CHICAGO – When two brothers confront the sins of each other and it expands into a psychology of an entire race, it’s at a stage play found in Chicago’s Invictus Theatre Company production of “Topdog/Underdog,” now at their new home at the Windy City Playhouse through March 31st, 2024. Click TD/UD for tickets/info.
Kyle Chandler
Spaced Out! On-Air Review of ‘The Midnight Sky’
Submitted by PatrickMcD on December 18, 2020 - 10:26pmRating: 3.0/5.0 |
CHICAGO – Patrick McDonald of HollywoodChicago.com appears on “The Morning Mess” with Scott Thompson on WBGR-FM (Monroe, Wisconsin) on December 17th, 2020, reviewing the new film “The Midnight Sky,” which will stream on Netflix beginning December 23rd.
Melodrama Mire in ‘Godzilla: King of the Monsters’
Submitted by PatrickMcD on June 1, 2019 - 9:59amRating: 2.0/5.0 |
CHICAGO – Everyone’s favorite city-flattening radioactive reptile, “Godzilla: King of the Monsters,” gets stuck in a mire of third-rate-TV-network domestic melodrama in this disappointing follow up to the thrilling 2014 reboot. But before I roar about the many ways this misbegotten miscreant messes up, let’s throw a few pebbles of praise.
'First Man' is Reverential to Moon Landing Mission
Submitted by PatrickMcD on October 12, 2018 - 3:31pmRating: 4.0/5.0 |
CHICAGO – There were several “firsts” for humankind in our civilization and technology breakthroughs, but until 1969 no person had even stepped on a planetary surface other than on earth. Neil Armstrong was that man, and he is portrayed by Ryan Gosling in a respectful overview of that Apollo 11 mission in “First Man.”
Jason Bateman & Rachel McAdams Score on ‘Game Night’
Submitted by PatrickMcD on February 24, 2018 - 12:09pmRating: 3.5/5.0 |
CHICAGO – A game cast elevates what is otherwise a bit of a ho hum affair in the action comedy “Game Night.” Jason Bateman and Rachel McAdams are a middle class couple hosting weekly game nights with a group of good friends. But when Bateman’s competitive venture capitalist older brother Brooks (Kyle Chandler) comes to town, he promises to take game night up a notch.
Casey Affleck Anchors ‘Manchester by the Sea’
Submitted by PatrickMcD on November 25, 2016 - 1:28pmRating: 3.5/5.0 |
CHICAGO – Tis the season for earnest character studies, and Casey Affleck in “Manchester by the Sea” has a doozy. Portraying a Boston guy with a mountain of sadness within, Affleck harbors the range of emotions like a coiled snake ready to strike, but manages to keep it all undercover.
Scorsese’s ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’ a Deliciously Gluttonous Inspection Into Our Demons
Submitted by HollywoodChicago.com on December 26, 2013 - 5:29pmRating: 4.5/5.0 |
CHICAGO – No matter how painfully bad it may be, I never walk out of a screening. It’s a professional rule I’ve set and keep it at all costs. But with Martin Scorsese’s latest stroke of genius, I experienced a kind of pain I don’t usually wrangle with: the survival of my bladder.
Martin Scorsese’s ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’ is Cinematic Adrenalin
Submitted by BrianTT on December 23, 2013 - 11:01amRating: 5.0/5.0 |
Jordan Belfort (Leonardo DiCaprio) lives completely, entirely in the moment. It’s not that there’s no tomorrow, there’s not even “later that same day” in his world. People who make their living on the minute-to-minute fluctuations of the stock market are inherently going to be inclined to live in the small spaces between those quick deviations but Belfort was even more so given the fact that his first day as a legit money maker was on the day the entire economy collapsed in 1987 known as “Black Monday.”
Crime Thriller ‘Broken City’ Fictionalizes its Crime Without Most of its Thrill
Submitted by HollywoodChicago.com on January 20, 2013 - 9:58pmRating: 2.5/5.0 |
CHICAGO – Rife with corruption and injustice, the setting for “Broken City” could have been picked from a litter of U.S. metropolitans. Said star Mark Wahlberg in a recent red-carpet interview with HollywoodChicago.com, it’s not Chicago.
Jingoistic ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ Highlights the Mission
Submitted by PatrickMcD on January 2, 2013 - 11:46amRating: 3.0/5.0 |
CHICAGO – Despite an obsession for killing a single man to represent a foggy revenge, “Zero Dark Thirty” is an effective thriller in the actual re-creation of that Navy Seal operation. Directed by Kathryn Bigelow (“The Hurt Locker”), the all-star cast is led by a miscast Jessica Chastain.
‘Zero Dark Thirty’ Turns CIA Procedural Into Riveting Thriller
Submitted by BrianTT on December 10, 2012 - 11:21amRating: 5.0/5.0 |
CHICAGO – Kathryn Bigelow opens her stunning “Zero Dark Thirty” with a date and a series of voice mail recordings. The date is, of course, September 11, 2001 and the recordings are the ghosts of the people who died that day, perfectly setting the stakes for the story to come – the hunt for and capture of Osama Bin Laden.