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Mike Schulz confirms with Dave Levora and Darren Pitra that the Reader has a database where you can look up old reviews by Schulz to find out what he thought about, say, The Hateful Eight (which none of them have any love for). Levora and Pitra also comment upon Schulz’s critical industry, because, well, five films requires a lot of time to sit on one’s butt in a dark room staring at a screen, y’know? The first film to test Schulz’s gluteal endurance was Priscilla, directed by Sofia Coppola and starring Cailee Spaeny, Jacob Elordi, Ari Cohen, Dagmara Domińczyk, Tim Post, Continue reading November 9, 2023, on Planet 93.9 with Dave and Darren — “Priscilla,” “Nyad,” “The Marsh King’s Daughter,” “What Happens Later,” and “Fingernails” →

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Dave Levora and Darren Pitra tell Mike Schulz how glad they were that Schulz brought his 9-year-old “younger friend” to see Five Nights at Freddy’s. Levora and Pitra’s reasoning is that, much like the Taylor Swift Eras concert film, Freddy’s didn’t seem like a movie made for middle-aged men like them. Directed by Emma Tammi and starring Josh Hutcherson, Elizabeth Lail, Piper Rubio, Mary Stuart Masterson, and Matthew Lillard, Freddy’s is a horror film for kids — nothing that’s going to invade the dreams of our intrepid trio. Security guard Mike Schmidt (Hutcherson) stays overnight at Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza and finds Continue reading November 2, 2023, on Planet 93.9 with Dave and Darren — “Five Nights at Freddy’s,” “Anatomy of a Fall,” and “After Death” →

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Mike Schulz talks with Dave Levora and Darren Pitra about his favorite Halloween costume from when he was growing up (a grandfather clock) and his least favorite (a pack of Bubble Yum chewing gum — cool concept, but squat execution, rendering movement difficult). Pitra thought it behooved him to ask Schulz because we will not be hearing from him until after the holiday. The three then discuss the one film Schulz saw this week: Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert De Niro, Lily Gladstone, Jesse Plemons, Tantoo Cardinal, John Lithgow, Brendan Fraser, and Scott Shepherd. At three-and-a-half hours’ runtime, Continue reading October 26, 2023, on Planet 93.9 with Dave and Darren — “Killers of the Flower Moon,” plus Previews of “Five Nights at Freddy’s,” “Freelance,” and “Anatomy of a Fall” →

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Mike Schulz talks with Dave Levora and Darren Pitra about the perils of being a movie critic: Namely, holding opinions that run contrary to the popular taste. While he’s a big fan of 1976’s Murder by Death (directed by Robert Moore from a script by Neil Simon and starring Eileen Brennan, James Coco, Peter Falk, Alec Guinness, Elsa Lanchester, David Niven, Peter Sellers, Maggie Smith, Nancy Walker, Estelle Winwood, and Truman Capote), critics remain largely dismissive of what they regard as cornball material — even though a case can be made that there are different levels of cornball, and Continue reading October 19, 2023, on Planet 93.9 with Dave and Darren — Wes Anderson’s Roald Dahl Shorts, “Fair Play,” and “The Burial” →

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Mike Schulz talks with Dave Levora and Darren Pitra about how Taylor Swift’s forthcoming concert film Eras Tour will not only benefit fans of Swift (Schulz mentions they’ll be getting better seating), but the AMC theatre-chain, given how the Hollywood actors’ strike knocked the Fall film schedule for six. The upshot of Swift’s having bypassed the major studios to work directly with AMC is that AMC stands to get 43% of every ticket sold (rather than the usual 20% starting-point, escalating every subsequent by 5% — and now you know why theater-chains are eager to hold films over for as long as they can; Continue reading October 12, 2023, on Planet 93.9 with Dave and Darren — “Stop Making Sense,” “The Exorcist: Believer,” “No One Will Save You,” and “Flora and Son” →

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Mike Schulz talks with Dave Levora and Darren Pitra beforehand about how Linda Blair has separated herself from her former profession — and, given the reviews of The Exorcist: Believer, that can’t be anything other than a good thing for all concerned — before getting into The Creator, directed by Gareth Edwards of Rogue One fame (or infamy, depending on your feelings about it). This is a film that neither man in our trio had heard of before; you may recall that The Creator didn’t surface in their discussion of previews last week. Budgeted at $80 million, The Creator took Schulz completely by surprise Continue reading October 5, 2023, on Planet 93.9 with Dave and Darren — “The Creator” and “Saw X” →

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Mike Schulz talks with Dave Levora and Darren Pitra about how Martin Scorsese bummed out his producers when he didn’t just make plain his disinclination to make sequels of any of his original works (which rules his 1986 The Color of Money, which continued the story of Paul Newman’s pool-shark character “Fast Eddie” Felson from Robert Rossen’s 1961 classic The Hustler), but, worse yet, directed 2006’s The Departed to be specifically sequel-proof. (Aside from “Marky” Mark Wahlberg and Vera Farmiga, everyone of consequence in that film dies.) Scorsese’s point was that he was dealing with a changing of the guard Continue reading September 28, 2023 on Planet 93.9 with Dave and Darren — “Expend4bles,” “Dumb Money,” “Cassandro,” and “It Lives Inside” →

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Mike Schulz talks with Dave Levora and Darren Pitra about how spectacular A Haunting in Venice was to watch, Levora’s personal disdain for Kenneth Branagh notwithstanding. Directed by Branagh from Agatha Christie’s 1969 novel Hallowe’en Party, it is the only work of hers starring her Belgian detective Hercule Poirot (played by Branagh) that hasn’t been adapted for cinema. Part of what made this third outing enjoyable, in contrast to the first two, was that Branagh chose not to employ so many stars for every conceivable role, and thus he was free to scale down the production to something quieter, smarter, spookier, more suspenseful, and thus more effective a film. Continue reading September 21, 2023 on Planet 93.9 with Dave and Darren — “A Haunting in Venice,” “The Inventor,” and “El Conde” →

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Mike Schulz talks with Dave Levora and Darren Pitra about “the laugh-riot, feel good movie of 2023,” The Nun II, directed by Michael Chaves and starring Taissa Farmiga, Jonas Bloquet, Bonnie Aarons, Storm Reid, and Anna Popplewell. Given that the film was not a comedy, one can presume that it failed as a horror movie, and in dubious fashion, too. Schulz also confesses to a bit of Conjuring fatigue (“What are we? Nine films in?”) thanks to its precise placement within that shared universe (“It’s the sequel to a prequel to a prequel to a prequel. . . we’re going backwards here. Conceivably, it will be, like, the invention of God within fifty years”). Continue reading September 14, 2023 on Planet 93.9 with Dave and Darren — “The Nun II” and “My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3” →