Red Dawn: Because nothing says entertainment like disgruntled emo kids with guns!

That’s right, the awful and awfully unnecessary Red Dawn remake is out on DVD today, but it isn’t alone.  We’ve also got flicks with Jessica Biel, Rebecca Hall, Eva Longoria, Aubrey Plaza, and two films with Catherine Zeta-Jones.  We’ve even got some famous dudes like Bruce Willis and Gerard Butler, if that’s how your ship sails.  We’ve got killer fish and killer water, a chatty hitman and a midnight stallion.  There’s a marine, a quadriplegic, Satan’s angel, and even some cannibals!

The DVDs:
Red Dawn
Wreck-It Ralph
Playing For Keeps
Lay The Favorite
The Bay
A Dark Truth
The Intouchables
Someday This Pain Will Be Useful To You
California Solo
Interview With A Hitman
Gun Hill Road
Midnight Stallion
The Marine 3: Homefront
Satan’s Angel: Queen Of The Fire Tassels
Elfie Hopkins: Cannibal Hunter
House Hunting

Streaming: Check out your choices here.

Does the name ‘DJ Mom Jeans’ mean anything to you?  It will, but only if you continue reading.  Curious about the fire tassels?  That’s understandable.  Continue reading to sneak a peek at ‘em.  Of course you can always just click the link above and skip right to the streaming suggestions, but if you do you’ll never know which film sold more tickets to German audiences than any other movie in 2012, and how can you live without that information? Read the rest of this entry »

After last year’s Worst Movies feature, I received feedback from some readers and Twitter folk about me possibly being “too negative” and “mean” when it came to criticizing films that I chose to watch for this annual hate crime report. Some people even pulled the “What movies have you written?” card, which is cheap because I can just turn around and ask what dog they’ve ever photoshopped a mustache on, and BOOM – argument over.

Hundreds, if not thousands, of films are made each year, and a lot of them are bad. That’s not just by my standards; that’s by the standards of the majority. I have never, in the several years that Vince has let me poison the quality of his website, proclaimed to be a critic. I am just a bro who likes watching movies, and I have a naïve innocence that lets me still believe that people in Hollywood care about making quality films. Then I watch Bucky Larson and that gullible side of me is shoved into a wood chipper.

So how, then, do I determine which of the many, many mainstream films that I have watched in 2012 are the absolute worst of the worst of the WORST? It’s a little pinch of common sense mixed with a dash of “Come on, that’s just f*cking awful”. But I also have some rules, and let’s review them now…

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Please break, dock.

It didn’t take very long for a “respectable” and “legitimate” film critic to finally “like” Gerard Butler’s new epic flop Playing for Keeps, but the film has taken a step forward from a 0% Rotten Tomatoes score to 2%. The critic in question is Leonard Maltin, who wrote this of Jessica Biel’s latest paycheck:

It won’t be up for any Oscars, nor will it score points for originality, but it’s harmless enough fare for its target audience.

Translated: “It sucked, but not enough that bored single women and housewives wouldn’t kill themselves if they had to sit through it.”

That said, enough people were either scared away by that horrible RT score or they just had enough common sense to watch the commercial or trailer and know that this paint-by-numbers romantic comedy probably isn’t even worth waiting for on Netflix. (I’ll let you know the answer to that soon enough, as Playing for Keeps is the only movie remaining on my Must Watch list for the 2012 Worst Movies feature, and thank God. I’m seriously in pain from this year’s awful mess.)

The incredible latest edition to the James Bond franchise, Skyfall, remains at the top of the box office this week, as it earned another $11 million, bringing the grand total to $261 million. Playing for Keeps was the top earner for new films with a lousy $6 million earning it the sixth best gross of the weekend overall. Meanwhile, Hyde Park on Hudson earned $83,300 on 4 screens, giving it a meaningless but awesome per screen average of $20,825. Hey, I’m just trying to find anything positive in an otherwise goober of a weekend.

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“And the audience is supposed to believe a pro soccer player would settle down with one woman.”

Opening Everywhere: Playing for Keeps, Hyde Park on Hudson

Maybe Opening Somewhere: Deadfall

FilmDrunk Suggests: Of the eight films opening this weekend – and I say opening as in they’re available this weekend, because some of these will never see the dark of a theater – one has a positive Rotten Tomatoes score. That film is The Fitzgerald Family Christmas, which was written and directed by my cousin Edward Burns, and I have never heard of that, nor do I expect to see that posted outside my movie theater. So as I spend even more of my precious hours watching the f*cking worst films I’ve ever seen for your entertainment, I need you all to will Cincinnati Bengals receiver AJ Green to good health. Positive energy, folks. That’s what will win me money. Thanks.

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For the past few years, I’ve been convinced that Gerard Butler, Clive Owen, and Anna Faris are all in a contest to see which super-likable actor can ruin their career by choosing horrible projects the fastest. Gerard Butler may have just taken a slight lead with Playing for Keeps (co-starring Jessica Biel, pictured below, for obvious reasons), which is currently tracking 0% fresh on

…flat, hacky, unfunny dreck… with an uncomfortably flagrant misogynistic streak. -Christy LeMire, AP

“Playing for Keeps” isn’t content just to be a generic romantic comedy. nstead, not only is it not funny and not particularly romantic, it treats women like idiots. the script, by Robbie Fox, is lazy; characters disappear for long stretches (who can blame them?), only to show up again when some ridiculous plot contrivance requires it. Simply put, it’s a mess. -AZ Central

…a sloppy, poorly focused comedy -ReelReviews

You don’t often find a romantic comedy that has no idea what it’s supposed to be doing. -NOWToronto

The story is surprisingly – almost painfully – hackneyed, with the fine cast giving consistently one-dimensional turns. It is perplexing as to how such an unambitious, paint-by-numbers work got made. Actually, it is not even a current paint-by-numbers effort, because most contemporary romances involving once-connected-now-separated couples are a bit more sophisticated and worldly. -Austin Chronicle

Butler’s latest putrefying corpse is “Playing for Keeps,” a movie that answers the question: Is it possible for a sex farce and a family drama to be one and the same movie?
The answer is no. Contrived and phony from beginning to end. -St. Paul Pioneer Press

At the end of this embarrassing movie, you feel that the director has not only wasted the talents of half a dozen good actors, but has also wasted vast amounts of money–and our own precious time. -Emmanuel Levy

…a mushy-headed vehicle for what are supposed to be a lot of high-voltage star turns. Nothing much makes sense, but look at all the celebrities. -Canada.com

Having given Greer a pity screw and let Zeta-Jones wrap those Entrapment legs around his neck, Muccino insists the audience take George at face value when he assures Stacie—while she’s at the final fitting for the dress she intends to wear while marrying Mr. Safe Choice, like, tomorrow—that she was always the only one for him. Playing for Keeps (which went into production under the title Playing the Field, and the disparity between the two says everything about the movie’s emotional dissonance you need to know) is knee deep in “don’t hate the player, hate the game” territory, no more so than when George nearly loses it all in the 11th hour because of the one woman he didn’t f*ck. -Slant

Yeah, but what about when he fights the giant spider in the third act? Yeesh, there’s just no pleasing some people.

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