Springbreakers (2013)

I was really worried that director Harmony Korine would reach the lower depths of Larry Clarke levels of exploitation with his dramatic crime thriller “Spring Breakers.” But thankfully, while “Spring Breakers” is often exploitative and completely gratuitous, it succeeds in also exploring the recklessness of youth, and the ticking clock that will inevitably catch up to four young women convinced they have life in their hands, that will more than likely blow up in their faces.

Continue reading

Fangoria Presents: Inhuman Resources (2013)

gWqZNAUAfter “Saw,” you could basically build an entire sub-genre around horror movies involving a group of strangers whom wake up in an abandoned location and endure a painful series of trials that teach them some lesson and reveal secrets. Thankfully, director Daniel Krige’s film “Inhuman Resources” (once known as “Redd, Inc”) works because it’s not only unique in its delivery of the premise, but darkly funny, too.

Continue reading

Taken (2002)

1sjQQiZThe 2002 Spielberg fueled mini-series “Taken” is one of the few mini-series I’ve ever watched two times in a row. It’s at least fourteen hours in length. And I watched it two times in a row. “Taken” is just that good. The epic mini-series aired in the summer of 2002 on the Sci Fi Channel here in America, and on the 25th anniversary of “Close Encounters of The Third Kind.” While Science fiction was never really my niche as a pop culture fan, “Taken” is a whole new level of the genre that defies any and all conventions. It’s a mini-series that doesn’t just build up to something humongous, but it leads somewhere pretty incredible.

Continue reading

Busty Coeds vs. Lusty Cheerleaders (2011)

cheerleeders-1_article

To be honest, I’m not even sure how to approach this film in any critical sense. The movie opens with character Angie emerging from a pool and narrating the movie. But–is she a narrator? Or a host? Is this supposed to spoof reality show, or is this an actual story? Director Jim Wynorski (as Sam Pepperman) can never really seem to care at all, so he basically just throws whatever sticks to the wall, and distracts us for seventy five minutes with soft core scenes of busty women being drilled, and busty women having sex with other busty women.

Continue reading

Puppet Master 4 (1993)

There’s apparently a puppet hell. Or at least a dimension where puppet like creatures exist. And Toulon stole their elixir that grants them life. I would love to have found out what the elixir exactly is. Is it a potion? Is it the secret to immortality? Or is it the blood from the creatures that reside within this dimension? Also, do the monsters from “Mystery Monsters” come from that realm as well? It’d have been cool to link both pictures together as one universe.

Continue reading

World War Z (2013)

WorldWarZ-PosterWe live in an age of pop culture, where today’s horror fan didn’t so much cut their teeth on horror movies, as they did horror video games. Where older horror fans were exposed to “Dead Alive” or “Cemetery Man,” young horror fans spent their days in the world of “Left for Dead” and “Dead Island.” It’s an age where horror environments are fast moving, stories are simplistic and unchallenging, and monsters are now computer animated polygonal blobs running at us from all corners.

Continue reading

Independence Day (1996)

Independence_Day

Roland Emmerich’s “Independence Day” is one quarter of a very decent albeit cliche alien invasion film, and three quarters an unwatchable adventure film. What opens with looming shadows and hovering space ships devolves in to a buddy comedy with catchy one-liners and plot twists much too convenient to buy. Even for a science fiction film about huge alien space ships. Apparently the government can see asteroids coming from miles away and predict when one will pass, but they can’t see space ships the size of two continents enter the atmosphere.

Continue reading