the fool who makes the bad movies, or the fool who watches them?
While Anne was gone, I spent my Saturday afternoon doing the thing I always seem to do while she's away: watching bad movies. And boy were some of them bad.
First up, Resident Evil: Afterlife. Remember: if the Director is married to the Lead Actress, the movie is going to be horrible. Yeah, sure, you can come up with a couple of possible exceptions–Much Ado About Nothing, perhaps (though it still had Keanu Reeves in it), maybe others–but in general, you're in for bad news. In fact, this fourth installment in the already-three-movies-too-many Resident Evil franchise amazes me in that it even got made. That there's a fifth on the way leads me to despair.
Second, G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, which fascinated me in its utter badness. I expected to watch the first five minutes, snigger a bit, and then move on to something at least watchable, but the level of spectacular trashiness this displayed fascinated me. And with actors who should know better: Dennis Quaid? Joseph Gordon-Levitt? Jonathan Pryce? I mean, is there any way this could have read well on the page? No. I just can't imagine a paycheck big enough. Maybe I need a drug habit to understand, or something.
Finally, Salt, which wasn't actually bad for what it was, though I saw the twist coming from pretty much the moment Liev Schreiber showed up. I'm fairly certain I didn't remember it from his slip on The Daily Show, but you never know, sometimes my brain files away things in odd places.
I sometimes wonder at the pathology of my addiction to bad movies. Is it that I find so few of even the movies people consider "good" to be of interest, I figure it's better not to get your hopes up, just watch things you know are going to be bad? Is it the sort of car-wreck fascination of trying to understand why anyone would watch this movie and enjoy it? I dunno, but I should probably see a doctor.