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Chicago Tribune: Jessica Reaves
In the early '90s, Naomi Wolf published a book called "The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty are Used Against Women." All these years later, director Darryl Roberts has finally gotten the message: Women suffer all sorts of indignities, anxieties and pain in our futile attempts to achieve a narrow, twisted standard of attractiveness. And on behalf of every woman who's ever turned down that second piece of cake or spent far too much on anti-aging creams, I want to say: Welcome, Darryl. I hope you'll invite other men to accompany you on your overdue journey to Obvious Town. more |
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Chicago Tribune: Michael Phillips
A Frank Capra throwback for an era of diminished expectations, the amiable "Swing Vote" casts Kevin Costner as an unemployed egg processing plant worker who must decide the fate of the state of the union. The hopes and ideals of the apathetic American citizenry are pinned on this hard-drinking resident of Texico, N.M., whose wife ran out on him to pursue a singing career, and whose 12-year-old daughter, played - and very well - by Madeline Carroll, has too long been the caretaker in their coexistence. more |
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Chicago Tribune: Michael Phillips
Some movies should've signed a no-compete clause with themselves. The action beats are more like action beat-downs. One Wow cancels out the last Wow, until the Wows start looking more like lowercase wows and soon the wows become merely eh, or worse, a string of low-grade, minimally inventive aggravations that fail even to hit the level of eh. They're more like bleh. more |
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Chicago Tribune: Michael Phillips
"American Teen" is as close to fraudulent as a documentary can get and still be worth seeing. more |
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Chicago Tribune: Michael Phillips
In certain scenes, Laurence Olivier took more time sipping his tea in the 1981 British television adaptation of "Brideshead Revisited" than it takes to watch the entirety of the brisk, rather disheveled film version of the Evelyn Waugh novel now in theaters. more |
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Chicago Tribune: Sid Smith
Even to those of us who were undergraduates ourselves when protesters died at Kent State University and inspired "Ohio," the quartet headlining "CSNY: Déjà Vu" are a bit worse for wear. more |
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Chicago Tribune: Michael Phillips
"Step Brothers" is stupid, predictable and fairly funny, though even its bigger laughs - John C. Reilly clocking Will Ferrell with a cymbal in a nicely judged medium shot, for example - make you wonder if the whole arrested-adolescent streak in contemporary screen comedy may be running its course. more |
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Chicago Tribune: Michael Phillips
Movie stardom isn't in the eye of the beholder, it's in the percentages demanded and received by the movie star. We're talking about a state of fiscal grace, not a state of glamour or mystique. more |
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Chicago Tribune: Maureen M. Hart
In the tradition of "The Honeymooners' " Ed Norton, Australia's Kenny Smyth (Shane Jacobson) dives into sewage and surfs out smelling like a rose. more |
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Chicago Tribune: Michael Phillips
It's funny what you buy completely onstage and resist completely, or nearly, on-screen. Case in point: "Mamma Mia!" -the ABBA-fueled stage phenomenon that has now become "Mamma Mia! The Movie." more |
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