Heathers

In the 1988 cult classic Heathers, a young and super-attractive Christian Slater introduces an equally young and possibly more attractive Winona Ryder to the dark side of high school drama queens. If this movie doesn’t take you back to the good ol’ days when you could creep around with your hot boyfriend in the middle of the night, murdering everyone who annoyed you, then your adolescence was lame, and you should have worn more leather jackets or ridden a motorcycle or something.

• Depiction of flowers getting stomped on to symbolize the loss of innocence soon to come. = +6pts. (So we all know where this is going)
• For finally showing us why we weren’t popular in high school—we knew we shouldn’t have wasted all that time on piano lessons when croquet was so clearly the way to go. = +11pts.
• Any actual journaler knows that journaling on the main staircase of one’s high school is counterproductive. = -4pts
• And the unpopular ex-friend of the reluctant popular star must wear glasses, am I right? Guys don’t make passes at girl who wear glasses, Betty.= -5pts
• We feel like it needs to be said, just to get it off our chests: Heather One is a total bitch. = +15pts
• Classic prank on  fat girl to get the ball rolling. Too easy.= -10pts
• How many times can two adolescent douche bags stalkerishly stare at each other in one lunch period? Gee, do you think Veronica likes the brooding type? = -3pts
• For showing college dudes everywhere how to make the “You’re so hot tonight. I can’t control myself” line work. = -12pts
• For throwing fire into a garbage can and smoking out the ever-elusive college party. = +15pts
• Veronica! Are you journaling while wearing a monacle? We don’t understand it, but we love it! = +13pts
• For not noticing as your boyfriend kills your “best friend” right under your nose. = -3pts (Veronica, don’t let your aloofness be exploited for dramatic irony. Take action, you beautiful genius!)
• At least Heather Chandler’s death meant something; Heather Duke doesn’t give a damn about her bulimia anymore. = +8pts
• Alluding to your dad’s past murders in front of your new girlfriend. = +6pts (That takes balls.)
• Homosocial bromance couple constantly spewing homophobia. = -9pts
• Let this be a lesson to all of you guys out there: You can’t tip cows on a date and then expect to get laid. = +20pts.
• For buying the line, “Oh, they’re fake bullets. It’ll just look like they’re dead. You believe me don’t ya?” She cannot be buying that. = -17pts (For wasting that super-high IQ.)
• Mineral water: Official drink of gay men everywhere. = -13pts
• JD using Veronica’s self-inflicted burn wound to light his cigarette. = +15pts (Baller move.)
• Super-sexy JD has killed three people with Veronica as an accomplice, but it’s the shooting the radio that really does it. No one interrupts the hit single “Teenage Suicide: Don’t Do It.” That’s it! They’re breaking up! = -11pts.
• Oh, Betty. Things could have been so different if you had been named Heather and didn’t need glasses. You can even play croquet, for God’s sake. If you weren’t a fictional character stuck in a loop of high school horror, we’d predict you’d bloom in college. In honor of you: = +18pts.
• Shannen Doherty getting bitch slapped. = +20pts (We’ll drink to that.)
• Faking your own suicide and getting your ex to admit he (1) loves you and (2) has concocted a nefarious plan to end all nefarious plans. Now, that’s something a genius would do. = +27pts
• She seriously shot his middle finger off! If you flip Veronica off, she will literally be the last person you flip off. = +25pts.
• Sorry to say, Veronica, but I’m afraid you may have developed a serious case of crazy eye over the course of this movie. Please don’t kill us. = +10pts

Total Score: +120pts.
Available: Netflix instant streaming, Ohio State Police case files #345897

Veronica and her new boyfriend go around town killing the irritating popular kids, who deserve to die because of their perfect 80’s hair and gay slurs, so who can blame them? No judgment here. But the victims foil that plan by becoming even more popular after death, and, as a direct result, even more fucking irritating.

Heathers illuminates a different side of teenage suicide that is usually kept from view: the positive side. It becomes clear that suicide is the only answer, and we should all obviously kill ourselves right now. Then we’ll finally be popular.

Score Technician: Savannah Tankersley 

Terminator 2: Judgment Day

Terminator 2: Judgment Day is, to many of us, the sci-fi action film. Its scope and the stakes involved are epic, its characters icons of their genre. It is an opera with a score made up entirely of explosions, as Wagnerian as a film can be in which the titular protagonist falls for the “down low—too slow” gag.

Terminator 2 requires no introduction and no synopsis. If you have cable TV, internet access, or friends, you know this movie, whether you realize it or not.

We will try to do it justice in today’s scorecard.

• Title presented in the “Star Wars Gothic medium” font. = +7pts for nostalgia 
• Introducing Edward Furlong! = +5pts 
• Half the world’s fossil fuel resources consumed in creating the background for the opening title sequence (= +10pts in 1991 / -25pts in 2013)
• Naked Schwarzenegger: = +50pts (The man worked hard—show some respect.) 
• “Bad to the Bone” as incidental music for on-screen badassery. (= +10pts in 1991; -30pts in 2013) 
• Huh. There’s only one “John Connor” in all of L.A. County? That’s a lucky break. = +25pts (For understanding the importance of pacing.) 
• Hey, Xander Berkeley is John Connor’s stepdad! Well, if you want a “weasely government functionary” or “sad-sack loser,” Xander’s your go-to guy—and this character may be both. = +15pts 
• While thinking he was just idolizing Bono, John Connor’s little friend was defining hairstyles for America’s lesbians from 1991 up to the present day. = +10pts in 1991; +50pts in 2013 
• Sarah Connor smoking unapologetically in a hospital. = +50pts for nostalgia (if you smoke) / -100pts on general principles if you don’t 
• John Connor playing the “Missile Command” arcade video game as the T-1000 closes in. = -15pts (For obvious foreshadowing.) 
• John Connor racks up a score of 400 on “Missile Command.” No middle-school boy with more than zero usable hands ever scored lower than 10,000. We’re pretty sure you get 500 points for inserting a quarter. = -40pts (For destroying our suspension of disbelief in a movie about time-traveling robots.) 
• The T-1000 is visibly wangless, while its ostensibly lower-tech predecessor, the T-800, is clearly wanged (based on the reactions of the cocktail waitresses in Arnold’s opening nude scene) = -75pts 
• Death by arm-sword mouth-rape? Did Robert Mapplethorpe and H.R. Giger collaborate on this screenplay? = -60pts (+30pts for originality, -90pts for the look on Xander Berkeley’s face, which haunts our dreams.) 
• Arnold promises John Connor he won’t kill anyone, then shoots an elderly security guard in both legs, saying “He’ll live.” He probably won’t. = +75pts 
• Neither will the black orderly he just threw through that window. = -100pts 
• Or the white one. = +125pts 
• “Come with me, if you want to live” has never worked as a pickup line—but so many have tried. = -50pts 
• Welcome to Palmdale, CA: Hollywood’s substitute for Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, Texas, Oklahoma, Somalia, Afghanistan, and earthlike planets everywhere since motion pictures were invented. = +75pts 
• Linda Hamilton: Tank top, sunglasses, cigarette, assault rifle. Fuck, yeah. =+250pts 
• … but you lost us with the Beetle Bailey cap. = -250pts 
• Hey, remember when being instantly incinerated by a nuclear blast was the worst thing we could imagine? = A wash. ( -150pts in 1991, +150pts in 2013) 
• The brilliant Cyberdyne scientist guy is black! = +100 in 1991; +10pts in 2013 
• … so he dies. = -25pts in 2013 
• Arnold shoots cops with tear gas canisters, then rips their gas masks off. Occupy Cyberdyne! = +/-100pts 
• The T-1000 jumps a motorcycle out of a window into a helicopter, which he commandeers. Sure, why not? = +20pts 
• Damn, I need another pair of hands. Oh, wait … I’m made of liquid metal! = +100pts 
• Yet I remain dong-less. = -90pts 
• Liquid nitrogen can freeze liquid metal? Well, that’s a double-edged forearm-sword. = +50pts 
• Shattering frozen T-1000 into tiny pieces that melt and re-form quicker. =+90 for applied shotgun, -75 for applied physics = +15pts 
• We never grow tired of watching Robert Patrick’s chest get converted into a muffin tin. Good thing, because that makes up half this movie’s running time. = +20pts 
• Stan Winston’s sculpture of the T-1000 converted into a T-750 / T-250 is breathtaking. This ain’t no CGI bullshit; this is special effects. = +75pts 
• Yes, even an Austrian murderbot from the dystopian future can be a Christ figure. = +50pts 
• Wait … nobody noticed that Arnold’s severed arm (from the future) is still stuck in that piece of machinery (here in the present)? Just like last time? Seriously? = -100pts

Total Score = +582pts
Available on: Netflix streaming, DVD (singly and boxed sets), the memory of every American male between the ages of 30 and 60.

Any way you slice the T-1000 with an iron bar, T2 still holds up as one of the premier examples of the action-movie genre. Hasta la vista, Michael Bay. James Cameron is still schooling you—from the past.

Score Technician: John Ormond

Freejack

[Oh hai! Paul Bower didn’t die, after all. Mea culpa. That was actually another Paul who died. You don’t know him, he goes to a different school/is from Canada]

Deciding to follow-up his anachronistic and relatively lucrative foray into the Wild West (1990’s Young Guns II) with a balls-out crazy vision of a dire, polygon-glutted future was a fairly gutsy move on director Geoff Murphy’s part. Trusting one of Young Guns II’s leads to carry the project might’ve been a case of his reach exceeding his grasp, but who doesn’t like an animated Emilio Estevez from time to time? Freejack is a weird one, at times surreally funny and self-aware, and at most others just too ridiculous to ignore. In this dystopian New York City of 2009, how do you suppose you’re going to find your way around Champagne trucks, Renee Russo’s chin, and the finer points of rat haute cuisine? Why, with a scorecard, natch!

• It's impossible to over-stress the importance of starting a doomed future off on the right foot. For instance, maybe a Lethal Weapon-esque sax theme song by Trevor Jones with just enough 8-bit glitchy shit added to "get us in the mood"? = +12pts 
• Picture of Emilio Estevez and his girlfriend Renee Russo on the armoire? Check. Toy racecar right next to it? Check. Just using clunky expository dialogue to reveal Estevez races cars for a living and dates Russo? Sure, why not? = -14pts 
• Uh oh, Estevez just promised to marry Renee Russo if he wins this next race. Think he might, you know, meet with an untimely accident or something? = -45pts 
• Russo just keeps shaking her head when she says she loves Estevez. Almost as if she were communicating to the audience, letting us in on the joke. = +34pts 
• Mick Jagger sets the tone right off the bat, showing up in some gnarly industrial future wearing the most awesome Virtual Boy® helmet imaginable. You can kind of tell it’s his job to capture Estevez, but you can also kind of tell he could go either way… = +7pts 
• Back in the past, Estevez just crashed into a BRIDGE! Or did he?? = +9pts 
• The polygon budget alone for this movie is obscene. = +34pts 
• Watching Estevez run around in the future. It's like… No one, not even the rain has such feathered hair. = +33pts 
• Mick Jagger looks so bored. He could discover the Holy Grail and dollars to donuts he'd still look like he'd rather be somewhere else. = +100pts 
• Just found out this movie is supposed to take place in 2009, and it accurately predicts how crappy New York was going to be. Way off the mark on how neckties were going to look, though. = -12pts 
• So when rich folks die, they can pay a bunch of money to transfer their minds to a "spiritual switchboard" and then some poor hardbody from the past gets jacked right before he dies and becomes the host for a rich dude. Maybe Ray Kurzweil is onto something? = +12pts 
• Was that member of a black paramilitary gang wearing a confederate flag WITH a swastika on it?= -45pts 
• So, there are such things as Champagne Trucks in the future. Like, food trucks, but they have champagne instead of really small tacos . Also, maybe not the most sensible vehicle for a getaway, Estevez? = -12pts (for teasing us with such a wondrous glimpse of an impossible future) 
• The image of Mick Jagger's maniacally laughing face on what looks to be a Thinkpad will get stuck in your head. Bet on it. = +60pts 
• Now that there's no champagne left on the truck we kind of don't care anymore. = -3pts 
• Jagger's witty comment upon Estevez's plunge into the East River? "If you drink any of that, I'm out of a job." = +5pts 
• Thanks to Frankie Faizon, I now know that preparing river rats all comes down to the sauce you make to go with it. = +45pts 
• Upon showing up together at a seedy bar, it becomes apparent that Russo's been slumming once or twice before her long dead boyfriend returned. Get tested first, Estevez. Just saying. = +3pts (The More You Know™) 
• Obligatory club scene with lots of exposed beams and electric blue drinks (in the future, screw it, why not just drink straight blue curacao?) and girls with a bunch of paint on their boobs. It's like Coachella without the oppressive sun. = +70pts 
• Back at home they're looking at each other for like, a straight up minute before he finally touches her hair and it gets super gentle and gross. = +200pts 
• Of COURSE the boat waiting for you at the river is going to explode when you get close to it. You're a freejack, Freejack! = +1pt 
• After a bracing post-industrial wasteland chase scene, Jagger still looks ridiculous, sashaying around in a dang warehouse with that kid's helmet on. = -21pts 
• You know how crummy it is when you’re trying to escape from one of the most fortified buildings in the entire future and pressing the down elevator button only brings you to the top of this massively fortified building? Estevez and Russo do. = +31pts 
• The spiritual switchboard does not look awesome. Not awesome at all, folks. If we were Anthony Hopkins playing the wealthiest man in the world we’d definitely not store our mind there. Actually, remember that one scene from Enter The Void that you wish you didn't? Kind of like that, but with markedly less vagina . = -70pts 
• We take that back. They're inside a dead dude's eyeball right now. Just waiting for the Lawnmower Man to show up. = +80pts 
• "Welcome to My Mind." Damn, Anthony, how is ANYONE going to say no to that offer? = +47pts 
• If you ever find yourself in a futuristic room with Anthony Hopkins and he tells you to "go with it" just don't do that. That's a bad plan right there. = -20pts 
• So it’s come down to this, Estevez vs. Hopkins in a supremely boring mind-battle to the finish. Although, you can totally see a vein on Estevez’s neck when he’s trying to act like his mind is doing something other than story prep for Mighty Ducks = +10pts 
• You thought you'd seen the last of Mick Jagger in his silly jacket? You should think again! = -26pts 
• Final shot with Twin Towers visible? (1992 = 0pts) 2013 = -250pts TOO SOON!

Total Score = +171pts
Available on: Available: YouTube, Underneath a pile of money in one of Mick Jagger’s houses.

Freejack will only give you as much as you put into her, and even then it’s a little dicey. But with this scorecard handy, you’ll have plenty in your kit to make the best of it.

Score Technician: Paul Bower

Johnny Mnemonic

It’s time we plug in our LAN lines and take a trip all the way back to the mid-90s—a time that was dominated by O.J. Simpson and his love of “the perfect crime;” A time when Americans needed a hero to look up to, and Val Kilmer’s bulge just wasn’t enough to satisfy the nation’s unquenchable thirst for manliness. Today, we evaluate a different class of hero: a cyberpunk data courier who’s being hunted down for the data that he is carrying…in his mind. No, it’s not The Matrix (sorry), but it is the most action-packed, hardest-to-pronounce, science fiction extravaganza that 1995 was able to pull out of its ass and throw up on the silver-screen (and Keanu Reeves is in it). Today, we score Johnny Mnemonic.

• The movie starts and we are literally inside the internet-- “The Internet 2021” to be exact. We wonder who colonized this land first? In any case, it really is a series of tubes! = +5pts. 
• Johnny makes a video-call from the television in his hotel room. The future is now! (or then, whatever.) = +5pts. 
• Johnny’s hotel is in Newark, New Jersey in 2021, dispelling all hope that New Jersey will someday sink into the eternal abyss, much like an unwanted, overly tanned Atlantis. = -5pts. 
• We don’t hate Keanu Reeves, we just hate when he doesn’t act with his whole face. = +3pts. 
• Johnny can only fit 160 Gigabytes in his brain, and that’s with a “doubler.” No matter how exponential technological growth is, you will never convince us that Keanu Reeves could fit more than a floppy-disk worth of data in his head. = -10pts. 
• Johnny enters a room full of scientists and thugs, holds up his briefcase like he’s delivering a pizza and says, “Who ordered the double-cheese with anchovies.” = +3pts. (For Keanu’s ninja-turtle style performance.) 
• The data the scientists put in Johnny’s brain is 320 Gigabytes in size, even though this will kill him within 24 hours for being over his capacity. Johnny could have avoided this, buts he’s a risk taker and a go-getter = +4pts. (For knowing what it takes to succeed living life in the fast lane.) 
• The creators of this film hit a few of the technological predictions about the internet on the head, but our question is, “Where are the cats?” = -6pts. 
• We also get severe nosebleeds after spending too much time online. = +7pts. (For identifying with the audience.) 
• The Japanese assassin using some heavy-duty, lightsaber-esque piano wire to cut people into pieces reminds us that we need to buy a better cheese slicer. = +11pts. 
• A meeting between the Pharmacological Company boss Takahashi and Yakuza leader Shinji is spoken in full Japanese for 30 seconds until Takahashi says, “You can speak to me in English now.” Which is English for, “OK, that’s enough, the Americans are tired of reading subtitles.” = -3pts. 
• The decision to have Henry Rollins’ character, Spider, wear hipster glasses is a testimony to the filmmakers’ commitment to ensure that this movie would stay so far underground, nobody would ever see it…ever. = -15pts. 
• Johnny loves to use motion sensors. TriStar should sue Nintendo for stealing their technology for the Wii. = -3pts to the Scorecard, for suggesting that Johnny Mnemonic had any influence whatsoever on technology in the real world. 
• Jane, the cyber-enhanced female bodyguard/Johnny’s sidekick, could have been a progressive character, breaking down barriers and showing that women don’t need to be present in action films strictly to be objectified... could have been. = -10pts. 
• Ice-T finally makes an appearance, looking less like a leader of a futuristic anarchist group, and more like the captain of a paintball team.= -10pts. 
• We didn’t believe that Takahashi was a powerful Asian man until the completely unnecessary shot of him getting dressed revealed a hard-ass dragon tattoo covering his entire back. = +5pts 
• Johnny reveals that he made room in his brain to house vast amounts of data by erasing his childhood memories, which also clearly included his ability to show basic human emotion. = -8pts. 
• Johnny uses Nintendo Power gloves to navigate the internet. = +5pts 
• Apparently, in 2021 you get shocked by the computer for guessing the wrong password. This must have been an attempt by computer engineers to punish the neckbeards. = +2pts. 
• There is a noticeable lack of pop-up ads on this highly interactive version of the internet, thereby decreasing authenticity. = -13pts. 
• Dolph Lundgren makes an appearance as the Street Preacher/Assassin Karl. He has a crucifix-shaped dagger, which makes us wonder about the crucifix he has hidden in the bedroom. = +3pts
• Johnny navigates the internet with his power gloves like Edward Scissorhands cuts hair: with grace and attention to detail. Now that we think about it, Johnny Digitalfingers may have been a better title for this movie. = +4pts. 
• Spider is as believable as a doctor as Henry Rollins is as an actor. = -5pts 
• Spider has a decked-out, armored Winnebago. All is forgiven. = +10pts. 
• Spider runs over the Street Preacher/Jesus look-a-like with the armored Winnebago. = +10pts (For quickly becoming our favorite character.) 
• Dr. Spider: “I fucking hate technology and how much we rely on it…Okay, now I’m just going to use this awesome technology to pull images from your head so we can save your life.” = -5pts. 
• In order to fool Johnny into giving up the cure during a video-call, Takahashi uses his hand (with a projector behind it) like a sock puppet to make Johnny believe he is talking to an actual human. Your guess is as good as ours. = -25pts. (Señor Wences would have been a master villain, had he lived to 2021.) 
• While approaching the LoTek hideout of “Heaven”, a car falls from to top of the tower and explodes on the ground, which is followed by Johnny yelling, “What the fuck is going on?!” We’re wondering the same thing, Johnny. = +10pts 
• For Johnny’s self-righteous speech about how much pressure he’s under to be the savior of the “entire fucking world,” when all he wants is room service. = +11pts 
• A cyborg dolphin that is being housed by the LoTeks is the key to the salvation for Johnny and all mankind. It even has cyborg eyes, and we wouldn’t be surprised if it could shoot lasers out of them. = +15pts. 
• A tender scene in which the dolphin squeaks and squeals in dolphin language, pleading with Johnny to let him microwave his brain for the last code of the key. = +3pts. 
• There goes another car from the top of the tower, and *BOOM*-- Heaven is rocked by another explosion so intense it could make Michael Bay climax. = +5pts. 
• Karl (the Street Preacher/Jesus lover) nailing Jane to the wall works on so many levels. = +4pts. 
• “The dolphin can take you into the data” may be the strangest combination of words ever strung together. = +2pts. 
• Karl is killed and falls off the top of the tower like the cars that preceded him. WHERE THE FUCK IS THE EXPLOSION?! = -25 pts. 
• “Initiate final boss sequence,” is what we imagine Shinji uttered right before starting the epic final fight scene. = +5pts. 
• Cyber dolphin reappears and helps get the data out of Johnny’s head, thus assisting him with saving all of mankind. If only Jesus had a cyber-dolphin. = +10pts. 

Total Score = -1pts
Available On: DVD, Blu-Ray, or the dumpster behind the Blockbuster that’s going out of business.

We were truly hoping that Johnny Mnemonic would be a “so bad it’s good” experience. Unfortunately, after the first 20 minutes had passed, we knew that this was not the case. Terrible acting, poor special effects, and a shitty soundtrack culminate into a brain-fart of an experience. If you must watch , please do so with scorecard in hand.

Score Technician: Ryan VenHuizen

CELEBRITY NEWS: Carson Daly Arrested at Mall of America for Harassing Tweens, Demanding to Know Why He’s Not Ryan Seacrest

Bloomington, Mn. -A deranged and obviously confused Carson Daly was arrested this weekend after accosting multiple tween girls, grabbing them by the arm, and shouting at them in front of their mothers, "Why the fuck am I not Ryan Seacrest!"

According to his publicist, Mr. Daly was in Minnesota to cover the unveiling of the world's largest Temperpedic mattress for his late night NBC show, Last Call. Witnesses claim that Mr. Daily became irate at the food court television, which had been running clips from Ryan Seacrest's E! Show E! News, during which Seacrest showed repeated clips of his own moments on the Fox mega-hit American Idol.

“He would start to ask something about the mattress, and then his eyes would float up to the television screen and he’d just sort of trail off,” said Doug McLauren, night manager for Temperpedic’s Mall of America location.

According to eye witnesses, Daly’s erratic behaviour continued for nearly 20 minutes before he threw his Chicken Teriyaki platter at an Auntie Anne's worker and began shouting, "THIS IS BULLSHIT!! THIS IS BULLSHIT!!" to no one in particular.

Representatives of NBC, the network on which Mr. Daly still manages to have a show, were contacted by The PCS-E and asked to comment on the story: "We don't do that show any more. Haven't for years. This is NBC, we make television history. We're not in the business of shelling out dreck." After The PCS-E sent them tapes of Mr. Daly's most recent show, an episode that featured Mr. Daly and Fred Durst on a camping trip and talking about how great music was in the 90's, the NBC executive responded, "I'll get back to you." The PCS-E is awaiting further comment.

An MTV spokesperson gave a similar account, "Carson Daily? Never heard of him. Sounds like a bad porn name. MTV is not in the porn business."

"Techically," the representative added

Eventually Mr. Daly was subdued by mall security guard, Grover Wilkinson who had located an old poster of Tara Reid from one of the many abandoned storefronts now currently occupying the Mall of America.  Mr. Daly was last seen fleeing the Mall with his entourage, singer Fred Durst and former MTV vee-jay Matt Pinefield. There is no knowledge to his current whereabouts and all calls to NBC have gone unanswered.

Reporting Technician: Sean McConnell
Photo: Maya Mackrandilal 

Mother of Tears

You know what? Let’s just do this and get it out of the way. After putting ourselves through Inferno, the second part in Dario Argento’s “Three Mothers” trilogy, we figured why not pull the band-aid and watch the third film, Mother of Tears. Per usual, we do not recommend watching either film without a scorecard handy.

• For being, at this point, still tangentially related to Suspira. = +13pts
• For being much closer to Inferno. = -12pts
• For making a movie after his daughter is of legal age that doesn’t feature her naked. = +18pts
• The 90’s-era Image-like graphic “EXTREME” that smashes the Dimension Films logo. = 0pts (Somebody call Rob Liefeld’s lawyer!)
• Note: All we can hope for right now is that Argento has not seen Saw. 
• Starting off with a bang. “Bang” in this case being your standard Omen-esque wailing choir played over ancient paintings of murder and debauchery. = +2pts
• Creepy gothic credits featuring glowing yellow eyes. = +2pts
• Bringing in a Cardinal to look at a coffin wrapped in chains and covered in satanic symbols so that, after looking at it for 3-seconds, he can say, “Cut the chains.” = +4pts (Bad Cardinaling is always a plus in movies. But not in real life.)
• The look of utter disappointment on the Cardinal’s face when they open the Satan coffin and he sees just a skeleton, followed by his dejected order to bury the Satan coffin, “On the other side of the cemetery.” = -3pts (Mainly for putting in our mind the idea that, if the Cardinal could speak freely, he would have added “with all of the blacks and Irish” to that sentence.)
• Digital cameras sure have come a long way! Remember when you would take a picture with one and a Demon face screaming “BOO!” (demon for “cheese”) wouldn’t come up on your lens? = +3pts (Supporting advancements in technology.)
• Aaaannnd we’re back at the Roman Museum of Ancient Art, otherwise known as that place where the alchemist killer/librarian from Inferno likes to hang. = -2pts (USE THE FRONT DOOR PEOPLE, IS ALL WE’RE SAYIN’!)
• Opening up someone else’s Satan urn. = -2pts (Not cool, dude. Not cool.)
• Note to self: When opening a Satan urn, be sure to do so using very sharp razors. That way, when you inevitably slice open your hand and bleed onto the box, the resurrected spirit isn’t all “WTF?!” = +1pt
• Random live tiny baboon appearance in ancient art museum. = +8pts
• Teeth and intestine removal by mysterious baboon wrangler. = +4pts
• Dental/intestinal removal not being the thing that kills you. = -9pts (Hint: Intestines have so many more practical applications.)   
• SCORECARD BULLETIN: Apparently, Argento has seen Saw. There is no way this is a good thing.
• Causing us to wonder if Asia Argento is more shocked at seeing tiny were-people hack her friend to pieces OR the fact that this came from the mind of her father. No points. Just a survey.
• Is there anything to do besides running when a baboon the size of a tabby cat is coming after you? = +2pts
• Watching said tiny baboon try to open a door. = +3pts
• Even the cops think the tiny baboon is hilarious. = +4pts (Although we should dock them points for calling it a “monkey.”)
• Anytime someone promises to not think you’re crazy after you ask them to, chances are their first thought is, “How crazy is this motherfucker?” = No points just an observation.
• Having sex with your boss in order to cope with having just seen your friend strangled with her own intestines. = +3pts
• Throwing your baby off a bridge in such a half-assed manner that it doesn’t even clear the concrete underbelly of the bridge before it hits the water. = -10pts (Put your back into it!)
• Scene of rabid goth chicks (possibly European models) cackling and walking through the airport and then kicking a nerd’s suitcase off his luggage trolley and laughing about it. As true a sign of the coming “darkness” as we’ve seen. = +3pts
• Apparently a bookstore is kryptonite to a coven of homicidal European goth models. = +8pts
• The best use of a door for murder since Lethal Weapon 2. = +2pts
• Udo Keir. = +6pts (This was either: A great call back to Suspiria OR A desperate attempt to remind us that Argento directed a movie we liked once. Both merit positive scores.)
• Letting Udo Keir speak in his real voice and not overdubbing him with an awful American accent like he did in Suspira. = +3pts
• Um, all we can say right now is that, apparently, Argento really hates babies. = -12pts
• For directing a scene in which a man has his throat slit (including vocal chords), yet somehow remains able to groan and scream in agony for a good 3 minutes while he is hacked to bits. = -2pts (That’s just bad science!)
• Seriously, who knew intestines had so many uses? = +1pt
• Random flash of hot lesbian scene after talking to the spirit of your dead mother via make-up compact. = +4pts
• Sight of mini-baboon Mission Impossible-ing its way into your home using what appears to be a ship-rope tied to a rafter out of the frame. = +13pts (Almost off the charts hilarious.)
• Murdering lesbians with a knife post erotic coitus. = -13pts
• Doing so in the most misogynist and phallic way imaginable. = -53pts
• Nagging ghost moms. = -8pts
• Lighting your boss on fire. = +5pts (Pre-economic downturn. = -7pts, post-economic downturn, = +12pts)
• •Nope…there it is! Being unable to resist the urge to film an awkwardly gratuitous nude shower scene featuring your own daughter. = -20pts
• For adding to our daddy issues. = -15pts 
• Waiting till the 3rd movie to introduce the concept of “good” witches. = -1pt
• For saying “Stop!” to your cab driver at the sight of roving homicidal European goth models and not, “Run them down! Run them all down! Now back over them ! Again! And again!” = -7pts
• The bored reaction to the presence of a dirty old homeless man in the lair of the Mother of Tears. = +2pts (That’s so European.)
• Barbed wire make-outs and tongue piercings are two things we would have thought naturally didn’t go well together. = -4pts
• You figure the Mother of Tears would have at least had the pull to get a better boob job. = -3pts
• You really don’t want us to tell you what’s happening in the den of the Mother of Tears. You really, really, don’t. = -13pts
• Apparently all you need to be the Mother of Tears is a bomb ass T-Shirt from Threadless. = -3pts
• Making a movie in which most of the deaths of the female characters occur by vaginal mutilation. = -25pts
• Bathing your own daughter in what appears to be corpses and poop water. = -15pts

Total Score = - 118pts
Available on: Netflix DVD, hopefully some kind of federal sex offender list that will keep Argento from coming within 50 yards of a school building

Argento had been keeping the third film in his “Mothers Trilogy” in his back pocket for a long time. Unfortunately, it appears that in the 20+ years since Inferno, he never changed his pants. What emerges from that fetid pocket is a flattened, stinky, moldy bit of cinema that, at best, is suited for a midnight grindhouse feature at a prison full of rapists. Not a good thing. Argento used to be a filmmaker known for integrating splashes of shocking violence into scenes of escalating tension and claustrophobia. In the post-Saw world, one wonders if he felt the need to rise to the current culture of horror of that (much better) movie. In the climactic “den” scene, one can practically hear him bellowing, “ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED!!” off-camera. No, sir. No we were not. Now, if you’ll excuse us, Jigsaw has been dead for 5 films now and his intricate post-mortem plan to cure people through suffering isn’t going to run itself. Now there’s a man/woman/cop/divorced father/doctor/teacher we can get behind!

Score Technician: Sean McConnell

The Last Action Hero

From the director of Die Hard and the writer of Lethal Weapon comes Last Action Hero! Watch the early ‘90s unfold as Arnold Schwarzenegger winks and nods at the action hero typecasting that defined his career. Keep this Scorecard handy, because the goggles, they do nothing! Up and at dem!

• Having two fantastic Alice in Chains songs made exclusively for the soundtrack. = +20pts 
• For using a dummy for a staged fall rather than a stuntman. = -4pts 
• Arnold asks a bad guy, “You want to be a farmer?” and then shouts, “Here’s a couple of achers!” moments before kicking the “mook” so hard in the groin that he rockets through the air. = +13pts 
• John Malkovich has never looked better than in his role as The Ripper. = -5pts 
• Ostentatious theater alert! = +3pts 
• The teacher made no mention of Danny showing up late for class, revealing that she either gave up on caring or never cared to begin with. = -7pts (For the accurate representation of the public school system.) 
• Arnold portrays Hamlet by murdering guys with a machine gun and then blowing up Elsinore. = +100pts 
• Danny’s ghetto-ass apartment is robbed by a crackhead who laments the lack of quality loot. = -8pts 
• Mr. Lundy was too much of a wimp to use Houdini’s magic ticket, but he’s completely okay with giving it to an adolescent boy. = -6pts (For clearly expecting something later. Perv.) 
• Quintessential Asian Bad Guy Al Leong makes a cameo appearance as the bad guy killed by an ice cream cone from an exploding ice cream truck. = +7pts 
• Arnold dazzles Danny by steering his car in midair and taking down a van-mounted machine gun. = +3pts 
• Arnold further dazzles Danny by taking him into a pink alley. = -9pts (For not being a double-entendre.) 
• That same truck exploding its way into a drag show= +4pts (We think we see a theme…) 
• Police station inventory: a midget, female officers with metal-plated breasts, and the T-1000. = +13pts 
• Danny figures out that F. Murray Abraham is a bad guy because he was Salieri in Amadeus. The tongue-in-cheek self-referential humor is reaching critical mass! = +3pts 
• In the Jack Slater movie universe, Stallone stars in The Terminator. What a whimsical land of poppycock! = -8pts 
• Danny backhandedly compliments the video store clerk by saying that she’s too pretty to be working there. = -5pts (Would be lower if there were any video store clerks left to offend.) 
• The moment we’ve all been waiting for: Arnold over-pronounces “California.” = +2pts 
• Arnold referring to himself as “Arnold Braunschweiger.” = +7pts 
• Training attack dogs to form a pyramid on command. = +3pts 
• Benedict’s henchmen: Cleveland Brown, Ditka, Glenn Danzig, and a vato with a side-ponytail. = -17pts 
• Referencing both The Goonies and E.T. by having Danny fly through the air on a little girl’s bike. = +4pts 
• Arnold’s closet comprises nothing but matching sets of the same clothes. = +3pts 
• For never launching a sequel starring Danny DeVito as Whiskers the Sassy Police Cat. = -12pts 
• Danny shows Arnold how useful he is by running onto a construction site while yelling and waving a gun in the air. = -10pts 
• Arnold’s idea of a decoy: Pointing off-camera and shouting, “Look – an elephant!” = -7pts 
• Everyone, including nuns and little old ladies, is packing heat at a mafia funeral. = +6pts 
• Arnold shows off his inhuman strength by swimming the La Brea Tar Pits as if it were the YMCA lap pool. = +4pts 
• Not only does Benedict deliver his evil monologue directly to the camera, but we can see the crew’s reflection in the background mirror. = -7pts for curb-stomping the tone of the film if it was intentional and for the generally sloppiness if not. 
• Instilling sympathy for the villain by having him experience the existential horror of realizing his life, loves, and losses were all fabricated by a Hollywood screenwriter. = +11pts (For being exactly like the real world.)
• Wrenching away that sympathy by showing Benedict murder a guy in cold blood. = -11pts 
• Benedict left the showing of Night of the Living Dead with the magic ticket, but didn’t have any zombies in tow. Clearly he will be defeated. = -13pts 
• The celebrity cameos are getting gratuitous: Little Richard, James Belushi, and MC Hammer. = -14pts 
• For having hot Schwarzenegger-on-Schwarzenegger action that didn’t include him making out with himself. = -5pts 
• Benedict’s evil plan is to bring every cinematic villain into the real world, but the only one we see is The Ripper. = -11pts (For ripping us off! Heh…) 
• Guest appearance by Ian McKellan as Death from The Seventh Seal. = +20pts 
• The film ends with Arnold willingly going back into the movie, foregoing free will and any chance at an actual life. What some people call “becoming shitty governor of California.” Thanks for nothing, Arnold!= -40pts 
• Ending your magic ticket movie without having anyone taking the magic ticket into a porno. = +7pts 
• Andrew Ryan was the Best Boy! Is the grip department not entitled to the sweat of its own brow? = +2pts 

Total Score =  +44pts

Available: The five-dollar DVD bin at Fred Meyer or TBS at 3 am on a Wednesday

Though turning its nose up at any real substance, Last Action Hero has enough hijinks and subtle nods to the buddy cop / action blockbuster genres to make this an entertaining film. It was shamefully received by critics and audiences, and, despite achieving cult status, is still often overlooked and essentially forgotten by pop culture.

Score Technician: T.J. Geise

A Sincere Thank You

Dear Lifetime Intern,

I would like to start off by thanking you. Apparently, for reasons unknown to any of us at The Progressive Cinema Scorecard, you decided to post our Scorecard for Dirty Teacher on the official Facebook page for the movie Dirty Teacher. First off, we applaud your discerning taste. You, sir/madam, are obviously a person of exquisite refinement, one who clearly realizes a fine piece of science writing when you see one. Second, your sharing of our Scorecard (even if it only lasted around 5 hours before the “suits” forced you to remove it) resulted in a huge increase in our traffic. So much so, that, as of now, we show up in Google ahead of, not only the ACTUAL site for Dirty Teacher, but also all of the porn involving dirty teachers. More people find us on the internet because of Dirty Teacher than find us for our name and we are really proud of that.

Joe and I truly hope that your progressive tastes did not result in you losing your internship at Lifetime. But we aren’t going to lie, the idea that executives at your network may have spent an entire day dealing with the "Dirty Teacher" situation amuses us greatly. (“This looks great! Wait, what is this? Did anybody read this first? How did it get up there? IS IT STILL UP THERE? Take it Down! Fire X-Intern/send him to the edge of the earth for coffee on a bicycle with a flat tire. We need to have a strategy session on how that got up there. I need to email at least 4 people to get to the bottom of this and then watch them eat each other to avoid responsibility. CALL A MEETING! I need to email my boss. Now I need to call my boss! WHERE DID MY DAY GO!”)

So, thank you, Intern. We hope you are well.

Now, to all my social network friends and blog readers, I think we could all learn from Lifetime Intern’s sacrifice. I urge you, in his/her name, to go to the blog and pick out a scorecard and share it with your friends/post it on a wall of some person who may find it relevant. Or, better yet, pick up the mantle of truth-science and do one yourself. Be a better person and get involved. If not for Joe and me, then for that poor intern who, in all likelihood, is calling his or her father right now in the hopes that dad might know somebody else who needs someone to run for coffee. Do it for that person. Do it for humanity.

Sincerely,

Sean, Joe, and all the rest of the Technicians

Submitting to the PCS

Everyone knows that the Progressive Cinema Scorecard is fun to read, but it's a well-kept secret that it's even more fun to score a movie yourselves, while at the same time probably adding years to your life.

Do you like watching movies? Some of which may be of dubious quality? Do think you have funny things to say about them? Do you often feel like there should be a more accurate system of valuing the components of a film that make it watchable (or unwatchable)? Have you reviewed the scorecard of a previous film on the site and felt that our tried and true formula may have missed a score (or two), thus your contribution could help us further refine the accuracy of our final scores? Then stop being lazy and help us out by doing something for science.

Send pitches and inquiries to thepcscorecard@gmail.com.

If your proposal grabs our interest, we'll get in touch with you about next steps for submitting your score adjustments, or possibly your own scorecard.

Gangland

Take a look at the poster above.

Most likely you know two out of three people on this poster. They’re big(ish), big enough that any smart director with a trash movie on his hands would put the (part time) actors most people know right smack on the front. So it should come as no surprise that all three of those characters on the poster have less than ten minutes of total screen time. The lady in the corner is model/actress Kristanna Loken, she plays the sister of a principal character, and she lasts about five, tops. Another poster for the movie floats around the interwebs, and this one has the only other actor you might know: Vincent Klyn of Point Break fame, or even better Cyborg (starring Jean Claude Van Damme), from which Klyn plays pretty much the same character as in Gangland. In fact, the general plot premise is exactly the same: both occur in a post apocalyptic future, both deal with martial artists fighting their way to save the world, both deal with something called “the plague,” and a “cure for the plague.” Gangland is basically Cyborg without the cyborgs. So here we are: a movie that has spent most of its budget on celebrity faces and a few explosions, directed by a fight choreographer (Art Camacho), and a plot mostly nicked from another movie. Sounds amazing, let’s do this.

• Stock footage of atomic bomb explosions doing what it does best: expositional montage visual filler. = +2pts 
• Taking those points right back; the stock shot of an airplane is obviously from the very not future. = -2pts 
• …Aaand we’re in New York City! Or, West Side Story? #setdesign #obviousstudio. -5pts 
• Suprisingly, Coolio’s acting is pretty good. =+7pts 
• Too bad Ice T decides to shoot him almost immediately. = -5pts 
• …Only to have his own heart of gold moment cut short, thanks to Lucifer. = -5pts 
• The two guys whose faces appear on the poster die within the first 10 minutes. We’ve never wished for Coolio’s return more. = -25pts 
• We’re pretty sure that the “cop” who just got kicked in the face was a 14-years old. At least he looks 14. = +7pts 
• For some reason, the “gang leader,” Lucifer, who whistled in the posse doesn’t lay a hand on anybody in the fight montage. = -5pts 
• Counting Ice-T and Coolio, the racial quotient of the movie’s cops is a pretty good mix of black/white, while all of the gang members are white (save Lucifer, who is…Hawaiian?).  = +15pts (For not adhering to racial stereotypes.) 
• Even the newscaster can’t get the plot right. = -6pts 
• Yes, put more science stuff around, then we’ll know it’s really science. = -2pts 
• All this talk of dangerous gangs in the streets and the fate of humanity and the “cure” for “the plague” means…FAMILY ROAD TRIP!!! = +3pts 
• The fate of humanity, the end of times, cities falling into chaos… and the only place not affected is Phoenix, AZ? = -8pts 
• Dear Mr. Beefcake Scientist, your son just got his throat slit; he’s bleeding to death in your car. You should try showing emotion. = -7pts 
• When driving through what looks like the set of The Road Warrior try not to be so nonchalant. = -5pts 
• Actually impressive fight scenes! = +11pts 
• Dude gets shot and sunglasses fly waaaay off! (like, straight up in the air off.) = +5pts 
• You think it’s okay to yell “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO” when your brother dies? = -5pts (You should know better!) 
• The newscaster guy, again. Will someone please give him a script? = -5pts 
• We get that you’re trying to portray these women as battered and desperate, but dressing them in torn clothes that show their very saggy boobs doesn’t reveal how bad of a state they’re in; it just shows the director is a sad, sad man. = -25pts 
• Jail scene provides cast with chance to show off their acting chops. = +5pts 
• We wish they’d go back to fighting. = -30pts 
• “Every day they take two out for execution; me and you are next.” (Never mind that we just got here, or how I know this; we need to advance this plot!) = -15pts 
• Least convincing stranglehold ever only incapacitates character for half a minute. = -10pts 
• So here’s something we missed before: If you are watching this on Netflix, a “property of… do not copy” message scrolls across the screen three times. = -15pts (5 for each time) 
• Lucifer’s red contact lenses. = -1pt 
• …and his coat he stole from The Crow. = -2pts 
• Pretty sure the horrid actor of a newscaster just died!= +200pts 
• Nope… still alive. = -200pts 
• Raining in one cut and not the other. = -7pts 
• Someone needs a medical adviser; Ebola is being used wrong (and up until this point hasn’t come up as a term for whatever’s going on) = -3pts 
• An exchange regarding the poisoned, post-apocalyptic water: “The ducks look fine!” “You’re not a duck.” = -5pts (+10pts for script, -15pts for science) 
• Man kicked through glass door. = +5pts 
• “NO, the war has just begun!” Ahh, one liners = +2pts 
• How did anyone/everyone here learn about the scientist and his secret cure? No wonder the guy got kidnapped. = -5pts 
• REVEALED: Lucifer’s brother! (that guy who’s been arguing the whole time #nosurprises) = -3pts 
• Um, you guys probably shouldn’t casually throw around the button for “the bomb,” especially while you’re talking about how dangerous it is. = -10pts 
• Apparently when Lucifer’s dog barks for his “food,” he means an apple and a few bananas. = -5pts 
• This is a good time to bring this up. Lucifer’s two servant women are sisters. The scenes they occupy place a lot of emphasis on this, yet the subplot is never explored. = -15pts 
• The “cure” for the “plague” needs to ferment? = -5pts 
• LUCIFER’S SECRET WEAPON: a genetically engineered super-fighter? So, Lucifer could make a super DNA-altered fighter man, but not a cure for the plague? = -25pts 
• That wasn’t a head snap! = -3pts 
• Casually, EVERYONE is a firearm and hand-to-hand combat expert. = +6pts 
• E.g., One second the lady protagonist Alexis is slap-fighting her way out of a car, and now she knows karate? = +( or -, really) 4pts 
• DNA superman growls like a wolf when punched. = +4pts 
• “I’m just gonna keep the trigger to this superbomb thing in my purse with my other stuff floating around.” = -6pts 
• Hey the prisoner escaped! Let’s share an evil laugh and chase him instead of alerting our supreme lord Lucifer. = -10pts 
• “Here, let me throw this bag full of guns on the ground so I can fight with my hands.” = -11pts 
• We have no idea what happened, but this dude our dear Alexis was fighting magically turned into a lady? = -25pts (For shoehorning a “catfight” onto the movie.) 
• How many guns can we load into this montage? Oh and there’s only two of us. = -5pts 
• “Move, you die!” He moves and doesn’t die. = -8pts (for broken promises) 
• Somehow, sand and pebbles fuck up Mr. Wolfman more than 1000 punches will. = -7pts 
• Pretty sure half of everyone in this gun battle isn’t aiming. = -5pts 
• Model miniature set explosion. Now we know where the budget went. = -4pts 
• The scientist walks halfway through the dark forest before deciding his white coat is too conspicuous and taking it off. = -9pts 
• Oh, and he can also can fight hand to hand, something he didn’t consider trying this the first time he and his family were being kidnapped? = -10pts 
• Getting shot in the back of the head, leaving no exit wound in the front, and still having enough time to touch the back of your head, look around, make noises, and then fall. = -15pts 
• If you’re trying to break into houses in suburbia, don’t be surprised that all the doors are locked, and maybe if you decide to bash your way into one, do it the first time rather than the tenth. = -5pts 
• Little Brother Lucifer can’t shoot for shit. = -5pts 
• Trailer explosion! = +25pts 
• The “cure” is bioluminescent. “Science.” = -10pts 
• Um, pretty sure Lucifer just vaporized, presumably after being infected by Alexis’s sister’s poisoned blood. But considering this plot device just came up, like, a minute ago, we’re only speculating here. = -15pts 
• This movie does not need to end with a tender moment. The last thing anyone would feel after all that is “the love.” = -5pts 
• Apparently all those rocks and pebbles didn’t kill Mr. DNA Superwolf man. SEQUEL??!!??? (never happens) = -50pts for breaking another promise (with a +50 for not putting us through the hell of what a sequel would be).

Total Score: =-322 (plus or minus 4)pts
Available on: Netflix, $2.99 DVD bins the world over

Gangland is a great movie to watch drunk/as a drinking game, and probably only once. The action level is about…we’ll say “Steven Segal” (who would have probably been in this movie had it not wasted its budget). If you’re really into it, director Art Camacho has many more masterpieces with about the same IMDB rating. Maybe this is the horrible movie franchise goldmine we’ve been looking for? Were we looking for that?

Score Technician: Alex Reed Wilson

Dirty Teacher

This is the high school Oprah warned us about. Lifetime Original Movie Dirty Teacher portrays the evil teacher Ms. Matson, who seduces innocent but dimwitted student Danny and gives new meaning to the phrase “after school special.” But when Danny breaks it off, things go sour, and it’s up to his unlikeable girlfriend Jamie to prove that it was all the fault of their teacher… their dirty teacher.

• For throwing in the towel and just naming movies after porn now = -10pts 
• If Danny doesn’t sleep with his teacher to improve his grades, he’ll lose his spot on the basketball team! = +2pts (For depicting real stories teens can relate to) 
• This line: “Don’t worry. It won’t take long.” = +5pts 
• Enabling teenagers to think that any teacher who gives a “C” is trying to sleep with and/or murder them. = -20pts 
• For the following legal disclaimer: “Hey, you’re 18, you can do whatever you want with whomever you want.” = +8pts 
• For using “whomever” properly in the above dialogue. (She’s an English teacher, after all.) = +15pts 
• Because you can’t have a movie set in high school without an angry locker slam. = +6pts 
• High school student spends an entire night writing a paper? This plot just became unbelievable. = -15pts 
• Danny chooses to break-up with his mentally unstable teacher in an abandoned lot. Suddenly, it’s clear why he was only a C student. = -3pts 
• Guy won’t call you back? Murder him. = +25pts 
• Pretty sure the dead kid just blinked (acting is hard). = -4pts 
• Teacher has time to construct an elaborate murder-framing plot in addition to her teaching responsibilities and her sleeping-with-student responsibilities (for impressive time management skills.) = +8pts 
• Just realized the crazy teacher’s name sounds like “Ms. Mad Son.” SYMBOLISM. = +5pts 
• Weird that the evil teacher sleeps on one side of the bed even though she lives alone… oh my god the dead kid’s ghost suddenly appeared in the other half of the bed!! Good thing there was room. = +5pts 
• In Lifetime’s legal system, murderers get house arrest and a stern talking to from their parents. = -15pts 
• Descent into madness monologue, culminating with object thrown at own reflection in the mirror = +15pts 
• She’s seduced and murdered students before?! Somehow this whole thing is going to blow back on teacher unions. = -25pts 
• Lifetime movies are contractually obligated to include this line: “You think because you’re pretty and popular that you’re so much better than I am?” = +10pts 
• Raising up the knife to kill the nosy do-gooder, then pausing to describe your evil plot just long enough for police to arrive = -3pts 
• Jamie’s boyfriend’s just been murdered and her English teacher tried to kill her, but an acceptance letter from “Whittendale University” just came in the mail. Everything worked out, you guys! = +10pts 
• Actual titles of director’s other films: Stalked at 17, Betrayed at 17, Accused at 17 = +17pts (I’m pretty sure the 17 Trilogy is due for a Criterion boxed set any day now.) 
• Actual titles of lead actress’s other films: Seduced by Lies, Mantervention = +5pts 
• Still not as good as the one where the lady from Family Ties goes on a food bender and vomits chocolate milk. = -60pts 

Total Score = -19pts
Available: Endless reruns on Lifetime for the next six years, as animated gifs on message boards everywhere

We’re starting to think that Lifetime is in on the joke. Even so, Dirty Teacher lacks many of the so-bad-it’s-good takeaways that Lifetime Movies are known for, such as quotable dialogue (see: The Drew Peterson Story’s “I’m untouchable, bitch”), C-list celebrities (see: Tori Spelling in Mother, May I Sleep with Danger?), or loose interpretations of salacious news stories (see: Amanda Knox: Murder on Trial in Italy, see also: The Pregnancy Pact.) In the end, all Dirty Teacher offers us is some bad acting and a title that requires anti-virus software to Google. So if you really want your classic Lifetime fix, we suggest cozying up to a rerun of My Stepson, My Lover.

Score Technician: Amanda Hemmerling

Caligula

Caligula is one of those unique snowflakes of a film, a wholly unrepeatable mashup of lofty artistic pretension and naked, craven exploitation. Its troubled production is the stuff of legend, and its critical reception was nothing short of toxic. If ever there was a film made for the Progressive Cinema Scorecard, this surrealist, pornographic bio of one of Rome's most notorious emperors was surely it.

• WHAT?!? Netflix doesn't have the uncut 156-minute version on the instant queue? Where's my extra 15 minutes of gratuitous hardcore sex? = -126pts
• Screenplay by Gore Vidal. = +25pts
• Oh, wait. Based on a screenplay by Gore Vidal. = -75pts
• Casting Alex from A Clockwork Orange as Rome's batshit craziest emperor. = +36pts
• Tantalizing us with hot '70s nudity in the opening scene, only to reveal that the parties concerned are brother and sister. = -6pts
• Miles of dangling chain gang slave wang. = +8pts
• Peter O'Toole: the drunken, paranoid, syphilitic grandfather we never had. = +30pts
• Emperor Tiberius's pleasure grotto looks like something out of an Hieronymus Bosch painting. = +25pts
• Holy shit! Is that a human centipede on Tiberius's stairs? = +20pts
• Drowning the stuck-up butler from Arthur in a glass bathtub. = +10pts
• So, wait, no one's going to... I don't know... remove the the thing you used to strangle the emperor from around his neck before letting everyone know that he's dead?  No? Okay, I guess you guys know what you're doing. = -17pts
• Young, partially nude Helen Mirren. = +100pts
• A doomsday machine with rotating death blades decapitating prisoners buried up to their necks in the floor of the Colosseum? Why the hell not! = +200pts
• The constant, haunting presence of Malcom McDowell's supple, hairless ass cheeks. = -24pts
• Caligula delivers the most enthusiastic thumbs-up in cinematic history following Caesonia's...er..."erotic" dance. = +41pts
•  Thank God they've captured the ancient Roman tradition of giving birth upright and cruciform for an audience of hundreds. Just like I always read about in my history texts. = +42pts
• Watching Caligula clumisily dragging his sister's naked corpse up the steps to a statue of Isis and knowing that somehow this scene was supposed to inspire pathos instead of snorting laughter. = -13pts
• Wow. I don't even know how to begin to describe what's going on here. So we've got an imperial orgy including all the wives and daughters of the senate, but the whole scene takes place in a land-bound ivory Roman galley, complete with oarsmen and a formation of Roman legionaries sashaying around it in a choreographed dance number. = +50pts
• Watching the re-enactment of Caligula's "conquest" of Britain. I'm glad the film makers captured the classic Roman strategy of sending their naked soldiers into battle first. You know, to weird the enemy out. = +13pts
• Apparently the password to enter the royal palace was "scrotum." = +10pts
• Gross historical inaccuracy. = -74pts
• Gross historical inaccuracy: = +148pts

Total Score: +419
Available on: Netflix, the writing team of Rome's DVD shelf, nowhere in the filmography of Gore Vidal

An A-list cast, hopelessly elaborate '70s art deco Roman sets, and a screenplay that unfolds as though it were written by someone who had read a wikipedia article on ancient Rome while huffing paint out of a sack made of mescaline. Even without the fifteen minutes of completely unnecessary and totally unsimulated sexual perversion, there's more than enough jaw-dropping insanity in this film to make Scorecard history.

Score Technician: Joe Hemmerling

Hannah

Now, if memory serves, we think Hannah is a film about a CIA program that tries to kill harmless blonde girls who happen to live in the woods with men who may or may not be their fathers/abductors/husbands, directed by the guy who locked Anna Karenina in a theater. Well, we all know how that story ended. In short, we recommend having this scorecard handy before wading into this quagmire of daddy issues.

• Shooting a reindeer with an arrow from a distance so that you can run it down across a frozen tundra and then shoot it with a gun at close range. = 0pts (A dime a dozen in Alaska/Austria/Siberia.)
• Having a 12-year old do it. = +12pts
• Getting beat up by Bruce Banner. = -3pts
• Taking any advice/life lessons from a know-it-all hermit in the middle of the woods. = -2pts
• 7-gallons of whale testicles?! = +15pts
• Those are a lot of dusty old books sitting by a bunch of open flames. = -2pts
• Nightman  revealed: AKA Dr. Bruce Banner. = +5pts
• So you train your wild-child to develop an elaborate back-story, no doubt to prepare her to re-enter society, yet she hysterically screams at the sight of a plane flying overhead? You are a terrible Nightman, Bruce Banner! = -2pts
• Why did they try to make Cate Blanchette look like Tilda Swinton? Isn’t it generally the other way around? = -1pts
• Bruce Banner is your dad?! Thanks for clearing that up, movie. We were starting to feel uncomfortable about the whole living arraignment. = +3pts
• Is that Lady Mary doing a terrible imitation of Cate Blanchette’s terrible Virginian drawl? = +3pts
• You wouldn’t like Bruce Banner’s daughter when she’s angry.  = +10pts
• Okay, seriously, what is up with that late 90’s industrial score? = -4pts
• “So, what I’m proposing is the most secure facility ever constructed by man.” “Yes, I see that. And this facility, will it be…completely secure?” “Absolutely, sir.” “What about this vast network of tunnels connecting all our key security areas?” “Relax. No man could breach security using these tunnels.” “I don’t know, I just watched Aliens the other day and that little blonde girl evaded some pretty mean aliens using tunnels and vents a lot like this.” “Ha! Sir, I think we’d all agree that the likelihood of a tween girl getting loose in the facility, much less one who could effectively navigate these tunnels and pick off the hundreds of armed men patrolling the base, is pretty slim.” “Hahaha! I guess you are right. That’s the last time I take any advice from movies!” = +10pts (For the kids.)
• Didn't anybody check this kid for a multitool? = -2pts
• MIA reference by tween girl who obviously has never heard a single MIA song, ever, which in turn makes us wonder if the director even knows who MIA is. = +5pts
• Indiscriminate use of accents to confuse viewers as to where in the world anyone is. (And this includes the American accents.) = -1pts
• Talking to a albino wild-child who is wearing a prison jumpsuit and not immediately calling the police or flagging down the convoy of military vehicles clearly looking for someone/thing. = +3pts
• At what point did this movie become Firestarter? = +5pts
• MIA-non-fan describing the awesomeness of lesbians in the exact manner she did MIA. Meaning with very little idea at all what she is talking about at all. = -3pts
• It’s hard to describe what is happening here, so we’ll keep it short: Morocco, winter wonderland, transgender burlesque, little person with fake beard, Cate Blanchett’s legs. = +10pts
• Nothing like having your mom breakdown the way in which lipstick is used to trigger mental images of the “labia minora” to your new BF. Thanks, mom! = +6pts (No, really, thanks mom. Our body, ourselves!)
• WILL SOMEBODY ASK ABOUT THIS GIRL’S PARENTS/CALL THE POLICE?! Mainly so we can get back to watching her kill all of them. (-3pts for lack or moral compass -3pts for boredom) = -6pts
• We’re beginning to think Javier Bardem may have aped his performance in Skyfall from the ambiguously gay blonde Hugo Boss Green (HBG) model in this movie. = +3pts (For getting there first.)
• How much better would the “secret-Hannah-in-a-box” scene have been if, instead of witnessing a happy family singing hippie songs and laughing and loving each other, Hannah had instead witnessed a passive aggressive Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolfe-esque emotional savaging? We think a lot better. At least for Hannah’s future mental state. = -4pts
• Drinking pool water. Barf. = -3pts
• Anticipation at the idea of watching college dudes—wait, we mean college pederasts—die at the hand of HBG. = +10pts (Almost off the charts. +25pts if Hannah does it herself.)
• Apparently everybody in Morocco sings around fires/riverbeds while cleaning clothes. Clearly Hannah needs to have her dad introduce her to Tony Stark. = -3pts
• What’s more uncomfortable: Waiting as you watch a dude in his mid-20s put the moves on a girl who looks barely 14, OR listening to said girl go into a long monologue about all the muscles in the face used in kissing and realizing that it was likely her father who’s been reading her such wonderful bits of information since she could walk? No score, just taking a poll. (The Nightman strikes again!)
• Lost in Translation: Apparently “I’d like to have a friend” in German actually means “I’ll shortly forget my training and as a result you will soon die. Das Bitter.” = +2pts
• Awkward Underage Sex Alert: We haven’t felt this uncomfortable since that scene in the original Let the Right One In. YOU KNOW THE SCENE! = -10pts
• For that Public Transit Scene. = (+5pts for Eric Bana’s hotness +2pts for artful use of single shot +3pts for understated score and slow transformation from Bana’s relaxed confidence to growing sense of doom.) +10pts
• Uh-oh they made him angry. Yay! = +5pts
• Now they made her angry. More yay! = +5pts
• Sending your daughter to creepy magic-hands man after she did all of your killing for you. = -8pts
• Eating raw eggs stored in a dirty old brown box. = -2pts
• Finding out that the man who sequestered you your whole life, who attacked you during all times of the day and night in an effort to “train” you, is in fact not your father, thus giving you a whole new level of issues to deal with. = -10pts (Nightman strikes again!)
• Nightman, meet Day Ma’am. = +3pts
• Overt symbolism of staging final scene in an elaborate rundown Grimm’s Fairytale Land. = +5pts (Because it looks cool and works. You know…because Hannah’s German.)
• Death by banana peel. = +7pts (So long accent!)

Final Score: +71pts

While we realized that our initial perception of this movie was clearly rooted in glancing at a 15-second preview, we found it to be a pretty solid indie action flick that caused us to reevaluate our parenting strategies, as well as our sexual identity.

Score Technician: Sean McConnell

Haxan

Equal parts horror movie, documentary, and exploitation film, Benjamin Christensen’s Haxan is a one-of-a-kind endeavor. The 1922 exploration of the history of witchcraft was banned and censored in multiple countries for its lurid depictions of the occult, but does this landmark in the cinema of the fantastic still hold the power to shock-and-awe the 21st century viewer? Grab your scorecards and let’s find out!

• Naming the sources for your film in your theatrical program is a big help to those of us streaming this on the internet nearly a century later. = -1pt 
• Pretty sure some of these examples of “evil spirits” in pre-Christian times, are actually those peoples’ gods. =-6pts 
• Gangly demon appears to be taking a dump on a vain woman’s floor. = +4pts 
• Not sure if the woman in that last illustration was being harassed by a devil, or just a grabby old drifter. Either way, = +2pts 
• I think whoever designed the moving models of the medieval cosmos is the real star of this show. = +10pts 
• Never mind, it’s actually whoever is handling that pointing stick. = +13pts 
• OH, MY GOD! Where can we get our own “strange, old mechanical representation of hell?” = +30pts (It’s like an ancient, mechanized Terry Gilliam cartoon!) 
• Image of woman milking an axe handle. =+8pts 
• Image of witches’ council looks pretty innocuous. Are you sure that’s not just three women sitting down for a medieval brunch? = -2pts 
• Calling our attention to the fact that the person lying sick in bed is naked because that was the custom of the day. = +4pts 
• Ceremonial banquet at Witches’ Sabbath looks surprisingly urbane. Remember to tip your demon waiter 20%. = +2pts 
• Man, that lady in front looks really eager to show the devil respect by kissing his ass. The next guy in line, not so much. = +13pts 
• The random little person that shows up during the first reenactment. = +3pts 
• It’s a well-known fact that cat-feces-and-dove-heart potions have been used as aphrodisiacs for thousands of years. = +4pts 
• That pious man of the church the woman wants to seduce with a love potion needs to lay off the roast mutton. = +2pts 
• Table manners clearly not a big part of monastic preparation. = -5pts 
• It would be another 40-some years before Black Sabbath would put out their first album, but that devil is metal as fuck (even when playing peekaboo with a studying monk). = +80pts 
• Beckoning a naked sleepwalker into the woods and then disappearing before she gets there. Dick move, demon. = -6pts 
• Dirtbag Satan knocking at the window shutter for the young witch to come and service him is my favorite incarnation of the Prince of Darkness so far. = +27pts 
• “Is it due to your eternal fear of the pyre that you get drunk night after night, you poor old woman of the middle ages?” Feeling a lot of judgment here, all of a sudden, movie. = -3pts 
• Satan vigorously jerking off a butter-churn. = +15pts 
• Aging witch Apelone’s “secret wish” is apparently to be pelted with metal coins while she’s passed out drunk. = +2pts 
• The Devil has only one facial expression, and it’s “puke face.” = +6pts 
• All the meats at the Devil’s banquet come with a serving sword. = +4pts 
• Are we not going to address the stop-motion bird-goat thing with boobs that just clawed through that door? = -8pts 
• Demons enjoying a friendly game of ring-around-the-rosie with some of their favorite souls of the damned. = +3pts 
• So, if that guy prays to Saturn and uses molten lead to help him divine whether a dead man was a victim of witchcraft, wouldn’t that make HIM a witch? = -9pts 
• If the filmmakers got one thing right about the middle ages, it’s the teeth. = +4pts 
• Beggar woman shows up at home of dead man and requests food from his wife. The old woman’s lack of table manners seems to be the only evidence of her witchcraft. = -1pts 
• By the way, apparently this woman nourishes herself by rubbing food all over her face. = +2pts 
• Getting one rough-looking old lady to play the unjustly accused beggar woman. = +10pts 
• Monks going all Hostel on this old lady. = -18pts 
• Old beggar woman confesses under torture to giving birth to giant, spike-covered monster babies. It’s like a clown car in her uterus. = +14pts 
• The origin of “witch ointment:” A medieval man stumbles upon a woman giving another woman a sensual massage and decides that it’s witchcraft = -2pts 
• Say what you will, the Prince of Darkness knows how to throw a picnic. = +6pts 
• He also plays a mean trombone. = +11pts 
• Demonic Jack Black provides a funky drum beat for the flagellation of an underperforming witch. = +10pts 
• THEY ARE STRAIGHT-UP GOING TO EAT A BABY! = +25pts 
• If taking a piss in a bowl and throwing it on your neighbor’s front door is a magic spell, then call us a coven of warlocks. = +17pts 
• Old beggar lady takes the opportunity to roll over on everyone whose wronged her in her 80 (although, being that this is set in the middle ages, probably more like 30) years on the earth. = +8pts 
• Okay, hold on Benjamin Christensen, we have to call bullshit on your portrait of the witch trials as a traveling plague of ecclesiastical judges. While the medieval Catholic church makes a convenient target for vilification, scholars generally agree that the most intense period of witch hunting took place during the early modern era, and was overseen primarily by secular authorities. In fact, the central text that you based your film on, the Malleus Maleficarum, was condemned by the Roman Catholic Church just a few years after it was written, so it’s not really a reliable source for the Inquisition’s standard operating procedure. Sorry, we got pretty serious there for a minute. Um… penisfart. =-100pts 
• A helpful tour of antiquated torture devices. = +9pts 
• An awfully light-hearted musical selection accompanying the physical and psychological torment of an innocent woman. = -16pts 
• Your “8 million burned” is more like 200,000, tops (which is, admittedly, still a hell of a lot). In 1922 = +25pts. In 2013 = - 50pts. Total score = -25pts 
• Scene depicting the aftermath of a church desecration by witches in cat form looks more like the wrap-up of a furry convention. = -7pts 
• Satan goes Looney Toons on a nun. = +11pts 
• Soon, the rest of the convent becomes possessed…with disco fever! =+14pts 
• In the olden days, we would burn old women at the stake as witches. Now we put them in nursing homes. Who really had the right idea on this one? = -3pts 
• Expressing incredulity that a person living in the 20th century could still believe in demonic forces. = -13pts 
• Offering the enlightened viewpoint that women accused of witchcraft were most likely suffering from some form of mental illness. = +20pts 
• Bundling somnambulism, pyromania, nerve damage, and kleptomania under one big umbrella diagnosis “hysteria.” = -40pts 
• Instead of getting nocturnal calls from Satan, today’s mentally ill are visited by some guy who looks kind of like Woodrow Wilson. = +6pts 
• “Hello, ma’am. I’m Woodrow Wilson, and I’m here to bone you.” = +10pts 
• We kind of get what you’re trying to say about the psychological advances of the ‘20s not being that far superior to those of medieval man, but we’d take a temperate shower over burning at the stake any day. = -13pts 
• The Danish word for “End” is “Slut.” = +5pts

Total Score: = +161pts
Viewed On: Hulu’s limited-time Criterion Collection stream

In a perfect world, this film would have ended with a final score of 666 points. As it stands, it’s faired respectably well. There’s a weird dual mentality at play here, as though Christensen were telling the audience, “Here’s a bunch of backwards, superstitious stuff that ignorant peasants used to believe, and LOOK HOW FUCKING COOL IT IS!” While the films’ attitudes towards psychology and the Middle Ages definitely show their age, Haxan’s stunning visual inventiveness make it a film well worth watching, especially with your scorecard.

Score Technician: Joe Hemmerling