Podcast: Exit Wounds (2001)

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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.

Some Notes:

• For some inexplicable reason, the producers cast a yet-to-be-super-famous Eva Mendes in a small role, but completely re-dubbed her voice. In an interview on the Daily Show a few years later, Mendes claimed that a producer said she "didn't sound intelligent enough."
• In this movie, Michigan militia members disguise themselves as motorcycle cops and try to kill the vice president. Thus proving my theory (similar to "all helicopters in movies blow up") that all motorcycle cops in movies are evil (see: Exit Wounds, Magnum Force, Terminator 2).
• A helicopter also blows up in this movie when Seagal shoots a handgun that sounds like an Uzi at it.
• This a second time DMX Anthony Anderson Tom Arnold have stared in Cradle 2 the grave together (source)

Podcast: Cradle 2 the Grave (2003)

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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.

Some Notes:

• Just for fun, here's video from the X Gon' Give It To Ya mod for the Resident Evil 2 remake.

Podcast: The New Mutants (2020)

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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 (The 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.

Some Notes:

• You can find our special guest Matthew Monagle's written work on his Authory page. You can follow him on Twitter. He is a co-founder of Certified Forgotten, a podcast and website focused exclusively on the movies that have fallen through the cracks. He was also on the Hit Factory Podcast to talk about Ravenous, a Your Stupid Minds favorite.

Podcast: Me You Madness (2021)

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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 2021's Me You Madness 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.

Some Notes:

• The sole IMDb trivia item is "Louise Linton came up with the concept for You Me Madness after falling asleep in a hot car following a trip to the pharmacy. She described a 'Doors-like vision' of an indigenous man telling her to make a movie about a girl-boss serial killer. So she did." It is most definitely completely made up.
• For juicier online content related to this movie, check out the Rotten Tomatoes user review section, which contains dozens of reviews from robot troll farms writing five star reviews two days after the movie came out. Including someone who claimed they watched it three times in a 24 hour period.
• Grand Theft Auto: Vice City contains two Michael Jackson songs: "Wanna Be Startin' Something," a definite b-side but a banger, and "Billie Jean," a definite a-side and also a banger.

Podcast: Mortal Kombat: Annihilation (1997)

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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.

Some Notes:

• Scorpion's Get 'n Go Outworld Kidnapping and Delivery Service: "I Get [Them] Over Here Then Get Outta Here!"
• Just for fun, here's Slate's Interview With the Guy Who Yells “Mortal Kombat” in the Theme for Mortal Kombat
• This may have been the first movie Nick saw where he realized that movies he thought he'd like could be bad.
• Available on HBO Max.

Podcast: Dolittle (2020)

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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.

Some Notes:

• We don't understand voles and voles don't understand us.
• Written and directed by Stephen Gaghan for some reason. He's is known for writing Traffic and writing and directing Syriana.
• If you're going to have a dragon poop out some bagpipes, there should at least be some poop on the bagpipes.

Podcast: Cyborg 2: Glass Shadow (1993)

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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.

Trivia:

• Trigger Warning: 17 year old Angelina Jolie has an elaborate softcore sex scene in this. Jon Voight had her legally emancipated in order to do this movie and not have to be there to watch all the icky sex scenes (what a great dad!).
• If you want to throw up just like Angelina Jolie did after watching Cyborg 2, just read some of the wonderful IMDb user created trivia for this movie.
• Available to rent on Amazon Prime. Unless you want to do a trial of MovieSphere (whatever that is). Then it's free, or whatever.