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Chicago Tribune: Jessica Reaves
If there is a single bright spot in the financial crisis, it is the possibility that one day producer Jerry Bruckheimer will run out of money. In a more just world, this would have happened before he gave the green light to "Confessions of a Shopaholic," a thin, largely unfunny comedy that marries lazy filmmaking with bad timing. Star Isla Fisher ("Wedding Crashers") is charming enough, and a gifted physical comic, but this material is so predictable and leaden that she has no prayer of keeping it afloat. more |
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Chicago Tribune: Michael Phillips
So many moments in the fine Italian crime drama "Gomorrah" recall scenarios from a hundred different American-made mob movies. The man told by business partners to crawl inside a car trunk for his safety. The underling telling his overlord he's fed up, and wants out. The crazed young hotheads, cranked on their own adrenaline and nerve, running around with pistols pretending to be gangsters they've seen on the big screen - in this case, Al Pacino's Tony Montana, in the "Scarface" remake. more |
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Chicago Tribune: Tasha Robinson
Joaquin Phoenix has been having a rough time in the media lately. There was the mumbled charity-benefit announcement that he was retiring from acting. The David Letterman appearance where he was so silent and awkward that Letterman eventually quipped, "I'm sorry you couldn't be here tonight." Ben Stiller's Academy Awards routine, where he chewed gum, donned a matted wig and beard and wandered vaguely around the stage, was a clear imitation of Phoenix's recent appearances. In the space of a month, Phoenix has become an easy visual joke. more |
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Chicago Tribune: Michael Esposito
Jim Carrey narrates "Under the Sea 3D," a new installment in the underwater 3-D filmmaking that IMAX pretty much owns these days. Nothing compares to the images in these films, and director Howard Hall, whose previous offerings include the IMAX hits "Deep Sea 3D" and "Into the Deep 3D," knows his way around the underwater camera - all 1,300 pounds of it - and personally tallied 358 hours of the dive team's 2,073 hours under the sea (accomplished in 1,668 total dives, many using closed-circuit re-breathing apparatus that allows much longer dives than regular scuba gear). more |
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Chicago Tribune: Michael Phillips
"Coraline" may not be for all tastes and it's certainly not for all kids, given its macabre premise. But writer-director Henry Selick's animated feature advances the stop-motion animation genre through that most heartening of attributes: quality. It pulls audiences into a meticulously detailed universe, familiar in many respects, whacked and menacing in many others. more |
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Chicago Tribune: Michael Phillips
Much as Robert Zemeckis toyed with Beatlemania in "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" a generation ago, the wobbly new comedy "Fanboys," set in 1998, salutes Yoda worship and the fine line between ardor and breaking and entering. It follows a quintet of "Star Wars" fanatics on a journey from their small town in Ohio to their Holy Grail, their Oz: George Lucas' Skywalker Ranch in California. more |
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Chicago Tribune: Tasha Robinson
According to Greg Behrendt and Liz Tuccillo's dinky 2004 relationship-advice book "He's Just Not That Into You," if a guy you're interested in won't call you, won't sleep with you, won't marry you in spite of years of dating or is already married to someone else, you should accept that he isn't really emotionally invested in you. It's time to move on. more |
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Chicago Tribune: Glenn Whipp
The painfully inscrutable paranormal thriller "Push" introduces us to a host of characters with various gifts. Some can see the future, some can heal, some can plant ideas, some can make change for a dollar. By the times the credits roll, your most fervent wish is to run into a "wiper" (one who can erase memories) after stumbling into the lobby. That or a telepath who could convince you that you just watched "Slumdog Millionaire" instead. more |
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Chicago Tribune: Michael Phillips
1. Nothing is harder and more elusive than successful slapstick on screen. Nothing. more |
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Chicago Tribune: Michael Phillips
"New in Town" is "The Pajama Game" without the songs, the laughs or the bare-knuckled realism. It stars Renee Zellweger and her blinding-snowstorm smile as Lucy Hill, a hotshot Miami businesswoman whose firm assigns her to oversee a 50 percent workforce reduction at a food-processing plant in New Ulm, Minn. Talk about culture shock. The people there are all recent graduates of a Bad Minnesota Dialect workshop, and they're not afraid to "drag Jesus into regular conversation," as Lucy's secretary, Blanche Gunderson (Siobhan Fallon Hogan), informs Lucy. more |
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