Mini-review: Cartel Land (2015)

Perhaps the scariest, most effective thing about this documentary is the fact that not only does it not have an ending, but there appears to be none in sight.

Following a group of Mexican civilian vigilantes out to fight the drug cartels and corrupt government controlling their country, this film doesn't tell a story as much as it paints a picture: A bleak picture. I'm genuinely uncertain as to how much of the footage here was real and how much was staged, because there have been few films to put you so close to gunfire and chaos as this. The effect is both shocking, and in the strangest sense, a release. There's something almost cathartic about being able to vicariously let out your aggression through these people who have finally had enough of being strongarmed and forced into a life of fear and poverty. The corruption and evil these people have witnessed is almost too much to imagine, and to finally see people fighting back against an unjust system is a welcome sight...up to a point. You see, the film doesn't simply leave it at this. It digs deeper and raises questions on morality and justice. In a challenging moment, this group is confronted by an outside community of enraged civilians and we begin to find ourselves asking, in the end, are they doing more harm than they are good? For in many ways, when you fight fire with fire, you run the risk of burning everything to the ground. There are no easy answers, but the questions will linger in your mind long after the final shots are fired.

RATING: 8/10

Man With The Screaming Brain - Review

Bruce Campbell. A man who, in the world of campy b-movie cheesiness, needs no introduction. This movie is what happens when you allow him to have complete creative control. How does it turn out? Well, it's kind of a bit of a mixed bag. By which I mean 90% of it is basically idiotic, unfocused crap, with a relative few jokes that actually land sort of splashed in between.

Things To Come

Miss me?

Cinemapocalypse was too clunky of a title. I felt too much pressure to be fresh and original. I want my old blog back.

Sooooo, get ready for a new top 50 countdown of my favorite cheesy, so-bad-that-they're-good campy-ass B-movies. I will also be starting writing more small reviews updating my lovely viewers on the movies and TV shows I've been watching. As always, with special focus on the movies of this year that I've seen. Once I get my desktop computer set up, I'll be back in business and ready to take on the world of film, one piece of garbage at a time. So let's get started.

A Fresh Start!

Mostly for the sake of freshness, I have decided to move to a new blog. No new posts will emerge under the Jeff S.C. Presents banner. The new blog is still currently under what I will call construction, but is really more of a work in progress that won't ever be truly completed until I have a domain name that has a nice clean ".com" without the silly inclusion of "blogspot" in the URL.

So what becomes of the content on this blog? It will remain here, available for future viewing. The new blog will have content much like this one, only with shorter reviews (50-100 words each, generally), so as to give me more time to focus on other activities outside of blogging, and make this feel less like a job, and more like a fun thing for me to do in my spare time.

The new blog is currently in the middle of the re-naming process, but at the moment can be found here or by typing "thecinemapocalypse.blogspot.com" into your browser and hitting the "Enter" key. You can also click on the word click as seen right here and it will send you to the new blog. As you can see, there are many ways to find it, so you have no excuse not to come and take a quick look if you find any of my content even remotely interesting.

What will be posted there will also be largely pertaining to movie-related things, with lots of mini-reviews and lists. Anyone have any recommendations for me? Just throw them out there. Anyone can comment on my blog, though I will filter out spam, seeing as how I don't have a mortgage and I'm not particularly interested in purchasing insurance for a house that I also don't have.

Join me, loyal readers, and we can once again bask in the glory of movies together. Don't be a stranger. My mommy told me not to talk to strangers...

Top 25 Best Movies of 2013: Part I (#25-11)

My original plan of making my year-end countdown into a massive video list fell apart once I realized that my face/voice on camera was a horrifying combination more suitable for being on display in the Mutter Museum than it would as a YouTube video. The result made me quite sad, as I was hoping to nerd-out about how much I love movies for 40 minutes on video, but now that I'm typing this, I can definitely see why the very thought of this was terrible from the very beginning.

And now, before I scare everyone away, here are my top 25 favorite movies of 2013: