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.
NFL
National Football Ladies are Super Bowled in ’80 for Brady’
Submitted by PatrickMcD on February 2, 2023 - 8:29pmRating: 2.0/5.0 |
CHICAGO – “80 for Brady” has an all star lineup, but when it comes to scoring any genuine laughs it has a serious case of fumble-itis. It’s fun to see these talented women together on the screen but there’s not much there. It’s four old friends going to the Super Bowl, and that’s about it.
‘Concussion’ Can’t Quite Tackle its Difficult Subject
Submitted by PatrickMcD on December 25, 2015 - 6:53amRating: 3.0/5.0 |
CHICAGO – “Concussion” suffers from what I call the “Moneyball” problem – it’s got an interesting subject matter, but it doesn’t seem to know what to do with it. It doesn’t have enough faith in its own material or its audience, so it stocks up on a lot of off-the-shelf melodrama in effort to avoid digging into what makes the story interesting in the first place. It’s also a movie that chickens out at the end and seems afraid to pick a fight.
‘Draft Day’ is Daft, Except as an NFL Infomercial
Submitted by PatrickMcD on April 11, 2014 - 4:37pmRating: 2.5/5.0 |
CHICAGO – Kevin Costner has defined a career in sports-themed movies. From the Iowa farmer building a baseball diamond in “Field of Dreams,” to “Bull Durham,” to “For the Love of the Game,” he exemplified game day heroics. Yet being an NFL executive in “Draft Day” isn’t quite as exciting.
Eye-Opening Cost of Playing Sports in ‘Head Games’
Submitted by BrianTT on September 28, 2012 - 8:48amRating: 3.5/5.0 |
CHICAGO – A father speaks through tears about the teammates for his deceased son standing at the funeral in the balcony paying honor to their lost captain and it’s impossible not to ask the daunting question at the core of “Head Games,” the new documentary from the great Steve James (“Hoop Dreams,” “The Interrupters”) that opens this weekend at the Siskel Film Center – how much longer can this go on?