Ridley Scott’s Napoleon, starring Joaquin Phoenix as the legendary Corsican-born general who reigned as French emperor for a decade, does little to illuminate the man or the leader. Scott’s 158-minute historical saga, a surprisingly tedious grind from an indisputably master director and world-class actor,…
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This Friday, November 17, at the Gene Siskel Film Center (8pm; tickets here), Chicago-born filmmaker and Hollywood director Andrew Davis returns to present his fledgling 1978 film Stony Island—his first as a director, shot on period Chicago’s gritty streets as a guerrilla endeavor of…
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In the inventive and frequently surprising Dream Scenario, filmmaker Kristoffer Borgli crafts a potent critique of flash-in-the-pan viral fame and our societal fickleness in making instant celebrities before breaking them as casualties of fifteen-minute brand recognition. The ever welcome, inspired Nicolas Cage stars as…
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Nicolas Cage continues his hot streak comeback—see also 2021’s Pig and 2022’s The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent—with one of his very best performances in the surprising new sleeper (no pun intended) Dream Scenario, an inventive new picture about an everyman schlub who gets…
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Todd Haynes’ May December, about an actress researching a notorious marriage in hopes of delivering an “honest” onscreen portrait, is mired with half-formed characters and little insight into either the artistic process or its sensational subject matter. Haynes, the visionary indie filmmaker who graduated from…
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The Holdovers, Alexander Payne’s wry, heartfelt new picture starring Paul Giamatti as an irascible New England boarding school instructor supervising a left behind student over Christmas break in 1970, is as much a loving nod to an era as a tale of a teacher…
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In the arresting All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt, a fictional memoir rendered in non-linear structure and rooted in emotion, confident first-time feature filmmaker Raven Jackson conveys the poetic lyricism of Terrence Malick by way of the minutely observant Kelly Reichardt. Thirty-three-year-old Tennessee native…
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Sofia Coppola’s Priscilla, about the domestic entrapment felt by a young Priscilla Beaulieu (and later the married Priscilla Presley) during her fourteen formative years with Elvis, offers few new insights in attempting to illuminate a complex and very public relationship. As written by producer-director…
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Just in time for Halloween comes Argentine shocker When Evil Lurks, a nastily blunt and mostly effective picture deploying an escalating series of demonic possessions as a metaphor for contagion, community distrust and questionable parenting. Modestly scaled yet pungently atmospheric, it has enough tension…
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Stick to the plan. Anticipate, don’t improvise. Trust no one: Words to live by and a mantra for a best in the business assassin whose carefully constructed world crashes down after a botched hit in David Fincher’s superbly constructed thriller The Killer. Played with…
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