Preview: NERD ALERT!! Bring Your Friends and Your Pets for the Virtual Chicago Nerd Comedy Fest
Way back when, when I was, I guess, a “cub” writer, I was unofficially assigned the “nerd beat.” This was in no small part due to the fact that my […]
Chicago Farmers Market Season Hits Full Stride
The Chicago farmers market season opened on May 1—a delightful and welcome return to normalcy. And with this weekend’s opening days, almost every high-profile market—and many of the cozier neighborhood […]
Review: New Filmmaking Duo Centers Horror Film The Djinn on Emotions as Much as on Scares
The Djinn is the kind of movie that proves that big budgets and a marquee cast are sometimes just icing on the independent filmmaking cake and that a perfectly entertaining […]
Review: Amy Adams Deserves Better than the Messy Mystery at the Center of The Woman in the Window
It’s always disappointing when a film doesn’t live up to expectations; it’s exponentially worse when that film comes from a filmmaker who is clearly capable of great things on screen. […]
The Complete (Chicago) Beer Course: Cream Ale
When COVID-19 closed taprooms and cancelled festivals, I looked for ways to still engage with Chicago’s craft beer scene. I therefore decided to finally work my way through The Complete Beer […]
Review: Barely a Saw Movie at All, Spiral Disappoints Across the Board
My brain is still attempting to understand how Spiral is a Saw movie at all. Okay yes, it takes place in the same universe as the original Jigsaw killings. And […]
Dialogs: Michio Kaku and LeVar Burton Bring Joy and Excitement to the Solar System and Beyond
What do junior high school science, science fiction, string theory, the God equation, and Elvis Presley have in common? They all played a starring role in physicist Michio Kaku and […]
Review: Lefse, Lutefisk, and Other Norwegian Things, For the Love of Cod, by Eric Dregni
For the Love of Cod: A Father and Son’s Search for Norwegian Happiness Eric Dregni University of Minnesota Press Eric Dregni is only partly Norwegian but that hasn’t stopped him […]
Review: Small-Town Ghosts, Spoon River America, by Jason Stacy
Spoon River America: Edgar Lee Masters and the Myth of the American Small Town By Jason Stacy University of Illinois Press It’s ironic that Spoon River Anthology—perhaps the most famous […]
Review: The Killing of Two Lovers Goes Deep Inside Its Character’s Trauma, Heartache and Struggle
This is a good week for films with captivating opening sequences. In the latest work from Robert Machoian, The Killing of Two Lovers, we open with an image of David […]
Review: In Profile, an Undercover Journalist Embeds in a World of Extremism and Human Trafficking
From frequently kinetic action director Timur Bekmambetov (Night Watch, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter; Wanted) comes a film that is much more about igniting your synapsis from anxiety and dread than […]
Review: Angelina Jolie May Be the Weakest Part of an Otherwise Often Thrilling Those Who Wish Me Dead
A B-movie disguised as something more grandiose, Those Who Wish Me Dead is a work with great dramatic potential but far too many instances of false emotions and the wrong […]