Piranha 3D (2010)


Directed by: Alexander Aja

Starring: Steven R. McQueen, Elisabeth Shue, Jessica Szohr, Adam Scott, Jerry O'Connell

Other Actors of Note: Richard Dreyfuss, Christopher Lloyd, Ving Rhames, Eli Roth,

Plot: After a sudden underwater tremor sets free scores of the prehistoric man-eating fish, an unlikely group of strangers must band together to stop themselves from becoming fish food for the area's new razor-toothed residents.



It's been a pretty weak summer filled with a lot of flops and a fair amount of movies that were good but not great (thus why I haven't reviewed them) I don't need to tell you that "Scott Pilgrim vs. The World" is awesome, nor that "Predators" was a worthwhile sequel to the original (still not as good as "Predator 2", fuck the haters.) But I do feel the need to comment on "Piranha 3D" because it's a more than worthwhile remake, it's not making much money, and it's the best movie you'll see this summer.

The movie opens with Richard Dreyfuss reprising his role as oceanographer Matt Hooper from "Jaws." Hooper's moved away from the ocean, obviously due to fear of being eaten by fish and seeing as Quint died a sharky death and Chief Brody was the casualty of a bad sequel explaining why a good actor wouldn't want to be in it, he's the only member of the trio left. He's sitting in a boat drinking Amity beer and singing along to "Show Me the Way to Go Home" on his radio. As he's trying to reel in a fish, he knocks a bottle of beer of the boat which falls to the bottom of the lake and inadvertently causes an earthquake that releases an entire underwater lake filled with hungry prehistoric piranha. Hooper finally suffers the death the book gave him but Spielberg left out of the movie.

Open on our small town with a name I can't remember as douche bags pour in to drink, fuck, and listen to terrible music. Here we meet our hero Jake (Steven R. McQueen) and his mother, the sheriff, Julie (Elizabeth Shue)

Jake comes to pick up his little sister from band practice and meets Joe Francis analogue Derrick Jones (Jerry O'Connell), the creator of "Wild Wild Girls" who hires Jake to show him some good locations to shoot his bad soft core porn.

Predictably everything gets fucked up and fish eat everyone. There's really not much more to explain here.


Steven R. McQueen, who imdb tells me is in "The Vampire Diaries", is a good actor in spite of what the information between those commas tells me. It's unfair to compare him to his grandfather (the late Steve McQueen for those of you who are a little slow) so I won't do that. I will simply say that Jake comes across as a shy teenage boy very realistically and that is seemingly deceptively hard for a 21-year-old actor if every other movie with older actors playing teenagers is any indication.

Jessica Szohr, who imdb tells me is in "Gossip Girl", is a good actress in spite of what the information between those commas tells me. I will simply say that Kelly comes across as a girl-next-door type very realistically and that is seemingly deceptively hard for a 25-year-old actress if every other movie with older actors playing teenagers is any indication.

Now, with the teens out of the way, let's get to the characters and actors we actually give a fuck about:

Elisabeth Shue plays Chief Brody from "Jaws", she exactly plays him, which is impressive seeing as she is a woman, and not Roy Scheider. Okay, she's not exactly Chief Brody but she's the exact same thing. Shue shows off what a badass she can be when the script allows and is a much more compelling hero than Jake.

Jerry O'Connell is a scene stealer as both comedic relief and the closest thing this movie has to a human villain. Every single line, movement, or action on O'Connell's part is memorable and usually hilarious.

If there had to be somebody to give the lame exposition filled with plot holes, it had to be Christopher Lloyd. Lloyd appears in all his Doc Brown splendor and his brief screen time is filled with magic.

Ving Rhames plays a role that was obviously written for Ving Rhames and does his best to fill out the checklist for "badass black guy." He says both "I'm getting to old for this" and "*insert bad pun here* Mothafucka!"


Forget the trailer you saw. The CG fish look much better in the movie. In fact all of the effects in this movie look good, though most of the underwater attacks are quick and hard to see, but I think that's intentional.

This is another of the dreaded post-conversion 3D movies. To be fair, Aja decided to this before post-conversion proved to be so catastrophically horrible and this movie was filmed with 3D in mind so this is easily the best post-conversion film I've seen yet.

The one scene Aja did film with 3D cameras is a long and hilarious underwater nude lesbian scene between Kelly Brook and Riley Steel. This scene is one of many instances of nudity that are shockingly prevalent in this film. This movie is about 20% plot and characters and 80% tits and gore. Aja obviously didn't want to make a SyFy original movie here so he gives fans of cheesy monster movies what they want, monster action. You will not believe that this movie is not NC-17 when you see it. There are so many memorable gore moments that I dare not spoil, in the biggest douche bag massacre ever filmed. There's roughly ten minutes of just solid deaths and it should please the gore hounds out there.

The movie is quite obviously tongue-in cheek but that fortunately never spills over to the characters. This movie wouldn't have been as great is the actors were all hamming it up. Instead everyone plays this whole thing deadpan which only proves to make every single blood drenched minute of it a load of fun.

If you like a fun, violent, and nudity-filled horror movie that delights in its own campy greatness then I recommend that you watch "Piranha 3-D" by any means necessary. 5 out of 5.

Pig Hunt (2008)


Director: James Isaac

Starring: Travis Aaron Wade, Tina Huang, Howard Johnson Jr., Rajiv Shah, Trevor Bullock, Jason Foster, Nick Tagas, Bryonn Bain

Other Actors of Note: Les Claypool

Plot: When John takes his San Francisco friends to his deceased uncle's remote ranch to hunt wild pigs, it seems like a typical guys weekend with guns - despite the presence of John's sexy girlfriend Brooks. But as John and his crew trek deeper into the forest, they begin tracking the awful truth about his uncle's demise and the legend of The Ripper -- a murderous three-thousand-pound black boar! Taken from www.imdb.com.


"Pig Hunt" is not a good movie. Not at all.

To call "Pig Hunt" good would be to insult it in ways man cannot even fathom. "Pig Hunt" is maybe one of the best movies I've seen in ages.

So the story of "Pig Hunt" involves a guy and his buddies (enlisted men who have never seen combat) going out into the woods near one's late uncle's house to hunt wild pigs. Pretty soon the group meets up with two old hillbillies that used to be friends with the protagonist. The movie starts with a bunch of people wandering around in the woods finding mutilated animals until someone gets injured, the second act involves a murderous family of rednecks pursuing the group through the woods, and the third act is where shit gets really fucked up. If you're not looking for this movie on Amazon right now, then you're dead inside.


In a world of bland clean-cut protagonists, there's no reason why Travis Aaron Wade's John Hickman should be anything more. This is why it's so shocking and amazing that John really comes into his own by act two, and by act 3 he's easily a guy to root for even though he has no spectacular character traits to speak of, nor any sort of character arc. He's a grumpy country boy living in the city at the beginning and that's what he is at the end, but he remains one ofthe better reserved protagonists I've seen in movies of this type.

Tina Huang's Brooks is another example of a character I shouldn't care about. She starts out the movie as some sort of anti-war activist painter who tags along on he hunting trip seemingly just to annoy the audience by being the typical annoying anti-machismo strawman. But just like John, Brooks shows herself to be pretty awesome in act two, proving to be an expert marksman and a cool headed sensible horror heroine that's not going to just run into the woods screaming like an idiot with her tits bouncing. She's also really hot, so... bonus!

Howard Johnson Jr.'s character is a necessary evil in a movie like this. He's an enlisted soldier with no combat experience, he's a truly annoying rude shithead and a complete fucking idiot. Easily every single bad thing that happens in this movie is his fault. He comes into his own toward the end of act 2 but unfortunately doesn't get to do much in act 3. Still he plays a truly hate-able character that somehow becomes endearing partway through.

Jason Foster plays the closest thing to a villain in the movie (aside of course, from the giant pig.) Foster's Jake is your typical backwoods tough who's too obviously gotten high on his own ability to bully others around with intimidation and violence. He's a capable villain (of the 5 of 6 this movie has) and plays his part well enough to be menacing even before his character shows signs of becoming violent.

Bryonn Bain plays a tall black hippie in a tie-dyed toga that carries a Kurkri Machete and grows weed in the forest. I would delve further into this but I've told you all you need to know to realize his greatness. A part early on where he calls Howard Johnson Jr. a "negro" is one of the first big laughs the movie gets.


I know it may sound like I'm being sarcastic talking about this movie. It most likely sounds like pure kitsch and certainly the events that take place in this movie are absolutely ridiculous, but that doesn't mean they're not strong enough to stand on their own. Every time Rob Zombie makes a movie, this is the type of movie he's trying to make.

Sure the gore is well done and it's plentiful enough to satisfy most people watching for that alone. But the story is awesome and with each section that unfolds, it just gets better. Sure we know the moment we see the family of hyper-Christian rednecks that they're going to go after the main characters before the movie is over, we know machete hippie is up to no good, and we know that at some point a giant pig is going to show up and wreck some shit up. But each time it happens it happens in such a way that it seems fresh and damn near illegally entertaining.

James Issac, director of "Skinwalkers" and "Jason X", directed this movie and I had no idea that he had something this good in his system. Never once does the movie feel bogged down or boring and things unfold in the most amazing way channeling movies like "Razorback", "Deliverance", and "Apocalypse Now" in some sort of melting pot to make a movie that's as memorable as it is amazingly good.

This is a giant pig movie, yet we don't even get to see the pig until the end of Act 3 and it's completely missing from Act 2. Yet it never feels like the movie's dragging its feet, giving you plenty of suspense or action to chew on as you wait patiently for the pig to show up.

Clearly the movie is based more than a little bit on the legend of Hogzilla (the infamous pig even gets name-dropped at one point) and the writer easily could have made this another "monster systematically kills kids in the woods movie", but instead (just like in "Razorback" and the upcoming South Korean pig movie "Chaw") we're left to focus on the characters and villains far more evil and disturbing than the giant boar on the cover.

My only complaints are that the movie ends on a strange note, and one scene involves two characters being left for dead and we're just left to assume that they died without so much as even seeing their bodies later in the movie.

The soundtrack is also a big part of the "Pig Hunt" experience, mostly due to the score by Les Claypool (AKA, the reason that "Primus" sounds like "Primus") who also cameos as preacher collared leader of the hillbilly clan.


If you even have a mild love of horror then there's absolutely no reason why you should walk away from this movie displeased. It's a monster movie that dares to look beyond its own definition and be something fun and memorable. This movie is not a rent, it's a definite buy.

I give "Pig Hunt" a 5 out of 5.

Operation: Endgame (2010)


Directed by: Fouad Mikati

Starring: Joe Anderson, Rob Corddry, Ellen Barkin, Odette Yustman
Other Actors of Note: Brandon T. Jackson, Ving Rhaimes, Emille de Ravin, Zach Galifianakis, Beth Grant, Bob Odenkirk, Jeffrey Tambor

Plot: A battle ensues among groups of government spy teams in an underground facility after their boss is assassinated. Taken from www.imdb.com

I love it when a comedy pushes itself to be something more. Sure you can drop as many f bombs and be as gross-out and sexual as you like, but when a comedy is truly at its greatest is when it steps across a line into something else, something darker.

"Tropic Thunder" did this, "Punch Drunk Love" did this, and "Employee of the Month" (the one with Matt Dillon, not the one with Dane Cook) did this (though it overstepped its bounds and finished off with a shitty ending that ruined the entire movie.)

So naturally when I hear about a black comedy that's like a cross between "Battle Royale" and "Mean Guns" (Remember "Mean Guns?" Of course you don't you silly bastard, it was terrible!) that promised to be all manner of violent and gory, I immediately signed up.

The set-up is simple: Our hero Fool (Played by "The Crazies'" Joe Anderson) has just landed a job aboard Omega Team in a secret underground facility in Washington, DC. The group he's joined deal with assassinations, cover-ups, and all manner of sneaky underground spy shit.

After meeting with his contact High Priestess (Maggie Q) and new boss Chariot (Rob Corddry) -they're all codenamed after tarot cards- he's brought down into the underground facility where he meets with his old flame Temperance (Odette Yustman). Soon, team leader Devil (Jeffrey Tambor) is killed, but not before setting off a program called Endgame that will delete all files in the space of one hour before filling the entire underground complex with napalm.

Now the spies are caught downstairs, with Team Alpha ordered to kill Team Omega, and the mysterious Hermit (Zach Galifianakis) knowing the only way out.


There are a lot of interesting characters in this movie, but Joe Anderson's protagonist "Fool" is not one of them. Fool is about as dry and uninteresting as protagonists seem to come. This movie seems to be the inverse of Anderson's role in "The Crazies" where his screen presence stole just about every scene he was in. As a hero, Fool isn't much and as such I didn't really care that much whether he lived or died.

Odette Yustman's Temperance is another weak point of the film. She's some sort of femme fatale that goes around and sleeps with world leaders and dictators to leak information from them. She's also not the least bit likeable and I couldn't give less of a fuck about her former relationship with Fool.

Rob Corddry saves this move, and I say this with absolute sincerity. I'm not a big fan of Rob Corddry. He was pretty good on the Daily Show but everything since then has been utter shit. In fact there is no reason why this character should have worked, because Chariot seems like a carbon copy of Corddry's character from "Harold and Kumar Go to Guantanimo Bay" at first glance, but he is. Chariot is a foul-mouthed drunken asshole that seems to either brood or yell the entire movie, he always seems to be mad, and doesn't have the least bit of respect for anyone. But Chariot is charmingly hilarious, walking around sipping whiskey out of a bottle shaped like a Baretta, and when the action starts he kicks a whole lot of ass. However, what really makes Corddry the best part of this movie is that he really acts. There's a lot of Chariot under the surface about how he's not happy with the life he lives and cares a great deal about the agents he has control over. I never in my life dreamed that Rob Corddry could have given a performance like this and I dare say that I hope to see more of him in the future.

Ellen Barkin plays some horrible cougar named Empress that leads Alpha Team. She's pretty much the bitchiest bitch you ever did meet and the disturbing amount of collagen in her lips services to make the svelte body in the red dress she possesses that much more confusing to my libido. She's effectively the "bad guy" of the movie though she doesn't really seem to be worse than any of the rest of alpha team.

Brandon T. Jackson (Alpa Chino from "Tropic Thunder") and Emille de Ravin (Claire from "Lost) play a hyper conservative black man and a psychotic Jesus freak; respectively "Tower" and "Heirophant" of Team Alpha. Both are batshit crazy and a little bit creepy and give decent performances that are at least slightly more memorable than the rest.

Ving Rhaimes is given a one-joke character named Judgement. Judgement's entire purpose in the movie is to make bad puns using the words "Judgement" or "Judge." He's in the movie until he stops being funny (see: immediately) and then dies. Hooray.

Zach Galifianakis plays Hermit. Easily the weirdest character in this or any other movie I've ever seen. Hermit used to do assassinations until he got diabetes, now he wanders around the complex in a hazmat suit and gas mask for reasons never really explained. This character does rely a bit on Galifianakis' brand name weirdness, but that doesn't take away from the character and he was doing these roles since long before he got famous.

Oh, Bob Odenkirk is in this. His comedic abilities are absolutely wasted on his character but he does a very good job.


Technically, this movie looks great and the special effects all look top shelf despite this being a semi-indie movie. The characters (except Fool and Temperance) are all interesting and well fleshed out.

The plot remains solid, keeping things funny throughout without taking away from the more serious aspects of them film. For this alone, the director should be honored. It's no easy task keeping a balance like that.

The movie is inter-cut with scenes of Barack Obama's inauguration speech, sort of as a way of showing why the spies are being phased out and their base and files being destroyed. It's a great story of the old regime covering up the dirty works that the new regime would not approve of.

I'm told that the original script, titled "Rogue's Gallery" was much more comedic and had a different ending. I think the ending to this, which I wont ruin, is a bit of a let down. However, the ending isn't a deal breaker like it the ending of "Employee of the Month"


It's not a perfect movie, some actors are wasted, other actors have too much screen time, there's a few plot holes, and the ending leaves something to be desired. But if you're looking for a good gory, funny, dark, serious comedy and a damn fine movie for a first time director, this movie is for you.

I give "Operation: Endgame" a 4 out of 5.