Full disclosure, my goal in this review is to use as many synonyms as possible for the words “ridiculous” and “entertaining.” The range between those two attributes comprises the pendulum swing of “The Accountant,” the latest Ben Affleck-led actioner from “Warrior” director Gavin O’Connor. The film has a dual personality between the entertaining and ridiculous that weaves through every component and cuts to its core.
Read MoreA masterfully powerful documentary, “A Doctor’s Sword,” chronicling the reflective and jarring tale of Irish World War II veteran Aidan MacCarthy, recently played as part of the second annual Irish American Movie Hooley at the Gene Siskel Film Center in Chicago. One half of this fine film is an astounding you-wouldn't-believe-it-if-I-told-you true story of World War II survival that would make "Unbroken" look like a nursery rhyme. Its calmer other half takes place in a present day where two proud families and two proud countries are forever bonded by shared history.
Read MoreKevin Baggott’s darkly comedic film “Beneath Disheveled Stars" was a favorite of the Cork Indie Film Festival and Brooklyn Underground Film Festival. The film recently opened the 2nd annual Irish American Movie Hooley at the Gene Siskel Film Center in downtown Chicago. As a self-made film from a self-made man, there are qualities to appreciate from this quixotic wild goose choose.
Read MoreCircling back to the “timely” label, the film bears the designation in equally positive and negative connotations, depending of your personal capacity. Consider “The Birth of a Nation” to be the antithesis to “Selma” two years ago. This film’s depiction of violent retaliation reverberates far differently than Martin Luther King’s example of nonviolence. Audiences will wrestle with that polar opposite being empowering or troubling in justification.
Read MoreThe quirk of the dark comedy genre comes from embracing absurdity and running with it. Small wrinkles of character traits and situational story elements get twisted for wry laughs and wicked surprises. One of Australia’s top films of 2015, “The Dressmaker” mixes high style in a setting of rubbish and romance with a cursed sense of revenge. Not all of the fits and starts of many, many dalliances of the film end up working, but the presence of Oscar winner Kate Winslet demands attention.
Read MoreAll eyes are on the hotly anticipated live-action "re-imagining" of Walt Disney Pictures' enormously successful "Beauty and the Beast" from 1991. That March 2017 sure-fire blockbuster will garner tremendous attention in its attempt to honor the animated Best Picture Oscar nominee and double Academy Award winner. In the meantime, the fairy tale's home country of France throws down its own gauntlet to give Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve's 1740 original story and Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont's abridged 1756 standard the grand, epic big-screen treatment it warrants. Let's just say the French sure know what they are doing.
Read MoreThere was a time Oliver Stone took risks and punched harder with his filmmaking style and history-challenging investigation efforts through compelling dramatization. The 70-year-old self-described dramatist used to stir provocative emotions and drop jaws with grand revelations. Those days feel like a distant memory with "Snowden."
Read MoreTongues are inserted into cheeks at a rapid-fire pace in “Bridget Jones’s Baby. The euphemisms, drollery, puns, wild physical gags, and self-deprecating farce originate from all directions and target anyone with eyes and a smile. The writing is harebrained in the most smart and witty ways possible and, trust me, that is a compliment. Better yet, when it needs to, the movie turns off the jokes and hits you with the necessary heart to make all the silly stuff enormously endearing.
Read MoreBuilding domestic suspense in poignant fashion and shifting between three eras, “Reparation” examines potent human flaws and plants them in small-town America with real-life consequences. This film doesn’t need a grandiose battlefield saga of hidden heroism to be the catalyst. This isn’t “American Sniper” and glossy hero worship. “Reparation” welcomes more intimate and jagged complications with authentic down-home realism and charm.
Read MoreCloying as it may be to some, “The Sea of Trees” still contains a poetry and a message of forced reflection and vitality with incorporeal nudges. These are touchy musings, for sure. Audiences that have the reflective capacity for tapping into those feelings and fears will appreciate this effort and the dedicated performances. Close-hearted and discomforted cynics that do not will flatly dismiss it instead and tell you (and it) to keep your feelings to yourself. This writer is openly capable of being in the first audience welcoming the deep thoughts.
Read MoreLeave it to renowned filmmaker Werner Herzog to hit you with a buffet's worth of food for thought. His musings on the origins of the internet and its growing ramifications, both positive and negative, on this modern world are sternly served in his new documentary "Lo and Behold, Reveries of the Connected World." Scintillating one minute and sobering the next, this film is required viewing for anyone who has seen how far we've come with connectivity and wonders fearfully just how high this Icarus of technology can fly towards the Sun before it melts and crashes back to Earth.
Read MoreYou know the "Goodfellas" tropes: excessive narration, ordinary people getting rich or powerful doing extraordinary and often illegal activities played by colorful actors or actresses, dramatic license spinning a likely lesser true story, a kicking period soundtrack, pervasive drug use, freeze-frame shots to stamp moments, and a tidy epilogue of comeuppance. Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, but it is also lazily standing on the shoulders of giants. That’s the impact and existence of Todd Phillips’s “War Dogs” in a gun… err… nutshell.
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