Tabletop party games are everywhere these days. A simple trip to Target will turn up dozens and dozens of them. And many of them follow a familiar formula, at least […]

William Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night is a mistaken-identity rom-com designed as a frolic to entertain at the end of the holiday season (there is nothing about Christmas in this play itself). […]

I heard that there was some Grinch behavior spreading around Chicago. Even I have mandated that my office shalt not play that one station that starts with the fa-la-la business […]

The Buttcracker (playing at the Greenhouse Theater Center through December 31) is a Nutcracker Burlesque, a Yule pantomime with elements of comedy, magic and circus that blends all the qualities […]

Filmmaker Noah Baumbach has made a career out of films that explore the absurdity of humanity, the seemingly arbitrary connections we forge and the ways we exhaust ourselves trying to […]

After truly enjoying his previous few films (The Queen of Spain, The Artist and the Model, and the Oscar-nominated animated feature Chico & Rita), director Fernando Trueba’s latest, Memories of […]

Set about 100 years apart, there are two films out right now built around real-life photographs of brutalized Black bodies that resulted in public outrage and instigated change in American […]

From the production/stunt team that brought us such films as John Wick, Nobody, Atomic Blonde, Deadpool 2, and Hobbs & Shaw comes the Christmas-themed actioner Violent Night. The film borrows […]

It’s the final Bandcamp Friday of the year! What initially was a short term way to help bands affected by the pandemic shutting down touring has become this great on-again-off-again […]

I had to check the archives to be sure, but I can now say with certainty I’ve seen American Blues Theater’s It’s a Wonderful Life: Live in Chicago! no fewer […]

Haunting and mysterious from the first frame, the latest from writer/director Joanna Hogg is the story of filmmaker Julie and her elderly mother Rosalind (both played quite distinctly by Tilda […]

After an array of indie hits as a producer (A Horrible Way To Die, Cheap Thrills, We Are Still Here) and a pair of well-received features as a director (Jakob’s […]