Sidekicks, comic foils, and other stock and background characters: cinephile and essayist David Lazar loves watching old movie character actors more than the leads. In his latest book, Celeste Holm […]
A slick if slight thriller, Synchronic earns points for originality with its pill-based time-traveling plot and for a strong central performance from Anthony Mackie, who brings us along as he investigates […]
A film with a distinctive sense of style, humor and fun, The Planters marks the confident and highly watchable feature directorial debut of collaborators Alexandra Kotcheff and Hannah Leder. The duo […]
Though it might be hard to tell without the red carpets and packed movie houses, the 56th Chicago International Film Festival has been happening all week, with virtual screenings, post-film […]
The first thing you notice about the new, Robert Zemeckis-directed adaptation of the classic Roald Dahl novel The Witches is that the focus is on the children, who are very […]
In the lead-up to receiving an early look at Borat Subsequent Moviefilm, the followup to the 2006 comedy Borat, the notes from publicists insisted that we keep certain aspects of […]
In the first 10 years or so of Bruce Springsteen’s recording career, a common criticism about his albums is that he had a tendency to underplay and over-sing, undoubtedly the […]
Something I’m seeing more and more of as the pandemic continues to make it impossible or unlikely for an array of new movies to open in physical theaters are films […]
In between weekends at the drive-in, the 56th Chicago International Film Festival rolls on with dozens of films screening online and live-stream virtual Q&As several times a day. This week, […]
That anyone would consider making a new film version of a noir novel already masterfully adapted by none other than Alfred Hitchcock is in itself the definition of hubris. Why […]
Documentary filmmaker Dawn Porter is having a tremendous 2020, having directed John Lewis: Good Trouble (released earlier this year), and the recently available The Way I See It, a documentary […]
The primary purpose of Honest Thief, the latest directing effort from Mark Williams (A Family Man, and a co-creator of Netflix’s “Ozark”), seems to be to make everyone fall in […]