James Woods

CHICAGO – When I heard that A&E was airing a remake of Michael Crichton’s wonderful slice of ’70s health care paranoia “Coma” (based on the book by Robin Cook), I thought, “That makes perfect sense.” With our current national focus on what’s going to happen to us when we get sick along with the continued health issues of the aging Baby Boomer generation, a “Coma” remake was a great idea.

CHICAGO – Sometimes a film is so good that it casts a shadow over all the other pictures that have the misfortune of sharing striking similarities. HBO’s star-studded adaptation of Andrew Ross Sorkin’s book, “Too Big to Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System—and Themselves” does its titular subject matter justice—but not nearly as well as J.C. Chandor’s “Margin Call.”

CHICAGO – In our latest thriller edition of HollywoodChicago.com Hookup: Film, we have 35 admit-two passes up for grabs to the advance Chicago screening of the new film “Straw Dogs” starring James Marsden, Kate Bosworth, Alexander Skarsgård and James Woods!

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 – They just don’t make movies like “Videodrome” all that often. Well, there just aren’t that many filmmakers like David Cronenberg out there, especially not those working in the psycho-sexual milieu that typified the work from the first half of his career. Arguably the best film from the early period of one of our best filmmakers, “Videodrome” has been granted the Blu-ray treatment from The Criterion Collection.

CHICAGO – Comic book fiction has a long history of parallel world and alternate universe stories and it only seemed a matter of time before the popular DC Universe series of straight-to-DVD animated films got around to making one. After the so-so “Wonder Woman,” the less-than-good “Green Lantern,” and the slight improvement of “Superman Batman: Public Enemies,” the series has returned to what they do best - team heroics - with the entertaining “Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths”.