Mike's Movie Tips

1.5/4 Starring: David Soul, Bonnie Bedelia, Ed Flanders, James Mason, Lance Kerwin, Lew Ayres Not Rated (probable PG-13 for Terror/Violence) "Salem's Lot" is a daytime TV soap opera with some really creepy vampires.  It has all the hallmarks of the former: a cast that (with two exceptions) competes with each other to best impersonate a block of cement, atrocious dialogue and bad melodrama that no one on Earth could possibly care about.  But boy, are those bloodsuckers scary. Ben Mears (Soul) is a writer who has moved back to his hometown of Salem's Lot, Maine for a six month stay.  He's writing a novel, and thinks that the local haunted mansion may prove to have some good inspiration.  While there, he meets the locals, including Jason Burke (Ayres), his old teacher who inspired him to become a writer and Susan Norton (Bedelia), with whom he falls in love with.  Also moving in is a man named Richard K. Straker (Mason), who, with his yet to arrive business p

2.5/4 Starring: Sebastian Stan, Christopher Plummer, Samuel L. Jackson, William Hurt, Bradley Whitford, Ed Harris, Diane Ladd, Jeremy Irvine, Alison Sudol Rated R for War Violence, and Language I had to take a minute to ask myself why I didn't fully embrace this movie.  It has an array of strong performances and more than a few moments of real emotional power.  Certainly this story needed to be told.  But is this the movie to tell it?  I don't think so.  The screenplay is bland, the emotional temperature is frequently wrong, and the manipulation is at times too heavy handed.  This good story needed a better storyteller. Scott Huffman (Stan) is a yuppie lawyer working for the Department of Defense.  He's cocky and ambitious, but the fact that he has a young son and a pregnant wife doesn't camouflage the fact that he's kind of a jerk.  Just as he's about to put the finishing touches on a project he's spent most of the year on, he's given a new assi

0/4 Starring: Justin Chon, Harry Shum Jr., Kevin Wu, Ray Liotta, Shuya Chung Rated R for Strong Violence including a Sexual Assault, Pervasive Language, Some Drug Use and Sexual Content The first 15 minutes of this movie are actively unpleasant.  During this time, we see human smuggling victims being forced into slave labor, a kid being beaten bloody by young gangsters, a second kid being forced to defecated on the injured boy before being abducted and forced into the gang (and stolen from his mother, who will later witness him murder two people in cold blood) and watch his friend suffer a similar fate.  I wanted to turn this movie off and not look back.  But I held out hope that it would get better.  That there would be some point to this savagery.  Let me save you the trouble and say that no, there isn't. I'd go over the plot, but there really isn't one.  It's 90 minutes of watching the scum of the Earth actively screw each other over and murder each other.  I

3.5/4 Starring: George MacKay, Dean-Charles Chapman Rated R for Violence, Some Disturbing Images, and Language I've always found it rather shocking that World War 1 has been left out of the movies, at least compared to its successor.  There's certainly no reason why a gifted filmmaker can't make a great movie out of, say, trench warfare or dogfighting.  It hasn't been completely forgotten, but the number of movies that concentrate on the conflict between 1939 and 1945 greatly outweigh those set between 1914 and 1918.  Fortunately, that seems to be changing.  With films such as " War Horse ," "Joyeux Noel," and " They Shall Not Grow Old ," more and more filmmakers are looking back farther to tell the stories from that tumultuous period of history. The set-up is simple.  The Germans are on the retreat, and the British Army is going to keep pushing them back.  But it's a trap, and two battalions are walking into a slaughter.  Two s

3/4 Starring: Kristen Stewart, Vincent Cassel, Jessica Henwick, John Gallagher Jr., T.J. Miller Rated PG-13 for Sci-Fi Action and Terror, and Brief Strong Language You have to at least admire the guts of a director who doesn't bother with a set-up.  After a brief monologue by Norah (Stewart), the film's protagonist, everything goes straight to hell. Norah works on an energy facility located at the bottom of the Mariana Trench, six and a half miles below the surface, and something has gone terribly wrong.  The building has sprung a leak and collapsed into itself.  Now Norah and a few of the remaining survivors have to find a way to make it to the surface in one piece, and time is quickly running out.  And just when things look like they can't get any worse, they get much worse. "Underwater" seems like a summer disaster movie in the vein of " Deepwater Horizon ," but actually it's closest cousin is " The Descent ."  The film is only

2.5/4 Starring: Henry Cavill, Dominic Purcell, Michael Fassbender, Emma Booth Rated R for Strong Bloody Violence and Gore, and Some Language Any student of history will be able to tell you that Nazi Germany, especially Heinrich Himmler, was obsessed with the occult.  They used it and perverted it to lend legitimacy to their beliefs of the superiority of the Aryan race.  So it goes without saying that film has taken this historical tidbit and used it to fuel their plots.  Everything from Indiana Jones (twice) to " Hellboy " and " Overlord ."  "Blood Creek" does too, although it's strictly window dressing. Evan Marshall (Cavill) is an EMT in rural America.  His war hero brother Victor vanished a few years ago on a fishing trip and he has long since given up hope that Victor is still alive.  It remains a sore spot for him, not least because his sister-in-law Barb (Lynn Collins) and her children cling to the hope that Victor will return, while his

0.5/4 Starring: Andrea Riseborough, Demian Bichir, John J. Hansen, Frankie Faison, Lin Shaye, John Cho, Betty Gilpin, Jacki Weaver Rated R for Disturbing Violence and Bloody Images, Terror and Some Language I've never seen "The Grudge."  Either the 2002 original or the inevitable remake two years later with 90's scream queen Sarah Michelle Gellar.  So any comparisons to the original shall be left to other critics and internet trolls (or clickbait articles).  I suppose the premise has promise.  I mean, there's potential in watching a pissed off spirit terrorizing anyone dumb enough to venture into their domain.  It's not exactly Shakespeare, but then again, neither was "Halloween." A thought occurred to me while I was watching this movie.  People have long been predicting the end of movie theaters due to the rise of cheap hi-def TVs and streaming content.  Some, such as famed internet critic James Berardinelli, see it as not only an inevitabil