GireWire

Muckraker doc maker Michael Moore gets a cold greeting from a guard at GM headquarters in “Capitalism: A Love Story.”

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“I refuse to live in a country like this!” Michael Moore declares, “and I’m not leaving!”

In Moore’s ingeniously provocative, amusingly muckraking, obnoxiously hilarious, shamelessly showboating doc “Capitalism: A Love Story,” the filmmaker takes on the dark side of America’s financial force with pugnacious effrontery.

This movie is so wild and over-the-top in its denunciation of the evils of capitalism that it stands to become a fiscal version of “Reefer Madness.”

Moore tackles the outrageous acts of banks bailed out by taxpayers. He reveals how big companies secretly buy life insurance on their employees, so companies collect a bonus when a worker gets killed or terminally ill.

“Capitalism” doesn’t break much new ground in Mooreland. It’s another anger-powered rant at the status quo and a call to arms for the proletariat to rise up against corporate abuse and hypocrisy. (Read more…)

I sat down with the effervescently cute Drew Barrymore at Chicago’s Metro club for a quick chat about her directorial debut, the rollerblading babes movie “Whip It,” opening today.

“Were you old enough to remember anything that Steven Spielberg did on the set of “E.T.” that might have helped you as a director?” I asked.

“The food fight scene is an homage to him, because we had this awesomely fun food fight when we were in the commissary while filming ‘E.T.’,” Barrymore said. “He told me, ‘Never act your character. Be your character.’ That was the most valuable lesson I ever learned about acting.

“I found my tribe on this set. I thought this set is so safe and full of joy, it feels like a family. I realized if you don’t have a family, you can make your own. That set of ‘E.T.’ was where the ‘Find Your Tribe’ theme came into being and why it’s on the (‘Whip It’) poster.” (Read more…)

Anna McDoogles (Jennifer Garner) decides she’d rather date hunky Brad Kessler (Rob Lowe) than dumpy Mark Bellison (Ricky Gervais) in the comic fantasy “The Invention of Lying.”

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“The Invention of Lying” tells such an imaginative, witty story with such likable main characters that you hardly notice the subversive idea festering at the core of its plot, that religion is one big, fat lie created to make frightened people feel better about their dull, shallow existences.

The movie doesn’t exactly hammer this point home. It’s almost an afterthought, a throwaway assertion in a daring, hilarious, fantastic premise that imagines a ruthlessly honest world where people cannot tell lies, or pass on any sort of misleading information.

Ricky Gervais – who codirects the comedy with first-time director/writer Matthew Robinson – brings his veddy dry British sense of humor to play Mark Bellison, a pudgy, nondescript man who writes boring screenplays for a company called Lecture Films.

Because no one tells untruths, fiction doesn’t exist. The “movies” consist of narrators reading histories, or as the Lecture Films motto says, “We Film Someone Telling You About Things That Happened.” (Read more…)

The Hurl Scouts (director Drew Barrymore, left, Ellen Page and Kristen Wiig) take to the rink in the coming-of-age action-comedy “Whip It,” Barrymore’s directorial debut.

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Every frame in the fun, breezy, coming-of-age roller derby dramedy “Whip It” oozes with the essence of Barrymore.

Drew Barrymore.

You know, the little girl who screamed her way into our hearts in “E.T.,” then later wreaked havoc with other organs as the psychotic teen seductress in “Poison Ivy”?

Barrymore became a successful producer, and now she’s directing her first feature. Like the actress, it’s a rollicking, cute and sexy adventure, yet, sincere to a fault.

Barrymore clearly loves all of her characters, even Juliette Lewis’ harsh roller warrior named Iron Maven. The director affectionately allows the scenes to last just a little bit longer for the sake of her characters, rather than cut them too short for ADD audiences brought up on “Bourne Ultimatum” flash edits. (Read more…)

Denise (Naturi Naughton) performs “Get on the Floor” in a remake of 1980’s “Fame.”

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As I drove away from a Chicago screening of Kevin Tancharoen’s “Fame” Wednesday night, I turned on 100.3 FM on the car radio and guess what I heard?

Irene Cara belting out the title song to the original 1980 hit musical “Fame.”

In that moment, I realized Cara packed more passion and talent into a single song than Tancharoen could squeeze into an entire shallow, vacuous remake.

His “Fame” uses the same plot and character types as Alan Parker’s original film, except that Tancharoen blunts Parker’s pain and realism, diminishes the drama’s heart by at least two sizes, and steps all over the cast’s sheer joy of performing.

The showcase scene from Parker’s “Fame” was an impromptu “concert” performed by students at the (then) New York Academy for Performing Arts. Every student in the school spontaneously breaks into a jubilant musical number, with dancers and musicians merging in a joyful celebration that spills into New York streets, snarling traffic, yet delighting everyone.

In Tancharoen’s “Fame,” a keyboardist, drummer and dancers start groovin’, but the scene fizzles out and shifts over to a couple of characters who could use a few lessons from their acting teacher Mr. Dowd (Charles S. Dutton). (Read more…)

The Noble Fool Theatricals Youth Ensemble will perform from 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. Friday (Sept. 25) to pump up the crowd before the local premiere of “Fame” at the Charlestowne 18 Cinema Theatre, 3740 E. Main St., St. Charles. Extra bonus: A Noble Fool instructor will teach “Fame” dances.

Not to be outdone, the Elk Grove High School Grenadettes will perform Friday (Sept. 25) at the Elk Grove Theatre, 1050 Elk Grove Town Center, Elk Grove Village, to pump up another crowd before the 7:15 p.m. showing of “Fame.”

In Steve Jacobs’ cinematic version of J.M. Coetzee’s novel “Disgrace,” former Chicago actor John Malkovich effects a slightly sinister South African accent that sounds way too much like Count Dracula as a college lit professor.

He plays David Lurie, an unrepentant white who uses his academic position to have sex with a vulnerable student of mixed heritage. Not Rated (for mature audiences). 120 minutes. (Read more…)

Now playing at the Pipers Alley in Chicago.

“That’s Paris,” says Pierre, a dancer with a bummer heart. “Nobody’s happy!”

Cedric Klapisch’s valentine to the City of Lights is an infrequently beguiling, mostly dull, social and cultural lattice of characters, among them a middle-aged history professor (Fabrice Luchini) who sex-texts his pretty student (Melanie Laurent), a dancer (Romain Duris) awaiting a heart transplant, his single mother sister (Juliette Binoche) who moves in to take care of him, and other characters flitting around them in subplots of varying amounts of interest. In French with subtitles. Rated: R (language and sexual references). 130 minutes. (Read more…)

Now playing at the Century Centre in Chicago.

Rollin Binzer’s doc “The Providence Effect” blows a big, slurpy kiss to Chicago’s impressive Providence St. Mel school, which has sent 100 percent of its African-American graduates on to colleges, including Ivy League ones.

As a recruiting film, “Effect” couldn’t be more effusive in its admiration of the West Side school, its faculty and its founder, Paul Adams III, who bought the building from the Catholic Archdiocese and heroically created a model independent school from scratch. Rated: PG. 92 minutes. (Read more…)

Now playing at the Century Centre in Chicago and Skokie’s Village Crossing.

“On the Banned Wagon: Cinema’s Forbidden Films”

Join Dann Gire (film critic of Chicago’s suburban newspaper THE DAILY HERALD, as well as the founder and president of the Chicago Film Critics Association, and adjunct instructor at Aurora and Harper Colleges in Illinois) and Raymond Benson (novelist, author of 20 books, former official author of James Bond books, film historian, and Film History instructor at the College of DuPage in Glen Ellyn, Illinois) as they discuss “On the Banned Wagon: Cinema’s Forbidden Films,” a look at the most censored movies in history. Clips from “The Miracle,” “Carnal Knowledge,” “The Last Temptation of Christ,” “The Life of Brian,” “Birth of a Nation” and 10 others. See Schaumburg Township District Library for more details.

Cost: Free

THURSDAY, Oct. 1, 7:30pm
AV Wing
Schaumburg Township District Library
130 S. Roselle Road
Schaumburg, Illinios