Borgnine in Naperville for double feature
Ernest Borgnine won the Oscar for playing the lead character in 1956's "Marty," but people remember him mostly as the cop married to Stella Stevens in the pivotal 1972 disaster thriller "The Poseidon Adventure." Both films will be shown Friday ("Marty" at 7:30 p.m., "Adventure" at 9 p.m.) at the Hollywood Palms theaters, 352 S. Route 59, Naperville.
Borgnine, now 92, will introduce them in person! Bo Hopkins, who starred with Borgnine in Sam Peckinpah's masterpiece "The Wild Bunch," will also be there. Tickets cost $12 for all celebrity events. Call (630) 428-5800.
Not just for 'The Birds'
Cool blonde actress (and mother of Melanie Griffith) Tippi Hedren will swing by the Hollywood Palms to introduce her 1963 Alfred Hitchcock classic "The Birds" at 7:30 p.m. and 10 p.m. Saturday. This marks her first visit to Ted Bulthaup's newly constructed Palms, but she's been an annual fixture at Bulthaup's Hollywood Boulevard theater in Woodridge.
Then on Sunday, Elliott Gould and Sally Kellerman, the original Trapper John and Hot Lips Houlihan from the 1970 anti-war black comedy "M*A*S*H," will introduce Robert Altman's masterpiece at 6 p.m. and 8 p.m. at the Hollywood Palms.
Reel Life review: 'New York, I Love You'
In a perfect world, this anthology film would receive 10 separate reviews of the 10 short stories told by 10 directors, each given two days to shoot and one week to edit his/her segment.
"New York, I Love You" is the second HD-shot film in the so-called "Cities of Love" franchise that began with 2006's much better "Paris, je t'aime." Here, New York residents become a blurry mix of indistinct types.
The most memorable:
1) Crusty Eli Wallach and crustier Cloris Leachman play aging New Yawkers who let their affections for each other seep through the bickering banter they exchange during a stroll on the boardwalk.
2) Ethan Hawke's pickup artist lays down a masterful verbal trap for intended target Maggie Q, but gets an O. Henryesque twist.
3) In Shekhar Kapur's elegantly celestial segment equipped with heavenly light and billowing curtains, Julie Christie's suicidal opera singer checks into a posh hotel in order to check out. Then she meets a physically handicapped bellboy (Shia LaBeouf) with a mysterious connection to John Hurt's hotel employee.
"New York," I did not love you. You are too constrained, unimaginative and dull to represent the teeming metropolis we lovingly call the Big Apple. 103 minutes.
Kids flicks for all!
More than 260 movies from 40 nations will be shown at the 26th annual Chicago International Children's Film Festival, cranking up next Thursday, Oct. 22, through Nov. 1 at Facets Multimedia, 1517 W. Fullerton Ave., Chicago. Opening night is a series of shorts hosted by "Broken Hill" star Luke Arnold at the Thorne Auditorium, 375 E. Chicago Ave., Chicago. Tickets cost $60 ($25 for kids). Call (773) 281-9075 or go to cicff.org for schedule and tickets.
Reel Life review: 'More Than a Game'
It's more than its cliched title would suggest. In fact, it's the best basketball sports doc since "Hoop Dreams."
Kristopher Belman's impressive film traces basketball phenom LeBron James and his teammates from their humble beginnings in an Akron, Ohio, gym to their amazing national high school championship nine years later, coached all along by one of the players' fathers.
Heartwarming and triumphant, the doc doesn't shy away from the negative impact of publicity and how it pulls James away from his peers, and for a while, threatens to trip up their potential for sports greatness.
Belman keeps his moving story moving with an aggressive battery of visual devices - cutouts, frame shifts and slow zoom-in and outs - that might make Ken Burns proud.
"More Than a Game" opens Friday at the River East 21 and the Century in Chicago, the Evanston CineArts 6 and other select locations. Rated PG. 102 minutes.
Reel Life review: 'The Damned United'
"The Damned United" is not a romance, but it's still a real love story. It's between legendary, egomaniacal soccer coach Brian Clough (Michael Sheen) and his quiet assistant, talent spotter Peter Taylor (Timothy Spall) whose invisible but crucial support is only appreciated after the arrogant Clough drives him away.
Clough spent a whole 44 days as coach of the super team Leeds United, and can't stand it that previous coach Don Revie (Colm Meaney, a dead ringer for the real guy) is practically worshipped by sports fans. All the actors inhabit their roles with perfection, and Tom Hooper's direction (from a deft script by Peter "Frost/Nixon" Morgan) captures a modern retelling of the story of the prideful Icarus.
"The Damned United" opens Friday at the Pipers Alley in Chicago. Rated R for salty language. 97 minutes.
Reel Life review: 'Rashomon'
Akira Kurosawa's 1950 drama introduced modern Japanese cinema and changed the vocabulary of the movies around the world. This story about the tenuous nature of perception - a rape and murder are interpreted differently by four witnesses - has probably been remade and ripped-off as much as "Psycho." (Martin Ritt's 1964 Hollywood remake "The Outrage" starred Paul Newman and William Shatner!) A restored version of Kurosawa's classic opens Friday at the Music Box in Chicago. Not rated, but for mature audiences. 88 minutes.
Free 'Nice Bombs'
Two free screenings of Usama Alshaibi's documentary on Iraq will be held at 8 p.m. and 10 p.m. Friday at the Portage Theater, 4050 N. Milwaukee Ave., Chicago. A naturalized American citizen from Iraq, Alshaibi shoots and narrates this video diary about his return to his native land in 2004 and finds it to be a place of bad bombs (by suicide bombers) and "nice bombs," what his cousin calls American weapons designed to take out insurgents. "Nice Bombs" comes out on video Oct. 27.