Movie Scum

Photo: Anchor Bay Films "The real monsters were the people we met along the way." - Ancient Proverb (?)

In a grim look a at teenager’s life, White Rabbit shows that some people are born to be hunters and some are molded that way. Tim McCann ’s film is at times not predicable and at others you can completely see everything unfold. Beginning with Harlon ( Nick Krause ) as a boy whose father eggs him into killing a trapped white rabbit and jumping forward through the years to show the systematic abuse he suffers from classmates, teachers, and even his own drug-addled and drunk father, it is clear that Harlon is not emotionally stable. Couple this with his obsession with a comic book that he speaks to, Harlon has little in his life of note with the exception of Steve, a younger boy also forced to suffer at the hands of society. Things begin to get better when Harlon meets Julie ( Britt Robertson ), a new transplant into his high school who has issues of her own but the two forge a bond and almost a relationship through alcohol, drugs, and shooting guns in the small town. Soon though,...

As much as I want to like Shia LaBeouf  as a serious actor, his past career choices and general absence of skill make that difficult.

Why did I not have a desire to see Warrior when it was in theaters? The stellar-looking cast including Tom Hardy and Joel Edgerton didn’t hurt but perhaps it was the seemingly overwrought story of two estranged brothers who each are fighting against each other for whichever predetermined important reason. (Was that even supposed to be a surprise in the final act? Because it’s all over the trailer!) Or perhaps Warrior didn’t strike my fancy since I am hardly a sports fanatic even though the brutality and testosterone-y aspects of MMA are pretty cool. Yet, all it took was one of my colleagues saying “You’ll want to tackle someone while watching it” that got me on board. For the record, he was right. Even if you are Amish or have short-term memory problems, or have otherwise not seen the entire narrative spoiled in the previews, the story in Warrior is so expected that you can see it coming from two summers ago. Hardy plays Tommy Conlon, an angry and bitter man who has suffered thr...

Certain movies just scream for attention and Academy Awards because of the pedigree of cast and crew or their subject matter. If you recall, this was my main issue with last year's Best Picture winner The King's Speech . Yet, even though some films have the requisite check marks on the Best Picture to-do list, they fall between the cracks. Such is the case for J. Edgar . Directed by the award-winning Clint Eastwood , starring the award-winning Leonardo DiCaprio , and written by the award-winning Dustin Lance Black , this should have been a shoe-in for every award that Oscar could throw at it. This was not the case as it is a mostly entertaining tale but nothing showcasing great cinema. J. Edgar Hoover undoubtedly is a prominent figure in United States history and it is rather odd that a theatrical feature about his life has only just been made (not counting the appearances in other films or the Treat Williams' TV film). Good or bad, his name still stands upon FBI headqu...

In case it isn’t apparent, we at Movie Scum are big fans of David Fincher . He is, in my opinion, one of few standout directors currently working even if his resume does not have the broad appeal of a Spielberg or a Cameron. Perhaps it was my excitement upon hearing he was involved in the American version of The Girl with a Dragon Tattoo that drowned out any feeble complaints of another American remake of a foreign film. I have not read the Stieg Larsson novel nor seen the entire Swedish adaptation, so I bring no preconceived notions of the story to this film and can hopefully be as impartial as possible.

You might have noticed that it was over a year ago that I reviewed the first and third parts of the Twilight soap opera, err … saga, but not this one. That isn’t by accident nor is it entirely due to my extreme laziness. As much as I kind of liked Eclipse and was sort of okay with Twilight , this movie did absolutely nothing for me to the extent that I wished to rewatch and review it. Yet, the gap in reviews for the series has constantly bugged me and with a forthcoming review for the newest installment (hopefully not by myself), I figured I would suffer for the loyal fan or two that we still have and watch New Moon . And I hate myself for it.

Written by: PBF Ghost from the Machine (or Phasma Ex Machina) is writer/director Matt Osterman ’s feature film debut. It had a budget of $25,000. If my review doesn’t give you a clue how good the film is, maybe this will: Universal Pictures is remaking it already. Cody ( Sasha Andreev ) and his younger brother James ( Max Hauser ) lost their parents due to a car accident. Cody is riddled with guilt as he blames himself. He dropped out of college, does not have a job and is living off of the insurance money from the accident. He becomes obsessed with the thought of getting his parents back and spends most of his time and money constructing an electrical device. In a nutshell, Cody basically believes that there is a shortage of a certain type of energy between our world and the other side. He believes that if he can supply this energy there would be no separation and he can then be reunited with his parents. This has caused him to in effect neglect James, whom he is supposed to b...

Written by: PBF Paul Thomas Anderson ’s Boogie Nights is inspired by, loosely based on or whatever you want to call it, the life of porn star John Holmes (at times, it even directly lifts dialogue from interviews with Holmes that appeared in a later documentary in which featured Anderson) . While the two are similar, it is more so a fictitious depiction of the lives of some folks in the porn industry during the 70s and 80s. It does have some true elements to it, such as the movement to get porn to convert from film to videotape. Ultimately, it is an examination of several people’s lives as they move in and out of the adult film world. The main story of this film revolves around Eddie Adams ( Mark Wahlberg ), a 17 year old who works at a car wash by day and a nightclub at…well, night. Eddie believes that everyone has one special thing that they are blessed with. His special thing happens to be a penis that hangs around 13 inches or so. The particular nightclub that he works for,...

I was going to write an opening paragraph along the lines that many women I know have proclaimed that The Adjustment Bureau is good movie. I figured I would just allude to it and move right along but only after making an off-hand statement that women have different tastes than I and this did not seem the type of film (Matt Damon and his alleged “hunkiness” notwithstanding) that the female subsect of society would be interested in. But that would make me seem like a mid-twentieth century pig. And I would be completely wrong as you can possibly surmise from the categories listed above. I don’t necessarily have a problem with “romance” movies. They just are not designed with my sensibilities in mind. I can still objectively review them from a critical standpoint to determine if they are completely bland and unsurprisingly (not unlike Love and Other Drugs) or a remarkably decent story merely concocted around a lovey-dovey tale like this film. Written and directed by George Nolfi, the f...

What can I say? I am a glutton for courtroom dramas even though they seem to all end the same. Matthew McConaughey plays the titular lawyer who spends his time defending the less-than-innocent. If you took an episode of The Practice and bred it with an episode of Law & Order , I suspect this is pretty close to the outcome. Some of the twists in the story are okay, even if they are given away by the previews, but this ultimately seems like a by the book legal thriller. It doesn’t help that McConaughey’s presence invokes A Time to Kill , a much more effective drama. There is a lot of talent that goes untapped from William H. Macy to the still smokin’ Marisa Tomei but the story featuring the possibly guilty rich boy Ryan Phillippe is short on surprises, even though Phillippe seems to be trying to prove he is a real actor.

Well, this was not the movie I expected. Admittedly, I knew very little about this film prior to watching it other than it won a good amount of Australian Film Institute awards and even an Academy Award nomination for Jacki Weaver. I was thinking it to be a zoo-based comedy that also featured Guy Pearce but instead, writer and director David Michôd provides a thoughtful and powerful look at family, crime, and why mixing the two is bad business. Seventeen-year-old Josh (James Frecheville) calls his grandmother to inform her of his mother’s untimely death after a heroin overdose. At least, once he can pull himself away from the Down Under equivalent of Deal or No Deal. Grandma Smurf (Weaver) takes Josh in and soon he is reunited with the uncles he has not seen for some time as Josh’s mother disapproved of the family. She had a point. Pope (Ben Mendelsohn), the oldest, is a has-been armed robber looking for a new trade. Craig (Sullivan Stapleton) is a manic and paranoid drug-dealer w...

Ben Affleck ’s first directing gig turned out pretty well, shocking many critics who had otherwise determined that his fame was fading. When The Town was coming out the question then became “can Affleck do it again or was Gone Baby Gone just a fluke?” Affleck stars as Doug MacRay, the leader of a gang of professional bank robbers in the Boston suburb of Charlestown. Under the charge of Fergie the florist ( Pete Postlethwaite ), MacRay and his team take down banks, armored cars, and anything else with a large sum of money to be had. When friend Jim ( Jeremy Renner ) loses control during a job, beats a man, and takes bank manager Claire ( Rebecca Hall ) hostage, MacRay befriends Claire to see if she knows enough to turn them in. Now having started a relationship with Claire and under constant surveillance and pressure from FBI agent Adam Frawley ( Jon Hamm ), MacRay begins to consider leaving his life of crime behind. The most interesting aspect of most heist movies can also be...

Written by: PBF Glengarry Glen Ross is quite brilliant. David Mamet (screenwriter, the film is adapted from his play) loves dialogue, and if an actor cannot handle it, it’s very easy to tell. There is no issue of that in this film. Everyone in this film execute his words perfectly. Basically, the film is the story of four real estate salesmen who work for Premiere Properties (played by Al Pacino , Jack Lemmon , Alan Arkin and Ed Harris ). The owners of the company ask Blake ( Alec Baldwin ) to come in and “motivate” the salesmen. He explains that the top seller for the month will win a new Cadillac, the second place salesman will win steak knives and everyone else will be fired. He gives a quite HR inappropriate, vulgar, insulting and yet entertaining speech which scares and pisses everyone off  except Roma, (played by Pacino) who is not required to attend the meeting, as he is top salesman. Blake shows the salesmen the Glengarry leads, which are “gold.” Levine (Lemmon), ...

One of my all-time favorite movies (and one I am terrified to do a proper review on) is American Beauty. Something in that film just grabs me every time I even think about it whether it be the music, the great acting, or the exposé on real life. Perhaps not strangely then, I thought about American Beauty quite a bit while watching The Kids Are All Right. And not just because Annette Bening was in both. Perhaps you can view this as the American Beauty for the new millennium. Nic and Jules have a dedicated, yet stressful marriage. Nic is a successful doctor who sometimes can be a bit overbearing; Jules is more of a free-spirit: a homemaker with an occassional odd job on the side. They have a two kids, Jodi and Laser, a nice house, and even a Volvo. If it hasn’t been spoiled for you already, allow me: Nic and Jules are gay. When the almost-college-bound Jodi (Mia Wasikowska) reaches out to the man whose sperm conceived her and her brother, the family is introduced to Paul (Mark Ruff...

Where has this Natalie Portman been hiding? In the horrendous Star Wars prequels and the other generic rom-coms that I haven’t seen, Portman has never received much applause for her performances; they weren’t bad but nothing special either. But if you would have told me ten years ago that Padmé from Episode I would go from a wooden performance of terrible dialog to a serious contender for Best Actress, I would have laughed at your absurdity. In Black Swan , Portman plays Nina, a dancer in a prestigous New York dance company who works hard but mostly without notice. After the announcement that the lead ballerina is set to retire, the troup’s director Thomas ( Vincent Cassel ) sets out to find a lead for his version of Swan Lake. Nina is considered due to her precise dancing ability but Thomas worries about her ability to play the parts of both the pristine White Swan and the devious Black Swan convincingly. Nina ends up getting the lead role but that leads her to obsess over h...

It doesn’t take long to think of a sports movie, usually based on a true story, with a scrappy underdog mounting a triumphant comeback to reclaim the respect of his love, his family, or himself. It is a tried and true formula with a feel good ending after some points of hardship for the main character. Since its release in December, The Fighter has received much acclaim from critics and associations declaring it to be one of the best pictures of the year. But the question I had going into this movie: does the world really need another one of these movies? Director David O. Russell weaves the tale of Micky Ward ( Mark Wahlberg ) as his ascension in the world of professional boxing is fraught with obstacles. The greatest is Micky’s hero and older half-brother Dicky Eklund ( Christian Bale ), previously an accomplished fighter who now is Micky’s trainer when he is not too high off crack to remember. Micky’s family is supportive to an extent but only as his mother Alice ( Melissa Le...

Since this site’s inception about a year ago, our top search keyword has consistently been Scum , the 1979 British-made movie from director Alan Clarke . Considering that previously I knew nothing of a movie called Scum, going into this review, our 200th by the way, I had vague knowledge of the basic story but little else other than it caused a bit of controversy in the UK when it was released. Taking place in a British borstal, a youth detention facility designed supposedly for rehabilitation and education rather than punishment, Carlin and two other new arrivals to the center are exposed to verbal and physical abuse from both the guards and the other detainees. Carlin, previously the “daddy” of his previous facility, finds it hard to maintain a low-profile as Banks, the leader of the wing, targets him specifically because of his previous internment. He meets another “trainee” named Archer, who sets out to passively cause trouble for the guards by refusing to eat meat, wear shoes,...

Written by: PBF The Killer Inside Me is based on a book of the same name by Jim Thompson. This is the second adaptation. A film also called The Killer Inside Me was released in 1976 starring Stacy Keach. This is the only incarnation of the tale I have imbibed. It is not a date film. This film is about Lou Ford ( Casey Affleck ). In a nutshell (no pun intended), he is a deputy sheriff that is not too complex on the surface. He lives and works in Central City, a small town in Texas. He speaks softly, with a charming accent. Also, he is consumed by an ever growing psychosis that causes him to lash out violently, mostly at women. Having to spank his mother’s ass as a child may have something to do with this. There is a story involving a prostitute ( Jessica Alba ), Lou’s girlfriend ( Kate Hudson ) and some money, but to be honest with you, the film could have had Smurfs in it and it would not have mattered. You are not supposed to notice the story so much as the violence. There a...

Written by: PBF Yes, I actually checked my Facebook while waiting for this movie to start. I also have a tab open in my browser right now where I am signed in to it. The Social Network tells the story of Facebook, from it’s drunken conception in a dorm room, to a billion dollar operation. Mark Zuckerberg ( Jesse Eisenberg ) gets dumped by his girlfriend and goes back to his Harvard dorm to drink and blog angrily. He suddenly comes up with the idea create a webpage where pictures of 2 female students are posted side by side, and users can click which one is hotter. As he is creating the page with the help of two friends, he blogs his progress. This project involves Zuckerberg hacking in to various residence hall databases in order to download pictures of students. He creates the page in one night and calls it Face Mash, then sends the link to as many people as he can. It becomes insanely popular, however, it lands Zuckerberg in to trouble and he is placed on six months of academ...