Strawberry Mansion—writer-directors Kentucker Audley and Albert Birney’s wildly surreal, charmingly offbeat indie—is part dystopian sci-fi, part storybook fantasy, and part quirky horror, the sort of mishmash movie that calls to mind a dozen different flicks yet somehow feels wholly unique.…
Documentary film is a unique art form, in that it aims to harness the power of another genre––narrative cinema––to convey objective truths. At its best, documentary is akin to great journalism as well: by using craft, research, reporting, and a…
The “war on drugs” has been waged globally since the 1970s as a sort of never-ending campaign. Its combatants are many, and its casualties immeasurable. Its battlefields are city streets and classrooms, private residences and police interrogation chambers. Who’s been…
Chris Porterfield sings with a kind of howl. On his songs, recorded with the folk-rock band Field Report, his words come out with a ferociousness that charges the poetry with immediacy. His speaking voice betrays that wildness––that’s the first thing…
On 2016’s “Margo,” Haroula Rose mournfully sings: “Your daddy brought you to the ways of the wild / Your mother she left when you reached a certain height” The song was inspired by the 15-year-old main character of Bonnie Jo…
Jimmy (Twilight’s Jackson Rathbone) and Maggie (Narcos’ Andrea Londo) keep meeting. Not in real life, mind you, but in each other’s dreams. They’ll bump into one another in waking life too, occasionally passing on the El and wondering why the…
On “Decision Day,” the stellar opener to Field Report’s autumnal sophomore album Marigolden from 2014, Chris Porterfield, the Milwaukee-based songwriter, sings “Take your time and let the tide pull you out to sea / Take your time and let the…
Playwright Philip Dawkins’ 2016 solo show, The Happiest Place on Earth, uses Disneyland as a means to investigate his family history. The park, which opened in 1955, became a crucial institution for his mother, her sisters, and his grandmother after…
Silk Road Rising, a Chicago theater company rooted in Asian, Middle Eastern and Muslim experiences, has re-released a 2012 film that is newly relevant during the coronavirus pandemic. Jamil Khoury, one of Silk Road’s founders, along with a filmmaker colleague,…
The 2020 Oscar nominated animated shorts are an excellent example of the expressive potential of cinema, each of the 5 films offering visually dynamic and thought-provoking bits of emotional storytelling. Audiences are likely to be not only impressed by the…
We Believe in Dinosaurs is the title of the handsomely made documentary feature directed by Clayton Brown and Monica Long Ross, but it’s also a statement repeated by several of the film’s subjects to correct a commonly held misconception about…
“According to a report from the United Nations, 71 per cent of all human trafficking victims are women and girls. Human trafficking earns profits of roughly $150 billion a year.” This information is relayed via a title card at the…
Not to be confused with Knives Out, though sharing some thematic DNA with Rian Johnson’s earlier film, Brick, Knives and Skin is a stylized, teen noir meditation on suburban stagnation, Midwestern ennui, and the tiny violences that develop from unchallenged…
You might expect Silent Theatre Company’s Incomplete Conversations, now receiving its world premiere production at the Tapestry Fellowship Church, to be void of dialogue– after all, the Chicago outfit, known for its movement based, wordless storytelling maintains the mission of…
Long Walk Home: Reflections on Bruce Springsteen Edited by Jonathan D. Cohen and June Skinner Sawyers Rutgers University Press He’s called the Boss—and a new book out from Rutgers University Press aims to answer why. Through a series of essays—some historical accounts,…
“I think I can hear dead people.” No, I’m not paraphrasing 1999’s The Sixth Sense. It’s a line from writer/director Molly Hewitt’s new film Holy Trinity, in which they also star. And like Haley Joel Osment’s Cole Sear, Hewitt’s Trinity finds…
There’s a noticeably chiller vibe when I show up to Douglas Park for day 3 of Riot Fest 2019. If Friday was like the final moments of the last day of school, wild with energy and promise, then Sunday is…
If he didn’t have family back east, Joe Pug would live with us in the Windy City. “They’re fucking up shit in the rest of the country. Chicago’s still got it going on.” The bluntness of this observation might feel…
My second day at Riot Fest was another one of firsts—first time that I used the port-o-potty at the festival, first time I rode a divvy bike into oncoming traffic, first time I was called a “little bitch” by a…
I’ll get this out of the way up front. I’m a Riot Fest virgin. In fact I have only been to one festival in my life, when I covered Pitchfork this summer for Third Coast. Tankboy’s preview earlier this week…
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