Mike's Movie Tips

3.5/4 Starring David Duchovny, Brad Pitt, Michelle Forbes, Juliette Lewis Rated R for Strong Violence, and for Sexuality and Language Be careful what you wish for.  You just might get it. It's an old adage, but one with a lot of truth in it.  We all have our dreams, our visions for a life, that while not necessarily perfect, is at least idyllic.  We, as human beings, are also pulled to the darker side of our natures.  It is a part of being human to be drawn to the things that scare or disgust us.  We watch horror movies, we slow down to look at a car accident, we get a thrill out of seeing the hero triumph over the villain.  It's human nature. One of the things that makes "Kalifornia" so effective is that it remembers this.  Not only that, this reality drives the characters, in their own way, and thus the plot.  Although one could classify this as a serial killer movie, it's an atypical one.  There is a tremendous amount of tension ...

2.5/4 Starring (voices): Kevin Kline, Kenneth Branagh, Rosie Perez, Armand Assante, Edward James Olmos, Jim Cummings Rated PG for Mild Thematic Material and Language Disney cornered the animation market since the release of "Snow White and the Seven Dwarves."  But about 20 years ago (give or take), other studios wanted a piece of the pie.  Few of them were any good, and none of them could capture that Disney magic.  Although with franchises like "Despicable Me," DreamWorks Animation is on solid footing (this is the only animated film of theirs that failed to turn a profit), "The Road to El Dorado" has been all but for forgotten because it's a forgettable movie. Tulio (Kline) and Miguel (Branagh) are two con men living in Spain in the mid-1500's.  In an attempt to escape the authorities, they end up on the voyage to the New World.  There, Captain Cortes (Cummings) throws them into the brig and plans to sell them to a plantation in Cuba.  Wit...

2.5/4 Starring: Laura Prepon, Misha Collins, Patrick Bauchau Rated R for Brutal Psychotic Violence including Murder, Rape and Spousal Abuse, Disturbing Sexual Content and Strong Language It is important to understand that the events in "Karla" cannot be accepted as 100% factual without reasonable doubt.  While there is no question that Karla Homolka and Paul Bernardo were responsible in some way for the murders of three young women (including Karla's sister Tammy), the truth about who was behind it all is closer to a "he said, she said" case.  That's one thing that the film forgets, or chooses to ignore, and it's not to the film's benefit. Karla Homolka (Prepon) knew from the second she saw him that she was going to marry Paul Bernardo (Collins).  Finding out that he was the Scarsboro rapist did little to dissuade her.  She loved him unconditionally, and that was enough.  She would do anything to please him, including letting him drug and rap...

3/4 Starring: Danielle Harris, Tony Todd, Kane Hodder, Parry Shen, Tom Holland The version being reviewed is unrated.  For the record, the theatrical cut is rated R for Strong Bloody Horror Violence, Sexual Content, Nudity and Language A movie like "Hatchet II" cannot be reviewed as a normal movie.  It's goals are different from a movie like " Halloween ."  Or " Scream ," for that matter.  None of it is intended to be taken seriously.  Well, not too seriously.  Like the first film, writer/director Adam Green finds the sweet spot between scares and laughs.  Also like the first one, he does so with gusto. And does he ever!  While no one could argue that the original shied away from the red stuff (quite the opposite in fact), Green has upped the ante.  The ways the characters in this movie meet their grisly ends is over-the-top for even a horror movie.  Blood and body parts fly everywhere in quantities that exceed normal units of me...

0.5/4 Starring: Natasha Henstridge, Christopher Lambert, Andrew Divoff Rated R for Gruesome Violence and Gore, and for Strong Language Watching "Adrenalin: Fear the Rush," I wondered what writer/director Albert Pyun was trying to do with this film.  Was he trying to create a surrealistic nightmare?  Or was he trying to make Ed Wood look like Steven Spielberg?  Either way, I felt my IQ drop with every passing minute.  Fortunately the movie is 77 minutes long, so I can still eviscerate it in a review. This movie is bad in a way that few movies are.  It's so bad that you watch it with some kind of mental distance.  I guess it's the brain's way of protecting itself from spontaneous combustion.  Dario Argento's " Opera " looks better with each passing minute.  At least that movie didn't repeat itself incessantly. There's not much of a plot.  It's a post-apocalyptic chase movie, although based on the evidence, I'm guessing that is...

1.5/4 Starring (voices): James Arnold Taylor, Nolan North, Mikey Kelley, Mitchell Whitfield, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Patrick Stewart, Chris Evans, Mako, Ziyi Zhang Rated PG for Animated Action Violence, Some Scary Cartoon Images and Mild Language Watching "TMNT," I thought to myself, "At least it's not as bad as the last iteration that, despite earning universal derision, made enough money to warrant a sequel.  I also thought to myself, that's a totally backhanded compliment. Unlike the disaster that made my Bottom 10 list two years ago, "TMNT" didn't threaten to drive me insane.  It's just deadly dull.  The story doesn't make a lot of sense, the action scenes are boring, and the jokes are lame.  For a movie that never had a hope of being taken seriously, that's a strike out. After defeating the Foot Clan, their bitter rivals, the Turtles are bored.  Leonardo (Taylor) has gone to Central America for training, which builds a lot...

4/4 Starring: Soren Fulton, Matt Borish, Sam Semenza, Michael Dean, John Michael Bolger Not Rated (Probable PG for Thematic Material, Rude Behavior including Drinking, all involving Young Teens) With a movie like "Rounding First," you have to be a little forgiving.  The film was clearly shot with no budget, which means that it had to have been made very quickly with a minimal crew.  "Rounding First" has some problems, like stilted dialogue and some raw acting (" Confession ," another fantastic no-budget movie, had some of the same problems), you'll find something much rarer and more valuable: good storytelling.  I don't know about you, but I'd rather watch an unpolished movie like this that manages to really involve me than a professional one that doesn't. The year is 1980.  Joe Koerner (Fulton) is a 12-year-old who lives with his parents.  He idolizes his older brother Tommy (Aaron Fiore), who is a scholar living in Europe, even th...

2.5/4 Starring: Ice Cube, Regina King, Common, Eve, Nicki Minaj, Cedric the Entertainer, Michael Rainey Jr. Rated PG-13 for Sexual Material and Language I haven't seen the first three installments of the popular "Barbershop" franchise, nor "Beauty Shop," the spin-off with Queen Latifah.  However, this is more or less a stand-alone movie.  I expect those who are well acquainted with Calvin (Cube) and his crew of hairstylists on the South Side of Chicago will get more out of it, but I never got too lost myself. Calvin is still running the barbershop with his group of a half dozen or so barbers.  They trade trash talk and quips about this and that, particularly about their lives and the men and women living in it.  However, the violence is getting to Calvin.  His son Jalen (Rainey Jr) is getting into fights and toeing ever closer to moving his shop to the North Side.  But after ex-barber turned politician Jimmy (Sean Patrick Thomas) prop...

Where would we be without our fans?  Cards fans at Busch Stadium on Opening Day (I was there, despite not being a particularly big baseball fan), comics fans at Comic Con.  And so it goes.  I have nothing against fandom itself.  I'm a huge "Halo" nerd and love the universe that the people behind the games have created.  But when does it go too far? With the rise of the internet, fans have found places to share their love of whatever brings them together.  Be it comics or " Star Wars ," what have you.  Studios have found a way to target this and make boatloads of money off it.  Hats off to them for figuring out how to make geekdom cool.  But we have come to a point where pleasing the fans has overtaken everything else. Easter eggs and references to other works are not new.  In one way or another, they've been around forever in storytelling.  I'm reading "Paradise Lost" in one of my classes, and it's filled to the brim with nods t...

4/4 Starring: Helen Mirren, Alan Rickman, Aaron Paul, Barkhad Abdi, Phoebe Fox Rated R for Some Violent Images and Language Roger Ebert had a term for movies like "Eye in the Sky:" the "bruised forearm" movie.  It refers to the arm bruises of the person next to you from grabbing them during the most intense scenes.  "Eye in the Sky" is definitely a "bruised forearm" movie. A British army officer named Katherine Powell (Mirren) is tasked with capturing a British national turned terrorist for al-Shabaab.  Assisting her are a pair of drone pilots, Steve Watts (Paul) and Carrie Gershon (Fox).  She is being watched by a group of politicians and Lieutenant General Frank Benson (Rickman).  Katherine's mission is to capture her alive, but circumstances dictate more drastic measures.  Political infighting puts the brakes on her plan, but just as she gets the green light for a strike, there's a new and terrifying wrinkle in play: a young gi...

1/4 Starring: Robert DeNiro, Dakota Fanning, Famke Janssen, Elisabeth Shue, Dylan Baker, Melissa Leo, Amy Irving Rated R for Frightening Sequences and Violence "Hide and Seek" is as familiar as an old shoe and done worse than any of its other incarnations.  I'm not going to mention any titles, but suffice it to say, I'd be willing to bet you've seen this movie before. David Callaway (DeNiro) awakes in the middle of the night to a horrifying scenario: his wife Alison (Irving) has just died, having slashed her wrists in the bathtub.  Worse still, his daughter Emily (Fanning) has seen the bloody aftermath.  Despite his friend Katherine's (Janssen) advice (she's also his colleague), he decides to move upstate to get away from it all and let Emily heal.  They move to a quiet town in upstate New York where everyone is friendly but suspicious.  David hits it off with a young aunt named Elizabeth (Shue) who has a daughter Emily's age.  But Emily has al...

3/4 Starring: Sharlto Copley, Danila Kozlovsky, Hayley Bennett, Tim Roth Rated R for Non-Stop Brutal Bloody Violence and Mayhem, Language Throughout, Sexual Content/Nudity and Some Drug Use "Hardcore Henry" lives up to its name.  And then some.  Many action movies, such as " Sin City " or the Paul Walker thriller "Running Scared" have gone "over-the-top."  "Hardcore Henry" leaves them in the dust.  Not only is it told almost entirely in the first person, it contains a number of sensational action sequences that even in a normal movie would be impressive. "Hardcore Henry" has a plot, although a thin one that makes no sense.  Twenty minutes into this picture I gave up trying to follow it.  All you need to know is that Henry wakes up and is suddenly a superhuman cyborg with no memory and a megalomaniac named Akan (Kozlovsky) wants him for his own ends.  His only ally is Jimmy (Copley), a guy who appears to know everything...

2/4 Starring: Morgan Freeman, Ashley Judd, Bill Nunn, Richard T. Jones, Jay O. Sanders, Cary Elwes, Gina Rivera Rated R for Terror, Violence and Language "Kiss the Girls" starts out strong, but when the second half comes around, it all falls apart.  An initially smart script dumbs down, editing problems abound, and the dreaded "talking killer" syndrome rears its ugly head not once, but twice. Forensic psychologist and best-selling author Alex Cross (Freeman) has just received some bad news: His niece Naomi (Rivera) has been missing for four days with no leads.  When he gets down to Durham NC to investigate, he learns that she's just the latest in a string of kidnapping victims, and her life is in extreme danger.  His only lead is Dr. Kate McTiernan (Judd), a brilliant young doctor who managed to escape the man's clutches. Okay, it's not Shakespeare, but as far as gimmicks for serial killer movies go, it's decent enough.  The problem lies in...

1/4 Starring: Jake Gyllenhaal, Naomi Watts, Chris Cooper, Judah Lewis, Heather Lind Rated R for Language, Some Sexual References, Drug Use and Disturbing Behavior I hate it when characters babble nonsense in an attempt to sound deep and interesting.  I also hate it when the director shows off visually to convey some abstract concept when he doesn't have a clue how to do it.  Despite the presence of the supremely talented Jake Gyllenhaal, Naomi Watts and Chris Cooper, "Demolition" is a real trial because it does both of those things. Davis (Gyllenhaal) has just lost his wife Julia (Lind) in a car accident.  Most people would be reduced to tears, rage against fate and the world, and finally accept reality and move on with their lives.  Not Davis.  Davis is numb to the world, and by his own admission has been for some time.  However, this newfound freedom has opened his eyes to his pointless existence.  Davi...

2/4 Starring: Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Bell, Ella Anderson, Peter Dinklage, Tyler Labine, Kathy Bates Rated R for Sexual Content, Language and Brief Drug Use Watching "The Boss," you get the sense that it was heavily improvised.  That's fine.  After all, some of cinema's best scenes and lines were improvised.  But there's good improv, and bad improv.  Good improv is where actors and filmmakers make up lines and scenes that fit in with their characters and story.  Bad improv is when actors say whatever is on their mind without knowing what they are doing (i.e. repeating yourself over and over again).  Some of the best improvisers are Bill Murray, the late Robin Williams, and the late Chris Farley.  Some of the bad ones are Seth Rogen, James Franco, and the like.  Comedy, like all drama, has to move forward, evolve, whatever you want to call it.  Merely saying the same thing over and over again may be improv, but it's not funny.  Un...

3/4 Starring: Liesel Matthews, Eleanor Bron, Liam Cunningham, Vanessa Lee Chester, Rusty Schwimmer, Arthur Malet Rated PG (for Cruelty...I guess) I heard, or possibly read, somewhere that kids movies are at their best when they give kids the impression that they can have an impact on the world.  I can't remember for the life of me who said it, but it's so true.  These days, with all the marketing blitzes and brand names and cute little supporting characters, kids, even if they're lucky enough to be at the forefront of a movie, rely on others for help.  That's not the case here.  The lead character is a little girl named Sara, and she matches wits with war, chance and the meanest matron ever to run a boarding school.  And comes out on top. Sara Crewe (Matthews) lives with her father (Cunningham) in India, where he impresses upon her that, despite not being "royalty," is a princess.  But war is coming, and he must leave Sara in the care of Miss M...

2.5/4 Starring: Stephen Dillane, Marisa Tomei, Goran Visnjic, Emira Nusevic, Woody Harrelson, Kerry Fox Rated R for Brutal Images/War Atrocities and Language After viewing Angelina Jolie's directorial debut, " In the Land of Blood and Honey ," another movie about the Bosnian War, I wrote, "Someday, someone is going to make a brilliant and innovative film about the Bosnian War, if they haven't already."  While "Welcome to Sarajevo" shows flashes of greatness, they are in the midst of a meandering story without much focus or characters we can truly latch onto. Michael Henderson (Dillane) is a reporter covering the Balkan conflict, along with his colleagues Jane Carson (Fox), Annie McGee (Emily Lloyd) and hotshot American reporter Flynn (Harrelson).  Violence and death are a daily reality here, and they cope with it the best they can.  But the constant danger and death and the "all talk" bureaucracy wear down on Michael, and he makes...

1/4 Starring: Melissa Joan Hart, Jesse Metcalfe, Hayley Orrantia, Ray Wise, Trisha LaFache, David A.R. White, Ernie Hudson Rated PG for Some Thematic Material Two years ago, " God's Not Dead " was unleashed into theaters.  Despite being a preachy, misogynist and hypocritical piece of crap that was so bad that even those in its target audience hated it, it made a killing at the box office (it made a handsome $60 million in profit).  It was one of the few movies I gave a zero-star rating to.  So when I learned they were coming out with a sequel, I dreaded it, realizing that the only pleasure I could possibly get from it was eviscerating it in a review. So why the 1/4 instead of the 0/4 that I was preparing to give it (and in some ways, hoping to give it).  A few reasons.  One, the acting has improved.  While Melissa Joan Hart, Jesse Metcalfe, and Ernie Hudson aren't name actors, they have starred in some legitimate productions and do solid jobs here, ...

3/4 Starring: Daoming Chen, Gong Li, Huiwen Zhang Rated PG-13 for Some Thematic Material Gong Li is one of the most beguiling actresses working today.  Even when she's in something awful like "2046," her presence and appeal (not to mention her talent) cannot be denied.  What's remarkable about her is that she's an incredibly physical actress.  Not in the sense of Bruce Willis or any other action star, but Li has the uncanny ability to use her body to get the perfect effect.  With a simple movement, she can turn something as mundane as walking into something truly expressive. Li plays Yu, a woman living in China at the time of the Great Leap Forward.  She has a daughter named Dandan (Zhang), who is training to be a dancer.  Her husband Lu (Chen) is a political prisoner and away to become a "comrade."  However, he escapes, but Dandan, fearing the loss of a key role, turns him in.  Three years later, he is released, but Yu has developed amnes...