Jones does her best with what she has to work with, and the movie may still strike an emotional chord with viewers if they don’t look too closely.
Category: Film
Posted inFilm
Thrill of recognition or contempt for inaccuracy
Ultimately, whether the show is any good does not depend on how well it “gets” Chicago, on a logistical or even cultural level, but on whether it is entertaining or not.
Posted inFilm
Not just another remake
With over a hundred years of the moving image at their disposal, these creative people appear at a loss how to proceed. It’s a very familiar feeling.
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Welcome to the skate park
“When we go to a skate park, we take up space, and then all of a sudden you don’t see a bunch of guys trying to tell you to move out the way, ’cause we’re the majority now,” says Lid Madrid. “And we’re taking up space, and just changing the way that skate parks traditionally […]
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The Black Phone
The effort is appreciated as far as it goes. But it doesn’t matter how enthusiastically you dial if you end up with a bore on the other end of the line.
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Minions: The Rise of Gru
Is this in any way, shape, or form defensible as meaningful art? Certainly not. Is it really cute? Yup.
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Lost Illusions
Xavier Giannoli’s film is hilarious and always moving with vivid colors and rapid-fire narration that in another movie might feel heavy-handed but here is a guiding force that gives a fascinating quasi-history lesson.
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Showcasing Black actors in foreign cinema
Floyd Webb is the curator of the Black Actors in Foreign Cinema screening series, co-presented by nonprofit media arts organization Chicago Filmmakers and his company, the Blacknuss Network.
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Ghost of drive-ins past?
From the comfort of your car or on a picnic with friends, Chicago’s outdoor movie screenings have resuscitated the alluring drive-in experience, so screentime can be spent with others all summer long.
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A brand new print of Airport premieres at this year’s Music Box 70mm Film Festival
Airport (1970) introduced many tropes so closely associated with the 70s disaster genre: the reverence for—and subsequent destabilization of—then-new technologies, in this case the Boeing 707; a miasma of soap-operaish subplots; and huge all-star casts slumming for easy paychecks.
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Cinema Deathmatch: Round One explores moral-panic entertainment
Critics sometimes say that films like Running Man and Battle Royale implicate the viewer. When you watch them, you’re supposed to recognize the ickiness of your own enjoyment of uber-violence. But isn’t the ickiness also part of the enjoyment?