Category: Directed by Joel Schumacher
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I spent much of Flatliners’s first half trying to figure out if there was anything technically redeeming about Jan de Bont’s photography. While it’s easy to qualify certain failings—with Schumacher’s bad directing, with Eugenio Zanetti’s obnoxiously ostentatious production design, could de Bont actually shoot it well? No, he couldn’t. But it also doesn’t somehow excuse…
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I’m not going to defend Batman & Robin. It’s not so much a matter of the film being indefensible, it’s just a matter of it being a pointless exercise. And, by defend, I don’t mean identifying who gives the least embarrassing performance (Michael Gough) or who is just jaw-droppingly bad (Chris O’Donnell). Watching Batman &…
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Not being a girl, I never really got The Lost Boys. I didn’t even see it until I was in my late teens, hunting down Jeffrey Boam’s screenwriting credits. Seeing it now, it’s not just clear how much the film wastes wasted Michael Chapman’s cinematography or how Schumacher makes Corey Haim the only gay leading…
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IMDb doesn’t mention it, but I thought one of the problems with getting Phone Booth made (it went through countless potential leading men) was the script and screenwriter Larry Cohen’s contract–i.e. no one could be brought in to make it, you know, good. The film’s a piece of crap and it’s too bad because some…
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I’m not sure I have the vocabulary to properly discuss The Incredible Shrinking Woman. It’s an experience–Ned Beatty was in Network and he appeared in this one? Sorry. Anyway, according the IMDb, the movie might have made money–in fact, it might have even been a hit. I always assumed it was an enormous failure, but…
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Joel Schumacher once commented he was first credited with saving the Batman franchise (with Batman Forever), then destroying it (with Batman & Robin). I think I’d watched his second venture (or tried to watch it) more recently than I had seen Forever… anyway, it isn’t like Schumacher made one good one and one bad one.…
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When the film started, I sort of marveled at how absurd it was–Joel Schumacher and Michael Douglas making a subversive movie, then I quickly realized Falling Down isn’t subversive… it’s “controversial.” Obviously, Schumacher doesn’t have a controversial bone in his body–and neither does Douglas–so Falling Down gets repetitive and boring before too long. I suppose…
The Stop Button 