The latest collaboration between Eddie Murphy and director Reginald Hudlin (after 1992’s Boomerang) is one of those holiday “comedies” that depends on everyone involved being stupid, a liar, and so […]
When the new Godzilla movie from its original Japanese production studio, Toho, opens with kamikaze pilot Kōichi Shikishima (Ryunosuke Kamiki) going through an existential crisis and faking mechanical trouble so […]
The Chicago Symphony Orchestra gave a rousing if edgy performance on Thursday night, when it opened a series of concerts at Symphony Center, billed as MTT Conducts Mozart. MTT refers […]
It’s the first Friday in December so that means it’s Bandcamp Friday! Things have certainly changed since Bandcamp first announced their initiative to help bands affected by the pandemic shutting […]
Just about halfway between MGM’s (and Judy Garland’s) immortal The Wizard of Oz and Broadway’s current box-office smash Wicked, there was another musical retelling of L. Frank Baum’s classic American […]
Bradley Cooper sure has come a long way since The Hangover, and we’re all the luckier for it. The one-time comic leading man has bold ambitions, and if his first […]
For as long as I’ve been watching films by the legendary director John Woo (I vividly remember sitting in a small New York theater in 1990 watching The Killer), I’ve […]
I have written at length about the works of master documentarian Frederick Wiseman, whose style of filmmaking is passive in the filming and quite active in the editing. There’s no […]
Start your final month of the year right with all the fun things going on this weekend! Tons of events are going on like concerts, movies, plays, markets, and so […]
The music of Johannes Brahms is featuring prominently in a series of concerts at Symphony Center this week. On Tuesday night, under the direction of Jakub Hrůša, the Staatskapelle Berlin […]
Some people have busier than normal years, and then there’s musician Jon Batiste’s 2022. Simultaneously, Batiste was the most celebrated artist of the year—he earned 11 Grammy nominations including Album […]
The Goodman Theatre’s 46th annual production of A Christmas Carol is the kickoff to the holiday season in Chicago. The last time I saw it was over 12 years ago […]