True crime stories are big business. Since the success of the blockbuster podcast Serial, seemingly every producer, writer and director in any medium is looking for the next big crime story to […]
Nicole Kidman is having quite a moment. She started 2018 on a high note, with Emmy wins for her contributions to the HBO series “Big Little Lies,” and just kept the momentum […]
In an odd sort of way, Stan & Ollie, a film that covers the later-period career of film stars Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, suffers from some of the same shortcomings as Bohemian Rhapsody, […]
What I thought might be a documentary companion piece to last year’s thought-provoking Boy Erased, about the abhorrent practice of teen gay conversion therapy, turns out to be a wholly different but not […]
As often as writer-director Lars von Trier has made films about despicable people, there has almost always existed a kind of twisted morality about each of them that made even their worst […]
Present political climate not withstanding, we live in a fairly sophisticated society where we shouldn’t have to soft-pedal the truth about assisting the disabled via a movie with comedy, just to ease […]
As we previewed last week, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has partnered with a handful of movie theaters across the country (including Chicago’s own Music Box Theatre) to show each of […]
At the center of Capernaum, the latest film from Lebanese writer/director (and actor) Nadine Labaki (Where Do We Go Now?, Caramel), is one of the year’s best performances, and it’s delivered by someone […]
From January 4 through 31, the Gene Siskel Film Center celebrates the art of the documentary with its annual series Stranger Than Fiction: Documentary Premieres. This year, the theme of identity in […]
There’s no way you don’t come out from watching Divide and Conquer: The Story of Roger Ailes, the latest by director Alexis Bloom (Bright Lights: Starring Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds), and […]
I have vivid memories of watching old episodes of both the NBC and CBS versions of David Letterman’s late night talk show and always getting a kick out a repeating bit he […]
In what has become an annual tradition at the movie theaters in early January, a PG-13 horror film has slipped in and threatened to soft-peddle largely bloodless scares in the direction of […]
