Review: Adam Melchor Takes Thalia Hall on the Joyride of a Lifetime
Review by guest author Lorenzo Zenitsky. I’m sure it’s getting pretty annoying lately as I shout from the rooftops about all my Chicago firsts and this review will be no […]
Sundance Review: Fragile Yet Fierce, Daisy Ridley Delivers Something Moving in Sometimes I Think About Dying
When somebody describes a film as a “Sundance movie,” my mind tends to envision works like director Rachel Lambert’s Sometimes I Think About Dying, a comedic and melancholic film a […]
Sundance Review: birth/rebirth Examines Medical Ethics, Mourning and More in Interesting, Scary and Heartfelt Ways
My favorite film from the Midnight selections at Sundance this year is the feature debut of director/co-writer Laura Moss (who penned it with Brendan J. O’Brien), birth/rebirth, a science-fiction/horror work […]
Sundance Review: The Pod Generation Features an Interesting Concept That’s Not Fully Gestated
A big swing and a miss comes courtesy of writer/director Sophie Barthes (Cold Souls, 2015’s Madame Bovary) in The Pod Generation, concerning a New York couple, Rachel (Emilia Clarke) and […]
Sundance Review: Kim’s Video Honors a Video Store and Tracks the Collection to Unexpected Places
During my brief time living in New York City in the early 1990s, I resided in a building in the Village, near the NYU campus. Just a couple of blocks […]
Review: Witnessing the Swan Song of Billie Holiday in Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill
Quite a few people say they love the music of Billie Holiday, having heard only God Bless the Child or—the song controversial in its time—Strange Fruit. Those songs cannot come […]
Review: The Sculptures of Dr. Charles Smith Address Racism from a Historical Perspective
The current exhibition at the National Veterans Art Museum (NVAM) displays the artwork of Dr. Charles Smith (born 1940) who is a sculptor, a US Marine Corps Veteran of Vietnam, and […]
Review: Close Explores Sexuality, Masculinity and Tragedy at a Fragile Crossroads in Teen Life
The second feature film from Belgian filmmaker Lukas Dhont, Close may be the most devastating film of recent memory, one that grapples with very serious, very painful subjects with such […]
Interview: Filmmaker Lukas Dhont on Making Close, with First-Time Actors and a Deeply Personal Story
Editor’s Note: this interview contains mild spoilers and includes discussion of suicide. Regardless of how the film may have ultimately been received upon release, writer/director Lukas Dhont’s 2018 first feature, […]
Review: Baby Ruby Channels Post-Partum Stress, Paranoia into Middling Maternal Thriller
Perhaps I’ve just seen too many films in my lifetime in which a housewife and/or mother is driven to the edge of sanity or has a full-blown mental collapse simply […]
Review: Actors Sam Riley and Haley Bennett Take a Risk that Nearly Pays Off in Improvising She Is Love
Not being entirely familiar with the films of writer/director Jamie Adams (Bittersweet Symphony, Venice at Dawn), I don’t know exactly how often he leans into the practice of allowing his […]
New Year, New Round of Bandcamp Fridays!
At the end of January, Bandcamp announced their 2023 plans for their series of fee-free first Fridays of the year! This initially was a short term way to help bands […]