This Blade is Terminally Dull: Scream 4 - Official Trailer 2 [HD]

Strap oyurselves in folks, this one's gonna be brutal and short (almost like the movie, which tires, at any rate, to be brutal).

Nauseatingly derivative and self-referntial, this latest instalment in the "Scream" franchise arrives with its smugness in full effect, bolstered by the success of its predecessors and the hany lore of other horror film properties, from which it liberally borrows and knowingly quotes from in order to boost its misguided sense of  faux irony and hipness.

Scream works overtime to present its remorseless lsasher and the bumbling "always-one-step-behind" town sheriff (the hapless David Arquette) as some kind of collective punchline, saying "Hey! the joke's on you!") but it only succeeds in getting egg on its own face.

The only real point of relief is the tabloid connection of Arquette and estranged wife Courtney Cox being thrown together - and with Cox's character fighting off the sheriff's deputy for her husband's attention.

Otherwise, this latest "Scream" is merely the look and sound of a franchise that has been overtaken. The "Saw" films have "out-slashed & gored" Scream while "Paranormal Activity and others have staked out the psycho-horror high ground.

Scream then, is a film that nobody really needs to hear - or see.

Cage, Unleashed: Drive Angry - Official Trailer [HD]

Okay, so maybe we're suckers for punishment: Nicholas cage keeps appearing in movies, we keep watching them (and  labouring to review them).

Let me state in my defense however that Drive Angry actually represents an improvement on Cage's prolonged wretched run. Sure, it has the pornographic violence, the mindless dialogue and the late-night-cable type sex scenes that we've deplored elsewhere.

But.....

there's a difference. Firstly, in Cage himself. he still has crappy lines, but he's noticeably not phoning them in the way he did in his previous outings. And director Patrick Lussier, having made his name, with the "Scream" franchise takes a "slash-and burn" approach to the filming itself, combining dizzying action scenes with lurid slo-mo with the glee of a kid mastering his first Super 8. Indeed, so much of the movie has a "WTF - let's go for it!" that I'm tempted to ask the question: "Has Nick Cage finally bottomed out?"

Some of the credit for that openness must go to the inspired casting of William Fichtner. Billed throughout the film only as 'The Accountant' he not only totally overshadows the film's other villain, a murderous Satanic cult leader played by Billy Burke, Fichtner actually makes one believe it is possible to look GQ-cool while driving the shaft of a baseball bat through a man's shoulder blade, or sitting in a car that has flipped over three times after falling forty feet off a bridge.

Yes, folks, these are just a sampling of the excesses that you will have to contend with in Drive Angry. Oh yes, how could we forget - there's Amber Heard, as Cage's unwitting sidekick in his pursuit of revenge. The role calls for feistiness and flashes of thigh and Miss Heard is up to the stern challenge.

He has a loooong way yet to go, but  Nicholas Cage may yet be on the road to redemption. Watch it - if you can - and see what I mean.