Brian Tallerico

Disney’s ‘Frozen’ Enchants Viewers This Holiday Season

HollywoodChicago.com Oscarman rating: 4.5/5.0
Rating: 4.5/5.0

Disney’s marvelous “Frozen” fits snugly in the lineage of princess stories that the studio has been crafting for decades while also looks forward to empower girls in ways that its predecessors never considered. It is a remarkably fun movie, especially in 3D, alive in ways that so many of its peers in this lackluster year for animation simply are not. With great voice work, fantastic music, and a script that feels like its themes emerge naturally from its story and characters instead just being forced upon them, “Frozen” is Disney’s best animated feature since “The Lion King.”

Dark, Daring Storytelling of ‘A Touch of Sin’

HollywoodChicago.com Oscarman rating: 4.0/5.0
Rating: 4.0/5.0

A woman who works at a massage parlor/sauna is beaten with money by a man who demands she service him as a prostitute. A coal miner goes through life stunned that the villagers around him pay honor to a man who has given nothing back to them. A young worker is injured on the job and given nothing in compensation because he happened to be making “small talk” at the time.

Entertaining, Complex ‘The Hunger Games: Catching Fire’

HollywoodChicago.com Oscarman rating: 3.5/5.0
Rating: 3.5/5.0

CHICAGO – Second acts to incredibly popular and entertaining mainstream fare can be a tough prospect. For every “The Dark Knight,” there are too many films like “The Twilight Saga: New Moon” – works that essentially just repeat what audiences fell in love with instead of trying to expand on the world of their predecessors.

Annoying, Inconsistent ‘Charlie Countryman’ with Shia LaBeouf

HollywoodChicago.com Oscarman rating: 1.5/5.0
Rating: 1.5/5.0

CHICAGO – What happens when you give people two months in Romania to make a movie about a lost soul dealing with grief, love, drug use, and general excess? You get a spoiled, bizarre, annoying piece of work like “Charlie Countryman,” starring talented people given absolutely nothing to do that proves that talent. It’s a film more in love with slow-motion shots of its abrasive lead running to electronic dance music than anything approaching character or plot. It’s like watching the travel video of the most annoying guy you know.

‘The Book Thief’ Fails to Find Tone of Familiar Story

HollywoodChicago.com Oscarman rating: 2.0/5.0
Rating: 2.0/5.0

CHICAGO – Brian Percival’s “The Book Thief,” from the hit book by Markus Zusak, is a well-intentioned piece of work that nonetheless fails, sometimes spectacularly, to connect in the ways that its creators intend. Tonally adrift between something clearly aimed at young adults and something much darker and more cynical about the nature of man and the afterlife, the film is only carried at all by the strengths of its talented leads – Geoffrey Rush, Emily Watson, and the remarkable Sophie Nelisse.

Gentle Meditation on Life in ‘Museum Hours’

HollywoodChicago.com Oscarman rating: 4.0/5.0
Rating: 4.0/5.0

CHICAGO – Jem Cohen’s “Museum Hours” is a lovely, almost calming meditation on life centered around an art museum with someone who spends a large portion of his life there and a traveler new to the building. Great art has the power to comment on life’s issues – sex, death, parenthood, religion, etc. – and Cohen uses the power of the still image to construct a film of moving ones with power of its own.

‘Thor: The Dark World’ is Little More Than Marketing For ‘The Avengers 2’

HollywoodChicago.com Oscarman rating: 2.0/5.0
Rating: 2.0/5.0

CHICAGO – Few major films have felt less creatively inspired and more commercially conceived than Alan Taylor’s dull “Thor: The Dark World,” a wannabe blockbuster with all the personality and ingenuity of a straight-to-DVD sequel. It is a film that simply fades into the background of other films, both already produced and still-to-come.

‘The Trials of Muhammad Ali’ Captures Fascinating Man

HollywoodChicago.com Oscarman rating: 4.0/5.0
Rating: 4.0/5.0

No matter what you think of Muhammad Ali’s religion, you certainly have to admire his courage.” — Martin Luther King

CHICAGO – We’ve come to expect so little of our athletes. When stories like the nonsense going down in the Miami Dolphins locker room or the drug scandals with A-Rod break, they’re starting to be greeted with a shrug.

‘Ender’s Game’ Loses Personality in Journey From Book to Film

HollywoodChicago.com Oscarman rating: 2.0/5.0
Rating: 2.0/5.0

CHICAGO – Gavin Hood’s “Ender’s Game” may be the best example of a current problem with science fiction: From “Oblivion” to “After Earth” to most of “Star Trek Into Darkness” and now this adaptation of the Orson Scott Card book, modern science fiction has become so depressingly sterile as to drain the genre of most of its joy.

‘The Counselor’ Disguises Lackluster Storytelling in Philosophy

HollywoodChicago.com Oscarman rating: 2.0/5.0
Rating: 2.0/5.0

CHICAGO – “That’s not what greed does; that’s what greed is.” Cormac McCarthy’s script for “The Counselor” is so weighed down with allegedly insightful philosophy like this that it collapses into a heap of laughable, unbelievable exchanges between characters who simply don’t exist in the real world.

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  • Manhunt

    CHICAGO – Patrick McDonald of HollywoodChicago.com appears on “The Morning Mess” with Dan Baker on WBGR-FM (Monroe, Wisconsin) on March 21st, 2024, reviewing the new streaming series “Manhunt” – based on the bestseller by James L. Swanson – currently streaming on Apple TV+.

  • Topdog/Underdog, Invictus Theatre

    CHICAGO – When two brothers confront the sins of each other and it expands into a psychology of an entire race, it’s at a stage play found in Chicago’s Invictus Theatre Company production of “Topdog/Underdog,” now at their new home at the Windy City Playhouse through March 31st, 2024. Click TD/UD for tickets/info.

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