Last October during the Chicago International Film Festival (remember film festivals?), I saw two films within days of each other, and it struck me that they had similar haunting vibes […]
Written by J.M. Coetzee (based on his novel) and directed by Ciro Guerra (Embrace of the Serpent), Waiting for the Barbarians is set in a rundown but peaceful North African […]
There has rarely been a time in literary history where the writings of Flannery O’Connor were not problematic to some. That being said, there also hasn’t been a time when […]
Who among us hasn’t wanted to watch the great Udo Kier pluck out another man’s eyeballs with a spoon in a jealous rage, shot in glorious black-and-white 35mm? I’m guessing […]
In some other timeline, we’re out enjoying a real Chicago summer, complete with street fairs and beach days and rooftop drinks and yes, summer blockbuster movies. Instead, this summer will […]
This is a guest post by Chloe Fourte. Director, producer and art curator Cheryl Haines takes on human rights and the far-reaching powers of free expression in her documentary, Ai […]
As premises go, The Tobacconist has an interesting one: a young man moves to Vienna to apprentice in a tobacco shop, only to become friendly with one of the store’s […]
What haunts in Relic, the debut feature film written and directed by Natalie Erika James, is something sinister, but also something essentially unseen and, therefore, all the more terrifying. A horror […]
Like most of you, I’m guessing my exposure to the work of the supreme actor Olympia Dukakis began with her Oscar-winning turn in Moonstruck (which came out around the same […]
There was a time when writer/director Atom Egoyan (The Sweet Hereafter, Exotica) was one of the most interesting filmmakers out of Canada and a talent whose works were worthy of […]
First published in 2017, the highly popular Image comic series (and later graphic novel) The Old Guard concerns a small group (meaning four) of immortal warriors who live in secret, […]
The writer/director of the new horror film The Beach House, Jeffrey A. Brown (making his feature debut), is the first example I’ve seen of someone who made a name in […]