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…
Read MoreA Great Star Plays a Legend: In Maria, Angelina Jolie Brings Glamour and Vulnerability of La Callas to Life
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…
Read MoreAll We Imagine As Light: Deeply Human, Sensitive Embrace of Working Class Mumbai Women
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.…
Read MoreSensational Spectacle Wicked Returns Magic to Hollywood—and is One of Year’s Best Films
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,…
Read MoreIn 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…
Read MoreIn 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…
Read MoreThe New Pope: In Edward Berger’s Gripping Conclave, Ralph Fiennes Navigates Twists of Clandestine Papal Election
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,…
Read MoreAttack, Deny, Never Show Defeat: Trump Origin Story The Apprentice a Tale of Ruthless Immorality and Wild Success
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…
Read MoreJoker: Folie à Deux: The Joke is on Fanboys in Dark Sequel Prizing Music, Doom Over Expectations
When Todd Phillips unleashed 2019’s $1 billion global hit Joker on the world the reaction was intensely polarized—passionate devotees plugged into the picture’s meticulous, retro sleazy New York milieu and tortured anti-hero Arthur Fleck, a lost soul mustering an alter-ego vigilante avenger. Others called…
Read MoreIf ambition equaled greatness, Francis Ford Coppola’s behemoth Megalopolis would be the movie of the year. But outsized vision gets the better of the master filmmaker’s four decade passion project, one reportedly on his mind since he traipsed the Philippine jungles of 1979’s Apocalypse…
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