CHICAGO – Society, or at least certain elements of society, are always looking for scapegoats to hide the sins of themselves and authority. In the so-called “great America” of the 1950s, the scapegoat target was comic books … specifically through a sociological study called “The Seduction of the Innocent.” City Lit Theater Company, in part two of a trilogy on comic culture by Mark Pracht, presents “The Innocence of Seduction … now through October 8th, 2023. For details and tickets, click COMIC BOOK.
San Francisco
In Character! On-Air Reviews of ‘Let Him Go’ & ‘Jungleland’
Submitted by PatrickMcD on November 6, 2020 - 6:28am Rating: 4.0/5.0 |
CHICAGO – Patrick McDonald of HollywoodChicago.com appears on “The Morning Mess” with Scott Thompson on WBGR-FM (Monroe, Wisconsin) on November 5th, 2020, reviewing the new films “Let Him Go” (in theaters) and “Jungleland” (Limited Theaters and VOD).
Melodrama Mire in ‘Godzilla: King of the Monsters’
Submitted by PatrickMcD on June 1, 2019 - 9:59am Rating: 2.0/5.0 |
CHICAGO – Everyone’s favorite city-flattening radioactive reptile, “Godzilla: King of the Monsters,” gets stuck in a mire of third-rate-TV-network domestic melodrama in this disappointing follow up to the thrilling 2014 reboot. But before I roar about the many ways this misbegotten miscreant messes up, let’s throw a few pebbles of praise.
Chef Emerges in ‘Jeremiah Tower: The Last Magnificent’
Submitted by PatrickMcD on April 28, 2017 - 9:54am Rating: 3.5/5.0 |
CHICAGO – The culture of food has never been more pervasive, from entire broadcast channels devoted to it, to new trends in eating being invented seemingly every day. Where did it all start? The new film ‘Jeremiah Tower: The Last Magnificent’ documents the chef that opened the door.
Miraculous ‘Batkid Begins’ Can Save Us All
Submitted by PatrickMcD on July 11, 2015 - 8:44am Rating: 5.0/5.0 |
CHICAGO – Sometimes, a simple will of the heart is like a drop of water in the ocean, which ripples so profoundly that it affects the tides. That will is illustrated in the heartbeat of “Batkid Begins,” the story of Miles Scott, a little boy fighting an illness, who wished to be The Batman.
‘Big Eyes’ Too Conventional to Generate Any Interest
Submitted by PatrickMcD on December 25, 2014 - 9:22am Rating: 3.0/5.0 |
CHICAGO – What’s up with Tim Burton? His style is hardly present in the straightforward story of artists Margaret and Walter Keane, locked in a battle of creation over “Big Eyes” child paintings. There is nothing revelatory or even interesting in the process of their struggle of who-painted-what, maybe perhaps Burton – a collector of the art – wants to increase their value?
‘The Guilt Trip’ Never Reaches a Destination
Submitted by PatrickMcD on December 19, 2012 - 12:37pm Rating: 2.5/5.0 |
CHICAGO – There has to be something wrong with a movie that by the end, the thought is ‘how did they get a parking spot in San Francisco?’ and ‘how much does that house cost?’ “The Guilt Trip,” with Seth Rogen and Barbra Streisand, is a dispirited exercise in wasted potential.
