Movie Scum

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

Written by: PBF The most important piece of advice that I can offer you prior to watching Hanger is: do not take it seriously. An appearance by Lloyd Kaufman should suggest that to you, even without my advice. Rose is a pregnant hooker who is often beat mercilessly by her pimp, Leroy. Leroy has told Rose many times that she needs to get rid of her unborn child. Rose no longer wants to be a hooker and wants to have her baby. One of her regular dates, referred to as “The John” no longer wants to pay her for sex so long as she is pregnant. As this means less money for him, Leroy decides to take matters in to his own hands. Using a hanger, he extracts Rose’s child, killing Rose in the process. He then tosses the child in to a dumpster. Flash forward 18 years, and we learn that the child (named Hanger) has been living with a homeless man who found him in the dumpster. On his 18th birthday, “The John” picks up Hanger and takes him to his new home and job. Hanger’s face is usually obscu

You may be asking yourself, “who the hell is Pete Postlethwaite?”  I know I certainly did. Most recently, he was seen as Maurice Fischer in Inception and in Ben Affleck’s The Town but Postlethwaite is one of those character actors that seem to pop up in every other movie. He also played in Romeo + Juliet , the Lost World , In the Name of the Father , and The Usual Suspects . He died of cancer at the age of 64.

Suburbia is such a wacky modern invention. Regardless of what reality is, all nicely arranged neighborhoods seem to consist of people who never work, get bent out of shape over ordinances about shingle color, and gossip nonstop regardless of gender. Perhaps I have seen too much Desperate Housewives . The ‘Burbs takes place in one of these planned communities where everyone’s house is the right color, has the right landscaping for aesthetic appeal, and the most frequent daily adventures are to a neighbor’s house to chat. Well, everyone except the newest residents on Mayfield Place, the Klopeks. They own a run-down Victorian looking structure and keep to themselves except during nocturnal drives to the curb to beat the hell out of oddly-shaped bags of garbage. Their presence has attracted the attention of everyone in the cul-de-sac, especially Ray ( Tom Hanks ) and his pals Art (Rick Ducommun) and Rumsfield (Bruce Dern) who are convinced that their new neighbors are Satanists or cul

Written by: PBF I really am almost at a loss for words after watching Leatherface. I really have no fucking idea what I just watched. The film opens with a narration that refers to the event of the first film. We learn that Sally died in a mental health facility in 1977. One of the Saywers, W.E. Sawyer, was put on trial and given the gas chamber. The jury apparently concluded that Leatherface was another personality of W.E. The narration suggests that this may or may not have been correct, and if not, Leatherface is still at large. Either way, the events of 1973 were just the beginning. We are then planted somewhere between the first 2 films (from what I can gather) and meet Michelle and Ryan. They are travelling from Los Angeles to Florida to deliver the Mercedes they are driving. They stop at a gas station and meet a creepy attendant and a hitchhiker. As Michelle uses the bathroom, Alfredo (the attendant) watched through a hole in the wall. He and Tex (the hitchhiker, played by

It's a good thing that Bill Murray is naturally hilarious. As star, producer, and co-director of Quick Change , the entire film could have easily gone south in lesser hands.

Written by: PBF My first impression of this film was that it was like a zombie film made specifically for Cinemax to air at around 3am. There was plenty of (somewhat justified) nudity almost immediately. However, it vanished just a quickly as it had come. FYI: If you are going to make a marginally engaging film, try not to blow your nudity wad all in the first 15 minutes. It leaves nothing much else to pay attention to. Brain Dead, directed by Kevin Tenney, doesn’t really show us anything new in its zombie story. Not that it is trying to. It’s the story of 6 random people (actually, 3 random groups of 2 people) who for one reason or another end up in an empty fishing lodge. We have Bob and Clarence, who are brothers and escaped prisoners. They arrive first, and end up holding the others hostage. Next to arrive are Claudia and Sherry, who were hiking and swimming naked. Last is Reverend Farnsworth and his assistant Amy. The Reverend would like to pork his assistant. What these peopl

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,

Unbeknowst to me, the property Babes in Toyland was originally based on a 1903 stage performance that yielded two feature films in 1934 and 1961 with a made-for-TV movie which is our entry today. 11-year-old Drew Barrymore is Lisa Piper, who on the way home with her sister and friends in a blizzard, is thrown from the car into a tree rendering her unconscious. The majority of the movie takes place in Toyland, a fictional town from Lisa’s subconscious filled with Mother Goose characters, walking, talking animals, and a sinister man named Barnaby Barnicle who wishes to rid the world of toys. After interrupting the marriage between Barnaby and Mary Contrary (Jill Schoelen), Lisa meets the citizens of Toyland and is caught in a web of lies and deceit as Barnaby tries to implicate his nephew Jack-be-nimble (Keanu Reeves) in a nefarious cookie heist to take control of the town and the domain of the Toymaster (Pat Morita). With the help of Georgie Porgie (Googy Gress), Lisa, Mary, and Jack

Written by: PBF The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 is quite a different film from its predecessor. I hold the original in very high regard for reasons that were absent from this film. That does not make it a bad film, however. Through some narration, we learn that Sally, the only survivor of the previous film was able to tell the story of what happened to her, her brother and friends, but goes catatonic afterward. There was a search conducted but no trace of the Sawyer family (Leatherface, et al) was found. However, there continued to be gruesome chainsaw related killings across the state of Texas for thirteen years. That brings us to the present. Two high school kids are travelling through Texas, drinking and shooting road signs. They call a local radio station that they are listening to and start bothering the DJ, Stretch (Caroline Williams). They play chicken with a truck and run it off the road. Hours later, the kids call Stretch again and while on the phone are stopped by the sam

Nora Ephron typically makes a certain type of movie. That movie: one which I do not care about. Her most acclaimed films run the gammit between romantic comedies starring Tom Hanks to other romantic comedies starring Tom Hanks. A bit of filler movies with Will Ferrell and Meryl Streep fill in the gaps. The thing I was most excited about with Mixed Nuts was Parker Posey, who I learned to love in Scream 3. Sadly, she appears with Jon Stewart in roughly 80 seconds of the movie. At least I had another Scream series vet to bide time with. Mixed Nuts centers around a crisis hotline on Christmas Eve. Phillip (Steve Martin) runs this help center although needing some help himself with an immanent breakup, a pending eviction, and stupid people surrounding him. His neurotic co-worker Catherine (Rita Wilson) has a friend of sorts Grace (Juliette Lewis) who is potentially nine months pregnant by her seven-month paroled boyfriend Felix (Anthony LaPaglia). The other hotline worker is Mrs. Munchnik