Copyright © 2009 Northwest Herald. All rights reserved.
Published in Crystal Lake, Illinois, USA, by Shaw Suburban Media.

MoviesNovember 6, 2009 By DAVID GERMAIN
- The Associated Press Cameron Diaz and James Marsden have a terrible moral dilemma in Richard Kelly’s “The Box”: Press a button on a mysterious container, they’ll get $1 million, and someone they don’t know will die. November 5, 2009 By DAVID GERMAIN - The Associated Press LOS ANGELES – Technology finally has caught up with Charles Dickens' imagination. By JEFFREY WESTHOFF - sidetracks@nwherald.com Leaving aside for a few moments the technology behind Robert Zemeckis’ animated “A Christmas Carol,” this is the most satisfying version of Charles Dickens' oft-told tale in years. By By JEFFREY WESTHOFF - sidetracks@nwherald.com “The Men Who Stare at Goats” pokes fun at the U.S. military for trying to create a team of psychic warriors, but you at least have to give the military credit for keeping an open mind. October 29, 2009 By DAVID GERMAIN – The Associated Press “Gentlemen Broncos” is a comedy so weird, so off, so simply wrong that even freakish hero Napoleon Dynamite would have a hard time lending it his catch word, “Sweet.” By DAVID GERMAIN – The Associated Press Low-rental 1980s horror returns with filmmaker Ti West’s “The House of the Devil,” which scores points for restraint and attention to detail but defaults when the mortgage comes due with a bloody, pointless, uninspired climax. October 23, 2009 By DAVID GERMAIN
- The Associated Press LOS ANGELES – Vampires have been an eternal force in Hollywood horror since silent-movie days, yet they have risen to new heights as the "Twilight" franchise, TV's "True Blood" and other incarnations put the bite on viewers. By The NORTHWEST HERALD Bela Lugosi is burned into most movie lovers’ brains as THE Dracula, but he’s hardly the only guy to portray the legendary bloodsucker. Christopher Lee played the Count seven times in the course of 15 years, Leslie Nielsen hammed it up in Mel Brooks’ vampire send-up, and John Carradine got to portray Dracula in a battle against, of all people, Billy the Kid. Ah, the ’60s ... October 22, 2009 By DAVID GERMAIN – The Associated Press Considering the risks Amelia Earhart took, losing her life in the call of aviation, Hilary Swank and director Mira Nair don’t put much on the line in their film biography “Amelia.” By JEFFREY WESTHOFF sidetracks@nwherald.com “Astro Boy” is one of those happy moviegoing surprises. By JAKE COYLE - The Associated Press It’s getting downright batty trying to keep all these vampires straight. October 16, 2009 By CHRISTY LEMIRE
- The Associated Press The real mystery of "Law Abiding Citizen" isn't how Gerard Butler's character manages to wreak explosive, bloody havoc on Philadelphia while confined behind the walls of his jail cell. October 15, 2009 By GLENN WHIPP The Associated Press The no-budget ghost story “Paranormal Activity” arrives 10 years after “The Blair Witch Project,” and the two horror movies share more than a clever construct and shaky, handheld camerawork. By JEFFREY WESTHOFF sidetracks@nwherald.com Maurice Sendak’s classic children’s book “Where the Wild Things Are” is only 10 sentences long and takes less than five minutes to read, if you don’t linger over the pictures. By JAKE COYLE The Associated Press NEW YORK – About the hoopla surrounding the film adaptation of “Where the Wild Things Are,” Maurice Sendak is characteristically gruff. October 8, 2009 By ED SYMKUS
- GateHouse News Service In the 25 years since Joel and Ethan Coen broke cinematic ground with the very dark but oddly funny “Blood Simple,” journalists assigned to interview them have found that the brothers would much rather be making movies than talking about them. Questions were often answered with one or two words, followed by long silences. By CHRISTY LEMIRE
- The Associated Press "Couples Retreat" suggests what life might have been like if the guys from "Swingers" had grown up, moved to the suburbs and turned into lame, sitcommy cliches. October 2, 2009 By SANDY COHEN
- The Associated Press LOS ANGELES – "Toy Story" has always been a 3D film, even if moviegoers never saw it that way. October 1, 2009 By CHRISTY LEMIRE - The Associated Press "Capitalism: A Love Story" By JEFFREY WESTHOFF - sidetracks@nwherald.com Ricky Gervais may be best known for his British situation comedies “The Office” and “Extras,” but his background in sketch comedy surfaces in “The Invention of Lying.” By JEFFREY WESTHOFF - sidetracks@nwherald.com Drew Barrymore jams all the indie film adorability she can into her directing debut, “Whip It,” even though few would consider women’s roller derby an adorable sport. “Whip It” is nonetheless an easy movie to like. By CHRISTY LEMIRE – The Associated Press You’d be justified in thinking you’ve visited “Zombieland” before. September 25, 2009 By CHRISTY LEMIRE
- The Associated Press The "reinvention" of the 1980 high school musical "Fame" – please, people, don't call it a remake – stays faithful to the spirit and structure of Alan Parker's original while sucking out all the raciness. By JAKE COYLE
- The Associated Press "Surrogates" is itself a surrogate, a kind of stand-in for many of the sci-fi movies of the recent past: In it, you'll recognize in it the ideas of "Blade Runner," ''Minority Report" and even "WALL-E." |
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