CHICAGO – Society, or at least certain elements of society, are always looking for scapegoats to hide the sins of themselves and authority. In the so-called “great America” of the 1950s, the scapegoat target was comic books … specifically through a sociological study called “The Seduction of the Innocent.” City Lit Theater Company, in part two of a trilogy on comic culture by Mark Pracht, presents “The Innocence of Seduction … now through October 8th, 2023. For details and tickets, click COMIC BOOK.
Martin Scorsese
Stellar Cast & Director Fail to Build ‘The Snowman’
Submitted by PatrickMcD on October 22, 2017 - 8:43pm Rating: 1.0/5.0 |
CHICAGO – The biggest mystery in “The Snowman” is what in the world talented actors like Michael Fassbender, Chloe Sevigny, Toby Jones, and Val Kilmer are doing here in the first place. Fassbender’s character’s name alone should have sent off alarm bells. This is based on a series of detective novels featuring detective Harry Hole, and characters have voluminous opportunities to repeat it, although with nary a snigger.
‘Silence’ is an Overwrought View of Religious Faith
Submitted by PatrickMcD on January 11, 2017 - 11:21am Rating: 3.0/5.0 |
CHICAGO – For gosh sakes, someone call the Vatican and make Marty Scorsese an honorary priest. He is overtly fascinated – in this work and his other films – with the notion of religious faith, particular within his Catholic roots. He approaches the subject again in the intense “Silence.”
A Celebration of Pure Cinema in ‘Hitchcock/Truffaut’
Submitted by PatrickMcD on December 27, 2015 - 12:40pm Rating: 4.5/5.0 |
CHICAGO – In 1966, a breakthrough book about the movies was released, entitled “Hitchcock/Truffaut.” A new documentary explores the actual interviews that were conducted between French new wave director Francois Truffaut and the legendary Alfred Hitchcock, that would become that book.
Roger Ebert Doc a Titanic Love Story About Movies, Chaz & ‘Life Itself’
Submitted by HollywoodChicago.com on July 6, 2014 - 4:41pm Rating: 4.5/5.0 |
CHICAGO – We’d all be so lucky to live a full life of love, success and dignity. But earning it and then dying with it is the ultimate accomplishment.
The film festival hit “Life Itself” honestly portrays the life and death of a great man that any man or woman can strive to emulate.
Roger Ebert’s Treasure of a Journey in ‘Life Itself’
Submitted by PatrickMcD on July 4, 2014 - 8:40am Rating: 5.0/5.0 |
CHICAGO – We will never see the likes of his kind again – the influential arbiter of cinematic taste, whose magic thumb could make or break the dreams of both filmmaker and film fan. The journey of Roger Ebert, the most influential film critic of our times, is told in the new documentary, “Life Itself.”
Scorsese’s ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’ a Deliciously Gluttonous Inspection Into Our Demons
Submitted by HollywoodChicago.com on December 26, 2013 - 5:29pmRating: 4.5/5.0 |
CHICAGO – No matter how painfully bad it may be, I never walk out of a screening. It’s a professional rule I’ve set and keep it at all costs. But with Martin Scorsese’s latest stroke of genius, I experienced a kind of pain I don’t usually wrangle with: the survival of my bladder.
Martin Scorsese’s ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’ is Cinematic Adrenalin
Submitted by BrianTT on December 23, 2013 - 11:01amRating: 5.0/5.0 |
Jordan Belfort (Leonardo DiCaprio) lives completely, entirely in the moment. It’s not that there’s no tomorrow, there’s not even “later that same day” in his world. People who make their living on the minute-to-minute fluctuations of the stock market are inherently going to be inclined to live in the small spaces between those quick deviations but Belfort was even more so given the fact that his first day as a legit money maker was on the day the entire economy collapsed in 1987 known as “Black Monday.”
‘The Family’ Whacks Obsession with Mafia Movies
Submitted by PatrickMcD on September 12, 2013 - 7:55pm Rating: 1.5/5.0 |
CHICAGO – “The Godfather” saga, “Goodfellas,” “Donnie Brasco,” “The Departed” – the list of America’s obsessive adoration of organized crime and mafia movies goes on and on. Finally, one film comes along to virtually kill the genre, the almost-unwatchable “The Family.”
Pulse-Pounding Action, Complexity Define ‘Easy Money’
Submitted by PatrickMcD on October 21, 2012 - 9:29pm Rating: 3.5/5.0 |
CHICAGO – Desperation is the best emotion for formulating action movies. There is something basic and true about a chase, for example, or a heist gone bad, when it’s the “end of the world” for a character or circumstance. “Easy Money” has that vibe, and delivers on some great sequences.
Influential Filmmakers Discuss Digital Revolution in ‘Side by Side’
Submitted by BrianTT on September 13, 2012 - 9:53amRating: 3.5/5.0 |
CHICAGO – We are at the tipping point of a technology that has been used for a hundred years to capture the moving image. Shooting on film is going away as more and more filmmakers use digital technology to tell their stories. How does this change the art form? Is it a creative new landscape or the death of something important?
