10 May 2006

Cruise in for a Bruisin': "Mission: Impossible III"

By Mike Schulz

Tom Cruise and Keri Russell in Mission: Impossible IIIMISSION: IMPOSSIBLE III

Call it envy, call it sour grapes, call it schadenfreude, but I'll admit to hugely enjoying the public meltdown of Tom Cruise, mostly because it's finally making him interesting. Cruise has always been too bland to be true. He's moderately proficient, and in several of his films - most recently Collateral and Minority Report - he's even been impressive. But he has too few resources to draw upon as a performer. It would be hard to accuse Cruise of slouching on the job - he's determined and earnest, and you can sense him trying to suggest interior life. But his line readings have no surprise and his on-screen performances rarely build; whenever a new scene begins, Cruise appears to have forgotten everything his character experienced in his previous scenes. He can't seem to play more than one emotion, or one thought, at a time.

04 Jan 2005

Scorsese Falters with the Pandering "The Aviator": Also, "The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou" and "Beyond the Sea"

By Mike Schulz

Leonardo DiCaprio in The AviatorTHE AVIATOR

Martin Scorsese's The Aviator, which covers two decades in the life of entrepreneur Howard Hughes, is a skillful, beautifully designed bio-pic, engaging and occasionally thrilling, and, despite a two-and-three-quarter-hour running time, it's remarkably easy to sit through.

28 Oct 2003

"Scary Movie 3" an Improvement, but Not Clever Enough: Also, "Runaway Jury" and "Radio"

By Mike Schulz

Anna Faris and Drew Mikusa in Scary Movie 3SCARY MOVIE 3

With Scary Movie 3, the assignment of directing has been passed from Keenen Ivory Wayans to Airplane!'s David Zucker, which is a big step forward right there. (Zucker isn't much of a director, either, but at least he has ideas on how to shape a scene, and is actually pretty adept at making his film parodies look like the films they're parodying.) Plus, any time Zucker and company are satirizing the outrageous pomposity of M. Night Shymalan, whose Signs receives - and deserves - particularly harsh treatment here, Scary Movie 3 is everything you want a movie spoof to be: smart, funny, and more than a little mean. (And heartening - until now, I thought I was the only one who detested Shymalan's "Hitchcockian" appearance as the vet who accidentally kills Mel Gibson's wife in Signs.) The wide-eyed, appealing Anna Faris returns as the lead, ably satirizing Naomi Watts' reporter from The Ring, and comic actors such as Charlie Sheen, Jeremy Piven, Queen Latifah, Camryn Manheim, and legendary spoofster Leslie Nielsen all score some laughs. So why is Scary Movie 3 still so disappointing?

12 Aug 2003

"Freaky Friday" Overcomes Doubt, Slow Start: Also, "S.W.A.T." and "Gigli"

By Mike Schulz

Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan in Freaky FridayFREAKY FRIDAY

Everyone I know has enormous fondness for the 1976 Disney comedy Freaky Friday, wherein mother Barbara Harris and daughter Jodie Foster switched bodies and discovered, on one very strange day, how the other half lived.

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