A Deep Dive into Weirdo Cinema [25] Quiz

Answer: Bob Odenkirk

Referred to by my father as 'Suburban John Wick', "Nobody" is a short-and-sweet film that put Bob Odenkirk from "Better Call Saul" into the lead role as a no-longer-in-the-biz assassin forced to take up the old way of things when a Russian crime lord puts his family in the crosshairs. Intended to be an opportunity to put Odenkirk into the action space, the movie found middling reception in the box office, a consequence of ongoing, international COVID-19 restrictions early in 2021.

This said, "Nobody" was popular with critics and it resulted in a sequel in 2025, bringing back Odenkirk, Connie Nielsen, RZA, and Christopher Lloyd (and adding Sharon Stone). These assassins can never separate their home life from their work life, can they?

Answer: The second

There's something fascinating about the "Transformers" live-action film series because they run the gamut from being amazing technical marvels (at least as far as graphics and action go) to being outright clunkers. Michael Bay's 2007 introduction to the series was very well-received and a box-office smash, and it was followed by "Revenge of the Fallen", "Dark of the Moon", "Age of Extinction", and "The Last Night" before spinning off and adding in the "Beast Wars" characters. Some of those are really rough to get through. Ever want to see a Transformer salute real-life Buzz Aldrin as an American hero? Why?

"Revenge of the Fallen", releasing in 2009, elaborated on the past and present of the Transformers, now on Earth as protectors, as they prepared themselves for battle against a foe known as 'The Fallen', actually Megatronus Prime, the first in a line of Decepticons. Shia LaBeouf, Megan Fox, Josh Duhamel, and others all returned for this one (Fox would be let go for the next movie) and it effectively printed money for the box office in spite of poor critical reception. Enough money that the review scores didn't matter, it would seem. Then again, if you like loud noises, big explosions, and the sound of grinding metal, you might be in heaven.

Answer: Shaun the Sheep

A stop-motion adventure created by "Wallace & Gromit" animators Aardman Animations, "Farmageddon" was a spin-off that developed out of the 1995 short film "A Close Shave", which saw Wallace & Gromit getting themselves embroiled in uncovering a sheep-rustling operation. The Shaun the Sheep character, himself a bit of a beloved claymation critter, would make the jump to a self-titled TV series starting in 2007 (for hundreds of episodes) before getting his own movie in 2015.

"Farmageddon", the second "Shaun the Sheep" film, featured Shaun in a bit less of a grounded scenario, being forced to act when an alien crash-landed on Earth at the Mossy Bottom Farm. Fighting back against the Ministry of Alien Detection (or MAD), it would naturally take on the same tone and slapstick energy as the other Aardman productions and fit that cozy animation niche one would come to expect.

"A Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farmageddon" would be nominated for Best Animated Feature at the 2020 Oscars though it would lose the statuette to Disney/Pixar's "Soul". It shouldn't stop you from watching it though; it's charming.

Answer: Wild Wild West

There's something about this movie where all the pieces sound like they'd be perfectly interesting on their own, but slammed together in a steampunk reimagining of the U.S. Wild West, it all just kind of comes out to be a bit of a clunker. "Wild Wild West" starred Will Smith, Kevin Kline, Salma Hayek, and Kenneth Branagh, who appears as a spider-obsessed Confederate soldier with no legs and terrorist ideals, set out to kill Ulysses S. Grant as the railway is completed somewhere out in the desert.

After many stories from famous film figures like Kevin Smith started coming out in later years, it was revealed that the need to have a giant, mechanical spider was a constant push from one of the movie's producers, Jon Peters, who had repeatedly tried to shoehorn the concept into a number of past movies and failed to do so. Well, he got it. And then the movie won Worst Picture at the Razzies the following year. Notably, Peters continued to try and put big, mechanical spiders in later works, much to the distress of his collaborators.

Answer: Yes

"But escape rooms are meant to be fun, hour-long activities with friends," you may say. Well, nuh-uh. The 2019 horror-thriller "Escape Room" instead 'Saw'-ifies itself by making elaborate trap rooms for people to force their way through, no matter how unbelievable or against the laws of physics or reason they may need to be. In this movie, a group of six people are trapped in a series of rooms and forced to face death in an effort to survive while a group of rich elites watch and bet on them from afar. In this one, two people manage to make it out.

Both of these players end up returning for the 2021 sequel, "Escape Room: Tournament of Champions", and interestingly, the film released in two very different versions of itself - one featuring more returning characters and one involving a greater story about the games' creators. Which one is canon? Who knows?

If you're looking for wacky, mindless horror and are eager to shut your brain off, you could do worse!

Answer: Donald Glover

The classic question of "why?" has historically come up a lot when talking about Disney live-action remakes, because many Disney animated films, considered classics, are nostalgically beloved by people of all ages; generations of movie-goers can likely pinpoint the movies of their childhoods based on decades of hits of Disney's yesteryear.

But because of a small handful of major successes in adapting the animated classics (in-house), Disney decided to push the envelope by making a live-action version of 1994's "The Lion King", a movie with an all-animal cast. And because that would be insane, the entire movie is technically computer-animated. The snake is eating itself, people.

Director Jon Favreau, who'd previously done the same thing (for the most part) in the live-action remake of "The Jungle Book" (2016), brought his talents to the table to direct the voices of Beyonce, Donald Glover, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Seth Rogen, and Billy Eichner (amongst others). Glover played the Simba role originally voiced by Jonathan Taylor Thomas and Matthew Broderick in the original movie.

It turns out the answer to that "why?" question is money. It became the highest-grossing animated film of all-time, taking in more than $1.6B USD in the box office. I'm still asking "why?", but maybe these remakes aren't for me.

Answer: Insane Clown Posse

One of those "what am I actually sitting and watching" types of movies, "Big Money Hustlas" stars Shaggy 2 Dope and Violent J, the former as a detective and the latter as a gangster, as they go head-to-head in the grand scheme of organized crime in New York City. And you may think that, at some point, the masks come off. Nope. You're watching the fully-painted hip-hop performers in full make-up from start to finish, playing it as straight as possible in the face of mob and exploitation tropes.

Independently-made, "Big Money Hustlas" released in 2000 and went stright-to-video. Ten years later, the stars went back in front of the camera for a prequel, "Big Money Rustlas", in a Wild West version of the story. Neither was well-received, but then again, these weren't made for the critics; they were made for the Juggalos.

Answer: No

Spoilers, if you're going to sit for "Exam", a 2009 British thriller set entirely in one testing room in what must be an elite office building - the movie contains an exam and only one person gets to the end having succeeded in it, but not before the applicants apparently go stir-crazy, harming each other, damaging the room, and revealing the presence of a deadly disease. At the end, it's revealed that the only question of the exam basically amounts to "any questions?", and someone says "no", and they pass the exam and get the job.

Oh yeah, and someone gets shot, but the bullet is a cure for the aforementioned deadly disease. Lucky!

Definitely an odd independent thriller in the vein of "The Circle" and "Cube", and an early film for actress Gemma Chan. While it failed to recoup its $600,000 USD budget, it's at least an interesting deep cut in the genre.

Answer: The Drone

While "Zombeavers" (2014) proffered up exactly what the title implies in its schlock outing, Jordan Rubin's sophomore film, "The Drone" featured - yes, a drone - but attempted to tap into the common modern horror trope of evil tech. In this movie, a serial killer's mind manages to root itself into a common consumer-quality drone, essentially pulling a "Child's Play" narrative out of a miniature helicopter that stalks an otherwise unassuming couple. It's amazing how much damage a lightning strike can do in transferring consciousness into consumer tech.

Is it a good movie? It depends on whether or not you're into campy, absurd horror premises. There's much worse out there, and this manages to keep just above the waterline when compared to a SyFy or Asylum-produced premise. It's self-serious, but egads is it silly.

Answer: Saw

After the 2010 film "Saw 3D", also known as "Saw: The Final Chapter", the creators of "Saw" and the execs at Lionsgate promised that "Saw" was done. But anyone in the horror sphere knows that appending 'The Final Chapter' on anything means it's never going to end. Instead, they followed it up with "Jigsaw", the eighth film in the series, in 2017, and then put "Spiral: From the Book of Saw" into production as a stand-alone movie, bringing back Darren Lynn Bousman and casting A-listers Chris Rock and Samuel L. Jackson, the former of whom championed the film in the pitch phase.

The movie lives somewhat aside of the Jigsaw murders in the previous eight films, chronicling those involved with a copycat killer. The traps are essentially of the same caliber... and the circumstances are almost the same... and it has many of the same tropes and images... ... yeah, it's just a "Saw" movie with Chris Rock.

"Spiral" headed to theatres during the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic but managed to take double its budget back in the box office. It led Twisted Pictures and Lionsgate to greenlight "Saw X", which ended up being one of the best-reviewed entries into the series, so maybe it was worth it?