Birdman, Alejandro Gonzalez-Inarritu’s audacious backstage redemption tale, is at once an incisive portrait of the artistic ego and a rage against the dying of the (spot)light, a personal movie about art as savior, second chances, aging, irrelevance and an indictment of a fickle industry…
Read MoreThe aptly titled new war picture Fury, starring Brad Pitt as an American sergeant leading a band of GIs through Germany at the close of the World War II, is a machine of a movie that storms both the battlefields and the emotions. Fashioned…
Read MoreThe great movie star Kathleen Turner was honored last night the Chicago International Film Festival during a brisk, ninety-minute tribute that featured scenes from her (many) memorable performances and a livewire Turner, who shared memorable anecdotes from her storied career onscreen, some of the…
Read MoreThe 50th Chicago International Film Festival continues this week after a rousing Sunday night visit from maverick filmmaker Oliver Stone, in town to present two very different yet seminal pictures, the controversial Natural Born Killers and his one-reviled, now better appreciated Alexander. Stone stopped…
Read MoreComprised of two distinct features and running 195 minutes, The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Her/Him is both too much and not enough. Arriving a mere few weeks after the film’s initial release, a 122-minute version titled The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Them, the new…
Read MoreThe 50th Chicago Internal Film Festival kicked off its Opening Gala last night at The Harris Theater, with a star-studded red carpet affair followed by a screening of celebrated Norwegian legend Liv Ullmann’s new adaptation of August Stridberg’s Miss Julie. And while the festival’s…
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