The 2018 Chicago International Film Festival has closed on another year. The 54th edition of the festival gave us a number of films from all over the world from all different genres and filmmakers. I saw 24 movies this festival, from big budget Oscar players to foreign indies you may never hear of. Here are my picks for the best of the festival. TOP 5 MOVIES 5 – IN SEARCH OF GREATNESS (Gabe Polsky)…
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*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…
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*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…
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*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…
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*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…
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*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,…
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*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…
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Damien Chazelle is having one of the greatest decades any filmmaker has ever had, reminiscent of Francis Ford Coppola’s run in the 70’s. In just a mere four years, Chazelle has quickly become one of the best directors in Hollywood today. He kicked it off in 2014 with the musical war drama, Whiplash, and followed it up with his modern take on 50’s musicals with La La Land, for which he won…
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The 54th Chicago International Film Festival kicks off this week and it is a festival I love attending. Not only was it the first festival that I attended back in 2008, but it is a festival that highlights so many unique movies from all around the world and showcasing some of the best filmmakers working today. This year’s festival is no different, with a slew of movies from all genres. I plan on seeing over…
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“The world has enough superheroes.” Such is the tagline for Ruben Fleischer’s Venom, a film that looked to be the supervillain origin story of one of Spider-Man’s most infamous foes. Supervillain origin stories have never been a thing in cinema, especially from major comic companies like Marvel and DC. The closest we’ve gotten is M. Night Shyamalan’s Split, but other than that, the only villain-focused film we’ve gotten is Suicide Squad, which, simply put, is an abomination. But…
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