08 Jul 2018

It's You I Like: “Won't You Be My Neighbor?,” "The First Purge,” and “Ant-Man & the Wasp”

By Mike Schulz

“I saw Won't You Be My Neighbor?. Friggin' face faucet, dude.” – actor/writer Kumail Nanjiani, in a recent tweet

Unless you're too young to be aware of the man and his legacy or too jaded or angry to care, it's hard to imagine who won't dissolve into a blubbery mess watching Morgan Neville's documentary Won't You Be My Neighbor?, a supremely intelligent, bighearted look at the life and career of Fred McFeely Rogers, host of the beloved PBS children's series Mister Rogers' Neighborhood. (And were you aware that his middle name was “McFeely”? Landing on that information recently, I got choked up anew with the refrain “Speedy delivery! Speedy delivery!” in my head.)

01 Jul 2018

They Didn't Build That Wall! : “Sicario: Day of the Soldado” and “Uncle Drew”

By Mike Schulz

Barring only occasional exceptions, summer movies, as Hollywood annually reminds us, are meant to be escapism. But it's impossible to imagine viewers, at least U.S. viewers, being wholly able to find escape in director Stefano Sollima's action-thriller sequel Sicario: Day of the Soldado. For better or worse, our real-world problems, and our real-world administration, simply won't let us.

23 Jun 2018

Clone Rangers: "Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom"

By Mike Schulz

Despite the movie topping the summer-of-2015 box-office charts and grossing some 1.67 billion worldwide, it appears that many of Jurassic World's salient details completely left my brain the moment I completed my review. I realized this after returning to said article in preparation for my Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom critique, and discovering that many of elements I was planning to diss this time around were elements I already knocked three years ago: the slavishness to Spielberg, the presentational sameness, the lack of genuine scares, the tired cliché of the first character killed off being a person of color. In fairness, the new film kills off a black guy and a white guy simultaneously, which I guess is this series' idea of progress, but still … . What was left to bitch about?

Quite a bit, actually. But in a not-unhappy surprise, very little of it matters, because while Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom may be stupider than its predecessor, it's also a lot more fun.

17 Jun 2018

Jack-Jack Be Nimble, Jack-Jack Be Quick: “Incredibles 2,” “SuperFly,” and “Tag”

By Mike Schulz

Listening to the sustained, rolling laughter at my screening of Pixar's Incredibles 2, it became clear, even while it was happening, which individual scene was likely going to be the best-remembered and most-adored of the bunch: the one with the raccoon.

10 Jun 2018

Purloined Necklace: “Ocean's 8,” “Hereditary,” and “Hotel Artemis”

By Mike Schulz

There's a kind of directorial smoothness, an almost tangible delight in the composition and pacing of the on-screen images, that keeps audiences alert and energized. Though the films themselves were of varying quality, Steven Soderbergh demonstrated this easy, breezy style in Ocean's Eleven, Twelve, and Thirteen – heist comedies that gleamed with their directors' signature polish. But there's also a kind of smoothness, a professional yet rather paint-by-numbers approach, that can lead to your mind wandering even while you're enjoying yourself.

02 Jun 2018

Johnny Knoxville Owns a Theme Park, and Other Freak Accidents: "Action Point," "Upgrade," "Adrift," and "The Rider"

By Mike Schulz

As the movie's star has recounted, among the many injuries Johnny Knoxville suffered while filming his new comedy Action Point were concussions, broken bones, and the loss of “two-and-a-half teeth.” Did they happen to be his fangs? I ask because director Tim Kirkby's stunt-filled slapstick, despite its expected R rating, is about as close to a family-friendly Jackass as Knoxville has attempted, and I don't mean that admiringly; even before its famously fearless, possibly deranged lead walked on set, this thing was destined to be toothless.

27 May 2018

Han So-So: "Solo: A Star Wars Story"

By Mike Schulz

Walking into Solo: A Star Wars Story, my biggest fear wasn't that it would be bad. It was that it would be terribly disjointed – a sci-fi adventure in which it was painfully obvious which moments were the work of original directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller (the Lego Movie and 21 and 22 Jump Street tyros who were fired well into production) and which were the work of replacement director Ron Howard. Their output, after all, couldn't be more dissimilar: Lord/Miller releases are loose, rambunctious, self-mocking, and sometimes bat-shit crazy; Howard's undertakings, even his comedies and thrillers, are sane, sturdy, earnest, and unsurprising to a fault.

20 May 2018

Reynolds Rap: “Deadpool 2” and “Show Dogs”

By Mike Schulz

As I recall, there aren't any overt references to the Guardians of the Galaxy in Deadpool 2 – which is kind of astonishing given that the movie's name-dropping antihero verbally side-swipes fellow Marvel figures ranging from Wolverine to Charles Xavier to the Winter Soldier to a certain Avenger MIA from Infinity War. (After momentarily losing his powers of invincibility here, our snarky protagonist dejectedly mutters, “Just give me a bow and arrow and I'm Hawkeye.”) Yet it's nearly impossible not to be reminded of the Guardians flicks while watching director David Leitch's hyper-violent comedy sequel, because if you thought the comic-book adventures of Chris Pratt and company boasted their genre's most ridiculously entertaining song scores, you were right … until now, that is.

20 May 2018

Fifty Shades of Great: “Book Club” and “RBG”

By Mike Schulz

The aging-friends comedy Book Club stars Jane Fonda, Diane Keaton, Candice Bergen, and Mary Steenburgen as … . I'm sorry, but does it even matter? There are precisely zero circumstances under which I, or really any longtime movie fan, wouldn't want to watch this phenomenal acting quartet together on-screen, even if their material were as insipid as Book Club's keeps threatening to be.

13 May 2018

Sorority Mother: “Life of the Party” and “Breaking In”

By Mike Schulz

In Life of the Party, Melissa McCarthy plays the doting mother of a college senior who, after being dumped by her husband of 20-plus years, pursues her dream of an archeology degree by enrolling in her daughter's university. I consequently expected 90-odd minutes of campus slapstick as well-meaning, accident-prone, profoundly uncool Mom mortifies her kid in classrooms and at Greek mixers and whatnot – just like the trailers indicated, and just like in the 1986 Rodney Dangerfield hit Back to School. But amazingly, that's not what we get. It turns out that instead of comedic stakes involving a child's embarrassment, there aren't any stakes at all.

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