Movie Review

CHICAGO – Nicholas Winding Refn’s “Drive” is an amazing thriller, a modern examination of heroism filtered through the fairy tale culture of the underbelly of the movie machine that is easily one of the most memorable and effective films of not just this year but the last several.

CHICAGO – Adam Sandler lost a bet. How else to explain the existence of “Bucky Larson: Born to Be a Star,” a movie that no one but the man behind Happy Madison would possibly finance? If you took this script (co-written by Little Nicky himself) to any sane film producer, they would assume you were pulling a prank.

CHICAGO – Power is a strange, corrupting force. Human beings manufacture power based on governments, money and religion. Oftentimes an element of humanity must be sacrificed to obtain power. In Iran, that element is women, as religious and governmental oppression conspire to create “Circumstance.”

CHICAGO – There are few sights more depressing than a game cast all dressed up with nowhere to go and no good jokes to share. “Burke and Hare” is the sort of comedy Mel Brooks was making in the ’90s. All the ingredients are on hand for a promising comedy, and yet something’s missing—namely, laughter. The timing is off, the punch-lines are obvious and the actors are bored beyond belief.

CHICAGO – A few weeks ago saw the release of the R-rated “Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark,” a gore-free creature feature that was given the MPAA stamp of 17-plus due to “pervasive scariness.” This week sees the PG-13-rated “Contagion,” a film SO much more pervasively scary than the movie about goblins in a distant mansion because, well, it’s about the fact that the world is pervasively scary.

CHICAGO – What do Robert Duvall and Melissa Leo have in common? They both have won an Oscar and they both cashed a paycheck for the fake virtuous hack job called “Seven Days in Utopia.” For Duvall especially, maybe the mortgage payment is due on the vacation home.

CHICAGO – “Shark Night 3D” is at the top of the food chain when it comes to the people-so-stupid-they-lack-basic-survival-skills category of horror thrillers, and has so many wrong elements it nearly swings back to be right.

CHICAGO – What Errol Morris does so well is very, very difficult. He takes unusual interview subjects (“Fast, Cheap, & Out of Control,” “Mr. Death), sometimes even with a political background (“The Fog of War,” “Standard Operating Procedure”) and makes them completely riveting. Clearly inspired by the Morris filmography, Jeff Prosserman’s “Chasing Madoff” attempts that blend of personality and history but falls flat on its face. Rarely has a documentary taken a more interesting story and told it in a more annoying manner.

CHICAGO – Space, the final frontier. The USA made one giant leap for mankind during the Apollo moon landing program forty years ago. Why were the missions abruptly terminated? Why haven’t they gone back? “Apollo 18” theorizes on the answers.

CHICAGO – Rarely have so many talented comedians been sucked into a more depressing morass of bad comic timing and worse writing than in the dreadful “A Good Old-Fashioned Orgy,” a movie with a bunch of people I like making a comedy I really, really hate. This movie knows nothing about friendship, sex, or, most importantly, comedy.