Movie

  • Chicago International Children’s Film Festival Offers Virtual Experience in 37th Year

    by - Nov 13, 2020
    The 37th Annual Chicago International Children’s Film Festival will take place entirely online this year, offering 262 films and 242 shorts to families and budding cinephiles in the Chicago area (the screenings are geo-blocked to the Cook,...
  • Love, Labor, and Human Heat: Francis Lee on Ammonite

    by - Nov 12, 2020
    Nature may shape the characters of Francis Lee’s rugged, working-class romances, but it’s nurture that ultimately saves them.  In 2017’s “God’s Own Country,” the Yorkshire-bred writer/director made a powerful first impression with a story, set on...
  • Freaky

    by - Nov 12, 2020
    There’s always something delightfully geeky about a genre film by Christopher Landon. The co-scribe of the vastly entertaining “Disturbia”—which skillfully blended Alfred Hitchcock’s “Rear Window” with a troubled teen story set in the ‘burbs—Landon knows a...
  • Hillbilly Elegy

    by - Nov 12, 2020
    The film version of J.D. Vance’s memoir “Hillbilly Elegy” arrives on Netflix so encumbered by cultural baggage and expectations that it’s hard to appreciate what it actually is—along with the things it does well, which are numerous, and understated...
  • Netflix’s Aunty Donna’s Big Ol’ House of Fun is Sketch Comedy Bliss

    by - Nov 11, 2020
    When sketch comedy finds a wide audience, it’s like lightning in a bottle. Think of how The Lonely Island used to dominate “Saturday Night Live” with their digital shorts, or how Tim Robinson made a cult...
  • Trial 4

    by - Nov 11, 2020
    Netflix has developed an incredibly deep catalog of true crime docuseries and they show no signs of slowing down the growth in this section of the streaming service. The success of “Making a Murderer” and “The...
  • Short Films in Focus: World of Tomorrow 3

    by - Nov 10, 2020
    (Note: This month’s Short Film is available as a $5.99 rental on Vimeo) I usually have to watch one of Don Hertzfeldt’s “World Of Tomorrow” episodes at least three times before I can even begin to...
  • Sleepless Beauty

    by - Nov 10, 2020
    The Russian torture porn throwback “Sleepless Beauty” is a nasty endurance test, the sort of calling card genre exercise whose relentless extremity—both in terms of its explicit and psychological violence—often seems to be a goal unto...
  • HBO’s Industry is a Bitter Mix of Grey’s Anatomy and Succession

    by - Nov 10, 2020
    One of the remarkable things about art is its ability to open the door to worlds you might not otherwise enter. Sometimes you enter a wardrobe and wind up in Narnia. Sometimes you find yourself in...
  • A Teacher

    by - Nov 9, 2020
    Our culture is rife with double standards spun out of gender identity. It shouldn’t be controversial to say that men and women are consistently judged differently for their actions, especially when it comes to heterosexual sex....