Film Review: 42 Grams Serves Up Local Chef’s Story
Jake Bickelhaupt, the Chicago-based chef who’s the subject of the new documentary 42 Grams, has a life story that ought to be inspiring. He first discovered his passion for cooking […]
Film Review: Courage and Family Matter in Beautifully Animated The Breadwinner
Every year, after the Oscar nominations are announced, the dust settles and a few titles rise to the top as head-scratchers. How the heck did that get nominated for an Academy […]
Film Review: God’s Own Country Succeeds with Strength, Tenderness
About half an hour into God’s Own Country, the feature debut from Francis Lee that premiered at Sundance Film Festival last year and opens at the Gene Siskel Film Center […]
Film Review: Mom and Dad Is Exactly the Nicolas Cage Crazy We Deserve
For any parent who has ever had the fleeting thought “I want to murder my kids,” have I got a movie for you. Mom and Dad is the decidedly dark […]
Film Review: The Surprising Humanity of Dashcam Documentary The Road Movie
It was explained to me years ago that some astronomically high percentage of cars in Russia have dashcams on them, facing out onto the road ahead. The reason for this […]
Film Review: New Restoration of The Passion of Joan of Arc Is as Breathtaking as Ever
I have such vivid memories of seeing Carl Theodor Dreyer’s 1928 groundbreaking work The Passion of Joan of Arc back in college: the stark, shocking camera angles; the tear-stained performance […]
Film Review: Forever My Girl is Forever a Bore
Ugh! I’m not sure what lessons we are meant to glean from Forever My Girl, but it’s something along the line of: no mistake is too big to be forgiven, […]
Film Review: Heist Film Den of Thieves Makes Grit, Sleaze and Chaos Work
I don’t often do this, especially after a movie starring Gerard Butler, but after watching his latest, Den of Thieves, I turned to a fellow critic sitting near me and […]
Film Review: Hedy Lamarr Gets Her Due in Revealing Bombshell
Even if you’re not a fan of classic Hollywood cinema, you know the name Hedy Lamarr. According to IMDb, Lamarr has only 35 film credits, but among them are the […]
Film Review: 12 Strong Is Not Your Average War Film; It’s Better
In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, there was that rare sense across not just America but the globe that there was a common enemy in the Taliban. According to fairly […]
Interview: Octavia Spencer and John Hawkes Talk Westerns and Making Small Town Crime
One of the most intriguing and captivating films to premiere at the SXSW Film Festival last year was a little crime drama called Small Town Crime, from the writing-directing brothers […]
TV Review: The Outrageous Fortune of Free Slings & Arrows
Like Hamlet’s murdered dad, the award-winning Canadian TV series Slings & Arrows has been resurrected, now for free on the Internets so all can experience or revisit the fraught fictional […]