CHICAGO – In anticipation of the scariest week of the year, HollywoodChicago.com launches its 2024 Movie Gifts series, which will suggest DVDs and collections for holiday giving.
Gerard Butler
What is it Good For! Audio Film Review of ‘Kandahar’
Submitted by PatrickMcD on May 28, 2023 - 9:52am Rating: 3.5/5.0 |
CHICAGO – Patrick McDonald of HollywoodChicago.com audio film review for the new feature “Kandahar,” with Gerard Butler teaming up for a third time with action/thriller director Ric Roman Waugh. In theaters on May 26th.
Come Fly with Gerard B! On-Air Film Review of ‘Plane’
Submitted by PatrickMcD on January 12, 2023 - 6:08pm Rating: 4.0/5.0 |
CHICAGO – Patrick McDonald of HollywoodChicago.com appears on “The Morning Mess” with Ben Thompson on WBGR-FM (Monroe, Wisconsin) on January 12th, 2023, reviewing “Plane,” the latest action thriller featuring Gerard Butler. In theaters beginning January 13th.
Satisfying Emotion in ‘How to Train Your Dragon: Hidden World’
Submitted by PatrickMcD on February 22, 2019 - 9:22amRating: 3.5/5.0 |
CHICAGO –All fiery things must come to an extinguishing point, and the “How to Train Your Dragon” animated film series concludes with its third entry, subtitled “Hidden World.” To finish things up the creators turn on the Dragon power, there are literally thousands of them flamed up and ready to go.
Sub Movie ‘Hunter Killer’ is Absurd and Entertaining
Submitted by PatrickMcD on October 29, 2018 - 6:36amRating: 3.5/5.0 |
CHICAGO – The United States military as superheroes has never gotten a better workout than in “Hunter Killer,” the title that sounds like a Halloween-themed movie, but it’s a style of submarine that seeks to adjust our geo-political balance. Gerard Butler is the commander hoping to prevent World War 3.
Heroic, Visually Bold ‘How to Train Your Dragon 2’
Submitted by PatrickMcD on June 13, 2014 - 3:46pmRating: 3.5/5.0 |
CHICAGO – “How to Train Your Dragon 2” is spectacular in 3D, the filmmakers actually geared the film to enhance that much maligned vision. It also features a warm and heroic story about the coming-of-age for the character Hiccup, and his now fully trained dragon, Toothless.
Gerard Butler Stars in Violent, Stupid ‘Olympus Has Fallen’
Submitted by BrianTT on March 19, 2013 - 1:37pm Rating: 2.5/5.0 |
CHICAGO – Antoine Fuqua’s “Olympus Has Fallen” (or “Die Hard in the White House”) is a stupid, exploitative movie that wants to be “Call of Duty: Black Ops” in film form but ends up more like one of its countless, ineffective rip-offs. There are moments of goofy, B-movie fun (certainly more of them than in the much-worse “A Good Day to Die Hard”) but not enough to get over the brutal nonsense that makes up most of this action flick.
Awful ‘Playing for Keeps’ Wastes Talent of Notable Cast
Submitted by PatrickMcD on December 7, 2012 - 4:41pm Rating: 1.5/5.0 |
CHICAGO – When will the movie universe stop lionizing the upper middle class and their “problems” as a standard for storytelling? The idiotic crawl of “Playing for Keeps” is a prime example of that style, a sad exercise in contradictions that pass for narrative. Gerard Butler, Jessica Biel, Dennis Quaid and Catherine Zeta-Jones get punked by the script.
Weak Story Wipes Out ‘Chasing Mavericks’
Submitted by PatrickMcD on October 26, 2012 - 10:52am Rating: 2.0/5.0 |
CHICAGO – After the initial disappointment that “Chasing Mavericks” wasn’t about the pursuit of John McCain archetypes – it’s political season, don’t you know – it was interesting to note that mavericks are water waves, and chasing them means surfing. Hang ten, dudes.
Ralph Fiennes Modernizes Shakespeare in ‘Coriolanus’
Submitted by PatrickMcD on January 21, 2012 - 5:55pmRating: 3.5/5.0 |
CHICAGO – The plays of William Shakespeare, influencing culture and morality for over 400 years, continue to open themselves up to new interpretations and settings. Ralph Fiennes directs and stars in a film version adaptation of “Coriolanus,” set against the modern day machinations of politics and war.
Story Too Broad to Execute in ‘Machine Gun Preacher’
Submitted by PatrickMcD on September 30, 2011 - 1:58pmRating: 2.5/5.0 |
CHICAGO – When one movie has an ex-con, drug retribution violence, his religious conversion, his building of a church, his preaching, his trip to Southern Sudan in Africa, his opening of an orphanage and his family, then it’s too big a story to tell. Therein lies the challenge for “Machine Gun Preacher.”
