Movie Scum

Throwback movies prove that some films exist just for shits, giggles and entertainment without an agenda, completely unlike most of what the Academy nominated this year. After all, what can be better than a low-budget film featuring attractive women involved in a vicious fight between a ludicrous stop-motion tentacled monster? The answer: not The Artist .* Available today on DVD from Breaking Glass Pictures, El Monstro del Mar! is a quaint tale from Down Under about Beretta ( Nelli Scarlet ), Blondie ( Karli Madden ) and Snowball ( Kate Watts ), three women who are as much empowered as they are tattooed, who seek a shack with a waterfront view after ruthlessly killing two locals in their path. After arriving at the shack, Blondie and Snowball take the opportunity to play in the water before being verbally scolded by Joseph ( Norman Yemm ) for being there. As things escalate between the vixens and the old man, his granddaughter Hannah ( Kyrie Capri ) breaks it up and catches the g...

Honestly, I don't think I even know of this film before it came out in theaters a few weeks ago and I certainly had no desire to see it. Strangely though, Chronicle received so many positive reviews (85% on Rotten Tomatoes, 7.6 on IMDb) that I thought I would be remiss without seeing it, especially as I had a free movie ticket burning a hole in my pocket. If all you know about it is "superhero found footage film" then stop now and go see it. I can almost guarantee you won't be disappointed. I suppose this was somewhat covered in X-Men: First Class (though honestly I don't remember how much), but the film's main angle is 'what would you do if you had super powers?' For Andrew ( Dane DeHaan ), Matt ( Alex Russell ), and Steve ( Michael B. Jordan ), the first answer is to fool around with it, all for fun and games of course. After their chance encounter with an odd foreign object, the trio develops the power of telekinesis and quickly use it to beam...

Much like #pbf said in his review of Piranha , there are certain elements in a movie like this that almost defy you as a viewer to question them, thus making them exempt from critical thinking. I will fully admit to buying into those aspects whole-heartedly for Pirahna but I think my expectations were too high for Shark Night (or Shark Night 3D in theaters). From the illustrious David Ellis , director of the worst ever Final Destination movie (and that’s saying something), Shark Night straddled the line between good and so-campy-and-bad-that-it-is-in-fact-good that I was unimpressed with the final outcome. If you substitute Haddonfield for this random Louisiana lake and insert sharks for Jason Voorhees, you have a pretty good idea of what to expect from this film. Sara ( Sara Paxton ) and her college friends come to stay at Lake Crosby for a random weekend of fun and shenanigans. Unfortunately, the good times and fun are interrupted when one of the group is attacked while water-...

I’m quite sure there were not a bunch of rabid fans demanding a sequel to 2008′s Quarantine , which if you recall was an almost shameless American rip-off of the Spanish film [REC]. Where [REC] was pretty well received and produced a decent sequel, Quarantine was merely an okay film bogged down by the fact that it fails at portraying supposedly real events with the polished and recognizable Hollywood actors. For that film’s sequel, writer/director John Pogue drops the found footage angle and sets up a storyline almost parallel to the events of the first. And it works for the most part. I chuckle at direct-to-video titles since they seem to fall into the trap of either a) crap that no one should see ever or b) crap that no one should pay to see in a theater but is otherwise manageable. Quarantine 2 is more of the latter even though the direct-to-video distribution model has a stigma attached to it which may lead you to dismiss it more easily. None of the characters from the origin...