Dann Gire
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A novel approach: ‘Brutalist’ a captivating, ambitious epic that feels like a book, looks like a paintingJan 07, 2025 1:47 pm - Austere, foreboding, harsh and intoxicatingly masculine. What’s to like about Brady Corbet’s third movie “The Brutalist”? Not much. And yet, it’s the best picture of 2024, just now opening in Chicago.
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A brutal(ist) top 10 list for 2024’s best moviesDec 26, 2024 10:10 am - “The Brutalist” recently won the 2024 Best Picture from the Chicago Film Critics members, and for good reason. It tops film critic Dann Gire’s best movies for 2024.
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Sub-woofer: Adams’ fiercely engaging performance drives tame adult fairy taleDec 04, 2024 4:37 pm - This provocative black comedy owes its narrative propulsion to Amy Adams’ harried, emotionally buried Mother of a 4-year-old boy, and wife of a benignly neglectful, stay-away-from-home husband.
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Lame dialogue wounds spectacularly violent epic sequel ‘Gladiator II’Nov 20, 2024 5:43 pm - In director Ridley Scott’s spectacularly violent, 200 AD Roman epic “Gladiator II,” limbs get lopped and heads get chopped, but the majority of casualties die from being talked to death.
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Wizard of awes: Magnificent movie musical ‘Wicked’ exceeds its hype as cinematic work of ingenuity, thrills and funNov 19, 2024 5:10 pm - The most popular song from the Broadway musical “Wicked” may very well be “Popular,” but the cinematic piece de resistance in Jon M. Chu’s magnificently mounted movie version turns out to be a jaw-dropping, retina-ripping, ear-drum-thumping number “Dancing Through Life.”
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Big gain with ‘Pain’: Sublime cast, sharp characters, wit, sentiment blend in emotionally honest relationship studyNov 13, 2024 5:30 am - Jesse Eisenberg has hand-crafted a wonderful gem of a movie wisely titled “A Real Pain.” This compact 89-minute relationship study works with an almost nonexistent plot, and with sharply drawn, realistic characters brought to life by a sublime cast.
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Hugh Grant diabolically good as a villainous scholar in religious thriller ‘Heretic’Nov 05, 2024 12:27 pm - Once two missionaries (Chloe East and Sophie Thatcher) settle in to discuss religion with Mr. Reed (Hugh Grant) in the religious thriller “Heretic,” the directors turn him into a congenial spider that has us —along with his guests — in his tightly crafted web.
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‘Here’ isn’t there: Conceptually daring visuals blunt empathy, emotions in tiresome gimmick movieOct 31, 2024 5:30 am - “Here” is a conceptually daring, but tiresome gimmick movie, a virtually plotless, visually busy anthology of nonintersecting stories spanning zillions of years, and we feel as if we’ve seen most of them already.
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Highbrow drama: Smart, savvy Vatican thriller presciently parallels U.S. politics in ‘Conclave’Oct 23, 2024 2:52 pm - If the Academy Awards ever created a special Oscar for “Best Performance by a Furrowed Brow,” Ralph Fiennes would handily win for his lively and versatile forehead wrinkles in Edward Berger’s elegantly staged, unpredictable and extremely timely drama “Conclave.”
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Mitzi Gaynor: Superstar, one-time Elgin girlOct 17, 2024 4:15 pm - Editor’s note: Actor-dancer Mitzi Gaynor died Thursday at age 93. This story was originally published on March 19, 2013. “Oh, honey,” Mitzi Gaynor told us, “it's hard to...