Dann in reel life: 'Another Year' worth a look

‘Another Year'

The After Hours Film Society presents Mike Leigh's fine domestic drama “Another Year” at 7:30 p.m. Monday at the Tivoli Theater, 5021 Highland Ave., Downers Grove. Leslie Manville was nominated for best actress by the Chicago Film Critics Association for her role as an aging spinster harboring a crush on her best friend's son. General admission costs $9 ($5 for members). Go to afterhoursfilmsociety.com. Rated PG. 129 minutes. ★ ★ ★ ½

Riding a thumb

Now that “Roger Ebert Presents at the Movies” is up and running on WTTW — again — I predict an upswing in the number of movies in which characters flash the “thumbs-up” gesture. Why?

Filmmakers want to slyly suggest to us, the viewers, that we're watching a critically approved motion picture. Already, Ebert's copyright for his digital expression has been violated by Paul the alien in “Paul,” Elisabeth Harnois in “Mars Needs Moms,” and both Jeffrey Wright and Jake Gyllenhaal in the upcoming “Source Code.”

We can expect many more thumbs up in this alternate digital age.

No more super landing

If you've seen the trailer to the fantasy movie “Sucker Punch,” you've seen the three female superheroes leap through the air and land on the ground in a pose that I call “the uniform superhero landing pose” — one knee up, the other down, one hand up, the other down.

Many superheroes have employed this stylized method of landing on the ground. Alex Pettyfer landed that way in “I Am Number Four,” and his character wasn't even a superhero, just an alien teenager in love. Stephen Colbert makes fun of it in the opening of his Comedy Central talk show.

Note to filmmakers: Abandon this silly and pretentious visual cliché, unless you're making a satire or parody of comic book superheroes. It makes your movie look conventional, if not utterly ridiculous.

‘South Loop' premiere

“South Loop,” the directorial feature film debut of College of DuPage film and TV professor John Rangel, will be screened at 7 p.m. Wednesday, March 30, in Room 153 of the McAninch Arts Center, at 425 Fawell Blvd., Glen Ellyn.

Rangel shot the film in 15 days. It traces one man's roller coaster ride caused by the housing market burst. Admission is free. Go to parksidefilms.com/southloop.

Not your run, ‘My Run'

The documentary “My Run” tells the story of Terry Hitchcock, a 57-year-old widower and father who ran from his home in St. Paul, Minn., to the opening ceremony of the Summer Olympics in Atlanta, Ga.

Narrated by Billy Bob Thornton, the doc will be shown at 500 theaters at 7 p.m. Thursday. For tickets and participating theaters, go to fathomevents.com.

Reel Life review: ‘I Saw the Devil'

You know you're watching a hardcore Korean-made horror/revenge movie when you start feeling sorry for the serial killer who rapes young women before he hacks their bodies into pieces and scatters the parts all over the landscape.

Kim Jee-woon's “I Saw the Devil” mixes “Death Wish” with Grand Guignol excesses so disturbingly graphic that the director had to recut the movie before Korean censors would let it play.

In “Devil” — the most extreme and extremely uncomfortable serial killer movie I've ever experienced — “Old Boy” star Choi Min-Sik creates a sociopath as memorable as Hannibal Lecter. His name is Kyung-cul, who opens the story by smashing a car windshield, then the head of a pretty screaming young woman behind the wheel.

Turns out she's the daughter of the ex-police chief and the fiance of secret service agent Joo-yeon (Lee Byung-hun), who takes a leave of absence to find the killer.

Joo-yeon doesn't just capture the killer. That would be boring.

He torments and toys with the killer, smashing his face, breaking his hand and slashing his ankle tendons, upping the torture and torment each time they meet.

At first, “I Saw the Devil” appears to support vigilantism as an effective tool for justice. Later, the story's violent twists and turns turn against the agent, whose revenge precipitates horrible personal losses.

“Devil” reminds me of John McNaughton's Chicago-made “Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer” in that it creates a world crawling with evil, amoral characters unabated by the forces of good or law. (“Henry” had no cops in its universe. The ones in ”Devil” are mostly impotent in the wake of evil.)

“I Saw the Devil” is a ghastly gore film, disturbing for its outbreaks of graphic bloody violence (we are spared from witnessing the sexual assaults), and for the scary world it creates, one populated by several thrill killers who slaughter cabdrivers and invade homes so they can dine on the occupants.

“Devil” is better at gore than gab. The characters blabber about how chasing a monster can make a good person become one. (Gee, ya think?)

Kim Jee-woon ignores all the small things that add up to a realistically frightening experience.

A teen girl who escapes from Kyung-chul magically disappears from the story. Where'd she go?

The agent throws Kyung-chul into a speeding car and apparently overpowers the knife-wielding villain while he's driving. How'd he do that?

Later, the agent produces a pill-sized transmitter device that had been placed inside the body of a murdered man in a restroom. Where did that come from?

I saw the devil, too, and he's in the details.

“I Saw the Devil” opens at the Music Box Theatre, Chicago. Not rated, but for adults only. 141 minutes. ★ ★ ½

• Daily Herald film critic Dann Gire's column runs Fridays in Time out!