Preview: Choose Your Own Adventure at C2E2 2022!
Nature is healing. Summer is in full swing, and Lollapalooza is behind us. Fan Expo kicked off our summer convention…
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Your Chicago Curated Weekend: 8/4 and Beyond
Summer is still going strong as a new month rolls in! There are tons of really fun events for everyone…
Review: Now Stars, Brandi Carlile and Her Band Renewed Their Chicago Bonds
When Brandi Carlile and her band last played Chicago in June 2019, they were riding a breakthrough high. Carlile and…
Gallery: Friday Cosplay at C2E2 2022
It’s another edition of C2E2! Only 8 months after the last C2E2, this year’s expo of pop culture welcomed fans…
Review: Grant Park Chorus Turns 60 in Full Voice
“The human voice is the most beautiful instrument of all, but it is the most difficult to play,” said the…
Review: Comedian Jo Koy Goes Personal for Easter Sunday, Complete With a Chaotic Family and Mouth-Watering Food
Fully admitting that I have no prior exposure to stand-up comic Jo Koy, I walked into what I believe is…
Review: Claydream Follows the Highs and Lows of a Creator’s Long, Eventful Career in Claymation
What I thought was going to strictly be a loving documentary tribute to the beloved Father of Claymation, Will Vinton…
Review: Bloody and Action-Packed Prey Finds a Captivating Prequel Story in a Familiar Franchise
The idea behind the Predator prequel is so simple and so perfect, I’m actually genuinely glad that someone took the…
Review: All Those People, All Those Lives, Where Are They Now?, Graceland Cemetery, by Adam Selzer
Chicago is young. Compared with the large cities of Africa, Asia, and Europe—hell, compared with the Native American metropolis that…
Review: Lena Dunham’s Sharp Stick Pokes at Dysfunction and Complexity But Never Finds It
Writer/director Lena Dunham burst onto the independent film scene in 2010 with her feature film debut Tiny Furniture, a film that…
Review: Bullet Train Speeds By With Chaotic Action and Brad Pitt’s Under-Utilized Comedic Wit
Did you ever have a friend who took one semester of Intro to Psychology and immediately started analyzing themselves and…
Review: Reality and Delusion Are Nearly Indistinguishable in Moody, Angsty Resurrection
After hoisting herself up as the new queen of angsty acting (with such films as Christine and The Night House) and equally impressive…
Interview: Documentarian Sara Dosa Explores the Fiery World of Volcanoes, Science and Love in Fire of Love
In her previous documentary, The Seer and the Unseen, director Sara Dosa adopted an almost magical-realism-like approach to telling the…
Review: IDLES Stomps Through Metro
By guest author Aviv Hart Attempting to categorize British rock band IDLES into a genre is an exercise in semantics.…
Review: Wildly Contorted and Reimagined: Don’t Make Me Do Something We’ll Both Regret, by Tim Jones-Yelvington
In his story collection Don’t Make Me Do Something We’ll Both Regret, Chicagoan Tim Jones-Yelvington zestfully recasts gay men and…
Essay: How Many Books Can $30 Buy at the Newberry Book Fair?
When I visited the Newberry Library Book Fair on Friday, I knew I had to come up with a strategy. …
Review: Paradise Highway Features a Strong Cast But a Loose Grip on the Horrors of Human Trafficking
In a week filled with oddities at the movie theater, few are stranger in my mind than the feature debut…
Review: Social Media Fame Backfires in Flawed but Entertaining Not Okay
Brace yourself. We’re on the verge of being bombarded with higher-profile feature films about the perils of being a 20-something,…
Review: Comedian and Actor B.J. Novak Impresses with Whip-Smart Debut Feature Vengeance
Although B.J. Novak is best known for playing Ryan Howard on “The Office” for eight seasons, he’s also been racking…
Review: Ron Howard Dives into the Harrowing Rescue of a Thai Soccer Team in Thirteen Lives
On certain rare occasions when a filmmaker adapts a book or play and essentially films everything in that source material,…
