All about me.
One of those odd little quirks of timing that happens in the world of cinema took place this year when not one, but two films based on the life of Christine Chubbuck were filmed and released at almost exactly the same time. The first was Christine, a more or less straightforward …
I don’t really listen to much new music anymore. Partly this is because no one pays me to do it anymore, and partly it’s because I have other things to do, but mostly it’s just because I’m old, and nobody needs another white guy in his mid-40s telling them what …
Donald Trump isn’t even president yet and the liberal establishment is already in a frenzy, convinced that the apocalypse has arrived and that if we don’t hang Mitch McConnell for treason right this second, it will mean the end of the American Dream. Some are even lapsing into an all-too-familiar …
When I started drinking, there was no such thing as “craft beer”. If you didn’t like the weak, watery, tasteless crap that passed for beer in America, you did one of two things: you found a bar that carried foreign beer (Guinness, usually, maybe something exotic from Germany or, if you were …
Barring a miracle, it is now a mere 30 days before overconfidence trickster/foundation abuser Donald Trump will assume the presidency of the United States. The most important battle to be fought once that happens is building political organizations powerful enough to combat the damage he will be able to inflict …
It wasn’t until the Siskel Center announced a new restoration of Daughters of the Dust that I’d even heard of Julie Dash’s stunning 1991 film, and that’s to my great regret and embarrassment. Released by the New York Film Forum in a beautiful new print to commemorate its 25th anniversary — though, …
Fidel Castro is dead. The last man standing in the Cold War, who survived the attempts of nearly a dozen American presidents to dislodge him from power, who elements of America’s foreign policy apparatus attempted to murder an uncountable number of times, has finally succumbed to age and decay, leaving …
From the very first episode of HBO’s newest — and most talked-about — prestige series, Westworld, I was convinced of two things. The first thing that went through my head as the closing credits rolled on Ramin Djawadi’s haunting theme music was “I really, really like this show.” The second thing was …
I’ve been thinking a lot about political violence. The election of Donald Trump has brought with it a significant escalation of the rhetoric that he is a dangerous fascist, and that things are about to get serious for Muslims, women, and LGBTQ people, to name a few. And, indeed, this …
As mentioned a few days back, before America was plunged into the depths of fascism and we cared about frivolous thinks like moving pictures, we recently took in a double feature at the Siskel Center of movies billed as “UK noir”. This isn’t entirely deceptive; the excellent Odd Man Out was on the …
Well, good job of it, America. You threw a fit and at the end of it elected a man who’s been a national punchline for four decades. Conservatives so completely swallowed their own venom that they ended up stuck with a nightmare from the id. Liberals fielded a candidate so disliked that …
This past weekend, we headed over to the Siskel Center for a double feature of what they were advertising as a program of British noir. Although both movies had their merits, calling them noir was more than a stretch; that was particularly true in the case of the first, 1963’s These …
This is the last post that I’ll make before America elects a new leader. It’s been a punishing election cycle, even by the degraded standards of our latter republic; the prospect of it being over is a little like finally getting out of prison, but knowing that the warden is …
You always want to end a film festival with a bang, and Chan-Wook Park’s new epic, The Handmaiden, allowed me to do that at the Chicago International Film Festival both literally and figuratively. Park is a household name amongst American film buffs, almost single-handedly vaulting South Korea to the upper echelon …
The third film I saw at this year’s Chicago International Film Festival was far and away the best — and very likely one of the best documentaries I’ve seen in a decade or more. Gianfranco Rosi’s Fire at Sea is by turns beautiful, powerful, moving, quiet, angry, and always deeply humane; …
