25 Jul 2015

True Detective / Truly Defective: "Mr. Holmes," "Southpaw," "Paper Towns," and "Pixels"

By Mike Schulz

Ian McKellen and Milo Parker in Mr. HolmesFriday, July 24, 10:40 a.m.-ish: It's been so long since my last quadruple-feature - a miraculous six months plus! - that I'm only mildly dreading today's, and only then because I know it's ending with Adam Sandler. It's beginning, however, with Mr. Holmes, and while I can't imagine the world needing yet another showcase for Arthur Conan Doyle's literary sleuth, I'm psyched knowing this latest iteration will reunite director Bill Condon with his Gods & Monsters star Ian McKellen and Kinsey co-star Laura Linney. Most of the movie consists of McKellen's 93-year-old Sherlock, in 1947, contending with failing memory and the haunting case that forced his retirement, while Linney's Irish housekeeper Mrs. Munro cooks and tidies up. But while several mysteries arise and are duly resolved in the film, I am distracted throughout by two unresolved questions. (1) Who is this little kid Milo Parker who plays Sherock's protégé (and Mrs. Munro's son) Roger? And (2) How is this boy giving a performance that might be topping those of the excellent McKellen and Linney?

21 Jul 2013

Ghost World: "The Conjuring," "R.I.P.D.," "RED 2," and "Turbo"

By Mike Schulz

Patrick Wilson, Lili Taylor, Vera Farmiga, and Ron Livingston in The ConjuringTHE CONJURING

I was about halfway through my screening of The Conjuring when I noticed that I was having a most unusual reaction to director James Wan's haunted-house opus: For the life of me, I couldn't stop smiling.

06 Aug 2011

Swap Meat: "The Change-Up" and "Rise of the Planet of the Apes"

By Mike Schulz

Jason Bateman and Ryan Reynolds in The Change-UpTHE CHANGE-UP

The Change-Up, in which Jason Bateman's discontented husband and father magically swaps bodies with Ryan Reynolds' perfectly contented slacker dumb-ass, is an appallingly smutty and juvenile slapstick. In the segment that finds Reynolds (in Bateman's body) preparing a late-night feeding for his pal's infant twins - with one tot seen playing with butcher knives and the other reaching into the blender and sticking his tongue into an electrical socket - it features one of the most painfully unfunny scenes in cinema history, and I'm not excluding any given scene in Sophie's Choice or Schindler's List.

20 Oct 2010

Men Behaving Badly: "Jackass 3D" and "RED"

By Mike Schulz

Johnny Knoxville in Jackass 3DJACKASS 3D

Well, it finally happened. Having frequently wept with laughter during MTV's Jackass series, 2002's Jackass: The Movie, and 2006's Jackass Number Two, Johnny Knoxville and his incorrigible extreme-stunt companions, in director Jeff Tremaine's Jackass 3D, got me crying for an altogether different reason.

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