The Scream franchise is a series of horror movies whose greatest asset has never been horror.  They provide the occasional jump scare, but the strength of the series lies in crafting a critique of the slasher genre, audiences (Scream 2), and Hollywood (Scream 3).  The first Scream did the best job in balancing scares with satire, but eventually the series devolved into ninety minutes of misdirection finished by a twenty minute speech where the killer explains his or her motivations.  In between the movie gropes at subtext, but rarely in a coherent way that’s clever or rewarding.  Scream 4 carries on this sad tradition but adds a heavy dose of resentment to the proceedings as it bitterly attacks everyone who left the snarky franchise behind.

It’s been sitting on the shelf for a little while, but Elektra Luxx, the sequel to director Sebastian Gutierrez’s 2009 film Women in Trouble, finally has a trailer.  The film stars Carla Gugino as a former porn star who agrees to seduce a woman’s fiancée but ends up getting drawn into a world of wacky intrigue.  In addition to Gugino, the film’s got a great cast which includes Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Timothy Olyphant, Adrianne Palicki, Emmanuelle Chriqui, Marley Shelton, and Malin Akerman.  But the real reason to see it is Gugino in skimpy clothing.

Hit the jump to check out the trailer.  Elektra Luxx is due out March 11th.

You can add some more names to Ghostface’s list of potential victims.  Heat Vision reports that Adam Brody (Jennifer’s Body), Marley Shelton (A Perfect Getaway), and Erik Knudsen (Youth in Revolt) have joined the cast of Wes Craven’s Scream 4.  According to HV, “Brody will play a cop recently graduated from college who was raised on the CSI TV series; Shelton will play a deputy who knew Campbell’s character in high school; and Knudsen will have a role similar to the one played by Jamie Kennedy in the first two installments, a character who is familiar with horror movie conventions and a provider of comic relief.”

The three actors will join original cast members Neve Campbell, Courtney Cox, and David Arquette along with fresh blood Emma Roberts, Hayden Panettiere, Rory Culkin and Nico Tortorella. Craven and writer Kevin Williamson are doing everything in their power to prevent the identity of the killer from leaking.  It’s important to remember that spoilers are now much easier to disseminate online than they were in 2000 when Scream 3 came out.  Scream 4 hits theaters on April 15, 2011.

The first big questions that popped into my head when I heard of the movie Women in Trouble were who in the world is Sebastian Gutierrez, and how in the world did he get Carla Gugino, Connie Britton, Adrianne Palicki, Emmanuelle Chriqui and Marley Shelton to all star in his movie?

And, more amazingly, how did he get them to play a pregnant porn star, two call girls and a stewardess about to join the mile high club in an airplane toilet? Well, having watched this, I’m still not sure how he managed to pull any of it off, but I can tell you that what he came up with is a little indie comedy that borrows extremely liberally from Pedro Almodovar and Robert Altman.

Hit the jump to find out whether or not any of this works on DVD.

The problem with the thriller is that formalists like Brian De Palma and Bryan Singer have spoiled them for normal people and critics. We expect our genre entries to confound us, or at the very east to be deconstructions of the genre. Forget dramatic irony, we want expert sequences, and tension to abound. And so David Twohy deserves some credit for what he attempts in A Perfect Getaway. He is aware of genre constructs and addresses them, but he does so in such a way that when he removes the tablecloth and the plates are still standing, no one’s so much impressed as ready for the third act. My review of A Perfect Getaway after the jump, jump (please continue).