By Bernie Jablonski More pics here. Chicago, IL-(ENEWSPF)- Writing about the new $72 million, multi-level, 165,000-square-foot Theatre School at DePaul University puts me in the middle of a very happy confluence. As a docent for the Chicago Architecture Foundation, I know a bit about the structure, form, and functions of[Read More…]

Movie Reviews By Bernie Jablonski OK. If I were reviewing this movie as The Regular Guy (the nom de plum of Chicago radio announcer Marty Lennartz when he’s reviewing movies for WXRT-FM; he does a mean Northwest Side uhduh City aaac-cent), I would probably start out saying that, “I t’ought[Read More…]

(PHOTO SUPPLIED) Movie Reviews By Bernie Jablonski Several movie critics have been calling Lee Daniels’ The Butler an African-American Forrest Gump. One could make a point for Backstairs at the White House Meets Forrest Gump as well. As always, this is a superficial, handy way of putting a movie in[Read More…]

(PHOTO SUPPLIED) Movie Reviews By Bernie Jablonski If Captain James Tiberius Kirk in the old (Uh, sorry. Original.) Star Trek lost control of the starship Enterprise to aliens about a dozen times, why was he never relieved of command? If Lieutenant Geordi LaForge of Star Trek: The Next Generation was[Read More…]

(PHOTO SUPPLIED) Movie Reviews By Bernie Jablonski When I learned that the famed 1925 Scopes “Monkey Trial” was not (as we are given the impression in the play based on that trial, Inherit the Wind) based on the struggles of one man against the System, I must admit that I[Read More…]

Denzel Washington in Flight. (PHOTO SUPPLIED) Movie Reviews By Bernie Jablonski The often-copied, never-duplicated original Twilight Zone TV show ran an episode entitled “The Last Flight,” about a British World War I fighter pilot who, seeing that the oncoming German attack planes will be too much for him, abandons his[Read More…]

Tommy Lee Jones and Meryl Streep in Hope Springs. (PHOTO SUPPLIED) Movie Reviews By Bernie Jablonski Watching Hope Springs, where Meryl Streep and Tommy Lee Jones play a married couple whose sexual life has become stunted, and seek help from a prominent (and best-selling) marriage counselor, one feels like one[Read More…]

Mark Duplass and Aubrey Plaza in Safety Not Guaranteed. (SUPPLIED) Movie Reviews By Bernie Jablonski Usually I bemoan the fact that small and/or independent movies (that I usually read about in my beloved Entertainment Weekly) don’t seem to play in Chicago’s Far South Suburbs, and that one has to go[Read More…]

Jesse Eisenberg and Greta Gerwig in To Rome With Love. (PHOTO SUPPLIED) Movie Reviews By Bernie Jablonski Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris was such a magical, enchanting movie, with the audience sharing the same sense of wonder that the protagonist does when he’s transported to the City of Light in[Read More…]

(PROMOTIONAL: SUPPLIED) Movie Reviews By Bernie Jablonski Farce works well if you play it fast, so the audience doesn’t notice the absurdity of the situation. Scratch out the word “farce,” replace it with “drama,” and you may not sum up the work of a lot of film directors, but you’ll[Read More…]