Quaid In Full - Episodes Tagged with “Aughts Movies”

S07E10: Pandorum

Sarah D Bunting — Thu, 01 Jun 2023 10:00:00 -0400

Author and critic Zack Handlen made the mistake of offering to return for Pandorum, 2009's "what if we stuck a bunch of grimy Jell-O to some warehouse walls and filmed a live-action 'Space Madness' meets Event Horizon" sci-fi. The movie starts out well -- good atmospherics; good partner chemistry between Quaid and Ben Foster -- but as Zack notes, most of the interesting stuff happened before the movie started. And after we find out the enemy isn't a giant snacky space arachnid, well, it's a tough sit. (How tough? We measured its length in, variously, feet of blanket knitted, Lego kits assembled, and online games of Risk played.) Surrounded by the detritus of the other, better properties Pandorum tried to rip off, we talked about confusing ship layouts, Virtuosity, which member of Roxette wrote Nadia's dialogue, Quaid's search for emotional truth, and why hypersleep pods in the future come with tooth-whitening strips. Oh, also what the hell "pandorum" actually is. It's the QIF season finale, so tell Scotty the PA to douse your cleavage in melted licorice and join us!

Overall score: 2.83
QQQ score: 6.17
Days since a lost Kuffs accident: 454
Don't Say A Word counter: 2

SHOW NOTES

Special Guest: Zack Handlen.

S07E09: G.I. Joe: The Rise Of Cobra

Sarah D Bunting — Thu, 25 May 2023 09:00:00 -0400

Extra Hot Great's Dave Cole is back to help us list the many complaints prompted by 2009's dreadful and boring live-action take on G.I. Joe, including attempts to elevate an already-fine cartoon, suboptimal explosions and fight scenes, pointless origin stories, creepy side views of Quaid holograms, and the movie putting SDB in the position of defending Transformers 2. G.I. Joe lifts scenes almost wholesale from Star Wars, Apollo 13, and others, and it still sucks -- but is DQ perfectly cast, and not the third or fourth choice for once? Did Channing Tatum's character learn about marriage proposals from Galaxy Quest's historical documents? And could we identify the exact moment, in the middle of a line of dialogue, when Joseph Gordon-Levitt gave up and went full Vincent Price on The Brady Bunch? So many questions (and Winston Lights-infused line deliveries)...but knowing is half the battle in the latest Quaid In Full.

Overall score: 2
QQQ score: 6.5
Days since a lost Kuffs accident: 447
Don't Say A Word counter: 2

SHOW NOTES

Special Guest: David T. Cole.

S07E07: Horsemen

Sarah D Bunting — Thu, 11 May 2023 09:00:00 -0400

Horsemen seems to have gotten memory-holed immediately after the fest circuit (or...during production by much of the below-the-line talent?), and with good reason -- it's bafflingly poor, studded with visual clichés, its actors apparently undirected, its script evidently without access to a Bible despite basing its tortuously contrived serial-killer procedural plot on more than one book therein. It's got a grieving-family subplot that should have come to the foreground, and a couple of actors -- including Quaid! -- who could have carried that version of the movie, but the version we got is a disorganized Seven For Teens with a crumbly topping of dated kink-shaming. A lot of the cast is either straight-up wasted in this mess or doing more than they need to, but Quaid is actually not bad. "Come and see" (...sigh) what we mean in the latest episode of Quaid In Full.

Overall score: 1.5
QQQ score: 6.25
Days since a lost Kuffs accident: 433
Don't Say A Word counter: 2

SHOW NOTES

S07E06: The Express

Sarah D Bunting — Thu, 04 May 2023 09:30:00 -0400

[NB: Due to file-corruption issues, this episode's sound isn't stellar; apologies for any inconvenience!] Critics were kindly disposed towards The Express, a well-meaning Ernie Davis bio-pic that seems to count on knee-jerk positive responses to 1) sports movies that 2) defy bigotry. It's done well, mostly, even though the dialogue really isn't how people speak to each other, mostly, and the traditional football-feelm structure wastes certain excellent actors while giving others more than they can handle -- so we're landing on "creditable, but not crucial." The Quaidosity is a more ambiguous prospect; after SDB regrettably uses the phrase "liminal space," we ponder the changing nature of the "qua" in "Quaid Qua Quaid," and DQ's transition from rakish pilot to avuncular coach/cop. Will Roy Williams-branded cliché containers, teratomae of movie rage, and the birth of a weird Brittany Murphy runner add up to a victory for our side?

Overall score: 5
QQQ score: 7.25
Days since a lost Kuffs accident: 426
Don't Say A Word counter: 1

SHOW NOTES

S07E05: Vantage Point

Sarah D Bunting — Thu, 27 Apr 2023 10:00:00 -0400

[NB: Due to file-corruption issues, this episode's sound isn't stellar; apologies for any inconvenience!] For a third-choice star in a first-draft action movie, Dennis Quaid's quite good in 2008's Vantage Point, a fridge-magnet-poetry "thriller" script whose "what if In The Line Of Fire + 24 + Dave gave DQ the adrenaline trots" logline invited multiple weary comparisons to Rashomon in (uniformly negative) reviews. Despite dialogue some film student shook out of the Michael Bay Presents: Boggle cup, a Frogger algorithm used as a car chase, inconsistent blocking, an inert title, and Quaid adopting the wrong posture for a Secret Service agent, we did find a handful of things to enjoy, like William Hurt doing an imitation of that flappy dude outside the car wash while getting shot, and imagining Niles Crane listing budget rental-car models. The president is a clone, but there's a Quaid In Full episode to distract you, so: who cares!

Overall score: 4
QQQ score: 6.5
Days since a lost Kuffs accident: 419

SHOW NOTES