“Quick kitty update for those who might be interested. His issues did come back, so now he’s at the big animal hospital waiting for surgery tomorrow. The good news, however, is that the surgery should fix him for good. So sucks for everyone that we hafta go thru this, but it’ll all be over soon.
Today’s choice off the wall was an easy one. Sure, there’s a couple under appreciated gems I wouldn’t mind rewatching. However, there is no film that lives in such infamy for me as The Core. This is the ultimate cheesy natural disaster movie. It’s just utterly laughable, for all the wrong reasons, and as “”good”” as it gets for b movie culty badness.
There was a point in the late 90s where we saw every type of disaster movie possible. It started small scale, with twisters and earthquakes, and progressed to outer space with various asteroids threatening from afar. Each film tried to one up the previous releases. Then came the crowning achievement. The Core. For some glossed over poorly explained reason, the Earth’s core stops rotating. The only way to restart it is to detonate a nuke at the center of the earth. Why? Because science!
This film is actually the subject of one of the greatest movie drinking games I’ve ever played. The rules? Drink every time there’s bad science. I watched this with a bunch of fellow MIT science nerds. We had to pause the movie halfway thru to make a beer run. What made it extra special was the one Wellesley girl in the group who didn’t understand half the time why we were drinking.
I don’t even know where to begin describing why it’s so bad yet good. Well I think the good comes from the uninentional hilarity from how commited the cast is to tryin to make this a legit film. Rather than phone it in, they try extra hard to make it work, giving it a charming (yet somewhat unfortunate) sincerity. Maybe they thought they just couldn’t understand the science because they’re actors, not scientists. Maybe they knew there would one day be a drinking game. I don’t know. But Aaron Eckhart and Hilary Swank, I salute you.
About that “”science””. There’s so much to pick apart. Things that are absolutely inane. Yet the delivery is entertaining. Basically, the actors spew science in one of two ways: talk thru it so rapidly it sounds like you know what you’re talking about and it makes perfect sense (in other words, pretty much anything Eckhart says), OR, deliver it in a crazy quotable line of dialog milking it for all its worth that either you’ll be taken seriously or you can claim you’re just in on the joke. Exhibit A: “”The unobtanium converts heat into energy!!!!””
Yes I said unobtanium. Scifi term for a nonexistent material with magical properties that somehow fulfill your exact need. The Lucious Fox of the team found a new element that happened to be perfect for building the ship. Yay science.
I’ll admit, physics is prolly the science that’s sketchiest for me. Yet I am still able to grasp the idea of torque, and how big explosion does not torque make. Those who know this stuff better have already written up why the science is so bad. Thank you Google.
Despite all that, the film still holds a special place in my heart. That drinking game night (actually, I think we tried this twice), is a happy memory. And it’s impossible to hear some of the dialog randomly out of context and not smile. Now excuse me while I go hack the planet.”