A thirty-something coworker recently vented her frustration with society’s suffocating insistence that motherhood is the pinnacle of a woman’s fulfillment. This came after enduring yet another round of nosy relatives asking, “When are you starting a family?” paired with the patronizing, “You’ll change your…
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Pablo Larraín’s Maria is foremost a vehicle for Angelina Jolie, bringing vocal precision and quietly regal vulnerability to her portrait of legendary mezzo-soprano Maria Callas. A meditation on artistry and decline as Callas drifts through her final days in a haze of memory, the…
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In the Cannes-winning All We Imagine As Light (currently playing at Chicago’s Gene Siskel Film Center), writer-director Payal Kapadia presents a rich tapestry of three Mumbai women whose routine, work-a-day lives take on a poetic grandeur against the grit of their big city existence.…
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Great news for fans of the iconic Broadway sensation Wicked—and honestly, for anyone who loves great entertainment: Jon M. Chu’s highly anticipated big-screen adaptation of the 2003 musical phenomenon doesn’t just deliver the goods; it soars. Arriving as one of 2024’s best studio pictures,…
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In the new thriller Heretic, Hugh Grant makes a deliciously unexpected late career u-turn, his signature affability upended by sinister malevolence (his wit, thankfully, survives the transition). It takes a special performer to so skillfully subvert a public image—toss it, really—in such a decided declaration…
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In their ambitious new novel Disturbing the Bones (Penguin Random House), hit filmmaker Andrew Davis and historian-novelist Jeff Biggers have crafted a high-tech, riveting thriller that interweaves geopolitical thrills and a personal, eras-spanning mystery. This isn’t just a whodunnit; it’s a politically charged race against…
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In less than a decade, filmmaker Sean Baker has graduated from the micro-budget ranks of an iPhone-shot debut to capturing the coveted Palme d’Or at the world’s most prestigious film festival. Yet while his visibility (and likely opportunities) has grown exponentially, his lens remains…
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Edward Berger’s Conclave takes us inside a hermetically sealed world rife with intrigue, that of a Vatican-set papal election following the abrupt death of a beloved pope. While most of us know little about such clandestine machinations beyond the conclusive puff of white smoke,…
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How do you make an honest film about Donald Trump when an election is looming and any depiction risks being seen as partisan? Trump is already larger than life—an endlessly debated, dissected and debunked figure. But early in The Apprentice, Ali Abassi’s can’t-look-away tale…
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How many actors can say they have created a character that has made its way into movie history? Sarah Douglas knows exactly what that feels like, her role as the icy, leather-clad villain Ursa in the 1981 classic Superman II a defining figure in superhero films.…
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