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.
The natural inclination after watching the Oscar-nominated, timeless, and slightly surrealistic The Red Turtle is to wonder what centuries-old mythology serves as its source material. In truth, this wordless story […]
It’s true what they say: familiarity breeds contempt. And the more I get to know the characters in the Fifty Shades film, the more I find them stupid and loathsome. […]
During the course of the first John Wick film (released in 2014), writer Derek Kolstad and first-time director Chad Stahelski (a former stunt man and coordinator) hinted at a vast […]
Sitting through the high-energy, brightly colored, million-jokes-per-minute The Lego Batman Movie, I was reminded of a question that I haven’t had the opportunity to ask myself in recent months: Is […]
Although it doesn’t end the debate about whether street art/graffiti art/anonymous art is a fancy term for vandalism, the documentary Saving Banksy lays out the captivating story of a handful […]
The richly textured and truly terrifying The Autopsy of Jane Doe has been impressing festival audiences for months now and has slowly been creeping its way across the country since […]
Nominated for this year’s Best Foreign Language Film Academy Award, The Salesman reveals to us something that is rarely portrayed in movies from Iran: a detailed look at the country’s […]
Returning to his more plot-heavy yet still quite emotionally gripping style of filmmaking, writer-director Pedro Almodóvar (Talk to Her, Volver, All About My Mother) brings up Julieta, the complex, time-jumping […]
One of the many Oscar-nominated films in theaters right now is the documentary I Am Not Your Negro, a kind of personal history of the American black experience, as told […]
I’ve said this countless times before, but having now seen Rings, the ill-advised second sequel to the impressive Gore Verbinski-directed remake The Ring, I clearly need to say it once […]
I think the biggest shock about this teen-oriented science fiction adventure is that it’s not based on a YA novel. From an original screenplay by Allan Loeb and directed by […]
Films about the world and occupants of stand-up comedy are a tricky proposition, and they need to succeed on two levels that would seem to be at cross purposes. On […]