29 Aug 2016

Bridges Over Troubled Brothers: “Hell or High Water” and “Southside with You”

By Mike Schulz
Jeff Bridges and Gil Birmingham in Hell or High Water

HELL OR HIGH WATER

Jeff Bridges has given so many fantastically lived-in, and just plain fantastic, screen performances over nearly a half-century that picking out his best is a true fool’s errand. Yet if pressed for his most entertaining one, I’d be tempted to go with Bridges’ drunken sharpshooter Rooster Cogburn in 2010’s True Grit, which would make his portrayal of Hell or High Water’s Texas Ranger Marcus Hamilton – more sober than Rooster but equally funny, marble-mouthed, and moving – a close second.

29 Aug 2016

The Blind Leading the Blond: “Don't Breathe” and “Mechanic: Resurrection”

By Mike Schulz
Dylan Minnette and Jane Levy in Don't Breathe

DON’T BREATHE

A few weeks ago, in the creepy and clever horror film Lights Out, our protagonists were at the mercy of a nightmarish figure they couldn’t see. In writer/director Fede Alvarez’s new horror film Don’t Breathe, our protagonists are at the mercy of a nightmarish figure who can’t see them. You’d presume these particular protagonists would have an easier time of things. But Alvarez, to his credit, doesn’t appear interested in making things easy for anybody – not for the “heroes,” not for the “villain,” and not for audiences accustomed to those tags presented without quotation marks. You may find your stomach in knots during much of this brutally effective shocker. You may also find that part of your discomfort stems from sensing that the traumatized characters here are getting just what they deserve.

21 Aug 2016

Chariots Affair: “Ben-Hur,” “War Dogs,” and “Kubo & the Two Strings”

By Mike Schulz
Morgan Freeman and Jack Huston in Ben-Hur

BEN-HUR

The first words heard in the new remake of Ben-Hur are delivered in voice-over by – wouldn’t ya know it? – Morgan Freeman, meaning that the quality of director Timur Bekmambetov’s biblically themed epic is up in the air from the start. Will this be another Shawshank Redemption? A Million Dollar Baby? A March of the Penguins? A War of the Worlds? A Love Guru? A Hillary Clinton DNC bio-video?

So it shouldn’t be surprising that the movie, like Freeman’s vocal-track record, is similarly all over the place – sometimes lugubrious and laughable, sometimes powerful and exhilarating, sometimes merely blah. It’s hardly a threat to the legacy of 1959’s Ben-Hur and its record-setting 11 Oscar wins. But on the rare occasions that Bekmambetov’s unnecessary outing works, it works thunderously well, and either way we’re spared the monolithic orating of Charlton Heston, which is a plus right there.

14 Aug 2016

Streep Throat: "Florence Foster Jenkins," "Pete's Dragon," "Anthropoid," and "Sausage Party"

By Mike Schulz
Meryl Streep and Hugh Grant in Florence Foster Jenkins

FLORENCE FOSTER JENKINS

For more than 30 years, Meryl Streep has been singing on-screen in movies ranging from 1983’s Silkwood to last year’s Ricki & the Flash, with musical pitstops in a half-dozen outings in between. But not until the new bio-comedy Florence Foster Jenkins has the star ever sung quite this badly. Streep being Streep, of course, she sings badly brilliantly.

07 Aug 2016

Sympathy for the Devils: "Suicide Squad" and "Nine Lives"

By Mike Schulz
Will Smith and Margot Robbie in Suicide Squad

SUICIDE SQUAD

Everything you’ve likely heard about Suicide Squad is true – unless, for some reason, you’ve heard it’s great.

01 Aug 2016

Woody, Woodsy, Woozy: “Café Society,” “Captain Fantastic,” and “Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie”

By Mike Schulz
Jesse Eisenberg and Kristen Stewart in Cafe Society

CAFÉ SOCIETY

Woody Allen has made dozens of movies I’ve been happy to watch. Café Society may be the first one I’d be happy to eat.

01 Aug 2016

Not Bad at All, Actually: "Bad Moms," "Nerve," and "Jason Bourne"

By Mike Schulz
Kristen Bell, Mila Kunis, and Kathryn Hahn in Bad Moms

BAD MOMS

Despite the film’s silliness and inconsequentiality, the experience of Bad Moms does prompt an almost existential question: If a crummy comedy makes you laugh out loud at least three-dozen times, can it even be considered crummy in the first place?

24 Jul 2016

Demons, Dems, Doze: “Lights Out,” “Star Trek Beyond,” “Hillary’s America: The Secret History of the Democratic Party,” and “Ice Age: Collision Course”

By Mike Schulz
Teresa Palmer in Lights Out

Friday, July 22, 9:55 a.m.-ish: Few things get me more psyched for a quadruple-feature – or, more accurately, get me less dreading one – than knowing my day’s first screening will be over in a scant 80 minutes. So I enter director David F. Sandberg’s Lights Out feeling pretty good. Somewhat incredibly, I exit feeling really good, because this hour-20 horror trifle gives you just what you want from these things and too rarely do: a creepy and clever premise, a snappy pace, a bunch of good scares, a few strong portrayals, and a relative lack of eye-rolling stupidity.

17 Jul 2016

Walter White-Hat: “The Infiltrator,” “De Palma,” and “Wiener-Dog”

By Mike Schulz
Bryan Cranston and John Leguizamo in The Infiltrator

THE INFILTRATOR

A true tale that plays like fiction, director Brad Furman’s The Infiltrator concerns a federal agent (Bryan Cranston) who poses as a money launderer to help bust Pablo Escobar’s drug cartel, and it’s based on a memoir written by said agent Robert Mazur, not on a pre-existing movie. Yet it somehow feels like even more of a remake than the new Ghostbusters – principally a remake of Donnie Brasco, The Departed, or any number of similar entertainments involving disguised cops playing long cons, wire-tapping, bloody retribution, and swarthy gangsters in flashy suits conversing while topless women pole-dance in the background. It may boast saltier language and more bare breasts than broadcast-TV allows, but the movie wasn’t even 20 minutes old before I thought, “Hey ... haven’t I already seen this episode of Miami Vice?!”

17 Jul 2016

The New Paranormal: "Ghostbusters"

By Mike Schulz
Leslie Jones, Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wiig, and Kate McKinnon in Ghostbusters

GHOSTBUSTERS

Haters, as we all know, gonna hate. So there was probably no way the new Ghostbusters was ever going to win over the trolling Internet fanboys convinced that director Paul Feig’s female-led reboot – a nuclear bomb aimed directly at their childhood memories – was the end of civilization as we’ve known it. What consequently saddens me is that the movie spends so much time sucking up to those guys. While watching Feig’s latest, it’s easy to forget about the film’s underwhelming, dare-I-say-dreadful trailers, as the work in full is frequently very funny. But it’s also exhausting, because hardly a minute passes in which you’re not reminded of the Ghostbusters legacy – Ivan Reitman’s 1984 original, sure, but also the tired “controversy” surrounding its new presentation. All told, this might be the most simultaneously apologetic and defensive Hollywood blockbuster I’ve ever seen.

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