Bruce Dern as Woody Grant and Will Forte as David Grant in Nebraska. PHOTO COURTESY PARAMOUNT VANTAGE’S NEBRASKA Director Alexander Payne knows that it’s hard to find fulfillment in what Hollywood pejoratively refers to as the “flyover states” – that vast part of the country that stretches from east to west from Missouri to Utah […]
film
Posted inArts & Culture
Mitty a magical tribute to the possible
Ben Stiller While I would hardly call it cutting edge cinema, Ben Stiller’s The Secret Life of Walter Mitty is a rather risky proposition in this day and age. As the poet, philosopher and sports agent Jerry Maguire once said, “We live in a cynical world,” and as such we’re always on guard, weary of […]
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Squad a pretender in the gangster genre
While director Ruben Fleischer’s Gangster Squad lets us know that it’s “inspired by a true story,” it becomes clear early on that it’s much more interested in the artifice of crime films rather than the hardboiled facts. To be sure, it’s a good-looking movie as the clothes, cars and locations all look of the post-WW […]
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Linings Cooper, Lawrence shine
Pat Jr. (Bradley Cooper) has a lot on his mind. His mother Delores (Jacki Weaver) has just sprung him from a mental institution after an eight-month stay. Seems, at home he had walked in on his wife Nikki (Brea Bee) and a co-worker taking a shower and nearly beat the guy to death. Well, can […]
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Acts of kindness buoy a harrowing Impossible
Director Juan Antonio Bayona puts us through the wringer with The Impossible, a harrowing film recounting one family’s improbable survival of the 2004 tsunami that occurred in the Indian Ocean. Employing cutting-edge special effects and an unflinching approach toward recreating the severity of the disaster which claimed an estimated 230,000 lives and displaced 1.7 million […]
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Land doesn’t fulfill promise
While there’s never any doubt that Gus Van Sant’s Promised Land was made with the best of intentions, something goes slightly awry in the execution of this environmental awareness movie. Working from a screenplay by Matt Damon and John Krasinski (The Office), which was based on a story by Dave Eggers, the film sets out […]
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Cruise at home in Reacher
In light of recent events, it’s rather difficult watching the opening of Tom Cruise’s Jack Reacher as a sniper picks off five innocent victims from a distance. I wouldn’t say the scene is done in a casual or callous way. At least until our collective sense of denial kicks in or memory fades, the lens […]
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Wreck-it Ralph’s clever odyssey
My father always used to say that he hated taking us to Disney animated films, yet I remember him being the one who laughed the most at what was happening on the screen. Of course, that’s the secret where making a full-length cartoon is concerned – you need to appeal not only to the kids […]
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Hitchcock too fractured
Much like the bathroom at the Bates Motel where Marion Crane met her untimely death, Sacha Gervasi’s Hitchcock is a bit of a mess. Attempting to tell the story about the making of one of the most notorious films of all time, while psychoanalyzing its director, is an intriguing story on paper. Not so in […]
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Softly a metaphor for our times
More like The Sopranos in tone and feel than Pulp Fiction, what with its lack of self-aware irony, Andrew Dominik’s Killing Them Softly has more than a few axes to grind. Intent on throwing the last two administrations under the bus for their causing and mishandling of the 2008 economic collapse, the writer/director uses the […]
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Hollywood, Illinois
Springfield may not be the first place people think about when imagining locations to shoot movies or TV shows. But thanks to the efforts of one local group, this city and the central Illinois region have earned a reputation as a great place to film and find professional talent. Dean Williams helped start the Central […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Next to godliness
Peter Sellars, renowned opera, theater and film director whose opera Hercules opened in Chicago to rave reviews, speaks to the Dominican Institute for the Arts, a group of artists from the United States, England, Argentina and South Africa, whose annual meeting is in Springfield this year. The DIA invites you to join them for two […]
