Many internal and external situations can cause feelings of desperation. Straits get so dire that horrible choices become the only choices. For Angie in Beauty Mark, played by emerging TV actress Auden Thornton, the burdensome weights (and they are sure plural) around her neck are overbearing. When those burdens and stresses pile on at the same time, the desperation of her situation becomes overwhelming in this excellent and hardscrabble family drama from writer-director Harris Doran.
Read MoreIn many respects, the degree of difficulty to make the cheesy entertaining is not very high. Laughs of the low-hanging fruit variety are easy to come by and guilty pleasure films are created all the time. The real challenge is to make the cheesy, and the laughs that come with it, unexpected and fulfilling. Flush with snickering hilarity and scoring plenty of points for swerving surprises, Game Night is infectiously entertaining with any cheese it serves.
Read MoreHere are my collected reviews for the Oscar nominees for Best Animated Short Film. Listed in order of rating and true to my website’s hook, each review includes a life lesson takeaway. A collected program of these films is available from various theater chains, including the Landmark Cinemas locations here in Chicago, starting on February 9th. In 90 minutes-and-change, you get five exceptional works for one ticket. Calling all Oscar completists!
Read MoreThrough 42 Grams, documentary director Jack C. Newell muddles away the self-importance and crafts his own dish laced with affinity and rapport. Following the trials and tribulations of gifted chef Chicago chef Jake Bickelhaupt and his wife Alexa, Newell’s film looks beyond the culinary decadence to reveal a core essence of ambition as relatable as any other version of the American Dream. The captive fascination swelling from that gathers attention and an audience where it normally would not.
Read MoreScoot Cooper’s grizzled western Hostiles opens with a quote from novelist D.H. Lawrence that reads: "The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer. It has never yet melted.” Those four adjectives and labels assigned by the English writer ring true for the late 19th century historical era he observed and also for the film itself you will watch. Each of those traits are embedded within Cooper’s difficult and impressive film.
Read MoreThrow out all of the Star Wars fan theories you’ve read or heard in the last two years. Ignore all of the online noise and irresponsible think piece editorials that have piled up on the web since Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Most importantly, relinquish whatever warped and selfish expectations that have been formulated by the blitz of marketing buzz. Star Wars: The Last Jedi takes its mountain of hype and shoves it away to make something nonconformist and wholly compelling in quite possibly the richest and most expressive entry of the storied franchise.
Read MoreDarkest Hour and Gary Oldman exhibit tremendous fight to match the vigor of the era. The film builds its mounting prospects of calamity and clashes of dissension with polish and gumption, avoiding many of the dull notes normally saddling most other behind-the-war-room yak-fest. The screenplay shrewdly skips laborious biographical notes and tautly fixates primarily on the two weeks of debate leading up to Operation Dynamo
Read MoreSoaringly endearing elements of romance enrapture with a heading spoonful of the perverse for good measure. Fantastical triumphs of mortal spirit over evil forces are applied to inhuman oddities with jarringly violent consequences. This is a film of stark peculiarity that challenges your safe zones and clashes with your sense of normalcy for the themes at play. It asks you to relish in an abnormal spectacle that dazzles with vintage style and extraordinary boldness.
Read MoreMichael Glover Smith’s words of mounting depth and weight turn idle chatter into soapboxes that eventually become proverbial fortifications built around questioned principles and shattered wills. The ensemble of performers delivers on the required heavy lifting from the director to make the multitude of human flaws believable yet still approachable. Mercury in Retrograde is a hidden gem.
Read MoreWait until the rest of Coco’s stirring vibrancy awakens even more senses and heartstrings. Softening a setting of gallows humor as few films have, family entries or otherwise, Coco is a divine representation of the human condition rooted respectfully within marvelous cultural heritage. Nearly every pluck of an animated guitar string in Coco strums chords of creativity and compassion.
Read MoreBright as the summer is sunny, thoughtful as the literature being referenced, and raw as the emotions running through it, Princess Cyd is a pertinent and inspiring triumph from writer and director Stephen Cone. We are privy to private moments, yet welcomed in for sake of common ground and personal growth. The sublime polish and volume of empathy amid this film’s themes is utterly magnetic.
Read MoreThis entire film is a head-turning and striking first impression if you missed Noel’s single season on Saturday Night Live four years ago. As aforementioned with a passion project like this, you beg and wonder how autobiographical a wild story like this has to be. No matter if it’s true or entirely created, the appreciation measures the heavily positive same. The jokes come from all angles and hit with every effect from belly laugh to full cringe.
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