If you’ve ever found yourself caught up in a game of Three Card Monte, you’ll have some idea of what sitting through John Hillcoat’s Triple 9 is like. Simultaneously over-plotted yet full of holes, the director has assembled a first-rate cast that does their best to bring a degree of emotional integrity to the film […]
Chuck Koplinski
Writing for Illinois Times since 1998, Chuck Koplinski is a member of the Critic's Choice Association, the Chicago Film Critics Association and a contributor to Rotten Tomatoes. He appears on WCIA-TV twice a week to review current releases and, no matter what anyone says, thinks Tom Cruise's version of The Mummy is a woefully underrated film.
Posted inArts & Culture
Haunting Witch utilizes high-end horror
Anya Taylor-Joy as Thomasin in The Witch. PHOTO COURTESY A24 Likely to disappoint hardcore horror fans, Robert Eggers’ The Witch is a thinking-person’s fright flick, a work that has more to do with the stories of Nathaniel Hawthorne than anything that might have happened in the Blair Woods. There’s little in the way of gore […]
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Oscar Nominated Live Action Short Films
Ave Maria (Palestine/France/Germany) – Taking place on Palestine’s West Bank, a Israeli family’s car runs off the road and crashes into a convent where five nuns who have taken a vow of silence reside. What with the Sabbath having just come into effect, the members of the family are unable to use the phone to […]
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Small but mighty
The nominees for the Oscar for Best Animated Short are (clockwise from upper left) “Bear Story,” “We Can’t Live without Cosmos,” “World of Tomorrow,” “Prologue,” and “Sanjay’s Super Team.” For the last ten years, the Oscar Nominated Short Films have been packaged and released to select theaters around the country. What began as an experiment […]
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Coens’ Caesar gently skewers Hollywood
Josh Brolin as Eddie Mannix in Hail, Caesar. PHOTO COURTESY UNIVERSAL PICTURES The great thing about the Coen brothers’ films is that they not only entertain but challenge their audience, something wholly unique and altogether welcome where today’s American movies are concerned. Their latest, Hail, Caesar, is a case in point. On the surface it […]
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Sincerity keeps Hours afloat
Casey Affleck in The Finest Hours. There’s something charming and reassuring about the old-fashioned quality of Craig Gillespie’s The Finest Hours, a throwback to movies of yesterday. It has no problem putting not one but two solid, erstwhile heroes front and center, drawing on untold reserves of courage to conquer seemingly insurmountable problems. There’s also […]
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Panda is still vibrant, smart third time around
A scene from Kung Fu Panda 3. PHOTO COURTESY DREAMWORKS PICTURES By the time the third entry in most film franchises is released, much of what made the movies in question distinctive and fresh has gone by the wayside. There’s a labored quality to what’s on the screen, and what was once inspired has become […]
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“Ride Along 2” Fires Nothing but Blanks
There’s a moment in the needless but seemingly obligatory Ride Along 2 in which everything clicks. Reluctant partners and pending brothers-in-law James (Ice Cube) and Ben (Kevin Hart) are interrogating a beautiful young woman, trying to find out where her ne’er-do-well boyfriend might be. With the suspected perp’s cellphone in hand, Ben goes through the […]
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Carol: A modern take on yesterday’s oppression
Rooney Mara as Therese Belivet and Cate Blanchett as Carol Aird in Carol. In adapting Patricia Highsmith’s novel The Price of Salt, director Todd Haynes takes the refreshing approach of looking at the era of repression that was the 1950s through a modern lens. Rather than give us a Douglas Sirk-like exercise, much as he […]
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Stunted Forest fails to thrill
Yukiyoshi Ozama, Natalie Dormer and Taylor Kinney in The Forest. PHOTO COURTESY GRAMERCY PICTURES Not sure why early January has become the time for low-budget horror films to be released, but it’s become a bit of a tradition, at least where the last five years are concerned. And while quality is not always guaranteed, the […]
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Thrills aplenty but Logic AWOL in “Point Break”
Surprisingly, there’s something of an intriguing story propelling Ericson Core’s remake of Kathryn Bigelow’s cult action flick Point Break, a movie that, despite it’s many fans, isn’t above an update or two what with the many technological advances that have occurred since its release in 1991 (yes, it’s been that long.). Slickly made and featuring […]
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The 10 best movies of a so-so year
I’ve seen a few movies in my time, so it’s very possible that a sense of burnout has set in. Perhaps that’s why most of the cinematic fare of 2015 left me with a feeling of “Meh” rather than elation or wonder. Were there good movies? Yes, plenty of them. Were there great movies? Very […]
