Sam Shainberg’s “Endless Sea” opens on a dreary metropolitan street where it looks like freezing rain has been pouring all morning. Carol (Brenda Cullerton) has a collection of recyclables she deposits for a little extra pocket change. She then enters a pharmacy to pick up her prescription for heart meds and gets dreadful news that

I met Tom Noonan in 2008, on the 2 train in Brooklyn, heading back into Manhattan after speaking to a film history class at Brooklyn College. There were maybe 40 people on the train, standing and sitting. I was seated on a bench near the middle of the car. Perched on a bench at the

“Rooster” could be considered the third entry in what I’ll refer to as Bill Lawrence’s “Likable White Guy Failing Upward” Trilogy, assuming, of course, that he stops at three. The first was “Ted Lasso,” which was co-created by Lawrence, Joe Kelly, Brendan Hunt and Jason Sudeikis and famously focused on an American football coach hired

Are you a murder mystery aficionado looking for a new show? Ever wanted to get into murder mystery TV shows, but don’t know where to start?  I’m here to solve that mystery for you. Along with my family, I have watched so, so many murder mysteries, of a variety of sub-genres, delving deep into British

Ever since Niall MacGinnis ordered his devil worshippers—among them malevolent ghouls and spirits—to do his bidding in 1957’s “Night of the Demon,” cinema has had its fair share of egotistical male cult leaders. From Sidney Blackmer in the satanic double act of “Rosemary’s Baby” and Orson Welles’ bespectacled coven leader in “Necromancy” to a literally

Entertaining audiences is in Joan Cusack’s DNA. A crackling, high-voltage live wire who commits to scenes with an intensely funny mischievous ferocity, Cusack appeared in a few bit screen parts in the early ’80s, including “Sixteen Candles,” before she earned a place as a cast member of “Saturday Night Live,” where she stayed for a

Last night, as I am wont to do, I went to the Music Box Theatre. There, a programme in its seventh iteration titled Life Within the Lens took place. It was staged by the Chicago-based programmer and curator Tyler Balentine, who previously presented his Melanin, Roots, and Culture series in 2024 and 2025, which featured

Legendary’s MonsterVerse live-action series for Apple TV, “Monarch: Legacy of Monsters,” achieved a franchise first: provide compelling human characters. In the first season, creators Chris Black and Matt Fraction managed to tell a captivating story with a monstrous, globe-trotting scope spanning two timelines: the 1950s and the 2010s. The series follows three branches of the

Netflix has a complex history with adult animation. Some of their most critically acclaimed original comedies are animated: “BoJack Horseman,” “Big Mouth,” last year’s excellent “Long Story Short.” And yet there’s the other side of the coin with duds like last year’s “Haunted Hotel,” and the truly execrable “Hoops,” a show so bad that I

Roger Ebert was a champion of independent films, and he was never more enthusiastic than discovering a new filmmaker with a fresh perspective. That is most evident in his support for Black filmmakers like Spike Lee, Julie Dash, and John Singleton. In honor of Black History Month, here are some of our favorites from his