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Mike Schulz discusses with Dave Levora and Darren Pitra what a low box-office draw this Memorial Day was — you have to go back to 1995, the summer of Caspar, for a lackluster opening that couldn’t be blamed on a pandemic. Schulz wasn’t expecting Furiosa to break records, being a Hard-“R”-rated film. Still, it must have been tough for him to watch a film crash and burn, financially, in quite the manner that Furiosa, a film devoted to crashing and burning, did.
- Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, directed by George Miller and starring Anya Taylor-Joy, Alyla Browne, Chris Hemsworth, and Tom Burke. Compared to Fury Road, Furiosa looks green-screened. Schulz did like the film, over-all, but there were a number of details that pulled a viewer out of the viewing experience where Fury Road kept one plugged in from the jump.
- The Garfield Movie, an animated adventure-comedy film based on the comic strip created by Jim Davis, directed by Mark Dindal and featuring the voice-work of Chris Pratt, Samuel L Jackson, Hannah Waddingham, Ving Rhames, Nicholas Hoult, Cecily Strong, Harvey Guillén, Brett Goldstein, Bowen Yang, and Snoop Dogg. Schulz didn’t hate it at all. That was shocking to hear, because he was expecting not to like it at all. Despite Dindal’s decision to change some of the details in a gratuitous manner — Garfield is lactose-intolerant, so he can’t eat lasagna; Odie is a genius-level savant, which doesn’t track — it had good comic timing and kept Schulz entertained. “Mea culpa, Garfield,” Schulz said.
- Babe, directed by Pamela Adlon and starring Ilana Glazer (who also co-wrote the film), Michelle Buteau, John Carroll Lynch, Hasan Minhaj, and Sandra Bernhard, it’s got Babe City energy and a similar lack of couth. If you like raunch, this will probably do it for you; if not, then not.
Previews:
- In a Violent Nature, a Canadia slasher directed by Chris Nash and starring Ry Barrett, Andrea Pavlovic, Cameron Love, Reece Presley, Liam Leone, Charlotte Creaghan, Lea Rose Sebastianis, Sam Roulston, Alexander Oliver, Lauren-Marie Taylor, and Timothy Paul McCarthy.
- Summer Camp, directed by Castille Landon and starring Diane Keaton, Kathy Bates, Alfre Woodard, Beverly D’Angelo, Nicole Richie, Josh Peck, Betsy Sodaro, Dennis Haysbert, and Eugene Levy. “The trailer is appalling,” Schulz says. The plot description sounds like Beach Blanket Bingo 2: The Oldening.
- Ezra, a dramedy about connecting with your autistic son, directed by Tony Goldwyn and starring Bobby Cannavale, Rose Byrne, Vera Farmiga, Whoopi Goldberg, Rainn Wilson, Tony Goldwyn, William Fitzgerald, and Robert De Niro.
“Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga,” “Babes,” and “The Garfield Movie”