CHICAGO – If you’ve never seen the farcical ensemble theater chestnut “Noises Off,” you will see no better version than on the Steppenwolf Theatre stage, now at their northside Chicago venue through November 3rd. For tickets and details for this riotous theater experience, click NOISES OFF.
Christopher Hampton
Film Review: Naomi Watts, Robin Wright Fake It in ‘Adore’
Submitted by BrianTT on September 5, 2013 - 9:25amCHICAGO – For a movie that should be about passion, sex, and scandal, “Adore” is surprisingly and depressingly tame. Two great lead actresses are left floating on a dock by a script that doesn’t treat them like real characters and a team that cast two inferior actors opposite them.
Blu-ray Review: Great Actors Drive Intellectually Engaging ‘A Dangerous Method’
Submitted by BrianTT on April 3, 2012 - 2:42pmCHICAGO – David Cronenberg’s “A Dangerous Method,” recently released on Blu-ray and DVD, features four of the most interesting performances of 2011 and is certainly a conversation piece in the themes that writer Christopher Hampton has chosen to explore. I still wish it had more of the actual “danger” of Cronenberg’s early work but there’s more to like here than I first thought, especially in what was brought to the material by those cast to deliver it.
Film Review: David Cronenberg’s ‘A Dangerous Method’ Needed More Risk
Submitted by BrianTT on December 16, 2011 - 3:11pmRating: 3.5/5.0 |
CHICAGO – There are glimpses of actual danger in David Cronenberg’s divisive “A Dangerous Method” with Michael Fassbender, Viggo Mortensen, and Keira Knightley, and the film has a lingering power as it’s easy to roll around your brain and contemplate its themes, but I wanted a bit more actual risk to the filmmaking. Easily the masterful director’s most straightforward work in some time (possibly ever), this is a worthwhile piece that nonetheless disappoints in the context of the rest of his filmography.
DVD Review: ‘Cheri’ Knows Love Isn’t Love if It’s All About You
Submitted by BrianTT on October 14, 2009 - 3:57pmCHICAGO – “Cheri” could be confused with an updated adaptation of a Jane Austen novel if its characters weren’t so comfortable with what goes on between the sheets. Like players in many stuffy costume dramas, they wear the best clothes, live in lavishly decorated homes and speak their perfect grammar in posh accents. But since they aren’t sexually repressed, they do it all with a little bounce in their step.