Timothy Spall

CHICAGO – As Esther Smith says in the following Podtalk, she chose acting because she wanted to indulge in the uniqueness of individuals. In the Apple TV+ series “Trying,” Esther portrays Nikki and Rafe Spall portrays Jason, a couple who desires children and ends up … at Season Two’s end … with two adoptees. Season Three began streaming last month.

CHICAGO – Patrick McDonald of HollywoodChicago.com appears on “The Morning Mess” with Dan Baker on WBGR-FM (Monroe, Wisconsin) on November 4th, 2021, reviewing the new film by director Pablo Lorrain (“Jackie”) about Princess Diana, “Spencer,” in theaters on November 5th.

CHICAGO – Day Ten of the 57th Chicago International Film Festival (CIFF) will screen “Spencer,” the highly anticipated film about Princess Diana, with Kristen Stewart as the title character, and directed by Pablo Lorrain (click SPENCER for details).

CHICAGO – Humor flows from one individual, and reaches another. Whether the receiver laughs or not is subjective, based on experiences and worldview. It can be agreed, however, that animator Nick Park (“Wallace & Gromit”) is hilarious, and he’ll make the world laugh in “Early Man.”

CHICAGO – HollywoodChicago.com interviews the “Queen of Truth,” Deborah Lipstadt, whose book and famous court trial inspired the new film “Denial”. This year’s “Spotlight” but for the Jews, Rachel Weisz plays Lipstadt opposite Timothy Spall, who portrays the Holocaust denier David Irving.

CHICAGO – The thing that can be said for British writer/director Mike Leigh is that it’s never known what story may capture his fancy. The auteur of “Happy-Go-Lucky,” “Topsy-Turvy,” “Secrets and Lies” and “Life is Sweet” now tackles the last quarter century of a notable British painter’s life, through his strange maneuverings and unconventionality, in “Mr. Turner.”

Rating: 2.0/5.0

CHICAGO – I’m not sure there’s ever been a heist film in which the heist is discussed, debated, and argued about more than “Wasteland,” opening in Chicago this Friday, August 2, 2013. We know from the beginning, with its “Usual Suspects” narrative trick of an arrested man telling a cop how he got there, that things went wrong. And then we get to hear about the plan for things to go wrong over and over and over again. Writer/director Rowan Athale thinks he has made a crime caper a la “Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels” but the constant spinning of wheels drains the piece of its energy until a final act gets so convoluted that the whole thing falls apart.

CHICAGO – Definitely one of the strangest films so far in 2013 is “Upside Down,” featuring a dream pairing of Kirsten Dunst and Jim Sturgess. The problem is they exist as disparate lovers on opposing planets, with opposite gravitational pulls. Thus what is up for Kirsten is down for Jim, or vice-versa?

CHICAGO – “Heartless” is a Faustian nightmare, a story of a man who sees behind the curtain of the real world to the creatures of chaos that really run it. It’s a surprisingly riveting and accomplished piece of work, bursting at the seams with attitude and ideas. Many films have attempted to recreate a truly terrifying night vision but “Heartless” finds that dark place between the waking world and that of our worst dreams to become something that deserves (and probably will find on DVD) a wider audience.

CHICAGO – Leave it to The Criterion Collection to not just perfectly remaster one of the most acclaimed films of the ’90s but to take its ancestor, the film version of the play in which the modern classic centers around, and give it a similarly remarkable treatment. Fans of Mike Leigh’s “Topsy-Turvy” will adore the new Criterion edition, available now on DVD and Blu-ray, but they should also pick up “The Mikado” to see the inspirational musical in its entirety.