Sam Neill

CHICAGO – Sometimes you’re just in the mood for a good old Liam Neeson ass-kicker… and “The Commuter” fits that bill. It asks, damn near requires, you to leave your brain safely at the station, but it moves too fast that you don’t have much time to think about it. It’s ludicrous, dumb and fun entertainment for January.

CHICAGO – Combining the history of golf with a heartbreaking romance seems like a contradiction, but the new film “Tommy’s Honour” does it fluidly, in part because of the two young actors portraying the romance. Jack Lowden and Ophelia Lovibond are the actors who anchor the film, and also are breaking out as performers.

CHICAGO – Great action movies have one truth in common – they mix their face-offs with a psychological battle, which complements the pyrotechnics of invincible super humans. “Escape Plan,” with grizzled veterans Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger, is true to that form.

CHICAGO – In the latest HollywoodChicago.com Hookup: Film with our unique social giveaway technology, we have 40 pairs of advance-screening movie passes up for grabs to the new thriller “Escape Plan” starring Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger!

CHICAGO – Few films from the first half of the ’90s have held up as well as Steven Spielberg’s “Jurassic Park,” recently released in a Blu-ray/DVD combo pack that includes the 3D version of the film. How HUGE is “Jurassic Park”? Adjusted for inflation, it’s made $728 million domestically, 16th all-time and sandwiched between two “Star Wars” movies (“Jedi” and “Phantom”). Everyone talks about Indy. The dinos have actually made more.

CHICAGO – In the latest HollywoodChicago.com Hookup: Film with our unique social giveaway technology, we have 15 pairs of family movie 4-packs up for grabs to the advance screening of the highly anticipated “Jurassic Park in 3D”!

CHICAGO – Willem Dafoe is one of those wonderful actors who seamlessly moves from mainstream fare to indie films and always seems purely in the moment and totally in character. He’s one of our most diverse and consistently underrated stars and I’ve loved the daring choices he’s made lately in films like “Antichrist,” “4:44 Last Day on Earth,” “Miral,” and “The Hunter,” my favorite of his recent stretch of arthouse flicks and recently released on Blu-ray and DVD.

CHICAGO – I feel like a bit of a confession is necessary to frame my opinion of the truly awful “The Vow.” Lest you think this is just some cynical male critic, I like “The Notebook” and “The Lake House.” I even kind of like “Dear John” and didn’t hate “The Time Traveler’s Wife.” Yes, I’m a cheeseball when the cheese is well-done. I wanted to like “The Vow.” There’s nothing to like here unless you find taking talented, charming actors and making them deadly dull likeable.

Rating: 4.0/5.0

CHICAGO – “The Hunter” is an uniquely mesmerizing film about a man on a complex journey. While the film threatens to fall into cliché (and sometimes hangs on by its fingernails on the precipice of doing so), excellent cinematography and another mesmerizing performance by Willem Dafoe keep it engaging enough to the point that it develops a fascinating rhythm of its own. There’s a lot to like here in this tale of a lonely man, his elusive prey, and the family he meets that gets caught in the middle.

CHICAGO – “The Vow” was “inspired by true events.” The end credits even showed the real couple of those events. Given the actual film, it’s likely that inspiration came in the form of “making stuff up,” as Rachel McAdams and Channing Tatum were opposite to any reality in this illogical, strangely cold romance.