Movie Scum

While this is not quite so random after the airing of our last episode, it was almost serendipitous that Best of the Best was begging for me to watch it on Netflix the night of filming. It was quite random that it came up at all from PBF and I discussing Chuck Norris’ Sidekicks . As a child, I was involved in martial arts and devoured a number of cheeseball movies, a shocking number of which starred Sasha Mitchell. This however was the best of the best (I know, that was dumb). Eric Roberts stars as Alex Grady, a former champion in martial arts who has since been forced into retirement due to injuries, as he and others attempt to prove themselves as … well, I was going to quote the title but nevermind. The film progresses as each of the members are chosen and must undergo the arduous training of sit-ups and James Earl Jones barking at them to challenge the victorious South Koreans in a martial arts tournament. In the process, we see their home lives, their struggles and challenge

Written by: PBF There’s a funny thing about Real Men . Almost every “review” of it mentions that every other review of it states that it is a bad movie, but that current reviewer disagrees. I have yet to find these negative reviews. I will try to make this plot summary as simple as possible. It is quite ridiculous. Due to an accidental chemical spill that we only hear about, all life on Earth will be dead in 5 years. The CIA have been negotiating with aliens for years and it is discovered that those aliens have a “good package” that will reverse the process started by the spill. They also have a “big gun” that can destroy a planet. The good CIA agents want that package and the bad agents and Russians want the big gun. A rendezvous is arranged to meet the aliens and the good agents have what keeps being referred to as the vital map, that shows the meeting spot. The aliens require a glass of water for the package or the gun, whichever is decided upon. At the beginning of the movie,

Written by: Digger Where were you when you first realized that there was no hope, and never will be any hope, for movies based on video games? For me, well, I was in the movie theater watching Wing Commander . This thing is a huge, steaming pile of weapons grade crap. I will concede that this wasn’t the first video game movie I saw that was utterly terrible. Super Mario Brothers , Street Fighter , and Double Dragon were all released many years before this and every one of them is completely irredeemable. The difference is that the Wing Commander franchise actually had a chance to be a pretty good movie for many reasons. First of all, this film was written and directed by Chris Roberts , the same man who produced and directed several of the video game installments. Secondly, the games were famous for their cinematic full motion cut scenes that featured several established Hollywood actors like Mark Hamill, John-Rhys Davies, and Malcolm MacDowell lending their talent to the project

Written by: PBF Law Abiding Citizen is cool. I did not expect to enjoy it that much, but I rather did. It’s not necessarily the type of movie I would seek out. Someone suggested that I watch, and so I did. I will first post this: *****SPOILER ALERT***** I do this because this movie has a certain progression and some events that would be a surprise to you might be ruined by this review. I don’t know that for sure, so I post that alert just in case. Read on if you like, but if you do and get pissed, it is now your own fault. Clyde Shelton ( Gerard Butler ) is the victim of a home invasion in which he watches his wife and daughter die. The men are arrested and are prosecuted by ADA Nick Rice ( Jamie Foxx ), who has a 96% conviction rate. Not convinced that he would win by prosecuting based on evidence and Shelton’s testimony, Rice arranges for one of the men to testify against the other, in exchange for a 10 year sentence, while they seek the death penalty for the other. Shelton

Written by: Digger I grew up in a family with two sisters. As an unfortunate result, I, through no fault of my own, ended up watching a lot of movies as a child that had horses in them. These films ranged in quality from the somewhat respectable The Man from Snowy River to the absolutely hideous My Little Pony Movie . Somewhere in the middle of all that is the memory of a film that my sisters watched a lot, and I mean a lot; something like two or three times a week. It’s called Wild Hearts Can’t be Broken and is about, get this, professional horse diving. The subject of this film always baffled me as a child and, even today, I can’t quite get my head around this concept. Apparently, if this movie is to be believed, during the great depression people were so bored out of their skulls that a woman jumping onto a horse’s back and then falling into an above-ground pool was seen as grade A entertainment. From what I understand, this story is based on the real life events of Sonora Webst

While PBF may hold the record for most random and ridiculous number of movies seen in theaters, I saw Popcorn at the tender age of nine in my local cinema. It is surprising that for the hundreds of movies I've seen over the years that I recall absolutely nothing about, I still remembered the basic gist of this and even remembered who the killer was. Not bad for a movie that I saw only once almost twenty years ago. Although to be fair, if you've seen any horror movie at all, you'll guess who the killer is within the first fifteen minutes of the movie. Here we have a group of college kids, film students of course, who decide to resurrect a defunct vintage movie theater and host a marathon of cheesy horror and sci-fi movies complete with gimmicks that tie into them. We have a giant mosquito flying through the theater during the mutated atomic monster flick, electrified seats during the poor man's Shocker movie, and a foul odor piped into the hall for the cleverly titl

Written by: PBF So, in case you haven’t noticed, I have been on a cheesy horror kick lately. Since Jesusflix has the entire Phantasm franchise, I figured I might as well revisit that. While I would substitute “low budget, but decent” for “cheesy” in regard to the first Phantasm , I would apply the phrase, “utter disappointment” to this installment. Phantasm II has us watching Liz thumb through a journal, talking to herself in her head, about Mike, whom she has only seen in her dreams. While she is doing this, the film cuts away to the end of the first Phantasm, with Mike and Reggie relaxing after the ordeal that they have just gone through. The flashback reminds us that they decide to hit the road and get a fresh start. However, things go awry when the Tall Man attempts to take Mike and turn him in to a dwarf slave, but is thwarted by Reggie who ultimately blows the house up, but not with the Tall Man inside. We flash forward a bit, and Mike is being released from a mental insti

False advertising is a big deal when it comes to businesses and consumer products. The laws on the books act to protect consumers against being misled about the product or service they are buying from inflated claims, inaccurate results, or overall deception. The United States even has the FTC, a government agency whose primary purpose is to protect buyers from all kinds of shenanigans. Why am I talking about this? Well, I am angry that there is no entertainment based equivalent to the FTC which would prevent unsuspecting movie goers from shelling out money on crap films. When I saw The Crazies this weekend, attached to the print was a new trailer for the upcoming Nightmare on Elm Street remake. As I previously worried based on the test screening reviews, this remake could very well suck balls and destroy my own personal, nostalgic 80s universe by further bastardizing the franchise already undone by the likes of Freddy’s Dead and Freddy vs. Jason. But, as I sat in the darkened movie

Written by: Digger I’ll be the first to admit that I love movies with car chases, explosions, big rubber monsters, and boobies, but every now and again I need a change of pace. Call it an escape from escapism. Some real life stories are worth experiencing just as much as fantasy, and everyone should learn about the man, the myth, the real life legend that is Harvey Pekar. American Splendor is the movie I watch to remind myself that for all the brainless Michael Bay boom-fests and boring vampire meat market movies out there, a film can still be a work of art. Now, I know what you’re thinking, or at least what I’m thinking, but artsy movie doesn’t always mean boring, self-indulgent pile of crap, and some directors need to learn the difference. (I’m looking at you, Vincent Gallo) The film opens with images of kids trick-r-treating on Halloween dressed as comic book superheroes like Superman and Batman, but one kid is dressed in his mild-mannered garb. When a house-wife distributin

Just days after we release an episode criticizing the prevalance of remakes in Hollywood, this gut-buster comes in and proves that we should just have a big tall glass of Shut-the-F-Up Juice and give the film a chance before crying foul about its origins. In fairness, PBF and I commented that this looked like a rather kick-ass movie which we had high hopes for. I am happy to report, along with many other reviews I’ve seen, that it does not disappoint.

Now THIS is the movie I was looking for! A low-budget, horribly-acted, crap movie to sit and just stare at in amazement. The amazement is born in the terrible plot, forged by lackluster direction, and cemented in the god-awful looking effects. To its credit though, Dragon Wars (or D-War as the cool kids would have called it if anyone else but me had seen this piece of trash) kept me entertained for a good ninety minutes. That’s more than I can say about many other films. The plot (and I use the term as loosely as possible) centers around the strife between a good dragon and a bad dragon. Now, I spaced out during part of the exposition but from what I gathered, the bad dragon wants to have something that is for whatever reason stored inside a specific person every 500 years in order to rule the earth or get to heaven or something like that. During about 78% of the movie, this person is Sarah, played by Amanda Brooks, who was born with a birthmark in the exact and defined shape of a

Reports are coming in that Andrew Koenig , son of Star Trek’s Walter Koenig, was found dead in Canada. Andrew played possibly one of the best named characters on a show whose main star was a devout Christian in real life, Boner Stabone, on Growing Pains. His father is reporting that it was an apparent suicide, but the cause of death has yet to be officially determined. Read more at the random news site I decide to link in this sentence.

Written by: PBF You've heard the phrase "Hugs not drugs," right? Well, I urge you not to heed that advice. I am not advocating the use of drugs by any means, but just beware of hugging. Allow me to explain. The Children is a delightful waste of time that begins at a nuclear power plant. The only 2 employees that are there must go find a drink so they leave. I assume that they have neglected something in their job description as some kind of leak happens and a big toxic fog forms. We then have a bus full of about 5 kids, having a merry time, singing the praises of the bus driver who approaches the dense mysteriously out of place fog with reckless abandon, and goes right through it. Later on, Sheriff Billy Hart finds the bus on the side of the road, engine running, but empty. The Sheriff then visits the parents of the missing kids to see if they have come home. They have not. What they have done, is turned into some kind of mindless gang of zombies, whose fingernails

Pop quiz! When I say Michael Crichton what’s the first movie that comes to mind? Jurassic Park ? Nice job! Twister ? Not too bad! Sphere ? Congo ? Now you’re just messing with me. If you did not think of his smashing directorial success Runaway , I wouldn’t be surprised. This is such an old favorite of mine that I’ve never heard anyone else even acknowledge (excepting PBF who probably saw in theaters). A 1984 movie about killer robots? How original! Oh wait. Terminator didn’t have Tom Selleck’s mustache though. Taking place “in the future” or some weird alt-history 1980s, Tom Selleck ’s Jack Ramsey is head of the runaway squad, a group of police who deal with industrial and household robots that misbehave. Things start off rather uneventful until a servant robot decides to dice up two people and hold an infant hostage at gunpoint. Ramsey discovers the robot was purposely tasked to go off the handle by the over-the-top Gene Simmons to eliminate an engineer who developed the compu

I was very disappointed in Exorcist II , the obvious follow up to William Friedkin’s 1973 classic The Exorcist . My aggravation with the movie though is likely different than the rumored reactions of audiences during the film’s premiere. Commissioned by PBF while reviewing Netflix’s awesome Watch Instantly collection, I went into the film expecting it to be quite horrid based on my readings of previous reviews about the film. Normally, I try not to have any preconceived notions about a film prior to watching it as sometimes it can be hard to separate what you’ve heard from what you actually see in the film itself. I am happy to report though that all of the bashers of the film hit it dead on. Taking place four years after the original, Reagan (played by a remarkably cute Linda Blair ) is undergoing psychiatric treatment to deal with repressed memories of her possession. During a really stupid looking hypnosis treatment, she is intertwined with Father Lamont who is investigating th

Written by: Digger Peter Jackson's directorial career has been one strange roller-coaster ride. I became aware of his work in the late 1990's when I and several of my friends discovered his early gore-fest movie Dead Alive (also titled Braindead ) and became instant fans. My classmates in high school were always yelling lines like "He's got, THE BITE!" in between classes. It was like the first drop on a rickety old wooden monster of a coaster; rough, and a little nauseating, but a hell of a lot of fun. After that I road the shaky turns of Bad Taste and The Frighteners still enjoying every minute. Then, in 2001, I sped into the smooth, polished, metal loops of a whole different monster with The Fellowship of the Ring . Don't get me wrong, it was still a great ride, just a different kind of ride. After that trilogy concluded, the coaster started to slow down with Jackson's somewhat underwhelming remake of King Kong and then the coaster sunk i

Written by: PBF Phantasm is bad ass and piss poor at the same time. But it is a good kind of piss poor. Jody and Mike are brothers who have lost their parents. Mike is younger, 13. Not wanting to be alone, he follows his brother everywhere. Mike follows Jody to a funeral of his friend Tommy, and sees the funeral director, who is simply called the Tall Man, pick up Tommy’s coffin by himself and put it back in the hearse rather than bury it. This suspicious activity, coupled with odd visions and noises, start to freak Mike out, and in standard horror movie fashion, his brother doesn’t believe that these things are actually happening. Well, until Mike shows him a severed finger in a box. The two (along with Reggie, an ice cream man) discover that the Tall Man is taking bodies, bringing them back to life as dwarf slaves, and taking them to another planet. The gateway to this planet is in a room in the mortuary and is between 2 sliver poles. Yeah that’s right. Didn’t see that coming,

Written by: PBF I bet if I were to poll a small group of people, and ask them to list 5 or so Ben Stiller films, Permanent Midnight would probably not be on many of those lists. It does not follow the usual mildly amusing, wafer thin plot, same character in every film formula that Stiller employs. He plays a heroin addict. Ben Stiller plays Jerry Stahl, a real person, who wrote the book Permanent Midnight, a memoir of his descent in to and climb out of heroin addiction. This film is of course, based on that book. Stahl has written for the television shows Alf, Twin Peaks, Northern Exposure, Moonlighting and CSI among others. In fact, he wrote the 100th episode of CSI, which is apparently is regarded as one of the best episodes of that series. He also wrote the screenplay for Bad Boys II . The time period of this film takes place when he was working on Alf and Twin Peaks. That being said, the film is a glimpse in to that part of his life, in which at some point he has a $6000 a

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Well, lookie what we have here! Another horror movie that successfully combines scares, tension, and humor. While initially it seemed odd to have another horror-comedy in the zombie sub-genre after the wildly successful Shaun of the Dead , Zombieland is extremely well done to stand alongside its cinematic sibling without infringing on it. Prior to meeting our main characters, the film starts with a nice montage of random zombie attacks that show the time between the initial outbreak from a mad-cow laced cheeseburger to the present events of the film set to Metallica. We are then introduced to Columbus (or the name we know him as) who introduces us to the rules that kept him alive a few months after the zombie onslaught. Columbus is very neurotic and paranoid and while these traits ultimately helped him survive, he would be dead first in most zombie movies. Tallahassee is a bit of a rough-neck with a burning desire for Twinkies but little else driving him other than the his disd