Review: The Long Night Is Standard-Issue Direct-to-Streaming Horror Fare
Marking the first feature from composer and music video director Rich Ragsdale, The Long Night concerns a young New York couple on the verge of taking big steps in their […]
Interview: Filmmaker Cooper Raiff on Acting in His Own Films, Casting Dakota Johnson and Being a Good Party Starter
When writer/director/actor Cooper Raiff began making films, he tended to borrow not just from events in his life, but also the mental place he was in his life at that […]
Review: Chicago Activist Jahmal Cole’s Origin Story and Impact Chronicled in A Tiny Ripple of Hope
“Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, […]
Review: The Black Phone Is an Impressive Original Horror Story with Strong Child Actors at its Core
From the mind of Stephen King’s offspring, son Joe Hill, The Black Phone (based on Hill’s short story) concerns a pair of siblings navigating their difficult lives circa 1978. Thirteen-year-old […]
Review: Beavis and Butt-head Do the Universe Marks the Return of ’90s Empty-Headed Fun
Admittedly, MTV’s “Beavis and Butt-Head” series (which began in 1993) and the characters’ first movie, Beavis and Butt-Head Do America (1996) are works that I dearly loved when they were […]
Review: A Star is Born in Baz Luhrmann’s Busy, Imperfect and Wildly Entertaining Elvis
It seems only right to preface this review by acknowledging that Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet, that frenetic, overdramatic, brilliantly contemporary adaptation of Shakespeare’s classic tragedy, is a formative film […]
Review: Chernobyl: The Lost Tapes Aims to Understand a Massive Disaster Through Newly Uncovered Sources
Filmmaker James Jones (On the President’s Orders, The Riots 2011) has a history of making documentaries about events of the past that have an almost deafening relevance in the present […]
Review: Chris Hemsworth Is Sinister and Polished in Spiderhead, But the Film Dances Around Bigger Issues
Spiderhead is a fim adapted from Escape From Spiderhead, a New Yorker short story by George Saunders.
Review: Lightyear Reverse-Engineers the Buzz Toy and Creates an Entertaining Science-Fiction Adventure
There’s nostalgia mining, and then there’s Lightyear, the latest animated work from Pixar that technically isn’t a prequel or origin story or any of the other labels people seem eager to […]
Review: Cha Cha Real Smooth, On Learning the Dance Steps as You Go
Filmmaker Cooper Raiff (Shithouse) is only 24 years old, yet he’s delivered one of the most emotionally mature, fully formed dramas of this year’s Sundance Film Festival in Cha Cha Real […]
Review: The Franchise’s Sixth Installment, Jurassic World Dominion Makes a Case for Sticking to the Original
When it was released in 1993, one of the reasons Jurassic Park became the mega hit it remains today is the sense of wonder and grand scale filmmaker Steven Spielberg […]
Review: Relative, a Genuinely Chicago Film, Tells the Story of a Rogers Park Family Going Through Change
Relative weaves together the stories of a Rogers Park family–the progressive parents, their adult children and their children–as change affects them all.