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…
Stages
Review: Dancing with Joy at Broadway in Chicago’s Ain’t Too Proud—The Life and Times of the Temptations
That drumbeat hits and then you hear a voice like no other—“I know you wanna leave me but I refuse…
Review: Tragic Hunchback Is Grand Finale to Milwaukee’s Skylight Music Theatre Season
Guest review by Anne Siegel. Milwaukee’s Skylight Music Theatre ends its 62nd season with a musical that was nearly 30…
Your Chicago Curated Weekend: 5/26 and Beyond
Warm days are back again just in time for Memorial Day weekend (and the Memorial Day Wreath-Laying Ceremony & Parade…
Interview: Filmmaker Stefan Forbes on Toxic Masculinity, Hostage Negotiations and Finding the Story in Hold Your Fire
In the 2008 documentary Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story, director Stefan Forbes painted a portrait of a political player…
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,…
Poem: A Note to the World From the Children of Ukraine
A poem by guest author Josephine Chaparro. WhispersWhispersWhispers We heardWe heardWe heard WhispersWhispersWhispers Soon the whispers turned into soundsThe sounds…
Review: Sniper Elite 5 Has Refined Its Formula to Near Perfection
I’ve been playing Sniper Elite games since I stumbled across the first game on Steam during a sale or possibly…
Review: Where Camelot Began—Rose Kennedy at Renaissance Theaterworks in Milwaukee
Guest review by Anne Siegel Chicago-based actor Linda Reiter is bringing her acclaimed portrayal of Rose Kennedy to Milwaukee in Rose:…
Review: A Well Spent Evening with the Mountain Goats and Will Sheff
I think no matter how you try to measure it, the Mountains Goats’ success over the past few decades is…
Feature: Beautiful Bronzeville Explored by TikTok Historian Dilla for the CHF
The Chicago Humanities Festival sponsored a bus tour of Chicago’s South Side, the “Black Belt,” for the spring Public-themed series.…
Review: The Billboard, by Natalie Y. Moore
In this pivotal moment in the struggle for reproductive rights, Natalie Y. Moore’s The Billboard comes at a time when…
Review: Grossman Ensemble Gives a Dull Performance
One of the leading incubators of new music in Chicago is housed at the Chicago Center of Contemporary Composition at…
Review: To Kill a Mockingbird Isn’t Your Parents’ Mockingbird, But It Tells a Powerful Story
Aaron Sorkin’s To Kill a Mockingbird is not the same story you read in high school or reread last year. It’s not the…
Dialogs: Female Rock Talk with Kim Gordon, Laurie Anderson, Sinead Gleeson at Chicago Humanities Festival
The Music Box Theatre hosted music royalty as part of the spring Chicago Humanities Festival: Sonic Youth’s frontwoman Kim Gordon, her co-author,…
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…
Review: The CSO Under the Baton of Karina Canellakis Delivers the Goods
What kind of concert starts with an 11-minute introductory piece that ends up getting two ovations? A Chicago Symphony Orchestra…
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…
Review: In After the Blast, a Play About Environmental Disaster, a Robot Named Arthur Steals the Show
Zoe Kazan’s play After the Blast is set a few generations in the future—underground. An environmental disaster has made “upstairs” unlivable and…
Poem: The Voice
June Sawyers wrote this poem—as a way to record her experience— after listening to a musician named Andrew perform in…