11 Jan 2015

For King and Country: "Selma," "Inherent Vice," and "Taken 3"

By Mike Schulz

David Oyelowo in SelmaSELMA

Movie violence is so prevalent - be it in horror films or action franchises (see Taken 3, if you must) or the PG-13 pummelings of every Marvel entertainment ever - that it's shocking to see one whose brutal acts have the power to make you cry. But within the first minutes of the extraordinary Selma, director Ava DuVernay stages a literal explosion of historical violence so frightening, repellent, and emotionally overwhelming that, in the awestruck moments of silence that followed, it was absolutely no surprise to hear viewers sniffling.

08 Jan 2015

Predicting the 2015 Academy Award Nominations

By Mike Schulz

Ralph Fiennes in The Grand Budapest HotelIf you're reading this hot off the (electronic) presses, members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences only have an hour or so to submit their online or - less frequently these days - paper ballots for this year's Oscar race. (Voting officially ends today at 5 p.m. PST.) So this seems like an appropriate time to make my own final guesses for January 15's nominees, even if a better time would be January 15 itself - preferably just after the Academy's official announcement of contenders.

07 Jan 2015

Boy Oh Boy(hood): The Most Enjoyable Movies of 2014

By Mike Schulz

Ellar Coltrane in BoyhoodThere are quite a few promising titles I've yet to see, including wintertime Oscar hopefuls such as Selma, American Sniper, Mr. Turner, Still Alice, A Most Violent Year, and Inherent Vice, and most everything bound to be nominated for Best Foreign-Language Film and Best Documentary Feature. The Quad Cities area is a relatively small movie market in the Midwest, and I don't get to Chicago (or New York or Los Angeles) very often. C'est comme ça.

So the films and the order of their placement on this list of "10 Favorite Movies of 2014" will, no doubt, eventually change. Baring a miracle, though, we're good to go on that first one.

04 Jan 2015

Blitz Creep: "The Woman in Black 2: Angel of Death" and "The Gambler"

By Mike Schulz

THE WOMAN IN BLACK 2: ANGEL OF DEATH

For those keeping track, the newly annual tradition of each film year opening with a horror sequel continues, thanks to the release of The Woman in Black 2: Angel of Death. But I should mention that, beyond the presence of the titular ghost, director Tom Harper's follow-up doesn't share many traits with the original. There's no Daniel Radcliffe, for one thing. And instead of taking place in the London outskirts of the Edwardian era, this one is set during World War II. And ... . Um ... . Wow. Does anyone recall anything else about the original?

01 Jan 2015

100 Favorite Movies, 2000-2014: Mike Schulz

By Mike Schulz

Wa-a-a-a-ay back at the tail end of 2009, my editor Jeff Ignatius and I thought it'd be fun to compose lists of our 100 favorite movies of the millennium. That, of course, led to a completely predictable fight over which year the millennium actually started in ... .

But once we put that past us, it was a lot of fun. So we decided, with five additional years behind us, to do it again - if, in Jeff's case, slightly differently this time around. Creature of habit that I am, though, I stuck to a good-ol'-fashioned ranking of 100 favorites in preferential order. In doing so, I also made some interesting discoveries.

01 Jan 2015

100 Favorite Movies, 2000-2014: Jeff Ignatius

By Jeff Ignatius

When Mike Schulz suggested revisiting and updating our lists of favorite movies of the 2000s, I looked back at my early-2010 article and thought: "Ghost Town? What the hell is that?" Sorry, Ricky Gervais, but it took a few seconds to recall anything at all about a movie I'd listed as one of my top 100.

Such are the perils of composing lists covering long periods of time with a memory as leaky as mine. Unlike my colleague Mike, I don't have a record of my thoughts about most of the movies I've seen, and therefore I can't say with much certainty whether I still like the 100 favorite movies I selected for 2000 through 2009. So I started from scratch here, with the idea that I wouldn't include anything so poorly (if fondly) remembered as Ghost Town. (Favorites from the 2010 list that aren't included here haven't necessarily fallen in my esteem; in many cases, I just don't have a recent experience or firm memory of them to rely on).

28 Dec 2014

True Defective: "Unbroken," "The Imitation Game," and "Big Eyes"

By Mike Schulz

Jack O'Connell in UnbrokenUNBROKEN, THE IMITATION GAME, and BIG EYES

Among other titles, Christmas Day brought with it the area releases of Angelina Jolie's Unbroken, Morten Tyldum's The Imitation Game, and Tim Burton's Big Eyes. Each of them opens with a title-card variant on "This is a true story." Each of them ends with a series of title cards informing us what happened to characters after the films' narratives concluded. And each of them, for occasional better and more frequent worse, feels absolutely, 100-percent Hollywood.

28 Dec 2014

Into the Weeds: "Into the Woods" and "The Homesman"

By Mike Schulz

Emily Blunt and James Corden in Into the WoodsINTO THE WOODS

"Do you know what you wish? Are you certain what you wish is what you want?" - lyrics from Into the Woods

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.

19 Dec 2014

Where There's a Will, There's a Way: "Annie" and "The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies"

By Mike Schulz

Cameron Diaz, Jamie Foxx, Quvenzhane Wallis, and Rose Byrne in AnnieANNIE

Sony's last-remaining grab for the holiday box office, the much-downloaded reboot of Annie, opened this weekend, and it must be said that as a musical - especially as a musically faithful interpretation of the stage show - it kind of sucks. The choreography's a shambles and the mixing is poor and the original numbers are terrible, while familiar, enjoyable Annie tunes such as "Little Girls" and "Easy Street" are merely sampled, their melodies and lyrics awkwardly woven into new pop and hip-hop arrangements. (Three of the film's myriad producers are Jay-Z and Will and Jada Pinkett Smith, so I guess we should just be grateful that the titular orphan is played by Quvenzhané Wallis and not Willow. Or Jaden.)

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