Roadside Attractions

CHICAGO – Sometimes it’s difficult to pinpoint the precise moment when one falls in love with a movie. Other times, it’s as effortless and intuitive as the day one stumbles upon a soul mate. That moment struck me like a bolt of lightning early on in Jeff Nichols’s “Mud,” the most richly satisfying and purely enjoyable moviegoing experience I’ve had thus far in 2013.

CHICAGO – Rare is the film that explores love from a male perspective and doesn’t become overtly preoccupied with sex. Writer/director Jeff Nichols’s fabulously entertaining third feature, “Mud,” is a bittersweet ode to the broken heart, and how it can both hinder and bolster one’s evolution as an individual. The picture is romantic in every sense of the word.

CHICAGO – The concept of crime and punishment is a goalpost that is constantly being moved. Justice becomes an discretionary circumstance, sold to the highest bidder. These are just a view of the happy themes in the new film “Arbitrage,” featuring Richard Gere, Susan Sarandon and Brit Marling.

CHICAGO – In the latest HollywoodChicago.com Hookup: Film with our unique social giveaway technology, we have 30 pairs of movie passes up for grabs to the advance screening of “Arbitrage” starring Richard Gere, Susan Sarandon and Tim Roth!

CHICAGO – Jennifer Westfeldt created a distinct movie persona in her debut in 2001 in “Kissing Jessica Stein,” but she has been generally off the radar since then. Her choice for a major film re-emergence is as a nebbish career woman with less memorable character traits. She also directs Jon Hamm, Kristen Wiig, Chris O’Dowd, Megan Fox and Maya Rudolph in “Friends with Kids.”

CHICAGO – Ensemble films, with their multiple stories and characters, can be a challenging delicate balance. Emphasize one story over another and an audience starts to wonder why the neglected subplot is even in the film. “Answers to Nothing” generates this reaction with all their narrative threads, in a movie that lacks any kind of cohesion.

CHICAGO – Power is a strange, corrupting force. Human beings manufacture power based on governments, money and religion. Oftentimes an element of humanity must be sacrificed to obtain power. In Iran, that element is women, as religious and governmental oppression conspire to create “Circumstance.”

CHICAGO – The beauty of indie filmmaker Miranda July lies in her ability to create substance and mystery out of the most mundane everyday circumstances. Ms. July wrote, directed and stars in the symbolically rich new film “The Future,” and nurtures the concept of “the relationship” into another realm.

CHICAGO – Alcohol mixed with the American Dream sometimes becomes a destructive chemistry. With every individual’s reaction to ethyl alcohol like a fingerprint, the general image of the party animal can easily morph into what John Cheever called ‘The Sorrows of Gin.” These sorrows are explored through Will Ferrell in “Everything Must Go.”

CHICAGO – The Latin term “Inter arma silent leges.” (There is no law on the battlefield) is coldly stated in “The Conspirator,” directed by Robert Redford. In plain truth, the new film recreates one of the most controversial military trials in American history.