ChicagoFilm | Movie Reviews and Features - Page 42

Straight Outta Compton

The exhilaration of Straight Outta Compton, one of the year’s best movies, is that of a good story, well-told with vivid performances and a stirring, contemporary sociopolitical context. Charting the rise, fall and rise of seminal hip hop forerunners N.W.A., director F. Gary Gray…

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Samba

Samba, the good-hearted story of a Senegalese immigrant in Paris fighting deportation, is a sum of its parts picture. Written and directed by the French duo Olivier Nakache and Eric Toledano from the novel Samba pour la France by Delphine Coulin, it’s a movie…

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Teriminator: Genisys

If any remaining proof of Hollywood’s creative bankruptcy should be required, the more-is-less Terminator: Genisys should put the issue to bed once and for all. An all-out assault on both the senses and storytelling, this overblown mess of a movie appropriates entire chunks of…

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The Overnight

A  good-natured sex farce about the insecure male ego and flirting with marital experimentation, The Overnight is a cheerfully raunchy ode to ennui and swinging that is revolutionary in its own small ways.  Light as a feather but no less enjoyable—actually quite enjoyable—this broad…

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Insidious: Chapter 3

The latest entry in the haunted family saga of otherworldly entities and vengeful spirits, Insidious: Chapter 3 is notable for one reason, and a good one—veteran character actress Lin Shaye as reticent medium Elise Rainier.  If awards were given for performances in genre films—and…

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Mad Max: Fury Road

The most imaginative and directorially accomplished movie of the year, Mad Max: Fury Road is a hell of a vision from director George Miller, 70 and at the peak of his powers, upending the action genre by delivering an antithetical, feminist war cry that…

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