Movie Scum

Well, this was not the movie I expected. Admittedly, I knew very little about this film prior to watching it other than it won a good amount of Australian Film Institute awards and even an Academy Award nomination for Jacki Weaver. I was thinking it to be a zoo-based comedy that also featured Guy Pearce but instead, writer and director David Michôd provides a thoughtful and powerful look at family, crime, and why mixing the two is bad business. Seventeen-year-old Josh (James Frecheville) calls his grandmother to inform her of his mother’s untimely death after a heroin overdose. At least, once he can pull himself away from the Down Under equivalent of Deal or No Deal. Grandma Smurf (Weaver) takes Josh in and soon he is reunited with the uncles he has not seen for some time as Josh’s mother disapproved of the family. She had a point. Pope (Ben Mendelsohn), the oldest, is a has-been armed robber looking for a new trade. Craig (Sullivan Stapleton) is a manic and paranoid drug-dealer w

Written by: PBF Ninjas vs. Vampires is writer director Justin Timpane ’s follow up to Ninjas vs. Zombies (which I have not seen). I must apologize to Mr. Timpane. While viewing this film, I sent Puck a text calling this film terrible. I rescind that. There are some terrible things in the film, but I now find that adjective to be not applicable to the film as a whole. Aaron and Alex are hanging out late at night at what is sure to be an unsafe location. They have known each for years, and Alex considers Aaron to be her best friend. Aaron on the other hand, has stronger feelings and would like to be her boyfriend. He vocalizes this and is quickly shot down. To further ruin his night, the pair is suddenly attacked by vampires. Just when it appears a feeding is to occur, a group of ninjas appear and save them. “What the fuck?” you say? I assure you, I type the truth. The group is part actual ninjas, as they practice martial arts, but they are also some sort of X-Men type group in

2011 must be the year of the superhero. Or at least the year of the superhero that I couldn’t care less about. Nolan’s next Batman doesn’t come out until next year after all. But, I figured I would be remiss without catching at least a few of the genre’s offerings this year and what better place to start than with The Green Hornet , the 3D big-budget film that was released … in January? Weird. Seth Rogen plays lovable slacker (seems like a stretch for him) Britt Reid, who is the playboy son of widower newspaper mogul, James Reid. His father is constantly disappointed due to his attention- and headline-grabbing antics. When his father dies, Britt meets Kaito ( Jay Chou ), a coffee-making car aficionado who worked for the family and commiserates with him about how much of a dick his father was. In a drunken act of rebellion, Britt and Kaito set off in bulletproof Chrysler Imperial to deface the recently erected statue of James Reid and foil a robbery nearby thanks to Kaito’s impres

Written by: PBF Remind me to keep my mouth shut the next time I say I should have been scarred . 2010's I Spit on Your Grave is a remake of a 1978 film of the same name. I was unimpressed by the original with its bland characters, lack of tension and surprisingly boring execution of a heinous serious of events. The rectifies these issues, but to the complete extreme. The story is the same; a writer named Jennifer arrives in the deep country to write her first novel. Before she gets to her cabin, she interacts with some locals, a healthy mix of creepy, retarded and seemingly harmless. An embarrassing event occurs at the gas station which establishes part of a motive for some depraved acts. This combined with a retarded chap\'s misinterpretation of a kiss from Jennifer, quickly results in the go ahead for those acts. Jennifer is assaulted, mentally tortured, and ultimately raped repeatedly. Before the assailants can kill her, she jumps into the river and disappears. Her b

After commenting on Twitter that I had seen and pretty much dug Bridesmaids , good ol’ Wifi Pirate from 3SMOVRadio attempted to clarify by asking if it was The Hangover for women. It is very Hangover -esque but featuring women, not necessarily just for them. As The Hangover was very reminiscent of previous movies by Judd Apatow , it seems fitting that this is one of his productions and directed by Paul Feig , one of the many people I love just for being involved with Arrested Development . As you can probably guess, Bridesmaids centers around a wedding. The bride-to-be Lillian ( Maya Rudolph ) wants her lifelong friend Annie ( Kristen Wiig ) to be her maid of honor but Annie’s life is in shambles. She is broke after a failed business attempt and shares a small apartment with a quirky English brother and sister. She is also quite jaded from a recent breakup and probably should not be anywhere near the planning of a couple’s everlasting happiness. Yet, Annie puts on a happy face a

Sadly, I was late getting into MST3k when it was still around. In my area, we didn’t have Comedy Central until just before the show switched to Sci-Fi so the only option for Joel/Mike and the ‘bots was overly expensive VHS copies or one hour long segments at 2 AM on Saturdays. As such, Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie (henceforth referred to as whatever acronym I feel like) was an easy way to get your bad movie fix rife with sarcastic commentary. That is, until I realized that the movie is actually quite different from the show. You should know about MST3k by now considering that we’ve had two previous posts about it, not to mention the dozens of other pages and wikis about the show. The long and short is that a man is trapped on an orbiting satellite just above Earth who is forced to watch bad movies to amuse his captors. Not content to suffer in silence, the first man, Joel, builds four robots, some to aid in the ship’s operation and others to make witty quips with him w

Written by: PBF Title that makes no sense? Subject I had not heard about? Documentary? Surely Cropsey is not for me. Quite the contrary. Cropsey is a documentary by Barbara Brancaccio and Joshua Zeman, who grew up on Staten Island. As kids (though they did not know each other at the time) each were familiar the urban legend of Cropsey, an escaped mental patient who kidnapped and murdered children. He varies from story to story, sometimes having a hook and other times wielding an axe. On July 9, 1987 a young girl named Jennifer Schweiger is kidnapped. After Andre Rand is arrested as a suspect, it seems like Cropsey may not just be an urban legend. Rand was on orderly at Willowbrook, a mental institution for children who were mentally ill, or handicapped. In 1972, Geraldo Rivera did an investigative report on the facility, exposing the horrible treatment of the patients (and employees) and their living conditions. Ultimately, the facility is shut down and the building left abandone

Since Piranha 3DD entered pre-production, almost every new announcement makes me more excited about it. We know from PBF’s review of the first that Piranha is not a watershed moment in cinema history, although I can’t say I’ve seen a 3D penis get eaten in any other movie. Yesterday, it was announced that the resident batshit crazy man Gary Busey was joining the cast of the next chapter in the Piranha saga. He joins an already rounded cast including Danielle Panabaker (The Crazies), David Koechner (Anchorman), and Clu Gulager (it’s fucking Clu Gulager!). Let’s hope this is more a Feast reunion as opposed to a Feast 2 reunion with director John Gulager and writers Marcus Dunstan and Patrick Melton. The one thing I am disappointed of is the release date: November 23, 2011. The piranha are back only this time at a water park. I am sure there will still be buckets of blood and gore and ample nudity but why release this at Thanksgiving? I understand the need not to rush things but this

When the 2010 Oscars were held, I had seen only two of the ten movies nominated. I did significantly better this year seeing nine before the ceremony. The one I didn’t get to: this year’s Titanic Effect victim, The King’s Speech. Early on it became abundantly clear that this film would sweep the award shows, potentially even in categories it wasn’t nominated for or ones that don’t exist yet. I figured I would let the dust settle and wait for DVD to see if I was watching The World’s Bestest Picture Ever! The King’s Speech is the type of movie that I would normally never watch. I don’t understand the fascination with monarchy and period settings always tend to add another layer of dullness to an already suffering movie. I figured though, I should probably shoot for all ten movies this year since Precious and An Education are still unchecked from last year’s nominees. Not surprisingly, I found the movie good and certainly “uplifting” as many others have said countless times before. Bu

It isn’t often that the fifth film in a series is well received by a far amount of respectable critics. It is even less often when that series is at best a popcorn movie geared towards adolescent boys, street racers, and the six or seven fans of Paul Walker. But shockingly, I’ve heard a lot of buzz about Fast Five and that … well, it is actually pretty good. As in currently holding as 79% rating on Rotten Tomatoes good. Admittedly, this may be a bit premature as currently there are only a few dozen reviews tallied up. But considering the harsh critical reaction to the previous four movies (52%, 36%, 35%, and 27% respectively), it looks pretty safe that Fast Five could end up on the “fresh” side of the fence. But why? I did not see the third or fourth movies strictly because they looked like car porn wrapped around a poor excuse for a plot with bad acting throughout. In fairness, the first two were as well. This film reportedly centers around the team including Vin Diesel and Wa

Written by: PBF Unlike the previous reviews, I will not be giving you a recap of the finale of Freddy vs. Jason. Only because it has nothing to do with the continuity of the Friday the 13th. For this is a re-something involving several of the early films. During the credit sequence of this film we see Pamela Voorhees chasing a a young girl. It is June, 13, 1980. She tells the girl that she must pay for letting her son Jason drown. Unfortunately for her, the young girl chops her damn head off. After the credits end, we transplanted to “present day,” which is 20 years later according to some dialogue. A group of young people are hiking, and stop near Camp Crystal Lake to find some marijuana that they heard was being grown in the woods. As tradition dictates, there is an obligatory camp scene and the legend of Jason is told. The same poor choices are made; some have sex, some wander off and find Camp Crystal Lake. Jason kills everyone except for Whitney. He keeps her. Flash forward

Written by: PBF We are going to travel back in time, but first, a briefing of what happened to Jason in Jason X, which chronologically(thus far) was his final adventure. He awakens on a space vessel in 2455 after being frozen years earlier. He begins to murder the folks aboard and actually almost is destroyed, but is rebuilt in to Super Jason. He has some kind of Cobra Commander looking new metal mask and is now a cyborg. Jason ends up literally “in” space floating at a very high speed about to collide with the survivors, but Sgt. Brodsky flies towards him and they both start heading toward Earth II where they are sucked in to the atmosphere. Thankfully, lakes exist on Earth II and we see two young people at one as they watch a shooting star fall in to the lake.  It’s Jason’s mask! Wooooo! What will happen next? Oh, yeah, we go back in time and visit another troubled town. If you recall, at the end of Goes to Hell, Jason was defeated and in fact sent to hell. Suddenly, Freddy Kru

It normally would be a problem when the biggest stars of your alien invasion flick are the guy from Scrubs or the generic guy from some cancelled TV shows. Yes, it’s somewhat bland and predictable but, like Battle: Los Angeles, I enjoyed Skyline in spite of its huge, gaping flaws as a movie. The effects were terrific, the ending is original, if baffling, and the film is much smarter than it has any right to be, even if the characters are not. The Strause Brothers took a moderate amount of money and churned out an entertaining, if somewhat forgettable, tale.

My first exposure to Maniac Cop was from a poorly edited TV version recorded on VHS many years ago. I didn’t know it at the time but there was quite a lot of talent involved in the film. Written by Larry Cohen, directed by William Lustig, and starring the dynamic duo of Tom Atkins and Bruce Campbell, this movie had no excuse to either be entertainingly bad or just plain awesome. I must have been much more forgiving in my younger years since Maniac Cop is clever at times and somewhat insulting at others. Given the production year of the movie, I am fairly confident in saying that it was inspired in part by the ongoing Friday the 13th series. The titular maniac is a large, brutal man dressed up in a police uniform. He kills random people as they are walking home or driving. He can’t be killed by bullets. He kills for revenge at a past injustice. This all seems familiar, doesn’t it? As the bodies of innocent New York City citizens start piling up, Detective Frank McCrae (Tom Atkins)

If Bloody Disgusting is to be believed (and who would make up crap like this?), then Lionsgate is looking to continue the roller-coaster-of-quality ride that is the Texas Chainsaw Massacre series. And this time, they are making it in 3D! Which I assume means that Leatherface and the rest of the Hewitt/Voorhees/whatever family will be awkwardly jutting things into the camera to make you less pissed that you paid $14 for another crap sequel. In talks for the directorial duties is John Luessenhop, who you might remember from … wait, did anyone actually see Takers? I guess we can presume if Platinum Dunes is involved it will feature sweaty “teen” stars from various WB TV shows who breakdown in the middle of Texas and get slaughtered in another attempt to further destroy the legacy of the original film. There were also rumors of a cult being involved. Does this sound like a good idea to anyone? Update: Apparently not to PBF who has previously expressed his outrage over this property s

My first exposure to Maniac Cop was from a poorly edited TV version recorded on VHS many years ago. I didn’t know it at the time but there was quite a lot of talent involved in the film. Written by Larry Cohen , directed by William Lustig , and starring the dynamic duo of Tom Atkins and Bruce Campbell , this movie had no excuse to either be entertainingly bad or just plain awesome. I must have been much more forgiving in my younger years since Maniac Cop is clever at times and somewhat insulting at others. Given the production year of the movie, I am fairly confident in saying that it was inspired in part by the ongoing Friday the 13th series. The titular maniac is a large, brutal man dressed up in a police uniform. He kills random people as they are walking home or driving. He can’t be killed by bullets. He kills for revenge at a past injustice. This all seems familiar, doesn’t it? As the bodies of innocent New York City citizens start piling up, Detective Frank McCrae (Atkin

Written by: PBF Holy shit! Did you see what happened at the end of Jason Goes to Hell (if you managed to sit through the whole thing)?! Freddy Kruger’s arm came out of the ground and took Jason’s mask to…hell? Wait, is Freddy in hell? I guess that makes sense. I mean he certainly would not be in heaven. But how does Freddy know about Jason? Is there news in dreamworld or hell? Did one of his victims get wind of the Crystal Lake murders and dream about it? How am I expected to keep track of all of this?! At least Jason X will answer these questions. Oh, wait. No it won’t. See, Freddy pulled Jason in to development hell. Somehow he managed to escape long enough to travel in to the future and appear in Jason X. But what happened last episode? Well, Jason killed his half sister Diana. He tried his damnedest to posses his niece Jessica so he could be reborn, but could not. Instead, his heart, morphed in to some weird baby looking creature crawled in to dead Diana’s vagina. Reborn! The

The thing I most worried about upon seeing Scream 4 was that my giddy anticipation for the film would render any objectivity null and void. Thus, while I gather my thoughts to obtain my truly valid response to the film, let me give you some quick thoughts on it. Some of the nagging issues I had with the previous sequels have been corrected with a cast that is much more fleshed out and relatable than the Ghostface fodder of before. This time, the characters are  ü ber-aware of horror films, both new and old, which results in interesting conversations but causes some of the surprise to dampen as even the characters are aware of what is to come. The script is not as tight as the first and feels more intent on poking fun at the remake/reboot trend as well as the previous films in the series than breaking any new ground. There are some clever call backs to the original film as it tries to be a combination of continuation and reboot at the same time. The returning cast of Neve Camp

Written by: PBF Jason Takes Manhattan just filled my head with all sorts of new questions. The most obvious one being, “Why does this film exist?” But also, did I really just watch Rennie get chased by two Jasons? Rennie, the main protagonist of part VIII (or not) had never been able to swim. When she was a young girl, her uncle took her out in a boat on Crystal Lake many times to try and teach hear, but she was always too afraid (of swimming, but I guess she was fine with the Jason legend that she was floating on top of). During one of these attempts, her uncle pushes her in the water to force her to learn. A young (and surprisingly clean looking) Jason tries to pull her under and drown her, but she survives. Unless it was in her mind. Which it may have been becausee the body of Jason was never recovered. So why would he still be in the lake? Either way, she is plagued by visions of the young boy that tried to drown her while on the trip to Manhattan. Then the real Jason shows up

Written by: PBF Dr. Crews was a bit of a douche bag, wasn’t he? I mean, he wanted to exploit Tina’s powers, he gets her mother killed. I was quite happy when he died. But that was pretty exciting. Tina did a pretty good job fighting Jason. I mean, not before a dozen people were killed. But it was exciting to see him get set on fire, electrocuted, fall into a basement, have a roof collapse on him. All of this does nothing of course because JASON IS A ZOMBIE AND NEEDS TO BE SHOT IN THE HEAD. Despite of this, Tina does what she meant to do at the beginning of the oddly titled sequel and uses her powers to raise her dad from the lake, who pulls Jason back under, which again, according to some book Tommy read in part VI, is the only way to kill him (as long as there are no blondes walking around firing off telekinesis all willy nilly). Then our heroes wake up in the morning and are carted off by an ambulance. Now, I don’t know about you, but I can’t fathom that Jason can come back after