Review: Chris Hemsworth Is Sinister and Polished in Spiderhead, But the Film Dances Around Bigger Issues
Spiderhead is a fim adapted from Escape From Spiderhead, a New Yorker short story by George Saunders.
Review: Lightyear Reverse-Engineers the Buzz Toy and Creates an Entertaining Science-Fiction Adventure
There’s nostalgia mining, and then there’s Lightyear, the latest animated work from Pixar that technically isn’t a prequel or origin story or any of the other labels people seem eager to […]
Review: Cha Cha Real Smooth, On Learning the Dance Steps as You Go
Filmmaker Cooper Raiff (Shithouse) is only 24 years old, yet he’s delivered one of the most emotionally mature, fully formed dramas of this year’s Sundance Film Festival in Cha Cha Real […]
Review: The Franchise’s Sixth Installment, Jurassic World Dominion Makes a Case for Sticking to the Original
When it was released in 1993, one of the reasons Jurassic Park became the mega hit it remains today is the sense of wonder and grand scale filmmaker Steven Spielberg […]
Review: Relative, a Genuinely Chicago Film, Tells the Story of a Rogers Park Family Going Through Change
Relative weaves together the stories of a Rogers Park family–the progressive parents, their adult children and their children–as change affects them all.
Review: Adam Sandler’s Genuine Love of Basketball Shines Through in Hustle
Adam Sandler is not above surprising us every so often. He did it not too long ago in the hyper-real world of Uncut Gems, much as he pulled together a […]
Interview: Fire Island Filmmakers on Inspiration from Austen, Casting Comedy Legend Margaret Cho and the Chance for a Trip Back to the Island
On a broader scale, director Andrew Ahn’s new comedy Fire Island is about a group of multicultural gay men who travel from New York City to the Long Island-adjacent gay […]
Review: Low-Grade and Truly Indie, Watcher Is Sharp and Highly Effective
One of the highlights of last year’s horror anthology V/H/S/94 was director Chloe Okuno’s creature-feature segment “Storm Drain.” Now making her feature-length debut, Okuno brings us the psychological thriller Watcher, about Julia (Maika […]
Review: Eiffel Reimagines Building Paris’s Iconic Landmark as an Act of Grand Romance
I’ll give the makers of Eiffel credit for their honesty in an opening title card that proclaims the film is “freely inspired by a true story.” In director Martin Bourbolon’s […]
Review: White Elephant Is Not a Good Movie, But a Stacked Cast Makes it Watchable
In all likelihood, you haven’t seen any of director/co-writer and prolific action filmmaker Jesse V. Johnson’s movies. But with a surprisingly solid cast, his latest work, White Elephant, might change […]
Review: Passable Action Scenes and Mild Politics Make Interceptor Less than a Must-Watch
I have to believe two things after watching the new nuclear terrorist threat thriller Interceptor. One is that our first line of defense against nuclear missile launches from Russia have […]
Review: An Updated Take on Austen, Fire Island Takes on Contemporary Romance, Gay Culture and Coming-of-Age
What little I knew about New York’s Fire Island (which runs parallel to the south shore of Long Island) before seeing director Andrew (Driveways, Spa Night) Ahn’s new film of […]