Your Chicago Curated Weekend: 1/11 and Beyond
Winter seems to finally be here! The forecast says heavy snow on Friday, but it’s Chicago and the events are…
Film
Review: The Book of Clarence Is a Smart, Sharp Satire of the Bible’s New Testament and Modern Race Relations
Here it is, everybody: the first truly great film of 2024 that isn’t a holdover from 2023. (A handful of…
Review: Featuring Varied Animation Styles (and Lily Gladstone), Quantum Cowboys Impresses with its Ambition and Originality
If 2023 didn’t satiate your need to see Lily Gladstone be awesome in both The Unknown Country and her award-winning…
Recap: The Curse (S1, Ep4) — Dougie Gets Some Time in the Light in Character-Defining Episode
By the time “Under the Big Tree” is over, we have a greater understanding of the Siegels. Whitney (Emma Stone)…
Recap: The Curse (S1, Ep3) — Explosive Fight Reveals More Holes in the Siegel Marriage
The Siegel marriage has seemed off from the beginning. Ignoring the weird sex and the utterly repellant people, when you…
2023 in Review: The Ten Best Television Shows of the Year
This was a big year for finality in television. A lot of amazing shows ended, and most of them stuck…
Review: Imagining a Philosophical Conversation, Freud’s Last Session Frustrates More than it Fascinates
Part of the issue with director and co-writer Matt Brown’s Freud’s Last Session is that it can’t decide what the…
Review: Jessica Chastain and Peter Sarsgaard Star in Beautifully Crafted Relationship Drama Memory
This year has been a very good one for the kind of films I’m naturally drawn to, films without much…
Review: Night Swim Boasts Strong Production Credits, but Its Plot and Scares Are Shallow
A slight and silly PG-13 horror film with a hefty pedigree (at least as far as producers go—James Wan and…
Review: Society of the Snow Recounts the Harrowing Events of a 1972 Plane Crash with Grace, Human Drama
If the story told in the epic, harrowing Society of the Snow seems familiar, that’s because it’s been recounted a…
Your Chicago Curated First Weekend of 2024 and Beyond
It’s a brand new year! Of course we’ll be accidentally writing 2023 for the next few day/weeks, but that doesn’t…
Recap: Fargo (S5, Ep3) — Series’ Third Episode Takes Its Time Setting Up Conflicts
Oh, I missed this show so much. I don’t think I can properly articulate how much I missed it, but…
Review: Centered by Authentic, Devastating Performances, All Of Us Strangers Confronts Grief, Passion and Connection
There’s a magic to writer/director Andrew Haigh’s All of Us Strangers, the kind that sneaks up slowly at first before…
2023 in Review: Best Narrative Films of the Year
It’s the last Friday of a pretty great year for film, so it’s time to reveal my Best of the…
2023 in Review: Best Documentary Films of the Year
As I am prone to do every year, I separate documentaries into their own Best of the Year list, not…
Recap: Invincible (S2, Ep4) — Mark and Nolan Fight Their Toughest Battle in a Brutal Mid-Season Finale
Where do we really come from? Invincible has been asking this question since its beginning. At first, Earth’s superpowered defender…
Review: Raging Grace Finds More Horror in the Immigrant Experience than Its Jump Scares
This article was written by Zachary Lee. I did not realize the clever double meeting of the title of writer-director…
Your Chicago Curated New Year’s Eve Weekend 2023 and Beyond
Well this is it. 2023 is coming to a close this weekend and there’s a TON of things going on.…
Review: Searching for Meaning in the Absurd World of Rajkamal Chaudhary’s Traces of Boots on Tongue and Other Stories
The late Indian writer Rajkamal Chaudhary (1929–1967) came to prominence in the first two decades of independent India in the…
Review: An Artist/Photographer Analyzes the Wanderlust of Stray Shopping Carts
The Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern North America: A Guide to Field Identification By Julian Montague Second edition, 2023, University…
