Matt Fagerholm

Rating: 1.0/5.0

CHICAGO – “After.Life” is one of the first truly awful films of 2010. Its aggressive solemnity combined with its head-slapping silliness will cause most viewers to simply laugh it off the screen. There’s at least two possible ways to interpret its murky story, and they’re both ludicrous.

Rating: 3.0/5.0

CHICAGO – Not much happens in “Mid-August Lunch.” It’s as uneventful and often benign as the title suggests, though that’s not to say it’s dull. Some films are primarily about plot, while others are about behavior, and this quietly observant international crowd-pleaser certainly fits in the latter category.

Rating: 4.0/5.0

CHICAGO – Is the Iraq war merely a continuation of Vietnam? In both cases, were we led to war under false pretenses, with the assurance that we were preserving democracy? Viewers on both sides of the political spectrum will be arguing about these questions long after this documentary, and the current war itself, is over.

Rating: 3.5/5.0

CHICAGO – Literary mysteries are harder to adapt for the big screen than one might assume. The trick is to make audiences feel like they’re discovering secrets right alongside the characters. We want to share in their exhilaration, their terror, their epiphanies.

Rating: 4.0/5.0

CHICAGO – Much ink has been spilled about how HBO is at the forefront of made-for-TV filmmaking in the world, a fact already demonstrated this year by the brilliant biopic “Temple Grandin” and the stellar WWII mini-series, “The Pacific.”