Hops and Box Office Flops

Summer Catch came at the peak of Freddie Prinze, Jr. mania. He was sort of the king of sub-par romantic comedies in the mid-2000s, and like the rest of his films, this one, too, is mediocre. Full of cringeworthy schmaltz and baseball scenes that strain credibility, Summer Catch is exactly what one would expect from a genre that feasts on the contrived. It's got the local boy (Prinze, Jr.) trying t...

Werewolves Within —which is as loosely based on a video game as possible—is a horror/comedy whodunnit that relies far more on humor than gore. And, for the most part, it works well. Starring Sam Richardson as bumbling park ranger Finn Wheeler, Werewolves Within never takes itself too seriously. Beaverfield, VT, is a small-town full of eclectic stereotypes of modern America. From the uppity gas pip...

Renfield is a delightful little horror comedy chronicling the titular character's toxic relationship with his master, Count Dracula. Featuring Nicholas Hoult as Renfield and Nicolas Cage as that overbearing boss, it's a film that works despite its own confusion on what it wants to be. Cage is phenomenal as Dracula and Hoult is charming as the nebbish Renfield. Their interplay almost universally hi...

The Blackening is a satirical take on the horror genre. Poking fun at the trope of the Black character dying first, it offers an interesting quandary for the killer: If every character is Black, they can't all die first. Based on a skit of the same name, The Blackening makes good on that premise. It is often hilarious, has a ton of fun playing with that central theme, and features a great cast of...

Any Given Sunday is a brutal, uncompromising look at the world of pro football. It's never subtle—in either its performances or depictions—which unfortunately is what ultimately hamstrings it. Oliver Stone over-directs the hell out of this movie. From its frequent cuts to its odd insertions of clips from other films, Any Given Sunday is full on cinematic whiplash.  For the actual football scenes,...

Dazed and Confused is flat out a classic. Focusing on a group of wayward teens in 70s Austin, Texas, it somehow remains one of the most relatable looks at the high school experience. Sure, some things don't really translate to the present—the hazing, for example—but few movies have captured the essence of what it's like to feel stuck, even though your whole life is still in front of you. One of th...

The Replacements is a fairly derivate football film about a group of underdogs overcoming the odds. It takes elements of Major League, Necessary Roughness, and even the kid-centric Little Giants and throws them into a blender, producing a jumbled blend of bits done better in other movies. Despite all that, The Replacements somehow still works. That is due in large part to the sheer charisma of Kea...

In The Faculty , a malevolent alien force descends upon Herrington High School and begins taking over—one hapless teacher at a time. It is up to the students—a ragtag group of people who wouldn’t be caught dead together otherwise—to put a stop to it. Written by Kevin Williamson, who also co-wrote Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer, The Faculty is a hip, high school-centric take on Invasion...

Heavyweights is a kid friendly take on the the traditional slobs versus snobs trope. In it, a group of kids are supposed to be headed to enjoy an awesome summer; but once there, they discover that the beloved owners of Camp Hope were forced to sell to an obnoxious fitness freak, Tony Perkis. It's Perkis' mission to whip these kids into shape—only not for their own benefit. He's trying to sell an i...

Wet Hot American Summer is an absolute cult classic. Boasting a cast on the cusp of superstardom, it is everything an eccentric comedy full of funny people should be. As in, it is hilarious. Wet Hot American Summer eschews plot in favor of nonsensical hijinks and non sequiturs. The things that happen vaguely follow its story, but they are much more in service to its anarchic stylings. That sense o...

Indian Summer is a heartwarming, ensemble comedy in the vein of The Big Chill. Seven friends, all at differing existential crises, reunite for one last magical summer at Camp Tamakwa, a seminal experience in each of their lives. Their mentor, camp owner Unca Lou, brings them all together because he, too, is at a crossroads. It's his last summer running the camp. That's the backdrop, but what makes...

Sleepaway Camp is considered an 80s horror cult classic. That is due in large part to its big final act twist. Otherwise, though, it's your general run-of-the-mill slasher that is too often derivative of better films in the genre, especially Friday the 13th. Sleepaway Camp boasts a laughably bad script, one made worse by the casts' delivery of it. And the kills—unfortunately—consistently fail to i...

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is a wonderful and heartfelt sendoff to one of cinema's greatest heroes. It makes bold narrative decisions and gives us an Indy who's a man out of time. That may sound depressing—and there certainly are tough moments—but it's not. The heaviness of Dial of Destiny's story is what makes it work. It can be extremely compelling to see our heroes vulnerable, watchi...

Mac and Me is an unapologetic clone of E.T., a far superior movie. It's weird, loaded with unintentional laughs, and packed with an obscene amount of product placement. We're not joking. Mac and Me boasts a scene of the titular alien dancing on the counter of a McDonald's — in a bear suit, no less. These extraterrestrials also drink Coca Cola as their life blood, a fact that comes sadly into play...

Heartbeeps was meant to serve as the big screen launching pad for comedian Andy Kaufman. It backfired. Why? Well, it's a mostly nonsensical mess with few laughs, and it buries him under bizarre robot prosthetics. As a performer, Kaufman was known for his showmanship. Heartbeeps robs him of all that, instead turning him into a caricature of his own caricature. Val, the android he plays, is just a w...

Superman IV: The Quest for Peace is the sad end to a beloved series. Well, III was also terrible, but there is something uniquely depressing about Superman IV. Perhaps it’s the fact that they coaxed Christopher Reeve into returning by agreeing to center the film on the threat of nuclear escalation; and then as they shot the movie, budget cuts kneecapped the project faster than a speeding bullet. S...

Tip Toes is an odd movie. Instead of serving as an effective drama that highlights the health and societal struggles of little people, it devolves into utter insanity. Why? Well, Gary Oldman took the lead role of Rolfe, a little person whose twin brother, played by Matthew McConaughey, is going through an existential crisis. Steven, McConaughey, is not a little person, but the rest of his family i...

With Fast X , our favorite street racers turned international spies again find themselves entangled with another bad guy hell bent on world domination and revenge. This time, it is the deliciously evil Dante, played with the perfect amount of lunacy by Jason Mamoa. Dante is the son of Hernan Reyes, who we last saw meeting his demise in Fast Five. Thus, Fast X is essentially trying to recapture the...

X-Men Origins: Wolverine  is one of the worst superhero movies to come out of the big comic book cinema boom. It ignores basically everything established in the main line of X-Men films to craft a laborious tale of the early days of Logan's heroism. Throwing in heaps and loads of random mutants, X-Men Origins: Wolverine has zero interest in crafting an adequate narrative for its titular hero. Inst...

Rocky V is a textbook example of a franchise hanging on too long. Without any more mountains to climb, Stallone took the titular character back to his roots. Unfortunately, that journey isn't a very compelling one. Rocky V has a lot to say—spotlighting the transactional nature of sports media, the devastating effects of head trauma, and how sports places profits over people; but none of it, sadly,...

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was the legendary character's big return to cinemas after 1989's The Last Crusade. Suffice to say, expectations were high for the famed archeologist's latest globe-trotting exploit. And, for fans of the character, Kingdom of the Crystal Skull did feature a lot of what made the original trilogy so great. What audiences seemed to be torn on, however...

Robocop 3 is the embodiment of when a franchise has creatively exhausted itself. It feels and looks cheap; has nothing new to say; and tones down the series' signature violence to milk the most out of a dwindling audience. For fans of the series, its existence must be heartbreaking. Robocop 3's ineptitude is on par with other disastrous sequels of the era, like Superman IV. That is really all you...

Alien Covenant was sort of damned from the beginning. As a direct sequel to the divisive  Prometheus , it was continuing a story half the audience had no desire to see. Moreover, they probably also had zero interest in learning where the Xenomorphs came from. Those are significant hurdles when that is exactly what the movie is about. Sorry, Sir Ridley. Thus, like its predecessor, your mileage on A...

Prometheus  was Ridley Scott's triumphant return to the franchise he helped launch with 1979's Alien. But unlike the myriad of sequels that followed the groundbreaking original, Prometheus forges new ground. Centering on the Engineers, it chronicles the creation of human life and the species' subsequent quest for answers that follows. It is during that quest the crew of the Prometheus discovers th...

Alien Resurrection was a bizarre attempt to reinvigorate the Alien franchise after the divisiveness of its predecessor. Written by Joss Whedon, it twists itself into narrative knots to revive the series' long-standing heroin Ellen Ripley. Honestly, it suffers for it. This variation of Ripley is a badass, as well, but she's also weird and barely resembles the character she's embodying. Combined wit...