Mike's Movie Tips

3/4 Starring: Eugene Levy, Catherine O'Hara, Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, John Michael Higgins, Jennifer Coolidge, Jane Lynch, Michael Hitchcock, Parker Posey Rated PG-13 for Language and Sex-Related Material What makes "Best in Show," and Christopher Guest's movies in general, so funny is that it so closely mimics real life.  Nothing that happens in these movies is hard to believe.  Guest takes human quirks and oddities and amplifies and tweaks them for comic effect.  Sure, they're your garden variety weirdos and eccentrics, but they're the kind of people that you could run into on the street.  These aren't the freaks that you'd find in a Wes Anderson movie. The film uses Guest's fake documentary approach and takes aim at a marvelously quirky concept: a dog show.  It's the kind of innocent lunacy that Guest loves so much and does so well with.  Nine people (plus their dogs) are looking to win the Best in Show award at the Mayflow...

3/4 Starring: Rafe Spall, Robert James-Collier, Sam Troughton, Arsher Ali Not Rated (Probable R for Strong Language and Terror Violence/Gore) Little of what happens in "The Ritual" is original.  But that's less of a problem than you might thing.  Effective performances and a palpable sense of dread and fear overcome the fact that very little happens in this movie that you haven't seen before.  For a Netflix movie, that's actually a compliment. After the death of their friend, four friends decide to go on a hiking trip in his honor.  Luke (Spall), Phil (Ali), Hutch (James-Collins) and Dom (Troughton) are doing fine in the hills of Norway when Dom trips and injures his leg.  Because he can barely walk on it (and has a history of whining), Hutch decides to take a shortcut to the lodge.  As you can guess, this turns out to be a very bad idea. "The Ritual" borrows from a number of horror movies, but it at least borrows from some good ones.  Influe...

3/4 Starring (voices): Jonathan Taylor Thomas, Tress MacNeille, Andre Stojka, Clancy Brown, J.K. Simmons, Maurice Lamarche Rated PG for Violence, Scary Images and Thematic Elements Of the two titans behind Studio Ghibli, the late Isao Takahata could be given the label as the more ambitious of the two.  While it's totally unfair to label Hayao Miyazaki as risk-averse, he has his own style that he rarely strays from.  Takahata is less successful but pushes animation and filmmaking in directions that not even Miyazaki would go.  This is the man who made the perceptive " Only Yesterday " and the devastating " Grave of the Fireflies ."  "Pom Poko" isn't in that league, but it has its own pleasures. In the early 90s, Japan was in the middle of an economic boom.  The forests of Tama Hills are being bulldozed to make room for the New Tama housing development.  But the deforestation threatens the tanuki (Japanese racoons) who live there, so they dec...

1/4 Starring: Jason Clarke, Amy Seimetz, John Lithgow, Jete Laurence, Hugh Lavoie, Lucas Lavoie Rated R for Horror Violence, Bloody Images and Some Language The original " Pet Sematary " back from 1989 was a pretty sorry excuse for a horror film, so the idea of remaking it isn't shameful.  I went it with optimism.  Horror movie lover (and stingy rater) James Berardinelli reacted positively to it.  And it's a box office success (not that that means much).  I figured it at least had to be better than the first attempt.  Boy was I in for a rotten surprise. The Creeds are leaving Boston behind.  Louis (Clarke) and his wife Rachel (Seimetz) have packed up their children Ellie (Laurence) and Gage (Lavoie), and Ellie's cat Church to move to the countryside for a slower pace of life.  Life gets off to a strange start when Rachel and Ellie see a bizarre funeral procession for a deceased pet, and Ellie runs into a cemetery for the departed furry friends,...

2/4 Starring: Alec Baldwin, Whoopi Goldberg, James Woods, Susanna Thompson, Craig T. Nelson, William H. Macy Rated PG-13 for A Strong Scene of Violence and for Racial Dialogue I just finished "Mississippi Blood" the other day.  It's the concluding novel of the "Natchez Burning" trilogy by Greg Iles, featuring his upstanding and determined protagonist Penn Cage.  Let me tell you: those books have spoiled me rotten.  Those books are so powerfully told, so well thought out and so packed with drama and suspense that a movie like "Ghosts of Mississippi" can't measure up.  While it's unreasonable to expect even a filmmaker of Rob Reiner's talents to pack in as much plot and character development into a 2 hour movie as Greg Iles is in one of his novels (each book is 800-odd pages with nary a wasted word), it makes you wonder why this movie contains none of the same power despite the fact that it is based on a true story. On June 12, 1963, ...