December 2013

CHICAGO – Why are those three Oscar winners – Susan Sarandon, Robert De Niro and Diane Keaton – laughing on that fourth poster below? Because they managed to cash a paycheck on the way to participating in one of the Worst Films of 2013.

CHICAGO – The year caught up with me. 2013 was characterized by a soft start and a strong finish, but overall there were impressive contenders throughout the year and some fine examples of great storytelling and filmmaking. Risks were taken, some truth emerged and even in more “mainstream” films, there were flashes of promise.

When I expressed excitement over the fact that Robert Altman’s stunning “Nashville” was being released in a Criterion Collection Blu-ray edition a few months back, a colleague asked me why I loved the film and I had trouble verbalizing my feelings about Altman’s sprawling, brilliant tapestry of characters. Watching the excellent new documentary about the making-of the film on the Criterion release makes it clear that I’m not alone.

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Danny Trejo of the films ‘Machete’ and ‘Machete Kills.’

CHICAGO – The “Days of the Dead” convention is an annual gathering in Chicago and elsewhere, that brings together admirers of the horror film genre, cult movies enthusiasts and panel discussions on a myriad of subjects related to film and collectibles. Several celebrities also attended the Chicago event, including Danny Trejo of the “Machete” film series, Jason Mewes and Brian O’Halloran of “Clerks,” and Joanna Cassidy of “Who Framed Roger Rabbit?,” and they posed for the HollywoodChicago.com camera.

Rating: 4.5/5.0

CHICAGO – No matter how painfully bad it may be, I never walk out of a screening. It’s a professional rule I’ve set and keep it at all costs. But with Martin Scorsese’s latest stroke of genius, I experienced a kind of pain I don’t usually wrangle with: the survival of my bladder.

Rating: 4.0/5.0

CHICAGO – The memory of South Africa freedom fighter Nelson Mandela, who passed away on December 5th, is filled with deserved accolades and iconography. Director Justin Chadwick and actor Idris Elba brings the man to human life in the essential “Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom.”

Rating: 3.5/5.0

CHICAGO – Sylvester Stallone and Robert De Niro – between them they have over 150 film credits in careers stretching back to the 1960s. Two of their most famous roles, boxers Rocky and the Raging Bull, get the full make-fun-of treatment in the Christmas Day Film “Grudge Match.”

I so want to love Ben Stiller’s “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.” Stiller’s directorial work on films like “The Cable Guy” and “Tropic Thunder” was underrated, the source material is great, the message of living in the moment has more value in an increasingly cluttered world, and the time seems right for an imaginative journey into the mind of a likable protagonist like Mr. Mitty.

And so 2013 ends with one final What to Watch to carry you through to 2014. Have some gift card money burning a hole in your wallet? Want something to stream while your family bickers over the holiday? Just need a break from it all? Here are the latest and greatest new releases, listed in the order we’d put ‘em on an Amazon wish list.

Rating: 5.0/5.0

Jordan Belfort (Leonardo DiCaprio) lives completely, entirely in the moment. It’s not that there’s no tomorrow, there’s not even “later that same day” in his world. People who make their living on the minute-to-minute fluctuations of the stock market are inherently going to be inclined to live in the small spaces between those quick deviations but Belfort was even more so given the fact that his first day as a legit money maker was on the day the entire economy collapsed in 1987 known as “Black Monday.”

Elio Petri’s “Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion,” winner of the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film and Grand Prize at the 1970 Cannes Film Festival, has been inducted into the Criterion Collection, the most important series of Blu-ray releases on the market. This is such a unique, bizarre film, one that I wasn’t familiar with until this release, which continues to prove that Criterion isn’t just a great company for known classics like Robert Altman’s “Nashville” but some films that may have fallen through the cracks of cinema history as well.

Rating: 5.0/5.0

CHICAGO – Writer/Director Neil LaBute has a righteous reputation as a harsh social critic, especially in the arena of relationships between men and women. To past films like “In the Company of Men,” “Your Friends & Neighbors” and “The Shape of Things,” LaBute adds “Some Velvet Morning.”

Rating: 2.5/5.0

CHICAGO – “Walking with Dinosaurs” depicts the magnificent titular creatures in stunning realism and 3D vision, and then proceeds to give them line readings with the equivalent sophistication of Archie comics. This adds up to an educational film with a long, dull journey ahead.

Rating: 5.0/5.0

How do we connect with other people? Why do we often push away those we need and stay with those we don’t? Why do we hold on to relationships long after they have stopped working? Is a physical relationship with no intellectual or emotional component somehow more valuable than one that can never be person-to-person but engages on a deeper level? And how do the ways we deal with love and loss impact the way we look at the rest of the world?