27 Feb 2008

Tape Dispensers: "Be Kind Rewind," "Vantage Point," and "Witless Protection"

By Mike Schulz

Jack Black and Mos Def in Be Kind RewindBE KIND REWIND

It's easy to enjoy writer/director Michel Gondry's Be Kind Rewind, but it's not the sort of enjoyment that lasts longer than your drive home from the cineplex, and the disappointment of the movie is that you really want it to be.

25 Jan 2005

"What the Bleep Do We Know?" Undermined by Messiness: Also, "Assault on Precinct 13" and "Coach Carter"

By Mike Schulz

Marlee Matlin in What the Bleep Do We Know?WHAT THE BLEEP DO WE KNOW?

The ideas expressed in the New Age-y pseudo-doc What the Bleep Do We Know? are inherently intriguing and endlessly debatable. What a shame that the movie itself is such a spectacular mess.

12 Jun 2001

"Evolution" Could Have Used Some: Also, "The Animal"

By Mike Schulz

David Duchovny, Julianne Moore, Seann William Scott, and Orlando Jones in EvolutionEVOLUTION

The sci-fi comedy Evolution is like Ghostbusters without Bill Murray, which isn't surprising since both films were directed by Ivan Reitman, but it also means that it's like Ghostbusters without the big laughs. In that 1984 blockbuster, Murray delivered his lines with an italicized innuendo that made even his throwaway quips hilarious; without his presence, the film (and its underrated 1989 follow-up) would just have been a moderately pleasant, cheesy, overscaled, haphazardly paced affair. That's Evolution.

15 May 2001

Forget "The Mummy Returns"; "Memento" Spellbinds

By Mike Schulz

Guy Pearce and Carrie-Anne Moss in MementoMEMENTO

It has taken quite a while, and an especially long while here in the Quad Cities, but the first unequivocally great movie of 2001 has finally appeared: writer-director Christopher Nolan's crime thriller Memento. And its greatness is of a very particular kind - you want all of your friends to see it immediately, so you can share your excitement with them and work out passages of the film that you're almost sure you understood. (Getting to review works like Memento is the absolute best thing about being a published film critic.) Like The Truman Show, Memento is so clever, so smart, so full-to-brimming with detail and wit and filmmaking passion that it feels miraculous, and within its genre, it just might be a new classic.

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