Freeform Fridays: Bad Movies We Love And Probably Shouldn't

Just a quick background, for those of you who weren't aware, I am not a fan of puns.

And since new LA Galaxy defender Jelle Van Damme shares a name with one Hollywood's most well known bad action stars...well, it's going to be a long season.

It's a bloodsport with Van Damme out there. Dude's like a kickboxer, left the Santos guy with nowhere to run even tho he was a hard target.

— Matthew Doyle (@MLSAnalyst) February 25, 2016

@JCatanese43 it's either that or mute me. Sorry.

— Matthew Doyle (@MLSAnalyst) February 25, 2016

So, since I can't block Matt Doyle, we might as well embrace the amount of Bloodsport and Street Fighter references we're going to see in 2016 and beyond in MLS.

Today's "Freeform Friday" we present our favorite bad movies that we shouldn't like and do anyway for reasons.

Jake Catanese: "Return of Swamp Thing" (1989) - There are so many movies from the 80s I could've used here (*cough* Flash Gordon *cough*), but this movie scores itself an dreadful 33% on Rotten Tomatoes. There's a former Bond villain in it (Louis Jourdan from Octopussy) and someone managed to drag Heather Locklear into this travesty as well. I couldn't even tell you who the actual Swamp Thing was until I looked it up, sorry Dick Durock.

Why do I love this movie? No idea, everything about it is bad. The plot is nonsensical, something about Jourdan trying to gain immortality and he needs Locklear's character to do it. Swamp Thing is the hero and all of the supporting characters, two mercenaries and a couple of awestruck kids, make this a gloriously awful but at times campy romp. The final action scene of Swamp Thing storming the mad scientist's mansion is is cliched and a "boss" battle with some random mutated lab worker with an inhaler is scraping the bottom of the barrel for groans, not even laughs.

The clincher for why this tops my list, my dad, a proven arts and entertainment Trivial Pursuit buff, didn't even know Swamp Thing had a sequel. That's how horrendous this movie is.

Steve Stoehr: "The Fast and the Furious 3: Tokyo Drift" (2006) - It was my understanding that this is for bad movies we think are so bad they're good, so this definitely comes to mind for me. The Fast and the Furious is a wildly successful franchise with 7 installments and, despite the tragic death of series regular Paul Walker, an 8th on the way. While none of those movies are known for thought-provoking plots or masterpiece acting performances, the third movie in the series was a particular lowlight.

Tokyo Drift starred Lucas Black, Sung Kang, Bow Wow (yeah), and Nathalie Kelley, and centered around "drifting." If you've ever learned to press and hold the jump button through a turn in Mario Kart, you understand the premise of drifting. The acting is mechanical, the plot devices are all massive cliches, and the whole thing was clearly contrived to capitalize on the popularity of Asian cars and drift racing with the young gearhead demographic. Even the plot is irrelevant - Sung Kang's character Han dies, but Kang appears as Han in the next three films in the series!

It's a guilty pleasure for me, though. Every time I come across it when flipping channels I stay glued. I'm not sure why - there is no good reason why anyone should watch this movie more than once, if at all - but I am always thoroughly entertained. The 37% rating on Rotten Tomatoes says I'm in the minority.

Stephanie Yang: "Jupiter Ascending" (2015)

This movie was every story you ever scribbled in your trapper keeper in 8th grade, with a space princess who doesn't know she's a princess, her loyal part-wolf handsome soldier who would literally die for her, and a galactic empire waiting for her to inherit it. It was a beautiful wish fulfillment extravaganza that didn't try to do anything more complex than present a story about a special girl and the special boy she likes; it just happened to be set against some overly dramatic political intrigue about how unchecked capitalism is very, very bad.

But just look at it! It's gorgeous, and the action is fun, and Mila Kunis does a great job as a bewildered Earth woman who gradually grows into her role as the literal OWNER OF THE PLANET EARTH. Why does a movie need to be super serious and intricate to be good? Jupiter Ascending is a gorgeous action movie that actually implies a lot in its world building, which makes it a shame that it'll probably never get a sequel that expands on all the royal houses and galactic economic repercussions of not harvesting unsuspecting planets for their body parts anymore. Just let the shiny colors wash over your eyeballs. Trust me.

Brendan Doherty: Does "John Dies at the End" (2013) count as a bad movie?

This movie reminds me of the theater of the absurd as it shifts through bad plotlines a few times and makes little sense the whole time. The "poor acting" throughout the movie can actually be a purposeful layer of the absurdism of the production if we want to get really meta about it.

A buddy of mine showed me this movie in college when I needed a wacky adventure and it didn't disappoint. The movie comes close to fulfilling several terrible cliches before veering way off course (and into a different cliche). It bears little resemblance to the book it's based on but isn't that just another movie cliche?

If you've ever tried to talk to your dead best friend through a hot dog after escaping police custody, you've probably seen John Dies at the End.

This movie makes close to no sense, has Paul Giamatti for some reason, and it gave my partner and me our future dog's name (Bark Lee).

Have a favorite bad movie that you like for reasons only you and maybe a few others can explain? Feel free to share in the comments below.