In honor of Halloween Kills slicing up the box office (and the holiday of Halloween in general) we reviewed a less successful foray into the franchise with possibly its worst entry, 2002’s Halloween: Resurrection! After decapitating Michael Myers in the last film, the embarrassingly titled but by all accounts decent Halloween H20: 20 Years Later, this movie opens with Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) in a mental institution. The exposition nurse reveals that in a stunning plot twist that allows them to make more Halloween movies, Michael switched his outfit with that of an innocent father of three EMT, who was the person Laurie actually decapitated. Michael is still alive. Laurie is in a constant state of pretend shock one year later, but lies in wait for Michael to come for her on Halloween so she can unleash her trap. Unfortunately for Laurie (and fortunately for Jamie Lee Curtis, who desperately wanted to stop making these movies) Michael slips out of the trap and kills her. A year later, and unrelated to everything that just happened, some college students sign up to star in a livestreamed internet reality series called Dangertainment. After being recruited by Freddie Harris (Busta Rhymes) and Nora Winston (Tyra Banks), the cadre of horny teens are locked in Michael Myers’s childhood home and must search for clues as to why he’s so crazy. But what’s really crazy is Michael has been living under the house this entire time and emerges to kill them off!

Your Stupid Minds

179 - Halloween: Resurrection

Since we are completists, we circled back to watch Exit Wounds (2001). Directed by Andrzej Bartkowiak and starring... well just switch out the cast from Cradle 2 the Grave but replace Jet Li with Steven Seagal. And add Michael Jai White, Jill Hennessy, Bill Duke, and the visage of Eva Mendes. Orin Boyd (Seagal) is a loose cannon Detroit cop who is in a lot of trouble for saving the vice president’s life. As punishment, he must go to the the dreaded Precinct 15, the most corrupt precinct in the entire city. While there, Boyd has situations thrust upon where where he is required to Judo like fifty guys; whether it be the half dozen street punks trying to steal his truck, or the elaborate heist in the hall of records. Through his bumbling, Boyd eventually figures out the force is crawling with corrupt cops trafficking heroin by soaking t-shirts in it and then drying them (yes, that’s their actual plan). Will he have to settle the score himself? Or will he have a little help from friend/foe Latrell (DMX)? Seagal also pummels a bouncer in the face with a chain for basically no reason.

178 - Exit Wounds

We’ll be honest. We were trying to watch Exit Wounds, the Andrzej Bartkowiak directed movie starring DMX, Anthony Anderson, Tom Arnold, and Steven Seagal. Somehow we mixed it up with Cradle 2 the Grave, directed by Andrzej Bartkowiak starring DMX, Anthony Anderson, Tom Arnold, and JET LI. We’re considering it an upgrade. Anthony Fait (DMX) is a friendly jewel thief who steals from rich jerks and doesn’t use guns. With his crew Daria (Gabrielle Union), Tommy (Anderson), and Odion (Michael Jace), they break in somewhere and steal some mysterious black diamonds. Su (Li) calls Anthony and wants those stones. X won’t give it to him (what?) he won't give it to him. So Su beats up Odion in a subway. Weirdly, Su turns out to be a good guy, because he’s trying to protect the stones from the evil Ling (Marc Dacascos), who steals Anthony’s daughter, which requires an MMA cage fight, backroom striptease, ATV street chase, and tank attack to get her and the stones back.

177 - Cradle 2 the Grave

Film critic, tabletop gaming enthusiast, and Trinity University alumnus Matthew Monagle joins Your Stupid Minds to talk about 2020’s The New Mutants, a film troubled by reshoots, company mergers, and a theatrical release right in the middle of a global pandemic. Dani Moonstar (Blu Hunt) is brought to a mysterious facility after her entire family dies during a “tornado.” The facility’s sole employee, Dr. Cecilia Reyes (Alice Braga), tells her she’s a mutant (of the X-Men variety, not the post-apocalyptic) and she’s in this building for her own protection. Dani meets other young mutants in the facility: Sam (Stranger Things’s Charlie Heaton), Rahne (Game of Thrones’s Maisie Williams), Illyana (Queen’s Gambit’s Anya Taylor-Joy) and Roberto (Teen Wolf’s Henry Zaga), and together they try to take control of their powers (or discover what they are), figure out why they can’t leave, watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer (created by no one), and, if they have time, discover why their nightmares come to life and try to kill them. If you’re wondering if this a) has anything to do with a certain “sinister” X-Men villain teased in a previous film, and b) if this will result in an entire New Mutants cinematic universe, the answer is yes and no.

176 - The New Mutants

Strap yourself in and enjoy the ride for this fast-paced, tongue-in-cheek, aesthetically beautiful episode! Did you know Louise Linton, (possibly better known as the wife of Suicide Squad executive producer and former Trump treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin) produced, directed, wrote, and starred in her own movie about a girlboss serial killer? Did you know it's just as awful as I just described? Because that's Me You Madness (2021) baby! Catherine (Linton) is a take-charge finance person who's rich, beautiful, confident, and also... murders and eats people? Whoa, talk about a twist! Unless you've seen American Psycho. But don't worry, this movie hangs a lampshade on that so this doesn't count as a ripoff. The movie (which takes place in modern day) also features a bunch of chart-topping '80s songs, just in case you forgot American Psycho took place in the '80s. For the purposes of setting up this threadbare plot, Catherine catfishes a sexy conman Tyler (Gossip Girl's Ed Westwick) into renting a room in her hideous cavernous Malibu mansion in order to kill him. But things get complicated after an MDMA-fueled threesome, and Catherine starts to fall for him. Will sparks fly? No. Will they argue for the last third of the movie in a completely annoying way? Yes. Did Louise Linton hire a troll farm to spam positive reviews of her movie on Rotten Tomatoes? Almost certainly yes.

175 - Me You Madness

Hey, did you know a new Mortal Kombat movie comes out tomorrow? Huh, weird. Well, just by sheer coincidence, we reviewed 1997's Mortal Kombat: Annihilation, a movie reviled even by Mortal Kombat film franchise fans. Shao Kahn (Brian Thompson), immediately at the conclusion of the first film, shows up to destroy the earth, breaking the rules of Mortal Kombat and rendering everything that happened in the last movie completely moot. The remaining heroes Liu Kang (Robin Shou) and Kitana (Talisa Soto), as well as their non-union Mexican equivalents Rayden (James Remar) Sonya Blade (Sandra Hess) and Jax (Lynn 'Red' Williams) must team up once again to stop him. This time Liu Kang must unlock his Animality, thus saving his Babality for the nonexistent theatrically released second sequel.

174 - Mortal Kombat: Annihilation (1997)

Mortal Kombat: Annihilation (1997)

Your Stupid Minds ends its two-movie cyborg series and jumps in to our tried and true “Worst of the Previous Year” mainstay. 2020 didn’t have a huge number of films to choose from, but luckily the first three months of the year, where the stinkiest movies usually reside, were relatively pandemic free. In January, Universal unceremoniously dumped Dolittle into theaters with little fanfare, and the shark critics (who can talk) swarmed on its carcass. Dr. John Dolittle (Robert Downey Jr.) is a doctor who can talk to animals. He also has a dead wife, so like all movies released in the last decade, he is stricken with grief, trauma, and depression. Lady Rose (Carmel Laniado) comes to him to say Queen Victoria (Jessie Buckley) is sick and needs his expertise of talking to animals to cure her. Also, the lifelong lease for this properly is tied to the queen’s life and not his own for some reason. Dolittle must sail to some place to get a book to go to another place to find the fruit of the Eden Tree to save the queen. He brings along his menagerie of CGI animals with unremarkable celebrity voices, including Emma Thompson as a parrot, Rami Malek as a gorilla, Kumail Nanjiani as an ostrich, John Cena as a polar bear, and so on. There’s also a kid named Stubbins (Harry Collett as a Tom Holland type, though Holland is also in the movie voicing a dog) who tags along, and Dolittle is chased by the villain Dr. Blair Müdfly (Michael Sheen). And a whale shows up at some point. And a dragon poops out some bagpipes.

173 - Dolittle

We continue our ad hoc mini cyborg series with a sequel to an Albert Pyun movie but not directed by Pyun: Cyborg 2: Glass Shadow. Cash (a 17 year old Angelina Jolie in her first starring role) is a top-of-the-line cyborg created to seduce her company’s competitors and blow them up. Her and her karate instructor Colton Ricks (Elias Koteas) have a good rapport, but a mysterious mouth named Mercy (Jack Palance) connect with both of them on every available CRT television nearby. Mercy helps them both escape and they’re on the run from competing cyborg hunters Chen (Karen Sheperd) and the unhinged Danny Bench (Billy Drago). They eventually find themselves at an outpost Fallout-style town where Colt must fight in a death match for the money to escape.

172 - Cyborg 2: Glass Shadow

In a vague gesture toward Cyberpunk 2077, that game people used to complain about a month ago, Your Stupid Minds dips into Amazon Prime's vast archive of schlock and found 1992's Nemesis, directed by YSM mainstay Albert Pyun (Dangerously Close, Captain America). Alex (Olivier Gruner, a Jean-Claude Van Damme type) is an LAPD cop with cyborg enhancements. He is tasked with finding his former partner and lover Jared (Marjorie Monaghan), who has gone rogue and allied with cyborg terrorists... or has she? He goes on his mission after a bomb is implanted into his heart without his consent. Alex comes across various players in this confusing scenario, including cyborg babes, gang leader Angie-Liv (Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa), a Lori Petty type named Max Impact (Merle Kennedy), his boss Farnsworth, a Mike Pence type (Tim Thomerson), and Billy, a Thomas Jane type (Thomas Jane). There are a bunch of shoot outs and some cyber eyeball gore. I think a Terminator attacks their helicopter. Some other cool stuff happens.

171 - Nemesis

Nick Nobel and Chris Dobson review a variety of camp, B, genre, and otherwise bad movies.

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