Movie Scum

On the heels of Tom Cruise’s announcement of a forthcoming Top Gun sequel , MarketWatch published an article this weekend titled ‘Hollywood is running out of hit ’80s movies to reboot.’ A sequel to the Tony Scott-helmed 1987 film is just the latest in a long line of film properties from the 1980s that have been updated for “modern” audiences like RoboCop , Friday the 13th , and Ghostbusters to varying degrees of success.

In all honesty, up until the first teaser trailer for The Force Awakens dropped last winter, I was more or less ambivalent towards it.

You might be mistaken for thinking the Mission: Impossible series to be nothing more than Tom Cruise’s daily exercise excuse and to a certain point, that may be true. But this Americanized version of James Bond, with the requisite femme fatales, gimmicky gadgets, and exotic locations, still offers an exciting ride through the world of espionage and double-crossing.

An Angry Birds movie may have made sense a few years ago. Is this an attempt to reinvigorate the franchise or merely sell more games and plush animals? The new trailer for The Angry Birds Movie , due out next summer, a good four years or so since Angry Birds were relevant in pop culture, doesn’t show much action or plot but merely introduces the characters we’ve all grown to love and loathe through our pig-destroying levels. The fact that this trailer light on jokes and heavy on name placement doesn’t bode well for this adaptation but we are still a few seasons away from a release. Although, this cast, including Jason Sudekis as ‘Red’, could enliven the scorned birds sufficiently, this seems more of a late cash grab than any animated kids movie that has any merit. Perhaps I’ll be wrong.

With M. Night Shyamalan back in the news recently for relatively positive reviews for his newest film, let us not forget that he has made some shitty movies. One of those movies is The Happening .

There was much complaining in the wake of last week’s finale that the pace was too slow with too little to justify its bloated runtime. While I can see the argument, I disagreed with that assessment. This, the second episode, should more closely match fan’s expectations: more zombies, more carnage, more collapse of society. As is stated in the episode: “it all goes quickly.” Madison, Travis, and Nick are mostly in shock at the start following the close of the pilot with Nick’s dealer, having been shot and twice run down with a truck, still giving them the glance-over with that glazed, zombified look in his eyes. Madison’s daughter, on the other hand, is concerned with her boyfriend who flaked on their last meetup and decides to go to his house. There she finds a house torn to pieces and Matt with a high fever and an unknownst to her bite on his shoulder. After finally prying Alicia away from Matt without any damn good explanation of why, the group heads back to their house only

According to Hollywood Reporter , Wes Craven has died at the age of 76. Likely only in stature to John Carpenter, Craven and his work has had a remarkable impact on not only my movie-going experience but life in general. Beginning with his first feature Last House on the Left , Craven has had the remarkable ability to inspire and horrify viewers for over 40 years. He dreamt our nightmare with A Nightmare on Elm Street . He made slasher films relevant again in his Scream series. He brought to life so many various stories of despair and trouble through voodoo, incarceration, and even robotics. While admittedly his output has been very hit-or-miss (more miss in his later years), Craven was always held up as a professor of the genre that he helped create. He, and his works, will be sorely missed. Wes Craven 1939-2016

Adulthood is scary. An imaginary foe constantly stalking you is even worse.

Whereas the pilot episode to The Walking Dead began with a bang and a shuffling zombie girl clutching a stuffed bunny, Fear’s pilot takes the more nuanced approach of showing us the world of despair and decay, only for the sake of watching it be torn down even further. Opening in dank, darkened church but strange sounds, heroin addict Nick stumbles around to find a few of his mates eviscerated and his friend Gloria munching on a dude’s face. Unsurprisingly, Nick is shocked and appalled and runs his ass right out of the church into oncoming traffic. Nick is the son of Madison, the level-headed guidance counselor, who has long given up on her son’s drug problems. When Nick turns up in police custody after the accident ranting about what he has seen, Madison is quick to renounce them as ravings of a drug addict and not a looming threat to the world at large. Oops. For as much as this series was built upon the premise of a first-hand report of the collapse of civilization, very li

Remember way back when Michael Bay wasn’t responsible for teenaged-fantasy films of semi-nudity, explosions, and gratuitous slow-mo? Yeah, me neither.

Well damn if Sinister isn’t a gut punch, even for hardened horror fans like myself. Sinister carries similar traits as other Blumhouse Productions such as Paranormal Activity or Insidious. Blumhouse films tend to be far more suspense than horror, using fear, dread, and general anxiousness over stupid, vapid villains and unearned jumpscares. Sinister , focusing on a true crime author who finds himself way in over his head in horrendous crimes against families follows suit. And it’s probably one of the better horror films to come out this decade. Ethan Hawke is Ellison Oswalt , the aforementioned writer, who is so desperate for a hit that he uproots his family and moves them into a house where the previous occupants were suspended from a hanging tree limb for quite a while. Of course, Oswalt, being the good caregiver he is, declines to tell his family they are living in the murder capital of their quite county. Oswalt stumbles upon a box in his new attic innocuously marked “Hom

Hell hath no fury like a dog owner scorned. Harkening back to uber-violent action films of the 80s and 90s, Keanu Reeves as titular character John Wick is cold, calm, collected, and quite badass assassin as he single-handedly takes down an entire underground syndicate and the crime boss Tarasov’s son kills Wick’s dog while stealing his car. Being that the dog was a gift was his late wife, Wick does not take this too well and soon is running around whatever unnamed metropolis decimating the legions of bad guys working for Tarasov who are protecting his son. While he typically gets much grief for his limited range and acting abilities, Reeves absolutely shines here as the withdrawn, broken Wick. Many fight scenes and shootouts occur during the film where Wick executes those in his way in a cold, brutal fashion and Reeves looks mighty creepy with his blank, emotionless face while pulling the trigger point-blank at a man. Co-directors Chad Stahelski and David Leitch make what

After the news of Michael Myers’ triumphant return in the stupidly titled “ Halloween Returns ,” Myers’ contemporary slasher villains are not going to sit on their laurels. I wonder where the saturation point of dredging up old 80s and 90s franchises will land but apparently not here as both Freddy and Jason have rumored continuations in the near future. A Friday the 13th series is apparently in the works at the CW which will feature the masked zombie/undeadish thing rather than whatever that anthology bullshit was that the previous series tried to pass off. According to IGN , the series will take place around the infamous Crystal Lake that “takes a more “sophisticated” approach as a horror/crime thriller.” There is also talks of gritty and grounded. To that I say: how the hell can one make Jason Voorhees a gritty and/or realistic/ and/or grounded character considering he’s been dead for about seven movies? The series will apparently focus on a detective searching for his

After a silly tiltle, some inspired casting, and a “meh” trailer, new images have emerged for Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice to remind people it is still happening. Entertainment Weekly brings us looks at the aforementioned inspired casting of Ben Affleck and Jesse Eisenberg as Batman and Lex Luthor respectively and ... not much else except for the preppy/hippy vibe I’m getting from Eisenberg ... and a mosh pit forming around Supes ... and a dance scene between uneasy allies and/or frenemies that seems ripped from just about every other action film (including the last Batman movie!). Click through for the rest and don’t let news of Affleck’s divorce get you down. Let’s just see how well this film goes before we see how much we feel sorry for him ... and Superman.

Zombeavers   has no business being as good as it is. Stop me if you’ve heard this premise before. A group of horny co-eds go to an empty cabin in the middle of nowhere and are picked off one-by-one by some gruesome, unstoppable force of nature. Since this basic gist describes the vast majority of horror films produced in the 80s so you’d be forgiven if your appetite wasn’t enthusiastically whetted. However, where before we had masked psychopaths with questionable parental supervision, here we have killer beavers. More specifically zombified killer beavers. It’s fantastic. Co-screenwriter/director Jordan Rubin is clearly well versed in the tropes of the horror films of yore. We have our batch of easily disposable victims, simple and close-minded locals that no one pays attention to, and gloriously cheesy practical effects when the ZOMBEAVERS come knocking (and chewing) at the door. I was reminded of Adam Green’s Hatchet   while watching this as it is an attempt to recreate the h

While I don’t hold out much hope for Batman V. Superman , Ben Affleck is not a point of my consternation. Given his resurgence as a powerful actor/director combo, I trust Affleck will be the least troubling part of DC Comic’s epic superhero movie of 2016. It’s just the shaky director, the overstuffed cast, and the gimmicky premise that has me questioning my future earnings on a box office ticket. But a solo Batman flick, simply titled The Batman , not only starring Affleck but also directed by him too? Count me in. At this point it is merely a rumor posited by Latino Review that Affleck will be in the director’s chair but I’d argue that’s a fine choice for whatever direction DC decides to take Batman. Affleck has already proved his worth in his previous directorial efforts of Gone Baby Gone , The Town , and Argo (factually notwithstanding) and I’m anxious to see what his take on the iconic character will look like when not shoehorned in with every other damn DC Comics char

As N ick Offerman ’s character says in 22 Jump Street , no one gave a shit about the “Jump Street reboot” but it did well enough to be brought back again. Only everyone wants the exact same thing. Fortunately, this movie is smarter than to retread standard sequel ground. After a illegal goods bust gone bad, Jenko ( Channing Tatum ) and Schmidt ( Jonah Hill ) are reassigned back to the Jump Street project, still under the direction of the angry black captain Dickson played by Ice Cube, to go undercover to college and investigate a new synthetic drug. Everyone emphasizes that Schmidt and Jenko are to do the exact same thing to crack the case. Directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller know well enough that standard sequel shenanigans won’t cut it after the meta-infused original that skewered the idea of Hollywood recycling and unoriginal ideas. As such, Lord and Miller turn their attention to the notion of second outings, and their built-in expectations of more of the first film

Unbreakable   was a modest success for director M. Night Shyamalan after his genuinely good (remember when that was true) debut and now, Night longs to bring it to TV. Speaking with IGN , Shyamalan expresses interest in continuing the saga of undercover superheroes (note: I haven’t seen this movie in forever) saying. “as a way continue the story, yes. That would [interest me].” We here at Movie Scum are strongly in favor of the shift to great, truncated TV dramas but are hesitant that M. Night (regardless of whatever acclaim his recent show Wayward Pines is getting) should be allowed anywhere near the same medium as The Good Wife , Game of Thrones , or Breaking Bad . And let us not forget that he directed The Happening . And The Last Airbender . And After Earth . And ...

San Andreas : Opening May 29 The Good : Disaster movies are fun, especially when they take place (like they seem to do the majority of the time) on the West Coast full of granola-crunching hippies singing Kumbaya (note: I’ve never been further west than Ohio). Disaster movies these days are also good for mediocre special effects showing the complete destruction of iconic areas and landmarks and San Andreas looks no different. But if anyone can take on the mother of all earthquakes, it’s The Rock with sidekick Carla Gugino. The Bad : Let’s be honest though. The disaster movie genre of the 70s is long gone and it took with it any sense of characterization or possible realism. San Andreas is a Hollywood producer’s wet dream with big blockbustin’ stars, action, effects ... the whole nine yards. And boy, does it show it in every single trailer or TV spot I’ve seen for this with the crumbling buildings, massive chasms in the ground and a 100’ tidal wave that The Rock(!) powers a speed

Aside from a voice-over role in Gnomeo and Juliet and an assuredly special episode of Walker, Texas Ranger , Hulk Hogan has mostly kept his hijinks in the fake ring of professional wrestling. Will that be changing soon? Not since Hogan and Tiny ‘Zeus’ Lister faced off with the smarmy assistant from Ghostbusters 2 in No Holds Barred have I been as excited about The Hulk appearing against a bunch of wrinkle-faced mutants (Gremlins 2 not withstanding). The Hulk confirms talks with Sylvester Stallone about appearing in the presumably forthcoming Expendables 4 as the villainous villain who no doubt will kill and maim and bring our rag-tag team of Expendables (and maybe -belles) together. Considering The Rock is likely a good twenty years away from taking this role, Hogan seems like a good fit. I just hope they can find a suitable stunt man.