Asteroid vs Earth

Title: Asteroid vs Earth

Director: Christopher (Douglas-Olen) Ray

Writer: Adam Lipsius

Starring: Tia Carrere, Jason Brooks, Robert Davi

Year released: 2014

Initial thoughts (Pre-screening): I don’t really see how an asteroid and the Earth can versus each other.

Their synopsis: “When a shower of massive meteors threatens Earth’s inhabitants with extinction, the world’s greatest minds devise a dangerous plan that will tilt the planet off its axis to avoid the impact.”

My synopsis: This guy wants to bang an Asian girl at a bar, but ends up having to work with her to set off nukes in the Yap Trench. Eventually, I think he probably does end up banging her.

Quick review: It’s not very exciting, but it’s not altogether bad.

Pros: Believable, normal homosexual characters in an Asylum film.

Cons: The movie’s asteroid-avoidance plot is less coherent than Armageddon’s.

Biggest movie cliché: A completely ludicrous, impossible-to-achieve idea to save Earth from asteroidal annihilation actually worked!

Best cameo: Melvin Gregg!

Say a nice thing: I liked the fidgety Asian intern.

Say a mean thing: The only good thing about Davi’s helmet of a hairpiece is that it distracts from his godawful, craterous face.

Biggest suspension of disbelief: That kid in charge of the nukes was far too young to be giving orders. The varying weight of the nuclear warheads was also completely absurd.

Most relatable current event: This could be Asteroid vs Earth 2.

Final review: It’s fairly well-executed, but lord almighty is it boring. I kept having to pause it and go do things, then come back. Perhaps this isn’t the best way to review a film, but it beats sleeping through it (which did happen once) and making this whole thing up. (Although, I’m not sure anyone would know the difference.) More, or just better, action sequences would have helped break up the monotony. Not creating monotony would have also been advisable.

Ranking:

2.5 bees

Age of Dinosaurs

Title: Age of Dinosaurs

Director: Joseph J. Lawson

Writer: Hank Woon Jr.

Starring: Treat Williams, Jillian Rose Reed, Ronny Cox

Year released: 2013

Their synopsis: “Using breakthrough flesh-regeneration technology, a biotech firm creates a set of living dinosaurs. But when the creatures escape…a former firefighter must rescue his teenage daughter…”

Initial thoughts (Pre-screening, post-synopsis): Dinosaurs AND teenage daughters, you say? This could be good.

My synopsis: Real and invented species of dinosaurs attack humans in the most insipid ways possible.

Quick review: Making dinosaurs boring is hard to do.

Pros: Went with a Ceratosaurus instead of the standard T. rex. Nicely done.

Cons: Needed about 11 rewrites. At one point I got frustrated and exclaimed, “This is so stupid!”

Biggest movie cliché: “Ten minutes, sir.” “Make it five!”

Say a nice thing: Jade seems like a good egg. I bet she could fuck for hours.

Say a mean thing: The news reporter is shit. I was happy when her helicopter blew up.

Say a sarcastic thing: I don’t think they stole from Jurassic Park enough.

Biggest suspension of disbelief: Trained SWAT with shotguns and assault rifles can’t take down a dinosaur, but a security guard’s shitty taser can easily incapacitate one?

Final review: Dinosaurs are cool on their own, you don’t have to put them on skyscrapers (somehow) or have them be impenetrable to human weaponry or randomly kidnap people. The interesting/stolen concept of the film is thoroughly drown by ridiculous story turns, awful action sequences, and uninspired dialogue. They’re dinosaurs for fuck sake! It shouldn’t be that difficult!

Ranking:

2 bees