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CHICAGO – When a handsome studmuffin meets a fetching, fabulously hot doctor, what’s the outcome? That’s right, sex without a relationship, AKA Friends with Benefits. And a movie featuring Ashton Kutcher and Natalie Portman called “No Strings Attached.”

CHICAGO – Imagine working on the most ambitious, personal artistic endeavor of your life only to watch the most unusual circumstances of fate tear it away from the public eye. Such was the case with 1969’s excellent “Army of Shadows,” a film that took 37 years to find an audience stateside. Released in U.S. theaters for the first time in 2006, Jean-Pierre Melville’s fascinating tale of the French Resistance has now been given the Criterion Blu-ray upgrade and firmly stands as the excellent piece of work that it should have been recognized as for the last several decades.

CHICAGO – Dealing with an overall economic downturn, as the world is still experiencing, becomes the story of the individual. The frustration and insecurity that develops in a long dry spell is poignantly rendered in writer/director John Well’s “The Company Men.” Ben Affleck joins Oscar winners Tommy Lee Jones, Chris Cooper and Kevin Costner in telling the story.

CHICAGO – It’s mere minutes into “Spartacus: Gods the Arena” before men are being decapitated and women are flashing their breasts. With all the self-serious junk on right now, it’s nice to have Starz’s biggest hit back.

CHICAGO – There are few character actors in the history of cinema more mesmerizing and fearless than Philip Seymour Hoffman. He’s created some of the most memorable characters ever to grace the screen: from the sexually arrested Allen in “Happiness” and the obsessed playwright Caden Cotard in “Synecdoche, New York” to the electrifying title role in “Capote.”

CHICAGO – The entertainment machine often turns in an unusual way that allows for a wave of material featuring the same star in the same month. Just as Robert De Niro was preparing his odd speech for the Golden Globe Awards, two of his most beloved films were being released on Blu-ray in “Raging Bull” and “Once Upon a Time in America,” while one of his 2010 works in “Stone” was about to hit the market as well. January 2011 is De Niro month. Sadly, while the “Raging Bull” Blu-ray is a gorgeous must-own, “Once Upon a Time in America” is merely satisfactory. The film is still strong but the release is nothing special.

CHICAGO – Working with high level actors such as Paul Giamatti and Dustin Hoffman didn’t faze director Richard J. Lewis. He had pursued the film version of the Mordecai Richler’s novel “Barney’s Version” for several years, and it was his direction that recently got Giamatti (as Barney) the Golden Globe Award.

CHICAGO – Since practically the beginning of TV, sitcoms about the trials of being in a couple are a dime a dozen. Today it takes innovative, highly intelligent writing to make the mundane, everyday challenges of being in a relationship seem exciting and—most importantly—watchable, week after week.

CHICAGO – The midseason premiere of season three of “Parks & Recreation” starts by catching us up on what we’ve missed. It details the arrivals of auditors, the “black hats,” played by the non-descript Adam Scott and a goofily-exuberant Rob Lowe, and features a tongue-and-cheek detailing of the budget crisis facing the parks department.

CHICAGO – A fascinating B-movie gem from 1964, “Robinson Crusoe on Mars” gives modern viewers an idea of what America’s collective imagination (concerning space travel) looked like during that brief moment in time. As an entertainment, it’s hokey and creaky beyond belief, but as a cinematic time capsule, it’s quite a trip.