Author Archives: Dann Gire

Subway train dispatcher Walter Garber (Denzel Washington) goes John McClane in the drama “The Taking of Pelham 123.” For all of its visual bombast, Hollywood action stars and updated screenplay by “L.A. Confidential” writer Brian Helgeland, “The Taking of Pelham 123” remains a passionless and shallow crime drama propped up by stilted action sequences and […]

Olivia (Yara Shahidi) shows her daddy (Eddie Murphy) a new way to season pancakes in the family comedy “Imagine That.” Apparently, the screenwriters of “Imagine That” really love the word “good.” “I’m good!” says Eddie Murphy. “Evan’s good!” says Thomas Haden Church. “You are very good!” says Martin Sheen. “You’re good!” says Yara Shahidi. The […]

Kate Churchill, a former producing director at Chicago’s Lookingglass Theatre, follows a non-religious, 29-year-old Canadian ex-journalist (Nick Rosen) around the world as he seeks enlightenment through the practice of yoga and the teachings of yoga masters. (Read more…) Now playing at the Century Centre in Chicago.

Oscar-winning director Sam Mendes directs a darkly comic, daringly detached indie art house road film starring John Krasinski (“The Office”) and Maya Rudolph (“SNL”) as a pregnant couple trying to find a place to raise a family. (Read more…) Now playing at Century Centre and River East 21 in Chicago.

Buster Keaton’s 1927 classic silent comedy will be screened at the Tivoli Theater in Downers Grove on Monday, June 15 at 7:30 p.m. The event is sponsored by the Fox Valley Chapter of the American Guild of Organists with famed organist Dennis Scott handling the Wurlitzer. Admission is $10 ($5 for students and seniors). Running […]

A quietly moving story about quietly moving on. Norwegian filmmaker Bent Hamer’s art house offering “O’Horten” is less interested in plot than in the moody visuals surrounding the retirement of a 67-year-old train engineer named Odd Horten (Bard Owe). (Read more…) Now playing at the Music Box in Chicago.

The After Hours Film Society presents Ramin Bahrani’s third feature. A Senegalese taxi driver named Solo (Souleymane Sy Savane) operates in Winston-Salem, N.C. (Read more…) Now playing at the Tivoli Theater in Downers Grove.

This would have been a review of Alex Rivera’s sci-fi drama “Sleep Dealer,” except that the distributor sent me a “screener” with a huge logo permanently embedded on the lower left of the screen, a running time-stamp on the upper right and the warning “PROPERTY OF MAYA ENTERTAINMENT. DO NOT DUPLICATE” across the middle. (Read […]

Scientist Rick Marshall (Will Ferrell) opens up a pod of creepy spiders in the fantastically juvenile comedy “Land of the Lost.” I’d say “Land of the Lost” is a sketchy, embarrassingly disjointed, monster-packed movie that sniggling junior high students would make, but that would be insulting to sniggling junior high students. This movie assumes that […]

Greek tour guide Georgia (Nia Vardalos) befriends a widower (Richard Dreyfuss) in the romantic comedy “My Life in Ruins.” “My Life in Ruins” tries oh-so-hard to replicate the magic that made Nia Vardalos’ sleeper “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” such a popular smash. That 2002 box office bolt of lightning fails to strike twice. (Read […]