23 May 2006

Sensory Deprivation: "The Da Vinci Code" and "Just My Luck"

By Mike Schulz

Tom Hanks and Audrey Tautou in The Da Vinci CodeTHE DA VINCI CODE

Throughout Ron Howard's The Da Vinci Code - based, of course, on Dan Brown's staggeringly successful novel - Tom Hanks and Audrey Tautou continually find themselves in dimly lit rooms, gloomy cathedrals, and the occasional underground tomb. When the characters finally do venture outdoors, their visibility doesn't much improve, as almost the entire movie takes place at night. And during the film's two-and-a-half-hour running length, deprived of nearly all natural (and even artificial) light, I never craved a nap so badly in my life.

14 Feb 2006

Stop! You're Killing Me!: "Final Destination 3," "When a Stranger Calls," and "The Pink Panther"

By Mike Schulz

Mary Elizabeth Winstead in Final Destination 3FINAL DESTINATION 3

Final Destination 3 is, almost unequivocally, the least successful of the franchise's entries. But you know what? The movie is still pretty terrific. It's easy to resent sequels that's don't deviate at all from the proven formula of their forebears, especially in regards to horror flicks; audiences want these follow-ups to give them what they loved about the original but not merely what they loved about the original. (The most common complaint I hear about horror sequels is "It's just like the first one.")

04 May 2004

Make a Date with "Mean Girls": Also, "Man on Fire," "Godsend," and "The Barbarian Invasions"

By Mike Schulz

Lindsay Lohan, Amanda Seyfried, Lacey Chabert, and Rachel McAdams in Mean GirlsMEAN GIRLS

Recently, some friends introduced me to the considerable pleasures of Freaks & Geeks on DVD, and I understood why the show barely lasted a season; it was a nearly pitch-perfect rendering of high school's everyday horrors and comic humiliations, and what mass audience, hoping for mindless entertainment, wants to subject themselves to that? And just like that sublime TV series, Mean Girls, the new teen comedy directed by Mark Waters and written by Tina Fey, is so wickedly sharp and achingly funny that its target audience probably won't know what to make of it.(At the screening I attended, everyone laughed like hell at the overt physical comedy, but the movie's most hilarious dialogue fell on deaf ears.)

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