Stephen Lang

CHICAGO – Patrick McDonald of HollywoodChicago.com appears on “The Morning Mess” with Scott Thompson on WBGR-FM (Monroe, Wisconsin) on December 8th, 2022, reviewing “Avatar: The Way of Water,” the highly anticipated sequel to the 2009 original, directed by James Cameron. In theaters beginning December 16th, in 3D and IMAX screen options.

CHICAGO – In the latest HollywoodChicago.com Hookup: Film, we have 60 pairs of advance-screening IMAX movie passes up for grabs to the new film “Mortal Engines” starring Hugo Weaving, Hera Hilmar and Robert Sheehan!

CHICAGO – “Hostiles” is an exercise in prestige western boredom. It’s competently made, but its as lifeless as a scalped corpse on the prairie. It’s long on pretty western locales and impressive facial hair, but short on story, characters, or much of anything else to help keep your eyelids from closing.

CHICAGO – The horror genre can be a complex creature. The great films can show you the difference between ‘horror’ and ‘terror’. Some horror is all shock and no substance, while terror can be all fear, but no shock. The difference between them is so nuanced that only a skilled director, like Fede Alvarez, can show you the difference in his latest film, “Don’t Breathe.”

CHICAGO – The horror genre in film is always looking for a shot in the old fear factor, and the new release “Don’t Breathe” delivers that injection (heh-heh). The second film by director Fede Alvarez (“Evil Dead”) features character actor favorite Stephen Lang – he prefers “Slang.” The film opens nationwide on August 26th.

CHICAGO – In the latest HollywoodChicago.com Hookup: Film, we have 50 pairs of advance-screening movie passes up for grabs to the new horror film “Don’t Breathe” from the creators of “Evil Dead” and producer Sam Raimi!

CHICAGO – It feels like when any studio besides Walt Disney or Pixar does an animated film with celebrity voices, there is a little less lacquer on it. What the other two remember, and others forget, is that it starts with a script. All the toon landscapes in the world can’t fix a dull story.

CHICAGO – Family 4-packs! In the latest HollywoodChicago.com Hookup: Film with our unique social giveaway technology, we have 10 family 4-packs (40 seats in total) up for grabs to the new animated 3D film “The Nut Job” with Will Arnett and Katherine Heigl!

CHICAGO – I really wish “Terra Nova” had worked. I not only wanted to like it more myself but it’s the kind of unique program that I wanted audiences to hook on to so its creators could iron out the problems and deliver true sci-fi greatness on network TV. Sadly, it wasn’t meant to be, and “Terra Nova: The Complete Series” merely serves as a bittersweet reminder of what could have been.

CHICAGO – There were a disturbing number of remakes in 2011 that failed to justify their existence, including “The Thing,” “Footloose,” and, perhaps worst of all, Marcus Nispel’s “Conan the Barbarian.” The man behind the equally worthless remakes of “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” and “Friday the 13th” has carved out his own niche of dubious filmmaking decisions that make the original look like a masterpiece in comparison. The first “Conan” worked almost entirely because of the star power brought to it by Ah-nuld. The words star power and Jason Momoa have never been used together in a sentence before now.