In The Chernobyl Diaries, viewers are forced to answer the proverbial question, “Would you rather die from a pack of angry wild dogs, from injuries sustained while running through a nuclear reactor that suffered a horrific meltdown, or from the psychotic, nuke-addled residents that live near that reactor?” Back in the go-go mid-'90s, a coworker and I found an adventure travel company that offered thrillseekers the chance to climb Devil’s Tower, that monolithic, chimney-shaped mountain thingy in Wyoming memorialized in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. We were going to climb it and get up on…

Any casual filmgoer has seen the previews for The Dictator for a year now. Those previews do a good job in extrapolating some of the film’s funnier bits (Sacha Baron Cohen as Aladeen shooting his competitors during a state-sponsored Olympics) while leaving the more outrageous humor to the patrons that actually go see the film (sometimes, previews spotlight the funniest parts of the movie). The Dictator had most of the audience chuckling at some points, certainly not the belly laughs that The Three Stooges elicited a few weeks ago, but some good howls nonetheless. Cohen plays Aladeen, the …

Has Johnny Depp ever turned in a poor performance? If so, I’ve never seen it. Whether he’s channeling Keith Richards (Pirates of the Caribbean), Hunter S. Thompson (The Rum Diaries), Ed Wood or even Edward Scissorhands, Depp always turns in a wonderful performance, and in Dark Shadows he again demonstrates his remarkable acting prowess. Depp is easily the best actor of his generation, sporting the intelligence and depth of Laurence Olivier, the suave charm of Adolphe Menjou and the humorous potential of Charlie Chaplin. He does whore himself out with the endless Pirates train of sequels, but …

Usually I wait until later in the review to mention the overall time at the movies, but this week extenuating circumstances and a huge crowd of fans did affect our experience (I went with my three kids). But don’t worry, we still enjoyed it. Heading out to the Louis Joliet Cinemark was an adventure. A carnival in the mall parking lot snarled up traffic, and opening night of this spring’s blockbuster The Avengers meant a longer line than usual to get into the theater. Even though I ordered tickets online a day in advance, we still had to queue up behind four generations of moviegoers, which …

The Raven isn’t really based on Edgar Allan Poe’s famed poem of the same name. Rather, it’s a sendup of his best writing, a greatest hits compendium of the macabre, murderous plotlines that Poe weaved into his short stories. Fellow English majors take note: This flick alludes to a libraryful of Poe’s works, many of which are quoted outright by John Cusack (who plays Poe here). The Masque of the Red Death, The Pit and the Pendulum, The Cask of Amontillado and a bunch of others are referenced in this picture, the stylishness of which is going to create a whole new generation of Poe fans. The …

I was prepared to despise The Cabin the Woods based on its previews, and until the last minute, I debated going to see Chimpanzee instead. I am so glad I took a pass on the primates and opted for the horror instead. There’s nothing subtle about Cabin (and subtlety is overrated anyway), but there’s enough humor and tongue-in-cheek (more like tongue-on-the-floor-after-it’s-been-chopped-off) pop culture references in this one to keep even the most desperate-for-amusement moviegoers intrigued. The premise seems like one we’ve all heard before: Attractive college-aged kids decide to escape for a …

Let us now praise Eugene Levy. The bespectacled, Ontario-reared comedian has humor chops to spare, and the most famous set of eyebrows of anyone that’s not named Marty Scorsese. His deadpanned, TMI-spewing character of Jim’s dad here doesn’t quite carry the show (Seann William Scott as the caustic Steve Stifler does), but Levy’s contributions are definitely memorable in this third sequel to the gross-out classic American Pie. Levy’s cut-each-other-off banters with son Jim Levenstein (Jason Biggs) in this movie are worth the price of admission alone. The two talk over each other like a pair of…

I really enjoyed The Hunger Games. There, I’ve said it. I should have hated it for three prime reasons: 1) I didn’t read the book, 2) I’m not in the targeted demographic (teens) and 3) the film contained barely any humor. But somehow, the filmmakers here engaged my attention and kept it, despite the marathon length of the picture (a whopping two hours and 22 minutes — I did take a much-needed personal intermission at approximately the halfway point). I went on Sunday morning at 10, and probably 200 other patrons joined me at the Cinemark Louis Joliet Mall, including a 40-something couple all …

I didn’t think I’d like 21 Jump Street (21JS), based on the numerous previews I’d seen. It looked too sophomoric, asinine and full of typical cop movie fare — all of which it was, in the end. However, 21JS was joyously juvenile, knowingly meaningless and made fun of the audience’s preconceived notions about cop movies — and film remakes — in a terrifically funny way. Schmidt (Jonah Hill) and Jenko (Channing Tatum) are two hapless cops who graduate from the local police academy and are immediately assigned to Dante’s purgatory of policework: Bike duty. Their incompetence at this most mundane …

If you’re currently breathing in an abode with working electricity, drop what you’re doing, face East and thank the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers that you’re alive. Because Silent House, besides not being silent, is all about the importance of functioning electricity. The film is set in a lakeside residence without it. The residence was apparently decorated by a lamp-obsessed hoarder with a taste for horrific wallpaper. The home’s basement, meanwhile, is a dim dungeon that would give horror author H.P. Lovecraft the willies. Silent House is also shot in dreaded handheld …

For the third time since I began reviewing films, the Cinemark at Louis Joliet Mall was packed with high-school aged people, odd since Project X is rated R and should therefore be off-limits to people under the age of 18. A crowd of five or six loud, baseball-hat sporting guys (and the crowd was mostly young men) who didn’t look a day over 15 plopped down in the same row. “Are you guys 18?” I asked somewhat authoritatively (and jokingly). “What is with you people?” one shot right back. Silenced and humbled after the exchange with my fellow viewers, I nonetheless grew to enjoy their energy and…

In Wanderlust, art imitates life, in that Paul Rudd (George) and Jennifer Aniston (Linda) feel the aftereffects of a still-smoldering recession. It’s a fun movie that tends to plod, but overall it’s an enjoyable picture — if you don’t mind the f-bombs and sexually loose themes (it’s rated R). The couple buys a tiny New York City apartment (jokingly referred to as a “microloft”), but are soon sent packing to the suburbs of Atlanta when George’s office is busted by the FBI and he loses his job. They stumble into a commune one night on the way to Atlanta, and they return semipermanently after a …

Want to compare notes with me on an upcoming movie, courtesy of the Shorewood Patch? Simply leave a comment below this week’s review. The comment can just be “Comment” or something equally mundane. At the end of the week, we’ll put all the names in a hat and draw out one lucky reader, who will get the opportunity to attend a film with me next weekend! How fun is that? The actual review Safe House’s premise is an interesting one: The highest levels of international intelligence, and therefore their governing bodies, are diseased and corrupt. These organizations are populated with rogue …

Chronicle offers up yet another cinematic instance of on-screen characters using handheld cameras to advance a storyline. We saw it first in 1999’s The Blair Witch Project, and it continued with this winter’s The Devil Inside. When first unveiled, this technique was an original idea, but now, the dizzying effect of actors filming things is just another Hollywood cliché. Filmmakers, let’s ban the handheld cameras. In this movie , three high school friends wander off into the woods from a party. They discover a sinkhole and contract telekinetic (the parapsyphological ability to move objects …

For the second week in a row, Hollywood has turned out a new action/adventure movie featuring a female in the lead role. But that’s where the similarities end. Last week, Haywire starred mixed martial artist Gina Carano as a special operative, while One for the Money stars Katherine Heigl as a bail bonds collector. Money was vilified by just about everyone, from the amateurs at imdb.com to the pros at McClatchey/Tribune news. But I’m here to tell you it’s not as bad as everyone makes it out to be. The dialogue here is great, delivered expertly by unique, charming characters, including film …

It took about 30 minutes for me to figure out that Haywire was a good movie, definitely one worth seeing. If you get lost or bored, sit it out. The confusing plot and the lack of dialogue had me mentally hamstrung until I came to three realizations: One: the main character, Mallory Kane (played by real-life mixed martial arts champion Gina Carano), is a female “freelance covert operative” (imagine seeing that title on a business card in the fishbowl at Red Lobster). To my knowledge, I’ve never seen a woman star in this type of action/adventure movie, filled with fighting, shooting and car …

Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise, who also produced) is out to save the world once again in Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol (we’ll call it M:IGP from here out), and throughout this flick, I was rooting for the bad guys to destroy Earth and prevent us from watching another dreadful sequel like this one (it’s the fourth installment — it only feels like the 24th). Other critics really drooled over this one, naming it one of the top three movies of the year, but man, I was constantly watching my mobile device (kids, don’t use your phone during the movie like me or you’ll be ejected, or so I was warned…

For the second week in a row at the cinema, I witnessed a hunky guy painstakingly made up to look normal, wearing regular clothes, dealing with the loss of a spouse, staring into space contemplating enormity, and saddled with the task of raising two kids alone. Both heartthrobs also cry a single tear from their right eye (do they teach that in drama school?) as their primary way of expressing sadness. Last week George Clooney took his wife off life support, and this week, Matt Damon almost got eaten by a bear. But whereas The Descendants (Clooney) is an adult drama filled with wrenching, …

If you ever doubted the talent of George Clooney (and I did), The Descendants will convince you of the man’s sheer talent. We’ve been put to sleep by his pretty-boy looks and the way he half-sleeps through easy roles like Up in the Air and Ocean’s Fill in the Blank. However, Clooney’s performance as Matt King, a lawyer in Hawaii, establishes the salt-and-peppery actor as an absolute master, a once-in-a-generation cinematic force that deserves all the magazine covers he shows up on. Clooney covers a huge swath of emotions as he deals with the impending death of his wife, on life support with …

I wanted to like The Sitter ever since I saw the movie posters that included a fake phone number you could call for an amusing message. Unfortunately, that bit of guerrilla marketing was about the most amusing thing about the picture. The cinematic formula of foul-mouthed kids under the tutelage of an irresponsible adult is time-honored and has been done well. Revisit the original Bad News Bears (1976) for proof of that (Chris Barnes’ Tanner Boyle is the second-greatest character in American cinema, behind only Robert Duvall’s Lieutenant Colonel Bill Kilgore in Apocalypse Now). However, The …