16 Sep 2018

Shane! Come Back! : “The Predator” and “The Wife”

By Mike Schulz

Even though Hollywood's summer tends to begin in the last days of April and end a couple weekends before Labor Day, it is, you know, still technically summer. Consequently, I feel completely within my rights to decree The Predator perhaps the happiest summer-movie surprise of 2018 – a thrillingly funny, nasty, unpretentious good time that's leagues more entertaining than any deeply unnecessary sequel/reboot of its type should ever be.

16 Sep 2018

Sherlock Homemaker: “A Simple Favor,” “Unbroken: Path to Redemption,” and “White Boy Rick”

By Mike Schulz

Few likely remember it, but back in 1985, Susan Sarandon starred in a movie titled Compromising Positions, an utterly charming mystery-comedy in which a suburban homemaker becomes an amateur sleuth investigating the murder of her dentist. Director Frank Perry's film is a sharp, funny trifle with an astounding supporting cast of Broadway talents – Raul Julia, Judith Ivey, Joe Mantegna, Joan Allen, Edward Herrmann, Mary Beth Hurt – and totally worth a watch on YouTube. (It's easier to sit through if you can ignore the film's rather blatant mid-'80s misogyny.) But I hadn't thought about that movie in years, if not decades – not until director Paul Feig's irresistible mystery-comedy A Simple Favor kept bringing it to mind.

09 Sep 2018

And Then There Was Nun: “The Nun” and “Peppermint”

By Mike Schulz

Follow along if you can: Director Corin Hardy's new horror film The Nun is the prequel to last fall's Annabelle: Creation, which was the prequel to 2014's Annabelle, which was the prequel to 2013's The Conjuring. This is what, in franchise terms, is called “universe building.” And if the popular series continues in this chronologically backward vein, I'm pretty sure that several hundred years from now, the final movie in the cycle will be titled Genesis, or perhaps The Mind of God. If only The Nun were similarly divine.

02 Sep 2018

Empathy for the Devil: “Operation Finale,” “Searching,” and “Kin”

By Mike Schulz

It's almost inconceivable, and a little perverse, that the same actor who was so convincing as a Jewish bookkeeper in Schindler's List, the heroine's father in Anne Frank, and freakin' Moses could also be wholly persuasive as Adolf Eichmann, the chief architect behind Hitler's Final Solution. But considering his additional screen roles have ranged from Mahatma Gandhi to gangster Meyer Lansky to film pioneer Georges Méliès, Ben Kingsley has always demonstrated a virtuosic talent for playing ethnically diverse real-life figures – a skill that's both the chief pleasure and biggest moral hazard in the engaging, slightly infuriating post-war thriller Operation Finale.

26 Aug 2018

No, Puppet. No, Puppet. : "The Happytime Murders" and "Papillon"

By Mike Schulz

The novelty of puppets – or, in the case of Team America: World Police, marionettes – cursing and boinking and excreting was already mostly worn out by the mid-aughts, at which point Crank Yankers was midway through its five-season run and Broadway's Avenue Q a mainstream, Tony-winning hit. So The Happytime Murders was probably doomed from the start, given that its central joke, and only truly sustained joke, finds humans interacting with puppets in possession of brazenly filthy mouths, active libidos, and a wild excess of body fluids. As comic conceits go, that one's definitely a yawn. Astoundingly, though, and despite its considerable flaws, the movie itself isn't terrible – or at least, nowhere near as terrible as you may have heard.

19 Aug 2018

Rich Man, Singapore Man: “Crazy Rich Asians,” “Alpha,” and “Mile 22”

By Mike Schulz

Much has been made in the press about how the romantic comedy Crazy Rich Asians, based on Kevin Kwan's 2013 bestseller, is the first Hollywood movie since 1993's The Joy Luck Club to boast an almost universally Asian and Asian-American cast. To be sure, this is a milestone worth celebrating – if also lamenting. (Representation of this sort took another quarter-century why, exactly?) But getting lost in the conversation is the fact that in addition to being a charming entertainment, the weekend's top-grossing film at nationwide cineplexes is, I'm forced to admit, unbridled pornography. Granted, it's luxury porn, and sometimes food porn, but a deliberate turn-on nonetheless.

12 Aug 2018

Duke and Hazards: “BlacKkKlansman,” “The Meg,” and “Dog Days”

By Mike Schulz

Inspired by true events – or, as an opening title card explains, “based upon some fo' real, fo' real sh*t – BlacKkKlansman is a police procedural, a thriller, a comedy, a celebration of black identity, an indictment of white nationalism, and a rallying cry against more than a century's worth of media and public complacency, misrepresentation, and offense. Being a Spike Lee joint, the movie's stunning success on these and additional levels isn't necessary a surprise.

05 Aug 2018

Oh, Bother: “Christopher Robin,” “The Spy Who Dumped Me,” and “Eighth Grade”

By Mike Schulz

A question for those of you who saw Disney's Christopher Robin over the weekend: While watching Ewan McGregor's titular character interact with vocal actor Jim Cumming's eerily lifelike Winnie-the-Pooh, did any of you immediately flash to Mark Wahlberg trading profane quips with his Teddy-bear best friend in Ted? Another question: If so, did you find yourself, as I did, kind of wishing you were watching Ted instead?

29 Jul 2018

Nuclear Winner: “Mission: Impossible – Fallout” and “Three Identical Strangers”

By Mike Schulz

Lord knows we don't need any more awards for movies and the people who make them. But after watching the latest sequel to Mission: Impossible – hell, after watching its first 10 minutes – I was actively wishing that someone would at least fashion an oversize blue ribbon, or maybe an Edible Arrangements bouquet of some sort, in recognition of “Best Pre-Opening-Credits Sequence.” Because the one that writer/director Christopher McQuarrie and company have devised for Mission: Impossible – Fallout is practically a movie of its own, and an awfully good one.

22 Jul 2018

Swedish Meatball: “Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again,” “Sorry to Bother You,” and “Unfriended: Dark Web”

By Mike Schulz

Any movie that casts 72-year-old Cher as the mother of 69-year-old Meryl Streep clearly has almost zero interest in realism and an almost immeasurable passion for kitsch. And so it is with Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again, the sequel to 2008's screen explosion of ABBA tunes that proves slightly less obnoxious than its predecessor, which turns out to be both a major plus and a significant minus.

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