Category: All Posts

Advice Column #6 (4/22/13)

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Hottest naked female on screen ever, please. Thanks! – Jason B.

Cody Clarke: This is such an easy question to answer. There are thousands and thousands of possible picks, all of them completely valid. But I’m gonna go way out of left field here with an obscure, underdog as fuck choice: (NSFW, obviously)

Editor’s Note (12/4/14): We no longer answer movie questions through our advice column. We answer them in the mailbag segment of our podcast. Send them to Cody@SmugFilm.com and we will answer on the show!
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The 10 Best Movies You’ve Never Seen

I realize it’s a little presumptuous to say you’ve never seen these movies.  Some of you out there may have seen a few, but some are so rare I’m almost certain they have only been seen by like one dude other than myself.  And some, I’m sorry to say, are virtually unavailable.  So you may have to do some digging.  But it’s more than worth it.

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10.  Audience of One (2007) | Dir. Mike Jacobs | 88 min.

I had the pleasure of seeing this little-known documentary at a bar in Brooklyn a few years ago.  Rather than wax on about how great it is, I’ll just tell you what it’s about, because you’ll immediately want to see it.
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The Innkeepers: A Crappy Horror Movie That Could’ve Been One of the Best Ever

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The Innkeepers (2011)
Written & Directed by Ti West
101 min.

Spoilers ahead. But not in the two paragraphs directly below this sentence.

What happened with this one? It really makes no sense how it could be so bad. The House of the Devil, Ti West’s film right before this, is pitch-perfect. A modern classic dripping with maturity. Easily one of my favorite horror movies of all time. The Innkeepers, however, is blatantly botched. So much so that it’s hard to believe he didn’t make it prior to The House of the Devil. How does one go from being the most intelligent horror writer-director around to being a hack in two short years? Did he get hit on the head or something?

I suspect the studio insinuated itself during the writing process, with awful script notes and the like. The thing just plain feels tinkered with and compromised, because the story starts off solid, and where he seemed to be going with it was genius and groundbreaking. And then unfortunately, for whatever reason, knowingly or unknowingly, he veered off onto a well-worn, safe, hackneyed path that robbed it entirely of depth.
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Advice Column #5 (4/15/13)

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Any recent good overlooked action movies? I liked The Raid but haven’t seen much else worth a damn. – John T.

John D’Amico: Short answer: yes. Long answer: yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes.

Editor’s Note (12/4/14): We no longer answer movie questions through our advice column. We answer them in the mailbag segment of our podcast. Send them to Cody@SmugFilm.com and we will answer on the show!
Continue reading Advice Column #5 (4/15/13)

10 Audacious Zombie Movies

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A gorgeous shot from The Plague of the Zombies (1966).

Now that Mad Men‘s back and I’m watching AMC, I keep seeing ads for The Walking Dead. I really, really, really don’t like The Walking Dead.

Even setting aside its dubious social politics, I think it’s thoughtless and ugly and boring. It has a routine as codified and rigid as Scooby Doo, but instead of that show’s good-natured-if-dull hippyism, it’s got nothing but contempt for its characters and audience. It’s a death march to samesy gore scenes in which the human body pulls apart as easily as tissue paper full of spaghetti sauce. I’m not impressed, and I resent it.
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