01 Jun 2014

Horns Aplenty: "Maleficent" and "A Million Ways to Die in the West"

By Mike Schulz

Angelina Jolie in MaleficentMALEFICENT

Disney's Maleficent is director Robert Stromberg's re-imagined fairy tale told from the perspective of, and with much empathy for, the sorceress who put the "Sleeping" in Sleeping Beauty. If this is the beginning of a trend - one in which the studio, in effect, remakes its animated classics so that their evil villains are no longer evil or villainous - I can't wait to see what's in store for us next. A baby Scar who seeks vindication after other lion cubs make fun of his unfortunate birthmark? A young, svelte Ursula the Sea Witch driven to malice and gluttony when her sister is turned into caviar?

29 Apr 2012

Prenuptial Agreement: "The Five-Year Engagement," "The Pirates! Band of Misfits," "The Raven," and "Safe"

By Mike Schulz

Emily Blunt, Jason Segel, Chris Pratt, and Alison Brie in The Five-Year EngagementTHE FIVE-YEAR ENGAGEMENT

Say what you will about the current state of movies. Yet in the history of the medium, have the actors who populate film comedies ever been as across-the-board-excellent as they are right now? It took about 20 minutes for this question to pop into my head during The Five-Year Engagement, and once it did, I'm not sure I ever stopped pondering it; from the stars to the supporting cast to the bit players who show up for all of three seconds, director Nicholas Stoller's rom-com features an embarrassment of performance riches. The movie itself? Eh, it's okay.

30 Aug 2009

Scary Movies, Two: "The Final Destination," "Halloween II," and "Taking Woodstock"

By Mike Schulz

Haley Webb and Nick Zano in The Final DestinationTHE FINAL DESTINATION and HALLOWEEN II

In a somewhat odd scheduling decision, this past weekend saw the release of both The Final Destination - the fourth in the popular series of cheat-death-and-pay-the-price splatter flicks, presented (on some screens) in eyeball-gouging 3D - and Halloween II, writer/director Rob Zombie's sequel to his 2007 remake of John Carpenter's horror classic. But for fellow genre fans wondering which of the two makes for a more gratifying fright film, I'm afraid it's a draw; the former is kind of fun but mostly terrible, while the latter is kind of fascinating but almost no fun at all.

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