Movie Review: "Mandingo Sex Addict" (2014; Full Circle Filmworks)

...truth be known, often times, one cannot help but rally around and appreciate a filmmaker who, in having garnished a successful career and respectably celebrated reputation, feels ready to take his or her efforts to that next plateau, moving away from a genre expectedly known for...taking things up a notch, so to speak, as far as grander ideas, financially higher-tiered production values and more readily available resources. To be sure, it's a personal growth process, and it has to be absolutely elating, not to mention a boost to a filmmaker's ego, knowing that in being critically upheld, as far as one's work, that the talent comes looking for the filmmaker, rather than the other way around. Considering that, it's even cooler when, despite the intentful desire to move on to bigger and better things, the filmmaker feels equally compelled to get that very last obligatory fist-pump in there...one last hurrah on that lower-rung genre, if at the very least, for personal satisfaction, closing that particular chapter in one's career, taking care of an itch one just has to scratch, and at the same time, affording the devotees of his work, an appreciative genre finale, before moving on...with promise of greater and more diverse things, soon to come...

...will such a 'genre finale' be a creatively conceived and satisfying crescendo moment, or will the overwhelming desire to get to that next level be so great and alluring, that the proposed 'crescendo moment' seems rushed, forced and cookie-cutter standard...even sub-standard?? Like something which one just has to get out of one's system, before moving on...in other words, as the saying goes, 'just phoning it in'?? (...the latter suggestion of which, for good instance, we definitely saw just recently, when director Tom Six, motivated and drawn toward 'getting it out of his system, once and for all' and moving on to something other than his infamous and notorious 'Human Centipede' franchise, punched out a third and final chapter in the gratuitously grotesque and gory 'saga'...and the resulting finale proved...well extraordinarily 'ordinary', at least by what might have been expected on the Tom Six Standard...but that's another story, altogether)...

Movie Review: Scumbag Hustler (2014; Full Circle Filmworks)

...from a filmmaker's point of view, one might imagine that going into films that spotlight drug addiction (...or any type of addiction, for that matter), and stirring in a measure of comedy, in the midst of the film character's catering to, or dealing with the addiction, is a fairly tricky tightrope to transgress. The balance has to be amiable; indeed, one doesn't want to patronize the viewers, in exploiting the addiction facet, to the point where one is basically saying, in a 'politically incorrect' way (...damn, I hate that term), 'hey, lookie here...join the party; this is the in thing to do!' And yet, with too much comedy inter-spliced...in a slapstick sort of way, ironically enough, the same thing seems to happen. Fortunately, for the most part, the lead dudes behind the camera, as well as the hungry, scribbling writers, have for the most part, genuinely managed to assume that proper balance (...off hand, this viewer cannot recall any film, immediately to mind, that otherwise doesn't do this), making that tightrope seem as easy to trod upon, as if the rope itself is three feet wide, and flat. The window of range is so wide, in fact...well, for the indiscriminate, everyman 'tourists', there's the almost countless cinematic antics of Cheech & Chong, or Jay & Silent Bob. But, for the more eclectic tastes, the devoted naysayers reach for cult oddities, like Terry Gilliam's eccentric road pic "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas", Gregg Araki's wacky and cartoonish "Smiley Face", David Cronenberg's macabre-flavored dark-humored & surreal "Naked Lunch", or even the recent toke of deliciousness from director Adam Mason...the wildly, albeit darkly comical "Junkie". And to that respectable lot...can we conceivably add tag-team director Sean Weathers' and Aswad Issa's newest production, "Scumbag Hustler"...a quirky and episodic, inner-city staged look at crazed desperation...and appetite never sated...and yes, addiction wildly out of control...to the point where our hapless protagonist, herein, is quite willing to...well, let's take a peek, shall we??...