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Chicago Tribune: Jessica Reaves
The jaunty, energetic first 10 minutes of "The Brothers Bloom" are easily the best first 10 minutes of any film I've seen recently. And while the succeeding hour and 43 minutes doesn't hold up to the movie's opening scenes, the whole endeavor is still an awfully good time. more |
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Chicago Tribune: Michael Phillips
You know the most heartening thing about the new Disney-Pixar film "Up"? It may be wonderful, but it isn't perfect. It feels nervy and adventurous and a little messy, the result of formidable creators and genuine wits working on an enormous budget, enormously well-spent. more |
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Chicago Tribune: Michael Phillips
I admit it: I was a little tough on the first "Night at the Museum." My son and I disagree all the time on movies, yet I suppose it took his delight in the film's simple but surefire premise (to preteens especially) to make me reconsider. Also, repeated encounters with the movie on a family vacation after it came out on DVD didn't hurt. That's the key to revising an opinion upward a half-star or so: hammering repetition. more |
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Chicago Tribune: Michael Phillips
What do you remember about the film version of "The Da Vinci Code," exactly? I remember two things. One is Jean Reno's surprising show of feeling when his character, the weaselly French police inspector, learned he had been betrayed. For a brief, shining moment all the plot mechanics mattered in human terms. more |
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Chicago Tribune: Michael Ordona
You've probably never seen anything like "Big Man Japan" ("Dai-Nipponjin," literally "Great Japanese"). It's a mockumentary following an ordinary schmo who goes to work as a skyscraper-size Japanese superhero, the kind who takes on mammoth insects in '50s monster movies. more |
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Chicago Tribune: Betsy Sharkey
The endless need, bad decisions and painful fallout of alcoholism have long drawn actors looking to lose themselves in that complicated tangle of darkness. To get all the way there, as Nicolas Cage did in "Leaving Las Vegas," requires exposing a very ugly place. Tilda Swinton is the latest to disappear into that morally murky pit in the drama-thriller "Julia." As a fading beauty with money problems and an unquenchable thirst, the actress is disturbingly dead-on, and the place she takes us is very ugly indeed. more |
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Chicago Tribune: Betsy Sharkey
"Little Ashes" is a trifling historical fantasy, gossip wrapped in gossamer, beautiful to watch, but it takes only a light wind to leave the story in tatters. more |
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Chicago Tribune: Michael Phillips
After "X-Men Origins: Wolverine," which exists primarily for its 7-Eleven Slurpee tie-in, the world needed a better franchise product, one that works with an audience rather than simply working it over. more |
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Chicago Tribune: Michael Phillips
A film of carefully strained pulp and rigorously controlled intrigue, the Austrian revenge drama "Revanche," which is really about the dividing line between vengeance and forgiveness, belongs to a neo-noir universe where all the classical genre laws apply. Meaning: If a man fixing to rob a bank reassures his lover by saying, "Nothing can go wrong," something will. more |
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Chicago Tribune: Betsy Sharkey
There are endless ways to film a face, particularly one with such a rich landscape as Isaach De Bankole's - cheekbones rising sharply over deep valleys, thundercloud eyes gazing straight into the gathering storm, and a wide plain of a forehead riding high above. more |
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