Essay: Why We Celebrate World Press Freedom Day on May 3
Saturday, May 3, is World Press Freedom Day. We celebrate that because in the US we are fortunate to have a strong Constitution that protects press freedom and other forms […]
Review: Anna Kendrick, Blake Lively Return for Another Simple Favor, Sequel with More Characters, Less Sharpness than the First
Although it didn’t take quite as long as it did The Accountant to get to its recent sequel (nine years), Another Simple Favor takes place in the aftermath of 2018’s […]
Review: Marvel’s Thunderbolts* Assembles a Team of Misfits for an Emotionally Driven Adventure
Not since the original Guardians of the Galaxy movie has Marvel so successfully forged a team that worked so convincingly together and resulted in so much emotion by the end […]
Your Chicago Curated Weekend: 5/1 and Beyond
It’s a new month and it’s as chilly as ever! Spring is a little slow to catch up (as it usual;y is in Chicago) but that doesn’t mean we need […]
Preview: Constellation Announces Sound & Gravity, a New Multi-Venue Music Festival
The summer festival lineups keep rolling in and it’s looking like September is going to be a very busy and undeniably enjoyable month for music lovers. Especially the week of […]
Review: At The Wake Of A Dead Drag Queen Reflects on Family, Blackness, and Queer Identity
The audience is given a fan as the entry pass to Story Theatre’s At the Wake of a Dead Drag Queen, written by Terry Guest. There is no doubt that […]
Review: Court Theatre Stages a Masterful Adaptation of Jason Lutes’ Berlin
Jason Lutes took some 20 years to complete his graphic novel, Berlin. Condensing Lutes’ 550-page magnum opus into theatrical language is no easy feat but Court Theatre has brought it […]
Poem: Vacant Lot Pope
Walk the goofy walk of the Galilee clown, laughing at denarii or spilling the coins in anger amid the pigeons and lambs, music of the heavens, lyrics by sacred hoboes […]
Review: Red Theater’s Kairos Probes Questions of Eternal Love—and Life
Kairos pits a newly formed couple against a sci-fi trope—technological revolution. When a new and selective procedure called Prometheus offers the couple synthetic immortality, they struggle, in a very human […]
Review: Mount Eerie Beautifully Details the Absurdity of Existence
It feels like an eternity ago that I last saw Phil Elverum’s Mount Eerie perform live. It was back in 2019, only a few months before the pandemic would shut […]
Review: Tom Hardy Stars as a Crooked Detective in Havoc, an Intense and Visceral Action Thriller
In Havoc, the latest absolutely chaotic, utterly brutal actioner from writer/director Gareth Evans (The Raid), Tom Hardy plays Walker, a beaten-down, taken-out-with-the-trash detective who starts out like that even before […]
Review: Video Game Adaptation Until Dawn Sees a Group of Friends Relive the Same Murderous Night
Considering the pedigree of the horror video game adaptation Until Dawn, I admittedly expected something better. From director David F. Sandberg (Lights Out, Annabelle: Creation, both Shazam! movies) and writers […]