COOP COOPER is an independently syndicated film critic with a split personality. His “Southern Side” prints mainstream reviews that appear in various print publications across the mid-south. His “Dark Side” from Los Angeles befouls the site with reviews of horror and grindhouse flicks. Welcome to the site where COOP’s two halves (and his contributors) review and debate the latest film/DVD releases…

Here’s a movie with an ambitious story and message that almost pulled it off.

Denzel Washington plays a cat-eating, machete-wielding post apocalyptic badass named Eli who walks the Earth (like Caine in “Kung Fu”) and carries a book that is supposed to save the remainder of the planet’s population 33 years after nuclear war. He runs afoul of Carnegie (Gary Oldman), the honcho of a wild west-style town who has been searching for the book for years with plans to use it to control the masses rather than save them. When he learns that Eli possesses it, he stops and nothing to get it…

With vampires en vogue at the moment, Hollywood has been struggling to figure out how to cash in on the latest horror movie craze. Understanding that not all viewers are enraptured by the “Twilight” phenomenon, studios have been struggling to develop vampire-themed properties that show potential for larger appeal. “Daybreakers” attempts a big-budgeted stab at making vampires marketable to the action-horror crowd, but the filmmakers don’t seem to realize when they’re flogging a dead horse…

Like any other venerable, once-popular property, Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes was bound to get a Hollywood redo sooner or later. Since I never much cared for the stuffy, British “Sherlock” films of the past, I welcomed the idea of a more stylized, updated version of the eccentric detective. Despite my usual dislike of the overrated English director, Guy Ritchie (better known as Madonna’s ex-husband), I felt his modern panache would mix well with the Victorian Era mystery genre. While all the right ingredients seemed present, the end result…

The most highly anticipated film of the year, “Avatar” marks director James Cameron’s first feature film since 1997’s “Titanic.” The notoriously meticulous filmmaker has painstakingly prepared this film, utilizing the largest motion picture budget to date. An estimated $300 million went into the making of this science fiction epic which boasts revolutionary 3-D imagery and supposedly “photo-real” special effects. Given Cameron’s exceptional track record for delivering some of the most successful mega-budget blockbusters of all time, “Avatar” has a lot to live up to…

The film gets off to a quick start as Clyde (Gerard Butler) watches as two thugs break into his house, render him immobile and kill his wife and little girl within the first 2 minutes of the movie. Months later, hotshot prosecutor Nick (Jamie Foxx) calculates that the offenders will get off unless he cuts a deal. Distraught, Clyde waits 10 years and then gets his revenge on the two killers in very creative ways. He allows himself to be caught and informs Nick that his revenge is not complete. Suddenly, Nick’s friends, colleagues and anyone else responsible for the miscarriage of justice start dying in a series of…

“Zombieland” is an R-rated “Ghostbusters” for the new millennium. This crowd-pleasing film has won over jaded audiences and critics from coast to coast, taking most of its inspiration from a source I did not anticipate… blockbuster comedies from the 1980’s. It has elements that put it in the same category as “Vacation” and “Planes, Trains and Automobiles,” resurrecting a tone and atmosphere I thought was long gone from the films of today. For this reason, I’m giving it my highest recommendation, not only to horror fans, but to those who miss the heyday of actors like Chevy Chase and Bill Murray.

Set months after the destruction of the world, neurotic college student Columbus (Jessie Eisenberg) has survived the zombie apocalypse by following his own set of obsessive/compulsive rules…

If you don’t know the guy then you probably didn’t frequent the same video stores I did in the 80’s and 90’s. Pyun’s direct-to-video releases were infamous for their high-entertainment value despite being made on the extreme fast and cheap. His most outstanding quality: Pyun has an uncanny ability for creating kick-ass action scenes.

His best film of all time was ironically his first. The Sword and the Sorcerer (1982) CLICK HERE FOR THE TRAILER has gone down in history as one of the best fantasy movies of the 80’s. It tells the story of…

I met Tupelo native Mike McCarthy at Ground Zero Blues Club in Clarksdale, Mississippi a little over two weeks ago and I found myself surprised to realize I’d heard of the guy. I caught his ultra low-budget film “Superstarlet A.D.”years back which was released by shlockmeister/producer Lloyd Kaufman, famous for his “Troma” brand of low budget exploitation flicks. I wasn’t a fan of the film, but I got a clear grasp for McCarthy’s style and obsessions. McCarthy spends his time in Memphis soaking up the hip Midtown scene and planning feature film projects. He fetishizes pin-up girls, rockabilly music and indie film… precisely all the ingredients that make up his latest opus, “Cigarette Girl.”…

Color me shocked. What looked like a loud, obnoxious, superficial action flick in the previews actually succeeded in making a meaningful (yet disturbing) social statement. Harkening back to the exploitative B-movie action films of the late 80’s and 90’s, “Gamer” begins as a sleazy, violent bloodbath with seemingly no redeeming cinematic value. Just as I started to turn my brain off, the story surprised me with some plot devices and story concepts way ahead of its time…

It’s an oddity of a film. Originally titled Dark Angel(???), this film capitalized on the late 80’s/early 90’s B-movie star power of Dolph Lundgren. Imitating a Shane Black, cop-buddy movie like Lethal Weapon or The Last Boy Scout, the film adds an additional element to the mix… a 9-foot tall alien drug dealer….

(NOTE: I’m delaying the next installment of HAIR METAL MOVIE MADNESS #11 for another week. Partially due to this week’s technical difficulties but also so I can save up some of the good horror ones for the month of October. Plus, this news was too juicy and I had to jump on it ASAP…)

My love for Boondock Saints (5 out of 5 stars!) has no bounds. Which is why with a heavy heart I still feel that a sequel should’ve never been made. Why? Because writer/director Troy Duffy didn’t deserve one. For those of you unfamiliar with the story, Saints involve a pair of illegal immigrant Irish twins, the McManus brothers (Sean Patrick Flannery and Norman Reedus) who get in a scrap with some local Russian mobsters in a Boston slum. After killing the mobsters in self defense, the brothers simultaneously get a divine vision instructing them to…

Possibly the first “smutty” movie I ever saw, Reform School Girls (1986) is not a movie to be taken seriously. At all. I didn’t understand that when I first saw it. I thought all R-rated movies were serious and therefore this was serious. I figured reform schools were evil places filled with bad, naked women… something that scared yet intrigued me. Kinda made me feel like “bad girls” new secrets and things that normal people weren’t supposed to know about. Mystery and danger.

Thus started my obsession of…

Recycling is all the rage these days. In my neighborhood up in the Pacific Northwest, it’s almost a religion. In Michigan it’s actually mandatory – but at 10¢ a can, who’s complaining? Yep, taking a discarded resource and reshaping it into a usable commodity for a fraction of the cost of producing new materials is nothing new. In fact Hollywood has been doing just that for decades…

Gerard Butler, once a D-list guy who once played Dracula 2000, soared to the status of ultra-badass status after playing the mythic King Leonidas in 300. Then he fumbled his new found success as an action star by starring in a couple of romantic comedies and a Guy Ritchie movie.

Now he’s poised to finally take his rightful place as a Hollywood star… at least for the rest of this year. His sci-fi action film Gamer releases next month. On October 16, a more promising film starring Butler releases…

Quentin Tarantino is a bona fide oddity in the modern film industry. The bulletproof director stays independent and non-union but he still manages to find the budget to fulfill his every whim. He takes his sweet time getting there, but what he creates often gains a massive amount critical/public scrutiny and acclaim. A long-gestating vanity project for Tarantino, “Inglourious Basterds” achieves some cinematic feats that rank it in the highest categories of cinema. For Tarantino fans, this is an admirable achievement. Unfortunately for…

I haven’t seen this much hype over something since Halley’s Comet back in ‘86. James Cameron’s 3-D sci-fi epic Avatar is so highly anticipated (or at least wants to be) that today Cameron has released 15 mins of free footage to be show in participating IMAX theaters all over the world. That’s right, people all over the world are going to a movie theater just to see a 15 minute trailer. Now, I’m a huge sci-fi fan but I’m no sucker…

Just when I think my home state was finally getting some decent movies portraying the state in a positive light (like The Blind Side which releases on Thanksgiving), the goons who thought it was a good idea to remake Straw Dogs decided it should take place in Mississippi instead of England this time.

Cue the inbred, violent, Southern redneck stereotypes…

There’s a reason why you haven’t heard the name of “District 9” director, Neill Blomkamp. An accomplished special effects wiz, “D-9” marks his first feature-length movie as a director. Based on his short film “Alive in Joburg,” Blomkamp received some high-ranking confidence from Producer/Director Peter Jackson who helped him get “D-9” off the ground with a meager budget of $30 million. Despite the relatively cheap price tag, Blomkamp has created one of the most…

Holy crap!!!

I was sooooo not prepared for the unbridled intensity and kick-assery of the new trailer for Legion. I don’t know if this is supposed to be some big-budgeted remake of The Prophecy or if it’s something new entirely. Whatever the case, you can see from the trailer that it is at least an homage to that film, plus several others by utilizing the Sam Raimi “Spook-a-blast” style with Terminator-style action.

Most children of the 80’s remember getting home from school and turning on the TV to watch a double dose of “Transformers” and “G.I. Joe” cartoons. In retrospect, these 30 minute time-wasters don’t hold up too well in the modern day of computer generated animation and not so easily impressed pre-teens. That didn’t stop Michael Bay from creating two mega-blockbuster “Transformers” films, nor did it discourage “The Mummy” series director Stephen Sommers from attempting a live-action “G.I. Joe” adaptation. For a big, dumb action movie idea, I’d say they hired the perfect director for the job.