ROTTEN TOMATOES: Michael Scrutchin

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Flipside Movie Emporium

MICHAEL SCRUTCHIN

Agrees with the Tomatometer 70% of the time.

Biography: Michael is a writer and film buff from Houston, Texas. In early 2000 he started Flipside Movie Emporium (www.flipsidemovies.com), a film website that covers current Hollywood films as well as the indies and B-movies that don't get any respect in mainstream media. A former member of the Online Film Critics Society (accepted in October 2001), he resigned in March 2004 for not keeping up with the society's required review quota (although he intends to return to the OFCS in the near future when he's back up to speed). He also writes screenplays and short stories, some of which are available at cinemascribe.com, his personal site.

Favorites:

The Apartment (Wilder, 1960)

The Best Years of Our Lives (Wyler, 1946)

Bride of Frankenstein (Whale, 1935)

Brief Encounter (Lean, 1946)

Carnival of Souls (Harvey, 1962)

Carrie (De Palma, 1976)

City Lights (Chaplin, 1931)

Chungking Express (Wong, 1994)

Dawn of the Dead (Romero, 1978)

Dazed and Confused (Linklater, 1993)

Heavenly Creatures (Jackson, 1994)

The Lady Eve (Sturges, 1941)

Magnolia (Anderson, 1999)

Manhattan (Allen, 1979)

My Life to Live (Godard, 1962)

Nashville (Altman, 1975)

Playtime (Tati, 1967)

Pulp Fiction (Tarantino, 1994)

Say Anything (Crowe, 1989)

The Shining (Kubrick, 1980)

A Simple Plan (Raimi, 1998)

Something Wild (Demme, 1986)

Stolen Kisses (Truffaut, 1968)

Sunrise (Murnau, 1927)

Touch of Evil (Welles, 1958)

Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (Lynch, 1992)

Vertigo (Hitchcock, 1958)

Wes Craven's New Nightmare (Craven, 1994)

Wild Strawberries (Bergman, 1957)

Written on the Wind (Sirk, 1956)

Publications: Flipside Movie Emporium

Total Reviews: 170
Total QuickRatings: 2

Location: Pearland, Texas

MOVIE REVIEWS ONLY

Rating	T-Meter	Title \| Year	Add Date (default)

Rotten C-	Rotten 35%	21 (2008)	" *I probably should have given it a lower grade, but I really, really* like watching Laurence Fishburne hurt people.**" Posted Mar 28, 2008
Fresh B	N/A	Savage Harvest 2 - October Blood (2006)	" A horror sequel that earns its existence with genuine heart and soul, rather than gallons of blood and flying body parts. But it has that too." Posted Sep 25, 2007
Fresh B	N/A	Interstate (2004)	" *From the ominous roadside locations and the shadow-rich cinematography to the immersive sound design, Interstate* is an immediate, gripping experience.**" Posted Feb 7, 2006
Fresh B	N/A	Sole Possessions (2005)	" As it builds to its frenzied climax, the film becomes an intriguing meditation on the free will of fictional characters." Posted Jan 13, 2006
Rotten C+	N/A	Creep (1995)	" As pure exploitative slasher-movie trash, it serves its purpose." Posted Jun 18, 2005
Rotten C-	N/A	The Undertow (2003)	" *For half of its 79-minute running time, The Undertow* meanders without tension, and then it nosedives into ineffectual, over-the-top savagery.**" Posted May 17, 2005
Fresh A-	Fresh 87%	A Tale Of Two Sisters (2003)	" Heart-stoppingly scary." Posted Dec 17, 2004
Rotten D+	N/A	Bram Stoker's The Mummy (1997)	" [A] plodding, lifeless bore -- a limp supernatural slasher that plays out against the backdrop of a stuffy drawing-room melodrama." Posted Oct 31, 2004
Rotten C+	N/A	Living Hell (2000)	" Living Hell's fun sense of dread gets tripped up in an increasingly contrived plotline, numbing scenes of physical torture, and a last-act nosedive into absurdity." Posted Oct 25, 2004
Fresh B-	N/A	Suburban Nightmare (2004)	" Might have been an insightful and resonant satire on relationships if only it didn't lose its way in the end amidst all the carnage." Posted Jun 29, 2004
Fresh B+	N/A	The Gosh Darned Mortgage (2001)	" Directed with such light-hearted, easygoing confidence by Pamela Sutch that it puts most sloppy and amateurish micro-budget productions to shame." Posted Apr 17, 2004
Fresh B-	N/A	Ozone (1993)	" Succeeds largely due to James Black's quietly charismatic lead performance and Bookwalter's considerable skill behind the camera." Posted Jan 27, 2004
Fresh A	Fresh 81%	Hard Eight (1997)	" *Packs a quietly devastating punch and perfectly encapsulates the oft-repeated line from Magnolia: 'We may be through with the past, but the past ain't through with us.'*" Posted Dec 20, 2003
Fresh B+	Fresh 76%	Expiration (2003)	" Smart, funny, and engaging, with a touching sense of humanity." Posted Oct 16, 2003
Fresh B+	Fresh 63%	Cabin Fever (2003)	" Cabin Fever's enthusiasm is wildly infectious." Posted Sep 17, 2003
Fresh B-	Rotten 57%	Killer Me (2001)	" Killer Me doesn't really explore any uncharted territory, but it's a solid, unnerving debut for writer-director [Zachary] Hansen." Posted Sep 11, 2003
Fresh B-	Rotten 41%	Freddy vs. Jason (2003)	" When they finally duke it out, it's great fun, and the blood-soaked final moments of the battle even achieve a graceful, poetic elegance." Posted Aug 24, 2003
Fresh A-	N/A	Bloodletting (1997)	" *It's not* a body count movie but rather a delightfully twisted, shamelessly ironic, and shockingly funny tragicomic love story.**" Posted Aug 6, 2003
Rotten C+	N/A	Truth or Dare? (1986)	" *For all its unbelievably bad acting, cheesy violence, and eye-popping inconsistencies, Truth or Dare* is so bad it's actually pretty damned entertaining.**" Posted Jul 14, 2003
Rotten D	N/A	Vampira/Night Vamps (2002)	" B-movie aficionados shouldn't bother, but those seeking bargain-basement titillation may find plenty to enjoy here. I didn't." Posted Jun 10, 2003
Fresh B	Rotten 40%	Wrong Turn (2003)	" *Up until the final act, Wrong Turn* is a taut, suspenseful, and scary throwback to backwoods horror classics like The Hills Have Eyes and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.**" Posted May 30, 2003
Rotten C+	Rotten 40%	Three Marias (2003)	" While there's a stirring sense of urgency and purpose that drives the first act, a plodding pace and stagnant character development do nothing to keep things engaging as it ambles toward its predictable conclusion." Posted May 30, 2003
Fresh A-	Fresh 80%	Horror (2002)	" Stirs up a feverish, pervasive sense of dread that works so well it's scary." Posted May 21, 2003
Fresh B-	N/A	Lustful Addiction (1969)	" Mind-numbingly slow, erotically charged, and completely mesmerizing." Posted May 12, 2003
Rotten C+	Rotten 16%	House of 1000 Corpses (2003)	" A campy tribute to gritty '70s horror and exploitation that struggles to find its own voice and occasionally uncovers it, but relies too heavily on echoes from the past." Posted Apr 14, 2003
Rotten C	Rotten 44%	The Rules of Attraction (2002)	" *The most fascinating thing about The Rules of Attraction* is how much noise it makes for a film with nothing much to say.**" Posted Apr 10, 2003
Rotten D-	N/A	House That Screamed (1999)	" *To say that it's shockingly incompetent on every conceivable level would be an understatement, but at least it seems like it's trying.*" Posted Apr 1, 2003
Rotten C+	N/A	Lord of the Strings (2002)	" As dimwitted and juvenile as most of Seduction Cinema's other Hollywood movie parodies filled with girl-on-girl sex and rampant nudity. But it has enough goofy charm to keep it from the trash heap." Posted Mar 11, 2003
Fresh B	Rotten 47%	Final Destination 2 (2003)	" A nerve-jangling, gloriously dumb, wickedly funny sick joke of a movie." Posted Feb 11, 2003
Fresh B-	N/A	Mummy's Kiss (2002)	" Instead of a series of lesbian scenes strung along by a half-assed plot, it's a cheesy B-movie with a few lesbian scenes thrown in. As a completely forgettable bad movie, it's not half-bad." Posted Feb 4, 2003
Fresh A-	Fresh 96%	Bob Le Flambeur (1955)	" The noir ambience and a stellar performance from effortlessly charismatic Roger Duchesne -- who simply oozes cool when donning a Bogart trench coat -- make it tough not to get wrapped up in Bob le Flambeur's spell." Posted Jan 26, 2003
Rotten D-	N/A	Satan's School For Lust (2002)	" Surprisingly dull lesbian sex scenes." Posted Jan 22, 2003
Rotten D	N/A	Maniacal (2003)	" At the very least this film may be a gorehound's wet dream with all the surprisingly well-executed exploding heads, neck-slashings, eye-gougings, and disembowelings. Much of it looks ridiculously fake, but Herschell Gordon Lewis would be proud." Posted Jan 20, 2003
Rotten C-	Fresh 69%	Personal Velocity (2002)	" Miller's tendency to tell more than show -- and even to tell when showing -- robs Personal Velocity of the intimacy it might have had, and suggests a writer so in love with her own prose that she can't let any of it go." Posted Dec 31, 2002
Fresh A-	Fresh 65%	Last House on the Left (1972)	" *Often foolishly condemned as sleazy exploitation, Last House on the Left* is uncompromisingly honest in depicting the ugliness of violence and the emptiness it leaves behind.**" Posted Dec 29, 2002
Rotten C	N/A	Meat Market (2000)	" How can a film that pits two super-cool rebels, three lesbian vampires, and a masked Mexican wrestler against a world overrun by flesh-eating zombies feel so uninspired?" Posted Dec 16, 2002
Fresh B	N/A	Ravage (1997)	" Taking a cue from John Woo's Hong Kong ballets of violence, a blood-spattered shootout in a police station achieves a nasty, visceral kind of poetry." Posted Nov 26, 2002
Rotten C	N/A	Deathbed (2002)	" Dismisses serious, potentially affecting subject matter in favor of tired horror-movie conventions, cheap scares, and a climax that descends into wild, gory B-movie absurdity." Posted Nov 10, 2002
Fresh B	Fresh 62%	By Hook or By Crook (2002)	" *The handheld camerawork, jumpy editing, blaring soundtrack, and stream-of-consciousness pacing all contribute to By Hook or by Crook's often intoxicating DIY punk rock aesthetic.*" Posted Oct 24, 2002
Fresh B+	N/A	Insaniac (2001)	" A dazzling psychological nightmare and a moving love story that packs quite a punch." Posted Oct 17, 2002
Fresh A-	Fresh 78%	Bubba Ho-Tep (2003)	" Combines sharp comedy, old-fashioned monster movie atmospherics, and genuine heart to create a film that's not merely about kicking undead ***, but also about dealing with regret and, ultimately, finding redemption." Posted Oct 10, 2002
Fresh B	N/A	Laughing Boy (1999)	" The movie's strengths lie in its wickedly funny social satire, the frequently sharp dialogue (even if some of the verbal gags do fall flat), and the spirited performances from the cast." Posted Sep 23, 2002
Rotten D	N/A	Eight Legs To Love You (1998)	" Everything is bathed in red light -- groovy, huh?" Posted Sep 20, 2002
Fresh B+	N/A	Desecration (1999)	" Wickedly frightening." Posted Sep 17, 2002
Fresh B+	Fresh 80%	Comic Book Confidential (1990)	" *Lively and engaging -- yes, this is a fun* documentary.**" Posted Aug 15, 2002
Fresh B-	N/A	Poetry in Motion (1982)	" Poetry in Motion has its ups and downs. While the downs may be a surefire cure for insomnia, the ups are frequently dazzling." Posted Aug 7, 2002
Fresh B+	N/A	Everything Moves Alone (2001)	" It's not easy to pull off a sweet-natured comedy-drama that's both funny and touching, but they do it without forcing the laughs too hard or stooping to cheap sentimentality." Posted Aug 3, 2002
Rotten D	N/A	I Spit On Your Corpse, I Piss On Your Grave (2002)	" A soulless exercise in depravity made to cash in on the sleaze market." Posted Jun 27, 2002
Rotten C+	N/A	531 (2001)	" This indie film's fusion of psychological drama and silly humor doesn't quite work, but at least it's an interesting failure." Posted Jun 26, 2002
Fresh B-	N/A	Don Juan (or If Don Juan Were a Woman) (1973)	" Surprisingly compelling, partly thanks to stylish cinematography and, more importantly, [Brigitte] Bardot's ice-cold performance." Posted Jun 25, 2002

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A	Eyes Wide ShutOffsite
A+	Mulholland Dr.Offsite
A-	Being John MalkovichOffsite
B+	Wonder BoysOffsite
B	Joe the KingOffsite
B-	Psycho SistersOffsite
C+	The Erotic Witch ProjectOffsite
C	Bringing Out the DeadOffsite
C-	The ShiversOffsite
D+	The Astronaut's WifeOffsite
D	Double-D AvengerOffsite
D-	The Third SocietyOffsite
B / A+	Cutting MomentsOffsite

A	Hard EightOffsite
A	RashomonOffsite
A+	NotoriousOffsite
A	American BeautyOffsite
A	Hall of MirrorsOffsite
A+	Mulholland Dr.Offsite
A	Ghost WorldOffsite
A	Requiem for a DreamOffsite
A	Boys Don't CryOffsite
A	Eyes Wide ShutOffsite

D-	House That ScreamedOffsite
D-	Satan's School For LustOffsite
D-	The Third SocietyOffsite
D	Vampira/Night VampsOffsite
D	ManiacalOffsite
D	Eight Legs To Love YouOffsite
D	I Spit On Your Corpse, I Piss On Your...Offsite
D	Mummy RaiderOffsite
D	Double-D AvengerOffsite

MICHAEL SCRUTCHIN

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