spoilers

Jack’s Bad Movies – The Wraith (1986)

IMDB’s description:

A mysterious figure suddenly appears to challenge a gang of motorhead thugs.

When cars can travel through space.

The alien from the Abyss has escaped the ocean and is terrorizing small town Arizona. Or at least that is what I think as two balls of light fly around the desert. Oh, they collided and made a car, so I guess they are transformers. Transformers and an astronaut (Wraith).

Now we cut to a man and woman driving when they suddenly are stopped by thugs and rapists (I assume grabby hands is a rapist). The ring leader wants to race for the guy’s car, and the guy doesn’t seem to have a choice. Totally unfair that the leader forcing this race gets to wear a helmet, he obviously knows racing can be dangerous. The bad guy randomly runs the poor schmuck off the road, and suddenly the race is over as he declares “the car is ours, nice and legal.” I guess they have never heard of coercion. The guy and girl are then left in the desert to walk back to wherever. At least they didn’t actually rape her.

And it’s Charlie Sheen. He rolls up on a dirt bike and asks a girl who just left her house for directions. “I’m Keri Johnson, I take rides from strangers on motorcycles.” Is what she must say in her mind, because she immediately decides to get a ride from him. Oh wait, the legally confused ring leader shows up and Keri jumps to get in his car. Keri doesn’t seem to like her jerk boyfriend though. We interrupt this movie for women putting on tanning oil… Jake (Charlie Sheen) is brand new in town, but immediately goes to the popular swimming spot to sun bathe. For a guy who rides a dirt bike with his shirt open, he doesn’t have much of a tan. A kid named Billy joins him and tells him his brother was murdered and the body never found. To this Charlie Sheen says “I’m sorry man I had no idea.” Less emotion has never been put into a consoling remark. This brother used to date Keri. I wonder if Packard murdered his brother (not really though, because it is obvious).

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Jack’s Bad Movies: Flight World War 2 (2015)

IMDB Description:

After Flight 42 travels through a storm they find themselves in France, 1940, during World war II.

The greatest battle that never happened! Based on true events!

That jacket cover makes a couple of bold assertions, and I fully expect it to live up to them.

This movie opens with the flight already in progress. Faran Tahir is captain William Strong. You might remember Tahir from such blockbusters as Iron-Man and Star Trek (2009) and such TV shows as Once Upon a Time and 12 Monkeys. What you won’t remember him from is Flight World War 2. Strong’s copilot is Daniel Prentice (Matias Ponce). They are flying International Airlines flight 42 from Washington D.C. to London. This airline wins the award for least imaginative fake airline name to ever appear in a movie. And of course there are some passengers and a flight crew, will they be relevant later? I hope not. This movie is called Flight World War 2, so I’m guessing somehow it is going to end up in the past. Best case scenario, the plane arrives over London and is shot down by flak cannons immediately.

Props to the movie, three minutes in and it brings us directly to a little thing I like to call, the inciting incident. The plane begins to experience turbulence, and the people on the ground warn the pilots of a sudden storm materializing out of nowhere. Ground control recommends flying around, but I guess that isn’t Strong’s style (ground control probably hates him almost as much as they hate Major “I love radio silence” Tom). Instead Strong decides flying into the vortex is the best idea. At this moment I experienced a terrible fear that this movie will be The Langoliers.

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Jack’s Bad Movies – Alien Uprising (2012)

I typically use the IMDB description for a movie at the start of a post. Except in this case. Netflix actually tells you what might happen in the movie.

One night five friends are out drinking, the next they’re struggling to survive in a landscape controlled by alien invaders in this sci-fi chiller. Anarchy is in the air as an enormous spacecraft hovers overhead and order breaks down on the ground. – Netflix

The real "battle" is the insurgence within mankind itself. - IMDB

The real “battle” is the insurgence within mankind itself. – IMDB

The movie opens with a woman (Maya Grant) running out of a house in a panic, in the rain. She is looking around scared, and then suddenly looks, and appears to be the on verge of fainting. I’m only 99% sure the purpose of this first scene is to have a woman standing in the rain and allowing the camera to pan up and look down at her cleavage.

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Jack’s Bad Movies: Wing Commander

IMDB’s description:

Blair, a fighter pilot, joins an interstellar war to fight the evil Kilrathi who are trying to destroy the universe.

This jacket cover makes the movie sound pretty exciting, so I'm optimistic. They definitely aren't allowed to misrepresent a movie on its cover.
This jacket cover makes the movie sound pretty exciting, so I’m optimistic.
They definitely aren’t allowed to misrepresent a movie on these things.

The opening credits say based on the games and novels by Chris Roberts. Then it says directed by the same Chris Roberts. Video game design and making movies are basically the same, so I’m sure in hindsight this will be viewed as the good decision it obviously is. You don’t want to bog down a film production with a director who has experience or a proven track record.

The movie opens with some exposition that mankind was conquering space and everything until they ran into a race of aliens called the Kilrathi and now they are in a desperate war against them. On the space station Pegasus, it is business as usual, until a Kilrathi fleet comes out of nowhere and easily destroys all the ships and boards the station. Their target? The computer that allows humans to travel through space. The CO of the station tries somewhat comically to shoot and smash his way into the computer room to prevent it from falling into enemy hands, but to no avail. Instead he sends out a little distress pod and goes down with the station. The Kilrathi now have access to the CO’s computer! Let’s hope there wasn’t anything inappropriate on there…

Now we cut to a small cargo ship, the Diligent. This ship has a crew of one old guy (Tchéky Karyo) named Taggart and two rookie pilots being transported to their first assignment in deep space. The two pilots are Lt. Blair (Freddie Prince Jr.) and Lt. Marshall (Matthew Lillard). Wing Commander is the second of what is apparently five match-ups of Freddie Prinze Jr. and Matthew Lillard. Matthew Lillard, of course, having his acting career destroyed by Scooby Doo movies, and has subsequently spent the last 12 years of his life doing little else other than rehashing the character Shaggy.

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