Ready Player One is the liveliest Spielberg film in a decade or more. You could spend hours pausing every frame of this film to discover and relish in the multitude of buried treasures, making the film’s rewatch and replay value tremendous. The nostalgia factor of this film should be a high-score badge of achievement and not a knock of pitiful pandering. Dream fulfillment is a worthy and ambitious target for audience inspiration. That tangible sensation equals the desired blissful excitement this film delivers.

Film Festival, 2018, MOVIE REVIEW, 4 STARSDon ShanahanMarch 27, 2018 Comments

MOVIE REVIEW: Mohawk

Their maddening pursuit for prisoners takes the opponents into a rustic valley of Mohawk turf with a river bordering one side and the full war on the other. One by one, grizzly deaths dwindle numbers on both sides until the prophetic zinger line of “we’re the only monsters left out here” brings forth another plane of peril. The aggressive hunt turns ethereal and truly primal towards a crackling climax of mist and fire.

2018, 4 STARS, Independent Film, MOVIE REVIEW, Film Festival, Video on DemandDon ShanahanMarch 25, 2018Comment

MOVIE REVIEW: Paul, Apostle of Christ

Removing the religious marrow from the bones of Paul, Apostle of Christ will not weaken the story being told by the film. At its core, the reverent desire to document an enlightened jailed man’s life story before his pending death is a respectful measure of learning and commitment anyone from any walk of life can appreciate. Moreover, when the purpose of recording is to carry on the prisoner’s mission, the sense of regard grows. Once the spiritual gravity of the “who” and the “what” is applied, the importance of this chronicle increases even further.

2018, 3 STARS, Independent Film, MOVIE REVIEWDon ShanahanMarch 25, 2018Comment

MOVIE REVIEW: Journey's End

Journey’s End recounts the British side of a climactic four-day span from March 18-21, 1918 in the stalemate “No Man’s Land” trenches of Aisne in northern France in the lead-up to Operation Michael. Every month, each British company is required to serve six days on the front line where casualties are gravely high. Gambling with death sentences, both trooper and officer alike pray that their six days are not the ones where an offensive is being amassed or defended.

MOVIE REVIEW: Flower

Though measured as a small independent film, Flower is an undoubted showcase platform for the soaring talent of Zooey Deutch. Clad in her plain tank-tops and empowering a character with all kinds of obscene confidence, not even the worst behaviors on display can take away the magnetism of her frank and jarring performance. For most of the film, she shines repulsiveness with unmatched charisma.

MOVIE REVIEW: Submission

Stanley Tucci is a cinematic treasure of sarcasm. What that man can shell out in a throwaway line, a raised eyebrow, or a pause of bated breath is on another level to most of his peers and contemporaries. When Stanley cranks that mockery up with profanity, it only gets sharper. It would take quite the rug pull to disrupt that man’s mojo. Tucci meets that tumultuous turmoil in Submission

2018, 3 STARS, Film Festival, Independent Film, MOVIE REVIEW, Video on DemandDon ShanahanMarch 19, 2018ArcLight ChicagoComment

MOVIE REVIEW: Colors of the Wind

The melodramatic preposterousness of Colors of the Wind is two-fold. The first layer is good old-fashioned stage magic, everything from card tricks to disappearing acts. The second comes from the notion of doppelgangers, the fanciful term for doubles, ghostly counterparts, and alter egos that have been a storytelling trope before in film. Both elements create spirited and soapy intrigue in the film when combined with the romantic destiny of star-crossed lovers.

MOVIE REVIEW: Beauty Mark

Many internal and external situations can cause feelings of desperation. Straits get so dire that horrible choices become the only choices. For Angie in Beauty Mark, played by emerging TV actress Auden Thornton, the burdensome weights (and they are sure plural) around her neck are overbearing. When those burdens and stresses pile on at the same time, the desperation of her situation becomes overwhelming in this excellent and hardscrabble family drama from writer-director Harris Doran.

SHORT FILM REVIEW: The Photographer

Underneath the on-screen actions in director Mark Sobol’s dynamic short film The Photographer, the motif of voyeurism is dissected from a presented theory. A male narrator orates an internal monologue opening on the notion “a subject is so much more beautiful when it doesn’t know its being watched.” Assigning beauty to a moment that is not the observer’s to share in begs a few life lessons.

2018, 2017, 5 STARS, Film Festival, Independent Film, MOVIE REVIEW, SHORT FILMSDon ShanahanMarch 8, 2018The PhotographerComment

MOVIE REVIEW: A Wrinkle in Time

Taking the full theological route possible from A Wrinkle in Time would be too strong mentally and too trippy visually for most of today’s audiences. By contrast, skimping on those expressions in favor of softer and attractive commercial cuteness sanitizes what makes the novel a subversive and revered classic. What you’re getting today in 2018 is a noble attempt at the core of the former with many caveats and concessions made for the latter.

2018, 2 STARS, MOVIE REVIEWDon ShanahanMarch 7, 2018AMC Navy Pier IMAXComment

MOVIE REVIEW: Annihilation

Before it even debuted, Annihilation, wunderkind filmmaker Alex Garland’s big studio follow-up to Ex Machina, was labeled “too intellectual” and “too complicated.” Come what may, the film is quite exactly those two qualities and then some. However, what might be a smearing hindrance for some is a emblem of brilliancy to others. Because the film could land either way, the intrigue and anticipation surrounding Annihilation couldn’t be better. You will undoubtedly get your mind’s worth and your money’s worth stepping up the cerebral challenge of this film.

2018, 3 STARS, MOVIE REVIEW, StreamingDon ShanahanFebruary 23, 2018AMC River East 21Comment

MOVIE REVIEW: Game Night

In many respects, the degree of difficulty to make the cheesy entertaining is not very high. Laughs of the low-hanging fruit variety are easy to come by and guilty pleasure films are created all the time. The real challenge is to make the cheesy, and the laughs that come with it, unexpected and fulfilling. Flush with snickering hilarity and scoring plenty of points for swerving surprises, Game Night is infectiously entertaining with any cheese it serves.

4 STARS, 2018, MOVIE REVIEWDon ShanahanFebruary 22, 2018Showplace ICON X at Roosevelt CollectionsComment