November 2011

CHICAGO – “Our Idiot Brother,” recently released on Blu-ray and DVD, is a light, good-natured comedy with a stellar ensemble that doesn’t quite click into place as a truly stand-out entry in the genre but features such a positive tone and overall message that it’s a difficult movie for which to mount too much of an offense against. The cast is so incredibly likable and so is the overall theme of the movie that it’s easy to approach like its title character and just go with the flow.

CHICAGO – After the not-so-surprising success of the heavily marketed farce “The Hangover,” Jon Lucas and Scott Moore have quickly become Hollywood’s most overrated screenwriters. They specialize in injecting high concepts with frat-boy vulgarity, mean spirited gags and entirely superficial warmth. If Zach Galifianakis hadn’t bolstered “Hangover” with his deadpan genius, the film almost surely would’ve flopped.

CHICAGO – The New York Film Critics Circle was the first major group to make their picks official for the best of film in 2011 when they announced their winners earlier today. After moving their awards from mid-December to late November, a move that many feel was just to make their pick more noteworthy in award season hype, the NYFCC picked the silent, black and white film “The Artist” as the Best Film recipient.

CHICAGO – Award season is definitely in full swing and nominations for ceremonies are just starting to be released. For the fan of the indie film, today is a very significant date: the release of the nominations for the 27th Film Independent Spirit Awards.

CHICAGO – With the success of mystery shows like “C.S.I.” and “The Mentalist,” why not try and bring back a staple of the ’70s and ’80s TV scene, the mystery movie of the week? Such is the thinking behind TNT’s programmers, as the network will debut a whopping four stand-alone mystery movies in the next month, starting with tonight’s debut of “Scott Turow’s Innocent,” starring Bill Pullman, Marcia Gay Harden, Alfred Molina, and Richard Schiff. Despite the stellar cast, this is a limp, dull effort that will only serve to remind viewers why they don’t make TV movies like this often any more.

CHICAGO – FX sent a press release today announcing the return dates for critical darlings “Justified” and “Archer,” along with the premiere of their new animated series “Unsupervised.” All three will premiere the same week mid-January.

CHICAGO – “Saints Row The Third” is to “Grand Theft Auto” as “Machete” is to “No Country For Old Men.” They may feature similar themes but one takes the dramatic edge of the other and turns it into B-movie insanity. And I don’t mean that as a criticism. The third game in the surprisingly robust “Saints Row” franchise is a blast. A goofy, wacky, silly, dumb, crazy blast.

CHICAGO – The sixth season of “Doctor Who” made the biggest waves stateside, in no small part due to a marketing blitz tied into the fact that the program was, for the first time, premiering in the U.S. at the same time it was in the U.K. (For years, the series would air in its home country and be imported later.) It also became a very divisive season. Do a Twitter search and you’ll find ecstatic love and pure hatred for this season.

CHICAGO – In the battle of vampires and puppets, the heartthrobs got the win. To clarify, that’s the vampires. “The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 1” came in at number one in the weekend box office with $42 million over the weekend and $62.3 million over the five-day Thanksgiving break. The total was enough to hold off “The Muppets,” which brought in a very respectable $29.5 million three-day, $42 million five-day total.

Rating: 3.5/5.0

CHICAGO – The Chicago born-and-bred actor Dennis Farina has had many opportunities in his career to distinguish himself in a variety of roles, but never has he carried a film as well as his turn in the recent “The Last Rites of Joe May.” Farina imbues the title character with raw emotion, feral toughness and a touch of fear.

Rating: 3.0/5.0

CHICAGO – If your heart flutters when you think about the drive-in days of old, with a triple feature of B-movie horror films, then writer/director Ricardo Islas delivers a nostalgic kick with “Frankenstein: Day of the Beast.” The film has its world premiere in Chicago on Sunday, November 27th, at the Portage Theater on Milwaukee Avenue.

CHICAGO – The legend of the 1961 film version of the Broadway sensation “West Side Story” grows as the years go by. Who better to remember that legend 50 years later than three of the stars of that Academy Award winning Best Picture – Rita Moreno (Anita), George Chakiris (Bernardo) and Russ Tamblyn (Riff).

Rating: 4.0/5.0

CHICAGO – Aardman Studios, the creators of the irrepressible “Wallace & Gromit” and the witty “Flushed Away” is back with another animated holiday treat, “Arthur Christmas.” Santa Claus and the gang are taken into the modern era, but the cheeky lads/lasses at Aardman can’t help but throw in a bit of whimsy and heart.

Update on 11/26/11 at 12:05 a.m.: Prizes will be hidden on Saturday AFTERNOON on Nov. 26, 2011! See our clue tweets here to find out where to go!

CHICAGO – Hide & Tweet! Unpuzzle the Twitter mystery and win! In our second edition of the HollywoodChicago.com Hide & Tweet, follow our clue tweets to discover one of two secret Chicago locations and snag one of 10 “Super 8” Blu-ray/DVD combo packs for yourself!