Film Review

Rating: 2.0/5.0

CHICAGO – “The Wall,” opening today at the Music Box in Chicago, is a numbingly frustrating film in that it constantly defies audience involvement by reminding viewers of its self-importance, tedious degree of seriousness, and general lack of anything approaching common human behavior. Told almost entirely through the narration of its lead character, “The Wall” starts with an interesting concept but goes nowhere with it, giving the viewer too little with which to relate or comprehend and asking them to mistake the clunky narrative as “deep.”

Rating: 3.5/5.0

CHICAGO – “We’re not psychos, all right?!?! We’re small business operators.” It’s been awhile since there was a horror-comedy as fun as “100 Bloody Acres,” opening today in Chicago at the Music Box Theatre, and playing in some other markets around the country.

Rating: 3.0/5.0

CHICAGO – Stephen Knight, the writer of brilliant scripts for “Eastern Promises” & “Dirty Pretty Things,” makes his directorial debut with “Redemption,” opening today in limited release, starring Jason Statham in a role that proves that he has more dramatic range than he’s usually asked to display.

Rating: 2.0/5.0

CHICAGO – I’ve rarely said this about Neil Jordan movie – in fact, maybe never – but I was bored during his latest, the vampire drama “Byzantium,” a movie with an intriguing cast and interesting story but little in the way of passion, emotion, dread, or the other intangibles needed to make a horror film like this effective.

Rating: 3.0/5.0

CHICAGO – An incredibly talented ensemble elevates a pretty pedestrian script in the just-funny-enough “The Heat,” a movie that gets better as it goes along, largely because its two mega-talented stars carry it over some mediocre patches of writing. Melissa McCarthy and Sandra Bullock simply have unimpeachable comic timing.

Rating: 4.0/5.0

CHICAGO – Wouldn’t we all like to believe that if one is true to their passion, honest with their creative vision, and unwavering in the world’s inability to embrace them that it is only a matter of time before that changes? We’ve always loved this theme in fiction and the encouraging idea that cream rises to the top propelled “Searching For Sugar Man” to an Oscar because of the goodwill it engendered.

Rating: 1.5/5.0

CHICAGO – How could a movie in which the President shoots a rocket from the back of a limousine during a car chase on the White House lawn possibly be boring? Roland Emmerich somehow finds a way in the numbing “White House Down,” a movie that make absolutely no sense but fails to entertain as B-movie escapism (as his movies sometimes have in the past).

Rating: 3.5/5.0

CHICAGO – While relaxing and catching his breath after the stressful task of filming “Marvel’s The Avengers,” writer/director Joss Whedon didn’t just drink wine, host parties, and take baths in his money. He decided to use his break to make another movie. Changing gears from one of the biggest blockbusters of all time, Whedon called his friends from TV shows and films he had made in the past and put together an adaptation of one of William Shakespeare’s most beloved works, “Much Ado About Nothing.”

Rating: 4.0/5.0

CHICAGO – We live a celebrity-driven culture that not only easily dismisses when its celebutantes get DUIs but practically sees the occasion as a rite of passage. We follow gossip websites to the degree that we know the schedules of people who are famous just for being famous better than we know our family’s.

Rating: 2.0/5.0

CHICAGO – Originally called “Fairytale,” “The Haunting of Helena” will be available on VOD tomorrow, June 18, 2013, before a very limited release on June 21, 2013. It’s a generic, mediocre horror flick with a few effective images and some interesting thematic play in the second act that is, sadly, totally underdeveloped.