Bruno Ganz

CHICAGO – With director Lars von Trier, who is a mad f**king genius of a filmmaker, it’s always make or break (or both). He breaks in his latest, “The House That Jack Built” which is all too much of evil everything, until it morphs into a last act that has an intriguing and unsettling sense of weird purpose. The story of a serial killer and the meticulous realizations of his killings is like a sound meter that is constantly going into the red zone, until the damn thing shatters.

CHICAGO – “Unknown,” the latest thriller to attempt to turn Liam Neeson into an unusual choice for an action star (a la “Taken” and “The A-Team”), is one of those films that nearly works but falls just short of its audience’s expectations. The elements are there — a (mostly) strong ensemble, an interesting concept, an intriguing location, a promising director — but the film never comes together because the script needed one more rewrite that it just never received.

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Liam Neeson

CHICAGO – This 28-image slideshow contains most of the official press images for the highly-anticipated “Unknown,” starring Liam Neeson, Diane Kruger, January Jones, Aidan Quinn, Bruno Ganz, and Frank Langella. The film was directed by Jaume Collet-Serra. It will be released on February 18th, 2011.

CHICAGO – When true film fans receive the monthly Criterion newsletter, they usually skim it looking for their favorite films. It’s not that Criterion really ever makes bad decisions, but when a personal favorite gets the call, it’s like watching the baseball player you grew up idolizing get inducted into the Hall of Fane. Such is the feeling I get when I look at the Criterion Blu-Ray release of “Wings of Desire,” one of the most lyrically beautiful films ever made.

Blu-Ray Rating: 3.5/5.0

CHICAGO – The rollercoaster of reaction to Stephen Daldry’s “The Reader” has somewhat diminished the questionable quality of the actual film.

CHICAGO – Two of the best actors working in film today, Ralph Fiennes and Kate Winslet, offer enough to make “The Reader” a cinematic book worth reading, even if it’s not the masterpiece it could have been with a few different choices by its director and writer.