Like the main character in one of this year’s nominees, I feel like I’m experiencing a “Groundhog Day”-like loop when I cover the Oscar Shorts nominees every year. We have a Kid-In-Peril storyline for the Live Action category, confounding animated shorts that ... More »
Nasim Pedrad pulls off a bold, bizarre comedic feat in “Chad,” the new single-camera comedy from TBS. She fully immerses herself into her portrayal of a 14-year-old boy, without the story ever winking that the character is being played by a talented comedian (... More »
The inaugural No Malice Film Contest for Illinois youth and young adults has extended its deadline to Monday, May 31st. The content is presented by the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library Foundation and the... More »
Amazon’s “Them” wants its own shelf in the modern horror echelon, especially when it comes to recently made stories about being Black in America. In its response to a nation currently examining the on-camera murder of a Black man by a white police officer, the... More »
Terrence Malick’s “The Tree of Life” is a film of vast ambition and deep humility, attempting no less than to encompass all of existence and view it through the prism of a few infinitesimal lives. The only other film I’ve seen with this boldness of vision is K... More »
Jean Renoir‘s “The River” (1951) begins with a circle being drawn in rice paste on the floor of a courtyard, and the circular patterns continue. In an opening scene, the children of a British family in India peer through porch railings at a newcomer arriving n... More »
Even as I was watching “Cloud Atlas” the first time, I knew I would need to see it again. Now that I’ve seen it the second time, I know I’d like to see it a third time — but I no longer believe repeated viewings will solve anything. To borrow Churchill’s descr... More »
Every year, on April 4th, the day that Roger Ebert died in 2013, we give the site back to the man who made it. This year, in honor of the incredible time in which the world finds itself, we thought we’d focus on times that Roger wrote about connection and rebi... More »
I never really understood Michael Apted. For most of my life his name would incongruously pop up under the “directed by” credit in the strangest places. In fact it was seeing the words “A film by Michael Apted” on the trailer for this particular fantasy yarn t... More »