Posts Tagged ‘Movie review’

Oak Park Arms presents its popular series “You Be the Critic” at 3:30 p.m. Friday, Aug. 9, at the Oak Park Arms, 408 S. Oak Park Ave. The 1996 film, “A Family Thing,” will be viewed and reviewed with radio announcer Dan Kane.

This drama was written by Billy Bob Thornton and Tom Epperson and directed by Richard Pearce. It stars Robert Duvall, James Earl Jones, Irma P. Hall and Michael Beach.

When the mother of a Scotch-Irish American Southerner, Earl Pilcher (Duvall), dies, she leaves behind a letter explaining how he is not her biological son but the son of a Black American maid who was raped by Earl’s (white) father and who died in childbirth.

The letter prompts Earl to visit his half-brother in Chicago, Raymond Murdoch (Jones). Ray blames the death their mother on Earl’s father and wants nothing to do with Earl when he shows up. As Earl is preparing to leave town his car is high jacked by street thugs, and he ends up in the hospital with nothing but Ray’s contact information in his pocket.

Ray, a veteran Chicago police officer, begrudgingly lets Earl recover in his home as the hospital is too crowded. It is there that Earl meets his Aunt T. (Hall), a loving and blind woman who eventually persuades the family to accept Earl and helps them all heal old wounds.

The Oak Park Arms is a rental retirement community which provides independent and assisted living apartments and a full schedule of activities and services. Furnished apartments are also available for a short-term stay – a weekend, a week, a month or longer.

The event is free and open to the public. Call Jill Wagner at 708-386-4040.

Oak Park Arms presents its popular series “You Be the Critic” at 3:30 p.m. Friday, March 8, at the Oak Park Arms, 408 S. Oak Park Ave. The film “Medium Cool” will be viewed and reviewed with radio announcer Dan Kane.

Written and directed by Haskell Wexler, this 1969 film stars Robert Forster, Verna Bloom, Peter Bonerz, Marianna Hill and Harold Blakenship. The film centers around a television news cameraman, John Cassellis (Forster), during a time of social and political upheaval in America.

For years Cassellis enjoyed filming gruesome and violent events with detachment and a blasé attitude, but when he discovers his tapes are being used by the FBI to find suspects of violence and racial tensions, he realizes the power of his camera. He protests to his network and gets fired.

Subsequently Cassellis attends the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Illinois where he meets and grows fond of the widow of a Vietnam veteran, Eileen, and her son Harold. When Harold goes missing during the convention, Cassellis’ help in the search for Eileen’s son takes him even deeper into the emotional pulls of human nature.

At one point Eileen is desperately searching through the rioting crowds and Cassellis is filming the convention, merging the fictional story and real-life brutality onscreen.

The film is best known for presenting the audience with powerful imagery through its documentary-style filmmaking techniques and combination of fictional and non-fictional content. Because Wexler funded the film partly out of his own resources, he had free reign during the film’s production.

Today “Medium Cool” is a vital late-‘60s film for its incisive narrative, formal dissection of the “truth” of visual politics and its awareness of the blurred lines of depicted violence received as entertainment, especially during a times of political upheaval.

It was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress in 2003.

The Oak Park Arms is a rental retirement community which provides independent and assisted living apartments and a full schedule of activities and services. Furnished apartments are also available for a short-term stay – a weekend, a week, a month or longer.

The event is free and open to the public. Call Jill Wagner at 708-386-4040.

Oak Park Arms presents its popular series “You Be the Critic” at 3:30 p.m. Friday, Feb. 8, at the Oak Park Arms, 408 S. Oak Park Ave. The 1975 film “Cooley High” will be viewed and reviewed with radio announcer Dan Kane.

Based upon Cooley Vocational High School, the real high school located in Chicago (which is no longer standing), “Cooley High,” set in 1964, was directed by Michael Schultz and starred Glynn Turman and Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs.

The movie is considered a classic of black cinema. It follows two teenagers, Preach (Turman) and Cochise (Jacobs), as their carefree lives take a turn for the worse when they wind up getting involved with street criminals.

After cutting class for a trip to the zoo and a party that goes bad, Preach and Cochise get mixed up with street thugs in connection to a stolen Cadillac. Although the two kids were let off the hook, they find themselves on the receiving end of vengeance from the street thugs who get arrested.

Following the high school seniors as they deal with girl, school and police troubles as they prepare for post-high school life, this movie ranked number 23 on Entertainment Weekly’s “50 Best High School Movies” list.

The Oak Park Arms is a rental retirement community which provides independent and assisted living apartments and a full schedule of activities and services. Furnished apartments are also available for a short-term stay – a weekend, a week, a month or longer.

The event is free and open to the public. Call Jill Wagner at 708-386-4040.

Oak Park Arms presents its popular series “You Be the Critic” at 3:30 p.m. Friday, Jan. 11, at the Oak Park Arms, 408 S. Oak Park Ave. The film “Call Northside 777” will be viewed and reviewed with radio announcer Dan Kane.

The movie is set in Chicago in 1932. An officer is murdered inside a speakeasy, and two men are quickly arrested and sentenced to 99 years imprisonment.

After the mother of one prisoner, Frank Wiecek, puts out an ad 11 years later offering $5,000 in exchange for information on the true killers, a Chicago Times reporter is assigned to write a story on the case. Although he believes the prisoners to be guilty, the reporter’s opinion begins to change as the story develops.

He is met with increased police resistance followed by political pressure to end a story that may embarrass the administration. Despite the government’s insistence, Wiecek eventually is proved innocent.

Directed by Henry Hathaway and starring James Stewart, Richard Conte and Lee J. Cobb, this documentary-style film noir was the first movie filmed in Chicago. It received mostly positive reviews both when it was originally released and when it was released again on DVD in 2004.

The Oak Park Arms is a rental retirement community which provides independent and assisted living apartments and a full schedule of activities and services. Furnished apartments are also available for a short-term stay – a weekend, a week, a month or longer.

The event is free and open to the public. Call Jill Wagner at 708-386-4040.

The Oak Park Arms hosts a popular monthly movie series titled, “View and Review: You Be the Critic” at the retirement community located at 408 S. Oak Park Ave. Hosted by radio announcer Dan Kane and offered to the public at no cost, “Windy City Films” is the theme of the 2013 movie selections.

Chicago’s history of filmmaking is almost as old as the films themselves. Before the rise of Hollywood, Chicago was the central hub for the motion picture industry. In 1895 the first motion picture camera was manufactured, and just two years later former magician William Selig was producing and showing films in Chicago.

Chicago quickly became a leader in the industry in the early 1900s with innovative trailblazers and an interested and supportive public.

Each month at “You be the Critic” a different movie filmed in the Windy City between 1947 and 2000 will be featured and discussed.

“Dan has planned an extraordinary line-up of films,” said Desi Vasquez, social programming director at the Oak Park Arms. “It’s an enjoyable way to learn about Chicago’s movie industry.”

All films are shown at 3:30 p.m. on the first or second Friday of every month in the Terrace Room. The line-up for the year includes:

•    Jan. 11: “Call Northside 777” starring James Steward
•    Feb. 8: “Cooley High” with Glynn Turman and Garret Morris
•    March 8: “Medium Cool” starring Robert Forster and Verna Bloom
•    April 5: “Ordinary People,” Robert Redford’s directorial debut
•    May 10: “Sixteen Candles” starring Molly Ringwald, Anthony Michael Hall and Michael Schoeffling
•    June 14: “The Father Clements Story” with Louis Gossett Jr., Malcolm-Jamal Warner and Carroll O’Connor
•    July 12: “The Breakfast Club” directed by John Hughes
•    Aug. 9: “A Family Thing” starring Robert Duvall and James Earl Jones
•    Sept. 6: “The Package” directed by Chicago native Andrew Davis
•    Oct. 4: “Backdraft” starring Kurt Russell and William Baldwin
•    Nov. 8: “The Fugitive” starring Harrison Ford and directed by Andrew Davis
•    Dec. 6: “Return to Me” with David Duchovny and Minnie Driver

“Following each film, Dan leads a discussion that occasionally morphs into a spirited debate,” Vasquez said. “It’s all in good fun.”

The Oak Park Arms is a rental retirement community which provides independent and assisted living apartments and a full schedule of activities and services. Furnished apartments are also available for a short-term stay – a weekend, a week, a month or longer.

See one, or see them all. Each movie is free and open to the public. For more information contact Jill Wagner at 708-386-4040.

Oak Park Arms presents its popular series “You Be the Critic” at 3:30 p.m. Friday, Nov. 16, at the Oak Park Arms, 408 S. Oak Park Ave. The 1960 film “The Alamo” will be viewed and reviewed with radio announcer Dan Kane.

Directed by John Wayne, who also starred in the film as Colonel Davy Crockett, the Alamo is a war film about the Battle of the Alamo, a pivotal event during the Texas Revolution.

When General Santa Anna and his Mexican army were sweeping through Texas in 1836, General Sam Houston (Richard Boone) bought time to arrange his troops by asking Colonel William Travis (Laurence Harvey) to defend a mission against the Mexican army at all costs. Davy Crockett and Colonel Jim Bowie (Richard Widmark) also joined the fight.

Mixed reviews have touted the film for its battle scenes and criticized it for its historical inaccuracies. The film’s production costs kept it from becoming an immediate success, despite a large box office take. The film won the Academy Award for Best Sound, and was nominated several times, including for Best Music, Best Film Editing and Best Cinematography.

The Oak Park Arms is a rental retirement community which provides independent and assisted living apartments and a full schedule of activities and services. Furnished apartments are also available for a short-term stay – a weekend, a week, a month or longer.

The event is free and open to the public. Call Jill Wagner at 708-386-4040.

Oak Park Arms presents its popular series “You Be the Critic” at 3:30 p.m. Friday, Oct. 12, at the Oak Park Arms, 408 S. Oak Park Ave. The 1997 film “Amistad” will be viewed and reviewed with radio announcer Dan Kane.

The critically acclaimed movie depicts the rebellion of African captives on the slave ship, La Amistad, in 1839. After freeing themselves from their shackles, the slaves kill the majority of the crew, save for the two owners of the ship who the Africans hope will sail them home to West Africa. The owners instead sail the ship to the coast of the United States where the slaves are imprisoned and put on trial.

The captives don’t speak a word of English and it seems they are doomed to be killed until an abolitionist lawyer decides to take their case.

The case eventually reaches the Supreme Court, where John Quincy Adams (Anthony Hopkins) makes an impassioned and eloquent speech for their release.

Based on a true story, this film was directed by Steven Spielberg and starred Djimon Hounsou, Anthony Hopkins and Matthew McConaughey.

The Oak Park Arms is a rental retirement community which provides independent and assisted living apartments and a full schedule of activities and services. Furnished apartments are also available for a short-term stay – a weekend, a week, a month or longer.

The event is free and open to the public. Call Jill Wagner at 708-386-4040