Kyle MacLachlan

CHICAGO – Being a child of the ’80s, I can vividly remember when David Lynch’s “Blue Velvet” took the world by storm. I was too young to see it in theaters but I would be an early teen when the decade ended and the film made a stunning number of lists of the best films of the previous ten years. I could finally see what the fuss was all about on VHS. I would never be the same. There are a few movies I can point to and say, “That shaped the way I look at film.” “Blue Velvet,” recently released on Blu-ray to celebrate its 25th anniversary and complete with 50 minutes of never-before-seen deleted scenes, is one of those movies.

CHICAGO – World-renowned dancer Li Cunxin’s autobiography, “Mao’s Last Dancer,” has been transformed into the type of unimaginative, sentimental tear-jerker that will only move viewers who’ve never seen (or heard of) a movie before. It doesn’t adapt Li’s autobiography so much as stage the SparkNotes version.

CHICAGO – In our latest drama edition of HollywoodChicago.com Hookup: Film, we have 35 admit-two passes up for grabs to the advance Chicago screening of the new film “Mao’s Last Dancer”!

CHICAGO – I’ll admit that I never jumped on the “Showgirls” so-bad-it’s-good bandwagon that turned one of the biggest bombs of the ’90s into a cult hit that plays at midnight in theaters around the world. Not unlike “Rocky Horror Picture Show,” people have been drawn to the film that killed the career of nearly everyone involved and is so awful that it became the go-to bad movie reference until “Gigli” came out. Catch up with the suck on the “Showgirls: 15th Anniversary Sinsational Edition.”