Mike's Movie Tips

 2.5/4 Starring: Christian Malheiros, Rodrigo Santoro, Vitor Julian, Lucas Oranmian Rated R for Language, Some Violence and a Sexual Reference Despite the presence of " City of God " director Fernando Meirelles and indie darling Ramin Behrani as the producers and a story that tackles an all too real tragedy, "7 Prisoners" feels like a rehash of old material.  What these men go through is horrible, but co-writer/director Alexandre Moratto makes a serious tactical error: he is apparently under the impression that no one in the audience knows that this kind of thing happens a lot.  Without a fresh approach or strong character development to bulk it up, "7 Prisoners" loses a lot of intensity and fails to deliver the gut punch it strives for. Mateus (Malheiros) is excited for the future.  He has an opportunity to make a living in the city and send money back home.  Going with him are three other local men.  The squalid living conditions nor the surrender of the...

 1/4 Starring: Taylour Page, Riley Keough, Nicholas Braun, Colman Domingo Rated R for Strong Sexual Content and Language Throughout, Graphic Nudity, and Violence including a Sexual Assault Truth, as they say, is stranger than fiction.  "Zola" started out as a series of 148 tweets from a Detroit waitress named A'Ziah King, or Zola for short.  Her wild weekend quickly went viral, catching the attention of celebrities such as Missy Elliott and Ava DuVernay and leading to an article in Rolling Stone. Now it's been turned into a movie. Frankly, I'm not sure what is so compelling about it.  If there was anything catchy or propulsive about it, director Janicza Bravo doesn't find a way to convey it.  This is a creepy and unpleasant story about people I didn't like at all and wanted to get away from.  Watching it isn't being taken on a wile ride.  It's like being trapped in a room with people you don't know who are fighting and doing increasingly danger...

 2.5/4 Starring: Biljana Cekic, Anja Stanic, Sandra Ljubojevic, Nikolina Friganovic, Jelena Grusicic, Zlatan Vidovic Rated R for Strong and Disturbing Violent Content, and Some Sexual Content I'll give "Dara of Jasenovac" credit for a few things: shining a light on an often overlooked part of history, not shrinking from the horrors that occurred nor backing down from controversy.  Unfortunately the film isn't wholly successful.  It contains strong performances from its cast and more than a few scenes of real power, but a lack of dialogue, thin characters and some poorly motivated actions hold it back from true excellence. "Dara of Jasenovac" tells the story of the genocide of the Serbs by the Croats.  While it did occur during WWII and shared many elements with the Holocaust, the crimes committed by the Ustacse government (which was a puppet state of the Nazi Party), it is very much its something else, even if the genocides interconnected.  Our entry-point i...

 3.5/4 Starring: Benedict Cumberbatch, Merab Ninidze, Rachel Brosnahan, Angus Wright, Jessie Buckley, Zeljko Ivanek Rated PG-13 for Violence, Partial Nudity, Brief Strong Language, and Smoking Throughout These days, spy thrillers have become synonymous with James Bond and Jason Bourne: outrageous action, cool gadgets and the fight against world domination or something.  And as much as I love James Bond (I can't say the same about Jason Bourne, though), the real spy stuff is much more interesting.  "The Courier," which is based on a true story, is a true blue spy story; it's a high stakes labyrinth of secrets and deception. Oleg Penkovsky (Ninidze), a military intelligence colonel for the Soviet Union, has just sent a message to the US Embassy offering his services as a spy.  In exchange, he wants an out for himself and his family.  Because he is such a high ranking individual, CIA agent Emily Donovan (Brosnahan) believes that the usual methods of espionage will ...

 2.5/4 Starring: Sean Nelson, Giancarlo Esposito, Samuel L. Jackson, N'Bushe Wright, Ron Brice Rated R for Intense, Realistic Depiction of Urban Violence, and for Drug Content, Pervasive Language and Some Sexuality "Fresh" starts out strong in its set-up but falls apart in its payoff.  It's an ambitious film, to be sure, but writer/director Boaz Yakin's vision exceeds his grasp.  This is what happens when the filmmaker's approach isn't deft enough to pull off what he is trying to achieve. Fresh (Nelson) is a young kid working as a drug courier for some local dealers.  He's smart and does what he is told, earning him the respect of the nasty people he works for.  Fresh has bigger dreams than running drugs; he's been saving up money for years to escape the projects and save his heroin-addicted sister Nichole (Wright) from the clutches of the dealers.  An act of impulsive violence spurns him into action.  Taking the lessons in chess that he learned fr...

 3.5/4 Starring: Ansel Elgort, Rachel Zegler, Ariana DeBose, Mike Faist, David Alvarez, Rita Moreno, Brian d'Arcy James, Corey Stoll Rated PG-13 for Some Strong Violence, Strong Language, Thematic Content, Suggestive Material and Brief Smoking Note: I missed the first minute or two of this movie.  And yes, I'll catch up to it later. Remakes provide a prospective groan from film lovers.  We've seen the story before and it reeks of "playing it safe" and being cheated money from risk-averse studios.  And yet we go to them because of the brand name and, in many cases, what else is there to see? This is, of course, not always the case.  It depends on the filmmaker's interpretation of the material.  How does the filmmaker use their talents and vision to reinvigorate the material.  Do they treat the story and the characters slavishly, as Gil Kenan did with his remake of " Poltergeist "?  Or do they use the film's core concepts and push it in a differen...

 3.5/4 Starring: Jude Hill, Catriona Balfe, Jamie Dornan, Lewis McAskie, Judi Dench, Ciaran Hinds Rated PG-13 for Some Violence and Strong Language "Belfast" is not a perfect movie.  Far from it, in fact.  There's no plot to speak of, and the film has an alarming, and at times annoying, habit of introducing subplots and not exploring them satisfactorily.  If they are finished at all.  So by normal standards the movie is uneven and problematic.  Yet "Belfast" doesn't earn a place on my year's Top 10 list because of its story or characters or performances or whatnot.  It earns its distinction of being one of the year's best because of the cumulative power of all of these elements combined.  "Belfast" takes patience to appreciate.  You have to allow it to draw you in and accept it on its own terms. Storywise, the film is thin.  It's less a story and more a collage of experiences involving a working class family in Ireland at the start of T...

 3.5/4 Starring: Maren Eggert, Dan Stevens Sandra Huller Rated R for Some Sexual Content and Language "I'm Your Man" is a sci-fi romantic comedy.  Emphasis on the latter.  Although Maria Schrader's film touches on familiar themes that are brought up in every film that deals with artificial intelligence, this is primarily the kind of movie that, had it been made in the 90s, would have starred Meg Ryan.  This isn't " Ex Machina ."  I'm fine with that; there's as much room for romantic fantasy as there is for hard science fiction.  More importantly, the central love story works . Alma (Eggert) is a historian who has thrown herself into her work after a recent break up.  Her boss has signed her up for an experiment where she will live with a robot that is tailored to meet her every romantic need.  Alma has had enough of romance and doesn't want to do this, but with funding for an international research trip dangled in front of her, she agrees.  A...