Movie Scum

Perhaps it was just presumptuous of M. Night Shyamalan to promote his upcoming adaptation of the Avatar: The Last Airbender tv series at the end of The Happening on a little girl's backpack.

I typically see a lot of movies with my kids that I don't review here. That's not entirely out of laziness but more due to being uncomfortable critiquing something that was not necessarily designed for me. At some point for everyone though, you must step out of your comfort zone and do the right thing. For me, that point was taking my 4-year-old to see The Smurfs and hating it so badly that I must ward off any reasonable human being from seeing it. I'm not quite sure what irritates me the most: that I paid $15 for the two of us to see it, that it literally felt like the longest 90 minutes ever, or that I just indirectly contributed to the already announced sequel. Much like a good chunk of our readership (at least I assume), The Smurfs were one of those childhood staples that were always around, whether on TV, on the racks of the video store, or on the shelves at the local Toys'R'us. Truth be told though, I could've cared less about a Smurfs movie because it...

It’s a universal truth that we’ve all had bosses, or superiors if you’d like, that deserve to be taken out back and eliminated in one way or another. I suppose that is the sad truth of growing up, becoming an adult, and dealing with bullshit day in and day out. Horrible Bosses is not the first film that addresses these frustrations of the workplace. In fact, the template (for me that is) of aggravating employment is and will probably always be Office Space. Director Seth Gordon and his team of writers don’t pull off the malicious nature of inter-office politics to the same success but damn if they didn’t create a film I believe will be highly regarded for some time. It is unfair though to outright compare Bosses to Office Space. Similar themes exist but the crux of the movie is wildly different since no one actually wanted to kill Bill Lumbergh. Nick ( Jason Bateman ) is practically a yes-man who comes to work early and stays late thinking he is in for a big promotion. Kurt ( Ja...

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 The Coffin , directed by Ekachai Uekrongtham will be released on DVD August 31, via Breaking Glass Pictures. It is based on a Thai ritual. The ritual involves a person who wishes to “cheat death and end bad luck” being sealed in a coffin and a funeral being performed over them. This is done in large groups. People claim to have gone into a coffin with Cancer and come out only to be given a clean bill of health on their next doctor visit. Some people believe in it and others believe it is hogwash. Su (Karen Mok) is a young woman who left Bangkok and Jack, to whom she was going to marry. She hasn’t told anyone that she has lung cancer. She goes to Thailand to be part of a mass funeral. Soon after participating (possibly even on her way home from it as the movie suggests) she is involved in a serious car accident. She escapes with only bruises, but learns that she no longer has cancer. While recuperating, she is given some terrible news and begins to have disturbing ...

I will admit that I did not have entirely good expectations going into this one. Our own #pbf referred to this as garbage, and he has not seen THE third film in this series. I had seen a few positive reviews for THE Final Destinatio n though so I figured maybe it was an acquired taste, much like Mountain Dew: Live Wire. Oh, dear God was I wrong. So, so wrong … I knew in THE first ten minutes of this film that it would be given THE “honorable” crap category. THE other seventy minutes were merely confirmation that I can judge a stupid movie by its even stupider fucking cover.

It’s not apparent during the first viewing of Final Destination 3 , but there is something missing which greatly strips out a lot of enjoyment compared to the previous films. Well, of course, there are plenty of graphic deaths and gore so that is present and accounted for. There is a skimpy callback to the first film, so nothing out of place there. And even Tony Todd returns, in voice at least. So what is it that the returning team of Glen Morgan and James Wong forgot in this installment? Where should we start?

The original Final Destination is no grand pinnacle in cinema, or even horror films, but it does a few things right. Its follow-up is again no grand treasure, but a pretty effective continuation of the first and one that tries to loop back into the mythos of the first. Final Destination 2 ' s main draw is the focus on elaborate deaths no doubt, but it almost taps into some of the humanity of the first. Moreso than those killer logs in the first act anyway.

Who would have thought that a spec script for The X-Files TV show could launch one of the bigger horror franchises in recent years? Apparently, someone at New Line Cinema did and the result is lots of dead people by way of some rather bizarre methods. After four movies (and a fifth with Emma Bell! coming soon), no one goes to see a Final Destination movie for the characters or the acting. We go to see how morbid writers can concoct a way for someone to die. But it wasn’t always that way.

The upside to having a terrible memory: I can see a film I’d only seen maybe once before years ago and not remember a damn thing about it. Downside to having a terrible memory: well, the same. It was not even a year ago that I watched and reviewed [ REC ] and while the main gist of the story and some of the bigger sequences still stick out, a lot of the movie is a total wash from my brain. Apparently, there was a religion angle in the first that I would have loved to have the faintest recollection of in watching [ REC ] 2 . At the very least, the first twenty minutes would not have been so jarring. Just like the original (and its remake Quarantine ), [REC] 2 takes place inside an apartment building somewhere in Spain with this installment kicking into gear almost immediately after the first ends. The first wave of responders inside the building have not been heard from. A group of SWAT members are called in to escort a doctor inside to check the status. Let’s just say that things...

Written by: PBF Rania Ajami’s Asylum Seekers will arrive on DVD on August 30th. There is really only one way to describe this film: batshit crazy. The simple synopsis of the film is as follows: 6 people who can be categorized as insane for some reason or another, seek asylum (ha) from the outside world that is ever increasing it’s focus on excess and more more more. They arrive at a mental health facility that is very lavish and promises to take care of their every need. However, so popular is this facility, there is only one bed left. Much like an Ivy League college, this facility will only accept the best of the best insane people. So how do you declare the best of the best? Why, have a competition of course. What ensues is a brightly colored, blatant parody of several things, including American Idol and The Rocky Horror Picture Show . I will tell you this. This film is ambitious, well acted and even well directed. However. The film sucks. The film loses itself in its own i...

I was a bad horror fan when I saw Quarantine before [REC] since the latter was not yet available commercially. This remake is the same tale of some unlucky folks including a reporter and her cameraman trapped inside an apartment building with an rampant zombie problem. It might not be a fair comparison but Quarantine does not succeed to the level that [REC] does. The characters are nowhere as defined, the pacing trudges along, and even the scares are much more easily spotted in this film. It fails as a "found footage" film since almost every actor is recognizable in some way or another. There are much worse things to see since this does not blatantly insult you. But, you'd be better off with the original as long as subtitled movies aren't a turn-off.