John Cusack

CHICAGO – There is a moral darkness in director David Cronenberg’s “Maps to the Stars” that is hard to shake. It is filled with circumstance and souls right at the edge of insanity, polluted by an atmosphere that doesn’t give them much of a chance. The apocalypse is now, and living in Los Angeles.

CHICAGO – The concept is a hot tub, that also acts as a time machine. It practically writes itself! The too-meticulous plot of “Hot Tub Time Machine 2” still delivers a decent amount of laughs, although most of them fall under the crude and rude category. Better a cheap laugh than no laugh.

CHICAGO – Jerome David Salinger, J.D. to his readers, remains one of the most influential and controversial authors of the 20th Century. Known intuitively for the classic novel “Catcher in the Rye,” he also was known as a reclusive soul. His life and times make up the new documentary, “Salinger.”

Rating: 2.0/5.0

CHICAGO – There have been a depressing number of bad career choices on the part of Oscar winner Nicolas Cage and once-great actor John Cusack in recent years. Anyone seen “Seeking Justice,” “Stolen,” “The Numbers Station,” or “The Factory”? Someone owes you an apology.

CHICAGO – In the latest HollywoodChicago.com Hookup: Film with our unique social giveaway technology, we have 40 pairs of advance-screening movie passes up for grabs to the highly anticipated “Lee Daniels’ The Butler” starring Forest Whitaker and Oprah Winfrey!

CHICAGO – John Cusack’s new spy thriller is so routine, predictable, and dull that they could have called it “By-the-Numbers Station”. Too easy? How about “Paint-by-Numbers Station”? OK, I’ll stop now before @FakeShalit comes after me.

CHICAGO – John Cusack is in a very bad mood. Not even a home-cooked Thanksgiving dinner can melt his icily grim disposition, as he speeds through traffic, shouts expletives at random extras and takes part in several terse phone conversations (hopefully with his agent). Of course, if I was an A-grade actor trapped in Z-grade dreck, I’d be peeved too.

CHICAGO – Some have embraced Lee Daniels’ super-weird “The Paperboy,” recently released on Blu-ray and DVD, as pure pulp entertainment, the kind of sexy, sweaty, ridiculous B-movie that they don’t make enough of any more. Others have called it absolute trash with The Onion A.V. Club going as far as to name it the worst movie of the year. I’m much closer to The Onion in this case. As hard as I tried to get on the wavelength of this film’s growing cult movie reputation, I couldn’t shake the fact that it’s just a piece of junk.

Previous | Image 1 of 20 | Next

CHICAGO – One of the great events in Chicago in 2012 was the Chicago Comic and Entertainment Expo, affectionately called C2E2. A galaxy of movie and TV stars appeared at that Spring gathering, including Sean Astin, John Cusack, Val Kilmer and Steven Yuen (“The Walking Dead”). The next C2E2 is April 26-28, 2013.

CHICAGO – John Cusack is an enormously likable actor, and for the first third of James McTeigue’s period thriller, he holds audience interest long enough to inspire hope for a better two thirds. Alas, the film crash lands soon after that, as McTeigue proves to have little to no interest in his central subject, one of the greatest writers in the history of literature.