Olivia Colman

CHICAGO – After all the controversies that beset the 91st Academy Awards, the actual event continued to surprise, with the stunning upset of Olivia Colman (“The Favourite”) as the Best Actress honoree – besting heavily favored Glenn Close – to the naming of “Green Book” as Best Picture, which overcame a backlash regarding the liberties of its based-on-truth story.

CHICAGO – The personal, emotional essence of Alfonso Cuarón’s “Roma” – a memory film set in the Mexico City neighborhood in the early 1970s – took home the Best Picture honor at the 2018 Chicago Film Critics Association annual dinner. “Roma” also was honored as Best Foreign Film, Director, Cinematography and Editing.

CHICAGO – Looking through auteur Yorgos Lanthimos’ filmography, you’ll recognize a style that combines both visual beauty and narrative absurdism. The Lanthimos effect, or Lanthimo-nium as I like to call it, elevates any piece of work to such a high degree that often times the meanings go over our heads. In his most mainstream effort to date, “The Favourite” will likely become your favorite of his works.

CHICAGO – “Murder On The Orient Express” is a movie that is never quite as interesting as the main character’s mustache. Kenneth Branagh directs and stars as Agatha Christie’s most famous detective, Hercule Poirot. While it is a departure from the source novel, Branagh sports silver streak facial hair of audacious eccentricity.

CHICAGO – It’s impossible to simply play spectator through the forward-moving experimental indie “Locke” without analyzing your own past. And only a zombie could sit through this one-man film without questioning what choices you’d make in Tom Hardy’s shoes.

CHICAGO – The de facto dazzle of isolated survival movies, regardless of their special effects, comes from pulling off their most impressive practical stunt: envisioning yet deconstructing high stakes drama with alternative spare plot resources, while featuring only a few on-screen characters, if even more than two. Though it entails Tom Hardy taking phone calls while safely driving at night on the highway (and if we’re talking straight arc, it’s only that), “Locke” is a movie that continues minimalism’s deconstruction of the large scope expectations audiences have for their thrill rides.

CHICAGO – In the latest HollywoodChicago.com Hookup: Film, we have 50 pairs of advance-screening movie passes up for grabs to the new experimental thriller “Locke” starring Tom Hardy (who played Bane in “The Dark Knight Rises”)!

CHICAGO – I’m always astonished when a filmmaker takes a fascinating figure immortalized in history and decides to explore one of the least interesting aspects of their life. “The Iron Lady” was so fixated on celebrating Margaret Thatcher’s gender that it ignored both her achievements and her controversies. “My Week with Marilyn” made the maddening decision to view its titular Hollywood icon through the perspective of a starry-eyed bore.

CHICAGO – In the latest HollywoodChicago.com Hookup: Film with our unique social giveaway technology, we have 40 pairs of movie passes up for grabs to the advance screening of “Hyde Park on Hudson” with Bill Murray as Franklin D. Roosevelt!

CHICAGO – It would be a cheap jab to say that “The Iron Lady” is a drag version of “J. Edgar,” and also redundant (hyy-ooh). Meryl Streep takes on the role of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, with a dreamy and vague interpretation of the PM’s life that at times feels like it’s told through the wrong end of a telescope.