Mike's Movie Tips

2.5/4 Starring: Ron Perlman, Selma Blair, Rupert Evans, John Hurt, Doug Jones, Karel Roden, Jeffrey Tambor, Biddy Hodson, Ladislav Beran Rated PG-13 for Sci-Fi Action Violence and Frightening Images It is perhaps the ultimate hypocrisy of a film critic (and by extension, an audience member) to criticize a filmmaker for taking chances.  We bemoan cookie cutter plots, a lack of new ideas, and films that are content with being the exact same movie we have seen a million times before.  When a filmmaker tries to do something new, we either put them on pedestals as "artists with vision" when they work or eviscerate them for their mistakes when they don't.  Harsh, but to some extent it's certainly true.  Guillermo del Toro certainly took some chances with his film version of "Hellboy," but unfortunately most of them do not pay off. Hellboy is the result of a foiled occult ritual conducted by the Nazis at the end of World War II.  Although Rasputin (Roden) f...

2/4 Starring: Charlotte Rampling, Ludivine Sagnier, Charles Dance The version being reviewed is unrated.  For the record, the theatrical cut is rated R for Strong Sexual Content, Nudity, Language, Some Violence and Drug Use Dive into this summer's sexiest mystery So the tagline for Francois Ozon's "Swimming Pool" promises.  Except that it's not very sexy or mysterious.  In fact, for the most part it's simply boring. Murder mystery author Sarah Morton (Rampling) is bored writing her series of popular murder mysteries.  Her publisher (Dance) senses this and offers to let her stay in his house in France where she can recharge her batteries and write something new.  That is until his daughter Julie (Sagnier) drops by unexpectedly, and things start to get a little testy... Normally I'd avoid divulging more in order to avoid spoilers, but the truth is that there really isn't much to spoil.  The brittle Sarah and the oversexed Julie are more or le...

2.5/4 Starring (voices): Jay Baruchel, America Ferrera, F. Murray Abraham, Cate Blanchett, Craig Ferguson Rated PG for Adventure Action and Some Mild Rude Humor A good sequel takes the characters and storylines from the original and moves them into a new direction.  "How to Train Your Dragon 2" did just that.  The original film ended with a complete social upheaval on the island of Berk, and the next installment started there and then journeyed into its new open world.  It wasn't as charming as the first one, but it had some bold ideas and left the film on a cliffhanger of an ending.  It's actually kind of shocking then that not only is "How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World" an utter rehash of the second film, but it completely ignores the ending of its predecessor. Berk is becoming very overcrowded.  With Hiccup (Baruchel) and his friends rescuing dragons from evildoers, it is becoming very hard to move on their tiny island.  Hiccup...

3.5/4 Starring: Glenn Close, Jonathan Pryce, Christian Slater, Max Irons, Annie Starke, Harry Lloyd Rated R for Language and Some Sexual Content Sometimes, it's all about the acting. A movie like "The Wife" lives or dies on the strength of the performances by the actors.  Plot is minimal.  Directorial style and flourishes can only distract.  And so on.  This is an actor's dream because they take center stage and show their stuff.  And few people do it as well as Glenn Close.  This is her movie and no one is going to steal it from her. Joe Castleman (Pryce) has just won the Nobel Prize for Literature.  His loving wife Joan (Close) is naturally elated as well.  But as a would-be biographer Nathaniel Boone (Slater) points out, there is more to the story of Joe's success than meets the eye.  Now Joan has a crucial decision to make, one alter the lives of the Castleman family forever. Have you ever noticed that when someone gets an awa...

3/4 Starring: Rosa Salazar, Christoph Waltz, Keean Johnson, Mahershala Ali, Ed Skrein, Jennifer Connelly, Jackie Earle Haley Rated PG-13 for Sequences of Sci-Fi Violence and Action, and for Some Language Finally, there's something I can say about a big budget action movie (other than there isn't a single dude or girl dressed in spandex making meta humor or get the audience to point out references to Joe Somebody from episode #624 before his friends see it).  It takes risks.  That doesn't mean to say that "Alita: Battle Angel" is original, because it isn't.  It's just that it doesn't feel like a carbon copy of every other movie like it.  There is a lot of plot, and I mean a lot .  I'm actually surprised that director Robert Rodriguez managed to fit it all into slightly more than two hours.  In fact, I would argue that with this much story, another ten or fifteen minutes of screen time would have helped the film breathe and allow the audience t...

1.5/4 Starring (voices): Chris Pratt, Elizabeth Banks, Tiffany Haddish, Will Arnett, Alison Brie, Nick Offerman, Stephanie Beatriz Rated PG for Some Rude Humor I think I can safely say that " The Lego Movie " took everyone by surprise when it was released in 2014 (myself included).  What seemed like a desperate and shameless attempt at product placement and cross-marketing turned out to be one of the freshest and funniest comedies in years.  Directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller threw everything at the screen: meta humor, self-aware satire and as many in-jokes and references as they could fit.  It was a blast and even made my Top 10 list that year.  Hollywood, always eager for a new genre or approach to mine (and run into the ground with overexposure), jumped on the brand and churned out two spin-offs (neither of which were any good).  But it has taken five years for a true sequel to be released.  Sadly, it's just not worth the wait. "The Lego...

3.5/4 Starring: Yoo Gong, Su-an Kim, Eui-sung Kim, Dong-seok Ma, Yu-mi Jung, Woo-sik Choi, Sohee Not Rated (probable R for Strong Zombie Violence/Gore and Some Language) Let's face it.  The zombie genre is in dire need of new life.  No pun intended.  The only way to make a successful zombie flick is to go for laughs, like in the charming sleeper hit "Zombieland" or the criminally underrated " Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse ."  Making a scary zombie movie seems like an impossibility due to the overexposure the undead have had in recent years.  Yet that's what Sang-ho Yeon accomplishes.  It may not be original, but it's done well. Seok-woo (Gong) is such a workaholic that it takes a bitter argument with his ex to remind him that it's his daughter Soo-an's (Su-an Kim) birthday.  After an attempt to give her a nice gift backfires, he decides to give Soo-an what she really wants: a trip to Busan to see her mother.  The day trip seems to...

2/4 Starring: Jon Finch, Barry Foster, Anna Massey, Alec McCowen, Barbara Leigh-Hunt, Clive Swift, Billie Whitelaw, Vivien Merchant Rated R (probably for Violence including a Brutal Rape, Language and Graphic Nudity) When "Frenzy" opens, there's a generic orchestra playing a stuffy soundtrack as the camera slowly swoops down along the Thames.  Indeed, the first half hour of the film feels like a British soap opera.  Not a good sign if you're Alfred Hitchcock.  And, sad to say, the film doesn't get much better.  It has its moments to be sure.  But this gratuitously violent would-be shocker is too dim-witted and too sluggish to generate much suspense. A killer is on the loose in London.  The madman rapes women, strangles them with a necktie, and then dumps the body.  The police are without a suspect, which causes many a reaction among the populace.  While they try to find the killer, a bloke named Richard Blaney (Finch) is having a really ba...