Lee Pace

CHICAGO – “The Resident” is one of those thrillers in which you’re never supposed to be quite sure what the hell is going on and the deceptive description on the back of the box makes it sound like it could be a ghost story (as does the involvement of horror icon Christopher Lee). From the beginning, you’ll be asking yourself, is there something supernatural involved or is this more like “Sleeping With the Enemy” or “Psycho”? The answers come quickly and not in a very satisfying way.

CHICAGO – How do complete disasters like “Marmaduke” get made? Shouldn’t there be some sort of quality insurance and when a studio sees that a film is this execrable, they are allowed to pull some sort of last-minute ripcord and make sure it’s never inflicted on paying customers? Wouldn’t that be a good use of our tax dollars?

CHICAGO – The minute I saw “Pushing Daisies,” one of the very first notes I took while watching the pilot was “this is never going to last”. It was great, but it was also too quirky, strange, romantic, and hard to put into a definable box, making it unlikely to find an audience. Now that the second-and-final season of “Pushing Daisies” is on DVD, we can look back and see the beauty of the brief time we had with this great show and wonder what might have been.

CHICAGO – Character comedies that actually have some depth and fun are as rare as boobs without silicone in Hollywood. “Miss Pettigrew Lives For a Day” reaches these heights with a sensibility of an old studio picture with stylized glamour, lovable rogues and at the center the great Frances McDormand as the title character taking a chance in 24 sparkling and event-filled hours.