Chicago Sun-Times

A saga of obsession in ‘Persistence of Vision’

Thu, 02 May 2013 13:18:00 -0500

Documentary director Kevin Schreck seeks the backstory of folly and failure behind animator Richard Williams’ unfinished, four decades in the making, epic “The Thief and the Cobbler.”

The kid-friendly movies of summer

Thu, 02 May 2013 00:20:00 -0500

“Monsters University” (June 21) Billy Crystal and John Goodman are back as Sulley and Mike, a big guy and one-eyed dot who want some higher education in this Pixar kid flick. “Despicable Me 2” (July 7) Bring on the minions! Gru (voiced by Steve Carell) has given up his bad-guy ways to raise his three daughters, until the Anti-Villain League needs him to track down an even bigger meanie. “Turbo” (July 17) After an accident, a cute snail (voiced by Ryan Reynolds) isn’t so slow anymore, to the point where everyone knows he can win the Indy 500. “Smurfs 2” …

From marital issues to ‘Mortal Instruments,’ more movies of summer 2013

Thu, 02 May 2013 00:15:49 -0500

“Peeples” (May 10) Kerry Washington wants to marry her sweet boyfriend Wade (Craig Robinson), except there are problems including his lack of direction and her family secrets. “Love Is All You Need” (May 10). Pierce Brosnan is a widower who links up with a married former cancer patient (Trine Dryholm) at the wedding of their kids in Italy. “Black Rock” (May 17) Kate Bosworth finds out the hard way that you really shouldn’t go to a desolate Maine island with your two best gal pals (Lake Bell and Katie Aselton) unless you want to be hunted by some local lunatics. …

A Marvel of a sequel, ‘Iron Man 3’

Thu, 02 May 2013 02:31:55 -0500

RICHARD ROEPER: Filled with breathtakingly brilliant special effects, bolstered by excellent supporting performances from a half-dozen other top-tier actors, crackling with sharp humor and working as a story that stands alone while often acknowledging the larger Marvel(ous) universe, “Iron Man 3” is one of the best entries in this modern golden age of superhero movies. Working from a smart if sometimes meandering script, director Shane Black takes us on a 3-D thrill ride in which a LOT of stuff is blown up, and the skies are filled with superheroes and supervillains. It’s a great start to the summer movie season.

Michael Shannon as General Zod in ‘Man of Steel’: No need to kneel

Wed, 01 May 2013 02:26:08 -0500

The Chicago actor says his villain in the upcoming Superman epic isn’t ruled by rage. This baddie’s “more like a general. He’s trying to protect the place where he rules.”

On open sea, recounting trek of the Kon-Tiki

Thu, 02 May 2013 09:18:30 -0500

Director Joachim Ronning doesn’t believe in a calm, collected life. “I think life is about perseverance,” the Norway native says. “It’s about that strong thinking that you can cross the ocean even if you’re terrified of water. You just go in and do it anyways. “I think most of us want to live a more adventurous life. We just need to dare ourselves.” It was that adventurous spirit that he brought to his new film “Kon-Tiki,” co-directed by his childhood friend Espen Sandberg. Earlier this year it was nominated for the best foreign film Academy Award. Set in 1947, “Kon-Tiki” …

Robert Downey Jr. stepped into ‘Iron Man 3’ with an agenda

Thu, 02 May 2013 09:19:46 -0500

LOS ANGELES — As the star of “Iron Man 3,” Robert Downey Jr. has the responsibility of jump-starting the summer movie season. Does he feel the weight? The pressure? The heaviness of it all? “Oh, heaviness? So, we’re going to start by talking about suit envy between me and Don Cheadle?” Downey says, referring to his co-star. “The truth is my Iron Man suit weighs 7,000 pounds.” Leave it to the girl to set the record straight. “I wore the suit in this movie and it’s not so bad,” says Gwyneth Paltrow, who plays Iron Man love interest Pepper Potts. …

Evolution of Pepper Potts suits Gwyneth Paltrow

Thu, 02 May 2013 09:19:55 -0500

Gwyneth Paltrow is tired of the girly girl act. “One of the most thrilling parts of ‘Iron Man 3’ — and the part that I know people will love to see — is Pepper Potts in the suit kicking ass,” she says. “It’s about time.” In this sequel, Paltrow’s Pepper has gone from assistant to love interest to CEO of Stark Industries. “She also wears the pants in her relationship with Tony Stark,” says Paltrow with a gleam in her eyes. “That’s why I feel really lucky to play Pepper. Very rarely to do you see a character who starts …

A film fest aimed at social change

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 02:30:45 -0500

Sabotage was once symbolized by a black cat in posters issued by the radical union the Industrial Workers of the World. For its three-day “Lucky 13th” edition of screenings, the Chicago Anarchist Film Festival adopts this agitator feline as its mascot. The festival aims to “present the works of un- and under-distributed filmmakers worldwide, who are engaged in providing radical entertainment, documenting social change and projecting a world that could be.” Videos come from Brazil, British Columbia and Bulgaria. Jorge Alva-Huerto’s “No to NATO!” reports on last year’s protest in Chicago. “I don’t fool myself that our festival can correct …

Snow White enters the bullring in the stunning ‘Blancanieves’

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 02:30:26 -0500

Once again a silent film once seems likely to become a success in the contemporary film world: “Blancanieves,” a striking, visually stunning Spanish feature, written and directed by Pablo Berger. Although the story draws on the Brothers Grimm and the legend of Snow White, it is anything but a children’s movie. It is a full-bodied silent film of the sort that might have been made by the greatest directors of the 1920s.

An operative deals with occupational hazards in ‘The Numbers Station’

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 02:30:56 -0500

John Cusack plays another lethal operative with occupational angst in “The Numbers Station,” a routine thriller that pairs the conflicted field agent with a female cryptographer in a secret CIA bunker with dire workplace issues.

Don’t you wish you were ‘Arthur Newman’? Colin Firth does

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 02:30:16 -0500

RICHARD ROEPER: It’s hard to argue against any movie top-lined by the great Colin Firth and the beguiling Emily Blunt, but it does feel like a bit of stunt casting to have these two British actors as the very American leads in this offbeat, sometimes self-congratulatory road movie romance about a guy of a certain age who wants to reinvent himself. Though first-time feature director Dante Ariola keeps things moving along at a brisk pace, “Arthur Newman” spins its wheels with repeated vignettes hammering home the whole “I wish I could be someone else” theme.

A ceremony of errors in ‘The Big Wedding’

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 02:29:46 -0500

RICHARD ROEPER: Formulaic comedy ensues when an adopted son asks his divorced parents to pretend they’re still together because his biological mother believes divorce is an unforgivable sin. But it feels as if all the guests at “The Big Wedding” are wearing ID tags telling us their one plot point. For such a lighthearted ensemble romp, “The Big Wedding” easily earns its R rating, what with a nude scene, and raunchy dialogue at gets pretty nasty at times. Here’s a premise that Robert Altman did much better in “A Wedding.”

‘Renoir’ paints merely a surface portrait of a great artist

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 02:29:55 -0500

“Renoir” brings natural expectations of a biopic set in Paris during the 19th-century heyday of Impressionism, with its namesake mingling with Claude Monet and other artistic luminaries of that now-celebrated era. But what director Gilles Bourdos has actually tried to create is a more complicated, offbeat and in some ways, artistically ambitious film.

Quirky ‘Pain & Gain’ goes on a steroid-fueled crime spree

Wed, 01 May 2013 12:24:14 -0500

RICHARD ROEPER: Here’s the mostly true story of three idiot bodybuilders who went on a steroids-fueled, tragicomic crime spree in south Florida in the 1990s, directed by Michael Bay with hard-R, turn-your-head-away violence. Even though the film does mine laughs from real-life tragedy, it refuses to glamorize these meatheads, Kudos to Bay and his screenwriters for making sure we’re laughing at them, not with them.