It’s our favorite time of year, the one in which the many writers of this site pick their favorite performances to write about. There were so many contributions this year that we’ve split the results in two—the second half will run tomorrow. Now, a few notes. These pieces are not comprehensive. There are performances we

The French call the orgasm la petite mort, but for Stephanie Hsu’s frenzied, thirtysomething serial dater Ruby in Peacock’s latest series “Laid,” the deaths around her are far from little. She’s the typical rom-com protagonist, or at least she’d like to think so: She’s obsessed with them, right down to coveting Billy Crystal’s abs in

Perhaps unsurprisingly for a group that self-selects for gothy wallflowers, “horror people” tend to have a bit of a persecution complex. As such, there’s one eternal truism we see over and over in analysis of the genre: horror gets no respect. This both is and isn’t true, for reasons that have been discussed to death

This review of EA’s “Dragon Age: The Veilguard” is much later than most of them for two reasons. One, it’s the busiest season of the year for just about everything in the entertainment world, and this review copy came late on a run of major video games, movies, TV shows, etc. Two, I wanted to

Chaz Ebert: As Roger Ebert would have said “Two Thumbs Up” for our Top Ten Lists! For a Film Critic, putting together a Top Ten Best Movies List at the end of the year is like playing Santa Claus at the North Pole. We are giving our loyal readers a gift list of film riches

“Dead to Me” creator Liz Feldman has once again delivered a whip-smart and heartfelt comedy for Netflix. This time, the series follows married couple Lydia (Lisa Kudrow) and Paul Morgan (Ray Romano) as they attempt to sell their luxurious Los Feliz home. While the concept appears slight, what unfolds is anything but. We first meet

In 1981, Roger Ebert called “Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark” an “out-of-body experience, a movie of glorious imagination and breakneck speed that grabs you in the first shot, hurtles you through a series of incredible adventures, and deposits you back in reality… breathless, dizzy, wrung-out, and with a silly grin on

Brady Corbet’s “The Brutalist” was the big film for the Chicago Film Critics Association this year, leading their nominations with 9 this year, including Best Picture, Director, Actor, Supporting Actor, and Original Screenplay. The film, which was also named the best of 2024 by the critics of this site, many of whom are in the

Director RaMell Ross, and his spectacular leads in Brandon Wilson, Ethan Herisse, and Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor sat down with us in Telluride months ago to discuss “Nickel Boys,” their adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, opening this month in theaters. They broke down the film’s challenging subject matter, richly steeped in the history of Black people

“Whether or not you believe in God, you don’t lie when you pray.” So says Richard Gere who plays aging documentary filmmaker Leonard Fife in director Paul Schrader’s “Oh, Canada.” Schrader’s films have never shied away from depicting how the divine has a role in the innate messiness of human experience. Still, there’s an earnestness