30 Jan 2024

Ballet Quad Cities' “Love Stories,” February 9 and 10

By Mike Schulz

For the professional company's latest rendition of Love Stories, its annual collection of choreographed vignettes that makes for a sensational Valentine's Day gift, Ballet Quad Cities' February 9 and 10 presentations at Augustana College's Brunner Theatre Center will be filled with sounds and sights to make audiences swoon. Compositions by George Gershwin and Leonard Bernstein. Beautiful figures moving to live instrumental accompaniment. Executions by gunfire. You know – all the romantic standards.

29 Jan 2024

Caste Away: “Origin,” “Nimona,” “American Symphony,” and “Flamin' Hot”

By Mike Schulz

The rare intellectual exercise that's also an emotional gut punch, writer/director Ava DuVernay's Origin delivers its most emblematic sequence toward the end of its 140 minutes, when all of the movie's many varied themes seem to intertwine in a heartrending, enraging true tale about a little boy and a swimming pool.

23 Jan 2024

The 2024 Academy Awards Nominations

By Mike Schulz

This morning's announcement of contenders for the 96th Annual Academy Awards was da bomb. Kind of literally.

21 Jan 2024

As Below, So Above: “I.S.S.” and “All of Us Strangers”

By Mike Schulz

I.S.S. is exactly what an edgy, professionally rendered January debut should be: 90 minutes long. Is it good? Yes. Is it great? No. Is there any reason to complain about that? Hell, no.

15 Jan 2024

clique … clique … Boom!: “Mean Girls,” “American Fiction,” “The Book of Clarence,” “The Beekeeper,” and “Night Swim”

By Mike Schulz

If you liked the 2004 version, you almost can't help but enjoy this latest one, because it's the same movie, albeit with songs.

13 Jan 2024

Predicting the 2024 Academy Award Nominations

By Mike Schulz

It's time again for my Oscar-nomination predictions! My annual article in which I hope you forget a large portion of it five seconds after the actual nominees are revealed!

13 Jan 2024

Haus of Ruckus' “Punk Rock Lobster,” January 19 through 28

By Mike Schulz

They've taken us to a purportedly haunted house, the interior of a video-game, labyrinths out of Greek mythology, and even, at one point, Colorado. But with the debut of Haus of Ruckus' latest comedy Punk Rock Lobster – running at Moline's Black Box Theatre January 19 through 28 – company founders and figureheads T. Green and Calvin Vo will be bringing audiences somewhere entirely new: under the sea.

08 Jan 2024

Manifest Destiny: “Society of the Snow,” “Good Grief,” “Foe,” and “Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie”

By Mike Schulz

It arrived a few days late, but the undisputed movie tearjerker of 2023 finally landed in '24 with Thursday's Netflix debut of Society of the Snow, writer/director J.A. Bayona's foreign-language survival thriller about the 1972 Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 disaster.

01 Jan 2024

Up and Anatomy!: Reminiscences on the 2023 Movie Year

By Mike Schulz

Either 2023 was a particularly outstanding year for movies or my standards are getting lower – though I suppose both could be true.

29 Dec 2023

Sing, Celie, and Deliver: “The Color Purple,” “Ferrari,” and “Leave the World Behind”

By Mike Schulz

In its new musical incarnation, The Color Purple isn't a very good movie. But I'm not sure how much that matters.

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