11 Oct 2005

Richmond Hill Plants a Not-Bad "Seed"

By Mike Schulz
The Richmond Hill Barn Theatre's production of Maxwell Anderson's The Bad Seed is entertaining stuff, yet you might not believe more than a few words of it. The sincerity that director Jalayne Riewerts gives the piece is admirable, but also a little misguided, because the show often aims for penetrating insight and forgets why audiences love The Bad Seed in the first place - not for its psychology, but because of the inherent fun in watching an eight-year-old sociopath get away with murder.
11 Oct 2005

You Wanna See Something Really Scary ... ?

By Mike Schulz
A nighttime walk through a haunted house? Scary. A nighttime walk through an unfamiliar forest or abandoned, ramshackle building? Scary. A nighttime walk through a haunted house set in an unfamiliar forest or abandoned, ramshackle building? Freakin' terrifying.
11 Oct 2005

Acting Trumps Presentation, and Here's the "Proof": Also, "In Her Shoes," "The Greatest Game Ever Played," and "Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit"

By Mike Schulz

Gwyneth Paltrow and Jake Gyllenhaal in ProofPROOF

Most cinephiles detest filmed versions of plays, with their awkward exposition, stagy dialogue, and functional, assembly-line characters who serve their purpose within the author's conceit and exit just in time for another character to show up and do the same; oftentimes, you can all but see the proscenium arch hovering overhead.

04 Oct 2005

Laughing All the Way to the Blood Bank

By Mike Schulz
Local author and Davenport native Michael McCarty, who will be a guest lecturer at Rock Island's Midwest Writing Center this Saturday, has spent more than a decade conducting interviews with some of the biggest names in fantasy and horror.
04 Oct 2005

By Georges!

By Mike Schulz
For some musicians, the idea of performing in a tribute band full-time, and in full costume, no less, would be a depressing proposition. Why devote time, talent, and energy to the presentation of someone else's hits? Michael Fulop and Marty Scott, though, wouldn't have it any other way, and if you had the chance to portray George Harrison for adoring Beatles fans on a nightly basis, you might feel the same way.
04 Oct 2005

Pulp Friction: "A History of Violence," "Oliver Twist," and "Serenity"

By Mike Schulz

Viggo Mortensen in A History of ViolenceA HISTORY OF VIOLENCE

I was completely rapt by the austerity and dread of David Cronenberg's A History of Violence - for the first five minutes. In the film's beautifully sustained opening sequence, we watch as two men - one middle-aged, in a black suit, and another, younger and sporting a T-shirt and jeans - exit their motel room. They load up their car, and the older gentleman drops off the room key while the other - slowly, slowly - pulls the car up to meet him. Moments later, the older man returns, having had, he says, "a little trouble with the maid." But before they leave, they need water. The younger man enters the motel office to replenish their supply, and as he does, we finally see the image that Cronenberg has thus far denied us, and that we in the audience have properly anticipated - the motel manager and maid lying dead in pools of blood. A frightened little girl, gently stroking the hair of her doll, enters the scene and makes eye contact with the younger killer. And the man, smiling gently, tells her not to be afraid, slowly aims his revolver at the girl's head, and fires.

27 Sep 2005

Heaven Help Us!: "Meshuggah-Nuns!" at the Circa '21 Dinner Playhouse

By Mike Schulz

My parents, being good people, raised me to believe that if you couldn't say something nice, you shouldn't say anything at all. Of course, they couldn't have imagined I'd wind up a reviewer, nor that I'd wind up having to devote 700 words to Meshuggah-Nuns!

27 Sep 2005

A Momentary Fix for the Film-Fest Deprived

By Mike Schulz

For die-hard movie fans in the Quad Cities, film festivals are always around. And therein lies the disappointment. They're around, they're just not here. In April, Cedar Rapids presented an independent film festival.

27 Sep 2005

Foster Soars, but "Flightplan" Is Earthbound: Also, "Tim Burton's Corpse Bride" and "Just Like Heaven"

By Mike Schulz

Jodie Foster in FlightplanFLIGHTPLAN

Movies such as Flightplan are hell to review. How do I explain, exactly, why the film doesn't work without giving away the plot secrets that prevent it from working? Like last fall's already-forgotten The Forgotten, director Robert Schwentke's airborne thriller involves a missing child. During a trans-Atlantic flight from Berlin to America, Jodie Foster's newly widowed Kyle lays her six-year-old daughter Julia (Marlene Lawston) down for a nap, falls asleep herself, and wakes to find the girl missing. Obviously, escape from the plane is impossible, but Julia is nowhere to be found, and, more disturbingly, no one on the flight seems to remember her being aboard. Could Julia have merely been a figment of Kyle's imbalanced imagination?

20 Sep 2005

"Murderball" Is the Best of Eight - and of the Year: Also, "The Exorcism of Emily Rose," "Jane Goodall's Wild Chimpanzees," "Lord of War," "An Unfinished Life," "The Constant Gardener," "Cry Wolf," and "The Man"

By Mike Schulz

MurderballMURDERBALL

I've seen a lot of sublimely satisfying documentaries this year, but none with the scope and passion of Murderball. Like last year's brilliant Metallica: Some Kind of Monster, the film's title and ostensible subject matter - quadriplegic rugby - are probably enough to frighten off the audiences who would love it the most, which I pray won't happen; Murderball, currently playing at the Brew & View Rocket, is, thus far, the most invigorating, fascinating, surprising, and deeply human movie of 2005.

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