Kate Beckinsale

CHICAGO – In our latest action/crime edition of HollywoodChicago.com Hookup: Film, we have 50 admit-two movie passes up for grabs to the highly anticipated new film “Contraband” starring Mark Wahlberg and Kate Beckinsale!

CHICAGO – The summer movie season is officially over (sigh), and now it’s time for Hollywood to show off what they’ve got planned for us next. (If we had to guess, we say bet on more “Pirates” movies and less “Green Lantern” sequels.)

CHICAGO – Is there any cinematic prize less prestigious than the Heartland Truly Moving Picture Award? Most of the films honored by this group tend to be simple-minded, cloying and thoroughly manipulative. Any group that names “The Blind Side” as “the best film of 2009” seriously needs its head examined. The Heartland award emblem gracing the DVD box of “Everybody’s Fine” is sure to scare off serious fans of its legendary lead actor.

CHICAGO – Thrillers set in a frigid landscape are nothing new. Just look at “The Thing,” or “The Shining,” or heck, even “The Empire Strikes Back.” Like outer space, a frozen wasteland is an efficiently isolated location where there’s little hope of escape from whatever malevolent forces lurk there. In the case of “Whiteout,” the malevolent forces are the filmmakers and the helpless victims are us.

CHICAGO – In our latest comedy edition of HollywoodChicago.com Hookup: Film, we have 20 admit-two passes up for grabs to the advance Chicago screening of “Everybody’s Fine,” which stars Robert De Niro!

CHICAGO – Universal is getting an early jump on the annual wave of horror-themed titles that usually hit stores in the week before Halloween with new Blu-Ray editions of three horror-comedy classics and, well, one stinker that surely looks good in HD if nothing else. Add “An American Werewolf in London,” “Army of Darkness,” “Shaun of the Dead,” and “Van Helsing” to your collection.

CHICAGO – Producing more derisive snickers than gasps and more snores than thrills, Dominic Sena’s “Whiteout” is a massive waste of time, a predictable, dull, and hysterically cliched slice of junk that should be run out of theaters before month’s end.

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Kate Beckinsale as Carrie Stetko.

CHICAGO – This 13-image slideshow contains the official press images for “Whiteout,” starring Kate Beckinsale, Gabriel Macht, Columbus Short, and Tom Skerritt. The film was written by Jon Hoeber & Erich Hoeber and directed by Dominic Sena (“Swordfish”) and opens on September 11th, 2009. It is rated R.

CHICAGO – “Underworld: Rise of the Lycans” is easily one of the weirdest movies of 2009. It’s a werewolf movie that plays like a variation on “Gladiator” or “Spartacus” with the foundation of “Romeo & Juliet”. Solid work by the excellent Michael Sheen nearly redeems the film but an awful screenplay, dull design, and plodding direction sink this bizarre prequel.

CHICAGO – While Alfred Hitchcock and more recently M. Night Shyamalan have teetered between whether or not to write roles for themselves into their own scripts, there’s no tottering for Chicago-born Marvel Comics writer and “Underworld: Rise of the Lycans” character creator Kevin Grevioux.