Dispatch: A Glorious Day for Jazz on Saturday in Millennium Park.
Chicago is so rich with talent and artistry that performers from every genre gravitate here, especially in blues and jazz. A kernel of each was brought here from the South […]
Dear Cinnamon: Not Too Cool to Take a Shot
Dear Cinnamon is a monthly column based on the idea that all of life’s questions can be answered by art, because, after all, art is the spice of life. To […]
Dispatch: Chicago Jazz Festival Brings the Hot and Cool to Millennium Park
This year’s Chicago Jazz Festival brings a cornucopia of talent to our fabulous city. This year, the variety of artists and styles of jazz promise something for everyone from fledgling […]
Essay: Film Adaptation of It Ends With Us Broaches a Serious Topic Without Making It Weird
This post was written by Tory Crowley. It Ends With Us doesn’t market itself as a sad, serious drama addressing the complexities of intimate partner violence. I mean, who would […]
Review: Two Childhood Friends Reconnect in The Wasp, a Thriller That Stings
The latest work from Spanish-born director Guillem Morales (Julia’s Eyes) begins as a domestic drama with Heather (Naomie Harris) engaged in an almost psychotic war with the occasional wasp that […]
Review: Merchant Ivory Chronicles the Professional and Personal Lives of Legendary Filmmaking Duo
Few filmmakers merged the personal and professional as gracefully as producer Ismail Merchant and director James Ivory. Their partnership ushered in the Golden Age of art-house cinema in the mid-1980s, […]
Review: Netflix’s The Deliverance Channels Bizarre Performances for a Derivative Possession Thriller
In case you were wondering, 1992 isn’t the only film being released this week that is something of a bait and switch—a film that starts out as a family drama […]
Review: Thriller Out Come the Wolves Is Best When the Savage Beasts Interrupt the Interpersonal Drama
Directed by Adam MacDonald (Backcountry), from a screenplay by Enuka Okuma, the Canadian production Out Come the Wolves takes a fairly straightforward approach to telling a story about retired hunter […]
Review: Biopic Reagan Glosses Over the Former President’s Mistakes to a Degree that Devolves into Propaganda
It didn’t take longer than about five minutes for me to figure out exactly what type of biopic Reagan was going to be. Obviously, it’s a childhood-to-death tracing of the […]
Review: Casey Affleck Stars in Slingshot, a Space Drama That Puts a Trio of Astronauts on an Uncertain Mission
While this new Casey Affleck-starring work, Slingshot, is set up like a science-fiction story, in reality it’s a tense acting exercise couched in a psychological thriller. The whole thing is […]
Review: Mountains Paints a Sensitive and Delicate Portrait of a Community Under Siege
The forces behind the gentrification of Miami’s Little Haiti community in Monica Sorelle’s feature debut Mountains are invisible and unstoppable. They go beyond the For Sale signs with the headshot […]
On the Road: We Review Five Broadway Shows—& Juliet, Hell’s Kitchen, Job, Suffs, Once Upon a Mattress
It has been a hot summer in New York, in more ways than one. On Broadway, 24 shows continue to draw large crowds, with several musicals and plays reaching near-capacity […]