08 Mar 2015

RoboCrip: "Chappie," "The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel," and "Unfinished Business"

By Sen. Charles Grassley

Chappie

CHAPPIE

The sci-fi-action-comedy-thriller Chappie is the tale of an insentient creature who gains a soul and learns to love, just like Pinocchio and WALL•E and Short Circuit's Number 5. But this is a film by Neill Blomkamp, the writer/director of the violence- and profanity-laden District 9 and Elysium, so don't expect Disney-style warmth or Guttenberg-ian sweetness from this similarly R-rated outing. Instead, prepare to be amazed - though "stupefied" is the more appropriate term - by just how mawkish a movie can be despite boasting a title character who proves expert at carjacking, and whose most frequent malapropism involves his spirited twist on a 12-letter cuss word.

21 Dec 2014

Unclean and Sober: "Top Five," "Wild," and "Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb"

By Mike Schulz

Rosario Dawson and Chris Rock in Top FiveTOP FIVE

Chris Rock is on-record as being a fan of Woody Allen movies and Richard Linklater's Before Sunrise/Sunset/Midnight trilogy, and the comedian's funny and thoughtful Top Five - Rock's first film as a writer/director since 2007's I Think I Love My Wife - is like a 100-minute blend of those influences. Then again, Allen, and certainly Linklater, would be much less likely to cap a scene with the image of a naked man getting a Tabasco-soaked tampon shoved up his ass.

26 May 2014

Quicksilver Takes the Gold: "X-Men: Days of Future Past"

By Mike Schulz

Hugh Jackman and James McAvoy in X-Men: Days of Future PastX-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST

Director Bryan Singer's X-Men: Days of Future Past opened this past weekend, and generally speaking, I liked it. At random moments throughout, I even loved it. And in one glorious, exquisitely crafted sequence about 40 minutes into the picture, I even fell madly in love with it.

21 Sep 2013

Missing Inaction: "Prisoners" and "Battle of the Year"

By Mike Schulz

Jake Gyllenhaal in PrisonersPRISONERS

Prisoners, which features Jake Gyllenhaal as a feverishly driven detective, is the most exciting and emotional cop thriller we've been treated to since last fall's End of Watch, which Gyllenhaal also starred in. Beyond that, director Denis Villeneuve's effort is probably the most suspenseful, evocative, and disturbing procedural thriller since David Fincher's 2007 Zodiac ... which also boasted Gyllenhaal in a leading role. I'm generally skeptical about the effectiveness of good-luck charms, but if the actor cared to accompany me the next time I buy a lottery ticket, you wouldn't hear me complain.

28 Jul 2013

Logan's Run: "The Wolverine" and "The To Do List"

By Mike Schulz

Hugh Jackman in The WolverineTHE WOLVERINE

As much as I adore the character and the actor who has now played him in six films, I'll admit that I entered director James Mangold's comic-book spectacular The Wolverine with more than a touch of trepidation, as I was still smarting from the bloated, boring mess that was 2009's X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Weren't there other costumed crime-fighters in the X-Men universe - Anna Paquin's Rogue, perhaps, or Ben Foster's Angel - who might've enjoyed their own solo projects before we were given yet another go-around with the growling softie with the adamantium claws and questionable grooming habits? Hadn't poor Hugh Jackman, and poor us, suffered enough?

25 Feb 2013

Gold Men Sunset: Notes on the 2013 Academy Awards Telecast

By Mike Schulz

Best Actor Daniel Day-LewisSeth MacFarlane, I thought, did a fine job hosting the 85th Academy Awards ceremony. He turned out to be a fine choice for the frequently thankless Oscar-emcee position, tossing in some fine jokes in between the generally fine production numbers and mostly fine acceptance speeches ... .

I'm sorry, but I am alone in thinking that last night's telecast, in the end, was just a little too "fine"?

27 Jan 2013

Skit-ish: "Movie 43," "Parker," and "Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters"

By Mike Schulz

Leslie Bibb, Justin Long, and Jason Sudeikis in Movie 43MOVIE 43

Ordinarily, Movie 43 would be the sort of unsatisfying, throwaway release that I'd dispense with in a paragraph, or maybe just a sentence or two. And it's not as though its opening-weekend box-office intake - a meager $5 million, despite the presence of nearly every star in Hollywood - necessitates longer consideration of the film. But this anthology comedy in the style of those '70s cult classics Kentucky Fried Movie and The Groove Tube seems to me a special case. How often, after all, do you get the chance to write about what might be your all-time least-enjoyable experience at the cineplex - including that time during the early '90s when you had to leave a screening for emergency root-canal surgery?

31 Dec 2012

Vox Populi: "Les Misérables" and "Cirque du Soleil: Worlds Away"

By Mike Schulz

Isabelle Allen and Hugh Jackman in Les MiserablesLES MISÉRABLES

Director Tom Hooper's take on the über-beloved musical Les Misérables is, in numerous regards, a maddeningly weak stage-to-screen transfer. Scenes have been bluntly presented with no discernible invention or style. The incessant employment of closeups creates stagnancy in sequences and numbers that beg for breathing room. The movie's two most prominent actors are cast in roles for which they can't nearly do vocal justice. And, so help me, I ravenously gobbled up every last, unsubtle, frequently disappointing morsel of the thing.

03 Dec 2012

Ho Ho Horrible: "Rise of the Guardians," "Killing Them Softly," and "The Collection"

By Mike Schulz

Rise of the GuardiansRISE OF THE GUARDIANS

There appears to be a certain amount of bafflement, among those who track such things, as to why Rise of the Guardians has failed to make its expected dent on the late-autumn box office. Did the action comedy open too soon after the release of the similarly animated Wreck-It Ralph, thereby splintering its audience? Was the casting of Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy as makeshift superheroes an idea deemed too juvenile for viewers over the age of three? Was the film's title generic and confusing, leading potential crowds to expect the arrival of the owls of Ga'Hoole?

If I may, I'd like to posit a different, simpler theory: The movie just sucks.

09 Oct 2011

Primary Concern: "The Ides of March," "Real Steel," and "Courageous"

By Mike Schulz

Philip Seymour Hoffman and George Clooney in The Ides of MarchTHE IDES OF MARCH

Audiences demanding insight, or even much depth, from director George Clooney's The Ides of March will no doubt leave the film disappointed - unless, that is, the revelation that political candidates and their staffers routinely lie and spin and backstab strikes any of those viewers as a newsflash. Yet if you enter this tale of Machiavellian (and, as its title suggests, Shakespearean) intrigue not expecting trenchant analysis so much as a good, gripping yarn supremely well-told, you're in for a major treat. Smart and fast and gratifyingly vicious, Clooney's latest is a drama that plays like a thriller, and it's full-to-brimming with sequences you want to watch over and over again; for those conversant in West Wing-ese, the movie suggests a juicy episode of Aaron Sorkin's TV series if every character in it was played by Ron Silver.

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