Erik Childress Movie Reviews & Previews

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Erik Childress

""I would give anything if you were two people, so I can call up the one who's my friend and tell her about the one that I like SO much." - Albert Brooks, Broadcast News "We...are going...to DIE!!!" Harrison Ford, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom"

Agrees with the Tomatometer 71% of the time.

Biography:: Erik started reviewing films as a frequent guest on the Jonathon Brandmeier Radio Showgram (105.9 FM in Chicago / 97.1 FM in LA) back in 1998 through 2001, which led to a mailing list over the Internet of his reviews to listeners of the radio show. Known as "Erik the Movieman", these appearances also attracted the attention of another Chicago radio show host, Nick Digilio (WGN 720 AM in Chicago, 11-3 AM Fri, 1-4 AM Sat, 12-2 AM Sun) where he's now become a regular guest on his Sunday night show to finish up the movie discussion. He is also on to discuss impending awards, top ten lists, new articles, etc...) Erik was also heard on Buzz Kilman & Wendy Snyder's midday show in Chicago (105.9 FM WCKG, 11-2 PM Mon-Fri) from Jan 2001-Mar 2002. Erik writes for eFilmCritic.com and has been a member of the Online Film Critics Society since February 2000 and also became the first online writer inducted into the Chicago Film Critics Association alongside such names as Roger Ebert, Michael Wilmington and Dann Gire.
Favorites:: Back to the Future, JFK, the Star Wars films, the Indiana Jones films, E.T., pretty much anything directed by Steven Spielberg, Aliens, Broadcast News, Die Hard, Flash Gordon (1980) (Hey - I was a kid!)
Publications:: Cinematical , eFilmCritic.com , Hollywood Bitchslap
Critics' Group:: Chicago Film Critics Association, Online Film Critics Society

Total Reviews:: 1141
Total QuickRatings:: 23

Location:: Elk Grove Village, IL (Chicago)

Listing Of All Reviews & Articles

Showing 1 - 50 of 1141

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Rating	T-Meter	Title \| Year	Add Date
1.5/4	36%	The Thing (2011)	" The Thing becomes its own beast; a thawed out creature from the past desperately trying to survive by imitating those that melted it down in the first place for their own selfish path to fame and fortune." — eFilmCritic.com Posted Oct 14, 2011
2/5	33%	All Good Things (2010)	— eFilmCritic.com Posted Oct 14, 2011
3.5/4	84%	My Week with Marilyn (2011)	" Unlike Me and Orson Welles from a few years ago, this is more than just an interesting footnote in history wrapped around a performance. And the star of it all is Williams, who from second one on screen IS Marilyn Monroe in a performance for the ages." — eFilmCritic.com Posted Oct 11, 2011
3/4	80%	We Need to Talk About Kevin (2012)	" If ever a movie gave you a hankering for jam and a vasectomy in one sitting, it would certainly be Lynne Ramsay's latest." — eFilmCritic.com Posted Oct 11, 2011
2/4	59%	Real Steel (2011)	" Most viewers over the age of 12 will feel they have stepped into a confused, unambitious piece of futurama weighed down by Shawn Levy's uninspired and limp direction." — eFilmCritic.com Posted Oct 6, 2011
3/4	93%	50/50 (2011)	" 50/50 is not just another crude piece of mockery. Crude at times, yes, but at its occasionally uneven soul is a very funny and bluntly moving tale of living within the fringes of potential death." — eFilmCritic.com Posted Oct 6, 2011
4/4	94%	Moneyball (2011)	" Baseball is more than just America's pasttime or America's game. It IS America. Moneyball should leave outsiders more appreciative of the game through an exceptionally crafted piece of work and true baseball lovers in seventh heaven." — eFilmCritic.com Posted Sep 21, 2011
4/4	93%	Drive (2011)	" Drive is quite simply the best film that Michael Mann never made in the period where Thief, Manhunter and the scores of Giorgio Moroder and Tangerine Dream secreted off the screen and into our veins." — eFilmCritic.com Posted Sep 16, 2011
3.5/4	84%	Contagion (2011)	" Steven Soderbergh is given the opportunity to scare us and it is the calm with which he does it that should frighten us all the more." — eFilmCritic.com Posted Sep 9, 2011
4/4	83%	Warrior (2011)	" The way it cobbles together the multiple storylines and relationships makes Warrior a more emotionally satisfying film than The Fighter. Lionsgate may want to get the train going on an Oscar campaign for Nolte." — eFilmCritic.com Posted Sep 6, 2011
0/4	0%	Swinging With The Finkels (2011)	" If you make it to the so-called happy ending, think aloud if Swinging with the Finkels would have lived up to its name better if the titular couple ended their relationship on the business side of a noose." — eFilmCritic.com Posted Aug 26, 2011
1/4	5%	The Family Tree (2011)	" Think Overboard with masturbating, asphyxiated teens, gun-toting/weed-smoking priests, lesbian high school teachers preying on her students, a parade of wasted talent, and Bow Wow." — eFilmCritic.com Posted Aug 26, 2011
3/4	59%	Don't Be Afraid Of The Dark (2011)	" Occasional visitors into the haunted house fray may want to peek their head in, if only to see how quickly they peek out." — eFilmCritic.com Posted Aug 26, 2011
3/4	74%	Fright Night (2011)	" It really comes into its own thanks to a great ensemble, an underlying theme about growing pains that should embolden the hypnotized Twilight fans and a rare, genuine mix of horror and comedy that complement each other as well as it did 26 years ago. " — eFilmCritic.com Posted Aug 18, 2011
2.5/4	60%	Final Destination 5 (2011)	" Maybe the filmmakers just got a little lazy, but it was disappointing to watch it wrap itself by becoming just another killer-in-human-form thriller." — eFilmCritic.com Posted Aug 11, 2011
2/4	76%	The Help (2011)	" Almost succeeds solely on the strength of its acting, but The Help cannot escape the central hypocrisy that should have been easy-as-pie to fix." — eFilmCritic.com Posted Aug 10, 2011
0/4	25%	The Change-Up (2011)	" A screenplay that should equally insult every single AND married man who witnesses this catastrophe. They say you have to hit rock bottom before you can find clarity. Well, after their Hangover, Lucas & Moore certainly did it with The Change-Up." — eFilmCritic.com Posted Aug 5, 2011
2.5/4	79%	Captain America: The First Avenger (2011)	" Those who want to accentuate Captain America as a blueprint for how comic book movies should be made, must footnote such hyperbolic statements with an asterisk referring to the first half. Cause the second half puts a noose onto all its momentum." — eFilmCritic.com Posted Jul 21, 2011
3/4	88%	The Hedgehog (2011)	" Develops into a deeply charming and smile-worthy little film with Balasko drawing us in bit-by-bit as she opens up to Kakuro's more-than-casual advances. And if you leave with ten minutes left to spare, you will be able to hold onto those feelings. " — eFilmCritic.com Posted Jul 21, 2011
1.5/4	60%	The Women On The 6th Floor (Les Femmes Du Sixi�me �tage) ()	" Over an hour in, the film would like to be some kind of reverse Ball of Fire, but none of it is remotely believable nor funny. Luchini is a big dud and Verbeke has a nice smile, but has nowhere to take it except the kitchen and upstairs." — eFilmCritic.com Posted Jul 21, 2011
2/4	86%	Romantics Anonymous (2011)	" Carr� and Poelvoorde are nice and cute in their scenes together, but just as it seems it is going to make some concessions in its second act, it is already over." — eFilmCritic.com Posted Jul 21, 2011
3/4	71%	Friends With Benefits (2011)	" There are many connections we can make to No Strings Attached, but easily the most favorable is that like the former, it also turns out to be a really sharp and funny surprise that treats its vulgarity in adult terms rather than childish shock value." — eFilmCritic.com Posted Jul 21, 2011
4/4	96%	Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 2 (2011)	" The continuous flow of the two movies will hopefully be molded into a single 4-hour plus experience on Blu-ray (where Eduardo Serra's cinematography will really pop) and solidify its place as one of the best final chapters of any movie franchise ever." — eFilmCritic.com Posted Jul 13, 2011
1/4	14%	Zookeeper (2011)	" Audiences may be shocked when they discover that only about 40% of the running time involves scenes of talking animals. That 60% of PG-rated adult material does not qualify under the mold of 'a little something for the entire family.' Just mold itself. " — eFilmCritic.com Posted Jul 7, 2011
2.5/4	——	Vampires (2010)	" There is the occasional dark, droll observation, but when they try to wring an actual plot out of the material we are thrust into a long, final stretch that feels like an extended what-are-they-doing-now epilogue from Christopher Guest's movies." — eFilmCritic.com Posted Jul 7, 2011
3/4	43%	Ironclad (2011)	" A certain bloody matinee charm to it, if your idea of charm is brutally graphic combat scenes and well-known faces hamming it up in the downtime between. " — eFilmCritic.com Posted Jul 7, 2011
3/4	69%	Horrible Bosses (2011)	" Spotty in its commitment to the darker elements of the material, but damn if this is not an example of actors taking control of nearly every scene and turning it into one of the more consistently funny efforts of the year." — eFilmCritic.com Posted Jul 7, 2011
3/4	34%	Larry Crowne (2011)	" With Hanks sharing screenwriting duty with Vardalos, you can almost make a game out of which characters and plot elements were of her invention and which ones he eventually smoothed out into a comedy that once it gets going is hard to stop smiling at." — eFilmCritic.com Posted Jun 30, 2011
2/4	35%	Transformers: Dark of the Moon (2011)	" To get to the much-ballyhooed final act, you have to suffer through a painful 95-minute comedic train wreck of flaunted jingoism and insulting anachronisms. " — eFilmCritic.com Posted Jun 28, 2011
2/4	44%	Bad Teacher (2011)	" Has no appreciable arc for any of the characters and if it wasn't for the work of Jason Segel who appears to have shown up with his own script, this would have been an even more brutal affair." — eFilmCritic.com Posted Jun 24, 2011
1.5/4	39%	Cars 2 (2011)	" A hypocritical bore of a film that is fundamentally no different in tone, humor and plot than your average Larry the Cable Guy film." — eFilmCritic.com Posted Jun 23, 2011
3/4	26%	The Best and the Brightest (2011)	" It may dawn on you that the film really only has one, big joke up its sleeve, but like The Aristocrats it finds so many great ways to tell it that the punchline rarely matters." — eFilmCritic.com Posted Jun 16, 2011
2/4	17%	The Art of Getting By (2011)	" Basically a collection of subplots for its lead character to look upon with smug insights while never having the stones to actually resolve any of them until a third act when we are long past the point of caring. " — eFilmCritic.com Posted Jun 16, 2011
3/4	32%	Kidnapped (2011)	" Kidnapped proves to be the rule and the exception as writer/director Miguel �ngel Vivas has a few tricks up his sleeves on the fringes of the same old ones. " — eFilmCritic.com Posted Jun 16, 2011
1.5/4	27%	Green Lantern (2011)	" Even the most hardcore fans should be leaving the theater saying 'In brightest day, in blackest night, may a really crappy movie escape my sight.'" — eFilmCritic.com Posted Jun 16, 2011
2.5/4	70%	Beautiful Boy (2011)	" Unlike the rather basic idea of Rabbit Hole being spun into other areas of forgiveness and catharsis, Ku's film exists in a bubble that just keeps floating." — eFilmCritic.com Posted Jun 10, 2011
3/4	84%	The Tree of Life (2011)	" Frustration aside, which might be inevitable for those who don't genuflect at Malick's altar, The Tree of Life has an astute elegance to the way it tells its story even if the filmmaker cannot help himself from underlining the thematics." — eFilmCritic.com Posted Jun 3, 2011
3/4	87%	X-Men: First Class (2011)	" There is new hope that the guy originally chosen to close this series has reinvigorated a reboot that could be destined for its own trilogy." — eFilmCritic.com Posted Jun 2, 2011
3.5/4	82%	Super 8 (2011)	" In some way Super 8 is the ultimate found footage piece and for once we are not yelling back at the screen to put down the camera." — eFilmCritic.com Posted Jun 1, 2011
2/4	81%	Kung Fu Panda 2 (2011)	" Whoever was responsible for all but writing out the original's best character, Shifu, deserves the most scorn. With maybe seven minutes and a handful of lines, it ends up featuring less of Dustin Hoffman than the eleventh hour reshoots of Little Fockers. " — eFilmCritic.com Posted May 26, 2011
3.5/4	93%	Midnight in Paris (2011)	" Easily Woody Allen's most enjoyable work since Small Time Crooks and his most lovely since Everyone Says I Love You." — eFilmCritic.com Posted May 26, 2011
2.5/4	60%	We Are The Night (2011)	" The first half-hour boasts real energy and finds new ways to explore elements of the vampire genre. Until the time continued to pass and it slowly dawned that most of its ideas were circa 1987." — eFilmCritic.com Posted May 26, 2011
0/4	35%	The Hangover Part II (2011)	" The equivalent of a drunk college student waking up the morning their book report is due and desperately trying to remember what they saw in the crappy movie version." — eFilmCritic.com Posted May 25, 2011
2/4	34%	Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (2011)	" Severely suffers from simplicity, trying to blanket the brain cramps experienced by those who chose not to keep up with many of the unappreciated intricacies of its predecessors." — eFilmCritic.com Posted May 20, 2011
3.5/4	90%	Bridesmaids (2011)	" After one bad and surprisingly misogynistic comedy after another written by women, here is finally one that doesn't alienate either sex and should easily garner a standing as one of the funniest films of 2011." — eFilmCritic.com Posted May 13, 2011
2/4	83%	The Double Hour (2011)	" The Double Hour would like to fool us into believing that it is really a story about people rather than crime, gimmicks and twists, but it really is just fooling itself." — eFilmCritic.com Posted May 13, 2011
2/4	85%	Meek's Cutoff (2011)	" Whatever allegory of pre-feminist roles that Reichardt hopes to achieve is slowly put to sleep along with the rest of the audience with a less-is-less narrative style that, like Meek, is too stubborn to realize how lost it is. " — eFilmCritic.com Posted May 13, 2011
3.5/4	79%	Conan O'Brien Can't Stop (2011)	" As solid a showbiz documentary as seen of late when it premiered at SXSW and now works as an addendum to the disastrous Charlie Sheen tour which plays more like the I'm Still Here to Flender's equivalent of the Dixie Chicks' Shut Up and Sing." — eFilmCritic.com Posted May 11, 2011
3/4	——	A Bag Of Hammers ()	" Brian Crano's A Bag of Hammers turns out to be that rare tale that surprises in its maturity while never losing the reality of leopards trying to change their spots." — eFilmCritic.com Posted May 11, 2011

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