Mike's Movie Tips

0/4 Starring (voices): Kana Hanazawa, Hoshino Gen Not Rated (probable PG-13 for Language and Sexual Content) I hated this movie.  I despised it.  I loathed it.  Sitting through it required me to watch it in two chunks, and each time I felt like I had spent 45 minutes in the seventh circle of surreal hell.  The plot makes no sense, the characters are annoying, and writer/director Masaaki Yuasa insists on dragging out his unintelligible story with unending metaphors that are either nonsensical or insultingly obvious. This is a movie where a set up of the plot is impossible.  This movie lost me after about five minutes.  It follows a girl (Hanazawa) who has a series of nonsensical adventures that would make Wes Anderson jealous, and a dweeby loser (Gen) who has longed her from afar and schemes to be with her.  Unfortunately she's too self-centered to notice him and he's too shy to speak to her.  It doesn't help that that they're both far too ...

1/4 Starring: Lupita Nyong'o, Winston Duke, Shahadi Wright Joseph, Evan Alex, Elizabeth Moss, Tim Heidecker Rated R for Violence/Terror, and Language In 2017, Jordan Peele released the comic horror film " Get Out ."  It turned out to be a sleeper hit, garnering $255.5 million against a budget of $4.5 million and four Oscar nominations.  Personally, I didn't think it was that great, but I enjoyed it for what it was.  But the film, a hybrid of horror, comedy and social commentary struck a nerve.  It's hard to imagine a similar response to his next film, "Us," which is just lame. Adelaide Wilson (Nyong'o) is taking a vacation to the beach with her husband Gabe (Duke) and two children, Zora (Joseph) and Jason (Alex).  Adelaide is nervous, particularly about going to the beach, since as a child she suffered a traumatic experience that left her with PTSD.  But just as her nerves get the best of her, her family is stalked outside by four people.  Ev...

2/4 Starring: Liya Kebede, Sally Hawkins, Timothy Spall, Juliet Stevenson Rated R for Some Violent Content, A Scene of Sexuality and Language The problem with "Desert Flower" is not that Waris Dirie's story isn't suited for the cinematic treatment or that the actress playing her isn't acceptable.  The problem is that director Sherry Hormann doesn't do a good job of telling it.  This is a poorly focused film that can't decide what it wants to be about or what it wants to say. As is the case with many a true story, the life of Waris Dirie is too amazing to be made up by a Hollywood screenwriter.  This woman fled an arranged marriage as a child, spent years as a servant to a Somali diplomat in England, survived on the streets, and was discovered by a fashion photographer while working as a janitor.  Then she became a supermodel and UN Ambassador in the fight against female genital mutilation. Waris experienced a lot in her life.  Telling it all in a...

2.5/4 Starring: Oscar Isaac, Charlie Hunnam, Ben Affleck, Garrett Hedlund, Pedro Pascal Rated R for Violence and Language Throughout It was all supposed to be so simple. Five guys take out an untouchable drug lord, relieve him of as much cash as possible, and fly away to safety.  Of course, things are never that easy.  And when you make the mistake of believing in your own genius, you have to pay the price. Pope (Isaac) is at the end of a long and violent career.  He's spent the past few years pursuing a drug lord named Lorea (Reynaldo Gallegos) with nothing to show for it but bad knees and a lot of dead bodies.  He sees an opportunity to settle the score and make out with more cash than he could have made in a thousand lifetimes in his career.  Lorea stores all of his money in his safehouse, so he and his buddies Redfly (Affleck), Ironhead (Hunnam), Ben (Hedlund) and Catfish (Pascal) will eliminate Lorea and steal as much of his money as they can get ...

3/4 Starring: Josh Hartnett, Shannyn Sossamon, Paolo Costanzo, Adam Trese, Glenn Fitzgerald, Vinessa Shaw Rated R for Strong Sexual Content, Nudity and Language "40 Days and 40 Nights" is a good romantic comedy where the lead character does something totally crazy and learns a few lessons about life and himself.  Admittedly, that's not a ringing endorsement for a raunchy sex comedy, but rest assured that this movie is both raunchy, sweet and occasionally hilarious.  Not everything works (the ending in particular), but all in all it's a fun way to spend 90 minutes. Six months ago, Matt (Hartnett) got dumped by his girlfriend Nicole (Shaw).  Devastated, Matt tries to fill the void with meaningless sex, but that only makes him feel worse.  Shortly after talking to his brother John (Trese), a priest-in-training, he gets an idea: no sexual activity of any kind for Lent. Sex, kissing, masturbation...they're all off the table for forty days and forty nights.  N...

2.5/4 Starring: Brie Larson, Samuel L. Jackson, Ben Mendelsohn, Jude Law, Annette Bening, Lashana Lynch Rated PG-13 for Sequences of Sci-Fi Violence and Action, and Brief Suggestive Language What can I say about "Captain Marvel" that I haven't said about every other MCU movie?  It's neither particularly good nor epically bad, more interested in continuity and in-jokes than telling a good story (or even a coherent one), and contains some awesome special effects that we have seen over and over again the past decade and a half.  In other words, it's the exact same movie you've been watching in the multiplex for ages.  That's good news for Marvel executives, Disney shareholders and comic book nerds, but for anyone who is like me and utterly bored of superheroes, it's damn depressing. Vers (Larson) is an amnesiac soldier for the Kree Empire, and right in the middle of a decades long conflict between the Kree and a race of shapeshifting aliens called...

1.5/4 Starring: Stephen Boyd, Edmond O'Brien, Donald Pleasance, Arthur O'Connell, Arthur Kennedy, Raquel Welch, William Redfield Rated PG (probably for Some Scary Images) How could this movie go so wrong?  It's such a good high concept for a movie: shrinking a bunch of scientists and then inserting them into the human body.  What happened?  Could it be the episodic screenplay?  The hopelessly cheesy special effects?  The lack of any real conflict?  It is, in fact, all of them.  And more.  This is one of the few movies that would do well with a remake.  It's hard to imagine it being worse. A brilliant scientist has just been brought to the US.  But on his way to safe haven with the US government, an attempt is made on his life.  During the struggle, a blood clot forms in his brain which leaves him in a coma.  Since normal surgery is impossible, that leaves one option: a team of scientists must enter a vessel called the P...

2/4 Starring: Luke Perry, Cynthia Geary, Stephen Baldwin, James Rebhorn, Carrie Snodgress Rated PG-13 for Language I started rolling my eyes as soon as this movie started.  I'm not one to criticize a movie for using a plot formula for telling its story.  After all, movies like " Avatar " and just about every romantic comedy ever made have used such templates as assets.  But when a film opens at sunrise with the plucky innocent of a hero chopping wood until his mother calls him in for breakfast, you're in trouble. "8 Seconds" tells the story of Lane Frost (Perry), a young rodeo rider whose career ascended to soaring heights before it ended suddenly at its peak.  Truth be told, the sports movie aspect of the film is hopelessly generic.  Every scene and every line is completely predictable.  In fact, it's so cliché that a smarter movie would have played it for satire.  Every t is crossed in this movie, and director John G. Alvidsen doesn't find ...

3/4 Starring: Viola Davis, Elizabeth Debicki, Michelle Rodriguez, Liam Neeson, Colin Farrell, Robert Duvall, Brian Tyree Henry, Daniel Kaluuya, Cynthia Ervio, Garrett Dillahunt, Jacki Weaver, Lukas Haas, Kevin J. O'Connor Rated R for Violence, Language Throughout, and some Sexual Content/Nudity It's kind of impressive just how much plot has been crammed into the two hours that it takes to tell the story of "Widows."  Perhaps not surprising, however, since it was based on a miniseries.  Still, this is a story that demands that the viewer pay close attention.  Answer a text, and you're likely to become lost.  Fortunately, the strength of the performances keeps things involving. "Widows" is a movie that depends a lot of surprises, so I'll just explain the set-up.  A robbery has just been foiled.  All four of the thieves, including the ringleader, Harry (Neeson), have died.  The money they have stolen was also destroyed.  That means that Harry...