Movie Scum

Written by: PBF Land of the Dead is the last Romero “Of the Dead” film before the series gets sort of rebooted with Diary of the Dead . Coincidentally (or perhaps not), it is the last one that was fairly decent the whole time. The dead now outnumber the living. In Pittsburg, most, if not all of the survivors have fled to the city. The city is enclosed by rivers and an electric fence, which is patrolled by military. Within the city is Fiddler’s Green which is where the rich dwell. It has luxury living, a mall, restaurants. Outside of Fiddler’s Green is where the poor people live. People are hungry, ill, and cannot afford medicine. Riley Denbo ( Simon Baker ), possibly the prettiest man of the zombie apocalypse, and Cholo DeMora ( John Leguizamo ) are the commander and second in command (respectively) of the Dead Reckoning. The Dead Reckoning is a gigantic mobile assault vehicle that is used to travel out in to the apocalypse to retrieve supplies (food, medical, etc) and distribu...

S01E03 When it comes down to it, the major point in most post-apocalyptic stories are the other survivors and The Walking Dead does not deviate much from that tradition. Sure, we still have the looming zombie threat but with only a handful of zombie appearances this week, it is all about the living and their interactions with one another. Rick is reunited with Lori and Carl at their mountaintop retreat in a scene that almost brought a tear to my eye. However, even after their tender moment, Rick contemplates returning to free Merle who was last seen chained to a roof as the group cut and ran last episode. Granted Merle was an ass, a racist, and would likely do more harm than good but Rick, Glenn, T-Dog, and Merle’s brother Daryl set out heading back to Atlanta, not only to free Merle but also to reacquire Rick’s satchel of guns left behind with his now-likely zombie horse. Meanwhile, things at base camp are not too rosy either as the zombies are heading further up the mountain and...

Written by: PBF I spent the majority of Of Unknown Origin on the thin line dividing like and dislike. Upon the arrival of the film's end, I fell over to the dislike side. Bart ( Peter Weller ) is an executive who is assigned a project by his boss that will guarantee his rise up the corporate ladder. While his wife and son go out of town, Bart stays behind to focus on his project. At random, we start to see very close up shots of a clearly over sized rodent. For some reason, a large rat that also lives in Bart's brownstone for who knows how long, suddenly decides that it will torment Bart, thus making it difficult for him to complete his assigned task. Bart also goes a bit nutty, and starts to obsess over the rat and learns as much as he can about vermin in general (at one point he views an illustration of one with the caption "of unknown origin," which explains the rather ominous and somewhat misleading title of the film). He spouts off a monologue filled with ...

Written by: PBF I’ll tell you, as anti 3D as I am, it didn’t bother me in Megamind . According to the internet, the 3D was complete garbage and/or useless, but I found it to be pleasant and comfortable to look at. Megamind ( Will Ferrell ) was sent to our planet at 8 days old (but highly intelligent) by his parents. In addition to this, another baby from another planet was sent to Earth and the two pods briefly collided, sending Megamind to a prison for the criminally gifted and the other child in to a home of a very wealthy couple and underneath their Christmas tree. The children are raised in their new homes, and end up going to the same school. As Megamind was raised by criminals, he is a bit of an outcast and ill behaved. The other child generally thwarts his behavior and wins the affections of students and the teacher alike. Constantly being placed in the corner, Megamind realizes that he isn’t good at anything, except for being bad, and makes the decision to become a villa...

Written by: PBF Take everything that was good about the first one, reverse it, and make a new movie. BAM! The Lost Boys: The Tribe . Great music turns in to terrible music. Clever, funny dialogue turns in to weak, lame jokes. You get the idea. The Tribe is the first sequel to the original Lost Boys film that for some reason a group of people felt they needed to ruin the legacy of. This went straight to video, and it looks like a film that went straight to video. The only connection this film has with the original is that Corey Feldman reprises his role as Edgar Frog. Also, Haim shows up during the credits for about 2 minutes and is now a vampire. That is not a spoiler and the scene is not relevant to the rest of the movie. Chris and Nicole Emerson have lost their parents and move to California. Chris was a professional surfer that was kicked off the circuit after having snapped. I assume he repaired himself, because he is remarkably low key for someone who has snapped. Chris ...

Written by: PBF Ah, The Lost Boys . I haven’t seen saxophone playing that sexy since Rob Lowe in St. Elmo’s Fire . Both of those films are directed by Joel Schumacher . Hm. Sam ( Corey Haim ), his brother Michael ( Jason Patric ) and mother Lucy ( Diane Wiest ) are relocating to Santa Carla, California after Lucy has divorce the boys’ father. They are moving in with Lucy’s eccentric father ( Bernard Hughes ). Seeing things like “murder capital of the world” spray painted on a sign, posters with missing people on them and all kinds of weirdos running around the boardwalk do not exactly make the boys feel good about the move. Grandpa is also a weirdo, who likes smoking weed, taxidermy and keeping Oreos in the refrigerator next to his root beer. While out on the boardwalk one night, Lucy goes in to a video store and meets Max ( Edward Hermann ), the owner, and takes a job there. Sam visits a comic book store where the Frog brothers, Edgar ( Corey Feldman ) and Alan ( Jamison Newland...

It is hard to have a decent expectation of what is to come before watching Due Date . Sure, it seems to be very similar to the John Hughes classic Planes, Trains & Automobiles but that quickly fades aside from the mismatched traveling buddies angle. You might also think it would feature some wacky hijinks similar to director Todd Phillips ' The Hangover but where that film was fun just for the hell of it, it feels like there is a point trying to come out of this movie. Robert Downey Jr. plays Peter, a serious and sometimes pretentious architect who crosses paths with Zach Galifianakis ' Ethan on a cross-country flight to Los Angeles. After Peter is grounded due in part to Ethan's obnoxious behavior without money or an ID, the two join forces to drive the distance so Peter can make it to the birth of his first child. From the start, both actors have a good, yet almost combative, chemistry as Galifianakis plays Ethan like a long-lost twin to his Hangover charac...

After starting the movie with little information going into it other than a recommendation by PBF, I thought that the opening scene had a very zany, almost Naked Gun -feel to it. Imagine my surprise when I learned in the credits that Top Secret was written and directed by none other than the once great, now not-so-much trio of Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker , or ZAZ for the motivationally challenged typists. Having been a big fan of Airplane ! and The Naked Gun ! in my younger years it was a shock to learn of another movie in the vain of those aforementioned that I had only fleeting knowledge of its existence. That would be the equivalent to finding out George Romero had another zombie film in the 1970s, you know before he started sucking. Skirting along on the daintiest of plots, Val Kilmer is very pretty here as Nick Rivers, an American pop singer who is summoned to perform in East Germany and goes on a haphazard journey before aligning with French revolutionaries who seek the cou...

Written by: PBF I can quote the entire film, and yet every time I watch it, I laugh as if I have never heard any of the lines before. It’s kind of like Police Academy . Only there’s no academy. Also, it’s funny. The plot is simple enough for any drunk or high viewer to grasp. In fact it may enhance the experience to be inebriated. Enhance. Enhance. Seriously though, Super Troopers is probably quite funny when viewed under the influence but it is not necessary. We have a chapter of Vermont State Police that prefer to engage in buffoonery and chicanery rather than take their jobs seriously. This behavior has finally caught up to them as they face being shut down due to budget cuts. The local police department would benefit from this by getting more money. In addition to that the two squads are rivals and the local cops would love it if the highway cops were jobless. Soon a dead woman is found and a truck filled with marijuana is pulled over and each group of cops try to break the...

Black comedies can be a hard combo to pull off, especially with the events that transpire in Very Bad Things . Comparatively to potty humor, black comedies (at least the good ones) tend to have an actual plot with real characters because that is really the only way that such a movie could work without an over reliance on bodily fluids. The danger comes from the delicate need to straddle the line between laughable and horrible that a black comedy must attempt. Writer and director Peter Berg is a talented guy and fortunately he is able to meld the two elements well, most of the time at least. As Kyle and his friends escape sunny California for Las Vegas for a bachelor’s party (that sounds vaguely familiar), things start normal enough with some standard bickering in the car, especially from brothers Michael and Adam, Kyle getting shit for his soon-to-be wife’s controlling nature, as well as lots and lots of drugs and alcohol. When Michael (played by Jeremy Piven just like every other...

Written by: PBF Coconut Pete is without a doubt, the best role Bill Paxton has ever played. Club Dread is the 3rd film by Broken Lizard, following Super Troopers . There is a resort called Coconut Pete’s Pleasure Island, in Costa Rica. It is your basic hedonistic paradise; lots of naked people, booze, drugs, etc. Coconut Pete is a former rock star in the vein of Jimmy Buffet who will be quick to remind you that his hit Pina Coladaburg was written 7 years before Margaritaville. On this island is the fun police, live Pac Man games (in which you might see the fruit from the game having sex with each other) and the legend of Machete Pete. Machete Pete supposedly killed a bunch of staff and castrated himself and ran off in to the woods never to be seen again. Soon after this story is told (around a campfire ala Friday the 13th Part 2) dead bodies start being found with cryptic clues carved in to them. With no way off the island, the staff must figure out which one of them is the kil...

S01E02 This episode illustrates why the concept of a weekly zombie series is an excellent idea (being AMC’s highest rated drama doesn’t hurt either). Any show can have a flashy and expensive pilot (and most do) but when it comes down to it, the premiere episode is merely the foundation of the series and usually not a particularly good expectation of what is to come. Historically, a series’ second episode delves more into the character-driven aspects of the show (one aspect the pilot was not lacking in to begin with) as you begin to get a sense of how the stories will unfold throughout the remaining episodes. If that is the case here, we have four   seventeen(!) more episodes of awesomeness ahead of us.After he escapes the tank from the end of the last episode, Rick ( Andrew Lincoln ) teams up with another group of survivors who are now in jeopardy as Rick’s presence has drawn more zombies (or “geeks” as one character calls them) to the storefront they are holding up in. Like wi...