Mike's Movie Tips

Anyone who knows me is well aware of my utter disdain for the MPAA, especially when it comes to their Ratings Board.  It's riddled with hypocrisy, corruption and has far too much influence on our culture for an organization that is so obviously broken.  So in "dis"-honor of their unbelievable decision to give " Dunkirk " a PG-13, I've decided to compile a list of their most egregious offenses. This isn't meant to be a comprehensive list.  The MPAA has made far too many blunders for such a list to exist.  But here are a few examples of their most outrageous decisions.  I'll also explain what I think it should be rated and why. " Sin City ." Rated R, should be NC-17. "Sin City" is totally bad ass and a great movie, but it's also hyper-violent.  The violence is as plentiful as it is brutal, with blood and gore flowing everywhere.  The fact that almost every character is a criminal, misanthrope or brooding antihero adds to t...

0.5/4 Starring: Bryan Madorsky, Randy Quaid, Mary Beth Hurt, Sandy Dennis, Juno Mills-Cocknell Rated R (probably for Pervasive Aberrant Violent Content involving Cannibalism and Related Gore and for Scenes of a Child in Peril) Has anyone noticed that the selection of movies is highly democratized?  The biggest hits are widely available (although so is low-budget crap, upon whose reliance partially led to the bankruptcy of Blockbuster) and the not so beloved stuff isn't.  This is a generalization, of course.  There will always be a steady supply of " Neighbors 2 " DVDs and Blu Rays, much as I would like Hollywood to follow the lead of Atari and dump them in a landfill.  And there are good movies that are hard to find, like " Fun " or " Xiu Xiu: The Sent Down Girl ."  Still, if a movie is hard to find, you can be sure there's probably a reason for it. "Parents" is such a movie.  This movie is so bad, so confused yet so banal, so biz...

4/4 Starring: Fionn Whitehead, Aneurin Barnard, Harry Styles, Mark Rylance, Tom Glynn-Carney, Barry Keoghan, Cillian Murphy, Tom Hardy, Jack Lowden, Kenneth Branagh, James D'Arcy Rated PG-13 for Intense War Experience and Some Language "Dunkirk" is an experience. No other descriptor does it justice.  Like other classics, such as " Saving Private Ryan ," " Schindler's List ," or even " Boyhood ," Christopher Nolan's newest project transcends its form and becomes something else entirely.  You don't watch "Dunkirk," you live it. "Dunkirk" lacks any true narrative, and that's by design.  This movie isn't about plot or characters.  It's about the event.  The men the camera follows are simply a way to navigate it.  In order to paint a full picture of the evacuation of Dunkirk, Nolan divides the film into three intertwining parts.  One follows, Tommy (Whitehead), Gibson (Barnard) and Alex (Style...

3.5/4 Starring: Dane DeHaan, Cara Delevigne, Clive Owen, Elizabeth Debicki, Sam Spruell, Rihanna Rated PG-13 for Sci-Fi Violence and Action, Suggestive Material and Brief Language The decision to release Luc Besson's new space opera, based on a comic not widely known in the US, next to the juggernaut that is Christopher Nolan's "Dunkirk" is one of two things: balls of steel or a vote of no confidence.  Realistically speaking, it's probably the latter, but my hope is the former, since this is easily the best movie of the summer (no, I haven't seen "Dunkirk" yet).  Not only is it the most brilliantly inventive piece of eye candy since " Speed Racer ," it's also a lot of fun. 500 years in the future, the ISS has gotten so large that it has long since been sent out into the far reaches of space for fear of being pulled in by Earth's gravity.  Now, it serves as a hub for thousands of different alien races.  Two cops for Alpha, as...

1.5/4 Starring: Michael Baldwin, Bill Thornbury, Reggie Bannister, Angus Scrimm Rated R for Nudity, Violence and Intense Scenes When I dream, it's surreal.  It makes total sense while I'm in the dream, but when I wake up, I realize how surreal and incoherent it all is.  Perhaps this effect is what writer/director Don Coscarelli was going for.  The plot rarely makes sense, characters are added and dropped with no explanation, important scenes are left on the cutting room floor while meaningless ones drag on long after they've made their point, and so on.  That this was made during the hippie era should surprise no one. Mike (Baldwin) has just lost his parents.  Now his older brother Jody (Thornbury) has lost one of his friends to suicide.  Actually, he was murdered by a one-night stand post-coitus in a cemetery, but no one knows this.  Mike, who follows his brother around nonstop fearing abandonment, sees the undertaker (Scrimm) take the coffin ...

3/4 Starring: Andy Serkis, Woody Harrelson, Steve Zahn, Amiah Miller Rated PG-13 for Sequences of Sci-Fi Violence and Action, Thematic Elements and Some Disturbing Images "War for the Planet of the Apes" is the grimmest movie of the 2017 summer season.  It's tough, bleak and relentless.  For those of you who are PlayStation owners, I was reminded of "The Last of Us."  It's that dark. After the events in " Dawn of the Planet of the Apes ," relations between the apes and humans are hostile.  Despite offering peace, Caesar (Serkis) is hunted as a war criminal.  But when one of the human leaders, a man only known as the Colonel (Harrelson) murders Caesar's wife and oldest son, he vows revenge. This isn't a straightforward revenge tale.  It's introspective and complex.  Caesar is continually haunted by Koba (Toby Kebbell), whose hatred caused him to bring things to ruin, in his nightmares.  He knows that by walking down this path h...

3/4 Starring: Christian Bale, Ni Ni, Xinyi Zhang, Tianyuan Huang, Dawei Tong, Atsuro Watabe Rated R for Strong Violence including a Sexual Assault, Disturbing Images and Brief Strong Language "The Flowers of War" is by turns thrilling, plodding, heartwrenching, ridiculous, moving, contrived and beautiful.  Most movies are either good or bad.  Rarely do they veer into both territories with such consistency as they do here. In 1937, during the Second Sino-Japanese War, Japan overruns the Chinese city of Nanking, where they proceeded to rape and slaughter 200,000 Chinese soldiers and civilians.  "The Flowers of War," based on the novella by Genling Yan (which was in turn inspired by the diaries of Minnie Vautrin, who witnessed the atrocities), tells the story of John Miller (Bale), a mortician sent into Nanking to bury a priest.  But the drunken boor of man has the bad luck of getting there when things have turned to hell.  He takes refuge in a church with ...