Star Trek Into Darkness
* * 1/2 Note: This review contains plot spoilers A mostly disappointing sequel to the gleaming 2009 series reboot, Star Trek Into Darkness is a movie that gives us a recycled villain, by-the-numbers directing and nothing new from the J.J. Abrams canon. It’s serviceable and enlivened by strong performances and an exciting climax, but largely [...]
What Maisie Knew — ChicagoFilm.com screening tickets for Thursday, May 16!
Please be our guest for a special, advance free screening of the upcoming movie WHAT MAISIE KNEW, the new film by the producers of The Kids Are All Right. A contemporary adaptation of Henry James’ celebrated 1898 novel about a young girl caught between two divorcing parents (Julianne Moore, Steve Coogan), both of whom are [...]
The Great Gatsby
* * * 1/2 Say what you will about Baz Luhrmann’s long-awaited (and much-delayed) vision of The Great Gatsby—a lavish, decadence-drunk period fantasia equal parts artifice and genuine emotion—but all that glitters (literally off the screen here in 3D) is all that matters in this surprisingly faithful adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s monumental novel. And a [...]
The Force Within Us
* * * On May 26, 1977—a long time ago in a rural Michigan town pretty far away—I vividly recall seeing something called Star Wars on the first Saturday matinee of its opening weekend. As my mother and I arrived on that early summer afternoon, we were astonished at the wrap-around-the-block line, narrowly managing to [...]
Mud
* * * * Two Arkansas teens befriend a mysterious drifter in Mud, a picture so good that it deserves to stand alongside the best coming of age movies. Like Winter’s Bone and Beasts of the Southern Wild, it fully immerses us in both observant cultural geography and the bone deep pangs of innocence lost. [...]
To the Wonder
* * Continuing his departure from conventional storytelling, Terrence Malick’s To the Wonder is a frustratingly abstract experience that’s either an accomplished piece of narrative minimalism or empty and underwritten. As much as I admire maverick Malick, one of the few American visionary directors left and whose 2011 Tree of Life was an unmitigated allegorical [...]
Disconnect
* * * * Disconnect is an unexpected masterpiece, a movie plugged into the zeitgeist of how we live and where we are right now, at this particular cultural moment. I can’t remember a recent picture about American life this insightful and gripping, or one that raises questions it refuses to answer, leaving us gobsmacked [...]
Trance
* * Reality is overrated in Trance, Danny Boyle’s twisty bit of tomfoolery about an art auctioneer who gets caught up in a heist (we think). It’s a minor picture from a major director, a dark love triangle where nothing is what it seems, a serpentine crime saga played fast and loose. It’s fun for [...]
The Place Beyond the Pines
* * 1/2 The Place Beyond the Pines, filmmaker Derek Cianfrance’s follow-up to 2010′s Blue Valentine, is about the sins of fathers being visited on sons, fate and a particular kind of grittiness in the working class milieu of Schenectady, New York, depicted here as a dead end of lower income homes, rampant crime, corrupt [...]
Evil Dead
* * Much has been said about the supposed quality of the new Evil Dead picture, a remake of Sam Raimi’s crafty, 1981 low-budget chiller and drive-in mainstay, about twenty-somethings whose weekend cabin retreat results in demonic mayhem. Directed by first-time Uruguayan filmmaker Fede Martinez from a screenplay by himself, Diablo Cody and Rodo Sayagues, [...]