Chicago Newcity | Movies+TV | AAN.org

'Cloverfield''s 9/11 Infelicitiesnew

Last weekend's $46-million top-grosser essentially says that its characters and, by extension, its paying audience, deserves to be killed: New Yorkers, Americans, Abrams' target demographic. I never thought I would see a movie made in the United States that was so gung-ho about 9/11.

Chicago Newcity | Ray Pride | 01-23-2008 | Reviews

Tags: Cloverfield, Matt Reeves

Kicking 'The Bucket List'new

Rob Reiner does something almost unthinkable: he makes Jack Nicholson painful to watch.

Chicago Newcity | Ray Pride | 01-09-2008 | Reviews

Tags: Rob Reiner, The Bucket List

Savage Gracenew

Note-perfect, Tamara Jenkins' The Savages puts all too much American moviemaking to shame.

Chicago Newcity | Ray Pride | 12-19-2007 | Reviews

Tags: Tamara Jenkins, The Savages

Holiday Movies 2007new

Dissecting this season's new releases.

Chicago Newcity | Ray Pride | 12-19-2007 | Movies

$128 Million Later: Will Smith is the Last Movie Star on Earthnew

The exteriors are stunning, and sadly, an insistent, ongoing metaphor for the script's inability to suggest much interior life.

Chicago Newcity | Ray Pride | 12-12-2007 | Reviews

Tags: Francis Lawrence, I Am Legend

The Icy Beauty of 'Atonement'new

There's much to admire in the glassy expanses of this film, yet much that's puzzling as well.

Chicago Newcity | Ray Pride | 12-05-2007 | Reviews

Tags: Atonement, Joe Wright

Crispin Hellion Glover's Strange Nocturnal Emissionsnew

Working with cash banked from playing an eccentric baddie in Charlie's Angels, Glover produced and directed a feature from a perspective no one else would likely ever consider.

Chicago Newcity | Ray Pride | 11-28-2007 | Reviews

Tags: Crispin Hellion Glover, It Is Fine! EVERYTHING IS FINE.

Testing the Limits of Artistic Vision in 'Margot'new

Baumbach fifth feature follows in terse, cutting strokes a short-story writer Margot Zeller with teenage son in tow to the wedding of her estranged sister.

Chicago Newcity | Ray Pride | 11-21-2007 | Reviews

Tags: Margot at the Wedding, Noah Baumbach

The Freewheelin' Todd Haynes' 'I'm Not There'new

Hoping to write about Todd Haynes' new not-a-biopic of Bob Dylan almost feels like trying to write footnotes to footnotes, a circular exercise that would wind even the fabulist likes of Jorge Luis Borges.

Chicago Newcity | Ray Pride | 11-14-2007 | Reviews

Tags: I'm Not There, Todd Haynes

The Coen and Cormac Frontier in 'No Country for Old Men'new

The casting is superb, but the notes each of the actors are allowed to search out and discover are what make No Country For Old Men at least within a well-hurled rock's throw of a "masterpiece" as some writers have already gratefully dubbed this glory of pearlescent carborundum.

Chicago Newcity | Ray Pride | 11-07-2007 | Reviews

Tags: Joel and Ethan Coen, No Country For Old Men