Review: "Birdman"

Like his character in Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance), Michael Keaton has been off Hollywood's A-List for some time. He's had some interesting supporting parts over the last few years, most notably as the police captain in the Will Ferrell/Mark Wahlberg comedy The Other Guys and as the voice of "Ken" in Toy Story 3, but you need to go all the way back to 2005's White Noise to find Keaton at the center of a studio movie.

I'm most fond of his work in comedies like Mr. Mom, Gung-Ho, Night Shift, and Beetlejuice. There's also a crazy satisfaction I get out of knowing that he played Ray Nicolette in two separate adaptations of Elmore Leonard novels (Jackie Brown and Out of Sight) for two different directors (Quentin Tarantino and Steven Soderbergh) at competing studios (Miramax and Universal). But, of course, it was Keaton's stoic performance in two successful Batman films that made him a perfect fit for the part of Riggan Thomson.

Review: "Robocop (2014)"

Anytime a filmmaker sets out to reboot a franchise, it's an uphill battle, and they must be willing to accept a healthy amount of skepticism from fans of the original. In the case of the new Robocop, director José Padilha (Elite Squad) isn't simply battling the overall quality of the 1987 Paul Verhoeven film, he's also contending with the biting social commentary and ultra-violence that made it an instant classic. Unfortunately for Padilha, the PG-13 rating that the studio wanted, and he agreed to deliver, automatically put him into a big hole with many fans, one that would be difficult for any filmmaker to climb out of.

Now, I enjoy a well-made, super-violent action picture as much as the next guy (or girl), but I reject the assertion that Robocop needs to be R-rated to be good. At its core, Robocop is the story of a half-man, half-cyborg who fights crime and battles big robots. That sounds cool. That sounds FUN. The thirteen-year old in me wants to see that movie, and there's no reason why the right filmmaker couldn't take that basic concept and turn it into an entertaining movie that reaches a wider audience.