This Week in Art House Cinema: Operation Avalanche, White Girl and more
It’s been a busy week in film. We took a look at Deepwater Horizon, which is a textbook example of how to make a make a disaster movie in modern […]
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: Masterminds, Cinematic Comfort Food
The long-delayed (due to Relativity Media’s financial woes) new film from director Jared Hess (Napoleon Dynamite, Nacho Libre, Gentleman Broncos) turns out to be a surprisingly moving love story couched […]
Film Review: Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, Regal and Mildly Creepy
The cries that director Tim Burton has righted his sagging string of recent efforts (Alice in Wonderland, Dark Shadows, Big Eyes) with his adaptation of Ransom Riggs’s novel Miss Peregrine’s […]
Film Review: Deepwater Horizon, A Textbook Example of a Modern Disaster Movie
The problem I’ve often had with films directed by Peter Berg, even the ones I’ve liked, have been that he feels the need to have all the knobs turned up […]
This Week in Art House Cinema: The Dressmaker, For the Love of Spock and more
The Dressmaker Those few times a year when a film escapes from Australia and makes its way stateside, you can usually count on it being a familiar story told through […]
Film Review: Disney’s Live-Action Queen of Katwe
Outside of the setting and the age of the competitors, Disney’s latest live-action work, Queen of Katwe, is structured using many of the same beats as the most of their […]
Film Review: Storks. Yes, It’s About Babies.
Allow me to draw your attention to the directing credits on the new animated film Storks. The first name belongs to live-action feature veteran Nicholas Stoller (who also wrote the […]
Film Review: The Magnificent Seven
Let’s just get this out of the way off the bat: there is no better version of this story than the original, original version—Akira Kurosawa’s 1954 masterpiece Seven Samurai. Six […]
Here Are Some of the Best Films to See at Reeling Film Festival
The second longest-running film festival of its kind, Reeling: The Chicago LGBTQ+ International Film Festival presents nearly 40 features and numerous shorts from around the world during its 2016 edition. […]
Snowden, Blair Witch, The Beatles: Eight Days a Week – The Touring Years, Maya Angelou: And Still I Rise, Author: The JT LeRoy Story, London Road
SNOWDEN Even if the story presented in Snowden were 100 percent fiction, it would still be a fascinating tale to watch unfold. As directed and co-written by Oliver Stone, Snowden […]
Sully; Complete Unknown; Other People; Neither Heaven Nor Earth; My Love, Don’t Cross That River
SULLY When you cast Tom Hanks as the lead in your movie, it’s almost a shortcut to telling the audience who you’re meant to side with in a film in […]
The Light Between Oceans, Morgan, The 9th Life of Louis Drax, The Hollars, Little Men, Mia Madre, Yoga Hosers, Miss Sharon Jones!
THE LIGHT BETWEEN OCEANS The long-delayed new film from Derek Cianfrance (The Place Beyond the Pines, Blue Valentine) is actually two films—the first is about falling in love, the second […]