Spider-Man: Homecoming

Review by Bob Ignizio

Every once in a while, a mainstream film comes along that seems to please everyone. The critics give it high grades, general audiences feel like they got their money’s worth and then some, and even the nit picky fanboys pronounce it acceptable. And when that happens, there’s always that one critic (well, usually a few more than one, but you get the idea) who has to be the contrary asshole. Guess it’s my turn to be that critic with SPIDER-MAN: HOMECOMING

HOMECOMING thankfully skips the already twice-depicted-on-film story of how Peter Parker (Tom Holland) became Spider-Man, and instead picks up where we left the webslinger at the end of CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR. He’s just helped Tony Stark/Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr., natch) in his conflict with Captain America, and now thinks he’s ready for the super hero big leagues.

For Stark, though, Peter is largely an afterthought as he moves on to other projects and priorities. He leaves Peter with the fancy new suit he was given in CIVIL WAR, and assigns his personal assistant Happy Hogan (Jon Favreu) to keep an eye on the kid. It’s a job Hogan doesn’t take all that seriously, as he’s in the midst of moving all the various high-tech gadgetry from Avengers Tower to the team’s new HQ.

The Founder

 

By George M. Thomas

Michael Keaton is Ray Kroc in The Founder.

He’s considered the founder of the fast food behemoth known as McDonald’s, but although he may have been a visionary, as shown with many warts, Ray Kroc was a snake oil salesman and weasel.

Ultimately, that’s the charm of THE FOUNDER, the latest effort from John Lee Hancock (The Blind Side).

Hancock, directing from a script by Robert D. Siegel, doesn’t hesitate to show Kroc (portrayed by Michael Keaton), a man who has been lionized in the past, for the flawed, opportunistic individual he was.

Kroc’s version of the American Dream belonged to someone else – Dick (Nick Offerman) and Mac McDonald (John Carroll Lynch) in this case. 

Jackie Brown (February 6th at the Cedar Lee)

[JACKIE BROWN screens Saturday February 6th at 9:30 pm and midnight at the Cedar Lee Theatre.]

Review by Charles Cassady, Jr.

It’s important to remember that JACKIE BROWN, in 1997, was boy wonder Quentin Tarantino third feature – and his first following the smash-hit-phenom from 1993 that was PULP FICTION. Yes, in the years between those two, fans wondered what could the electrifying Tarantino possibly pull out of his unleashed id this time? In the meantime, whole books were written about the former video clerk and B-movie nut-turned-superstar director/producer/impresario and his earlier triumphs with PULP and RESERVOIR DOGS.

Well, when JACKIE BROWN – an adaptation of the Elmore Leonard novel Rum Punch – finally premiered, a number of folks were let down. Possibly even more fans than were disappointed by STAR WARS (I DON’T EVEN CARE WHAT EPISODE IT WAS) THE PHANTOM MENACE.

Because, well, dude, where’s my decapitations? Where’s the weird stuff? Where are the shot-by-shot tributes to some 1970s badly English-dubbed Yugoslavian grindhouse softcore horror movie nobody but QT ever saw during its limited run in some condemned LA fleapit?

Listen, fanboys, you got your old Quentin Tarantino back with the KILL BILL series, not to mention INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS, DJANGO UNCHAINED and THE HATEFUL EIGHT. As for JACKIE BROWN, a curious one-off in Tarantino's ouvre of B- and Z-movie tributes with A-movie casts and budgets, look at it this way: it’s almost as though a late-career Quentin Tarentino movie fell through a wormhole in time and space from, oh, say 20 or 30 years from now. When the director has finally grown up, gotten his heart broken more often, and is an older, wiser, sadder and more sedate Tarantino that the one we know now, the kung-fu connoisseur who is the yin to Robert Rodriguez’…other yin.

Birdman

[BIRDMAN opens in Cleveland on Friday October 31st exclusively at the Cedar Lee Theatre.]

Review by Pamela Zoslov  

The spirit of Robert Altman hovers over  BIRDMAN (or The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance), the much talked-about new film by the Mexican director Alejandro González Iñárratu. A dark showbiz satire, the film echoes Altman's The Player, and its central event, a play based on Raymond Carver short stories, evokes Altman's Short Cuts. Although González Iñárratu doesn't have Altman's flair for ensemble drama, it's an ambitious film with rhythmic style and technical flair.

Robocop

Review by Pete Roche

I was barely old enough to catch Paul Verhoeven’s ROBOCOP in theatres back in 1987.  Shocking for its violence, the offbeat sci-fi flick was a surprise blockbuster and warranted frequent rental on VHS in my neck of the woods.

It took a while to appreciate the Dutch director’s dark satire.  Yes, the movie was true to Edward Neumeier’s story of a human policeman turned into a technological crime-fighting machine—but Verhoeven was also concerned with what it meant to be human in a dystopia where corrupt corporations make backroom deals with crooked politicians and constituent / consumers numb themselves with narcotics and schlock television.