I saw What You Wish For at the Chicago Critics and to be honest, it was not one of my most anticipated movies of the festival. The film was barely on my radar as a movie coming out this year. The only reason I went to see it was because following the film was a screening of Martin Scorsese’s Bringing Out the Dead on 35 mm (which was amazing) so I thought I’d give…
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Last Stop in Yuma County finds several strangers stranded at a diner in the middle of Arizona waiting for a gas truck to come to the neighboring gas station. The strangers include a knife salesman (Jim Cummings), a pair of thieves who just robbed a bank (Richard Brake and Nicholas Logan), the diner’s lone waitress (Jocelin Donahue), a couple looking for trouble (Ryan Masson and Sierra McCormick), and an older couple (Gene Jones and…
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The Watchers marks the directorial debut of Ishana Night Shyamalan, the daughter of director M. Night Shyamalan. Since breaking out in 1999 with The Sixth Sense, M. Night Shyamalan has been one of the most polarizing directors over the last almost thirty years, so following in his footsteps is quite a task. But Ishana shows that she is a real-deal filmmaker with this well-made, eerie, flawed folk horror movie. The Watchers finds Mina (Dakota…
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Karyn Kusama’s directorial debut Girlfight is the latest film to enter the Criterion Collection. Bullied by her father at home and feeling adrift at school, Diana Guzman (Michelle Rodriguez) finds refuge in an unexpected pocket of her native Brooklyn—a timeworn boxing gym, where she learns to channel her strength, discovers a sense of community, and falls for a rival fighter. In Karyn Kusama’s raw, understated feature debut, Rodriguez commands the screen with both tightly coiled intensity…
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Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is one of the greatest prequels ever made because it does everything a great prequel should do and does it well. It takes us back in time to give us a more in-depth look at a character we loved in a previous film. It expands the cinematic world in which the previous films took place while also showing us characters and places we’ve already met. It feels unique in its…
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Greg Kwedar’s Sing Sing is a sensational movie. A beautiful, moving experience about rehabilitation, hope, brotherhood, and the importance of the arts. The film stars Colman Domingo as John ‘Divine G’ Whitfield, a wrongfully accused man serving time at Sing Sing prison in New York. During his time in prison, Divine G, a well-read and articulate writer, has formed an in-prison theater group where other inmates come together to write, act, and produce a…
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The Fall Guy is a perfect movie to kick off the summer season. It is by no means a perfect movie and is in fact very flawed, particularly with its plot, but it features all the hallmarks of a good summer movie. It’s got action, comedy, romance, tons of set pieces and explosions, and features two beautiful actors at the center who exude charisma. What more could you want? The Fall Guy follows Colt…
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The Chicago Critics Film Festival returns to the historic Music Box Theater in Chicago for the 11th time to highlight some of the most exciting films making their rounds on the film festival circuit. Once again the festival showcases an eclectic group of films, from indie sensations to midnight hits to anniversary screenings of beloved favorites. Here are some of the titles I am most excited about at this year’s festival. Bringing Out the Dead…
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Luca Guadagnino’s Challengers is a great film because of how effortlessly it blends what could have been two separate films together to make one great film. This is a love story and sports film, reminiscent of Ron Shelton’s Bull Durham. One film is a love triangle about two friends, one girl, and the ideas of past loves and what could have been. The other is a sports film about the competitive spirit. If these…
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A movie featuring Godzilla and King Kong together on screen should not be boring, and yet, watching Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, the latest entry in the Monsterverse cinematic universe, I was consistently bored and underwhelmed. It is a movie that not only barely features Godzilla and King Kong fighting together, but barely features them on screen together, despite them being the titular duo. Instead, we get a movie that features the same…
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