Movie Reviews
Movie Reviews

RescueFest Opens with Restoration of Steve Buscemi’s Wonderful “Trees Lounge” | Festivals & Awards

“Trees Lounge,” a movie that Roger Ebert called “the most accurate portrait of the daily saloon drinker I have ever seen” is going to open the 2025 RescueFest, a benefit for IndieCollect that starts tomorrow, December 5 at the Laemmle Monica. Star/writer/director Steve Buscemi will be there in person, and it’s just the start of

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Movie Reviews

Welcome to the Family Captures Chaos & Coolness of One of Hollywood’s Most Memorable Franchises | Books

An author needs to meet a subject on its own terms to find the right tone for the story being told. For example, you expect a different sort of cultural and philosophical unpacking of the work of Ingmar Bergman than you do Michael Bay. It’s not to say one is more “important” than the other,

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Movie Reviews

Palm Springs Film Festival Announces 2026 Lineup | Festivals & Awards

The 2026 Palm Springs Film Festival has announced the 169 films that make up its 2026 program, including 53 premieres. The event unfolds from January 2 to January 12, 2026, and will also include 44 International Feature film Oscar candidates, often serving as a great platform for Academy voters to catch up with that category.

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Movie Reviews

Starz Returns to Form With Brutal and Brilliant Spin-Off “Spartacus: House of Ashur” | TV/Streaming

It’s been twelve long years since Starz’ “Spartacus” ended on a brutal and glorious high note, and after two years since it was initially announced, the show’s first spin-off series is finally here. Unlike many prequels or sequels, “Spartacus: The House of Ashur” takes place in an alternate future where the titular character (played by

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Movie Reviews

Short Films in Focus: Off the Face of the Earth (with Michael Pantozzi) | Short Films in Focus

Michael Pantozzi’s “Off The Face of the Earth” opens with a reclusive photographer, Tim (Pantozzi), who struggles to find the courage to delete his social media account. Once he does that, will he truly be alone and perhaps freer? Or is he trying to take a stand against being a product that exists only to

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Movie Reviews

Reflections on the 2025 Tailinn Black Nights Film Festival | Festivals & Awards

In November, the time change hits hard, not just in places that observe Daylight Saving Time. The darkness seems to creep in earlier and earlier every day, everywhere, as we barrel towards the end of the year. The city of Tallinn, Estonia, embraces this darkness as a virtue. Each year in November, they host the

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Movie Reviews

My Dinner with Gene & Roger | Roger Ebert

In the fall of 1981, Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel fell in love with two men named Andre and Wally, and they told the world about it, thereby saving a tiny, eccentric, beguiling movie from a fast fade into commercial oblivion. I went to that movie, as did a few hundred thousand or more other

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Movie Reviews

Wong Kar-wai’s Gorgeous, Captivating “Blossoms Shanghai” Arrives on the Criterion Channel | TV/Streaming

Earlier this year, I had the chance to sit in Chicago’s venerable Music Box Theatre and watch a 25th anniversary screening of “In the Mood for Love,” the masterful and visually ravishing exploration of romantic yearning from Hong Kong filmmaker Wong Kar-wai that became an instant classic from the moment it first screened in 2000.

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Movie Reviews

Felt More than Heard: Nathan Johnson on Composing his Third “Knives Out” Movie, “Wake Up Dead Man” | Interviews

Nathan Johnson composed the score for Rian Johnson’s three “Knives Out” mysteries, but with each one, they start from scratch. While the character of master detective Benoit Blanc, played by Daniel Craig, has to solve a murder mystery with a colorful range of interconnected suspects in all three movies, each is a distinct genre, and

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Movie Reviews

Making Dreams Feel Real: A Memory of Siskel & Ebert | Roger Ebert

Between the ages of 3 and 5, I fell in love with the movies after seeing my very first one, learned how to read and write, and discovered there was actually a job out there that combined all of those things into one: A film critic. From that point on, I knew what I wanted

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