Movie Reviews
Movie Reviews

Sundance 2026: Once Upon a Time in Harlem, Wicker, The Gallerist | Festivals & Awards

Sundance doesn’t really start until the third day. By that point, there isn’t any feeling around for what might be good. You’re hearing real buzz on the ground about the movie you must see before you leave this thin-air bubble. Sometimes, it’s merely hype. But at other points, you start watching the films you know

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Movie Reviews

Lightning in a Bottle: Angus MacLachlan on “A Little Prayer” | Interviews

Writer-director Angus MacLachlan’s “A Little Prayer” is a quiet domestic drama about an older couple in North Carolina, their troubled adult children, the children’s significant others, and their struggles to find peace and happiness despite the mistakes they’ve made and the distress they’ve caused others. It received respectful national attention and found a theatrical audience,

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Movie Reviews

H is for Hawk review – occasionally falters, but…

Grief never really goes away, but its initial impact takes many forms. Some people are paralysed for months on end. With others, it doesn’t properly hit them until later. For some, our self-medicated methods for processing loss in the early days involve pursuing complicated projects, designed to distract us from the overwhelming mental noise. Such

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Movie Reviews

Keiko Tsuruoka: ‘The starting line for me was the…

Every year at the Tokyo International Film Festival, the programming team makes an effort to champion emerging talent that challenges preconceived notions of what Japanese cinema is or can be. Through their Women’s Empowerment and Nippon Cinema Now strands, the festival often showcases new work from female and non-binary filmmakers who bring their unique worldview

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Movie Reviews

Apple TV’s Excellent “Shrinking” Continues to Find Humor in the Heartache | TV/Streaming

The first season of “Shrinking” felt a bit like a show trying to find its voice. Created by Bill Lawrence, Brett Goldstein, and Jason Segel, it was clearly a personal project for Segel, who threw himself into the role of a therapist suffering from the deep wounds of grief after the loss of his wife

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Movie Reviews

Remote-Droppers and Jeff Bridges: Nick Digilio on His Book About 40 Years Reviewing Movies | Interviews

Nick Digilio has been a movie critic for 40 years, for many of those years on WGN radio, now with a popular podcast and hosting screenings in Chicago. And I’ve been talking to him about movies for 25 of those years. I still remember our first conversation, which included a discussion of “Donnie Darko” and

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Movie Reviews

Peacock spy TV series offers compelling thrills

Remember the Mila Kunis/Kate McKinnon spy comedy “The Spy Who Dumped Me”? Of course you don’t; neither did I. But it did come back to me when the dynamic between the straight-laced Beatrice “Bea” Grant (Emilia Clarke) and the dry-witted Twila Hasbeck (Haley Lu Richardson) reared its head in Peacock’s espionage thriller series, “Ponies.” “Ponies”

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Movie Reviews

The Many Reasons Women Are Watching “Heated Rivalry” | TV/Streaming

Across the country, notably in New York City right now, lesbian bars are throwing “Heated Rivalry” watch parties; in the comments of “Heated Rivalry” TikToks, you will frequently see “I’m a lesbian, and I’m still at the cottage.” The gay hockey romance between two rivals based on books from Rachel Reid’s popular Game Changers series

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Movie Reviews

“Sinners,” “Bel-Air” Lead NAACP Image Award Nominees | Festivals & Awards

“Sinners” and “Bel-Air” led the NAACP Image Awards when nominations were announced this morning on CBS. Ryan Coogler’s southern gothic vampire period piece nabbed a whopping 18 nods on the film side, while “Bel-Air,” which just aired its fourth season, was recognized 7 times in the television categories.  Founded in 1967, the NAACP Image Awards

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Movie Reviews

Chaz Ebert to Guest on Steve Dale’s Booth 46 Podcast Live at Petterino’s | Chaz’s Journal

Today, January 7th, 2026, at 5pm CST, Chaz Ebert will join WGN’s Steve Dale for a guest appearance on his podcast, Booth 46. She will be discussing The FECK Awards that recognize individuals and companies in four categories: Forgiveness, Empathy, Compassion, and Kindness. The ceremony will take place Saturday, April 4, 2026, at the Ritz-Carlton

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