23 Dec 2010

Hello. My Name Is Mattie Ross. You Killed My Father. Prepare to Die.: "True Grit" and "Yogi Bear"

By Mike Schulz

Jeff Bridges and Hailee Steinfeld in True GritTRUE GRIT

Over the course of their careers, the films of Joel and Ethan Coen have, of course, inspired a wide variety of responses: amusement (and quite a lot of it), excitement, fascination, terror, confusion, astonishment, mortification. (Oh, the depressing spectacle of Intolerable Cruelty ... .) But while we audiences have laughed and gasped and occasionally scratched our heads, we haven't, prior to the Coen brothers' True Grit, been moved to tears by scenes of unbridled yet honestly earned sentiment. Guess we can now scratch that one off the list, too.

03 Aug 2009

Bombs Away: "Funny People," "The Hurt Locker," and "G-Force"

By Mike Schulz

Adam Sandler and Leslie Mann in Funny PeopleFUNNY PEOPLE

Leslie Mann, the wife of comedy kingpin Judd Apatow, is unfailingly awesome, and I love her in her husband's first two outings as a film writer/director: 2005's The 40-Year-Old Virgin and 2007's Knocked Up. So it pains me to say that I would've enjoyed Apatow's third auteurist venture - the current Funny People - a whole lot more if Mann's character had been excised from it completely. Of course, that would've made the movie almost a full hour shorter than it is. That would've been all right, too.

28 Feb 2006

A Debuting Oldie and Some Old Newbies: "Transamerica," "Firewall," "Freedomland," "Date Movie," "Eight Below," and "Curious George"

By Mike Schulz

Jeez, you take one week off from regular movie reviewing and you fall so behind ... .

14 Jan 2003

"Bowling for Columbine" and "Adaptation" Challenge, but Don't Let That Scare You: Also, "Maid in Manhattan" and "Two Weeks Notice"

By Mike Schulz

Michael Moore in Bowling for ColumbineBOWLING FOR COLUMBINE

Michael Moore's latest, the astounding documentary Bowling for Columbine, has finally made it to our area (it's currently playing at the Quad Cities Brew & View), and although I spent a couple hundred words extolling its merits last month in the Reader - where I named it my favorite movie of 2002 - the film is so good that a few hundred more seem necessary.

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