Mike Schulz, back from holiday, having seen no movies over the break, talks with Dave Levora and Darren Pitra about how “man-oh-man” good Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse was; about how the richness of the concept (infinite Spider-Men across an infinite multi-verse, each sharing special life circumstances that made their super-heroism possible) is matched by the eye-popping digital visual effects and the compelling voice-acting. “Favorite movie of the year?” asks one of the Deez. “Yeah, yeah,” replies Schulz. “It tops John Wick so far. . . It’s just that good.” About the new Transformer film, Schulz is warmer to it than its predecessors, given how Michael Bay (per Schulz) provided incoherent spectacles that wanted for nothing, including, apparently, a mentally-alert audience. “At least this one has a story you can follow,” Schulz says, “which is helpful there.” About the visual effects, Schulz didn’t think it offered anything especially special — “big, metallic robots beating other big, metallic robots, with some animals now; we’ve got metallic animals” — but it certainly didn’t make Schulz question his disdain for Bay’s tenure. Still, the directors’ firm of Joaquim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers, and Justin K Thompson (it really does take a village) have staked their claim as the talent to beat; the seventy-stone elephant in the room which defies removal. Schulz also caught a sneak-preview of the comedic-horrific The Blackening, whose premise — young urban African-American characters trapped in a cabin with a problematic board game and a kill-crazy masked man all stabby-stabby for them — is elegantly summarized by its tag-line, “We Can’t All Die First.” Directed by Tim Story, the film delivers beautifully on the comedy, much of it a satire of late-twentieth/early-twenty-first-century African-American pop culture, with an impossible question at the center of it: “What does it mean to be the blackest of the black?” The answer? If you’re among those sitting in this room, you really don’t want to know. The Blackening falls apart as a horror film, so its hybrid comic/horror genus doesn’t withstand taxonomical analysis; Jordan Peele needn’t worry about his competition just yet. As straight-up satire, though? Sharp, sharp, sharp. Opening this weekend are two major releases, the first being the Disney/Pixar computer-animated romantic comedy-drama (take a breath) Elemental. Puzzling over the film from its press packet, Schulz offers, “It looks like Inside Out, but with elements.” In an effort to combat the initial perception of the film’s unexciting look — one which the Disney and Pixar execs hope doesn’t become general, given their output over the last decade has been largely sequels and spin-offs — one of the Deez offers Zootopia as a basis of comparison, a film which Schulz loved. He puts a finer point on the problem with Pixar of late: “None of the last couple films have made me sob like a baby.” So, if Elemental can live up to either movie, and break its audience down into tears in their seats, at least one person will be sitting happy. The second film is The Flash, directed by Andy Muschietti and starring Ezra Miller, Sasha Calle, Michael Shannon, Ron Livingston, Maribel Verdú, Kiersey Clemons, Antje Traue, and (JOY!) Michael Keaton. The film’s central problem? It sounds a lot like Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. Bad, bad timing, Warner Bros; bad, bad, bad timing, DC Studios. Were it not for Keaton’s presence — reprising his turn as Bruce Wayne/Batman for the first time since Batman Returns in 1992 *shudder of one’s encroaching mortality* — viewers of a certain age would probably sit this one out. Nonetheless, everyone in the studio is keen to find out whether bad timing is the only thing going against The Flash. PS Michael Keaton’s return in this, and the forthcoming Beetlejuice sequel (directed by Tim Burton, “exactly as he made the first Beetlejuice,” ie no CGI, presumably), makes them wonder what other Keaton-canon films are in the works: Johnny Dangerouslier? More Paper? Mr Grandmom? Reinventing the Abbotts? Much Ado about Less Than Nothing? Clean and Soberer? Hey, he’s made a lot of films over his career; we could be here all day. . .

Transformers: Rise of the Beasts and Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse