No author has seen his work has seen his work made into more movies than Stephen King, with over 50 films originating from his writing. However, not every movie was a success. Courtesy of MoneyPod, enjoy this intriguing infographic on the cinematic successes and failures based on the works of Stephen King.
Read MoreThis entire film is a head-turning and striking first impression if you missed Noel’s single season on Saturday Night Live four years ago. As aforementioned with a passion project like this, you beg and wonder how autobiographical a wild story like this has to be. No matter if it’s true or entirely created, the appreciation measures the heavily positive same. The jokes come from all angles and hit with every effect from belly laugh to full cringe.
Read MorePaired perfectly as a double-feature follow-up to this summer’s spacefaring Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, Taika Waititi’s Thor: Ragnarok is a raucously rad roller coaster that shoots rainbows out of every digitally-rendered pore. Blasting with energetic pace in the complete opposite direction from the dreary and grayish Game of Thrones Lite tone of Thor: The Dark World, this new chapter is a cinematic box of Crayola crayons laced with dynamite.
Read MoreLanthimos’ The Killing of a Sacred Deer is deeply immersed in such dread. As purposeful as that approach may be, it’s borderline unnatural and it throws you off. Where the peril present in this psychological thriller should be raising heart rates, the slightness and dullness of its flatlined tone fail to move minds and elicit palpable responses. Titillating ideas should titillate. Resonating themes should resonate. Neither occurs and madness takes over.
Read MoreHaynes’ Wonderstruck still evokes true and impassioned power. The film strides within a sensitive middle ground of approachable and praiseworthy quaintness in addressing difficult youthful challenges and emotions. The effect is a grown-up experience audiences can, and should, appreciate compared to the mindless popcorn fluff and weightless distractions studio shovel into the PG marketplace. If a new definition could be created for the term “wonderstruck,” it would read “rapt attention.”
Read MoreSuburbicon lazily delivers a caper that lacks cleverness, smarts, and anything edgy other than the spurts of hemoglobin that stain a few starched shirts. Even if it is pitch black by design, the final ingredient of fake sentimentality glazed over the proceedings is ineffective to add any varnish to the acidic angle of white-collar crime. Nonsensical twist follows nonsensical twist for an aimless purpose.
Read MoreThe 53rd Chicago International FIlm Festival brings over 1,000 films of all genres and sizes to our fair city. There are premieres aplenty, between those making their world, North American, or Chicago debuts. Opening with a red carpet premiere of Marshall, peaking with the centerpiece of Greta Gerwig’s Lady Bird, and closing with the Oscar contender The Shape of Water from Guillermo del Toro, the 53rd CIFF fills the AMC River East 21 for two weeks. For the fourth year in a row, Every Movie Has a Lesson has been granted press credentials to cover the CIFF and here are my capsule reviews.
Read MoreThe discolored and dingy tile grout at the bottom of a swimming pool and the imagery effect of rippling water seen under the surface bending the images above perspective starkly symbolize the many warped dimensions of Liquid Truth. The truth in the title is as slippery as the water in director Caroline Jabor’s simmering social commentary. The film may be foreign from Brazil, but it typifies all too many social media ills that would explode in a parallel fashion here in this country.
Read MoreSimon Curtis’ Goodbye Christopher Robin is a cinematic quilt collecting experiences from many different narrative themes. A few patches carry the pattern of biographical films, chronicling life’s highlights and lowlights within a well-to-do family and their hired caretaker. Others carry the created images of a writer’s world-building legend. The threads binding those quilt pieces are a woven blend of the barbed wire of post-traumatic stress disorder and the smoothly silken cords of childhood whimsy. The experience of snuggling up with the Goodbye Christopher Robin blanket of testimony and memories is as affectingly dramatic as it is comfortably warm.
Read MoreFor a while now, I have long wondered how someone could bottle that signature Pixar-level lightness for dramatic heft and pour it into a live-action piece with the same welcome whimsy. Pixar's animated feature films and shorts consistently have a special way with conveying humor within the most difficult emotions I might have found the closest attempt yet in Chad Hamilton’s lovely short film Not Yet.
Read MoreThe character of James in Message Received, played by David Chin, is a married man whose extramarital activities has been discovered by a mystery person. His actions that follow in the taut 11-minute short demonstrate how desperation can make that downward cycle even more steep and slippery. Things get worse instead of better and he has no one to blame but himself.
Read MoreThe filmmakers promised Loving Vincent to be nothing you’ve ever seen put to film and they were not lying. The sheer artistry is miraculous where even folded shirts look as dramatic as emoting faces. To call the biographical drama a work of art and astonishing technical achievement would be shameless understatements. The best part of all is the massive wellspring of creativity was thankfully applied to an engaged narrative worthy of the artistry and the legend cast by Vincent Van Gogh
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