It seems only right to preface this review by acknowledging that Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet, that frenetic, overdramatic, brilliantly contemporary adaptation of Shakespeare’s classic tragedy, is a formative film for me. It was released at the height of my…
Filmmaker Cooper Raiff (Shithouse) is only 24 years old, yet he’s delivered one of the most emotionally mature, fully formed dramas of this year’s Sundance Film Festival in Cha Cha Real Smooth, a film both heartwarming and heartbreaking in its honesty…
When it was released in 1993, one of the reasons Jurassic Park became the mega hit it remains today is the sense of wonder and grand scale filmmaker Steven Spielberg achieved in introducing the world to a theme park and…
If you had told me over a decade ago that a prim and polished television drama from PBS set within the gilded walls of a great British estate during the early 20th century would become one of the longest running…
A film like Men, the latest from writer/director Alex Garland (Annihilation, Ex Machina), is not going to be everyone’s cup of tea. I’m not even entirely sure it’s my cup of tea, but hopefully by the end of these several…
Over the last 15 years or so, chances are you’ve come across comedian, author, filmmaker, podcaster and storyteller Mike Birbiglia. It could be you’ve been a fan of his (like me) since Sleepwalk with Me, the story about his issues…
If everything in the news lately about reproductive rights (and the effort to restrict and remove them) has you feeling despondent and worried, perhaps a screening of Happening, the story of a young woman in 1960s France seeking an abortion,…
Perhaps because I just saw Joachim Trier’s The Worst Person in the World for a second (and just as impressive) time, Anaïs in Love, the feature directorial debut from actor Charline Bourgeois-Tacquet, feels unexpectedly familiar, playing like a lighter, less…
Part social commentary, part creature-feature, Finnish thriller Hatching succeeds in large part because it commits so diligently to its conceit, as out there as it is. Tinja (Siiri Solalinna) is the teenage daughter in a picture-perfect family; Mother (Sophia Heikkilä) makes sure…
Before a certain virus changed everything, I’d gotten into the enviable habit of jetting off to New York whenever a show I really, really wanted to see premiered on Broadway. I flew east to see the original Broadway cast of…
French filmmaker Celine Sciamma had her work cut out for her in following up her own masterpiece; 2019’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire was one of the most sensual, romantic and heartbreaking films of recent memory (not to mention gorgeous…
One of the best things about The French Dispatch, the latest quirky drama from filmmaker Wes Anderson, was the fact that Anderson decided to go, well, Full Anderson. The filmmaker leaned in hard to everything about his signature aesthetic we…
Twenty-two years into the millennium, there is an entire generation (and counting) of young people who’ve grown up in an entirely online age. Now young adults, they’ve never known a world where phones were attached to walls (and the phrase…
Every now and then—it’s rare, but it happens!—a film comes along that is just an absolute gift of absurdity and delight from start to finish. The head-scratching abounds, but damn if it isn’t a great time from its first moments…
Five years (and one pandemic) after its first go-round with an all-David-Lynch, all-the-time program, Chicago’s Music Box Theatre again presents a week-long retrospective on “one of the greatest and most original American filmmakers in existence” (according to the theater’s press…
First-time filmmaker Mariama Diallo combines social commentary and surrealist horror in Master, a film that earns most of its goodwill through yet another riveting performance from Regina Hall. She is Gail Bishop, newly installed as the “master” of a residence hall…
When you’re a 13-year-old girl, there’s nothing quite as dramatic—or traumatic—as being a 13-year-old girl. Hormones are raging, bodies are changing, there’s so much you don’t know about who you are, who you’re supposed to be, how you’re supposed to…
If my records are correct (yes, I keep track of these things), the last production I saw at Hyde Park’s Court Theatre (before…you know) was the interesting and intriguing Photograph 51. That production’s biggest draw, I remember, was its lead actress,…
It’s entirely possible you don’t know who Sebastian Stan is (yet). If you’re not enmeshed in the world of all things Marvel; if you missed the recent “Pam & Tommy” miniseries; if you skipped the Margo Robbie vehicle I, Tonya…
Grief, missed opportunities and the lingering love of those we’ve lost all combine in Mattie Do’s The Long Walk, a surreal, time-warping fable about the choices we make and their ripple effects, both known and unknown. Less a horror film than…
Join Our Newsletter today!
