The A.V. Club - I Watched This On Purpose

DVD: I Watched This On Purpose:Twilight

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0600

Sometimes, even The A.V. Club isn’t impervious to the sexy allure of ostensible cultural garbage. Which is why there’s I Watched This On Purpose, our feature exploring the impulse to spend time with trashy-looking yet in some way irresistible entertainments, playing the long odds in hopes of a real reward and a good time. Cultural infamy: 2008’s Twilight has a Metacritic score of 56. That’s pretty lousy, but looking over the list of semi-positive reviews (whoa, Entertainment Weekly gave it a B?), it doesn’t sound like the sort of train wreck that normally demands ...

DVD: I Watched This On Purpose:S1m0ne

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0600

Sometimes, even The A.V. Club isn’t impervious to the sexy allure of ostensible cultural garbage. Which is why there’s I Watched This On Purpose, our feature exploring the impulse to spend time with trashy-looking yet in some way irresistible entertainments, playing the long odds in hopes of a real reward and a good time. Cultural infamy: In 2002, screenwriter Andrew Niccol was on a roll, sort of. He penned and directed Gattaca in 1997, and followed it by writing and co-producing The Truman Show in 1998. Both films dealt with characters trapped in social infrastructures that value ...

DVD: I Watched This On Purpose:Miss March

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 12:00:00 -0500

Sometimes, even The A.V. Club isn’t impervious to the sexy allure of ostensible cultural garbage. Which is why there’s I Watched This On Purpose, our feature exploring the impulse to spend time with trashy-looking yet in some way irresistible entertainments, playing the long odds in hopes of a real reward and a good time. Cultural infamy: The debut feature from sketch-comedy troupe The Whitest Kids U’Know—or at least Zach Cregger and Trevor Moore, who wrote, directed, and star—Miss March currently ranks as Metacritic’s most poorly reviewed film of 2009, with an abysmal 7 ...

DVD: I Watched This On Purpose:Friday The 13th (2009)

Wed, 07 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0500

Sometimes, even The A.V. Club isn’t impervious to the sexy allure of ostensible cultural garbage. Which is why there’s I Watched This On Purpose, our feature exploring the impulse to spend time with trashy-looking yet in some way irresistible entertainments, playing the long odds in hopes of a real reward and a good time. Cultural infamy: Friday The 13th (2009) is a remake/re-imagining/regurgitation of a slasher franchise that never earned higher than a C- on any but the most lenient of curves. It was released by Platinum Dunes, the production company that gave us “modern ...

DVD: I Watched This On Purpose:How To Lose Friends & Alienate People

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 11:49:00 -0500

Sometimes, even The A.V. Club isn’t impervious to the sexy allure of ostensible cultural garbage. Which is why there’s I Watched This On Purpose, our feature exploring the impulse to spend time with trashy-looking yet in some way irresistible entertainments, playing the long odds in hopes of a real reward. And a good time. Cultural infamy: After years of capping off at cult status, making silly movies and TV shows with his friends, Simon Pegg was poised, much like the “protagonist” of How To Lose Friends & Alienate People, to break into the big time. And on paper ...

DVD: I Watched This On Purpose:The Genius Club

Thu, 10 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0500

Sometimes, even The A.V. Club isn’t impervious to the sexy allure of ostensible cultural garbage. Which is why there’s I Watched This On Purpose, our feature exploring the impulse to spend time with trashy-looking yet in some way irresistible entertainments, playing the long odds in hopes of a real reward and a good time. Cultural infamy: The cultural infamy of The Genius Club lasted all of about three days in May of 2007, when writer/director Tim Chey screened the bizarre stealth-Christian action-thriller—about a government plot to solve the world’s problems in one night by ...

DVD: I Watched This On Purpose:The Inglorious Bastards

Wed, 26 Aug 2009 13:35:00 -0500

Sometimes, even The A.V. Club isn’t impervious to the sexy allure of ostensible cultural garbage. Which is why there’s I Watched This On Purpose, our feature exploring the impulse to spend time with trashy-looking yet in some way irresistible entertainments, playing the long odds in hopes of a real reward and a good time. Cultural infamy/Curiosity factor: In the case of The Inglorious Bastards, there’s no separation between what recently made it famous and why I was curious to watch it. For much of its lengthy conception and production stages, Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds ...

DVD: I Watched This On Purpose:Obsessed

Wed, 12 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0500

Sometimes, even The A.V. Club isn’t impervious to the sexy allure of ostensible cultural garbage. Which is why there’s I Watched This On Purpose, our feature exploring the impulse to spend time with trashy-looking yet in some way irresistible entertainments, playing the long odds in hopes of a real reward and a good time. Cultural infamy: The 2009 thriller Obsessed was eviscerated by critics, scoring a 25 on Metacritic and a 19 percent freshness rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Detractors disparaged its reliance on clichés, deplorable racial and sexual politics, and blatant borrowing from Fatal Attraction, Disclosure ...

DVD: I Watched This On Purpose:Transmorphers

Wed, 29 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0500

Sometimes, even The A.V. Club isn’t impervious to the sexy allure of ostensible cultural garbage. Which is why there’s I Watched This On Purpose, our feature exploring the impulse to spend time with trashy-looking yet in some way irresistible entertainments, playing the long odds in hopes of a real reward and a good time. Cultural infamy: Maybe it’s that I don’t hang out in video stores nearly as much as I used to, but I only recently became aware of The Asylum, a studio whose work gets slightly more respect than the Girls Gone Wild ...

Film: I Watched This On Purpose:Bad Boys

Wed, 15 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0500

Cultural Infamy: Bad Boys’ cultural infamy is rooted in its status as the film that introduced moviegoers to an alpha-male commercial/music-video/Playboy Video Centerfold: Kerri Kendall director named Michael Bay. It was the beginning of a one-man cinematic tidal wave that would consume pop culture, a shiny, shooty, blow-uppy, cleavage-rich cinema of excess that wears its snotty adolescent ‘tude proudly, and sneers at the notion that movies should be anything other than a sleek delivery system for explosions, shootouts, profanity, sexy girls, and cool guys. Bad Boys wasn’t eviscerated by critics, but its 42 freshness score on Rotten ...

DVD: I Watched This On Purpose:Knowing

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0500

Sometimes, even The A.V. Club isn’t impervious to the sexy allure of ostensible cultural garbage. Which is why there’s I Watched This On Purpose, our feature exploring the impulse to spend time with trashy-looking yet in some way irresistible entertainments, playing the long odds in hopes of a real reward and a good time. Cultural infamy: Knowing was originally slated to be Richard Kelly’s follow-up to 2001’s Donnie Darko, with which it shares plenty of elements: A reluctant hero roped into a destiny much larger than himself, the puzzling out of cryptic and pseudo-scientific signs ...

Film: I Watched This On Purpose:12 Rounds

Wed, 17 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0500

Sometimes, even The A.V. Club isn’t impervious to the sexy allure of ostensible cultural garbage. Which is why there’s I Watched This On Purpose, our feature exploring the impulse to spend time with trashy-looking yet in some way irresistible entertainments, playing the long odds in hopes of a real reward and a good time. Cultural infamy: Actually, 12 Rounds has a serious lack of cultural infamy. It opened in theaters on March 27, 2009, and it’s already dropped so far off the cultural radar that it might as well have never existed. In fact, maybe it ...

DVD: I Watched This On Purpose:Reign Over Me

Wed, 03 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0500

Sometimes, even The A.V. Club isn’t impervious to the sexy allure of ostensible cultural garbage. Which is why there’s I Watched This On Purpose, our feature exploring the impulse to spend time with trashy-looking yet in some way irresistible entertainments, playing the long odds in hopes of a real reward and a good time. Cultural infamy: At this point, very little of Reign Over Me’s original cultural infamy—spurred by the stupid-looking trailer—remains. Even the people in this office who’ve seen Reign Over Me didn’t remember what it was. Here’s a quick ...

Film: I Watched This On Purpose:The Da Vinci Code

Wed, 20 May 2009 00:00:00 -0500

Sometimes, even The A.V. Club isn’t impervious to the sexy allure of ostensible cultural garbage. Which is why there's I Watched This On Purpose, our feature exploring the impulse to spend time with trashy-looking yet in some way irresistible entertainments, playing the long odds in hopes of a real reward and a good time. Cultural infamy: Peep this number: $758 million. That’s what The Da Vinci Code grossed. No amount of bad press and reactionary religious folks could stop this thing at the box office. Here’s the thing, though: I still know next to nothing ...

DVD: I Watched This On Purpose:My Best Friend’s Girl

Wed, 06 May 2009 15:00:00 -0500

Sometimes, even The A.V. Club isn’t impervious to the sexy allure of ostensible cultural garbage. Which is why there’s I Watched This On Purpose, our feature exploring the impulse to spend time with trashy-looking yet in some way irresistible entertainments, playing the long odds in hopes of a real reward—and a good time. Cultural infamy: Critics rightfully eviscerated My Best Friend’s Girl as a perverse semi-remake of Cook’s last vehicle, the similarly reviled, equally gimmicky Good Luck Chuck. It scored an all-too-generous 34 on Metacritic and a 15 percent freshness rating on Rotten Tomatoes ...

DVD: I Watched This On Purpose:Max Payne

Wed, 22 Apr 2009 12:22:00 -0500

Sometimes, even The A.V. Club isn’t impervious to the sexy allure of ostensible cultural garbage. Which is why there’s I Watched This On Purpose, our feature exploring the impulse to spend time with trashy-looking yet in some way irresistible entertainments, playing the long odds in hopes of a real reward—and a good time. Cultural infamy: It’s tough to say whether Max Payne, the 2008 movie based on the 2001 videogame, actually has any infamy at all. I guess it shows how out of touch I am (or outside the target market), but this movie made ...

DVD: I Watched This On Purpose:The Island

Wed, 08 Apr 2009 16:49:00 -0500

Sometimes, even The A.V. Club isn’t impervious to the sexy allure of ostensible cultural garbage. Which is why there’s I Watched This On Purpose, our feature exploring the impulse to spend time with trashy-looking yet in some way irresistible entertainments, playing the long odds in hopes of a real reward and a good time. I’ve never enjoyed a Michael Bay movie, but I’ve come to grudgingly respect that he must be on to something. I skipped Bad Boys, but caught The Rock in the theater in 1996, and found nearly every aspect of it hugely ...

DVD: I Watched This On Purpose:I Watched This On Purpose: Repo! The Genetic Opera

Wed, 11 Mar 2009 12:00:00 -0500

Cultural infamy: Repo! The Genetic Opera started life as a stage play, garnering a cult following in the process. Sometimes “cult film” refers to a movie that failed in theaters, but was eventually embraced by a vast, dedicated underground support network; sometimes the term is just slapped on anything that’s so offensive, weird, or narrowly focused that only a small, determinedly perverse collective could love it. Repo! is the latter, the kind of item that’s labeled as “cult” even before its release, because it has no chance of finding any other kind of audience. It’s too gory ...

DVD: I Watched This On Purpose:College

Wed, 11 Feb 2009 13:00:00 -0600

Cultural infamy: With College, fetus-like wannabe movie star Kevin Covais attempted to become this generation’s DJ Qualls, which is interesting considering that the previous generation’s DJ Qualls (who happens to be the actual DJ Qualls) is still perfectly suited for the “goofy-ass geek gets laid” roles not already taken by that McLovin guy. Did Kevin Covais succeed in his modest quest? Perhaps another question is in order: Who the fuck is Kevin Covais? As followers of American Idol will tell you—The A.V. Club is nothing if not a gathering place for loyal Idol fans—Covais was ...

DVD: I Watched This On Purpose:Mirrors

Wed, 28 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0600

Cultural infamy: So you're Kiefer Sutherland. (No, seriously, you are. Get into character. Start sneering.) You've had a pretty successful career by just about any measure: You landed respectable movies practically from the get-go, including Stand By Me and The Lost Boys. You made appearances in Hollywood blockbusters (A Few Good Men) and dark indies (the underappreciated Freeway). You even caught the directing bug, though with limited success. And then 24 came along, and while Judd Nelson is (possibly) smoking pole for pocket change in the subway, you're on top of the fucking world. You're one ...