Scre4m (2011)

★★★
Kevin Williamson used the time well between Scream 3 and Scre4m. In those eleven years, he saved up enough good ideas and had the opportunity to watch how horror movies were evolving in the new millennium. His movie is shockingly prescient. Social media is making stars out of anyone who can acquire a large following by creating and posting videos (I hate the word "content") that show everything from the ordinary to the outrageous, but the extent to which some creators will go to gain validation has gotten worse since this movie came out in 2011. Scre4m exposes the dark and ugly side of online fame. Watching someone find a lost kitten sounds benign until you realize it was staged.

Sicario (2015)

★★★
Capsule Review

A deliberately slow pace is not the end all be all to building suspense. Sicario is a crime drama involving U.S. law enforcement and Mexican drug traffickers, and everything about it indicates a top end production. It has a stellar cast, a gifted director (Denis Villeneuve) and amazing cinematography. There are two masterful sequences. The film opens with a raid on a house with suspected human traffickers. Kate Macer (Emily Blunt), who participated in the raid, is then recruited to join a task force that is targeting a drug lord. Macer and her new comrades execute a tense infiltration into Ciudad Juárez to take custody of the drug lord's associate and bring him back over the border. Beyond these two scenes, the movie chugs along at a plodding pace with little else going for it except arguments between Kate and task force lead Matt Graver (Josh Brolin). Benicio del Toro also stars, but he also appeared in the superior crime/drug movie Traffic from 2000. This is a solid movie but not something I would revisit.

© 2025 Silver Screen Reviews

Spring Breakers (2013)

★★★½
Did Harmony Korine ever attend spring break? I wondered that as I watched Spring Breakers, a movie that could be seen either as an exaggerated account from someone who absorbed the imagery of spring break through years of watching spring break movies or an accurate on-location report from a real spring break gathering but amped up to highlight the hedonistic nature of the annual event. Someone could come away with either interpretation or maybe another that I haven't considered yet. Korine is a cinematic wild child who doesn't shy away from excess, so the spring break setting is the perfect place for him to indulge in his tendencies. He walks a tight rope here, and this time he pulls it off. I've seen Gummo, which featured a fragmented narrative about the residents of a poor town, though it was unsatisfactory because his camera was more fascinated with behavior than providing any insight into that behavior. The unreliable narrator seemed to distance him and us from his subjects.

Save the Green Planet! (2003)

★★★
Capsule Review

Paranoia fuels this little shocker from South Korea. In Save the Green Planet!, a loner and conspiracy theorist kidnaps a high-profile C.E.O. and holds him hostage because he is convinced that this public figure is an alien from the Andromeda galaxy. Lee Byeong-gu (Shin Ha-kyun) and his girlfriend Suni (Hwang Jeong) bind and gag their victim Kang Man-shik (Baek Yoon-sik) and torture him until he confesses. I watched this after watching the American remake Bugonia, and the remake is the better version of the same story. Writer and director Jang Joon-hwan came up with this highly original concept and filmed it with passion, but his completed project had room to improve. Kang's manipulation of Lee towards the end plays too quickly. I preferred Emma Stone's calculating persuasion. Jang's movie is a great template, but on its own as a study of paranoia and the extremes someone could take it, Save the Green Planet! works well enough.

© 2025 Silver Screen Reviews

Scream 3 (2000)

★★
The below review was written in 2000. After my rewatch, I looked at this review and decided to repost it and not write an update, since it largely explains my current feelings about the movie.

The first two Scream movies were all about being self-aware. They knew the conventions of horror movies and poked fun at them too. What they didn't do was fall victim to them. Scream 3, on the other hand, is a by-the-numbers slasher flick that offers a few chuckles but otherwise doesn't have anything new to say. Even with the same director and the main actors of the series returning, Scream 3 falls short of expectations. Maybe that's because Kevin Williamson didn't write this installment. Ehren Kruger (any relation to Freddy?) has the screenwriting credit. Williamson does have a producer credit, though I have to wonder how much he was involved with the production, because this entry isn't as fresh as the first two.

Scream 2 (1997)

★★★
Scream 2 continues the premise of the original film and adds to it by featuring characters who not only know they're in a horror movie but also know that they are in a sequel to a horror movie. As Randy Meeks (Jamie Kennedy), the resident horror movie buff, helpfully explains to former deputy Dewey Riley (David Arquette), there are rules to follow regarding the body count, level of violence and suspects. Kevin Williamson returns as the screenwriter, and he has no shortage of ideas to explore in this sequel, which is amazing considering that he was a busy man during this time. In addition to this, he wrote 1997's I Know What You Did Last Summer and created Dawson's Creek, which premiered in early 1998. This time around, he toys with the conventions of slasher movie sequels and our expectations for them. The result is a movie that doesn't match its predecessor's originality but does feature a worthy mystery and engaging cast.

Scream (1996)

★★★½
Scream was the perfect storm that made landfall at the right time when it was needed the most. By 1996, the big three horror franchises of the '80s were finished. Freddy was dead, Jason went to Hell and Michael had one last shot at relevance with 1995's dreadful Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers before his series ran out of gas. There were still notable horror movies in the first half of the '90s (Candyman, Body Snatchers), but the outlook for the slasher movie genre looked bleak. It was just as well. Most were just obvious cash grabs with little to offer beyond what had already been done better by John Carpenter and Wes Craven. It would be Craven himself who saw an opportunity to reflect on the genre and toy with its conventions in his 1994 feature Wes Craven's New Nightmare, but its low box office haul showed that something was missing to make this kind of movie appealing again.

Sugar Cane Alley (1983)

★★★½
José (Garry Cadenat) lives a hard life in the sugar cane fields of 1930s Martinique. He is an orphan being raised by his grandmother. His childhood is only a brief respite before he is strong enough to work in the fields for the rest of his life to make a paltry sum that will barely sustain him. His prospects don't appear too bright. We see that in the early scenes. Slavery is officially illegal on these Caribbean islands, but the workers toil away as if they were still chained to an existence imposed on their ancestors. The workers are free, but they are free to do what? They have no resources to move out of the shacks to learn new skills. Slavery is still in the recent past, but maybe someone like José represents the future. He's a smart kid. He is resourceful. He sits and listens to the wise Medouze (Douta Seck) tell stories of Africa. He wants to travel there one day.

Sound of Freedom (2023)

★★★½
Finished in 2018 and shelved by Disney after its acquisition of Fox, Sound of Freedom finally makes it way to theaters five years later. The movie's journey to the big screen comes to us by way of producer Eduardo Verastegui's tireless efforts to pry the distribution rights from Disney's clutches and raise funds through grassroots efforts to get this story in front of audiences. I’m glad all the hard work paid off. This movie was too important to remain hidden away in a vault somewhere collecting dust. It tells the true story of Tim Ballard, played passionately here by Jim Caviezel, as a former agent of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security who found the limitations of his employer's jurisdiction insufficient for him to make enough of a difference. Early on, he and a colleague comment on the number of pedophiles they have arrested. It's a high number, but the number of children they have rescued is far too few. Dissatisfied with the bureaucratic obstacles in his path, Ballard eventually struck out on his own and founded an organization that aims to rescue children and raise awareness of the sickening crime of child trafficking.

Skyscraper (2018)

★★½
Like The Towering Inferno but without the crowded room of famous actors, Skyscraper does what you would expect it to do given the premise of a burning high rise and the presence of Dwayne Johnson. It's the kind of movie Sylvester Stallone would have made if this idea had been brought to him in the '80s. With a building falling apart around him and hindered by animated fire that is far from being perfected, Johnson barrels through the action with his signature gruffy tough-guy personality, but this time he has family placed at risk, which gives him the opportunity to show a softer side that works and is a welcome change of pace for the actor. A few surprises here and there keep the interest level high. For once, a Dwayne Johnson character is vulnerable and could fail. Late in the movie he realizes he no longer controls his destiny, and this results in a tender moment with his daughter to assure her of his love for her. The rest of the movie, though, feels like a retread of better action movies.

The Super Mario Bros. Movie (2023)

★★★
The Super Mario Bros. Movie is a fun animated adventure full of colorful landscapes and amusing characters. It has a simple plot, but it makes the most of its short runtime by inserting many references to its source material and various other adaptations over the years. I really liked the commercial jingle taken straight from the television series starring Captain Lou Albano as Mario from the late '80s. The movie is also a referendum on the modern state of film criticism and the D.E.I. culture that has become widely vocal over the last six years. I don't wish to position Illumination's latest success story in the culture war, but its attackers have forced the issue. The movie has no motivation behind it other than to entertain. Children will love it for its beautiful character design and humorous situations. It is thrilling in all the ways that will captivate its young fans. Adults who are long-time devotees of the games—along with those who are not, this is not a movie that excludes curious outsiders—will appreciate the attention to detail and the respect given to Nintendo's mascot. This is a passion project. Nevertheless, leave it to the race hustlers to attack it for not fitting into their agenda.

Searching (2018)

★★★
Searching (2018) is a thriller that takes place entirely on a computer monitor. It is not the first of its kind—Unfriended came out in 2014, and that wasn't even the first—but it is a superior example of a genre on the rise. The potential for storytelling in the so-called screenlife format has yet to be fully tapped, but these early examples prove that the sky's the limit, or in this case, the internet's the limit. Here is a film that ingeniously uses websites, software, applications and cameras to tell the tale. Not only that, but the movie even conveys emotion through mouse clicks and keyboard entry actions. When a character hesitates, this act manifests not through facial gestures but through a cursor and the backspace key. Watching this movie was a thrill.

Smile (2022)

★★★
The bottomless well of inspiration that is 2002's The Ring (itself a remake of the Japanese original Ringu) strikes again with Smile, an effective and scary horror movie that has several really good moments of terror. The story is interesting enough. It's a mystery featuring a main character racing against the clock and searching for clues to end the terrifying events going on around her, but the urgency with which writer and director Parker Finn tell this tale slowly gnaws at our natural desire for a positive outcome. As the story progresses, that sort of resolution becomes more and more difficult to attain, as the movie heavily stacks the deck against the heroine. The revelations and temporary respites provide moments of hope, though. The premise, once we understand it, is intriguing, and it logically opens the door to additional obstacles and dangers while staying true to the internal mythology.

Stuck on You (2003)

★★★
The Farrelly brothers hit a small road bump with Shallow Hal, but with Stuck on You, they're back in top form. Peter and Bobby have had a great amount of success with their comedies, starting with Dumb and Dumber in 1994. They're showing no signs of slowing down.

Shrek (2001)

★★½
Shrek (2001) rode a wave of success following the rise of Pixar and the production of C.G.I movies outside of the Pixar umbrella like Antz. For its time, it was groundbreaking, and it still is. The character design is amazing. The vivid, detailed imagery is outstanding and holds up today. Like Antz, it featured adult humor, and its soundtrack contained modern pop hits that stand in contrast to its medieval setting. A Knight's Tale would do the same several years later. The voice actors embody their characters just as well as the actors do in Pixar's output. I loved the movie when it came out, so imagine my surprise when, after watching it again years later, my reaction wasn't so enthusiastic. The technical details are still spectacular, and it's easy to get swept away by them, but the characters—Shrek himself and Donkey in particular—have not retained their appeal.

The Sweetest Thing (2002)

★★½
The Sweetest Thing has an immediate likeability about it. It's kind of sweet, has some funny scenes and the actresses are charming. After giving it some thought, though, I realized that because the movie takes place in the real world, the things that happen in it are far-fetched and included for the sake of shock value. Most of the blame for this can be placed with screenwriter Nancy Pimental. She also writes episodes of South Park, so I can only assume that the extreme sexual nature of The Sweetest Thing can be attributed to that show's influence.

Scorched (2003)

★★★
Scorched came and went so fast it passed virtually unnoticed in the public's eye. At first sight, that doesn't seem like a big deal. Receiving top billing are Alicia Silverstone and Rachael Leigh Cook, two actresses who delivered terrific performances in their respective breakout movies but have since slipped into obscurity with few successes after their initial brush with fame.

Scream (2022)

★★
I once wrote, in my review for Scream 3, that I hope there isn’t another installment. Years later, there was another installment, Scre4m, which turned out to be a strong entry in the series. Now I’m going to say it again. I hope there isn’t a Scream 6, because Scream (not called Scream 5), is a weak entry. While it cleverly tackles the latest trend of soft reboots (as seen in Star Wars and Jurassic Park) and the motivation for making them and featuring a Ghostface killer who follows the rules for soft reboot storytelling, the movie plods along, devolving into a standard slasher affair instead of rising above it. The first, second and fourth installments managed to incorporate the formulaic construction of slasher movies into gripping stories. This one, and part 3, fall victim to their source material.

She's All That (1999)

★★★
My favorite shot in She’s All That lasts about five seconds at the end. Laney Boggs smiles as Zack Siler embraces being on the losing end of a bet. The camera zooms in on Laney, who's laughing with such gusto, like she just set free a lifetime of frustration. Sixpence None the Richer’s “Kiss Me” plays on the soundtrack. Credits roll. I love it. It summarizes her journey from unpopular art student to someone ready to combine her strengths with her newfound confidence and enter a new chapter in her life. It’s fitting that this movie came out in 1999. With the new millennium just around the corner, she has the opportunity to leave her old self behind and step into another era and start anew.

Stealing Harvard (2003)

★★
Stealing Harvard starts out well enough before descending into a pathetic bore. Even then, the movie almost pulls it off. Jason Lee carries the film on his shoulders, turning in a sincere and amusing performance in a movie that doesn't give him much support. If there is any reason to see this mess, then it is Jason Lee. When left to do what he does best, Lee is engaging and funny, but when left to the requirements of this screenplay (which is most of the time), he is a victim of abuse.