Keeping up with the Satanisms

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Mother of Tears - The Third Mother (2007)

Some jokers unearth this old urn, but something about it freaks out the local Catholic muckamuck so he sends the urn to Rome to get it checked out. (What doesn't freak out the Catholics? My mom's boyfriend nearly had a heart attack once because I was eating a Big Mac on the wrong day of the week or something.) The cat in charge of Esoteric Horseshit is out of the office though, so two bimbos open the package instead and naturally one of them bleeds all over the thing and suddenly the whole city is going crazy and every witch with enough frequent flyer miles is showing up to get in on the fun. Which makes Rome sound like the place to be, until you remember that 98% of witches are lesbians, and the ones who aren't are already going out with a guy who's in a band. And judging by the witches in this movie, that band is Cinderella.

Meanwhile, the mega-tasty Asia Argento is right in the thick of it, but she's so busy being chased around by hipsters, cops, gothic lolitas, and monkeys that she barely has time to expose any nipple much less figure out what to do. Eventually though she realizes that she's the main chick, so she decides to take down the queen witch once and for all, which turns out to be surprisingly easy. I'm not kidding, it takes me longer to open a bottle of beer with a cigarette lighter than it takes Asia to trounce this bitch.

I wouldn't have expected a 1000-year-old witch to look so much like one of the
Bangles. Not that I'm complaining. (Hair by Ken Paves, fake tits by Satan.)

So the end's a fizzle, and there are some pretty stupid parts along the way – like when Asia nearly drowns in raw sewage, then two seconds later doesn't have a drop of poo on her – but there's also a head crushed in a door, eyes gouged out, a spear up the cooch, a guy set on fire, an arm whacked off with a machete, a surprising amount of infanticide, rioting, vandalism, some lesbo action, and plenty of tits, so really, I got no complaints.

Asia Argento, who crawled through a river of shit and came out clean on the other side.

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Beneath the Mississippi (2008)

There are two groups of people who can never be succinct: conspiracy theorists and low-budget moviemakers. Seriously, there is no reason for this Blair Witch-on-a-boat nonsense to be nearly two hours long, but I'm a sucker for movies that take place in flooded/submerged towns (I actually paid to see Hard Rain, in the theaters), so here I am again, wading (heh) through another badly-made shitfest just because it toggled one of my weird, highly-specific triggers. (Other bizarre, specialized triggers I instantly respond to are: cute Asian chicks dressed as ladybugs; any movie where someone has sex, willingly or otherwise, with a tree; and anything involving giant bees). Unlike giant, Asian bee sex however, this movie is completely incomprehensible. The picture looks like shit -- alternately too dark or super washed out -- pretty much 100% of the time, which means that while you could say that you've watched this movie, you can't honestly say that you've seen it.

Beneath the Mississippi - the thrilling climax. I'm totally not kidding here.

You can't hear a goddamned thing either, because the sound is usually completely muffled, except of course when they suddenly get one sound effect or scream right and it blows out your speakers because you had them cranked to maximum to hear the dialogue. (Maybe their microphone guy was recording the dialogue portions from... beneath the Mississippi! Ha ha! Seriously though, I wouldn't be surprised if that really was the case.) Hell, even the size of the picture keeps changing: it's like watching two people with dueling remotes fight over what aspect ratio they want to watch the movie at. I kid you not, the only way a movie could be any more visually and audibly inaccessible is if it was shot by tying a video camera to the back of a truck and dragging it around the parking lot. At night. And of course it's too fucking long, even for a movie that wasn't a fucking torture-chore to watch. (The back of the DVD case says that it's 109 minutes; when it reached the 110-minute point and still wasn't over I'm not ashamed to admit that I started crying.)

So what is it actually about? Well, since you can barely see or hear anything there's really no way to know, although the front and back of the DVD promise a flooded/haunted town so I guess that's what all the muffled assholes on screen (whoever they are) are looking for. (Of course, we never actually see this submerged town, because that might actually be interesting.) There was this ominous musical sting every so often, so I guess whatever was going on at those specific moments was supposed to be ominous, but it never seemed particularly ominous to me. Usually it was just washed-out blurs standing around mumbling. There's no sting when the audience (but not the characters) sees the first dead body though, something most people would consider pretty ominous, so maybe that's the key: maybe this entire cunt movie was made on Opposite Day, so that's why it has sound you can't hear and a picture you can't see and is ostensibly entertainment but in practice is simply waiting for it to be over. Honestly, it's all so jaw-droppingly incompetent that eventually I was just grateful that the picture was right-side-up most of the time. (Yes, at one point it isn't. But that was on purpose, probably.) 

I'm not one to engage in hyperbole and shit, but everyone who worked on this movie deserves to die.

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Want to avoid bad movies like this one? Mr. Satanism can help.

Johnny Mnemonic (1995)

Truth be told, I kinda like Keanu Reeves. Oh, he's a shitty actor (in any given role a potted plant could do better), but he's charismatic, in his own way, and he seems like kind of a nice guy. So I decided to go into this movie with an open mind, basically by ignoring everything I know about computers and, like the producers, pretending that the Internet really is an actual alternate dimension as portrayed in movies like The Lawnmower Man (1992) and Tron (1982) (and, inexplicably, again in 2010), and not merely a convenient conduit for thirteen-year-olds to call me a faggot on Reddit. Besides, the guy who wrote this movie basically invented cyberspace, so let's face it, anything he got wrong, fuck you, no he didn't.

Why?

So, Keanu plays portrays acts... Fuck. Okay, just accept that he's this guy, alright, this guy who's got computer hardware in his head and hires himself out as a sort of cybernetic courier. Basically, you upload information into his noggin and he smuggles it to another location where it can be safely downloaded. How this is preferable to just shoving a thumb drive containing the data up his ass is actually explained, but how it's easier than simply encrypting the information and e-mailing it to the intended recipient isn't. No matter, I said I'm giving this one a chance, so fine, I'll buy their (stupid) premise. It's fucking stupid though.

"He has the eyes of one who never awakes."

Naturally some bad guys are after the information in question, but Keanu's biggest problem is that the data currently loaded into his brain is 160 gigabytes over his personal capacity, which we're told is extremely dangerous. This is probably supposed to generate some additional suspense, although if Keanu Reeves shorted out half his brain I doubt we'd notice any change in his behavior whatsoever. There's plenty of violence; lots of trench coats; Ice T and Henry Rollins appear, apparently competing with each other to see who can give the most embarrassing performance (Rollins wins); the fashions are hilariously out-of-date 1980s futurisms (I can't remember the last time I saw so many people who looked like they were auditioning for the band Split Enz); the main chick is exceptionally hot and has a terrific ass; Keanu's mid-movie rant about wanting a club sandwich is fucking hilarious for all the wrong (and therefore right) reasons; and the thrilling climax, which involves a crossbow fight with the Yakuza, a junkie dolphin reading Keanu Reeve's mind, a last-minute rescue by an electronic ghost, and He-Man being cooked alive, is so delirious you can't help but love it.

Hey, baby, don't cover up on my account.

Ultimately, Johnny Mnemonic is no dumber than The Matrix (1999), and unlike The Matrix it doesn't blow its entire wad twenty minutes in and then just flail around for the rest of its running time plus two even-worse sequels. In short, I liked it. And no, I'm not being sarcastic or ironic - I actually liked it. Scout's honor.

You can see my eyes, you can tell that I'm not lyin'

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