The After Hours Film Society presents “The Beaches of Agnes,” by 81-year-old French filmmaker Agnes Varda. It’s an autobiographical portrait of a self-described forager, searching the world for images that capture her fancy. See After Hours Film Society for more details.
Cost: $9.00 (Members $5.00)
Monday, November 23, 7:30pm
Tivoli Theater
5021 Highland Ave.
Downers Grove
![Ben Foster in "The Messenger"](http://i.dailyherald.com/stories/213/213842.jpg "Ben Foster in "The Messenger\"")
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Casualty-notification officer Will Montgomery (Ben Foster) delivers devastating news to families of fallen soldiers in “The Messenger.” |
They’re called casualty-notification officers.
Their mission is to go to the homes of fallen soldiers to notify their NOK (next-of-kin) of their deaths in the line of duty. It’s a terrible job, and in Oren Moverman’s painfully intimate, exquisitely detailed “The Messenger,” Woody Harrelson and Ben Foster bring strength, pain, loneliness, honor and a rainbow of other conflicting qualities to their roles as military messengers of doom.
Captain Tony Stone (Harrelson) has been married three times, twice to the same woman. Staff Sergeant Will Montgomery (Foster) has no family or personal commitments.
They don’t really like each other at first. But they begrudgingly find common ground as they carry out their mission in a series of masterfully executed vignettes that tell us everything we need to know about the families of the fallen within 30 seconds of meeting them. (Read more…)Rated: R (language, sexual situations, nudity). 105 minutes.
Opens Thursday, November 19 at the Music Box in Chicago.
The Elk Grove Theatres, part of the Classic Cinemas dynasty in the Chicago area, Wednesday will officially open four new auditoriums, bringing its theater count to 10. The new rooms will feature stadium seating, and the seats in all 10 auditoriums have already been upgraded to Carrera leather. (Read more…)
Hollywood’s trade publication Variety has already dismissed the upcoming holiday movie season as “playing it safe” with “almost the same number of major releases, the usual number of Christmas Day launches, the same mix of prestige items and popcorn fare” as last year.
To a bean-counter maybe.
If box office receipts are all that matter, then this year’s movie crop probably doesn’t look that promising, outside of James Cameron’s loudly tub-thumped $225 million, 3-D science-fiction thriller “Avatar,” going filmo-a-filmo against “2012” for the special effects audience.
But I think the season offers a very exciting mix of movies, and it has nothing to do with marketing. (Read more…)
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Bella (Kristen Stewart) is torn – metaphorically speaking – between a vampire (Robert Pattinson) and an American Indian werewolf (Taylor Lautner) in “The Twilight Saga: New Moon.” |
You gotta feel sorry for Bella Swan.
First, her vampire boyfriend disses her. (“You don’t belong in my world, Bella!” he says.)
Then, her werewolf boyfriend pushes her away. (“I’m not good!” he cries, “I used to be a good kid. Not anymore!”)
Many times Bella tries to kiss them, individually, of course. But every time, they’re either interrupted, or the guy wimps out. There haven’t been this many lips quivering in anticipation since the opening of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.”
“The Twilight Saga: New Moon” takes up where 2008’s “Twilight” left off after Bella (Kristen Stewart) fell for a mysterious teen named Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson) with sideburns and luminous skin.
Edward the vampire falls so hard for the human Bella that he announces in “New Moon” he must leave her to save her, especially after a fellow vampire tries to kill and eat her during her 18th birthday party at the Cullen house.
Ed departs, and Bella falls into a deep depression for the remainder of the year, devolving into a basket case of repetitious ticks and sighs with stringy hair and perfectly shaped stiletto eyebrows.
She befriends a 16-year-old local Native American boy named Jake Black (Taylor Lautner), whose physique resembles a young Lou Ferrigno, only not green. “You’re buff!” Bella blurts with feminine appreciation.
She falls for the younger Jake. Then he gets a tattoo and hangs out in the rain with hunky young Native American guys who hate shirts and long pants. They turn out to be unconvincing, poorly computer-animated werewolves, and they really hate bloodsuckers. (Read more…)
If you’ve never seen “The Wizard of Oz” on the big screen, now’s your chance. To celebrate the film’s 70th anniversary, “Oz” returns to local theaters for one night only, 6:30 p.m. on Tuesday, November 17. For theaters, check the Daily Herald movie ads or log on to FathomEvents.com. Or you can follow the yellow you-know-what.
Cost: $10.00
Go to FathomEvents.com for details.
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Norman Reedus and Sean Patrick Flanery reprise their roles as the vigilante killers in “The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day.” |
Troy Duffy’s long-awaited sequel, “Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day,” concocts the same insane blend of gun fetish, inverted religious invocations, bloody killings, giddy stunts, cool sunglasses and ridiculous tattoos as his comical cult action thriller “Boondock Saints” did back in 1999.
Hard-core fans of the original will be in boondock heaven. Everyone else might think of a hotter location.
The execution of a Boston priest brings back the fraternal twin vigilante killers Connor and Murphy MacManus (original stars Sean Patrick Flanery and Norman Reedus), who’ve been on the lam for eight years in Ireland with their gun-toting Poppa (Billy Connolly).
The local mob (look for a crazed, overacting Judd Nelson) trembles with the thought the Boondock Saints have returned to Beantown to start knocking off its members, again.
Taking over for Willem Dafoe’s investigator, FBI Agent Eunice Bloom (a Southern-drawlin’ “Dexter” star Julie Benz) struts into town with stiletto heels and powers of deduction that a “CSI” cast would envy. She has a not-so-hidden agenda in a convoluted plot that has the twins searching for a mysterious mob kingpin called “The Roman” (played by a secret guest star).
There’s never a dull moment in “Boondock Saints II,” and no doubt Duffy’s mix of testosterone, guns and action will find its intended audience. (Read more…)Rated: R (violence, nudity, language). 117 minutes.
Opens Friday, November 13 at local theaters.
Don’t worry if you haven’t seen the horror hit “Paranormal Activity.” I will not reveal the ending here.
However, I will say that I hated the last 15 seconds, because the cheesy jolt ending was completely out of sync with the well-mounted. “Blair Witch”-like realism of the movie up to that moment.
The 2007 movie, which cost a mere $11,000, had an original ending involving cops and a shooting. (You can see it by Googling “Paranormal Activity endings” and selecting any of the Web items.) I didn’t particularly like that one.
But I did think a third ending would have been the best. In it, demonically possessed Katie (Katie Featherston) kills her boyfriend Micah (Micah Sloat) off-screen, then walks into the bedroom, looks at the camera, then calmly cuts her throat.
Gruesome and chilling? Exactly.
But distribution honchos wanted the current ending, because it gives audiences a cheap thrill, which translates (they think) into a bigger box office take. (Read more…)
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In the sequel “Twilight Saga: New Moon,” actor Kellan Lutz plays vampire Emmett Cullen to Nikki Reed’s Rosalie Hale. |
If you don’t know who Kellan Lutz is yet, you’re not a screaming fan of last year’s hit vampire movie “Twilight.”
Lutz is the 24-year-old South Dakota-born actor who plays Emmett Cullen, one of the vampire siblings of Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson), the hunky romantic interest of human teenager Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart).
The “Twilight” sequel “New Moon” opens next Thursday, and unless you’ve been hiding in a coffin for two years, you already know that.
I saw down with Lutz, a physical actor in the Steve McQueen mold, to talk about vampires and taking on the new Freddy Krueger.
How do you approach playing an old vampire playing a human teen.
“It’s really unique that Stephenie Meyer created vampires who are trying to portray and act like humans,” Lutz said. “We found it difficult in the cast to wear the contacts and to show emotion. It’s kind of hard to do that, especially when you can’t really see the person right in front of you so clearly. It’s definitely tough to move like a vampire.”
What’s so different about the Cullen vampires?
“We’re not trying to show off that we’re vampires, or that we have special skills, or that we’re invincible,” Lutz replied. “We’re trying to portray humans, but we’re vampires who’ve lived hundreds of years. We try to take that into account with the wardrobe we wear, how we move, how we speak. It’s a lot to do.
“We’re not just playing vampires who are 20 years old. We’re playing vampires who are hundreds of years old portraying a 20-year-old human, or teenage vampires. It’s definitely a unique spin on trying to be human and trying to fit.” (Read more…)
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Baby sitter Samantha (Jocelin Donahue) prepares for the worst in the self-descriptive thriller “The House of the Devil.” |
Samantha, the cute college student, takes a baby-sitting job at a creepy old Victorian house in the boonies, and when she arrives, discovers the weird couple living there doesn’t even have a baby.
Run, Samantha!
The lady of the house tells Samantha she’s just been checking her furs in the basement. But Sam finds the furs in a closet on the second floor.
Run, Samantha! Run!
In an upstairs bathroom, Sam discovers huge chunks of lopped-off hair in a drain.
Samantha, get your tushie outta that house and run!
Part of the fun of watching “The House of the Devil” comes from noticing the signs screaming “Danger!” to a well-paid baby sitter who doesn’t really want to see them.
The title “The House of the Devil” pretty much tells you all you need to know about this low-budget, delayed-fuse horror film by writer/director/editor Ti West, who does a reasonably good job of recreating the look and feel of vintage terror tales from the 1980s, when this movie is set.
This, although ’80s horror was dominated by cheap mad slasher epics inspired by “Friday the 13th” rather than diabolic Satanist thrillers that hailed mostly from the 1970s. (1968’s “Rosemary’s Baby” leads the pack, which includes “Daughters of Satan,” “Race With the Devil,” “The Omen,” plus others.) (Read more…)