MOVIE REVIEW: The Tender Bar

George Clooney’s The Tender Bar has, above everything else, a crucial mentor character that wins over the entire film with everything he does. When regular dads are absent or inadequate, father-figures are incredibly important for an malleable kid. We’ve seen plenty of them in movies before, but Ben Affleck’s Charlie character feels more spot-on and special than usual. When he’s there putting an arm around a shoulder or mixing a martini, you’ll either wish for or recall your own Uncle Charlie from your life.

MOVIE REVIEW: Spider-Man: No Way Home

The successes spring forth from the roller coaster of crowd reactions between cheers and tears that you yourself will undoubtedly witness (or share) at your own theater visit. Imagine if everything you eventually see was a protected surprise and that measurement goes through the multiplex roof even further. Top to bottom from a production standpoint and crowned with a smile from ear to ear, this is what big screen escapism and dream fulfillment looks like at the highest level.

2021, 4 STARS, ADVANCE MOVIE REVIEW, MOVIE REVIEWDon ShanahanDecember 16, 2021Spider-Man, Spider-Man: Far From Home, Spider-Man: No Way HomeComment

MOVIE REVIEW: West Side Story

Though the nostalgic director has rightfully earned a carte blanche status from galactic success to make whatever he wants, it feels like Spielberg had not really challenged himself for the better part of the last two decades. Yet, here he is making his first musical with the energy of a man half or even a quarter of his age. Populated with fresh faces, sung with fiery voices, and varnished with spirited hues of toughness and beauty, his resulting West Side Story can win over the purists and cure those remake value worries. We (myself included) can put the memes away for this one.

2021, 4 STARS, ADVANCE MOVIE REVIEW, MOVIE REVIEWDon ShanahanDecember 3, 2021West Side Story, 20th Century Studios, Ariana DeBose, David AlvarezComment

MOVIE REVIEW: The Power of the Dog

Calling down the inspirational Biblical thunder of Psalm 22:20 that swings like a pendulum between beloved darlings delivering souls and the deadly teeth of sin, The Power of the Dog allows straight bitterness to build its texture of smoke. You have a western that doesn’t pull a trigger to make its points. It kills without blades or bullets. Call it a woman’s touch, if you must, but that would be dismissive when you consider the source material and its notable twists.

2021, 3 STARS, ADVANCE MOVIE REVIEW, Chicago Film Festival, Home Media, Independent Film, MOVIE REVIEW, StreamingDon ShanahanNovember 27, 2021Comment

MOVIE REVIEW: Spencer

Try as she may, though, I look at the woman playing Princess Diana, even with all the clear personal commitment, and all I see is Kristen Stewart. Thanks to her own natural twitches under her blonde helmet of hair, Stewart’s same agape expressions and same exasperating line deliveries land a lip bite or two away from showing us it’s more her than who’s she playing.

2021, 3 STARS, ADVANCE MOVIE REVIEW, Chicago Film Festival, Film Festival, Independent Film, MOVIE REVIEWDon ShanahanNovember 4, 2021Comment

MOVIE REVIEW: Eternals

The grandiose convergence of mythic themes is all the talk of Eternals. It not so softly preaches the specialness of the planet and its people in the larger realm of existence where the exchange of energy at the end of one life begins another. Such heady motivations, coupled with heroism, is a lovely core away from the usual costumed good vs. evil throwdowns, but it’s very, very profuse, complete with all of the intergalactic gibberish in between.

2021, 3 STARS, ADVANCE MOVIE REVIEW, MOVIE REVIEWDon ShanahanOctober 29, 2021AMC River East 21Eternals, Chloe ZhaoComment

MOVIE REVIEW: Last Night in Soho

All of the nimbleness from swimming in time-bending nightmares gets washed away by a present with little mystery to match. It’s odd to call an Edgar Wright film somewhat slow in pacing, yet here we are feeling drag when the pizazz is either turned off or soured by the ickiness. A level of extra oomph and shock is missing for the viewer. What was sensationally painted to linger doesn’t get the fullest chance to stain and sear more than just pretty clothes.

2021, 3 STARS, ADVANCE MOVIE REVIEW, Independent Film, MOVIE REVIEWDon ShanahanOctober 28, 2021AMC River East 21Comment

MOVIE REVIEW: The Harder They Fall

Readying its eager and loose dramatic license, the opening message of The Harder They Fall begins with “While the events of this story are fictional…” and changes to proclaim “These. People. Existed.” fading in one word at a time with those table-slamming periods. Consider that an emphatic shout to be heard that is louder than any broken bone or gunshot that follows in this Netflix release. The indignation seething from this movie is warranted and gladly received.

MOVIE REVIEW: Dune

All can be asked in a simpler way. Can the melodramatic be made mythic and can the gaudy be made truly grand? Do that and you’ve got the fans and the newbies. Denis Villeneuve’s Dune moves a great many things in spectacular fashion: sand, swords, aircraft, plots, necks, eardrums, eyelids, and more. For all its triumphant fury, what Dune doesn’t move is the heart. That is the unconquered core barrier that remains unshaken. Golly, do we ever have a jaw-dropping and cold movie!

2021, 3 STARS, ADVANCE MOVIE REVIEW, Chicago Film Festival, MOVIE REVIEWDon ShanahanOctober 20, 2021Music Box TheatreComment

MOVIE REVIEW: The Last Duel

It is also through her side of the story, clearly a huge product of Holofcener’s storytelling contributions, where the historical behaviors in The Last Duel accurately yet problematically fly against our still-evolving modern attitudes. While Scott’s film may follow the charted multiple perspectives of Jager’s well-researched novel, folding its painful and triggering trauma three times makes for an exorbitant and unsettling movie experience.

MOVIE REVIEW: No Time to Die

Pushing new discipline, they realigned their creative engine to strip the rote and antiquated character’s foundation back down to its very studs. Progressive change was needed for a new era of geopolitical influences and a new leading man who favored toughness over suaveness. Cinematic dalliances that burned hot, moved with excitement, and extinguished themselves quickly were given depth that was previously rare or entirely dismissed.

2021, 4 STARS, ADVANCE MOVIE REVIEW, MOVIE REVIEWDon ShanahanOctober 5, 2021AMC River East 21James Bond, No Time to DieComment

MOVIE REVIEW: Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings

Even if the advice is only spoken for a moment amid flurries of exposition and martial arts melee, neither versions of those breaths feel wasted in this new Marvel Studios entry. And does this movie ever breathe! In this sensational origin story, we gulp and we gasp with every kinetic huff and puff of our heroes and villains embroiled in turmoil and combat. I, for one, dig that simplistic focus on the voluntary and involuntary ways Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings draws in its oxygenated energy.