Coming of Age: In “Flipped,” Rob Reiner makes a movie out of time
RECOMMENDED By Ray Pride I went into Rob Reiner’s “Flipped” fearing a coming-of-age romantic comedy that would live up to Roger Ebert’s notorious pan of the director’s “North”: “I hated this movie....
View ArticleReview: Hitler: A Film From Germany
RECOMMENDED When Francis Coppola “presented” Hans-Jürgen Syberberg’s mammoth, 442-minute 1977 “Hitler: A Film From Germany,” roadshow-like limited runs were the rule, and Coppola retitled the film “Our...
View ArticlePreview: Chicago International Film Festival, Week Two
The second week of the 46th Chicago International Film Festival includes Chicago premieres of movies opening in the coming weeks, including Danny Boyle’s “127 Hours,” Doug Liman’s Valerie Plame Wilson...
View ArticleTruth Be Told: The fractures in fact and fiction
By Ray Pride George Hickenlooper’s death Saturday at the age of 47 ended a career that more and more typifies how curious, ambitious filmmakers are keeping their line of business alive in a moment of...
View ArticleGo Western: Fill those seats at “True Grit,” you S.O.B.
By Martin Northway Western movies were once as common as today’s Bourne-type thrillers and as ubiquitous on television as modern reality programming. In my youth they were part of my generation’s...
View ArticleSomething to Do: The undulating poetry of Godard’s “Every Man”
By Ray Pride Contrails crosshatch and feather a deep blue sky to the sound of planes. A camera pointed upward, soon to come to earth to trace how the lives of three adults’ lives criss-cross. Shocking...
View ArticleYou, Valentine: Tangling with young women in the movies
By Ray Pride What’s in a title? While Oscar contenders linger in the theaters, “Rapunzel” is only a couple of weeks away from grossing over $200,000,000 in the U.S. and Canada. Oh, wait. It’s...
View ArticleReview: Transformers Dark Of The Moon
All Michael Bay’s “Transformers” in 3D is missing is a 40. (Take a 40, please.) Robustly cynical, “Transformers: Dark Of The Moon,” credited to screenwriter Ehren Kruger (“Scream 3,” “The Ring Two,”...
View ArticleReview: John Carter
Johnny Reb finds he belongs on Planet Red. Andrew Stanton’s most peculiar “John Carter,” which was produced as “John Carter of Mars,” and appears as the film’s end title, is a boy’s dream story come...
View ArticleStarting The Fire: The Reel World of “The Dark Knight Rises”
By Ray Pride The first frames of “The Dark Knight Rises,” my eyes tear up: It’s film. It’s celluloid. It’s huge. This is one of the marvels of Christopher Nolan’s 164-minute conclusion to his Batman...
View ArticleRoger Ebert, Newspaperman: 1942-2013
By Ray Pride EVERYTHING THAT ROGER EBERT WAS, was a newspaperman, and was because he was a newspaperman. Ink, and then film, and then ink about film. That would include appreciating the movement of...
View ArticleMoments for Lifetimes: Ebertfest Without Ebert
By Ray Pride “Quality over quantity,” Roger Ebert wrote to me when he’d just signed onto Twitter, seeing how much I posted on any given day. But soon after, he was furnishing the Internet with his own...
View ArticleReview: The Great Gatsby
RECOMMENDED I never expected Baz Luhrmann’s “The Great Gatsby” to feel understated, but it’s almost demure at times. While busy and jumped-up, it’s as much about trappings of luxe, the secret life of...
View ArticleReview: The Canyons
“Who’s really happy? Tell me.” As a glimpse of where the feature-length narrative industry lies in the moment, there’s modest pathos underlying “The Canyons,” directed by Paul Schrader from a script by...
View ArticleReview: Laurence Anyways
RECOMMENDED “Laurence Anyways” is drenching melodrama, reckless, ravishing. Actor-writer-director Xavier Dolan has shot a fourth feature since, and he’s still only twenty-four. His style, to some, may...
View ArticleReview: Alphaville
RECOMMENDED (A Strange Adventure of Lemmy Caution) Fifty shades of grayscale: Jean-Luc Godard’s 1965 “Alphaville” is eternally nouveau, fifty years passé. One of his most entertaining movies is also...
View ArticleReview: Fading Gigolo
“Fading Gigolo” is exceedingly odd and a discomfortingly inauthentic comedy of sorts from writer-director John Turturro, about a florist, Fioravante (Turturro) who becomes a “ho” with the encouraging...
View ArticleReview: Transformers Dark Of The Moon
All Michael Bay’s “Transformers” in 3D is missing is a 40. (Take a 40, please.) Robustly cynical, “Transformers: Dark Of The Moon,” credited to screenwriter Ehren Kruger (“Scream 3,” “The Ring Two,”...
View ArticleReview: John Carter
Johnny Reb finds he belongs on Planet Red. Andrew Stanton’s most peculiar “John Carter,” which was produced as “John Carter of Mars,” and appears as the film’s end title, is a boy’s dream story come...
View ArticleStarting The Fire: The Reel World of “The Dark Knight Rises”
By Ray Pride The first frames of “The Dark Knight Rises,” my eyes tear up: It’s film. It’s celluloid. It’s huge. This is one of the marvels of Christopher Nolan’s 164-minute conclusion to his Batman...
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