Review: A Worthy Chronicle of Female Spies in WWII, A Call to Spy Tries to Do Too Much
A few years ago, a couple of great World War II films were released; even more than 70 years after the war ended, it remains a deep source of narratives […]
Review: A Sharp Sci-Fi Premise Meets Brutal, Gruesome Thrills in Possessor
The premise of Brandon Cronenberg’s Possessor is the sort of sci-fi make believe that’s so outlandish, a bit of comfort can be found in this otherwise unsettling, intense film. The sort […]
Review: With a Strong, Contemporary Cast, The Boys in the Band Revisits a Turning Point in Queer History
Looking back, I probably first saw the 1970 screen adaptation of playwright Mart Crowley’s 1968 off-Broadway play The Boys in the Band sometime in the late 1980s. And knowing me, […]
Interview: Actor Mark Rylance on Portraying a Legal Legend, Aaron Sorkin’s “Impeccable” Vision and Eddie Redmayne as the Tom Hanks of The Trial of the Chicago 7
I admit, I didn’t know before I spoke with him last week that Mark Rylance had been knighted in 2017, and that my addressing him as anything other than Sir […]
Review: Oliver Sacks: His Own Life Is the Extraordinary Story of an Extraordinary Man
Neurologist, author and generally wonderful human being Oliver Sacks died in 2015 after a months-long battle with cancer. On receiving the news that his prognosis was terminal, he wrote a moving […]
Review: A Contained, Detailed Performance Drives The Swerve‘s Journey to Deterioration
As slow-burns where a woman finds herself increasingly unhinged go, The Swerve is a solid debut from writer/director Dean Kapsalis, starring a diminutive Azura Skye in the central role. She […]
Review: Worthy Feminism but Barely a Revolution in Predictable Misbehaviour
Sometimes shifts in history can be predicted, and other times they happen in unexpected places—such as in the 1970 Miss World competition held every year in London. The film Misbehaviour […]
Review: Recounting a Chicago Courtroom Drama, The Trial of the Chicago 7 Ignites with Staggering Performances
People seem to enjoy giving Oscar-winner Aaron Sorkin grief, and I’m not entirely clear on why. Obviously as a screenwriter, not all of his words are of equal worth, but […]
Review: As Early Russian Cosmonauts, Space Dogs Brought Tough Street Smarts to Orbit
On the surface, the documentary Space Dogs is about the Soviet space program during its infancy, when dogs were placed into spacecrafts and sent above the atmosphere and eventually (usually) […]
Review: Miranda July’s Oddball Kajillionaire Follows a Family of Scam Artists with Emotional Baggage
My admiration for writer/director/artist Miranda July runs deep, and the feeling began when I first saw her 2005 debut feature Me and You and Everyone We Know (her follow-up, The […]
Review: Dreaming Grand Avenue Features a Chicago Dreamscape With a Criss-Crossed Plot and Strong Ensemble
Jimmy (Twilight’s Jackson Rathbone) and Maggie (Narcos’ Andrea Londo) keep meeting. Not in real life, mind you, but in each other’s dreams. They’ll bump into one another in waking life […]
Review: Setting Aside Its Asides, Netflix’s Enola Holmes Works Best as a Coming-of-Age Adventure
Being totally unfamiliar with author Nancy Springer’s six-novel series about the teenage sister of detective Sherlock Holmes and Mycroft Holmes (who is also technically Enola’s legal guardian), I wasn’t exactly […]