Arcada hosts Shirley Temple film fest

Critic's notebook

• Attention Shirley Temple fans! A Shirley Temple Film Festival will be presented at 2 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 22, at the Arcada Theatre, 105 E. Main St., St. Charles. It will offer a career retrospective and four of the tap-dancing child star's most noted motion pictures: “Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm,” “The Little Colonel,” “Heidi” and “Poor Little Rich Girl.”

Shirley Temple Black died last week at 85. Adult admission costs $10 (for one or all films); tickets cost $3 for kids younger than 10. For schedules and tickets, go to www.oshows.com or call (630) 962-7000.

• The After Hours Film Society presents the Academy Award nominated foreign language thriller “The Hunt” at 7:30 p.m. Monday, Feb. 24, at the Tivoli Theatre, 5021 Highland Ave., Downers Grove. The Dutch drama stars Mads Mikkelsen as a good-hearted, community-minded citizen falsely convicted of child molestation by nothing more than gossip and suspicion. An excellent, realistic cautionary tale of a modern witch hunt. Tickets cost $9. Rated R for language, sexual situations and violence. 111 minutes. . . . ½

• The Chicago Film Critics Association presents “The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 26, as part of the ongoing “Film With a View” program at the Studio Movie Grill, 301 Rice Lake Square, Wheaton. Admission costs a measly $2. Dominick Suzanne-Mayer, film critic of HEAVEmedia.com will host the show and conduct a post-screening discussion. Go to chicagofilmcritics.org or studiomoviegrill.com.

• If you've missed all of Dann & Raymond's Movie Club Academy Award shows so far, fear not! I will be doing one final Oscars prediction program — sans my partner Raymond Benson — at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 26, in the Carnegie Community Room at the St. Charles Library, 1 S. 6th Ave., St. Charles.

Film clips! Free admission! Go to stcharleslibrary.org or call (630) 584-0076.

Mini-review: 'Black Out'

The official press notes describing Arne Toonen's Dutch production “Black Out” almost get it right: “If Guy Ritchie made 'The Hangover' in Amsterdam, it might look something like 'Black Out,' an audacious crime thriller laced with colorful lowlifes, tough femme fatales, corrupt cops, and outbursts of extreme violence.”

OK, if Guy Ritchie had made “The Hangover II” in Amsterdam, that would more accurately describe Toonen's collision of comedy and killings committed by creepy, criminal characters.

Retired drug dealer Jos (Raymond Thiry, emanating a Paul Hogan vibe from his “Crocodile Dundee” days) wakes up from his bachelor party in bed alongside a dead man with a bullet in his face.

The non-retired drug dealers give Jos 24 hours to return the 20 kilos of cocaine they say he stole, otherwise they'll do something bad to his fiancee Caroline (Kim van Kooten) the day before their wedding.

Oh, no! Jos can't remember anything that happened last night. So, he spends the day crisscrossing paths with a killer grandpa, bovine hit guys and two femme enforcers dressed like combatants in a WWE Death Race remake.

We've more or less seen the latticed plotting and entertaining coincidences of this movie under different disguises and titles. (Consider it “Smokin' Aces” meets “Go” meets “Rocknrolla” meets more of the same.)

Working with a cast of barely likable characters, Toonen taps into the kinetic spirit of this Tarantino-inspired genre without adding much to it, except for stealing a sequential mass-shooting sight gag straight from Mel Brooks' 1965 spy comedy TV series “Get Smart!”

“Black Out” opens at the Music Box in Chicago. Not rated, but contains violence, language, sexual situations and drug use. 92 minutes. ★ ★ ½

• Dann Gire's Reel Life column runs Fridays in Time out!