Oh god. Oh goooooooddddd.

Alright. This is a really tentative recommendation. The sort of bad movies I like are Samurai Cop which still ranks as my favorite movie of all time. In fact, I'm going to watch it right after this review, because I love it so much. I'm not actually being ironic. I actually ended up contacting Cinema Epoch regarding the rerelease of Samurai Cop, which by the way is available April 19th and everyone should get it. Cinema Epoch, I don't mind actively sponsoring your Samurai Cop rerelease and will gladly get it tattooed on my chest while I walk naked around town. Please contact me. I'm cool with selling out. Bitch I need money, don't hate.

Anyway, the difference between the films, aside from the plot, actors, sound design, and basically everything, is that Samurai Cop is a technically poor movie, while Birdemic is a technically...uh...uhm. Birdemic feels like it was edited once and they just sort of went with it. Like they ran out of money after doing the fucking awful bird CGI and just sort of rolled with the rest of the movie because they needed to get it out the door.

Before I really get in to this review, I do have to say, I almost feel like I can't review this film and do it justice. Unfortunately, the film was recently taken off YouTube where it was previously available free. It is currently available on Netflix. Sorry if you wanted to watch it on YouTube. You're not missing out on quality either way. Where was I?

Oh, right. So this movie is hard to review because its not a film that you can review in a traditional manner at all. Its so fucking awful in every conceivable way that attempting to criticize the acting or the sound design or the special effects or the cinematography or the editing or the writing or the shot composition or the framing or the blocking or the pacing or the lighting or the costume design or the weird soft focus that they use in every shot or even the fucking financial backing placement really isn't going to be able to accurately convey what this film is. Because trust me. Birdemic is bad. Really. Really. Really. Really. Really. Bad.

Okay so it sucks. How should I watch it?

Drunk and with friends. I cannot stress this enough, and I'm finding it odd that I'm having a hard time being funny about the movie, but its really because you can't convey that sense of friendship that comes from watching such god awful bullshit.

If you watch this film in any manner aside from high, drunk, or stupid, you are going to be in for an incredibly strange ride. If you watch it alone you are depressed and need to see a counselor, seriously. So grab some friends, grab Birdemic, and watch it. You won't be disappointed, except with the constant sense of crushing failure surrounding your life.

So...you have a whole review left, and don't want to talk about the movie.

Yeah, basically.

Do you want to summarize the plot?

I can give you that. Lemme see if I can make someone spit beer again. Then I'll talk about bad movies in an intellectual manner that shows just how way too serious I am about them. They're like my religion.

Birdemic is a film that follows a man whose whole life is going great for him - a totally sympathetic trait, I know - and his girlfriend who happens to be a model and/or an actress that James Nguyen picked up off the street on a quest to avoid getting murdered by poorly CGI'd birds that for some reason are attacking everyone. Unfortunately for the party, the birds are equipped with advanced GPS, miniature bombs, and steel tipped claws, which allow them to discover where the main characters are at any given moment for no reason other than to kill a fat man in a cowboy hat. Sometimes the birds explode.

In this film, characters will get naked down to their undergarments and not actually have sex. Somehow, an actually attractive actress will keep herself from laughing in most scenes while a man who clearly has never performed in anything in his life will talk about retiring early. The plot also preaches about environmentalism to a girl who doesn't actually do anything bad, and to a guy who made more efficient solar panels with nanobots I guess. This movie was financed by imaginepeace.com, which is not very subtle about where the website address is placed.

That's basically the plot. Also they find orphaned kids but they don't actually change anything that happens in the movie. I'd normally try and track this plot and see which action causes which effects but I think I can refrain from doing that this time around. Beer causes pee.

Uhm. I'm confused.

Good. You should be.

You see, and here's where I get to talk about bad movies, I have a deep seated love for terrible films. They're great. They're honestly my favorites, over every other film. Yeah, serious movies with great plots and great acting are good, they can make you think and you'll leave the theater discussing the plot with your friends, but there's something dishonest about it all. Something about good film just feels...off.

It might just be the fact that its just too well done, that it feels too polished, something like that. I like mistakes in movies, it makes them feel human, and when you have a movie with an incredibly well told story and special effects that are in service of the plot, where acting is great, it feels removed from its audience. It approaches the audience with a sort of ego; you can see it in a lot of great movies, where the movie has certain expectations about the audience, usually references or themes, understanding character motivations, things like that. And that's fine, it really is. A great movie is still a great movie, but there's a degree of pretense to it and that's almost unavoidable.

You see, character motivations especially cannot be universally understood in an emotional sense, and when that's the basis of a character it becomes a bit of a disconnect. Its why when watching a movie like, say, Inception - though not the greatest movie - I have a hard time really understanding Leonardo's motivation. I don't have kids, I'm likely never going to be separated from my kids so thoroughly. I can intellectually understand his position, but I can't emotionally understand it because I have yet to experience it.

Do you sort of see my point?

Yes, kind of. What does this have to do with bad movies?

Nice segue.

Bad movies are the complete and total opposite of great movies in more than one sense. When you sit down and watch a bad movie, you are approaching it from a position higher than the movie itself; you are watching the movie on your terms, and the movie is not dictating emotions to the audience, period. This difference is massive and fundamental to every bad movie, and its why movies that so often attempt to be so-bad-its-funny fail is because they don't understand why a bad movie is great in the first place.

There's something about being in the position where the movie is your plaything. You end up projecting yourself on to the movie; you make it something personal rather than something communal. What I get from Birdemic or Samurai Cop are the stupid small details nobody else notices. My favorite scene in Birdemic is when they're inside of a gas station looking for sandwiches, and its not because of how dumb the acting is or how bad the sound design is, its because inside of the sandwich case is a bottle of ranch dressing for no obvious reason.

In Silent Hill: Revelation or whatever, there's a scene in a bedroom where Jon Snow and blond chick are arguing. For a few shots, you get to see a prop on top of the bed. Its just a single red high heeled shoe. Why is that shoe there? Did they just forget it on set? Was it there for a reason? Is it a symbol? Why? Why is it red? Why is there only one? There's only ever one shoe shown there. Is it from the game?

These small details are the stuff I notice in films and bad movies are great for that, because I can take those small details and make it a part of watching the film. A bad film becomes something more when you watch it; you are as much a part of producing it as the director or the actors or anyone else involved in it. Good movies just can't emulate that because a good movie requires a strong director and a strong cast, which drowns out the audience. That's not a bad thing, and most of the time that's great. If you hate bad movies its because you probably don't enjoy building the movie as you watch it, and you probably like film for good stories and technical prowess, which again is totally fine.

There's just something perfect about terrible films like Birdemic that can't really be captured in a review like this. Its not that it's technically a poor film. Okay, yeah no, its technically a film I could produce with no arms or legs. There are other films that have bad technical production as well, but they aren't necessarily going to capture that spirit of a truly badgreat film. Its almost mystical; everything has to be just right, made just to taste, and that can't be forced. You have to stumble in to it. Its like a series of shooting stars that form a cosmic dick in the sky. You'll laugh the entire time, and never understand how the fuck that just happened.

So wait, why is the recommendation tentative?

Bringing it down from the philosophical I guess.

I have to bring it back to Samurai Cop again. Samurai Cop is a completely honest film; none of it feels ironic, none of it feels like it was phoned in. It feels like a labor of love from a person with a really mangled hand that just couldn't quite do any of it at all competently. Dialogue is out of place, the acting is poor, the pacing is bonkers, the special effects are paintball bullets - I'm not joking - and they use katana sword. Jesus christ, its just called a katana. But, it feels like an honestly made movie. Its not Asylum Films where they make it as a trick, its not a parody movie where its made for the purpose of being bad, its a pure, honestly bad product. At no point is the film being marketed.

Birdemic has a strange whiff about it. It feels slightly off, like at some point people realized that the whole thing was basically a gigantic joke and decided to go that route. The film is almost too bad to be true, where you begin to have a hard time believing that the director didn't make it out of irony, or with the intent of being a bad film. There's just the smallest whiff of that, but then against James Nguyen did also drive around with fake dead birds on his van at Sundance so fuck all if I know.

Please stop talking.

Eat a dick, invisible question poser.

Closing remarks are in order I suppose.

Despite my feeling of offness about the movie, its still a fucking terrible film that you should watch. I don't actually know enough about it to determine how genuine the effort was, but its still a technically terrible film in every respect. It looks like a home movie. You probably made this exact movie in high school, and you know what? That makes its awfulness all the better.

I don't know how good the second one is.

What's the week look like, asshole?

Plenty of shit left. Especially once I get my new HD copy of Samurai Cop available April 19th from Amazon. Please fund me, Cinema Epoch.

DONE

It's My Party and I'll Die oh fuck it - That title is seriously way too long Birdemic - It counts as being reviewed.

NOT DONE

Adaptation My Bloody Valentine

FAN REQUEST FRIDAY

Ice Spiders Ginger Snaps Long...Something Raising Arizona <---- IN THE LEAD

Keep 'em coming, folks.