CHICAGO – Patrick McDonald of HollywoodChicago.com appears on “The Morning Mess” with Dan Baker on WBGR-FM (Monroe, Wisconsin) on March 21st, 2024, reviewing the new streaming series “Manhunt” – based on the bestseller by James L. Swanson – currently streaming on Apple TV+.
Jean Dujardin
‘The Monuments Men’ Has Been Drained of Personality
Submitted by BrianTT on February 6, 2014 - 10:03am Rating: 1.5/5.0 |
George Clooney’s “The Monuments Men” is processed cheese. It is a film that has been rewritten, edited, and refined until it has lost all sense of purpose or identity. There’s no flavor left. It is a film that defies genre; not quirky enough to have a comedic personality despite a cast that almost always supplies edge and not engaging enough to work as drama or thriller.
Scorsese’s ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’ a Deliciously Gluttonous Inspection Into Our Demons
Submitted by HollywoodChicago.com on December 26, 2013 - 5:29pm Rating: 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.
French Film Has a Bigger Chill in ‘Little White Lies’
Submitted by PatrickMcD on August 31, 2012 - 6:31pm Rating: 4.0/5.0 |
CHICAGO – The landmark ensemble film “The Big Chill” (1983) featured seven former college friends reuniting for the funeral of one of their own. The French film “Little White Lies” takes that concept a step further, as friends go on a yearly retreat without one of their own, because he is in the hospital. Francois Cluzet, Marion Cotillard and Jean Dujardin co-star.
‘The Artist’ is Magical Ode to Old Hollywood
Submitted by BrianTT on December 19, 2011 - 4:11pm Rating: 5.0/5.0 |
CHICAGO – “The Artist” is the kind of film for which a critic feels an added responsibility. The fact is that I know that a large number of readers won’t go anywhere near a movie that is described as “a black & white ode to silent films.” Eek. Sounds like torture. And yet, I also know for a fact that a vast majority of those same readers would LOVE “The Artist.” This is a stellar piece of filmmaking, one of the best of the year. Jump on the bandwagon early for what will surely be one of the major players of the upcoming awards season.
Inferior Sequel ‘OSS 117: Lost in Rio’ Mostly Falls Flat
Submitted by BrianTT on June 10, 2010 - 12:58pm Rating: 2.0/5.0 |
CHICAGO – It’s no mystery why the appeal of spy satires transcend the boundaries of time and culture. Clueless detectives with a bloated sense of self-importance are great comic punching bags. Everyone loves seeing a doofus get his head slammed in a door, whether that doofus be Inspector Clouseau or Lt. Frank Drebin or countless other law officers who could easily blend in with the Keystone Kops.
1960s-Era James Bond is Skewered in New Spoof ‘OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies’
Submitted by HollywoodChicago.com on June 27, 2008 - 2:32am Rating: 3.0/5.0 |
CHICAGO – The heroic nature of the James Bond series of films begs several questions about his representation of western world power.
For one, just who did he act for and what was he fighting against? The new French film “OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies” attempts to answer this question through a subtle and sporadically funny satire, a skewering of the Bond image and geopolitics in the 1960s.
