Geoffrey Rush and Sophie Nélisse play a small-town, working-class German father and adopted daughter on the eve of World War II in The Book Thief, based on the popular best-selling novel by Markus Zusak and featuring lovely performances from the pair, and Emily Watson…
Read MoreLegendary Horror Master Dario Argento’s Dark Fantasies Fuel Five Decades of Classic Chillers, Including New Dracula 3D
![](https://chicagofilm.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/Ferguson-Lee_Navy-150x150.jpg)
It would be impossible to overstate the impact legendary filmmaker Dario Argento has had on the horror genre with landmark shockers including 1970’s The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, 1975’s Profundo Rosso (Deep Red) and 1978’s Suspiria, as well as a revered canon of…
Read MoreAll in the Family: Filmmaker Jim Mickle’s We Are What We Are Charts Innocence Lost, Dark Secrets
![](https://chicagofilm.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/Ferguson-Lee_Navy-150x150.jpg)
Filmmaker Jim Mickle (Stake Land) wasn’t a fan of horror remakes, but something resonated in the 2010 Mexican cannibalism thriller Somos Lo Que Hay, the story of some gruesome family traditions and the ties (of blood) that bind. With co-writer Nick Damici, Mickle refashioned…
Read MoreInto the Gray Zone: Brit Marling and Zal Batmanglij Explore Personal and Political Intersection in The East, the Year’s Most Provocative Movie
![](https://chicagofilm.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/Ferguson-Lee_Navy-150x150.jpg)
In two films together, writer-actress Brit Marling and writer-director Zal Batmanglij have explored issues of identity, and both spiritual and cultural alienation. Distinct and intelligent, both 2011’s Sound of My Voice, about a mysterious Los Angeles cult leader (the transfixing Marling) and their new…
Read MoreNow You See Him: As His Career Heats Up, Dave Franco on the Art of Throwing Cards and The Livelihood of Bananas
![](https://chicagofilm.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/Ferguson-Lee_Navy-150x150.jpg)
Dave Franco looks and sounds a bit like a certain older brother we all know and love. Now that we’ve got that out of the way, the charming younger Franco—currently carving out an impressive movie career in big screen comedies like 21 Jump Street,…
Read MoreThe Entertainer, Mr. Maltin and Me: Hollywood Grand Dame Mitzi Gaynor on Classic South Pacific, Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Crown Jewel and Unabashedly Romantic Social Critique
![](https://chicagofilm.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/Ferguson-Lee_Navy-150x150.jpg)
It’s not every day you find yourself chatting with the legendary Mitzi Gaynor, an entertainer bar none who, at 81, still has an ageless combination of wit, style, humor and, well, sizzle, that she had 55 years ago as kind-hearted romantic Ensign Nellie Forbush,…
Read MoreActor Chaske Spencer Uses Rising Twilight Star to Promote Change, Positive Images for Native Americans
![](https://chicagofilm.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/Ferguson-Lee_Navy-150x150.jpg)
As Sam Uley, the leader of The Twilight Saga’s feral—and uniformly handsome—wolf pack, actor Chaske Spencer has spent the better part of the last decade starring in one of the most popular film franchises of all time, a high-profile role requiring equal parts physique…
Read MoreWarm Bodies, Rest and Motion: Nicholas Hoult and Teresa Palmer Fall in Love, Heal the World in Winning Comic Zombie Love Story
![](https://chicagofilm.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/Ferguson-Lee_Navy-150x150.jpg)
January isn’t known for good movies, but Warm Bodies, the immensely appealing romantic comedy about a post-apocalypse where a melancholy zombie named “R” falls in love with a human girl named Julie, both lonely and looking for connection in isolated worlds, is a real…
Read MoreFamily Achieves The Impossible in Director Juan Antonio Bayona’s Tsunami Survival Story
![](https://chicagofilm.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/Ferguson-Lee_Navy-150x150.jpg)
You’ve never quite seen anything like the tsunami in director Juan Antonio Bayona’s The Impossible, the true story of the 2004 Thailand catastrophe and how one family’s will to survive became an elemental force. The film, featuring Naomi Watts in a performance for the…
Read MoreCharlie Bewley and Daniel Cudmore Travel Darker Road in The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2
![](https://chicagofilm.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/Ferguson-Lee_Navy-150x150.jpg)
I made it out of my chat with Charlie Bewley and Daniel Cudmore, veterans of The Twilight Saga pictures as members of the menacing Volturi vampire council, without being either, you know, decapitated or “changed.” They may be diabolically vicious onscreen but luckily neither…
Read More