CHICAGO – Excelsior! Comic book legend Stan Lee’s famous exclamation puts a fine point on the third and final play of Mark Pracht’s FOUR COLOR TRILOGY, “The House of Ideas,” presented by and staged at City Lit Theater in Chicago’s Edgewater neighborhood. For tickets/details, click HOUSE OF IDEAS.
Kristin Scott Thomas
Mediated Performances Highlight Alternative Story of Charles Dickens’ Personal Life
Submitted by NickHC on January 24, 2014 - 3:55pmRating: 3.5/5.0 |
After years of enlivening adapted work in front of the camera and on the stage, only recently has the prolific actor Ralph Fiennes taken to directing films; in 2011 he gave the world a version of Shakespeare’s “Coriolanus,” which included the odd treat of watching Gerard Butler espouse the Bard’s words from his mouth, and a sporadically-lauded performance from Vanessa Redgrave.
Robert Pattinson Drains Life From Misguided ‘Bel Ami’
Submitted by BrianTT on June 22, 2012 - 11:07amRating: 2.0/5.0 |
CHICAGO – Robert Pattinson is such a divisive actor. While he’s clearly one of the most popular young stars in the world thanks to his work in the “Twilight” films, he has yet to prove to most people that he can really act. While some who have seen David Cronenberg’s upcoming “Cosmopolis” claim that this will be the film that finally allows Pattinson to break out of the franchise that has defined him, we’re stuck with something far lesser for now.
Ewan McGregor, Emily Blunt Flounder in ‘Salmon Fishing in the Yemen’
Submitted by PatrickMcD on March 9, 2012 - 4:59pmRating: 2.5/5.0 |
CHICAGO – Often when novels with quirky titles get made into films, all that is left of the quirk is the name on the cover. That is exactly what has happened to “Salmon Fishing in the Yemen,” a tome authored by Paul Torday, and reduced to torpid blandness by director Lasse Hallstrøm.
‘The Heir Apparent: Largo Winch’ is Cliché Drowned in French Style
Submitted by BrianTT on November 23, 2011 - 1:53pmRating: 2.5/5.0 |
CHICAGO – From what I understand, the name Largo Winch is a household one in Europe. While it may mean nothing here, a French spy thriller with a name like “The Heir Apparent: Largo Winch,” based on a European comic book, might sound like the perfect alternative for arthouse movie goers looking for something different this holiday weekend. Sadly, from the very beginning, “Largo Winch” feels like nothing different at all.
‘Sarah’s Key’ Unlocks the Ever-Present Past
Submitted by PatrickMcD on July 30, 2011 - 8:31amRating: 3.5/5.0 |
CHICAGO – The old saying, “those who cannot remember the past is doomed to repeat it” applies succinctly in “Sarah’s Key,” a Holocaust film with a French twist. Kristin Scott Thomas plays an American journalist who uncovers the facts in a less-remembered incident that reverberates to now.
Aaron Johnson as John Lennon is a Real ‘Nowhere Boy’
Submitted by PatrickMcD on October 15, 2010 - 9:37amRating: 4.0/5.0 |
CHICAGO – The great John Lennon would have been 70 years old on October 9th, but never got to expand upon the journey that started in a small British port town called Liverpool, where a young Lennon was shuffled from home-to-home between his Aunt Mimi and his mother Julia. Aaron Johnson plays the teenage rock icon in a crucial point in his life in the poignant “Nowhere Boy.”
French Film ‘Tell No One’ a Journey of Mystery Down Road of Twists, Turns
Submitted by HollywoodChicago.com on July 15, 2008 - 12:42amRating: 3.5/5.0 |
CHICAGO – The most perfect description for the new French suspense film “Tell No One” comes from the most unlikely source: a 1957 American film called “Sweet Smell of Success”.
Describing one of the characters in that film, one line observes that he has “more twists than a barrel of pretzels”. Take that barrel and put it through the zigzag of a taffy-pulling machine and those results might be able to straighten out the labyrinth of circumstances in “Tell No One”.