From director Sacha Jenkins (Bitchin’: The Sound and Fury of Rick James) comes this honest and sweeping look at jazz trumpet icon Louis Armstrong, a founding father of jazz and one of the world’s first internationally known stars who was…
It’s difficult to wrap my brain around the fact that one of the most talented and twisted minds in stop-motion animation, Henry Selick, hasn’t made a new feature film since 2009’s Coraline. The maker of The Nightmare Before Christmas, James…
“I’m a pair of boots with a rifle.” In many ways, this statement by one German soldier to another is the key to Erich Maria Remarque’s world-famous account of the years-long battle for a few hundred yards of land during…
One of the upsides of the world’s seemingly endless fascination with true crime stories in all formats (podcasts, documentaries, investigative books, etc.) is that there has been a tidal shift in the way certain films and series approach retelling these…
Sometimes a film franchise goes out with a bang; other times, a whimper seems more appropriate. In the case of what is reported to be the final entry in the Halloween series—appropriately titled Halloween Ends—whimper seems too aggressive a word…
There was a time—entire decades, if we’re being honest—that the name Dario Argento meant horror films that would be suspenseful, terrifying, bloody and inventive. Works like Suspiria, Opera, Deep Red, and Tenebre remain staples and building blocks of the giallo…
When fictional classical conductor Lydia Tár (an electric Cate Blanchett) spouts the statement “Don’t be so eager to be offended” to a mixed-race student, I began to worry that this would be the message of writer/director Todd Field’s TÁR (Little…
With a two-year-plus pandemic in our collective rearview mirrors, the 58th Chicago International Film Festival is poised to take up residency in several venues around the city October 12-23, including its primary home base at AMC River East. Supplemental special…
Living most of my adult life in Chicago, the story and legacy of the 1955 murder of 14-year-old Chicago-native Emmett Till in Mississippi never really fades away. With so many of his family members living in and around Chicago, as…
Before breaking out in 2018’s Eighth Grade, 19-year-old Elsie Fisher was probably best known for voicing one of Gru’s daughters in the Despicable Me movies. Although she’s acted in quite a number of series, shorts and films before Eighth Grade,…
Most recent horror movies that are actually veiled metaphors for the lasting impact trauma can have on a person’s psyche don’t actually use the word “trauma” as much as Smile, the feature film debut from writer/director Parker Finn, who has…
Directed by Damon Thomas and taking full audio/visual advantage of its 1988 period setting, My Best Friend’s Exorcism brings us into the world of high school sophomores and best friends Abby (Elsie Fisher, Eighth Grade) and Gretchen (Amiah Miller), who,…
Based on truly inspiring real events (which is not to say the film is inspiring; stay tuned…), The Greatest Beer Run Ever tells the story of dopey-but-loyal New Yorker Chickie Donohue (Zac Efron) circa 1967, who lives in a neighborhood…
Casting no aspersions on the great filmmaker Walter Hill, his new western, Dead for a Dollar, isn’t particularly memorable or special. In fact, the whole piece looks like it was shot under an orange light with a camcorder. What it…
Smart, insightful, an avenue for LGBTQ characters to tell their stories, and screamingly funny, Bros marks the first time a major motion picture studio (Universal) has released an R-rated gay-centric rom-com (earlier this year, Fire Island was released on Hulu…
For years, many people only knew comic performer (and Northwestern University theater graduate) Billy Eichner as the crazed street interviewer on his wildly popular internet series “Billy on the Street,” but in more recent years, he’s popped up in supporting…
This review was originally published in January 2022 for our Sundance Film Festival coverage. Built entirely from archival footage taken from both commercial broadcast television and material shot by the U.S. military, the harrowing documentary Riotsville, USA paints a portrait…
In a work that is both unexpectedly raw and beautifully tender, director Gaysorn Thavat’s debut feature film, The Justice of Bunny King, follows the largely tragic life of its title character, played by the great Essie Davis (The Babadook). Bunny’s…
From director Anna Foerster (Underworld: Blood Wars, several episodes of “Westworld” and “Jessica Jones”) and producer J.J. Abrams comes Lou, the strangely complicated but somewhat thrilling movie about Hannah (Jurnee Smollett) and her young daughter Vee (Ridley Asha Bateman) living…
A far cry from writer/director Lena Dunham’s other 2022 offering, Sharp Stick, her latest is an adaptation of the wildly popular book Catherine, Called Birdy by Karen Cushman, a coming-of-age story set in 1290 in the English village of Stonebridge.…
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