Star Trek Into Darkness (2013)

Enjoy These Final Moments of Peace.

Tuesday again.  Time again for a double feature at my local theater.  It’s problematic for a film critic to hate crowds so much that he doesn’t like to go see new movies until the theaters have slowed down, but that’s the kind of critic you idolize.  Me.  This would normally be too soon for me to want to go see a movie of this magnitude, but there weren’t a lot of options in theaters right now, and my desire to see this movie was pretty strong.  I was never a fan of the TV series this movie comes from, and I didn’t see the greater majority of the movies that helped make the series so popular.  But I did see the movie right before this one and it made me a fan.  I absolutely loved it.  So when they put out a new one, it made me very excited.  Did it live up to those expectations?  Find out as I review Star Trek Into Darkness, based on characters created by Gene Roddenberry, written by Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman, and Damon Lindelof, directed by J. J. Abrams, and starring Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Benedict Cumberbatch, Peter Weller, Bruce Greenwood, Zoe Saldana, Simon Pegg, Anton Yelchin, John Cho, Karl Urban, Alice Eve, Noel Clarke, Nazneen Contractor, and Leonard Nimoy.

On a mission to the planet Nibiru, Captain James T. Kirk (Chris Pine) violates the Prime Directive in order to rescue First Officer Spock (Zachary Quinto) from danger.  This causes Admiral Christopher Pike (Bruce Greenwood) to be forced to relieve Kirk of his command of the USS Enterprise.  Elsewhere, a man named John Harrison (Benedict Cumberbatch) offers Starfleet Officer Thomas Harewood (Noel Clarke) a way to save his dying child in exchange for blowing up a Starfleet archive.  Admiral Alexander Marcus (Peter Weller) calls together the captains of Starfleet to figure out their next move, falling directly into Harrison’s plan.  Harrison attacks the meeting, killing many of the Starfleet commanders.  In retaliation, Kirk is sent out with 72 prototype Photon Torpedoes with the order to destroy Harrison, while trying not to bring on a full scale war with the Klingons.  But all is not as it appears…

For the first half of this movie, I admit that I was feeling a little underwhelmed by it.  It was good, but it was not living up to my expectations for it.  Then shit started to get real.  Some might be embarrassed to say that they started to tear up near the end, mostly on moments between Spock and Kirk, but I’m not your usual man.  I’m barely a man at all!  What I am is a nerd, so it’s completely appropriate.  The story is also heavy with references to the past of Star Trek, which I’m sure I missed a bunch of because of my relative inexperience with the franchise, but I still got most of them.  I know Khan, for instance.  I know Tribbles.  I also know what happens to Spock at some point in a radioactive room.  But I like that these movies are taking place in an altered timeline so thing happen close to what happened in the past, but occasionally roles are reversed to be able to still catch the audience off guard.  But I was beginning to get trepidations in the beginning because a few things made me think they’d be treading the same ground as the previous movie, like when they took away Kirk’s ship and wanted to put him back in the academy, but they didn’t waste that much time in that.  Then Kirk would start getting at odds with the crew again, although he had a good reason.  I got most worried about how I’d feel about this movie when Kirk and Scotty parted ways.  BRING PEGG BACK!!  But then they did, and I could calm down.  But the end of the movie was filled with some great action and great emotional moments, and I’ve always said that ending strong is more important than opening strong.  I won’t spoil what was happening, but when Uhura told Spock to, “Go get him,” I got some wood, and surprisingly more because of the awesomeness than Zoe Saldana’s hotness.  I would have to admit that I saw the ending coming, making it not that much of a surprise when we find out Kirk’s fate.  I even wrote it in my notes just after I first saw the Tribble.  That being said, I didn’t feel like it was any less effective just because I knew how it would turn out.

There’s really no point even talking about the look of the movie, is there?  You saw the commercials and how awesome and epic they make the movie look, right?  Yeah, that’s what it looks like.  They were not lying to you.

I loved all the performances in this movie as well.  Chris Pine is great as Kirk.  He does the funny parts as well as he does the emotional parts.  He also plays a dick very well, easily making me silently curse him in the theater for making Simon Pegg leave.  I find it hard to talk about Zachary Quinto’s performance as Spock.  Through most of the movie, he’s acting really robotic.  On the other hand, that’s exactly what he’s supposed to be doing.  And he’s able to convey quite a bit of emotion through his performance while still being such a Vulcan, and he kind of breaks down at the end of the movie in an awesome way.  Zoe Saldana is hot.  Simon Pegg is awesome.  Peter Weller was Robocop.  I was unfamiliar with this Benedict Cumberbatch before I went into this movie.  I had heard him talked about a lot in nerdier crowds, so I knew he must have some nerd cred of some sort.  I think it’s because he’s in that Sherlock show, but I’ve never seen it.  And you never see him in The Hobbit because he only lends his voice to it.  That being said, I still thought he was pretty awesome in the movie.  Maybe not quite a Ricardo Montalbán, but pretty damned solid.  Even with the emo hair that occasionally happened in the middle of a fight, he maintained a certain level of quiet badassdom.  And the starring role in this movie for me is the white-haired chick on the command deck of the Enterprise.  I don’t know who she is, but I want to be in her.

Star Trek Into Darkness is another addition to the series that wins in my book.  The movie starts off a little slow for my taste, but ends strongly with a great deal of awesome action and emotion that actually made me tear up.  It looks great and all the performances were also top notch.  I’ve never considered myself a Star Trek fan, but if Abrams keeps this up, I might actually start watching the stuff that inspired the guy to make these awesome movies.  In the meantime, I recommend getting yourself to the theaters to check this one out as soon as you can.  Star Trek Into Darkness gets “If you test me, you will fail” out of “Because I am better.”

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Batman: The Dark Knight Returns (2012 and 2013)

We’re in For a Show, Kid.

Today’s review is brought to you by Smodcast. Well, Kevin Smith and Smodcast are in no way paying me to write this review, but it probably wouldn’t have come to pass if it weren’t for Kevin Smith. I listen to numerous Kevin Smith podcasts, and I think I’ve heard him rave about today’s movies on a few different podcasts he’s taken part in. The movies are based on some comic books that meant a lot to Smith, but I had never read. I had attempted to read them, but I found them a little verbose and not as visually interesting as the comic books that I tend to go for. Then these movies came out, and Smith loved them. If I remember correctly, he stated that he is brought to tears by the retelling. After hearing him talk these movies up numerous times, I finally decided that they begged a rental. And that brings me to review Part One and Part Two of Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, based on the comic books by Frank Miller, screenplay by Bob Goodman, directed by Jay Oliva, and starring the voices of Peter Weller, Michael Emerson, David Selby, Ariel Winter, Mark Valley, Wade Williams, Maria Canals Barrera, Robin Atkin Downes, Paget Brewster, Michael McKean, Gary Anthony Williams, Tress MacNeille, Grey DeLisle, Bruce Timm, Conan O’Brien, and Frank Welker.

Part One. The government has banned superheroes. Billionaire Bruce Wayne (Peter Weller) retires from crime fighting as the Batman. But, without the Batman, Police Commissioner James Gordon (David Selby) is left to fight a losing battle against the gangs of Gotham City. Harvey Dent (Wade Williams), having undergone surgery to repair his face, relapses and returns to crime. Bruce also relapses, succumbing to the gangs, Harvey’s reappearance, and the memory of his parents’ death, and returns to the cowl after saving the life of 13-year-old Carrie Kelley (Ariel Winter), who he starts training as his new Robin. But Batman’s return may have other consequences…

Part Two. Batman’s return brings the return of the Joker (Michael Emerson), who remained in a catatonic state in an asylum in Batman’s absence, his life having no purpose. Joker intends to make his big debut on a talk show interview, and Batman determines to stop him, even though he must get through Commissioner Gordon’s successor, Ellen Yindel (Maria Canals Barrera), to do so. But making such a public showing of the Batman’s return comes with another danger: the government may send Superman (Mark Valley), who works as a government operative now, to deal with the vigilante detective.

I was really happy with this movie. I knew that the comic books were well-written and entertaining, but I’m too easily bored by reading to make it through. Turning these into a movie was the perfect way to enjoy the story without any of that annoying reading stuff. And the story is definitely one that’s worth getting into your brain, either by reading or by watching. I start into the movie a little closed off because I don’t like seeing Batman retire, but I also understand the world that Miller creates that leads to Batman retiring. And then I like it even more when Batman comes back because of Two-Face. But if Two-Face no longer has two faces, doesn’t he have to change his name to Harvey Face or Scary Face? Plus, don’t they already have a villain that walks around with his face wrapped up like a mummy? Hush or something? I also thought it was cool that the movie shows us what it’s like to be an aging Batman, in the shadows planning his move against a group of criminals, and then you get to see a little bit of what it’s like to be one of the criminals, getting beaten down by the Batman, but not knowing where it’s coming from. But really, I feel like I was more excited to get to part two of the story. Part one does a lot of hinting at bigger things on the horizon. I was waiting to see what would happen with Superman, and I was waiting to see what would happen with the Joker. The relationship between the Joker and Batman has always been a fascinating one. I really liked Kevin’s Smith’s take on it in the comic book series Batman: Cacophony, and that one seems to take some ideas from Dark Knight Returns in things like the fact that the Joker is catatonic in a world without Batman and only comes back when Batman does, and Joker says something to that effect in Smith’s book. But the talk in Smith’s book was only a preamble to what happens further along in the timeline in this story, and it is an epic conclusion to their relationship to be sure. I also knew that part two would include a showdown between Batman and Superman, which I was very excited for. Mainly because I hate Superman. Such a goodie two-shoes son of a bitch. And not even a bright one! Why would he shove a train to a halt to save one blind man on the tracks when he could’ve just … I don’t know … picked him up and carried him off of the tracks instead of demolishing a train by shoving it to a stop? Fuckin’ douche…

I really don’t have a lot to say about the look of the movies. I wouldn’t say that I “liked” it, per se, but I do respect that they captured the look of the comics very well. I just wasn’t that big of a fan of the look of the comics. It works very well either way, but it’s not really my bag. I also like how the fights are realized in the movie. They’re very effective. It’s kind of like watching a UFC fight … in mud … between Batman and a mutant guy with spikey nipples … Also, I was a fan of that Bruno chick, or as I called her “Swastika Titties.” Swa-stick-ons? Swa-tit-kas? I don’t know, you work it out.

I found myself very conflicted by the voices in the movie. I liked them all, but I kept feeling myself missing the people that I had become more familiar with. Batman’s voice for me has pretty much always been Kevin Conroy from Batman: The Animated Series, which may have been one of the first times I heard him speak. Either that or Pete Holmes imitating Christian Bale. Those are my Batman voices. The same could be said for the Joker. No one does Joker like Mark Hamill. Peter Weller and Michael Emerson do good jobs, but my brain is so resistant to change that I will probably always shy away from any deviation.

If you’re anything like me, you should definitely go out and buy Parts One and Two of Batman: The Dark Knight Returns. It allows you to experience Frank Miller’s fantastic story of the aging Batman and his return to crime-fighting without all that tedious reading. They capture the comic book entirely, as best I can tell from my limited skimming of the graphic novels many years ago. Definitely worth buying for any comic book fans, Batman fans, and people who lack the attention span to read things. Of course, if that’s you, I doubt you made it to the end of this review. I wouldn’t have read it all, that’s for sure. Part Two is way better in my opinion because it has the fights with the Joker and Superman, but you kind of need Part One to set it all up. Batman: The Dark Knight Returns gets “It took years and cost a fortune. Luckily, I had both” out of “This isn’t a mud hole. It’s an operating table. And I’m the surgeon.”

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Leviathan (1989)

Talk About Having a Bad Day…

I really have no idea what inspired me to put today’s movie in my Netflix queue.  It wasn’t requested and I’ve never heard of it.  I know a couple of people that starred in the movie, but none of them would ever drive me to watch it.  My best guess was that Netflix recommended it to me based on my love of either the Abyss or Sphere and it decided, “Oh, he likes movies that happen underwater.”  Well, they were wrong.  I like GOOD movies that take place underwater just fine, but this movie wasn’t even well reviewed.  Netflix didn’t even think that I would like it, thinking that I’d give it a 2.5 out of 5.  Were they right?  Let’s find out as I randomly review Leviathan, written by David Peoples and Jeb Stuart, directed by George Pan Cosmatos, and starring Peter Weller, Amanda Pays, Ernie Hudson, Richard Crenna, Meg Foster, Hector Elizondo, Michael Carmine, Lisa Eilbacher, and Daniel Stern.

A mining crew run by Steven Beck (Peter Weller) is ahead of schedule in their underwater mining until one of their group named Buzz ‘Sixpack’ Parrish (Daniel Stern) discovers a wrecked ship called the Leviathan.  He brings back a safe he found on board for the crew to loot, but he pockets a flask for himself.  The ship’s doctor, Dr. Glen Thompson (Richard Crenna), finds a series of files marked “Deceased” amongst the findings, as well as a video tape that shows that something bad happened on the ship, but not what.  I suppose we could’ve reached that conclusion from the wrecked ship.  Something always goes wrong on a wrecked ship.  Sixpack shares the contents of the flask he found with crewmate Bridget Bowman (Lisa Eilbacher) later that day.  Shortly after that, Sixpack develops a rash and a strange, scaly skin condition and dies shortly after that.  The doctor decides he needs to examine the crew to make sure no one else is infected, and more specifically Elizabeth ‘Willie’ Williams (Amanda Pays), who was the one that retrieved Sixpack from the ship.  She’s fine, but Bowman starts showing signs of infection as well.  While Willie and Justin Jones (Ernie Hudson) go to retrieve the doctor, Bowman stumbles upon Sixpack, whose infection has continued after his death and started turning him into a strange creature.  She kills herself so she doesn’t go down the same path.  The infection continues as Bowman and Sixpack’s bodies start to fuse together into a creature, threatening the lives of everyone else on the ship.

This movie sucked all up on them balls.  It’s a super basic story that steals from anything and everything that it can while simultaneously being completely stupid, poorly crafted, and filled to the brim with actors who did not seem to want to participate.  As always, I will first mock the story.  It was the balls.  It’s poorly written and completely obvious in every way but worse still is that it can’t seem to decide what kind of monster movie it wants to be.  The first problem is the infection that turns people into zombies after they die.  But that zombie creature likes blood, apparently.  So now it’s a vampire movie.  But it’s also a hive mind, so is it an alien now, or just a science gone bad type of thing?  I’ll tell you what it is: it’s a rip off of better movies.  You got some Abyss in there; you’ve got a lot of The Thing in there, and then various things from whatever monster movie they felt they could cram in there.  For other movie clichés, you also have the group of people that are right on the border of going home, and we all know nothing bad ever happens to people that are so close to retirement.  There’s also plenty of stuff in the movie that are just stupid.  I thought it was dumb that everyone in the movie got so mad at the doctor in the beginning of the movie because he wasn’t in the command center when something went wrong with DeJesus’ suit while he was in the water.  What the hell was he supposed to do that Beck couldn’t?  And he lived anyway, so fuck off.  Later, when they are putting the creature in the airlock to send it out into the ocean, one of its limbs gets obviously cut off.  Why didn’t they jettison this as well?  When that same creature scratched Cobb’s chest, how did they not think to keep an eye on him for when he inevitably became infected himself?  When the corrupt company said they couldn’t pick up the crew because a hurricane was coming, why did they not think to even check on the surface weather themselves after they all already showed that they were suspicious of them, and showed that they had the ability to do it?  They didn’t figure that one out until the last ten minutes of the movie.

All these things make this movie super obvious.  You can see everything coming from a mile away.  When Sixpack and Bowman drink from the flask, you know it will start the troubles.  When they blatantly ignore the severed limb of the creature, you’re sure it will return.  When Cobb gets scratched, you now he’ll be infected.  When Jones and DeJesus decide to work on a puzzle together and he strangely goes into the next room and puts on headphones, you know that DeJesus is not long for this world.  That one was so blatant it made me angry.  Why would he agree to put a puzzle together and put on headphones as he got set up for it?  Did he just really want to hear about 30 seconds of his favorite song, or were they just obviously having the background noise blocked out for him so DeJesus could meet his demise?  The whole weather thing was completely obvious as well, and turned out exactly as I expected.  I predicted it so much sooner than the people in the movie that so much time had passed by the time they actually decided to check on it that I started to believe they weren’t going that way.  Then they did.  The ending of the movie fit spectacularly in with the rest of the movie by also being a pile of shit.  Having their escape pods lost to them, they just hop in their suits and have balloons drag them up to the surface.  Then, someone that knows the slightest thing about how the ocean works must’ve informed them that they would die without decompression (or they just watched the Abyss again to see if there was anything else they could steal) and fixed that problem by having the display on their suits say, “Decompression,” in big red letters.  All better.  Then, they’re up in the water, about to be rescued by a helicopter, and they decide to just throw one more thing in by randomly having a shark come in their vicinity.  They said it was trying to attack, but it didn’t seem that interested.  I guess I can’t be that bothered by this because they opened the movie the same way, trying to throw some “exciting” or “suspenseful” moment in that had nothing to do with the story and was just a random attempt to get their audience interested.  So, fuck you, movie.

I was extremely confused by the look of this movie.  When the opening credits were rolling, I saw that Stan Winston did the creature effects for the movie.  I thought to myself, “Hey, I know that name.  So at least this movie will have something going for it.”  I was wrong.  He must’ve just knocked out the creatures for this over a weekend.  They were all super goofy looking.  The first one that occurred to me was the little spider thing early on.  I thought it might have been a facehugger at first, but then I realized that it didn’t have a tail, or the ability to articulate its limbs.  It was about as effective as putting a rubber spider on the end of a stick and bouncing it up and down on the floor.  They could’ve opted for strings instead.  Later, when the creature’s limb was cut off, it split about three inches away from the point where the compression was happening.  Near the end, I started to wonder why they weren’t showing the creature full on.  Was it to create suspense?  To let our imaginations run wild?  Or because it looked like a retarded walking fish?  Probably that last one.

None of the performances in this movie were any good.  I recognize at least a few of them as decent enough actors, but I got the feeling that they were all aware that the movie they were in was a piece of shit.  Peter Weller seemed completely bored by the movie, and barely entertained the notion of emoting.  At the end of the movie, when only he and Willie survived to be greeted by the Martin (Meg Foster), the woman who owned the company that sent them down there and also decided to lie to them about their possibility of evacuation, I thought the movie couldn’t get any worse.  Then Peter Weller punches this woman in the face … and the movie won me back.  Excellent movie!  But seriously, is that what you want our hero to do?  Punch a woman in the face?  Yeah, she was a bitch and tried to leave them to their death, but you also had Willie standing right there.  Let her punch the bitch in the face.  No harm, no foul.  Ernie Hudson never did anything to impress in the movie, and Daniel Stern only annoyed the piss out of me.  Thankfully, he was the first one to die.  But before that, all he did was semi-constantly bang his dick against the two girls on the vessel, both of which just grinned and took it like a good, subservient woman should.  His only personality trait was being horny all the time, and not at all afraid to show it.  Speaking of which, I got really bummed out when Lisa Eilbacher killed herself in the movie, but only because I was sure she was the only chance I had of seeing boobs.  Both of the girls in the movie were hot, but Amanda Pays’ character was being obviously set up as the heroine, so we’d only see her naked if they did some unrealistic “let’s fuck because we’re about to die” thing with Beck.  When Eilbacher died, I knew there would be nothing in this movie at all for me.

Leviathan sucked.  It sucked out loud, in stereo surround sound.  The story was just a blatant cash grab, stealing from far better movies without the good sense to do anything right as they did it.  The look was goofy even though they employed one of the most famous names in monster effects, and every performance phoned it in.  Next time I can’t figure out why a movie is in my Netflix queue, I should probably trust my gut and not watch it.  On the other hand, this was a fun movie to make fun of.  But the movie itself is no fun, so don’t bother watching it.  Leviathan gets “I realize you must’ve gone through hell” out of “Gone?  Bitch, we’re still here!”

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The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension (1984)

Laugh While You Can, Monkey Boy!

I’ve heard about today’s movie many times as a staple in nerd culture. It got to the point where I felt as if I would not qualify as a true nerd if I had never seen this movie. And since I have only two things – my nerdiness and my balls, and I don’t break ’em for nobody – I felt it was necessary to watch The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension, written by Earl Mac Rauch, directed by W. D. Richter, and starring Peter Weller, John Lithgow, Ellen Barkin, Christopher Lloyd, Robert Ito, Clancy Brown, Lewis Smith, Jeff Goldblum, Pepe Serna, Ronald Lacey, Matt Clark, Vincent Schiavelli, Rosalind Cash, Dan Hedaya, and Yakov Smirnoff.

Buckaroo Banzai (Peter Weller) is some kind of scientist/action hero guy. The movie opens with him testing out a Jet Car with a oscillation overthruster mounted to it that allows it to drive into a mountain. When he comes out, he finds some kind of alien organism attached to the car. Elsewhere, in the Trenton Home for the Criminally Insane, Dr. Emilio Lizardo (John Lithgow) hears about Banzai’s accomplishment and has a flashback to when he helped Banzai’s mentor, Dr. Hikita (Robert Ito), in a overthruster experiment that failed and allowed Lizardo to have his mind taken over by Lord John Whorfin, leader of the Red Lectroids. The Red Lectroids are a group of alien reptiles that tried to take over Planet 10 before being stopped by the Black Lectroids and getting banished into the 8th Dimension. The Red Lectroids now spend their time hidden as regular people who all share the same first name of John. Banzai finds a girl named Penny Priddy (Ellen Barkin), the long-lost twin sister of Banzai’s deceased wife, but she is kidnapped to ransom her for the overthruster, and the Black Lectoids threaten to destroy Earth if Banzai can’t stop the Red Lectoids. Can Buckaroo Banzai save the day? And if he can, will we understand what the hell is happening in this movie?

Generally speaking, a cult hit is not a very good movie, but has a certain campy charm that makes it appealing to a certain group of people. I guess you could say that this movie has a bit of a campy charm to it, but it just wasn’t very good. You could very easily say this movie is imaginative, but it was also very strange and confusing. I barely have any idea what was happening in this movie. The whole theme of the movie was reminiscent of old serialized action/drama’s that I’ve seen on Mystery Science Theater 3000, but I wouldn’t want to watch those without three hilarious guys mocking it. This movie was not painfully bad, and certainly had a few entertaining moments, but it was so confusing to me that I can’t say I enjoyed watching it. There was a machine that put people into another dimension, this group of scientist/superheroes that were also in a band or some shit, a love interest that was inexplicably depressed when we meet her and was the twin sister of our hero’s dead wife but them dating was cool somehow, a bunch of strange-looking aliens that all were named John for some reason. I have no idea what was going on here. I suppose it’s a similar story to the first Men in Black movie where the heroes have to stop something from happening to save the world, but it was like the first Men in Black if it was written by people on LSD that didn’t read the story they wrote after the drugs wore off.

The coolest thing about this movie is the people in it. It may not have been the start of these actor’s work, but it was certainly one of the earliest roles for people that went on to be in huge movies. Peter Weller may not have had as big of a career as some of the other people I’ll get to, but he was Robocop. His performance in this movie was decent, but nothing that caused me to pay much attention to him. John Lithgow, on the other hand, I did pay attention to. We should all know Mr. Lithgow from his many other fantastic performances and he was probably the most enjoyable part of this movie with his over the top performance as Emilio Lizardo. If not him by himself, some of the funniest parts were interactions between him and his resentful underling, John Bigboote (which most people pronounced Big Booty), played by Christopher Lloyd. This man will be forever loved by me for Back to the Future, and his role as Fester Addams helps too. This movie didn’t do anything to help my love of him, but didn’t do enough to hurt it. I don’t really know what I thought about Ellen Barkin’s performance because I mainly spent all the time she was on screen trying to figure out if I was attracted to her or not. I’m still undecided. There are many other people in this movie who went on to huge movie roles that I’m sure had very little to do with this movie. Jeff Goldblum was in Independance Day and Jurassic Park, Ronald Lacey was most famously Toht in Raiders of the Lost Ark (though that was before this movie), Clancy Brown was the fuckin Kurgan in Highlander, Dan Hedaya was in Alien: Resurrection, and Yakov Smirnoff was … Yakov Smirnoff. Lots of big names in this movie, if nothing else.

I can see how people would find this movie charming without actually finding it charming myself. Kudos are deserved for making a movie that certainly qualifies as a candidate for the most imaginative movie I can think of, but the movie also has to make some sense for me to get into it. It was sort of fun, and included varying qualities of performances from numerous recognizable characters, but if you never know what’s going on, what’s the point? I can’t really recommend you watch this movie. I imagine I’ll find it fun to be able to say that I’ve seen this movie in the future, and it is apparently such a staple in nerd culture that you may have to watch it to consider yourself nerdy, but the movie itself is only good to be mocked, as far as I’m concerned. If they tried to be funny by kind of being a parody in itself, I didn’t get it. The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension gets “Use more honey. Find out what she knows” out of “I’ve been ionized, but I’m okay now.”

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