Hops and Box Office Flops

Willy's Wonderland is delightful schlock. An unabashed Five Nights at Freddy's ripoff, it stars Nicolas Cage as the Janitor—the silent protagonist who is stuck cleaning Willy's Wonderland to pay off a debt. It should come as no surprise that the titular establishment is not on the level. In fact, its troupe of animatronic mascots are actually reanimated serial killers who committed ritualistic sui...

Black Friday is like if someone took Dawn of the Dead, Army of Darkness, and The Mist, threw them all in a blender, but somehow removed any of the ingredients that made those films so memorable. Biting social criticism? Well, it is there; it just doesn't work. Humor and over the top, practical gore? Both are in far too short supply. Dramatic tension? Sorry, there are no real scares to speak of. Th...

Annihilation is based upon a 2014 novel of the same name. And it is director Alex Garland's follow up to his highly acclaimed directorial debut Ex Machina. Like that title, Annihilation is much more than the sum of its parts. Certainly, it is a Sci-Fi film where a team of women head into the unknown, the Shimmer as its called, to identify the source of the invading entity. But that is just the sur...

Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City is the seventh live-action iteration of the storied video game franchise. Sadly, like its predecessors, it fails to live up to the legacy of the series. Yes, folks, Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City is yet another uninspired video game adaptation. But unlike the Paul W.S. Anderson saga, this at least sticks close to the source material. Raccoon City is a...

The Happening is a cinematic travesty. Directed by M. Night Shyamalan, it has zero in common with some of his finer work. For one thing, it lacks even the hint of a twist—a hallmark of his better movies. It's also painfully stupid. Boasting Mark Wahlberg as high school science teacher Elliot Moore. Yes, you read that right; he's a science teacher. The Happening is little more than a premise. What...

Showdown in Little Tokyo  is indisputably a bad movie, but that doesn't mean it isn't a heck of a lot of fun. Starring Dolph Lundgren as Sgt. Chris Kenner and Brandon Lee as his partner Johnny Murata, it desperately wants to be Lethal Weapon. Unfortunately, it lacks the wit, charm, and overall directing acumen that film had. Instead, this is a low budget 90s flick with a seedy aesthetic that rises...

Double Team  is an ill conceived 1997 action film that attempts to capitalize on the waning star power of Jean-Claude Van Damme and Dennis Rodman. Though each had experienced much success in their respective careers, this came far after each of their sell by dates. For Van Damme, who stars as Jack Quinn, a series of misses and a well known issue with drugs took their toll. The latter can be said f...

Firestorm , which is essentially Die Hard set amidst a forest fire, is as bad as you'd expect a movie that stars an ex-NFL player to be. That said, it's still dumb fun, and it is anchored by another deliciously evil turn from William Forsythe. He plays Shaye—an escaped convict who engineered the fire, so he could reclaim his stashed millions. Unfortunately for him, these are Jesse Graves' woods! J...

Stone Cold is a perfect piece of 90s cinema. It's hyper-masculine, nonsensical schlock; and it is glorious. Starring Brian Bosworth—a stud linebacker from Oklahoma University whose injuries derailed his NFL career—Stone Cold chronicles one man's struggle to bring a gang of degenerate bikers to justice. Yes, it is as awesome as it sounds. And it's just entertaining enough that one wonders why Boswo...

Kill the Irishman chronicles the life and turbulent times of Danny Greene, a tough Irishman who gets involved with the Cleveland mafia. As far as gangster flicks go, it's not half-bad; but that also means it's generally half-good. That's because it's a relatively unfocused look at a rather complicated and violent life. It honestly feels like there's a good 30 minutes of connective tissue missing f...

Striking Distance  is a fairly stereotypical 90s cop movie, but with a twist: Bruce Willis' hairline! From scene to scene it shifts dramatically. Balding Bruce, which we must assume is the Bruce from the original shooting, transforms into toupee Bruce multiple times throughout the movie—sometimes from one cut to the next. It's astounding. The wig—despite its omnipresence—is not the hook of the fil...

Road House is everything an action movie should be. Its premise is over the top, its plot is utterly nonsensical, and none of the people involved seem to be aware of it. Starring Patrick Swayze, who was fresh off of Dirty Dancing, Road House presents the all too relatable plot of: What if you're a doorman in a small town run by a vengeful crook? Well, if you're Dalton (Swayze), you beat the snot o...

Deadbeat at Dawn is essentially a student film. Jim Van Bebber, Chumpzilla's childhood neighbor, dropped out of college and used his student loans to fund it. It's unapologetic exploitation cinema from the warped mind of Van Bebber, and it is glorious. It's violent, obscene, odd, overwritten, and surprisingly boasts action scenes that outshine crap we've done on the pod from far more expensive mov...

The  Matrix Resurrections  ushers us back into the false and hollow reality that is the Matrix. It's been 18 years since we've entered the virtual dystopia. And the last time we were thrust into its oppressive confines, the results were less than stellar. 1999's original two sequels sort of divided general audiences. The visuals and exceptional stunts were still there, but the message was lost in...

End of Days  was Arnold Schwarzenegger's triumphant return to the big screen after a two-year hiatus. Suffice to say, it was an odd choice of comebacks. End of Days centers around Satan's quest to bring about, well, the end of days by consummating his relationship with the woman destined to be the mother of his child. It certainly has action scenes, but it's more religious horror than anything els...

8-Bit Christmas  chronicles a boy's quest to get a Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) for Christmas in 1988. That plot evokes memories of both A Christmas Story—which it clearly pays homage to—and How I Met Your Mother—a show also starring one Neil Patrick Harris. As a more modern take on the familiar tale of a child's quest to attain what his parents are reluctant to get,  8-Bit Christmas  doesn...

Out Cold is like someone spliced Caddyshack and  Mallrats . In principle, that sounds awesome, right? Well, unfortunately, that's more in terms of concept—a group of shiftless park rats bumming around their place of work—and the presence of a London brother. In Out Cold, it's Jason, rather than Jeremy. I guess there's slightly more to it. They do have to save their fledgling ski resort from an evi...

Home Sweet Home Alone is the epitome of a lazy, soulless rehash; and, quite frankly, it is the antithesis of how you leverage a valuable IP. Disney should be ashamed. With their abundance of resources, they trotted out not only one of the worst films of the year, it's one of the worst of the decade. Home Sweet Home Alone is never funny. It is quite often painful, though, and that's not including t...

Terminator Genisys is a hodgepodge of ideas from more beloved Terminator films. It gives us the gruff and tough Sarah Connor, as well as the sleek and dangerous T-1000; and it even features an Arnold versus Arnold face-off in 1984 amid the familiar backdrop of the original T-800's arrival. There's only one issue: None of it particularly works. Terminator Genisys feels more like half-baked fan fict...

The Rocketeer  is a beloved 1991 Disney film. Based on Dave Stevens' comic series, which debuted in 1982, it revolves around stunt pilot Cliff Secord's (Bill Campbell) fortuitous discovery of a jetpack created by Howard Hughes. Of course, adventure ensues. The character was created as a tribute to the 1930s serials that had inspired wonder in the youth of their day. Both the comics and film execut...

Snake Eyes continues the unfortunate legacy of the legendary G.I. Joe toys on film. As in, it's not particularly good, nor was it successful. Snake Eyes, like many films nowadays, is meant to serve as an origin story for its titular hero, but also as an introduction to a larger universe. We get appearances from Cobra's Baroness, as well as the classic Joe Scarlett. The issue is they don't necessar...

The Lone Ranger  is a modern adaptation of the popular 1930s radio series, as well as the late 1940s/1950s television show. It features a masked hero, the titular one, and his trusty Native American sidekick, Tonto. After decades of inaction, Disney went big to bring the duo back. They re-teamed Gore Verbinski with Johnny Depp—who’d collaborated on the first three Pirates of the Caribbean movies;...

Dune , based upon Frank Herbert's classic 1965 novel, has been done before on both big screen and small, but never to this scope or scale. Denis Villeneuve—given the resources and technology—has crafted a faithful and awe-inspiring interpretation of the novel's first half. Thankfully—based upon recent remarks—Paul Atreides' adventure will not end here. This is literally half a story. And without t...

Club Dread —Broken Lizard's follow up to Super Troopers—is a riff on 80s slasher films; and it boasts a cast of characters that are eclectic, dumb, horny, and ripe for the picking. This, of course, is anchored by the Broken Lizard crew. There's Dave, the drug-addled DJ (Paul Soter); Putnam, the buttoned-up tennis coach (Jay Chandrasekhar); Sam, the chief of the Fun Police (Erik Stolhanske); Lars,...

They Live  is a bonafide cult classic. And it works not only as a critique on rampant consumerism and Reagan-era economics, but also as a guilty pleasure action movie. The premise is simple: Nada—played by "Rowdy" Roddy Piper—is awakened to the horrific reality the world is actually living in through the lenses of special sunglasses. That world is one run by an unknown alien race, who are bleeding...