Entertainment
The Worst Movie Ever Made Gets Upgrade Nobody Asked For, And It’s Glorious
By Robert Scucci
| Published
2003’s The Room has gone down in cinematic history as one of the worst movies ever made. It stars Tommy Wiseau, who wrote, directed, produced, funded, and wore about 1,000 other hats to bring his ill-fated romantic thriller to life. He made myriad misguided financial decisions along the way, like buying cameras instead of renting them, and filming the entire thing in both HD digital and on 35mm film at the same time so he could choose either format for the final movie. An expensive custom-made apparatus was designed to house both camera types because almost nobody had been crazy enough to try combining them that way. Despite this bizarre bit of cinematic innovation, only the 35mm version of the movie was used for the final cut.
When all was said and done, The Room took about six months to film, and Tommy Wiseau spent over $6 million of his own money on the thing. The script makes no sense, the acting is terrible, green screens and sound stages were used when they could have shot on location for a fraction of the cost, and it’s an absolute punisher of a film that has dominated midnight screenings where people throw spoons and footballs, yell “You’re tearing me apart, Lisa!” and celebrate what’s known around the world as “the Citizen Kane of bad movies.
In other words, The Room is so terrible it’s awesome, which leads us to The Room Returns, directed by Brando Crawford and starring Bob Odenkirk in place of Tommy Wiseau’s Johnny.
The Room Returns is special because Crawford wanted to approach the film the exact opposite way Wiseau approached it. He reused the script word for word, and the entire thing, even the apartment interiors, appears to have been shot in front of a green screen. He cold-emailed Bob Odenkirk, telling him he wanted to remake The Room in a single day to see if great actors could elevate the original script into something more palatable, and Odenkirk said yes without hesitation.
While there is some hearsay surrounding The Room Returns’ delayed release, I’m not here to fuel or dispel any rumors, but legend has it that Mr. Wiseau didn’t want this film, which was shot in 2023, to be released because it would undermine his own. It’s now available to rent for $7.99 thanks to Crawford, and all proceeds go to The Foundation for AIDS Research and the nonprofit Blue Collaborative, which supports independent artists. I got through my rental last night, and it’s better than anything I could have imagined.
The Room But With Less Rooms
Shot entirely in front of a green screen in less than 12 hours, The Room Returns is an absolute punisher. Beat for beat, line for line, it’s the same movie, but Brando Crawford was kind enough to spare us the sex scenes, instead preferring to show a black background with white text telling us who’s supposed to be having sex with who. In the original film, 11 percent of the runtime was devoted to a kind of unwholesomeness you need to be specially built to handle.
Like the original, The Room Returns follows Johnny (Bob Odenkirk), a wealthy investment banker who’s about to marry Lisa (Bella Heathcote), who’s having an affair with his best friend Mark (Brando Crawford). It’s a story about passion, betrayal, and, oh yeah… Denny (Cameron Kasky), who’s also in love with Lisa, but also mixed up with a violent drug dealer named Chris R. (portrayed by none other than The Room’s Greg Sestero) for reasons never explained in either film. The story still makes no sense, and the dialogue is still wooden, but Odenkirk really brings the goods here.
Every interview I’ve seen with the Better Call Saul star says pretty much the same thing. He’s reciting the script verbatim, either from memory or a teleprompter, and his whole method for elevating the dialogue is to space out the emotions to give the lines room to breathe. After claiming that “he did not hit her” in one of The Rooms most quotable scenes, he looks down, slowly raises his eyes, and sadly says, “Oh. Hi, Mark.” It’s the same lines, but delivered by somebody with some serious acting chops.
Now you may be asking, does this improve The Room? Absolutely not. The film is so far beyond saving, but you really can’t fault anybody working on The Room Returns. The acting only seems marginally better because they’re trying to stay faithful to the source material, which is an absolute wreck. What it does do, however, is add another layer of enjoyment to The Room because there’s a level of earnestness coming from Odenkirk that simply didn’t exist in the original film.
A Perfect Disasterpiece
If you’re not a fan of the original film, either in earnest or ironically, your mileage may vary with The Room Returns. I’m notoriously cheap, but I had to shell out the money to rent this because I knew it’d be a memorable watch. I also watch The Room once or twice a year and quote it until my wife kicks me out of the living room. It’s really cool that Brando Crawford just went for it, and even cooler that Bob Odenkirk immediately got on board to participate in the project.
It’s a fever dream that doesn’t really improve upon or detract from the original film. It simply exists, and I’m so glad it does. Now I know a new way to say “do you understand life?!” the next time I get into an argument. I now know that I can probably shoot a feature-length film using the stock backgrounds from Google Meet. And I can rest easy knowing that some insanely talented people tried to do the unthinkable for a great cause, and exceeded every expectation I had while I waited to finally feast my eyes on it.
The Room Returns is available to rent through Brando Crawford’s Gumroad site, and it supports a great cause. It’s also way more amusing than it has any right to be.
Entertainment
James Gunn’s Raunchy, R-Rated Superhero Comedy With Office Star Delivers Swift And Brutal Justice
By Robert Scucci
| Updated
Any grown man will tell you that some of the best moments of his childhood involved playing superheroes with his friends. If you could use your imagination, throw some sort of mask over your eyes, and maybe even arm yourself with the lid from a trash can, you were all set. It goes without saying that every friend group had one sociopath who wanted to be the villain, which is why the trash can lid came in handy. You didn’t have much time before they started throwing rocks, which more often than not resulted in parents getting involved.
If you’re wondering what it might look like if a grown adult decided to play dress-up and start fighting crooks after punching out from his day job, you pretty much get 2010’s Super, starring none other than Rainn Wilson as Frank Darbo, or, as he would like to be known, The Crimson Bolt.
Thinking about how kids playing superheroes is pretty much universal (my 5-year-old son has the capes in his toy chest to prove it), Super feels almost like wish fulfillment for those kids after they grow up. Except our hero is so misguided in his vigilantism that the best we’re going to get from him is “Shut up, crime!” before humiliating himself in most situations.
From Loser To Super
When we’re first introduced to Frank Darbo (Rainn Wilson) in Super, it’s well established that he’s not exactly a prize catch. He’s deeply religious, works as a short-order cook, and lets everybody walk all over him. This includes his wife Sarah (Liv Tyler), a reformed drug addict who quickly shifts her attention to a ruthless drug dealer named Jacques (Kevin Bacon). Absolutely heartbroken, and worried sick that his wife will relapse in her new lover’s company, Frank decides it’s time to take matters into his own hands after the religious superhero from the local TV station known as The Holy Avenger (Nathan Fillion) pays him a visit in a dream.
Now calling himself The Crimson Bolt, Frank heads to the comic book store to do some research, where he meets Libby (Elliot Page), a nerd of the highest order who wants to help him fully embrace his alter ego. When he’s not working or researching, Frank is field-testing his Crimson Bolt suit by hiding behind dumpsters and waiting for crime to happen.
At first, we bear witness to some truly vulgar displays of power, if you could call it power because he has none. Frank gets into fights with people who cut him in line, and most of his crime fighting leaves both him and everybody else worse off after he intervenes. Once he starts building a reputation as a force for good, though, everybody catches on. Jacques and his goons realize he’s out for revenge because that’s what kicked off this entire crusade in the first place. Meanwhile, Libby wants in on the action. She knows Frank is running around as The Crimson Bolt and decides she should call herself Boltie and become his sidekick.
Together, The Crimson Bolt and Boltie are a force to be reckoned with. But is Frank’s gumption, and his sudden interest in building pipe bombs, enough to take down Jacques? And will The Holy Avenger support this kind of behavior? Only time will tell, but rest assured plenty of people get their asses kicked in Super.
Deserves Its Cult Status, But Don’t Compare It To Kickass
What’s most baffling to me is how Super only garnered a 50 percent critics score on Rotten Tomatoes. For a dark comedy, it checks all the boxes. It has a conflicted protagonist who channels serious Dwight Schrute energy when he’s pushed into an awkward situation, and Kevin Bacon looks like he’s having an absolute blast playing the bad guy.
One possibility is that the James Gunn film was constantly compared to Mark Millar’s Kick-Ass, which came out the same year. It could be that audiences only had so much bandwidth for superhero comedies, and when push came to shove, Kick-Ass simply ended up being the more popular movie. Commenting on the similarities between the films, Millar chalked the whole thing up to parallel thinking. The reality is they were both working on similar ideas at roughly the same time, but the end result is two very different movies.
If I’m being honest, I think Super is the superior movie, mostly because nobody has any enhanced abilities. It’s a spiritual journey that one man goes through after his whole world falls apart, and his naivety about how the world works is what sells most of the humor. If anything, you should watch both films as a double feature because they’re cut from the same cloth while operating in completely different lanes.
As of this writing, Super is streaming for free on Tubi.
Entertainment
James Gunn’s Raunchy, R-Rated Superhero Comedy With Office Star Delivers Swift And Brutal Justice
By Robert Scucci
| Updated
Any grown man will tell you that some of the best moments of his childhood involved playing superheroes with his friends. If you could use your imagination, throw some sort of mask over your eyes, and maybe even arm yourself with the lid from a trash can, you were all set. It goes without saying that every friend group had one sociopath who wanted to be the villain, which is why the trash can lid came in handy. You didn’t have much time before they started throwing rocks, which more often than not resulted in parents getting involved.
If you’re wondering what it might look like if a grown adult decided to play dress-up and start fighting crooks after punching out from his day job, you pretty much get 2010’s Super, starring none other than Rainn Wilson as Frank Darbo, or, as he would like to be known, The Crimson Bolt.
Thinking about how kids playing superheroes is pretty much universal (my 5-year-old son has the capes in his toy chest to prove it), Super feels almost like wish fulfillment for those kids after they grow up. Except our hero is so misguided in his vigilantism that the best we’re going to get from him is “Shut up, crime!” before humiliating himself in most situations.
From Loser To Super
When we’re first introduced to Frank Darbo (Rainn Wilson) in Super, it’s well established that he’s not exactly a prize catch. He’s deeply religious, works as a short-order cook, and lets everybody walk all over him. This includes his wife Sarah (Liv Tyler), a reformed drug addict who quickly shifts her attention to a ruthless drug dealer named Jacques (Kevin Bacon). Absolutely heartbroken, and worried sick that his wife will relapse in her new lover’s company, Frank decides it’s time to take matters into his own hands after the religious superhero from the local TV station known as The Holy Avenger (Nathan Fillion) pays him a visit in a dream.
Now calling himself The Crimson Bolt, Frank heads to the comic book store to do some research, where he meets Libby (Elliot Page), a nerd of the highest order who wants to help him fully embrace his alter ego. When he’s not working or researching, Frank is field-testing his Crimson Bolt suit by hiding behind dumpsters and waiting for crime to happen.
At first, we bear witness to some truly vulgar displays of power, if you could call it power because he has none. Frank gets into fights with people who cut him in line, and most of his crime fighting leaves both him and everybody else worse off after he intervenes. Once he starts building a reputation as a force for good, though, everybody catches on. Jacques and his goons realize he’s out for revenge because that’s what kicked off this entire crusade in the first place. Meanwhile, Libby wants in on the action. She knows Frank is running around as The Crimson Bolt and decides she should call herself Boltie and become his sidekick.
Together, The Crimson Bolt and Boltie are a force to be reckoned with. But is Frank’s gumption, and his sudden interest in building pipe bombs, enough to take down Jacques? And will The Holy Avenger support this kind of behavior? Only time will tell, but rest assured plenty of people get their asses kicked in Super.
Deserves Its Cult Status, But Don’t Compare It To Kickass
What’s most baffling to me is how Super only garnered a 50 percent critics score on Rotten Tomatoes. For a dark comedy, it checks all the boxes. It has a conflicted protagonist who channels serious Dwight Schrute energy when he’s pushed into an awkward situation, and Kevin Bacon looks like he’s having an absolute blast playing the bad guy.
One possibility is that the James Gunn film was constantly compared to Mark Millar’s Kick-Ass, which came out the same year. It could be that audiences only had so much bandwidth for superhero comedies, and when push came to shove, Kick-Ass simply ended up being the more popular movie. Commenting on the similarities between the films, Millar chalked the whole thing up to parallel thinking. The reality is they were both working on similar ideas at roughly the same time, but the end result is two very different movies.
If I’m being honest, I think Super is the superior movie, mostly because nobody has any enhanced abilities. It’s a spiritual journey that one man goes through after his whole world falls apart, and his naivety about how the world works is what sells most of the humor. If anything, you should watch both films as a double feature because they’re cut from the same cloth while operating in completely different lanes.
As of this writing, Super is streaming for free on Tubi.
Entertainment
Obsession Just Beat Bruce Lee
By Chris Snellgrove
| Updated
In the world of Obsession, the One Wish Willow is an obscenely powerful artifact that you can buy over the counter. With a single wish, you can achieve fabulous wealth, get your crush to obsess with you … anything you want, really, though your desires are likely to backfire. Despite its fantastic premise, Obsession is relatively grounded, so we never see the One Wish Willow grant anyone kung-fu fighting skills, a la The Matrix. Despite this, however, Obsession just managed to inexplicably defeat the greatest martial arts master who ever lived: Bruce Lee!
Recently, Curry Barker’s horror film, which was made for a measly $750,000, reached an astounding new record by earning over $400 million worldwide. For context, that’s far more than The Mandalorian and Grogu, which has earned $334 million against a budget of $165 million. Now, Obsession is officially the highest-grossing movie that was made for less than a million dollars. To achieve that record, it had to earn more than the most beloved kung-fu film in Hollywood history: Bruce Lee’s Enter the Dragon.
A Bloody Great Achievement
It’s kind of astounding to think that Obsession came out eight weeks ago. It only took this horror film two months to become the biggest film of the summer (at least, until Spider-Man: Brand New Day comes out), despite some heavy competition. Like, who could have imagined a micro-budget spooky film from a virtually unknown director could trounce everyone from Supergirl to He-Man? Now, eight weeks after its release, Obsession has passed an important landmark, earning $400 million worldwide against a budget of $750,000. Now, it’s officially the highest-grossing movie ever made for under a million dollars.
Previously, that record was held by the Bruce Lee kung-fu classic Enter the Dragon. That martial arts masterpiece was made for $850,000; after it came out in 1973, it earned a total of $400 million at the box office before it left theaters for good. For over half a century, no film managed to beat this ratio of low budget and high box office earnings, though a few movies deserve honorable mention. For example, Rocky earned $225 million against a $1 million budget, and The Blair Witch Project earned $248.6 million against the same budget Obsession had: $750,000.
Bruce All Fighty
At the risk of glazing Curry Barker too much, the comparison to Blair Witch really highlights what a cinematic achievement Obsession is. Back in 1999, $750,000 was enough to create a found footage horror movie with amateur actors and bad cameras. Now, that same budget can be used to create a polished film with amazing cinematography and professional acting. Does that make breakout star Inde Navarette the new Bruce Lee, though? It depends on your perspective. Obsession earned more than what Enter the Dragon earned pre-inflation; if we account for inflation, Lee’s own breakout film earned over $2 billion in today’s dollars.
Regardless of inflation, however, surpassing a beloved ‘70s Bruce Lee movie is another amazing accomplishment for Obsession. The little horror film that could continues to prove that you don’t need a huge budget in order to make a successful movie: you just need a good script, talented actors, and a director with a genuine vision. Those have always been the ingredients for great movies, and as Barker recently reminded The Hollywood Reporter, younger audiences in particular are “tired of slop” and are “hungry for movies that are original.” Now, if only the studios pumping out endless sequels, prequels, remakes, and reboots would get the freaking memo!
South Africa's Jayden Adams, 25, dies after playing in World Cup
James Gunn’s Raunchy, R-Rated Superhero Comedy With Office Star Delivers Swift And Brutal Justice
