Steve Prokopy is chief film critic for the Chicago-based arts outlet Third Coast Review. For nearly 20 years, he was the Chicago editor for Ain’t It Cool News, where he contributed film reviews and filmmaker/actor interviews under the name “Capone.” Currently, he’s a frequent contributor at /Film (SlashFilm.com) and Backstory Magazine. He is also the public relations director for Chicago's independently owned Music Box Theatre, and holds the position of Vice President for the Chicago Film Critics Association. In addition, he is a programmer for the Chicago Critics Film Festival, which has been one of the city's most anticipated festivals since 2013.
There are two things I’m very leary of these days in big-budget studio films. One is handing over a giant franchise or otherwise familiar property (like King Kong, for example) […]
Why does Anna Kendrick have such a difficult time finding material as good as she is? Of late, her best work seems to only be in films that allow her […]
Through something like eight films leading up to Logan, Hugh Jackman has given us a few different versions of Wolverine, but they’ve all been rooted in the inherent threat that […]
With a concept that is better than the execution, Before I Fall tells the story of Samantha Kingston (Zoey Deutch), a high school girl who is forced to relive the […]
One of the four films that lost to The Salesman at the Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film came from Denmark, a positively terrifying post-World War II suspense work […]
Believe it or not, this micro-budget, semi-autobiographical comedy about the life of singer-comedian Henry Phillips is actually a sequel to his 2009 collaboration with director Gregori Viens, Punching the Clown, […]
Providing a genuinely unique, sometimes terrifying, usually hilarious vantage point of the life of a stand-up comic, Dying Laughing features dozens of interviews from top American and British comics, walking […]
This odd, dark romantic-comedy is really just an excuse to watch Gael García Bernal (Y Tu Mamá También, “Mozart in the Jungle”) act up a storm in a story that […]
The set up might seem like it’s from a family-friendly film from a major Hollywood studio that wants to counter-program against so many movies aimed at dog lovers. But Turkish-born […]
I’m genuinely shocked and more than a little troubled that a film as near perfect and genuinely original and effective as The Girl with All the Gifts is getting such […]
The surprise midnight screening at the Sundance Film Festival this year wasn’t much of a surprise by the time it began rolling, but I think it shocked more that a […]
“Eye opening” doesn’t even begin to describe my reaction to director Mehrdad Oskouei’s Starless Dreams, a deeply revealing documentary that takes a look inside an all-female, mostly juvenile prison in […]