I’ve been very fortunate in the 18 years I’ve been a film critic to be a part of some truly great events. But never in my time as a critic or Chicagoan have I had more pride in playing a…
MONEY MONSTER There’s a brief set of shots near the end of director Jodie Foster’s Money Monster that are chilling. They almost seem like an afterthought, and one might assume that by the time they are on the screen, audience…
CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR The only battle that matters during Captain America: Civil War is deciding which character is the most fun to watch. With relative newbies—such as Ant-Man (Paul Rudd), Black Panther (Chadwick Boseman) and Spider-Man (Tom Holland)—running amongst…
KEANU The idea is so deceptively simple, it’s a wonder no previous film in the YouTube age has used it to this degree until now. People love videos of kittens doing adorable kitten things. So the master sketch comedy team…
The Huntsman: Winter’s War Don’t let yourself be fooled into thinking that this follow-up to 2012’s Snow White and the Huntsman is a prequel that shows us where The Huntsman (Chris Hemsworth) came from and how the evil queen Ravenna…
THE JUNGLE BOOK See it in 3-D, see it as big as you can, and see it in a theater you trust to project it right. Grabbing whole handfuls of both the original Rudyard Kipling stories and the 1967 Disney…
CIMMfest 2016 (Chicago International Movies & Music Festival) runs April 13-17 at various venues. CIMMfest is a four-day showcase of music-related films, concerts, VJ/DJ sets, Q&As, live score performances, industry panels, and presentations—an exercise in showing what movies and music…
THE BOSS Well, it’s better than Tammy. The last time comic dynamo Melissa McCarthy paired creatively with her husband, Ben Falcone, the results were the disastrous, richly unfunny work that is neck and neck with Identity Thief as her worst…
The first-ever DOC10 documentary film festival is running this today through Sunday, April 1-3, at the Music Box Theatre and features a collection of 2015-16 high-profile docs from the likes of the late Albert Maysles (his final film In Transit); Werner…
EVERYBODY WANTS SOME!! With Richard Linklater’s latest, Everybody Wants Some!!, I’ve never had more fun watching a film about guys I never would have hung out with in college. Set in 1980, on the brink of a new school year…
BATMAN v SUPERMAN: DAWN OF JUSTICE I’ll admit I had a tough time starting to write this one. It wasn’t any type of writer’s block or uncertainty about my option on DC Comics’ first major thrust into the expanded universe…
DIVERGENT SERIES: ALLEGIANT Most science fiction works on multiple levels, and the best of it cares equally about telling both its character-driven story and crafting its social commentary. My issues with the Divergent films to date (Divergent and Insurgent) is…
Join Our Newsletter today!
