There seemed to be a lot of hype around David Gordon Green’s Halloween and I don’t understand why.  It wasn’t like this was the first movie where Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) came back and fought Mike Myers or the first sequel in the franchise.  I don’t remember anyone getting this excited for Rob Zombie’s remake, nor the sequel.  Was it because people were excited for another David Gordon Green project?  Or maybe a Danny McBride co-written…

        Jonah Hill is an actor who has worked with some of the best directors in the game today, such as Scorsese, Tarantino, Miller, Van Sant, and the Coen Brothers.  As an actor, working with these directors is probably a dream, especially if an actor has aspirations of becoming a director.  It is essentially the best directing class you could ask for.  So the idea of Hill directing a movie sounded intriguing….

*NOTE: This review is going to be a CAPSULE review, which means it’ll be a tight, quick critique of the film as opposed to the more in-depth reviews I usually do.             How do we suppress pain?  That is the question that is asked in Jumpman, Ivan I. Tverdovskiy’s drama that played in competition at the 2018 Chicago International Film Festival. Denis (Denis Vlasenko) has lived his entire life in an…

*NOTE: This review is going to be a CAPSULE review, which means it’ll be a tight, quick critique of the film as opposed to the more in-depth reviews I usually do.             A lot of people have a negative connotation of film festival movies.  A lot of people think that a lot of them are dense, or have a heavy subject matter, or are too vague and ambiguous.  This is…

*NOTE: This review is going to be a CAPSULE review, which means it’ll be a tight, quick critique of the film as opposed to the more in-depth reviews I usually do.         On paper, a documentary about the history of Chicago advertising sounds rough.  Half the people who read that first sentence probably fell asleep while reading it.  But Ky Dickens latest documentary is a fascinating, compelling documentary and a small love-letter…

*NOTE: This review is going to be a CAPSULE review, which means it’ll be a tight, quick critique of the film as opposed to the more in-depth reviews I usually do.           No, this isn’t a Lion King origin story.  Rafiki, which means “friend” in Swahili, is a forbidden love story about tomboy Kena (Samantha Mugatsia) who falls in love with Ziki (Shelia Munyiva), though not without problems.  Besides the fact that both of…

*NOTE: This review is going to be a CAPSULE review, which means it’ll be a tight, quick critique of the film as opposed to the more in-depth reviews I usually do.             Joël Karekezi’s film The Mercy of the Jungle tells the story of Sergeant Xavier (Marc Zinga) and Private Faustin (Stéphane Bak), two men who get separated from their troop and must travel long distances to join them.  However,…

*NOTE: This review is going to be a CAPSULE review, which means it’ll be a tight, quick critique of the film as opposed to the more in-depth reviews I usually do.           Over the years of going to the Chicago International Film Festival, the After Dark program has been one of my favorite parts of the festival, as it showcases some of the wildest movies from around the world.  Filled with…