Film Review: God’s Own Country Succeeds with Strength, Tenderness
About half an hour into God’s Own Country, the feature debut from Francis Lee that premiered at Sundance Film Festival last year and opens at the Gene Siskel Film Center […]
Film Review: Mom and Dad Is Exactly the Nicolas Cage Crazy We Deserve
For any parent who has ever had the fleeting thought “I want to murder my kids,” have I got a movie for you. Mom and Dad is the decidedly dark […]
Film Review: The Surprising Humanity of Dashcam Documentary The Road Movie
It was explained to me years ago that some astronomically high percentage of cars in Russia have dashcams on them, facing out onto the road ahead. The reason for this […]
Film Review: New Restoration of The Passion of Joan of Arc Is as Breathtaking as Ever
I have such vivid memories of seeing Carl Theodor Dreyer’s 1928 groundbreaking work The Passion of Joan of Arc back in college: the stark, shocking camera angles; the tear-stained performance […]
Film Review: Forever My Girl is Forever a Bore
Ugh! I’m not sure what lessons we are meant to glean from Forever My Girl, but it’s something along the line of: no mistake is too big to be forgiven, […]
Film Review: Heist Film Den of Thieves Makes Grit, Sleaze and Chaos Work
I don’t often do this, especially after a movie starring Gerard Butler, but after watching his latest, Den of Thieves, I turned to a fellow critic sitting near me and […]
Film Review: Hedy Lamarr Gets Her Due in Revealing Bombshell
Even if you’re not a fan of classic Hollywood cinema, you know the name Hedy Lamarr. According to IMDb, Lamarr has only 35 film credits, but among them are the […]
Film Review: 12 Strong Is Not Your Average War Film; It’s Better
In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, there was that rare sense across not just America but the globe that there was a common enemy in the Taliban. According to fairly […]
Interview: Octavia Spencer and John Hawkes Talk Westerns and Making Small Town Crime
One of the most intriguing and captivating films to premiere at the SXSW Film Festival last year was a little crime drama called Small Town Crime, from the writing-directing brothers […]
Film Review: Don’t Miss the 4k Restoration of Renoir’s The Crime of Monsieur Lange
I shouldn’t have to convince you to see a beautifully restored, 4K presentation of a great French film by the director of Grand Illusion and The Rules of the Game, […]
Film Review: Rose Marie’s Iconic Comedy Career Chronicled in Wait for Your Laugh
By what I think is complete coincidence, Facets Cinémathèque is opening the documentary Wait for Your Laugh just two weeks after the passing of its subject, the legendary comic talent […]
Film Review: Starring Anton Yelchin, Porto Is Melancholy and Marvelous
Porto, the feature debut by former Chicago film critic Gabe Klinger (his follow-up to the engaging 2013 documentary Double Play: James Benning and Richard Linklater), is a film about being […]