Antoine Fuqua’s Michael, a biopic about music icon Michael Jackson, is an “and then” movie. It is a movie made up entirely of scenes and sequences strung together solely to get us to the next scene or sequence, yet without any connective tissue. Its essential breakdown is: scene one happens, and then scene two happens, and then scene three happens, and so on. It is simply a series of things that happened in Michael…
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Tourette’s Syndrome has not had a great run in pop culture. Despite how serious a disorder, and the stress it puts on the people who have it and those closest to them, Tourette’s is usually played for attempted laughs in movies and TV. From Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo to Not Another Teen Movie to South Park, when a character has Tourette’s, they usually, and uncontrollably, yell obscenities at the most inopportune times. Some movies,…
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Tsui Hark’s 1995 martial arts film The Blade has been added to the Criterion Collection. Among the boldest accomplishments of Hong Kong cinema’s golden age, this uniquely visceral martial-arts movie puts a gritty new spin on the story of the one-armed swordsman, an iconic figure from the moment he was introduced by the Shaw Brothers studio in 1967. Composed in a whirlwind of immersive close-ups and fractured editing, The Blade follows the young sword-maker Ding On (Vincent…
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Chicago is a great movie city. Besides the several movies that have been shot and continue to be shot there, there are also a lot of cool and interesting big-screen events constantly throughout the city. Whether it’s a retro screening taking place at the iconic Music Box Theater, a curated block of movies at the Gene Siskel Film Center, or early screenings of something coming out soon, there is always a reason to go to…
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I was able to watch all eight episodes of season 2 of Marvel’s Daredevil: Born Again, which is streaming on Disney+. This review will cover the entire season, looking at the overall story and character arcs while also highlighting some of my favorite moments. It will be completely SPOILER-FREE, but just a heads up, there weren’t any major character reveals or anything crazy that would have the internet in a tizzy. Since its days on…
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With the 98th Academy Awards over, we can officially say goodbye to the 2025 movie year and look at the movies coming out in 2026. 2025 was a great year for movies, and 2026 looks to be the same, if not even better. We’ve already gotten excellent movies like Send Help, 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, Nirvana the Band the Show the Movie, Hoppers, The Rip, André Is an Idiot, GOAT, and Project Hail…
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The 2025 Academy Awards are here, which means the 2025 movie year is almost officially over. Ryan Coogler’s Sinners leads this year’s pack of nominees with a record-setting 16, followed by Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another with 9. This year’s group of Best Picture nominees is one of the best we have seen in quite some time. While only three of the ten nominated films landed in my personal list of the ten…
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Hollywood’s biggest night is here! The 98th Academy Awards are just days away. Ryan Coogler’s Sinners has the most nominations out of any film with 16, setting a new record for most nominations for one film, followed by Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another with 13 and Guillermo Del Toro’s Frankenstein with 9, respectively. This is the most excited I have been for the Oscars in a long time. Not only do we have…
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Project Hail Mary opens with Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling) waking up alone on a spaceship following an induced coma. He has no memory of how he got on the ship or why he is in space. As he searches the ship, he finds that everyone else on the ship has died. As his memory returns, he uncovers that he is on a mission to find a way to stop a mysterious substance from killing…
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Delmer Daves’ classic western 3:10 to Yuma recently got a 4k upgrade from the Criterion Collection. In this beautifully shot, psychologically complex western, Van Heflin is a mild-mannered cattle rancher who takes on the task of shepherding a captured outlaw (played with cucumber-cool charisma by Glenn Ford) to the train that will deliver him to prison. This apparently simple mission turns into a nerve-racking cat-and-mouse game that tests each man’s particular brand of honor. Based…
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