“Life Itself”: Roger Ebert goes to the movies one last time

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“Life Itself” has its Madison premiere at 3 p.m. Saturday at the Union South Marquee Theatre, 1208 W. Dayton St., as part of the UW-Cinematheque summer series. PG-13, 2:03, three and a half stars out of four. FREE!

“For me, the movies are like a machine that generates empathy.” — Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was a great film writer for many reasons, but one of them was that he wasn’t just a great film writer, just writing about movies when he was writing about movies. Read through his reviews, and you’ll find political arguments, philosophical musings, remembrances of his boyhood in Champaign-Urbana. He believed that the beauty and the power of a great movie didn’t stop at the concession stand, but extended out the front doors into — life itself.

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Instant Gratification: “Enemy” and four other good movies to watch on Amazon Prime and Netflix

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Well, this could get complicated. Up until now this weekly column has focused exclusively on Netflix, since they’ve usually been the one to get the jump on new releases, with Amazon Prime and Hulu focusing more on television. But then I saw Amazon Prime is releasing “Enemy,” part of an exclusive new deal it struck with the studio A24. So I’m going to start broadening the column from here on out to include other streaming platforms. Hopefully, this won’t get too confusing.

Pick of the week: “Enemy” (Amazon Prime) — My full review is here. Canadian director Denis Villeneuve reteamed with Jake Gyllenhaal after “Prisoners” in this unsettling tale of a meek history professor who finds out he has an exact doppelganger, a cocky young actor. As they wrestle over who is the “real” self, Villeneuve bathes the film in a sense of dread that’s Cronenerberg-esque.

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Instant Gratification: “Mad Max” and four other good movies to watch on Netflix Instant

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I’m filing the Instant Gratification column a little late this week to catch some of the new movies that Netflix just made available for streaming on Aug. 1. And there were a lot of them. Click on the title, and the link will take you directly to the movie on the Netflix site. Enjoy!

“Mad Max” — With the dynamite trailer for the 2015 reboot “Mad Max: Fury Road” released this week, it’s a great time to revisit the 1979 original, a nasty bit of “Oz-sploitation” starring an impossibly young Mel Gibson who goes from good cop to vigilante in a hurry.

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The five movies you have to see in Madison: Aug. 1-6, 2014

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1. “Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill!” (7 p.m. Friday, Union South Marquee) – The UW-Cinematheque summer season is a great way to keep abreast of classic cinema, and that’s certainly true of this screening of Russ Meyer’s 1965 camp classic about three supervixens taking revenge on the leering men around them. Hey, audience? My eyes are up here.

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“Get On Up”: James Brown paid the cost to be the boss

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“Get On Up” is now playing at Point, Eastgate and Star Cinema. PG-13, 2:18, three stars out of four.

At first, watching the James Brown biopic “Get On Up” is like listening to his greatest-hits album on shuffle. First, we’re in 1988, when a track-suited Godfather of Soul fires a rifle into the ceiling at one of his businesses and is chased by police. Then we’re back in 1968, as Brown and his band flyon a transport plane to a show in Vietnam, enemy gunfire all around. (While his band cowers, Brown seems more offended than anything else that the Viet Cong might cause him to be late for the show.)  Then we’re back in 1939, as a young Brown growing up poor in rural Georgia, the prize in a lifelong tug-of-war between his abusive parents.

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“Guardians of the Galaxy”: A guy, a girl, a wrestler, a raccoon and a tree walk into a bar . . .

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“Guardians of the Galaxy” opens Friday at Point, Eastgate, Star Cinema and Sundance. PG-13, 2:02, three stars out of four.

A guy, a girl, a wrestler, a raccoon and a tree walk into a bar . . .

The punch line is “Guardians of the Galaxy,” which injects a much needed adrenaline shot of silliness into the summer blockbuster formula. Using a team of Marvel backbenchers and directed by Jason Gunn, who completely subverted the superhero film in “Super,” “Guardians’ isn’t quite the anti-Marvel Marvel film some folks were hoping for. It uses the same formula and beats as “The Avengers” or “Thor” — it just seems to have a lot more fun with them.

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“Cuban Fury”: Nick Frost makes a hot fuss on the dance floor

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This may be a strange thing to say about an actor best known for playing a chipmunk-cheeked slacker zombie, but Nick Frost always exudes a certain dignity on screen. As Simon Pegg’s sidekick in Edgar Wright’s Cornetto Trilogy of movies, Frost could have easily been relegated to porky comic relief. Instead, as the layabout friend in “Shaun of the Dead,” the action-movie-loving rookie cop in “Hot Fuzz,” and the clone-battling middle-aged man in “World’s End,” Frost always brings a certain gravitas to ridiculous circumstances. He’s funny, but very self-possessed, and I wouldn’t mess with him.

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“The Big Chill”: Your parents used to be screwed up, too

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It’s surprising that “The Big Chill” writer-director Lawrence Kasdan never pulled a Linklater and revisited the film’s seven Baby Boomer characters 10 or 20, or now even 30 years later. It may be that the movie business has changed — movies like “The Big Chill” just didn’t get sequels back then. Or maybe Kasdan was hellbent on moving forward, even if that forward momentum led him into, uh, “Dreamcatcher.”

Or maybe it’s because “The Big Chill” is a film that needs to be stuck in its time — both in 1983, the year that the ex-hippies got rich, and in the single weekend that brought the seven college friends together for the funeral of the eighth, to take stock of their lives, play old records, get drunk, and maybe reconnect on a deeper level. As Harold (Kevin Kline, sporting a distracting Southern accent) puts it, “I feel like I was at my best when I was with you people.”

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Recipes for failure: Behind the making-of docs for “Mystery Science Theater 3000” movies

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With 29 DVD editions and four movies in each edition, you’d think Shout! Factory would be running out of bad movies to put in its “Mystery Science Theater 3000” boxed sets by now.

But nope, “Mystery Science Theater 3000: Vol. XXX” is out in stores this week, and still has some top-level cheese in it, from the cut-rate swords-and-sorcery of “Outlaw of Gor” to the classic ‘50s giant-insect shocker “The Black Scorpion.”

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“Hercules”: It ain’t easy Herc-ing for a living

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“Hercules” is now playing at Point, Eastgate, Star Cinema. 2 hours, PG-13, three stars out of four.

For once, I’m happy to have been lied to by a movie trailer. The trailer for “Hercules” shows Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson (if ever there was a movie for him to use “The Rock,” this is it) fighting giant lions, boars, even a multi-headed Hydra sea serpent. Yet another super-serious swords-‘n’-sorcery CGI fest, right?

In truth, all those battles happen in the first five minutes of “Hercules,” and there’s some doubt as to whether they really happened or are an exaggerated legend. In truth, this is a refreshingly unpretentious “Hercules” with human-sized heroes and villains. It’s really more like a Western — specifically, “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance” with killer pecs.

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