August 2017

CHICAGO – On August 22nd, 2017, the first slate of films were announced, and the official poster was revealed, for the upcoming 53rd Chicago International Film Festival. Festival Founder & CEO Michael Kutza unveiled the poster design, by artist Edwin Smeege, and Artistic Director Mimi Plauché gave the first sneak peek of films at the fest.

CHICAGO – One of the rites of passage for most girls in the U.S.(and elsewhere, I presume) is ballet lessons. Usually it lasts for a very short time, but some girls-to-women keep pursuing it, and may even become prima ballerinas. A new animated film named “Leap!” is dedicated to that spirit.

CHICAGO – In one of the more intriguing “happenings” in the Chicago scene, the husband and wife team of Rebecca Fons and Jack C. Newell are hosting “Destroy Your Art” in Chicago, on August 25th, 2017, at Lost Arts in the Goose Island neighborhood (details below). The evening promises a one-of-a-kind event.

Rating: 3.5/5.0

CHICAGO – Aubrey Plaza (“Parks and Recreation”) is an actor who always seems to do something memorable in her performances. In “Ingrid Goes West,” she carries an entire movie on her quirky and sometimes disturbing character… that of a bipolar stalker who can’t find balance.

LAS VEGAS – For Jerry Lewis, the “King of Comedy” wasn’t just a mere nickname, but an apt description for his long career and influence. He went from being the most popular entertainer of an era, to notable and studied filmmaker, to charity spokesperson and finally to comic legend. Jerry Lewis died in Las Vegas on August 20th, 2017. He was 91.

CHICAGO – When the magnificently creative film “Dave Made a Maze” begins, it seems like another Millennial generation stab at micro budget filmmaking, with a claustrophobic set and extreme archetypes instead of characters. But then the “exploration” of the title maze starts, and suddenly “Dave” becomes a marvel of invention, tribute, hilarity and even truth.

CHICAGO – Less than two years ago, Women of the Now (WOTN) Founder and filmmaker Layne Marie Williams brought her Philadelphia organization to Chicago, when she moved here to evolve her career. As Woman of the Now has grown in its new home, the group has sponsored many happenings and events, the latest of which is “Poerotica,” subtitled “Liquor, Lingerie and Love Languages.” The event will take place at Reunion Chicago on Saturday, August 19th, 2017 at 8pm (details below).

Rating: 2.5/5.0

CHICAGO – One day I would like to meet a professional assassin. Are they as quippy and biblical as Samuel L. Jackson? This tired movie occupation is trotted out again, this time pairing Jackson with Ryan Reynolds, in an overwrought and ultra-violent buddy comedy, “The Hitman’s Bodyguard.”

CHICAGO – Bridget Everett is a New York City entertainment maven, as a singer and “cabaret provocateur.” She is breaking out recently as a movie actor, with the just-released comedy “Fun Mom Dinner” and her latest role, as a mother to “Patti Cake$,” a white girl hip-hop artist from New Jersey with a determination of gold.

Rating: 4.0/5.0

CHICAGO – We all belong to something, be it a family, workplace, congregation or (expansively) a tribe. But within all that belonging is a sometimes nagging feeling of being an outsider. There is not a human being in existence that hasn’t felt that way, and a new film expresses that feeling in “Menashe.”

Rating: 2.5/5.0

CHICAGO – Writer/Director Taylor Sheridan is a deep thinker regarding humanity in these United States. In the third film of his “American Frontier Trilogy” – after “Sicario” and “Hell or High Water” – he goes to the Wyoming Native American reservation, for a unwieldy story titled “Wind River.”

Rating: 2.0/5.0

CHICAGO – Anyone showing up to the “The Nut Job 2: Nutty By Nature” will know exactly what they’re going to get… it’s a late summer sequel to an animated movie you may be surprised was successful enough to warrant a sequel at all, much less a theatrically released one.

CHICAGO – Cada semana, HollywoodChicago.com le traerá las criticas de las películas que hemos visto y que están saliendo esa semana, pero en español. HollywoodChicago.com ESP no sólo representa HollywoodChicago.com Espanol, sino también Esta Semana en Peliculas. Esta semana haremos un viaje a una tierra extranjera para salvar al mundo (‘The Dark Tower’), y luego investigamos un crimen en una tierra extranjera para tratar de salvar a una comunidad (‘Wind River’).

CHICAGO – The beauty of ex-Vice President Al Gore is that whenever his name is mentioned we think about his central passion… how Planet Earth is changing due to greenhouse gases and pollution. His groundbreaking “An Inconvenient Truth” documentary is a cultural icon, and now he is back with the aptly titled “An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power,” co-directed by Bonni Cohen and Jon Shenk.