Review: A Styleless There Are No Saints Never Gets Beyond Crime Drama Tropes
The hook of There Are No Saints, the new film from director Alfonso Pineda Ulloa, is that he’s working from what is apparently an old screenplay by the great Paul […]
Review: Top Gun: Maverick Features Impressive Flight Scenes But More Nostalgia Than Novelty
I recently had a wise person tell me that nostalgia is for those who are afraid to face the present, and I tend to agree with that. By that token, […]
Preview: Chicago Media Project’s Doc10 Film Festival Returns with Acclaimed, Essential Filmmaking
Chicago’s only all-documentary film festival, Doc10, has truly established itself over the last seven years as one of the top-tier non-fiction festivals in the nation. Taking place this year primarily […]
Review: Despite a Slightly Dimmer Storyline, Downton Abbey: A New Era Captures Much of the Franchise’s Charms Yet Again
If you had told me over a decade ago that a prim and polished television drama from PBS set within the gilded walls of a great British estate during the […]
Review: Gender-Centric Horror Flick Men Struggles to Find Depth Beyond Trauma
A film like Men, the latest from writer/director Alex Garland (Annihilation, Ex Machina), is not going to be everyone’s cup of tea. I’m not even entirely sure it’s my cup […]
Review: Lacking Any Spark, a New Adaptation of Stephen King’s Firestarter Never Really Ignites
The recent attempt to re-ignite author Stephen King’s work as film adaptations after the first It movie blew up the box office (followed by a solid remake of Pet Sematary) […]
Review: The Sadness Is a Highly Effective and Wildly Unnerving Zombie Thriller
Who knew Taiwanese horror could be so…messy? Marking the feature debut of writer/director Rob Jabbaz (a Canadian filmmaker who has made his professional mark in Taiwan), The Sadness is a […]
Review: With Typical True Crime Style, Our Father Recounts a Troubling Fertility Saga
Perhaps it should come as no surprise that the new Lucie Jourdan-directed documentary Our Father is produced by Jason Blum (among others), because the events being recounted are a true-life […]
Review: Set in the 1960s, Happening Is a Starkly Contemporary Story of Reproductive Rights
If everything in the news lately about reproductive rights (and the effort to restrict and remove them) has you feeling despondent and worried, perhaps a screening of Happening, the story […]
Review: Based on a True Story, Operation Mincemeat Offers Drama, History and a Glimpse into WWII-era Personal Lives
One of the things I love about historical dramas is that they have a tendency to be dry, which I realize runs counter to what I typically like about films […]
Review: Shepherd Offers a Horror Film with Physical Scares and Emotional Torment
From writer/director Russell Owen (Inmate Zero) comes Shepherd, a surprisingly effective and angsty horror thriller set on a remote Scottish island where nothing seems to live but sheep, ghosts, and […]
Review: Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness Is a Chaotic Mix of Tones and Styles
In many ways, director Sam Raimi (the Evil Dead trilogy, the original Spider-Man trilogy) was the absolute perfect choice to take over the reins of the second Doctor Strange film, […]