CHICAGO – Patrick McDonald of HollywoodChicago.com appears on “The Morning Mess” with Dan Baker on WBGR-FM (Monroe, Wisconsin) on March 21st, 2024, reviewing the new streaming series “Manhunt” – based on the bestseller by James L. Swanson – currently streaming on Apple TV+.
HollywoodChicago.com DVD Reviews
DVD Round Up, Mar. 23, 2009: ‘Lilo & Stitch,’ ‘The Odd Couple,’ ‘To Catch a Thief’
Submitted by BrianTT on March 23, 2009 - 3:02pmCHICAGO – A Disney movie and two all-time classics being inducted in Paramount’s “Centennial Collection” make up this week’s version of the “DVD Round-Up,” your safety net for titles that may have slipped by your home entertainment radar.
DVD Review: ‘Elegy’ Features Spectacular Performances From Ben Kingsley, Penelope Cruz
Submitted by BrianTT on March 17, 2009 - 11:06pm DVD Rating: 3.5/5.0 |
CHICAGO – They have yet to perfectly adapt the great author Philip Roth’s tone from page to screen, but Isabel Coixet’s “Elegy” comes the closest. With other modern masters like Ian McEwan (“Atonement”) and Cormac McCarthy (“No Country For Old Men”) finding a new audience through the successful adaptations of their work, maybe “Elegy” will bring fans to Roth.
DVD Review: ‘Twilight: Two-Disc Special Edition’ Designed to Satisfy Legions of Fans
Submitted by BrianTT on March 17, 2009 - 9:25pmDVD Rating: 3.5/5.0 |
CHICAGO – Good news, “Twilight” junkies. The two-disc DVD of your favorite movie, the vampire romance starring Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, Taylor Lautner, Ashley Greene, Billy Burke, Peter Facinelli, Edi Gathegi, Cam Gigandet, and more really delivers.
DVD Review: Sally Hawkins Shines in Mike Leigh’s Fantastic ‘Happy-Go-Lucky’
Submitted by BrianTT on March 16, 2009 - 12:44pm DVD Rating: 5.0/5.0 |
CHICAGO – “Happy-Go-Lucky” was one my favorite films of 2008 with a pitch-perfect performance by the great Sally Hawkins, an actress who so embodied her character that not only did she deserve to be nominated for an Oscar, she should be polishing her trophy right now. New to DVD, audiences can finally catch up with “Happy-Go-Lucky,” another notch in the belt for the great Mike Leigh, one of the more consistent filmmakers of the last twenty years.
DVD Review: Manipulative ‘The Boy in the Striped Pajamas’ Feels False
Submitted by BrianTT on March 16, 2009 - 12:38pm DVD Rating: 1.5/5.0 |
CHICAGO – The plot of “The Boy in the Striped Pajamas,” new to DVD and based on a best-selling novel by John Boyne, may have worked on the page but a number of awful decisions on the way to the screen have taken a story with inherent emotional strength and turned it into misguided, manipulative drama.
DVD Review: Anne Hathaway’s ‘Rachel Getting Married’ Deserves Huge Audience on DVD
Submitted by BrianTT on March 12, 2009 - 6:28pmDVD Rating: 5.0/5.0 |
CHICAGO – Jonathan Demme’s “Rachel Getting Married” was easily one of the best films of 2008, featuring Oscar-worthy work by Anne Hathaway, Rosemarie DeWitt, screenwriter Jenny Lumet, and its acclaimed director.
DVD, Blu-Ray Round Up, Mar. 10, 2009: ‘Scarlett Johansson Collection,’ ‘Brokeback Mountain,’ ‘Witch Mountain’
Submitted by BrianTT on March 10, 2009 - 1:02pmCHICAGO – The Round-Up, HollywoodChicago.com’s famous recurring column about lesser Blu-Ray and DVD titles that may have slipped through your fingers at the store recently, is in clean-up mode this week. With a DVD collection for a famous young actress, an old cartoon, a straight-to-video horror movie, and three movies with the word “Mountain” in the title, the only word that comes to mind to tie these titles together is “random”.
DVD Review: ‘Wonder Woman’ Continues Series of Interesting DC Universe Releases
Submitted by BrianTT on March 6, 2009 - 2:20pmDVD Rating: 3.5/5.0 |
CHICAGO – Even though I once had a weekly comic book addiction, I was never a big Wonder Woman fan. Maybe it was a trapping of my gender, but I always tended toward books with male heroes like Superman, Batman, and The X-Men. Having said that, I can still respect what the team behind DC Universe’s latest film have accomplished with “Wonder Woman,” another installment in an increasingly intriguing series of straight-to-DVD movies.
DVD Review: ‘Fountains of Wayne: No Better Place - Live in Chicago’ Captures Windy City Show
Submitted by BrianTT on March 3, 2009 - 2:47pm DVD Rating: 3.0/5.0 |
CHICAGO – Fountains of Wayne have always put together light, breezy pop tunes, so a set in the Windy City seems the perfect location for their first ever concert DVD, “Fountains of Wayne: No Better Place - Live in Chicago”. The 16-song performance runs less than an hour and amplifies the band’s most notable weakness as the songs all kind of start to sound the same, but fans should be thrilled to finally own a piece of Wayne’s world.
DVD Review: ‘Breaking Bad: The Complete First Season’ Features Gripping Performance
Submitted by BrianTT on February 27, 2009 - 11:11amDVD Rating: 3.5/5.0 |
CHICAGO – AMC’s “Breaking Bad” is not one of my favorite shows on television but the lead performance by Emmy Award winner Bryan Cranston is one of the most riveting I’ve seen in the last few years. He is pitch-perfect and everything that works about this unusual series comes from his great star turn.
