other than to confuse, which it did. But that was just a minor quibble in an otherwise super-campy, super-bad, so-bad-its-good vampire flick.

When it comes to these types of movies, I hate giving them ratings, because there are two levels to it. There's the actual movie score and the "how I perceived it" score, and I really don't like doing more than one score per movie. So I'm gonna go ahead and invent a brand new score, premiering today (actually, there are 2 new scores. The second I'll hardly ever have to use, but I have had to score a handful of movies with that rating in the past, so I figured it might as well get a picture). Ladies and gentlemen, I give you... the "Hot Mess" rating:


A Hot Mess

(P.S. Both new ratings can be found in the sidebar "Ratings" section.)

A Week Of Uwe Boll #3: Far Cry.

Wow. What can I say about Far Cry? I guess we'll just start with the plot. On a military-run island (I think), a man named Dr. Krieger (Udo Kier) is doing experiments on soldiers, trying to create the ultimate super soldier that can be controlled by said military. One of the men working there, though he doesn't really want to, is a man named Max (Ralf Moeller), who is the uncle of a reporter named Valerie (Emmanuelle Vaugier). He sets up a covert meeting for them on the island, so Valerie needs to find a way to get there. She hires a boat driver named Jack Carver (Til Schweiger), who also happens to be ex-Special Forces... and also happens to have fought in said special forces with Max... to take her to the island. But they're found out at soon as they get there and are nearly killed. Jack wants to just find a boat and get off the island, but Valerie refuses to leave without Max. Completely illogical stuff ensues.

First and foremost, I want to start off with the acting. It's atrocious. Like, really, really bad. I'm not even gonna go into detail. I'll just post this video that happens at the very beginning of the movie:



And it doesn't get any better from there. In fact, you don't hear much of Jack in this video, but he's just... ugh. I've never played the video game, so I don't know if Jack has a German accent in the game (or if there's even a voice over), but they could have--at the very least--gone with somebody who didn't struggle with English and then have them do a German accent.

It could have very well been my TV, but the action scenes in the first half of the movie were so dark you couldn't see what the hell was going on. Fortunately, I do have to admit that the action in the last 30 minute or so of the film is much better, particularly once all the super soldiers are released. But this is also a prime example of how ridiculous and illogical this movie was. The super soldiers had super skin that acted essentially like Kevlar. If they were shot, the bullets basically bounced off them. So tell me if this makes sense: The super soldiers were given Kevlar vests to wear, while the regular, non-super soldiers did not get Kevlar vests. And the greatest part? Everybody continually shot directly at the Kevlar vests on the super soldiers. Not their clearly open arms or heads. And you'd think they'd just go for the head shot. They couldn't possibly be afraid of missing. After all, seconds after they learn they need to aim for the EYE or MOUTH, everybody becomes an incredible marksman and can shoot a super fast super soldier in the EYE without even aiming. Hell, there's one moment where a woman just spins around and shoots one in the eye in about a second. And don't get me started on the romance and sex to be had within hours of meeting each other and previously being unable to stand each other. Or the elongated deaths, where there can be reactions and further actions to advance the plot right before death, despite being shot IN THE FACE (and boy did those eye shots just look stupid and unrealistic).

Let me try to put this another way. Remember yesterday when I discussed how Chris Coppola could have single-handedly destroyed Postal for me? Yeah, he was the best part of this movie. His character was actually pretty funny, though he's not really introduced until the last third of the movie. Udo Kier (who you'll instantly recognize, despite probably never having seen the majority of his movies) is a pretty decent villain. His acting is probably the least annoying (after Chris Coppola). The worst thing about the whole thing? (SPOILER ALERT) They never show his demise. That's right. You don't even get the satisfaction of seeing the villain defeated. You see the super soldiers coming toward him as he stands with his back to a cliff, but that's it. Then it goes to the escape boat with our heroes, and that's the end of the conflict. (END SPOILERS)

Yeah. This movie is pretty bad. There are a couple redeeming factors (like Chris Coppola's character), but that's about it. It's dull. It's inept. It's stupidly illogical. And up until Rampage, people apparently considered this Uwe Boll's best movie. And as I'm going in descending order based on rank, I can't wait to see what I have to look forward to next. As for Far Cry, I can totally see this as a movie to riff on with friends. I'm sure that'd be a good time. Just try to avoid watching it alone. Not as fun.


The Zed Word

(P.S. Geeooorrggee, what are you doing driiivvvinngg? But Geooorggee, what about the whaaallleesss?)

A Week Of Uwe Boll #2: Postal.

I wanted to like this movie... I really did. And in fact, part of me did. At least, certain parts of it. But it was just so... I don't know. Let's get into it, shall we? Based on the video game of the same name, Postal cannot be blamed for ruining the story of the game. Why? Because the game has no story. So how can you mess up a movie adaptation? Well, Uwe Boll found a way. Set a few years after 9/11, the story follows Dude (Zack Ward) as he has a really bad day, including his overly obese wife cheating on him with, well, apparently the whole town. His uncle, Dave (Dave Foley), runs a sham of a religion that he made up himself. But he and his right hand, Richard (Chris Coppola), run afoul of the government and owe a lot of money. Meanwhile, Osama Bin Laden (Larry Thomas) shacks up in the back of Habib (Erick Avari) and his daughter's convenience store and plans, along with a man named Mohammed (Michael Benyaer), some secret, dastardly plan that is even crazier than 9/11. And all of these stories will converge... with Verne Troyer.

Yeah, the biggest problem the movie has is that it tries to do way too much. There's even a subplot with a police officer that I didn't mention up there, not to mention a couple horny old men that are thrown in from time to time. And not only with different storylines, but different things going on within each storyline. It just feels like a total mess.

The comedy is really hit or miss, and considering this is a comedy, that's not a good thing. It's a very over-the-top screwball-type comedy, not to mention it tries to be as offense as possible. I actually went into the movie expecting it to be offensively bad and batshit crazy as I'd heard rumored. This movie really was tame, especially in comparison to films like Feast 2 and 3. But there are some genuinely funny moments. Unfortunately, most of these moments happen within the first 20 or so minutes. For instance, the opening with the 9/11 terrorists, the interview scene (with "That Guy" Rick Hoffman), and the Asian lady in the car scenes were great (actually, the interview scene is probably my favorite scene in the whole movie). There's also a scene that introduces yet another character, a coffee shop worker named Faith, that is hilarious. And I haven't even mentioned the fact that J.K. Simmons needed a paycheck pretty bad for this movie, too (though his role is horribly short).

The acting can range from decent to awful. Zack Ward (who, ironically, is also somebody I always recognize from Freddy vs. Jason, much like yesterday's Brendan Fletcher) is pretty good in the lead role. He does comedy well. Dave Foley would have been better had I not have been subjected to seeing his penis. And I loved how Bin Laden was the only middle eastern character who didn't have a middle eastern accent. The worst offense, however, has to go to Chris Coppola as Richard, who is so annoyingly over-the-top, he would have ruined the movie had it already not been disappointing.

I think the action is where the movie lacked the most. In a movie about a first-person shooter that is known for being nothing but pure violence, there is surprisingly little. In fact, the violence doesn't really kick in until quite late in the movie. Though I wonder if Uwe Boll did this purposefully so to have a single joke work: There's a scene where Mr. Boll cameos as himself being interviewed, and eventually the creator of the Postal video games appears and attacks him, claiming how he's ruined his game by making this movie. It's actually a fun and clever scene, and Uwe Boll gained a bit of respect with me in how he makes fun of himself in the scene. But really... you make the majority of the movie suck for the purpose of a single joke that actually makes fun of the movie maker? That's pretty ballsy... and I don't think it worked, if that was really his intention.

But where the movie failed, it failed epically. Where it failed to be clever, it was painfully stupid. Where it failed to be funny, it was painfully unfunny. And unfortunately, there were more bad moments than good. The movie was a pretty big mess overall, and I wish that the good was scattered throughout the film instead of lumped at the beginning. Though there were a strange amount of similarities/connections with Rampage. For instance, I think Uwe Boll must have either worked in or had a really bad experience with a coffee shop...

I'm sure there's more I wanted to say about this film, but I'll leave it at that. With a tighter script, this movie could have been decent. But as it is, the movie is a bit sub-par. There are some fine moments, like I said (check out the interview scene here). But these scenes were far overshadowed by the rest.


Feed Me, Seymour!

(P.S. What is the difference between duck?)

A Week Of Uwe Boll #1: Rampage.

I know I'm about to miss the deadline (and on the first day!), but it's here. I've been working on finishing the first draft of my own movie script today. But now that that's done, I can focus on other things. Like this (though I still ended up getting distracted elsewhere after writing those first couple sentences... but I digress). So here are my thoughts on Uwe Boll's masterpiece, Rampage. And when I say masterpiece, I mean it literally, because this is probably his best movie.

Let me explain to you my situation going into this movie. The very first movie of Mr. Boll's that I'd seen was House of the Dead, which remains to this day the only Boll movie I've seen in theater. And this was prior to all the infamous Boll hatred started, considering this was really the film that brought him into the American spotlight. To be fair, this had also been one of the only movies of his I'd watched all the way through. I tried watching Alone in the Dark, but fell asleep over halfway in. I've since at least felt like I've seen the whole thing while watching the Nostalgia Critic's take on the movie (which is hilarious). But I know Boll's films by reputation... and by trailer... which is more than enough. I even knew of his boxing match against film critics and all the details therein. Needless to say, I wasn't a major fan of Mr. Boll by the time I got around to Rampage. In fact, despite positive reviews, I still went in expecting to not like it in some degree. And you know what?

While there were some issues here and there, it was overall a pretty damn good movie. Rampage is about a guy named Bill Williamson (Brendan Fletcher) who still lives at home with his parents (Matt Frewer and Lynda Boyd). He also puts up with his anarchist friend, Evan (Shaun Sipos), who so looks like he could be Brad Pitt's little brother (I swear, a couple times, he looked just like Brad Pitt in his younger years, say in Twelve Monkeys). And Bill's having a bad day. His parents want to kick him out of the house, his boss yells at him, his waitress spills food all over him, etc. While this doesn't create his reaction, it adds to what he does later. And what does he do? He dons a kevlar-based full body armor and goes on a killing spree (as well as robs a bank).

The movie is a slow burn at first, building his relationships and taking him through his bad day. You can tell he has a pretty good relationship with his parents, so there isn't the "let's blame the parents" angle. Even when they were talking about kicking him out, he was able to keep a level head and talk with them kindly and rationally. It was completely unexpected. And this whole section of the movie goes on for at least 20 minutes or so. It's a bit too long, honestly, and there's a whole bunch of unnecessary flashes into the future when he eventually goes on his rampage.

Similarly, once he starts on his rampage, there are flashes back to the beginning of the movie when he's not on his rampage. It was just very strange, and it's my biggest complaint about the movie. Then again, Uwe Boll has always had very strange editing choices (House of the Dead video game footage, anyone?). The rampage itself is fine, except for the very beginning of it. Going along with the strange choices, Boll decides to have almost the entire first few minutes of the rampage happen while we see nothing by Bill's eyes. It's kind of annoying.

I think what I loved most about the movie was the direction it turned. Travis' review kinda spoiled it for me, as I probably would have picked up on it slower had I not read it first, so I'm not gonna go into too much detail here. Let's just say it becomes a kind of genre I really enjoy. And it shows you how well thought out this whole thing was and how smart the character of Bill really is.

On the acting front, you really only have a few characters to deal with: Bill, his parents, and Evan. Evan is good for the character he is. And, again, there's one moment when you're watching one of his online videos that he looks so much like Brad Pitt it's scary. You'll recognize the parents immediately, or at least the father. Matt Frewer is a veteran "That Guy" who, if you're like me, you'll most likely recognize from Honey, I Shrunk The Kids every time you see him in something. Not sure why I recognize the mom. Probably from Final Destination 2.

And then, of course, Brendan Fletcher, who I always recognize from Freddy vs. Jason. I want to give this guy his own paragraph. He does amazing as Bill. Seriously. He plays the character in a way that is so unexpected. He's not yelling at his friends or his parents. He doesn't come off as the loser loner, nor does he come off as some kind of Roid-Rage freak (he's pumping iron quite a bit in the first 20 or so minutes). He gets along fine with his parents. He puts up quietly with his outspoken friend... at first, anyway. Even when he's on his rampage, he's not screaming and yelling at people. In fact, he's pretty calm through most of it, keeping cool and collected. He knows exactly what he's doing, and he's not exactly doing it for thrills. He's doing it to make a point.

In fact, there are a few instances in the movie where he does leave survivors. He decides not to kill certain people (another spoiler from Travis' review that cut the tension a bit for me, so I won't say who). It's not a rampage of chaos. Everything he does has purpose. It's actually order disguised as chaos, which is where the real brilliance of the film lies.

That's right, I said it. There's brilliance in a Uwe Boll film. From the way the story resolved to the message it delivered, this was actually a well thought-out film. A brutal and bat-shit crazy film, but a well though-out one nevertheless. The only thing that almost killed it for me was the ending. The last few seconds of the film with the text about ruined the mood. It would have been better to end it right before that text came on screen. Fortunately, it wasn't enough for me to dislike the film. Unfortunately, I'm now left with only those films I shall probably dislike (which I'm going to review in descending order, giving myself ample time to sink into the degradation of his worse films). But as for now, I need to rate this one.


A Keanu 'Whoa'

A Week Of Uwe Boll.

Man, it's been a while since I've done a "A Week Of..." Seriously. Like, at least a year or more. And it's not exactly an entire week. In the past, my "A Week Of..." posts were actually 7 days long. This will only be 6 days, Monday through Saturday.

Why Uwe Boll, might you ask? For a couple reasons. The biggest, of course, is that Travis and I will be covering the man and his work in our next episode of The Demented Encyclopedia. Next, though, is that I recently watched Rampage... which was actually a good film. And because I haven't actually seen the majority of his movies, I thought I'd drown myself in their terribleness. There are a few I won't be covering here, of course, but on top of Rampage, I will be covering 4 others. I've added them to my Netflix Instant Queue, and I will be checking them out over the next week.

Which 4, you ask? Well, you'll just have to wait and see! But I'll give you a hint. I won't be covering House of the Dead or Alone in the Dark (two of his most notorious) because, well, 1) they aren't available on Instant Streaming, and 2) I've already seen both (OK, so only most of Alone in the Dark). These 4 are going to be ones I have not yet seen. And, again, the fifth is Rampage, which I'll be covering first, since I just recently watched it.

So get yourself pumped. The Raging Boll is making his way back to my blog (I covered him once a very long time ago, announcing how he was the root of all evil), one film at a time, topping off with Saturday's posting of the Uwe Boll-centric TDE. Oh, and don't worry. I'm still continuing with the TV Meme. So you'll be getting at least 2 posts a day over the course of this week. Stay tuned!