Chris Cooper

Rating: 4.5/5.0

CHICAGO – The Muppets stand on such a pedestal for an entire generation that there was an understandable amount of trepidation when it was announced that Jason Segel and Disney were moving forward with a reboot. How could it possibly live up to our expectations? Would they turn Kermit, Fozzie, and Miss Piggy into commercial commodities like “The Smurfs” and “Alvin and the Chipmunks”?

Rating: 4.0/5.0

CHICAGO – Dealing with an overall economic downturn, as the world is still experiencing, becomes the story of the individual. The frustration and insecurity that develops in a long dry spell is poignantly rendered in writer/director John Well’s “The Company Men.” Ben Affleck joins Oscar winners Tommy Lee Jones, Chris Cooper and Kevin Costner in telling the story.

Rating: 4.0/5.0

CHICAGO – Only three years since the Chicago Film Critics Association awarded Ben Affleck as our most promising filmmaker, he’s back in the director’s seat a second time with “The Town”. While the film dramatically centers on the business of robbery in his familiar streets of Boston, Affleck importantly proves that his 2007 Oscar-nominated film “Gone Baby Gone” wasn’t just beginner’s luck.

Rating: 2.5/5.0

CHICAGO – The hottest actor of the moment, smoldering Robert Pattinson, gets the opportunity to ditch the “Twilight” fangs and sink his teeth into a drama about New York City and the splintering factions of family in “Remember Me.”

CHICAGO – In 1967, author Arthur Koestler wrote the non-fiction book “The Ghost in the Machine”.