Best Movies

The 2023 cinematic year is officially over; now, it is time to look back at the best movies, performances, and achievements of the year. I am going to start by looking at the best technical achievements of 2023. I will be looking at the best screenplays, cinematography, production design, score, and other technical categories. Each category will have five “nominees” (a.k.a my personal top five) with my “winner” (my favorite) in bold, followed by short…

Cauleen Smith’s Drylongso recently got a Blu-ray release from the Criterion Collection.  A definitive film of 1990s DIY filmmaking, Drylongso is an incisive look at racial injustice within a lovingly handmade buddy movie/murder mystery/romance. Alarmed by the rate at which the young Black men around her are dying, a brash Oakland, California, art student Pica (Toby Smith) attempts to preserve their existence in Polaroid snapshots, along the way forging a friendship with a woman in…

The 2023 Chicago International Film Festival kicks off this week and it is a film festival that I truly love. This was the first festival that I ever attended back in 2008 and it is one I have attended every year since. It is a great film festival that does not get the love and attention of some higher-profile festivals but deserves to be mentioned as one of the best film festivals in North America….

The Chicago Critics Film Festival celebrates its 10th anniversary from May 5th through May 11th at Music Box Theater in Chicago. This is an excellent film festival that offers up some of the best and most exciting movies that have been making their way around the film festival circuit, as well as some classics. This year’s festival is loaded with great titles and here are a few that I am most excited about.   A Disturbance in the…

The 2023 Sundance Film Festival has officially come to an end. I saw 28 feature films at this year’s festival and a handful of shorts. Overall, I thought this year’s festival was pretty solid. There were a number of movies that I really liked and only a few that I truly did not like, for one reason or another. However, missing from this year’s festival, as has been missing from the past couple of festivals,…

The 2023 Sundance Film Festival is just around the corner, returning in-person and virtually for the first time since 2020. I will be attending this year’s festival in person and I cannot wait to go back to the snowy mountains of Park City, Utah.  The Sundance Film Festival is my favorite film festival in the world. I have been attending the festival since 2011 and love it every single year I go. I love the…

It’s that time of the year again. Time to look at the very best movies of 2022. I’ve broken down what I think are the best movies from each genre, the best technical achievements, and the best actors and directors of the year, and now it’s time to look at what I think were the best movies of 2022. Overall, 2022 was a strong year for movies and it also felt like a normal movie…