Bad Movie Friday | Microkhan by Brendan I. Koerner

Entries Tagged as 'Bad Movie Friday'

The Last 3,000 Miles

October 23rd, 2009 · 4 Comments

After a tremendous week of work, contemplation, and gorging on fish tacos out here in Palo Alto, we’re heading back to Microkhan headquarters this evening. Not much time for blogging today, alas, as we try to suck a last few moments of enjoyment out of this trip. So we’re skipping right ahead to Bad Movie […]

Blue Screen Blues

October 9th, 2009 · Comments Off on Blue Screen Blues

A quick Bad Movie Friday this week, as we’re absorbed in the game of narrative non-fiction writing (i.e. the gig that pays the bills ’round here). Let’s just say that we probably owe Krull another look; we saw it at a grade-school birthday party back when it came out, and probably didn’t yet have the […]

Truly Unsafe at Any Speed

October 2nd, 2009 · 2 Comments

This is the last post we scheduled before departing for Kenya last weekend—a Bad Movie Friday entry that rankles with its unrealistic depiction of vehicular combustion. Even the 1971 Ford Pinto wasn’t quite this fragile. Thanks to those of you stuck with us this week, despite knowing that a WordPress bot was at the posting […]

“It’s Dangerous for Strangers in Atlantis”

September 25th, 2009 · 3 Comments

On our forthcoming trip to Africa, we certainly hope we don’t suffer Kathy Ireland’s fate and slip into an underground realm populated by refugees from an Olivia Newton-John video. But we reckon anything’s possible, so we’ll be sure to conceal our surface-world origins should foam columns give way. Believe it or not, we actually saw […]

The Physics of the Impossible

September 18th, 2009 · 1 Comment

Unlike some past movies we’ve highlighted as part of Bad Movie Friday—notably the irredeemably dreadful Hard to Ticket to Hawaii—Gleaming the Cube is actually halfway watchable, provided you’re willing to switch off your brain for 90 minutes. But even when we’re feeling truly charitable, there are two things that can’t help but irk us to […]

“At the End of the Day, It’s Just a Snake”

September 1st, 2009 · 2 Comments

Ordinarily we’d save Lockjaw: Rise of the Kulev Serpent for our weekly Bad Movie Friday feature. But, honestly, we don’t think we can sleep too many more days without knowing exactly what star DMX mumbles in the middle of this trailer. We think his closing line is, “The only thing you have to look forward […]

A Fiberglass Romance

August 21st, 2009 · 3 Comments

Had Corvette Summer been blessed with a better casting director, perhaps it would have escaped the ignominy of our weekly Bad Movie Friday slot. But no—they just had to cast the 27-year-old Mark Hamill as a high-school student, and noted character actress Annie Potts as a Vegas sexpot (a far cry from her ideal role […]

A Death Less Ordinary

August 14th, 2009 · 3 Comments

It’s probably a bit of stretch to file 1999’s Deep Blue Sea under our ever-popular Bad Movie Friday heading. While the premise of the film could scarcely be more ridiculous—hyper-intelligent mako sharks?—the sunken-laboratory thriller is not without its guilty pleasures. Chief among them is this classic scene, which features Samuel L. Jackson at his edgy […]

Beastmaster Errata

August 10th, 2009 · 1 Comment

Look, we’re big enough Mongolian monarchs to admit when we’ve goofed. And that’s exactly what appears to be the case with last week’s Bad Movie Friday post about the 1982 Marc Singer vehicle The Beastmaster. We riffed about Singer’s apparent refusal to save the life of the ferret that had just helped pluck him from […]

The Sacrificial Ferret

August 7th, 2009 · 9 Comments

Whatever you may be drinking this weekend, please plan on pouring a little out for the heroic ferret in this classic The Beastmaster clip. We have no idea why Marc Singer’s character, supposedly a Dr. Doolittle-like friend to the animals, doesn’t try and help his rodent savior. But that’s just one of the many eternal […]

“A Profound Instinct…for Vengeance!”

July 31st, 2009 · Comments Off on “A Profound Instinct…for Vengeance!”

Here’s a doozy of a me-too flick for Bad Movie Friday: 1977’s Orca, which tried oh-so-hard to copy the Jaws formula. But the film flopped miserably, in large part because its target audience wasn’t all that terrified by killer whales. (Thanks, Shamu.) Oh, and also because Richard Harris gnaws on the scenery like it was […]

Don’t Shake Henry’s Hand

July 24th, 2009 · 3 Comments

Yesterday we noted a mid-1980s toothpaste commercial that still freaks us out to this day. Now, in the space normally reserved for Bad Movie Friday, we’d like to recall the celluloid character who creeped us out more than Freddy and Jason combined: Henry Kane, the demonic cult leader who menaces the Freeling family in Poltergeist […]

One at a Time, Please

July 17th, 2009 · 7 Comments

This week’s installment of Bad Movie Friday brings us some serious high-concept nonsense: the 1985 Kurt Thomas vehicle Gymkata, which sought to cash in on the nation’s post-Mary Lou Retton love affair with gymnastics. And what better way than to take a slightly past-his-prime male gymnast and insert him into a limp ninja flick? We […]

“I Don’t Like the Axe…”

July 10th, 2009 · 1 Comment

After a holiday hiatus, Bad Movie Friday returns with a true gem: 1987’s The Barbarians, starring bodybuilding twins Peter and David Paul (aka the Barbarian Brothers). Though obviously a blatant attempt to copy the then-successful Conan blueprint, The Barbarians attempted to infuse the swords-and-sorcery formula with ample amounts of proto-ironic humor. More often than not, […]

Werner Loves the Jiggle

June 26th, 2009 · 2 Comments

One of our favorite means of procrastination is sifting through Nathan Rabin’s “My Year of Flops” series on The A.V. Club. That habit recently brought us in contact with this evisceration of The Real Cancun, which Rabin curtly derides as “a horrifying glimpse into the kiddie-pool-shallow minds of folks whose greatest ambition in life is […]

Using Canned Peas to Your Advantage

June 19th, 2009 · Comments Off on Using Canned Peas to Your Advantage

In keeping with last week’s Bad Movie Friday theme, we’re gonna once again focus on the thespian debut of a notorious athlete. In this case, our critical eye turns toward Brian Bosworth, the ex-Sooner star turned Bo Jackson doormat. Shortly after his pro football career came to an embarrassing end, Bosworth shifted gears and starred […]

And Speaking of Basketball…

June 12th, 2009 · 6 Comments

For this week’s Bad Movie Friday, we’re gonna hit the proverbial layup and call out 1997’s Double Team. (Tagline: “He’s a one-man arsenal…with enough voltage to rock the world!”) The film is notable primarily for oddball hoopster Dennis Rodman’s scenery-chewing co-lead performance, opposite Jean-Claude Van Damme on the verge of sliding into his cocaine phase. […]

The Utter Failure of High Concept

May 29th, 2009 · 2 Comments

For today’s installment of Bad Movie Friday, we’d like to shred a flick that must’ve seemed so great when William Friedkin pitched it: Cruising, a murder mystery that’s several degrees clumsier than the worst Encyclyopedia Brown shortie. Now we can see why this got made. The milieu (the gay leather-bar scene) was ultra-edgy at the […]

Hop the Next Shark to the Bahamas

May 22nd, 2009 · 6 Comments

The holiday weekend’s just hours away, and we’re mighty spent from a long week of writing and tending to Microkhan Jr. So we’re gonna outsource this week’s Bad Movie Friday to the late Richard Jeni. His target? The egregiously awful Jaws: The Revenge (aka Jaws IV). As Jeni rightfully points out in his routine, there […]

Skate or Die…or, Both

May 15th, 2009 · 8 Comments

After a week’s hiatus, Bad Movie Friday returns with a vengeance, as well as the most unnecessary use of a rocket launcher ever committed to film (c. the 1:20 mark). The ridiculous clip above is plucked from the 1987 Skinemax anti-classic Hard Ticket to Hawaii, in which several Playboy centerfolds play badass DEA agents. The […]

Form of…a Hawk?

May 8th, 2009 · 6 Comments

Microkhan has to jet downtown to beg The Man for affordable health insurance (prognosis: grim), so no Bad Movie Friday this week. But we’ve got the next-best thing to reward you for a work week well-done—Manimal, dude, Manimal. How Microkhan loved this cheese back in his grade-school days, and how we wept when NBC unceremoniously […]

“The World Meets Nobody Halfway”

May 1st, 2009 · 1 Comment

Let Microkhan go on record as saying that we’ve enjoyed at least one frequently derided Sylvester Stallone flick (the campy-yet-terrifying Cobra). But when it comes to Over the Top, we have no choice but to agree with the masses. Like so many of Sly’s 1980s vehicles, it’s all-too-easy to envision the movie-exec brainstorming that went […]

“Your Highness Learns Fast”

April 24th, 2009 · 6 Comments

There are few films less deserving of a big-budget remake than Red Sonja. It plays more like a sword-and-sorcery spoof than a genuine adventure, due in large part to the most awful dialogue this side of Mortal Kombat: Annihilation—as well as the craven addition of a Short Round-style sidekick. If memory serves, Red Sonja was […]

Ninjas and Coincidence

April 17th, 2009 · 8 Comments

One of the things I’ve learned while writing the Now the Hell Will Start screenplay is that it’s tough to make coincidences believable. They’re often necessary for the plot to move forward, alas, so you have to finesse them. You certainly don’t want audience members turning to each other to say, “Um, that wouldn’t happen […]

“…And a Very Fast Ostrich”

April 10th, 2009 · 3 Comments

In celebration of the forthcoming Easter holiday, Microkhan would like to offer a very special dud for Bad Movie Friday: the infamous Leonard Part 6. The Bill Cosby spy spoof is allegedly a comedy, but is known to evoke fewer laughs than the typical root canal. As the Washington Post‘s Rita Kempley so succintly put […]

“Odd, Inexplicable, and Unpleasant”

April 3rd, 2009 · 5 Comments

Once again, the joyous end of the work week spurs Microkhan to dredge up a hilariously negative movie review of yore. This week’s slab of celluloidic infamy is Death to Smoochy, perhaps history’s greatest testament to Robin Williams’s talent for irritation. As depicted in the video above, it also features Ed Norton singing an anti-heroin […]

What Was Lea Thompson Thinking?

March 20th, 2009 · 4 Comments

Another Friday, another end-of-week paean to terrible movie reviews. This time, instead of digging though the proverbial crates, Microkhan would like to cite the A.V. Club’s recent take on the Howard the Duck DVD release: Finally, the book can be closed on the DVD era: Howard The Duck, a George Lucas production every bit as […]

Monkeys and Their Crayons

March 13th, 2009 · 4 Comments

As Microkhan’s regular readers know well, Fridays ’round here mean it’s time for hilariously negative movie reviews of yore. This week’s victim is John Travolta’s Scientology-infused sci-fi stinker Battlefield Earth, which remains the great blemish on Forest Whitaker’s otherwise amazing career. How the man behind Ghost Dog and Charles Jefferson got suckered into this disaster […]

“A Place Beyond Good and Evil”

March 6th, 2009 · Comments Off on “A Place Beyond Good and Evil”

With the official end of the work week just hours away, it’s time for Microkhan to offer a parting treat before he jets ’til Monday morning: Yet another hilariously negative movie review of yore. Inspired by the A.V. Club’s recent smackdown, I’ve decided to call out Dana Stevens’ classic pan of The Love Guru. As […]

[Read more →]

Tags:Bad Movie Friday·movies

“Barely Worth Dismissing”

February 26th, 2009 · 1 Comment

Apologies for today’s lighter-than-usual posting. I’m mobile, working on the Now the Hell Will Start movie and enjoying Assamese tea at a Cobble Hill joint. Rest assured, the esoterica will recommence in full tomorrow. In the interim, please enjoy one of Microkhan’s guilty pleasures: Hilariously negative movie reviews. There just aren’t many harsher thumbs downs […]