What makes Melissa McCarthy’s such an effective comedienne is her two-pronged attack where getting laughs are concerned. One the one hand, she can be the sweet, not-so-confident bumbler who never met a social situation she couldn’t botch, whose good intentions fail to hide the fact that she’s the sort of woman who’ll always be a […]
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.
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Business as usual for entertaining Entourage
PHOTO BY CLAUDETTE BARIUS Kevin Connolly, Jerry Ferrara, Adrian Grenier and Kevin Dillon in Entourage. Where Doug Ellin’s film adaptation of Entourage is concerned, it’s more of the same for Vincent Chase and his three faithful cohorts as they continue their Hollywood misadventures. And as well-done as the HBO series was during its eight-year run, […]
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Aloha: Say hello to tragedy
Bradley Cooper as Brian Gilcrest, Emma Stone as Allison Ng and Rachel McAdams as Tracy Woodside in Aloha. PHOTO COURTESY Columbia Pictures Well, it certainly looked good on paper. With a script and direction by Cameron Crowe (Jerry Maguire) and a cast that features hot as napalm Bradley Cooper as well as Emma Stone, Rachel […]
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Madding a glorious, romantic throwback
Carey Mulligan in Far from the Madding Crowd. Unabashedly romantic, sumptuously shot and wonderfully acted, Thomas Vinterberg’s adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s Far from the Madding Crowd is the perfect anecdote for the summer movie overload. (Yes, I know the season has just begun, but I’m feeling special effects weary already.) This is the sort of […]
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Summer Movie Preview 2015
It’s summertime and at the movies that means two things – superheroes and sequels. Of the mainstream films being released between June and Aug., more than one-third will be followups, TV takeoffs or tales featuring meta-humans. Most of the rest will be comedies, animated features, horror flicks and teen movies. However, each summer season has […]
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“Tomorrowland’s” Good Intentions Can’t Overcome Faulty Script
If good intentions were all that was necessary in making a good movie, Brad Bird’s “Tomorrowland” would be considered an instant classic. As written by Damon Lindelof and the director, the film is an earnest plea for the renewal of the sort of national optimism that fueled the space race, an unabashedly optimistic look at […]
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“Poltergeist” a Worthy Update of Horror Classic
Unlike the unwanted, supernatural characters at its core, director Gil Kenan’s Poltergeist does not overstay its welcome. Playing somewhat like a Cliff’s Notes version of the Tobe Hooper/Steven Spielberg classic, this re-do recreates, and sometimes improves upon, the many iconic moments from the 1982 feature, wasting little time to deliver one round after another of […]
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Ferocious Fury Road a grand vehicular opera
Tom Hardy as Max and Charlize Theron stars as Furiosa in Mad Max: Fury Road. Photo by Warner Bros. Pictures Like a Road Runner cartoon on steroids – replete with gizmos that surely came from ACME, Inc. – George Miller’s Mad Max: Fury Road is a glorious ode to vehicular destruction, outdoing the Fast and […]
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Schwarzenegger, Breslin Strive to Bring Life to “Maggie”
Since giving up on California politics, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s return to the big screen has failed to generate the sort of box office success his earlier work had. Cameos in Sylvester Stallone’s geriatric action franchise The Expendables and features such as The Last Stand and Escape Plan failed to break any new ground where his persona […]
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Pursuit leads to disaster
Reese Witherspoon as Cooper in Hot Pursuit. PHOTO BY SAM EMERSON/ WARNER BROS. PICTURES The old adage is that “Dying is easy. Comedy is hard,” and that’s never been more evident than while watching Hot Pursuit, an agonizingly bad movie that features Reese Witherspoon and Sofia Vergara. From past work, we know that both of […]
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Daring “D Train” Worth the Ride
During its first weekend in release, Andrew Mogel and Jarrad Paul’s The D Train made $447, 524 at 1,009 locations. That breaks down to $444 per screen. This is no surprise as the film contains no superheroes or aliens and deals with flawed characters wrestling with genuine emotional issues. Yep, box office poison and yet […]
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Sleek Machina hindered by rusty plot
Domhnall Gleeson as Caleb, Alicia Vikander as Ava and Oscar Isaac as Nathan in Ex Machina. PHOTO COURTESY A24 Alex Garland’s Ex Machina is a film that revolves around appearances, all of them deceptive. But none more than the movie itself, as its promise of the new is nothing but a lie. Sporting a high-tech […]
