Movie Reviews
Movie Reviews

CIFF 2025: The Beauty of the Donkey, The Eyes of Ghana, Below the Clouds | Festivals & Awards

Documentary is a filmmaking approach inherently designed for remembrance. In fact, it’s the approach that most closely aligns with photography and the desire to capture a moment, a person, or a thing before the forces of time overcome and erase its existence. So, you know, usually with these films, you’re going to get a topic

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Movie Reviews

CIFF 2025: Silent Friend, Calle Malaga, Belén  | Festivals & Awards

The 61st edition of the Chicago International Film Festival has boasted an unusually strong lineup of high-quality titles from around the world, including such significant works as “The Secret Agent,” “The Mastermind,” and “It Was Just an Accident.” However, if I had to pick just one favorite, I would have to go with “Silent Friend.”

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Movie Reviews

11 Times That D’Angelo Made a Movie Better with his Music | Tributes

Like so many contemporary R&B fans, I was gutted when it was reported that Michael Eugene Archer, better known as groundbreaking neo-soul artist D’Angelo, passed away on Tuesday at the too-damn-young age of 51, after a long, private battle with pancreatic cancer. The man was an elusive enigma, only dropping three studio albums–Brown Sugar (1995),

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Movie Reviews

The 11 Best Body-Swap Movies, Ranked | Features

Who hasn’t at least once fantasized about switching lives with someone who, from a distance, seems to have a more comfortable, secure, happier existence? While Shakespeare and others created stories about characters pretending to be someone else, it was Mark Twain’s The Prince and the Pauper that popularized the idea of people in opposite circumstances trying out each

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Movie Reviews

In the Third Season of “The Diplomat,” It’s All Upsides and Distances, Darling | TV/Streaming

Season 3 of “The Diplomat,” Debora Cahn’s feast of political intrigue and personal drama, has landed on Netflix. If you thought the last two seasons were a headrush, you’re “read in” and ready. But before we jump into this cross-pollination of Sorkin-esque walk-and-talks and Rhimes-ian emotional bombshells, let’s get you caught up on the world-shaking

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Movie Reviews

Chaz Ebert Launches National Awards to Honor Acts of Forgiveness, Empathy, Compassion, and Kindness as Siskel & Ebert Approaches 50th Anniversary | Chaz’s Journal

The FECK Awards spotlight the power of everyday heroes and bold visionaries who elevate humanity through action, proving that compassion and kindness aren’t just ideals, but powerful forces reshaping lives and communities Chicago (October 15, 2025) – Chaz Ebert—CEO of RogerEbert.com, humanitarian, film producer, and wife of the late Pulitzer Prize-winner Roger Ebert—today announced that

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Movie Reviews

“Battlefield 6” Seeks to Reclaim the Front Line of Multiplayer Shooters | Video Games

“Battlefield” has been around for over two decades. Still, even its most diehard fans would probably argue that it’s been a bit of a non-factor in the first-person shooter conversation for much of the second half of that timespan, after the disappointing “Battlefield V” in 2018 and “Battlefield 2042” in 2021, a game so broken

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Movie Reviews

CBS Wants Your Sitcom Time to Be Spent at the “DMV” | TV/Streaming

There’s something comforting about a well-done workplace comedy. It’s the relatability of people sanded down by capitalism, forced to go into cubicles or other office spaces like so many viewers do every Monday, which usually allows for a bit of perspective. Think your job sucks? At least you don’t work at the DMV. That’s the

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Movie Reviews

Netflix’s “Boots” is a Trite Coming-of-Age Tale with a Hollow Corps | TV/Streaming

Basic training in the United States Marine Corps is a lonely business. So lonely, in fact, that 18-year-old Cameron Cope (Miles Heizer, “13 Reasons Why”), the central protagonist of Netflix’s new series “Boots,” frequently has conversations with his hidden queer self. Though dressed alike, Cope’s concealed persona is blunt, witty, and encouraging, while the Cameron

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Movie Reviews

What Really Matters is What You Like: “High Fidelity” at 25 | Features

When we look back at John Cusack’s expressive and bruised-heart romantic Rob Gordon in “High Fidelity” a quarter-century after the film’s release, there’s little doubt Rob was often a petulant and immature narcissist who filtered nearly every life experience only through what it meant to him. At times, it seemed like it would shock Rob

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