28 Mar 2015

Lay It Forward: "It Follows," "Get Hard," and "Home"

By Mike Schulz

Jake Weary and Maika Monroe in It FollowsIT FOLLOWS

Any horror fan who came of age with Halloween, Friday the 13th, and their many sequels knows the ironclad rule regarding imperiled teens: If they have sex, they're gonna die. So maybe you'll have to be of a certain generation - or have an affinity for a certain breed of shocker - to get the most from It Follows, writer/director David Robert Mitchell's intensely witty, pretty damned scary tale of a young woman diagnosed with a literally murderous, and ambulatory, STD.

20 Aug 2012

Old Habits Die Hard: "The Expendables 2," "ParaNorman," and "The Odd Life of Timothy Green"

By Mike Schulz

Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, and Terry Crews in The Expendables 2THE EXPENDABLES 2

If home viewings of The Expendables 2 are one day turned into a drinking game, and I pray that they are, one of the rules has to be that you chug every time the film employs a thudding cliché from the '80s, either directly or indirectly. A plot involving stolen weapons-grade plutonium? Drink! A team of he-men astonished that a new female recruit can actually do something? Drink! Dolph Lundgren wrestling with a Rubik's Cube? Drink twice!

16 Oct 2011

Two Left Feet: "Footloose," "The Thing," and "The Big Year"

By Mike Schulz

Kenny Wormald and Miles Teller in FootlooseFOOTLOOSE

It was probably inevitable that Paramount would get around to remaking Footloose, and once it did, the studio probably could've done worse than to hire director Craig Brewer for the job, despite a filmography (Hustle & Flow, Black Snake Moan) not exactly bursting with lighthearted confectionary fare. Yet considering that 27 years have passed since Kevin Bacon first screamed, "Let's da-a-a-ance!!!" to a grain mill full of eager young hoofers, shouldn't this new Footloose have been... I dunno... at least a slight improvement on the original?

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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