Monthly Archives: November 2010

Leslie Nielsen hams it up with co-star Nicolette Sheridan during a 1996 appearance to plug the spoof “Spy Hard.” I met Leslie Nielsen in 1988 when he came to Chicago to promote his comedy feature “Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad.” “I love comedy!” he told me. “I love being an idiot!” If […]

By any measure, Ruth Gruber is a most remarkable woman. She wanted to get a closer look at Adolf Hitler, so she pretended to be a German citizen so she could sit in the area closest to Der Fuhrer. At 15, she was accepted at New York University. At 20, she became the youngest student […]

Doug (James Gandolfini), a plumbing guy from Indiana, takes a New Orleans stripper (Kristen Stewart) under his Midwestern wing in Jake Scott’s slow, big-hearted “Welcome to the Rileys.” This might well be the closest thing we get to an actual Christmas movie this holiday season. Jake Scott’s family crisis drama “Welcome to the Rileys” boasts […]

Jamie (Jake Gyllenhaal) falls for Maggie (Anne Hathaway) in “Love and Other Drugs.” Edward Zwick’s romantic drama “Love and Other Drugs” comes in three main parts: a torrid love affair, the explosive 1996 success of a new drug called Viagra, and a man’s search for a cure to his lover’s degenerative disease. These disparate segments […]

Rapunzel (voiced by Mandy Moore) captures a good-hearted thief named Flynn (voiced by Zachary Levi) in “Tangled.” Where Walt Disney/Pixar’s “Toy Story 3” sketched all-too human characters in an adult story about mortality and the unstoppable march of time, “Tangled” returns to classic Disney princess tales for kids, with the characters filtered through a “Shrek” […]

Ali (Christine Aguilera) is a small-town girl whose pipes and curves revive a dying nightclub in “Burlesque.” Writer/director Steve Antin wants desperately to be Bob Fosse in his brassy, sassy musical “Burlesque,” but the laughably cliché dialogue and shallow characters sink any chance that audiences will mistake his film for Fosse’s Oscar-winning “Cabaret.” We never […]

John Brennan (Russell Crowe) springs his convicted murderer wife (Elizabeth Banks) from the big house in Pittsburgh during “The Next Three Days.” The most significant contribution of Paul Haggis’ lengthy and occasionally intense crime drama “The Next Three Days” could be the elevation of community college literature professors to the hallowed ranks of action heroes. […]

Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe) is on a quest for hidden pieces of Voldemort’s soul in “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1.” Maybe Harry Potter could cast a magic spell over us before we see his new movie. He could point his magic wand and utter an incantation like “NoDozeium Offem.” Or “RedBullium Energizus.” […]

Engineer Frank Barnes (Denzel Washington) takes on the dangerous job of trying to stop the “Unstoppable” in Tony Scott’s new action-thriller. Seriously, how threatening and scary can a big, unmanned choo-choo be? Let yardmaster Connie Hooper answer that one. “A missile the size of the Chrysler Building!” she screeches. OK. Now that sounds scary. Tony […]

James Franco stars as a climber stuck in the Utah desert in Danny Boyle’s captivating drama “127 Hours.” Several viewers keeled over while watching Danny Boyle’s fact-based drama at its Telluride Film Festival premiere earlier this year. That’s actually a testimonial for Boyle’s captivating survival movie and for James Franco’s phenomenal performance as an adrenaline […]