Thanksgiving (2023)

Based on a one-note joke and a fake trailer from Grindhouse (2007), Eli Roth's Thanksgiving aims to become a new holiday classic (especially since there aren't enough turkey-themed slasher pics). A pilgrim wearing a John Carver mask (a fitting name if there ever was one) goes around slicing people up around the festive season. I know we've seen it all before, but it somehow manages to be entertaining without feeling like a complete cliché. My only complaint is that they went hard with the gore, but not enough with the big floppy titties. If you're going to do a throwback slasher flick, you have to provide the skin to go along with it. I found myself going back to the original Grindhouse trailer just to see how much things have changed in the 16 intervening years (note the big floppy titties).

3 waffle irons out of 5

SCREAM 3 [1999]

When the scriptwriter of your trilogy doesn't have the time to do the final instalment, you wait till he does have the time. Don't get some schmuck to pen it instead...and that's exactly what happened here.
Scream 3 has some promising elements but in the end it's just plain bad. It loses that perfect balance of horror and satire and comes off as an episode of Scooby-Doo or Abbot & Costello (mansion filled with secret passageways and trapdoors included). Even the new characters are boring and snotty. You just can't wait for them to bite the biscuit.
Such a shame. It left such a bitter taste in my mouth for 12 years.

2 Jay & Silent Bob's? out of 5

TRANSFORMERS: DARK OF THE MOON [2011]

I walked out of the theater at the hour and fifteen minute mark of this shitfest. So I figured if budarc could sit through Priest twice then I could sit through this beginning to end.
I'm not sorry I missed the remainder of the movie, however I would have liked to have seen the final hour in IMAX 3D, with the exception of the final showdown which is a HUGE letdown. Giant robots fight. Things go boom in slow-motion. Plenty of ass shots...and that's just Shia's face. Victoria Secret model Rosie Huntington-Whiteley gets plenty of exploitive shots as well.
As a CGI effect and sound effects film this is a work of art...for story, acting, direction and anything else is a steaming pile of shit.

1 "Missed It By That Much" out of 5