This movie was very kindly sent to me by a viewer of my youtube channel, which, given we live in totally different countries is a HELL of a kind gesture…Well, I say a ‘Kind’ gesture…it’s ‘Trump Vs The Illuminati’…im not sure if its kind of them, or the beginning of a new amendment to the geneva convention…we’ll likely sort it out via the courts…

Anyway; im going to review this one much more in depth on my youtube channel in future. But a quick overview finds us in 3044, at some point 1000 years prior THE ‘Donald Trump’ inadvertently started a nuclear conflict that just so happened to coincide with an AI uprising.

during this time, the nuclear war wipes out most of humanity, and the sentient AI machines harvest the earth of all its natural resources leaving the planet picked clean…HOWEVER! just before the nuclear conflict properly kicked off a lab grown clone of Donald Trump based in China escapes its holding facility and SOMEHOW commandeers a spaceship, managing to escape the planet just before the nuclear armageddon. I dont know HOW he knows how to fly a spaceship, but you’ll find with this film that a LOT of the runtime is filled with ‘how does he/she know that’? so its easier to just let it keep on whatever momentum its working with…

Anyway, The Trump Clone crashes his spaceship on Mars, and somehow manages to merge his conciousness with AI machines that essentially render him immortal. He spends the next 1000 years on Mars until 3044, when an alien race approach the clone Trump (who either has an imaginary friend called ‘The Major’ or has an ACTUAL friend called ‘The Major’ who he will abandon shortly. The aliens warn the clone of a terrible future in which the illuminati (led by the conciousness of Alistaire Crowley ressurected into the body of an alien…for some reason…) form a galactic army and wipe out the universe.

Clone Trump doesnt care about ANY of that, and refuses to help. But when Crowley and his cronies turn up and attempt an assassination, thats only foiled when the good aliens beam Trump aboard their ship and give him a cruiser of his own. Clone Trump eventually learns that his destiny as saviour of the universe is inevitable, and so he heads out to Dubai, where the entry portal to Hell is located, so that he can fight Lucifer to the death, to destroy the illuminati and restore order to the universe…Oh! and he’s assisted in this by a Han Solo/Chewbacca style pairing of either a clone or descendent of ‘Van Helsing’ and ‘Bigfoot’…

I felt like I was having a stroke at multiple points while watching this. I see a lot of movies that dont ‘feel’ like real movies, but most of them just look a bit cheap and have a basic story. But this is the first film i’ve seen in a while that doesnt even ‘feel’ like a movie, it feels like something that would have appeared in an episode of ‘Tim and Eric Awesome show’ back in the 2000s as a scathing work of satire.

Halfway through watching this, I wondered what the audience reaction would have been had I sent this film back in time, with no context, to viewers in 1995. And I can only liken the response to be similar to that old meme about giving a medieval peasent a dorito.

The scripts the base ramblings of a mad man, theres nothing more to it, its just pseudo philosophical ‘bullshit’ mixed in with overt references to Trumps first time in office wrapped up in a bizarre plot of intergalactic warfare, that BARELY features ANY actual intergalactic warfare…

The pacings ice-bergian CRAWLING to the endzone at 69 minutes, it feels like it goes on for over 2 hours. and its BIZARRE choice to spend the majority of the runtime essentially running a ‘What If?’ around the idea that Clone Trump, under different circumstances could have been some kind of martyr figure, I feel even in 2020 was kind of poor taste, and in 2025 is just downright demented.

Essentially the majority of this movie is watching a spacesuit avatar travel from one location to another, pontificating about what makes us who we are, the meaning of life, and the occasional ‘grab’em by the pussy’ reference…

The characters all feel like they just popped out of a beginners ‘Warhammer’ Campaign. the dialogue is frankly painful and delivered by ACTUAL voice actors in such a way that im STILL not 100% certain they didnt do voice cloning and Text to speech at some points in this movie…

And to add insult to injury, the film doesnt even really fully resolve. It solves one plotline that kind of becomes irrelevent just before the end. Then about 7 minutes off the end, they cram in a dozen characters we’ve NEVER seen before up to this point, set up some random new threat and then they just…drop it. Literally they dump all that on the audience, then hard cut to credits…with seemingly no follow up planned and no ACTUAL resolution given. the film just..stops.

The direction is sparking off in every possible direction it can go off in, it lacks focus and vision, and…you wouldnt know it from the poster or DVD cover. But this is almost 100% CGI, and to be more specific, it looks VERY similar in places to PS3 era ‘Fallout 3’, ‘Mass Effect’ with a little bit of Halo thrown in for good measure. the models animate only SLIGHTLY more than a ‘T’ pose, they show locations with no characters in them frequently so they dont have to animate characters mouth movements. The Trump clone character is in a spcaesuit for 90% of the runtime, its mouth doesnt move at ALL when we can look through the visor, and the characters who DO get mouth movements? NOT ONE LINE matches the movements of the mouth.

The art style feels generic, almost like something from an out of the box animations studio piece of software, and because so MANY characters are using generic Alien models here, I assumed it meant they didnt have any additional models to cover other characters…an example being Lucifer and Alistaire Crowley here are both represented by generic alien models…but THEN literal MINUTES off the end. they show both a human animation model AND a ‘Satan’ animation model…SO WHY ARE ALL THESE CHARACTERS JUST COPY PASTED ALIEN MODELS?!?

The editing is atrocious, the score, generic and ill fitting. If it wasnt a weekday where I have work in the morning, i’d be drinking by now…ABSOLUTE waste of time…Dont bother, the fact its at least VAGUELY self aware was JUST enough to pull it back from the absolute pits. But it is TEETERING. AVOID.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/trump-vs-the-illuminati/

The first ‘OCOS’ That I caught live as it went out, and it left a HELL of an impression, from Greggs mobile VFA car, to the twist ending I did NOT see coming. this oscar special was wild in just the right way, and ensured that I didnt miss a special go out live again.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/the-7th-annual-live-on-cinema-oscar-special/

Arguably one of the high water marks for the OCOS’s its a solid night of chaos BUT! adding a twist to proceedings, the entire nights events unfolded between two different streams. I know some people were annoyed by that, but for me I found it a fascinating use of mixed media and a GREAT way to drip feed in hidden lore and details to the series without overtly doing so. the Gregg feed was a definite favourite, and I still remember the thrill of watching folks flick between the two looking for clues and behind the scenes gossip.

It was a great night that balanced comedy and tragedy perfectly once again, and one that I had a real soft spot for.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/the-8th-annual-live-on-cinema-oscar-special/

A little bit of a slower offering for this years oscar special, while the ‘live at the hei ranch’ location was a bit of a shakeup, I felt like this one was nothing we hadnt seen before…and while the dramatic closer really did up the experience. This was one of the few oscar specials that I feel like I didnt need to watch it live…

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/the-9th-annual-on-cinema-oscar-special/

Easily one of the better Oscar specials in recent memory, a genuinely chaotic watch when I caught it live, and the finale was one of the bleaker moments in ‘On Cinema’ history. I really enjoyed this one, and i’ve been back to it a few times in recent years.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/the-10th-annual-on-cinema-oscar-special/

This one I felt was a little slower going than the previous Oscar specials, but non the less, It still had some really solid moments, the Ma and Pa kettle stuff really made me laugh, and the finale was a stunning moment in Oscar special history!

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/the-11th-annual-on-cinema-oscar-special-live-from-amatocon/

Tim and Gregg really bought the house down with this one…literally.

Also; bonus points for Eric Roberts GENUINELY making some of the funniest moments i’ve seen in any of the oscar specials in recent memory

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/the-12th-annual-on-cinema-oscar-special/

As an SOV afficionado, I’d had ‘Garden Tool Massacre’ recommended to me a few times by folk over the years, So I figured tonight would be the night…

Honestly, theres not much to say, the film is set somewhere between the midlands and the north of England, and it could best be summed up as ‘What if John Carpenters ‘Halloween’ happened just outside of Manchester, England?’

The plot is about a guy who murders his wife, and a couple of days later is apprehended by the police who put him in a maximum security mental health facility. He promptly goes mute and doesnt react to anyone for about 7-8 years, where he promptly escapes the facility by just…murdering a janitor and walking out…

and the next thing to happen is we cut to a group of lads as they’re getting ready for a weekend long party at one of the lads houses…

And you’d think that that would then be the premise…our Killer rocking up at the party and slowly picking the lads off…BUT YOU’D BE WRONG! because the vast majority of the film is just the lads awkwardly having THE most 90s english house party I’ve ever seen (seriously this brought back a LOT of memories) while a series of ‘fake outs’ happen where you THINK they’re going to be killed…but they arnt…This continues for the full runtime until about 10-15 minutes off the end, when the ‘massacre’ formally DOES start, and could best (and most generously) be described as an exercise in ‘Copy/pasting’…

The script itself is frustrating, with a first act that feels alive behind the eyes and is keen to set the entire movie up as effectively as possible. Which it succeeds in doing really, I was genuinely on board with this thing right up till the 2nd act, where the breaks are pounded and the whole film just falls into a load of people talking nonsense at a house party for the better part of 30-40 minutes…Before we crash into a VERY repetative final act that felt like a film going through the motions leading to a rather uninspiring and dry finale that just dumps you into the credits without so much as a wink and a good bye.

The characters are all one note and fairly generic, with talking topics largely being centered around beer, birds, peeing, murderers and horror films. the dialogue is rigid, unnatruralistic and due to poor audio recording equipment, BARELY audible most of the time. its a really poor show honestly that just made me wish I was watching ‘Halloween’ for most of the runtime.

Mercifully, the direction and cine DO impress. Given this was the writer/directors first foray into feature film making we get a VERY impressive creative vision that, really drags up a subpar script to something much more worth your time. Scenes are clearly very carefully planned out and crafted and its clear that, while this was a skeleton crew on hand, every attempt to keep things as close knit and to the directors vision was taken.

While the vast majority of the film does play out like one long ‘continual action sequence’ occaisonally broken up by random killings. the shots are very well composed, theres a sense of dynacism in the camera movements and given this was low/no budget, it does feel like it was at least attempting to put an heir of professionalism behind the lens.

Theres at least some attempt at utilizing B-roll, though more would have definitely been welcome, the editing for this one is really tight with some solid match cuts and decent transitions across the runtime. Visually, apart from the fact that the VHS quality here is ABSOLUTELY to the wall (im assuming the filmed this in SLP mode) it looks consistent and about as solid an attempt as i’ve seen in the SOV genre to make something feel fairly filmic.

Soundtrack wise, we have a problem. So the original scoring for this film was apparently almost entirely movie music, or copyrighted studio releases. So here for SRS’s release, we have a licensed score that DOES fit the bill and is used appropriately…But that isnt the issue. The issue is that all the dialogue audio was recorded using the video cameras on board mic. And the cast here all have VERY thick northern accents. AND they’re all in various echoey rooms…Which means I cant hear a bloody thing being said in this movie, other than the occasional line where the cast member was literally talking RIGHT into the microphone, or if they did an overdub. What I WAS able to hear though, was largely just idle chatter and horror references…So I dont think I was missing much.

And as such, the performances here are kind of moot too. The cast were all friends of the director more or less, they had limited acting experience, and largely just sort of awkwardly stand about and occasionally deliver muffled lines that I cant quite here. Honestly? the fact this release doesnt come with a subtitle track was probably the biggest miss this company have ever made…

Garden Tool Massacre is a game of two halves. While visually this is really rock solid, and it has its moments of being funny, or genuinely impressive gore wise. The sound issues, lack of animation from the cast and VERY lumpy script, ultimately hold this thing back from really hitting its potential. Even with this in mind, I did find myself having a bit of a soft spot towards it, not enough to make me want to recommend it. But almost certainly enough that I could see myself rewatching this one again, partly for the nostalgia, and partly to ACTUALLy try and figure out what the hell these people are saying for the most part.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/garden-tool-massacre/

Taking a bit of a detour tonight on our ‘Pokemon Movie’ Odyssy, ‘Mewtwo Returns’ was released direct to VHS and DVD in the US and EU as a sequel to ‘Pokemon: The First Movie’ and was even advertised as ‘An All New Movie!’…But the reality is that this was in fact not the case. In Japan, this was a one off extended episode of the Anime that sat between episodes of the regular TV series. It ran to just over an hour or so, and rather than trying to slot this thing into TV listings (something that would not only be a very difficult thing to do given the runtime, but also for the fact that this ‘special’ is a MASSIVE detour from the plot of the Johto arc up to this point…Not to mention that by just putting it straight to TV your effectively just…GIVING it away…) 4Kids decided to cut this out of distribution packages outside of Japan and release it in the west as its own standalone thing.

and while this *Technically* came out BEFORE ‘Pokemon 4Ever’ it didnt feel like enough time had passed between movies for this to really have any kind of significant impact on landing, so I chose to swap them around for viewing purposes to be more dramatic…and before I get into the review, a little side note here but, I hadnt realised until I started rewatching these films just how NEGLECTED ‘Johto’ was when it came to the movies…Donphan appears briefly in ‘The First Movie’ and then it’s Kanto pokemon all the way, We get Lugia and Slowking in ‘Pokemon 2000’ but the main thrust of the plot is the legendary trio Kanto starters and again, its largely Kanto pokemon all the way…Then ‘Pokemon 3’ ACTUALLY bothered to let the film have SOME Johto pokemon in it, but even then its still very Kanto-centric…and then ‘Pokemon 4Ever’ FINALLY makes the franchise FEEL like its ACTUALLY doing a film about ‘Johto’ with ‘Johto’ pokemon and ‘Johto’ locations…and it quickly gets kicked to the curb by this thing, which goes RIGHT on back to being all about Kanto pokemon and very little else.

I wondered if this was a recurring issue with the movies…but NOPE! the next 2-4 films are all set in Hoen and they go ALL IN on Hoen for those movies…like…from the moment it starts…I guess what im saying is that this special/movie kind of acts as the ‘epilogue’ for the Johto movies…and if I had watched this NOT knowing it was supposed to be set in Johto…I’d have assumed they were still in Kanto.

ANYWAY! I’ll put my soapbox aside…’MEWTWO RETURNS!’…and the main question I was left asking was…’Why?!’

And thats because the story for this thing is SO dull…SO damn dull…We open with Ash, Brock and Misty missing the bus for a local tour of a mountainous region. But in many ways they got lucky, because not long after the bus gets onto the trail, a disaster strikes and they fly off the road! BUT! they dont die! because they’re saved by Mewtwo!

It’s revealed that after the end of ‘Pokemon: The Fist Movie’ Mewtwo flew off with all the clone pokemon and wiped everyones memories of the events of that movie. He then relocated all the clone pokemon to Johto, and more specifically ‘Mount Quena’ the largest mountain in Johto with a lake at the center and several densly wooded areas. The lakes and rivers around Mount Quena have powerful restorative powers and Ash, Brock and Misty are invited to sample the waters by a local member of the moutntains tour board. she later reveals herself to be a pokemon professor studying the lakes herself to see if she can find out why the waters are so effective and where the source is coming from.

While all this is going on another two folks arrive at the professors cabin, a fellow professor by the name of Cullen Calex and his assistant ‘Domino’ who are in the region ALSO studying the waters. Everyone seems to be getting on well, until Team Rocket crash into the scene, cause a commotion and end up dragging everyone out of the cabin via a rope attached to their hot air balloon. Simultaineously; ‘Domino’ recognizes the team rocket uniforms and reveals herself to be ‘Agent 009’ a secret agent of Team Rocket working in the area to try and locate ‘Mewtwo’ after tracer signals have been found in the area…Long story short, she locates Mewtwo, alerts Giovanni and the entirity of Team Rocket end up storming Mount Quena…and thats…basically the rest of the movie, Ash and the gang trying to help Mewtwo fend off a Team Rocket invasion, while Mewtwo struggles with the idea of whether humanity should be avoided or spared with mercy…

And…this one kind of sucked if im being honest. The script felt very one note, it was very slow paced, with most of our key characters either walking or being locked up for most of the runtime. Pikachu, Meowth and their clones are pretty much the only pokemon we see outside of the other clones in this, with most of the gangs other pokemon given maybe 1 scene before they’re gone for the rest of the movie. The 3rd act feels like a rerun of the first film, only they pretty much get the ‘fighting is wrong’ message from the first film out of the way in 2 minutes, rather than making it the whole plot of the film, while then focussing on the ‘how do we fix this’ for WAY longer than it needed to.

The three acts are lumpy, inconsistent and I couldnt tell you where each act began or ended. The tones all over the place, it feels like its trying to be stoic in the same way the first film was, but…it’s clearly on a TV anime tone and budget…So they put a lot of forced comedy in there…and even that isnt great. When Team Rocket are key players in the movie and dont even raise a stifled laugh…somethings gone VERY wrong.

The characters all seem a bit underwritten and underplayed. Ash and co are, for the most part, relegated to just shooting out exposition and standing around watching stuff happen. Its actually kind of nuts really, because this is supposed to be one of the first times that Team Rocket as an organisation are shown to be a serious threat and force, AND one of the first times Ash and the crew have to interact with the full force of Team Rocket, and it just…could NOT be more dull, NON of them actually meet, whenever they interact with each other its as people in different rooms talking in monologue format…This should have been the match up to end all match ups! and it flops to the ground with all the weight of a bag of soiled spinach.

The endings also kind of dissatisfying. Its essentially an inverse of the first film…with noone really learning anything significant and Mewtwo just kind of…buggering off to go do something somewhere else. Which is very dissapointing.

Art direction and animation is, in some regards a bit of a win…We dont have rubbish CGI in this one because they couldnt afford to put rubbish CGI in…But at the same time, theres nothing here that really feels grand. It all feels VERY much in line with the TV shows sensibilities (because…it WAS the TV show really…) which, with it being marketed as a film, makes it feel cheap by comparison. Shots are very static, the fluidity i’ve come to expect from the ‘official’ films is missing, and you just end up with a lot of kind of dull, flat sequences because the budget and manpower to do anything more than that just isnt really there.

Performances are pretty much the same as ever. I honestly didnt notice any bad turns…Though im still not 100% on Mewtwo having the voice of Yami/Yugi from Yugioh…

and the soundtrack IS a big upgrade over the usual TV scoring…it feels grander and more orchestral. But because the script is so dull, and the animation so basic and simply structured, it makes it feel like its a bit TOO much, like…imagine some kids making a shot on video film in their back garden, and its scored entirely with royalty free classical music…This special/movie gives that kind of vibe…Which (I assume) is very much not the feeling they wanted to go for…

I remember watching ‘Mewtwo Returns’ when it first came out and kind of being nonplussed by it. But now revisiting it about 23-24 years later. I dont think its aged all that well, its slow, theres nothing particularly interesting or ‘of note’ to keep me hooked, the characters all seem to have been aggressively stripped back so Mewtwo can get a word in, the direction and art style are better than the TV series at this point, but WAY off the quality of the previous films animation, and…Well, the best way to sum it up is as soon as the credits rolled on this one, I just kind of sat back and went ‘…What was the point of this?…Who wanted THIS?!’ Because it sure wasnt me.

Absolutely not essential, and really not that great. If you had a BURNING desire to know what happened to Mewtwo after ‘Pokemon:The First Movie’ I think you kind of missed the point of ‘Pokemon: The First Movie’…but if you DID want to know…this film will tell you in all its yawning and sluggish detail…Its a pass from me.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/pokemon-mewtwo-returns/

Watched on Saturday March 1, 2025.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/pikachus-vacation/1/