Movies

Defending Trash

Defending Trash: In Defense of Mac & Me (1988)

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I love Mac & Me. No, really. I love it. Yeah, I know. It has been pilloried and ripped to shreds countless times. We covered it on Torture Cinema. Paul Rudd has made a joke about it for years (the Rudd Roll, if you will). And I will even admit that it is a ridiculous film that by most standards would be considered legitimate “trash.” But I love it nonetheless, so much so that I appeared on Fine Beats and Cheeses in April 2025 to talk about it with the fine hosts of the illustrious show. For years, I’ve made fun of so-called “bad movies” on The Skiffy and Fanty Show, from Plan 9 from Outer Space to Birdemic, from Batman & Robin to The Black Hole. The whole point of the Torture Cinema podcast is to give films most people think are terrible a humorous-but-critical look with the understanding that film criticism is often subjective. Sometimes a film doesn’t deserve the hate it receives (and vice versa). Ultimately, I think we ought to give trash movies a bit more love. After all, some of the most enjoyable movies of all time aren’t exactly good. Even the editorial team at Rotten Tomatoes has a list of bad movies they actually love. The Mummy (1999) is one such movie; it has a 62% critic rating on Rotten Tomatoes (it was lower when I started writing this), and I’m told that David Annandale despises it with a passion not seen since the Pharaohs actually lived. Yet, audiences rather like that film, and its reputation has spawned amusement park rides, miles of merch, numerous sequels (and a spinoff of sorts), and 1999’s most important eye candy in the form of Brendan Frasier’s Rick O’Connell (seriously, he’s so pretty). Of course, the popularity of a thing doesn’t tell us whether the thing is any good, but I also don’t think the popularity of a thing can be dismissed.

Film Lists, Random Stuff

A Definitive Absolutely Accurate Ranking of James Bond Theme Songs

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The title says it all. Mostly. It doesn’t tell you why I have decided to put together a ranking of every James Bond theme song. I could tell you that there are great reasons for this, but I would be lying. The real reason: I’ve been watching and re-watching James Bond movies on and off for years, both as a kind of weird comfort watching and because the culture critic in me wants to understand them. The other real reason: cause I want to. In preparing for this, I had to consider two factors: first, what criteria to use to judge these songs, because no ranked list would be valid if we didn’t pretend to some kind of objective measure; and second, how to use such a list to incorporate my brother’s feedback, as he was coaxed into participating in this fiasco for our mutual amusement. The second of these, I simply decided that we’d use the ranking average of our two scores for the final score in one of the criteria categories. The more difficult task was coming up with the criteria in the first place. And so with much deliberation with myself, a little with my brother, and a little more with other folks who also have opinions about things, I came up with this list of five:

Movie Reviews, Movie Roulette

Pete’s Dragon and the Most Alarming World of Child Abduction…with Music!

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When you’re a kid, you don’t spend a whole lot of time thinking about the historical basis for the narratives in the fantasy films you grew to love. It’s all about the anthropomorphic Robin Hood figures, talking parrots and genies, flying beds and walking suits of armor, an astronomically large collection of Dalmatians, or a magical cartoon dragon who roasts apples for his child companion. That describes much of my early experiences with Pete’s Dragon (1977), which saw Disney attempting to recreate the live-action-and-cartoon musical magic some thirteen years after Mary Poppins. It’s a film about a little boy and his magical dragon, about a small New England seaside town, about larger-than-life hillbilly villains, and about familiar Disney things like the power of family (even found family) and even the “value” of children. Value would normally have an obvious meaning here. Something like “hey, we should listen to kids because what they have to say matters,” for example. And Disney certainly has that here. Pete (Sean Marshall), the lively redheaded boy who is taken in by lighthouse keepers Nora (Helen Reddy) and Lampie (Mickey Rooney) gets his fair share of moments to remind the adults around him that what he thinks does matter – though other adults, such as the strict and draconian schoolteacher, Miss Taylor (Jane Kean), find little of value in the words of children. Yet, it’s the other value that I found particularly shocking upon rewatching the film for this feature.

Film Reviews

An Adventure in Style Over Substance: Snyder’s Army of the Dead (2021)

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There are times when I turn on a thing and realize it was a mistake. Sometimes it’s a terrible 80s horror film like Edge of the Axe (1988) or a TV series you don’t realize will leave you disappointed until it’s too late (ahem, Jupiter’s Legacy). This time, it’s Zack Snyder’s Army of the Dead. If I’m honest, I came into this with high hopes. Unlike most people over the age of 25, I actually quite enjoy Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead (2004) – even though I agree that the original is a better film. I thought the film handled its zombie universe well, built up meaningful personal stakes for its characters, and had sufficient tension to make for an occasionally terrifying adventure. It is upon that experience that I came into Army of the Dead with certain expectations for the kind of film we’d get. Alas, a heist-y Dawn of the Dead we did not get.

SF/F Commentary

The Unbearable Weight of Fantasy, Tolkien, and Race (or, Eh, Black Elves Are Fine)

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The Internet is abuzz about the one fantasy author to rule them all, J.R.R. Tolkien. Over Superbowl weekend, Amazon released the first trailer for their new Tolkien adaptation, The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. As with any highly-anticipated media property, the trailer (and the still shots released earlier this year) have sparked considerable debate about the nature of Tolkien’s work, the process of adaptation, and, in particular, Amazon’s decision to feature more diversity than we have seen in previous adaptations of Tolkien’s work (or, indeed, in much of the public conversation of his work). The last of these debate topics would be disheartening if it weren’t so utterly predictable — both because it’s a talking point we’ve seen before in this same community and because it’s a talking point that has been used as a response to diversity in basically all media going back long enough that it’s essentially tradition. While there may be value in discussing these attitudes of (sometimes racist) rejection in particular terms, I think it’s more fruitful to consider the root assumptions which make these debates even possible.

Film Reviews, Movie Reviews, Movie Roulette

Brokeback Mountain (2005) and the Unbearable Violence of Gay Love

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In 2005, the United States found itself in a renewed culture war over the place of homosexuality in society. Just two years prior, the Supreme Court overruled Bowers v. Hardwick to establish sodomy laws as unconstitutional. None of this was new to civil rights activists, of course. Gay rights had been part of the national conversation for decades, especially in the wake of Stonewall (1969) and the DSM’s redefinition of homosexuality as non-pathological (1973). By 2005, the year Brokeback Mountain blew up the box office, Massachusetts had legalized same-sex marriage and a flurry of bans had swept the country, ushering in an era not just of tacit acceptance of bigotry against gay people but also of systemic, government-supported bigotry. All this was hot on the heels of decades of brutal murders of gay people, and an especially tumultuous 1990s, which saw well over a dozen murders and executions of gay men (and women), some of them so high profile that they would eventually lead to legislation designed to protect gay people from (or at least create greater punishment for) murderous homophobes. For a young man raised in a deeply homophobic culture, all of this was a bit of a shock, not least of all because my mother was a gay woman, and for about a decade up until 2005, my life had been packed with gay people being people with regular people problems. And here we were being asked as citizens to determine if other citizens had the right to live their lives without government interference. For me, there was no question that same-sex marriage should be legal.

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