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…

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…

High on the heels of the runaway box office hit “Paranormal Activity,” another “found footage” scare flick has entered the scene just shy of the Halloween season. Touting itself as a dramatization of supposedly real taped hypnosis sessions that reveal alien abductions, the creators of “The Fourth Kind” made a sizable gamble. “The Blair Witch Project” was ten years ago and found footage films had not regained a foothold in the genre until “Paranormal Activity” came around. Add to the fact no one expected the escalating hype and sudden wide release of “PA” and “The Fourth Kind” gets the lucky boost it needs for box office success. There’s one major difference between these two films…

I’m giving this one 4 and 1/2 out of 5 stars. Now you know how I feel about it right off the bat. Why the urgency? Because like many others, I waffled in seeing it. For this reason, it’s tanking like Ishtar which isn’t fair at all because it’s a great sci-fi film that deserves a dedicated following of fans, and it may not be in the theaters much longer.

It’s one of the oldest pitches in the book: “A guy wakes up in a ______ with amnesia, so he must solve the mystery of who he is, how he got there and why someone (or something) is after him.”…

I like science fiction films that make me think, but sometimes a concept really gets my gears moving. Films with robots tend to catch my fancy. I even taught an English unit to high school students involving classic short stories about robots and how they could have a positive or negative effect on society. 95% of the time, the stories lean toward the negative. “Surrogates,” based off of a graphic novel, is no exception. While engaging and moderately exciting, it raises more questions that it answers…

Whew, back from a relaxing vacation to bring you an indie film that needs more exposure.

Set in the future where fears of terrorism have made travel across the border between America and Mexico nearly impossible, native Mexicans find a new, high-tech method of illegal immigration. Luis Fernando Pena plays Memo, a young man who reads “Hacking for Beginners” books and tinkers with his own surveillance equipment at his father’s struggling farm in Mexico. The U.S. Government has…

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….

Count yourself lucky if you’ve ever seen this movie prior to today. It’s a rare find on DVD and appears sporadically on the Independent Film Channel. It Came Without Warning aka Without Warning aka Alien Warning aka The Warning aka Alien Encounter aka Alien Shock scared the heck out of me in 1980 with its shocking televised promo spots. The normally tame programming would interrupt to show humans being attacked by frisbee monsters thrown by a giant alien with an over-sized noggin. At 4 (or possibly 5) years old, I was horrified at seeing those images.

Years later, I had completely forgotten the name of the…

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…

Like some kind of evil sequel to Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind, The Fourth Kind takes real file footage from supposed alien abductees under hypnosis in Nome, Alaska and fictionalizes their stories for the silver screen.

Milla Jovovich plays Abby, a shrink who discovers a disturbing similarity in her patients’ nightmares. They all have visions of an owl at their window, paralysis, intense fear, yadda-yadda. The deeper she delves into this mystery, the scarier it gets. Under hypnosis, patients relive their terror as aliens…

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…

Google has just officially scared me. To understand this, you have to bear with me here…

Anyone who’s tried to watch Shane Carruth’s indie sci-fi thriller Primer (made for only $7000) probably had to do a lot of head scratching to figure it out. Me? I flat out couldn’t follow it. The plot is too complex, the acting is too monotone for me to pay full attention and the time travel concept behind it is too cerebral even for me. It made me feel so thick-headed that I got frustrated with it and put it out of my mind. Fast forward to today…

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.

I’ve been in denial for years over this film. Tried to convince myself that I didn’t actually see this movie in the theater… but I did.

Undoubtedly one of the the worst movies of the 80’s, Yor: Hunter from the Future made absolutely no sense and unapologetically oozed cheese from every celluloid frame it projected. Cashing in on the Sword and Sorcery/sci-fi hybrids of the early part of the decade (shared with films like Flash Gordon, Krull and Metalstorm: The Destruction of Jared-Syn), Yor features American actor Reb (I played Captain American once) Brown running around in a loincloth, bad blond wig and a stone axe across a prehistoric landscape…

Meant for high-brow audiences, it’s obvious the filmmakers intended this film to score at least a limited theatrical release. With an impressive cast, a high concept story and a horrifyingly suspenseful plot, The Killing Room has the formula for cult classic status. It premiered at Sundance this year resulting in a moderate amount of buzz.

An NSA psychologist (Chloë Sevigny) arrives at an unnamed facility to interview for a career-advancing position. She’s immediately put at unease by…

Not since The Empire Strikes Back have I anticipated a movie so eagerly. Tron was one of the biggest cinematic staples of my childhood. I can’t imagine a world without it. Finally, we are about to get a sequel. Tron Legacy (formerly Tron 2.0 and TR2N) has been a twinkle on the horizon for many years now. Four years ago or so, Jeff Bridges did an interview wearing his old Flynn helmet which sparked speculation that something was on stove. Rumors emerged…