Mike's Movie Tips

4/4 Starring: Chris Pine, Cameron Daddo, Peter Greene, Lukas Behnken, Bruce Davison, Tom Bosley, Kate Vernon, Adam Bussell Rated R for Some Violence The best thrillers are not about plots, but about characters.  Characters that are put into unenviable circumstances and struggle to get out of them as the nooses get ever tighter.  While movies like "Seven" and "The Silence of the Lambs" have their pleasures, movies like "Confession" are in some ways more potent because they're about people that have the same impulses we do. Luther Scott (Pine) is the troublemaker at St. Michael's Prep.  He'll lie and con just about anyone for booze, drugs or porn (for the right price), has zero respect for authority, and does whatever he wants (including visiting his girlfriend at the sister school).  But when a party he throws soils the reputation of the school for a powerful senator (Robert Pine, Chris's father), Luther and his roommate, Robbie (Beh...

2.5/4 Starring: Kevin Spacey, Gabriel Byrne, Chazz Palminteri, Stephen Baldwin, Kevin Pollack, Benicio Del Toro, Dan Hedaya Rated R for Violence and a Substantial Amount of Strong Language "The Usual Suspects" is a mystery so convoluted that it essentially requires a play-by-play synopsis to figure out what is going on, or more appropriately, what really happened.  An unreliable narrator, a plot that doubles back on itself and forces you to step back and analyze whether what you saw is the truth...the film is never dull.  But it's also often incomprehensible. 27 men are dead on a pier in an apparent drug deal gone bad.  But the $91 million haul wasn't even there.  There are two survivors: one, a severely burned Hungarian criminal named Arkosh Kovash (Morgan Hunter) and the other, a meek con-artist with cerebral palsy named Verbal Klint (Spacey).  Having been granted immunity, he's on his way out the door when he is stopped by Customs Agent Kujan (Palmint...

2/4 Starring: Dylan Fergus, Andrew Levitas, Matt Phillips, Hank Harris, Bryan Kirkwood Rated R for Strong Horror Violence and Gore, Sexual Content, Language and Drug Use I suppose it's only fair that since there are so many crappy horror movies featuring straight characters getting butchered that there be one with gay characters ending up in the morgue in various ways.  Actually, for a slasher movie that appeared to have been made for next to nothing, "HellBent" isn't half bad.  It looks like shit (not that that's an excuse..."Halloween" was made for $325,000 in 1978 dollars, which comes out to almost $1.2 million today, and that's pretty cheap), but at least writer/director Paul Etherage-Ouzts) knows how to make the most of it.  The shot selection is reasonably dynamic and there are some truly creepy scenes. Eddie (Fergus) would be a cop had he not lost an eye in an accident.  I guess it makes sense that he's the worrywart of his group o...

3/4 Starring: Tobey Maguire, Leonardo DiCaprio, Carey Mulligan, Joel Edgerton, Elizabeth Debicki, Isla Fisher, Jason Clarke Rated PG-13 for Some Violent Images, Sexual Content, Smoking, Partying and Brief Language The thing that made Jay Gatsby so interesting is that despite his unbelievable charisma and all we know about him, he remains an enigma.  It's only at the end that we realize that we don't know much about him.  We understand what drives him, but there is still a huge aura of mystery about him.  That is what makes him so compelling and so maddeningly captivating.  The best thing about the film version is that it remembers this. Nick Carraway (Maguire) is a midwesterner looking to make his fortune in the financial business selling bonds.  He's a writer, but he abandoned that because the lure of quick and insane amounts of cash was irresistible.  He moves into a cottage across from his cousin, Daisy Buchanan (Mulligan), who is married to...

3/4 Starring: Dan Monahan, Mark Herrier, Wyatt Knight, Roger Wilson, Cyril O'Reilly, Tony Ganios, Boyd Gaines, Kim Cattrall, Chuck Mitchell, Scott Colomby Rated R for Pervasive Sexual Content, Nudity, Language and Some Violence (I Guess) Let me ask you a question.  Can a critic, in good conscience, give a positive review to a mess of a film that has no coherent plot, absolutely zero character development, and only a few funny scenes?  Ordinarily, I think not.  But such is the case with "Porky's."  There are some amusing bits here and there, but there are many that don't land.  There is, however, a sequence that has to last at least five minutes, if not longer, that is absolutely hysterical.  I was nearly crying I was laughing so hard.  You don't see that very often. As I said, there's not much of a plot in this movie, just a series of comic set pieces of varying quality.  They revolve around six guys and their quest of sex, or failing that...

2.5/4 Starring: Jamie Lee Curtis, William Baldwin, Joanna Pacula, Donald Sutherland Rated R for Sci-Fi Violence/Gore, and for Language "Virus" is a guilty pleasure.  The acting is weak, the dialogue is crap, the story is thin, and it's dumber than dumb, but it is sort of fun. The crew of the salvage vessel Sea Star has been pulling a broken down barge through a hurricane.  It's about to sink them as well, but the borderline psychotic captain Everton (Sutherland), has risked everything he has on the salvage, so he's not about to let the barge go down.  Eventually, the chain breaks and he has no choice.  His luck changes when he and the crew come across the Akademik Vladislav Volkov , a high-tech Russian military vessel.  It's dead in the water, so salvaging it will make them stinking rich.  But they're not alone on the ship.  There's a terrified survivor, Nadia (Pacula), who informs them that an alien energy took over the ship via the Mir spac...

1/4 Starring: Michael Fassbender, Carey Mulligan, James Badge Dale Rated NC-17 for Some Explicit Sexual Content I was wary of seeing "Shame" after suffering through Steve McQueen's (not the legendary epitome of cool) first "film," "Hunger."  That film boasted an interesting premise: the last days of hunger striker Bobby Sands (also played by Michael Fassbender), but it was ruined by an extraordinary amount of self-indulgence (an hour of people beating the crap out of each other, screaming and smearing feces on the walls...compelling stuff to be sure).  "Shame" suffers from the same problem: good premise, excessive ego. Brandon (Fassbender) is a young professional living in New York City.  He's handsome, but quiet and reserved.  His boss, the fast talking womanizer (who is in fact married) David (Dale), likes him.  So do a few of his co-workers.  But what no one knows is that Brandon is a sex-addict.  He is driven by a need for sex...