Thomas Jane

CHICAGO – Say the words “San Diego Comic-Con” to a certain comic geek subculture and suddenly heart rates are up and anticipation is in the air. The documentary maker Morgan Spurlock (“Supersize Me”) seeks to capture that feeling in “Comic-Con Episode IV: A Fan’s Hope,” with help from Seth Rogen, Kevin Smith, Stan Lee, Thomas Jane, Josh Whedon, Seth Green and Matt Groening.

CHICAGO – HBO has such a limited amount of series and so many critical darlings that when they announce a renewal or a cancellation it carries more weight than most networks. They announced four today with no major surprises as we all expected that Golden Globe-nominated “Enlightened” would return for a second season and even fans of “Hung,” “Bored to Death,” and “How to Make It in America” could have guessed that those series were headed in the other direction.

CHICAGO – Mark Pellington’s “I Melt with You” is one of the worst movies of 2011, but has the benefit of also being among the weirdest. Students of rotten cinema will surely flock to this disaster simply to watch it in morbid, mouth-gaping awe. Yet without a scenery chewing wild card like Nicolas Cage in the ensemble, this mournful mess is far from an enjoyable guilty pleasure.

CHICAGO – Not all HBO shows are created equal. While critics have devoted thousands of words to the brilliance of shows like “Boardwalk Empire,” “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” and “Game of Thrones,” a few other offerings from the most important TV network of the last quarter-century have gone under the radar.

CHICAGO – Baseball is a game made for the romantic hyperbole of otherwise stoic men. The appreciation of the game is often passed from Dad to son, so just in time for Father’s Day along comes two great baseball films, the Billy Crystal directed “61*” and the “When it Was a Game” collection.

CHICAGO – With easily the darkest subject matter and most intense level of violence to date in the DC Universe series of PG-13 animated film, “Batman: Under the Red Hood” is far from your typical Saturday morning cartoon. This is morally complex material much closed to “The Dark Knight” than “Batman & Robin,” and it’s a smash success for the franchise, resulting in easily the best installment in years.

CHICAGO – Male prostitute Ray Drecker (Thomas Jane) and his pimp Tanya Skagle (Jane Adams) are back in the second season premiere of “Hung,” a show that improved drastically over its first year (check out our Blu-ray review here) and seems primed for continued growth in its sophomore outing. Shows like “Hung” often fine-tune their characters and themes between the first and second year and this unusual comedy is primed for breakout success.

CHICAGO – HBO’s “Hung” doesn’t quite live up to the incredibly high standards of the best network on television but the sporadic writing on the show and very strong ensemble did produce enough interesting dramatic and comedic moments to warrant a look on the excellent Blu-ray release of the first season, timed to coincide with the premiere of season two on Sunday, June 27th, 2010.

CHICAGO – Pardon the obvious metaphors, but when you name a show “Hung” and feature a motivational speech about the lead character finding “his tool,” it’s damn-near impossible not to fall into the same pattern.

CHICAGO – How does a movie with Oscar-nominated leads, a prominent director, beloved source material, and an excellent supporting cast get delayed for so long that it inevitably gets quietly shuffled off to DVD? Well, if history tells us anything, having a complicated and troubled project in the Weinstein Company archives doesn’t help a movie like “Killshot,” an action thriller that has its flaws but none so big that it deserved such an unusual and lackluster fate.