Forest Whitaker

CHICAGO – Oscar winner Forest Whitaker greeted the HollywoodChicago.com lens on the red carpet on Oct. 9, 2010 for the 2010 Chicago International Film Festival.

CHICAGO – “Paying homage” and “ripping off” are not the same thing. A picture like Christopher Nolan’s “Inception” gathers fragments of our collective cinematic memories, and places them in an entirely fresh dreamscape of the mind. Miguel Sapochnik’s “Repo Men” assembles pieces of other movies and claims them as its own creation. The film opens like “Blade Runner,” ends like “Brazil,” and looks suspiciously like plagiarism.

CHICAGO – Reminiscent of vastly superior work by David Cronenberg and Paul Verhoeven but with none of the directorial skill apparent in the work of those two talented men, “Repo Men” with Jude Law and Forest Whitaker is a total disaster possibly unmatched in the careers of its talented stars.

CHICAGO – Spike Jonze’s “Where the Wild Things Are” is a beautiful, moving, daring, complex, gorgeous piece of filmmaking that was underappreciated during its theatrical release but that I can guarantee you will have a long, beloved life on Blu-ray and DVD. With well over 200 films seen in 2009, “Where the Wild Things Are” rose to the top for this critic. It may not win any Oscars on Sunday, but history will regard it as the best film of last year.

CHICAGO – All seven season of the Emmy-winning, groundbreaking “The Shield,” easily one of the best programs of the ’00s, have been collected into one absolutely gorgeous set for “The Shield: The Complete Series Collection”. This time of year usually produces several complete series sets to essentially re-sell already available programs to holiday shoppers. This is one of the best.

CHICAGO – From the looks of things, you’d think “Where the Wild Things Are” director Spike Jonze is more than just Max Records’ director. You’d think Jonze was his 12-year-old star’s father, too.

The trailer for the Denzel Washington-directed film “The Great Debaters” just went online at Yahoo! Movies.