HollywoodChicago.com Content

Rating: 3.0/5.0

CHICAGO – Creating the lofty name for this film, “Love is All You Need” – from a translation of its original title, “Den skaldede friser” – is intently ambitious considering its source is a lyric from one of The Beatles most famous songs. The film has its moments, but cannot sustain itself in a stew of high drama and mixed emotions.

Rating: 2.0/5.0

CHICAGO – The Tyler Perry “filmmaking machine” cranks out lowbrow comedies or high drama potboilers without any regard for originality. While this may jibe with Perry’s creative vision, the films themselves are a waste of time. Tina Gordon Chism directs the latest Perry production, “Peeples.”

Rating: 1.5/5.0

CHICAGO – Ryuhei Kitamura’s “No One Lives” starts off with enough grit and style that a good horror fan is likely to get their hopes up at the potential fun to come. And so the crash is even greater when that same horror fan realizes that “No One Lives” is going absolutely nowhere interesting and that the first act is its best. Kitamura has style (although it is MUCH better utilized in the underrated “Midnight Meat Train” and cult hit “Versus”) and the cast isn’t bad but the script is simply awful and the movie exists for no other reason than to highlight some nifty makeup horror effects. You can do much better.

Rating: 2.5/5.0

CHICAGO – There’s a scene in “The Great Gatsby” in which Jay Gatsby (Leonardo DiCaprio) is gleefully throwing multi-colored clothes down upon a smiling, spinning Daisy Buchanan (Carey Mulligan). While she seems happy at first, she ends up covered in colored fabric and crying. I knew how she felt.

Rating: 2.5/5.0

CHICAGO – Eli Roth may be in front of the camera for the earthquake horror film “Aftershock,” opening in some markets this weekend, but his fingerprints are all over it as a creative voice as well. From the long “Hostel”-esque set-up about the dread that can come just from being a foreigner in a strange land to the shock value of some of the extreme places that the film goes, it’s a Roth joint.

Rating: 4.0/5.0

CHICAGO – Mention the name Thor Heyerdahl or his sea-faring vessel “Kon-Tiki,” and half-remembered images of a voyage across the sea in a ship that looks like it was built on “Gilligan’s Isle” might cross memory neurons. Why, when and how he did it is brought to screen in the excellent and appropriately titled “Kon-Tiki.”

Rating: 3.5/5.0

CHICAGO – Given the recent media coverage of the Boston bombings, the issue of profiling – judging a individual as suspect based on religion or appearances – is an ongoing problem. Director Mira Nair explores profiling in the context of September 11th in “The Reluctant Fundamentalist.”

Rating: 3.0/5.0

CHICAGO – Writer/director Ramin Bahrani is interested not in agendas, special effects, or broad statements. He makes films about characters, including the widely acclaimed “Chop Shop,” “Man Push Cart,” and “Goodbye Solo.” For his latest drama, “At Any Price,” Bahrani expands his canvas, using more household names in his effort to tell a story of the heartland and the corruption and greed that can infiltrate even the most seemingly pure aspects of American life.

Rating: 4.0/5.0

CHICAGO – Critics and viewers fell in rapturous adoration of the legend of The Dark Knight when Christopher Nolan and his team took the risk of making character-driven superhero movies. To kick off the second phase of the Marvel Universe of films with this weekend’s “Iron Man 3,” Shane Black and the team behind this guaranteed blockbuster have done the same – presenting us with the most human Marvel flick since “Spider-Man 2.”

Rating: 2.0/5.0

CHICAGO – In what could be subtitled, “The Challenge of American Accents,” the new release “Arthur Newman” has a laugh-inducing U.S. inflection face-off between Brits Colin Firth and Emily Blunt. Amid that obstacle, there is a lame road picture that emotionally is false, and makes no sense.