December 2011

CHICAGO – In our latest horror/comedy edition of the HollywoodChicago.com Hookup, we have 10 Blu-ray and DVD combo packs up for grabs to the DreamWorks home entertainment release of “Fright Night” starring Colin Farrell, Toni Collette and Anton Yelchin!

CHICAGO – A&E’s “Bag of Bones” is a mess. There are elements that work but a source material that doesn’t exactly translate to the mini-series form along with a mediocre script by Matt Venne and generic direction by Mick Garris add up to an experience that’s disjointed and inconsistent. There was a time when a Stephen King mini-series was an event – “The Stand,” “It,” even “Storm of the Century” – but what’s so disappointing about “Bag of Bones” is how inconsequential the whole thing feels.

CHICAGO – The Sundance Institute announced their selections last week for the Short Film Program as part of the 2012 Sundance Film Festival, and among the 7,675 submissions, Chicago filmmaker Anna Musso made the cut with her stellar break-out effort, “L Train.” The 2012 Sundance Film Festival will take place January 19th-29th.

CHICAGO – Mavis Gary (Charlize Theron) isn’t a girl you’d Facebook like. She’s got one too many dark passengers, she’s a repugnant drunk, she likes too much pink, her white dog is too puffy and most would consider it less than Usher cool that she’s throwing herself at a married man she couldn’t bag back in high school. Or is she? And is Mavis so different than you?

Rating: 3.5/5.0

CHICAGO – Mavis Gary (Charlize Theron) isn’t a girl you’d Facebook like. She’s got one too many dark passengers, she’s a repugnant drunk, she likes too much pink, her white dog is too puffy and most would consider it less than Usher cool that she’s throwing herself at a married man she couldn’t bag back in high school. Or is she? And is Mavis so different than you?

Rating: 2.5/5.0

CHICAGO – David Gordon Green’s “Your Highness” was like a punch to the gut – an unqualified train wreck from someone who had been correctly dubbed one of the best working filmmakers. His same-year follow-up, “The Sitter,” opening this weekend, is far less disastrous but similarly disappointing in that it displays flaws that the talented director never showed even hints of previous to 2011.

CHICAGO – “New Year’s Eve” is so garish and manipulative that it doesn’t really qualify as a film – it’s a product, no more an actual movie than a Hallmark card is a piece of poetry. It is corporate junk at its worst, so shallow that it’s almost remarkably thin, as if director Garry Marshall were trying to win a contest for lack of subtlety.

CHICAGO – Mark Pellington’s “I Melt with You” is one of the worst movies of 2011, but has the benefit of also being among the weirdest. Students of rotten cinema will surely flock to this disaster simply to watch it in morbid, mouth-gaping awe. Yet without a scenery chewing wild card like Nicolas Cage in the ensemble, this mournful mess is far from an enjoyable guilty pleasure.

CHICAGO – For three weeks in a row, “The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn — Part 1” has been number one at the box office, to no real surprise. The thirst for this popular saga is almost as desperate as a vampire’s blood lust. Daniel Cudmore and Alex Meraz are part of the now well-known cast.

CHICAGO – In our latest holiday set edition of the HollywoodChicago.com Hookup, we have 10 Blu-ray and DVD holiday sets up for grabs for the home release of “The Smurfs”!

CHICAGO – Does it say something about the current market of Blu-rays that nine of our top ten releases of the year (and, honestly, most of the runner-ups considered) are for catalog releases and special editions instead of films produced in the current era? More and more often, modern releases seem kind of lackluster. Throw on a featurette, maybe a deleted scene or two, and put it on the shelf.

CHICAGO – For all of its ambition and integrity, Jon Favreau’s “Cowboys & Aliens” is a dull genre exercise devoid of charm or wit. Whereas “Iron Man” got a great deal of mileage out of Robert Downey Jr.’s deadpan persona, this sci-fi/western hybrid is marred by its two one-note leads: the morose Daniel Craig and the snarly Harrison Ford. Viewers expecting a “Bond meets Indy” lark a la “The Last Crusade” will be sorely disappointed.

CHICAGO – One man’s delightful whimsy is another man’s annoying hipster facade. For every person who gets on the wavelength of a band like The Decemberists or Belle & Sebastian, there are others who find their music too self-aware and, well, hipster. The same is true with film. Even though I’m often a fan of music and fiction that could be deemed hipster — you know the kind, the Sundance whimsy that comes through the art house a few times a year — I found “The Future” grating in its lack of emotional truth. It all feels like artifice to me, which is especially problematic given the clear attempt at something deeper.

CHICAGO – One of the nice surprises of the Chicago International Film Festival was the opening night presence of a true Chicago-based film. “The Last Rites of Joe May” stars Dennis Farina as an aging small-time hood, taken in by single mother Jenny Rapp, portrayed by Jamie Anne Allman. The production was directed with sublime power by Joe Maggio.