November 2011

CHICAGO – Disney’s theatrical version of the classic A.A. Milne creation, “Winnie the Pooh,” was decimated at the summer box office by bigger, louder, and far more annoying family fare. Hopefully those of you with young ones in your family or those of you just young at heart will catch up with it because it was, without question, the best family film of the Summer of 2011. It’s a charming, delightful return to the Hundred Acre Wood that playfully offers what has always worked about these timeless characters.

Rating: 1.0/5.0

CHICAGO – It’s ironic that a film called “The Double,” starring Richard Gere & Topher Grace, would remind one of so many superior thrillers. It is in itself a double, a carbon copy of better films that focuses on all of the wrong elements, thinking that audiences are still dumb enough that just throwing twist after twist at them will keep their head spinning enough to not realize that what they just saw not only makes no sense at all but wasn’t even remotely entertaining.

Rating: 2.0/5.0

CHICAGO – Director Dito Montiel and star Channing Tatum were once tagged with the label of the hot new debut artistic partnership. 2006’s great “A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints” introduced both men to the world and it felt like it could be the calling card for a creative team to someday rival Scorsese & De Niro. Tatum reunited with Montiel on the disappointing “Fighting” and their latest venture, “The Son of No One,” while an improvement on Montiel’s sophomore slump, is nonetheless another misfire.

CHICAGO – Detroit Tigers pitcher Justin Verlander, who just won the MLB Players Association’s Player of the Year Award, was named the new cover athlete for “Major League Baseball 2K12” this morning. The game is scheduled for release on March 9, 2012.

Rating: 3.5/5.0

CHICAGO – “A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas” delivers exactly what fans should expect from it and even a bit more, as the actors who play the stoner icons have gotten noticeably better at their craft and the production team behind the film has gone all out in a quest to throw as many jokes as possible at the viewer in a barrage of attempts at hilarity.

Rating: 3.5/5.0

CHICAGO – The young love affair, that first one that breaks through the heart, mind and biological objectives, is the memory that never really goes away. Sometimes it works out for a lifetime, sometimes it ends. Anton Yelchin and Felicity Jones play out this oft-remembered experience in “Like Crazy.”

CHICAGO – The television series that is deep in its run could have shake-ups and a different direction for story arcs. Or like a comfortable slipper, stay the course that made it popular and hope the audience hangs on. “Bones,” starring Emily Deschanel, is staying the course in its seventh season on FOX.

CHICAGO – The next installment in the Bond films, the twenty-third installment to be accurate, has finally had its title revealed. Known as Bond 23 for months, the new film will officially be called “Skyfall.” The title was revealed this morning at a press conference by the producers of the film.

CHICAGO – Konami Digital Entertainment made news yesterday when announcing one of its top selling franchises was returning to gamers not once, not twice, but thrice in 2012. The survival/horror series “Silent Hill,” which first premiered in 1999 on Sony PlayStation, will have its eighth and ninth installments released in the coming months, as well as a re-release of two of its classic tales.

CHICAGO – Richard Linklater’s “Dazed and Confused” is not just a fun comedy, not just a clever slice of nostalgia, and not just a stoner movie. It is, without question, one of the best films of the ’90s. It passes through nostalgia to something more like a time machine, in a way not that dissimilar to George Lucas’ “American Graffiti.” A deeply personal project from one of our best modern writer/directors, “Dazed and Confused,” recently released on Criterion Blu-ray and re-released on Criterion DVD, gets better with each passing year.

CHICAGO – I feel like I’ve written a dozen reviews of USA’s hit “Burn Notice” and they all have basically the same theme — this is a show that could have been great but has now clearly settled for just being good.

CHICAGO – As completely as “Batman: Arkham City” lived up to high expectations (and even surpassed them), Activision’s “Spider-Man: Edge of Time” has been such a disappointment that it’s actually taken me longer than normal to put it into words. Last year’s “Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions” was such an entertaining treat, the best webslinger game yet produced. All they had to do was build on the elements of that game that worked. Instead, they tore them down.

CHICAGO – It has been over three years since the release of “Grand Theft Auto IV,” and fans of the very popular video game series finally have something to look forward to. Rockstar Games released the first trailer of “Grand Theft Auto V” on their website this morning, giving a vague look at the possible characters, setting, and storyline of the newest GTA game.

CHICAGO – “The People vs. George Lucas” is a misleading title and several outlets have misleading representations of what you should expect from the film. This is not an antagonistic piece even if it does contain some amazing evidence in the anti-Lucas movement. The “vs.” makes it sound like a hatchet job. It’s not. It’s more of a love letter to the fans who have built their lives around “Star Wars” and THEN it goes on to point how that love has made the fan base even more sensitive to perceived slights to the holy trilogy. It’s a clever, fun documentary that runs just a bit long but truly captures something about geek-movie culture that hasn’t been so well-documented before.