Take away every rooted piece of cheesy disconnect and disdain you have calcified in your hearts and minds for whatever bloated quality you remember or assigned to the six-film "Rocky" series and shelf it immediately. The spin-off film "Creed" is a new tangent that gracefully and respectfully builds from the nostalgic anchor that comes with the "Rocky" territory, but grows to never be bound by that history for a second. Ryan Coogler's film successfully strives to be its own bold and rousing saga fitting of the shared connection.
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Tom Hooper's new film, "The Danish Girl" based on the fictionalized account of Lili Elbe, spearheads what has been a banner 2015 year for LGBT film subjects. This a film not about a character looking for love. All that person wants is to be the truest version of themselves on the inside in a time where what that means on the outside would not be accepted publicly. The philosophy of it all brings us back to Ralph Waldo Emerson when he said, "What lies behind you and what lies in front of you, pales in comparison to what lies inside of you." "The Danish Girl" delivers a story that matches the matter of Emerson's thoughts on the past, future, and inside.
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51st Chicago International Film Festival OUT-Look Special Presentation
"Carol," among many other superlatives, is a film completely driven by the weight of reason and accountability within its female lead characters. Played by Oscar winner Cate Blanchett and Oscar nominee Rooney Mara, we witness two women formulating the capacity to reason with the undeniable truths they find in their hearts while understanding the ramifications and accountability acting on those feelings would result in as women of the pre-feminist 1950s. "Carol" is a fascinating and empowering love story, no matter what label you associate for your identity or disposition.
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With all honesty, this writer has never been a fan of "The Hunger Games." Dystopian worlds and brassy films about them are always fascinating, but kids-killing-kids-for-sport isn't a cup of tea fitting of endorsement. It is easy to be intrigued but admittedly hard to be entertained by such a thing. With the profit-milking complete from "Part 1" last November, "The Hunger Games: Mockingjay- Part 2" ties together its loose ends with reasonable quality. To this critic, the series has always come down to your tolerance of overwrought melodrama, your acceptance of illogical hang-ups, and your stomach for grim fictionalized massacre with a high body count being pushed on kids. It's hard to be a fan of that bleakness.
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51st Chicago International Film Festival U.S. Indies special presentation
Much of the resisted maturation journey playing out for the title character in Josh Mond's "James White" feels petulant and half-hearted, much like the character himself. We learn that effort is by design because he is a character that needs fixing. The only way James White can mature is through bottoming out and finding emotion in places other than himself. "James White" is a difficult and unflinching look at both terminal illness and wasting one's life on selfish excesses.
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51st Chicago International Film Festival Highlight special presentation
In the hands of someone more bombastic, the finished product of "The 33" would be far more cliche and erroneously over-dramatized. Director Patricia Riggen certainly still employs a plentiful creative license to dramatize and compress this trauma into two hours, but the lionizing on one end and the vilifying on the other is remarkably low. "The 33" is a winning survival film where the people come before the stereotypes and theatrics.
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As busy I get from time to time, I find that I can't see every movie under the sun, leaving my friends and colleagues to fill in the blanks for me. As poetically as I think I wax about movies on this website as a wannabe critic, sometimes a simple sentence or two from a friend says it all. Sometimes, it inspires me to see the movie too and get back to being my circle's go-to movie guy. Sometimes, they save me $9 and you 800+ words of blathering. In a new review series, I'm opening my site to friend submissions for quick-hit movie reviews. Here is the Stark family with "The Peanuts Movie."
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The extraordinary new film "Spotlight" answers the motivating historical benchmark set by "All the President's Men" nearly four decades ago to make a truly transcendent film about real print journalism and true history. Chronicling another Pulitizer Prize-winning case of investigative journalism, director Tom McCarthy's fifth directorial effort is nothing short of a new masterpiece. "Spotlight" is, far and away, the best film about the media since Clooney's "Good Night and Good Luck" and the best about print journalism since Pakula's landmark classic. This film will make people rewrite "best of" lists.
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French filmmaker Gaspar Noe's new film, "Love," demands audience acceptance of seeing art in the explicitness of sex. When you bring up the idea of explicit sex, the immediate label is "pornography." Lead by trio of unknown leads and shot in exploitative 3D, "Love" is going to have a hard time (go ahead and start inserting "that's what she said" at every opportunity) shaking that label of "pornography" in favor of "art."
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"Brooklyn" is an forthright, approachable, and esteemed historical drama where the dignity and honesty soar to heavenly heights to shine on the plights of love and independence. This tremendous film nestles a powerful love triangle within a touching immigrant and independent woman's saga from the 1950s. More than just being some high-end chick flick, "Brooklyn" stands as one of the finest films of the year and an immediate Oscar contender.
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With the arrival of "Spectre" for Daniel Craig's fourth outing as 007 and the returning follow-up of Academy Award-winning director Sam Mendes, questions arise to the notion of raised and renewed expectations. How do you top "Skyfall?" How do you improve or follow a game changer like that? The first answer is you can't. The best this film can do is continue the momentum and build to the next game changer. "Spectre" stands as exactly that precise first step down from a summit on its way to find the next mountain and next great challenge.
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