Film Review: CHIPS, So Overpoweringly Unlikeable
If I had to guess, I’d say that CHIPS writer-director-star Dax Shepard was going for an action comedy in the style of the Jump Street films but with even more […]
Steve Prokopy is chief film critic for the Chicago-based arts outlet Third Coast Review. For nearly 20 years, he was the Chicago editor for Ain’t It Cool News, where he contributed film reviews and filmmaker/actor interviews under the name “Capone.” Currently, he’s a frequent contributor at /Film (SlashFilm.com) and Backstory Magazine. He is also the public relations director for Chicago's independently owned Music Box Theatre, and holds the position of Vice President for the Chicago Film Critics Association. In addition, he is a programmer for the Chicago Critics Film Festival, which has been one of the city's most anticipated festivals since 2013.
Film Review: T2 Trainspotting, A Curious and Desperate Journey
I’d certainly be within my rights to get long winded about the way director Danny Boyle uses clips from the original, 20-year-old Trainspotting to provide contrast between the drugged-out characters […]
Film Review: The Belko Experiment, An Astonishingly Violent Take on Workplace Politics
Although I was aware that the premise of The Belko Experiment involved a great deal of death and other bad behaviors, I wasn’t quite prepared for just how vicious and […]
Film Review: Beauty and the Beast – A Murky, Mirror Image of Something Wonderful
It’s one thing to take a familiar cinematic fairy tale and reinvent it or tell it from different perspective (such as Maleficent’s take on Sleeping Beauty, the more action-oriented Snow […]
Film Review: My Life as a Zucchini, Exceptionally Heartfelt
The last of the Oscar-nominated Best Animated Films titles to be released in the United States is the French work My Life as a Zucchini, from first-time feature director Claude […]
Film Review: The Last Word, Held Together By A Nuanced Performance by Shirley MacLaine
Judging a film based on a its trailer is something I’m quite vocal about avoiding. I live by the rule that trailers always get it wrong; even when they don’t, […]
Kong: Skull Island. Not Like Any Version of the Kong Story We’ve Seen
There are two things I’m very leary of these days in big-budget studio films. One is handing over a giant franchise or otherwise familiar property (like King Kong, for example) […]
Film Review: Table 19, An Unfocused Mess
Why does Anna Kendrick have such a difficult time finding material as good as she is? Of late, her best work seems to only be in films that allow her […]
Film Review: Logan, An Epic Western Set in a Hopeless Future
Through something like eight films leading up to Logan, Hugh Jackman has given us a few different versions of Wolverine, but they’ve all been rooted in the inherent threat that […]
Film Review: Before I Fall, A Better Concept Than Execution
With a concept that is better than the execution, Before I Fall tells the story of Samantha Kingston (Zoey Deutch), a high school girl who is forced to relive the […]
Film Review: Land of Mine, A Positively Terrifying Untold Tale of Retribution From World War II
One of the four films that lost to The Salesman at the Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film came from Denmark, a positively terrifying post-World War II suspense work […]
Film Review: Punching Henry, Just Sits There on the Screen
Believe it or not, this micro-budget, semi-autobiographical comedy about the life of singer-comedian Henry Phillips is actually a sequel to his 2009 collaboration with director Gregori Viens, Punching the Clown, […]