MOVIE REVIEW: When I'm Ready

Moral challenges and splits involving personal truths increase as the days and hours dwindle to do something about them. Depending on the viewer’s acceptance and temperament, When I’m Ready is a complicated blend of the morbid and the soulful. Cynics will call it soft and over-convenient. They’ll be missing the attempted love letter-level poetry championing companionship. Instead, those who lean to and shine with the positive latter will be rewarded with a lovely odyssey of warmth fighting back bleakness.

MOVIE REVIEW: Suze

Witnessing this journey is an absolute pleasure to behold in Suze, a little gem that can unite wayward young audiences with the jaded adult parents out there both trying to make sense of shifting crossroad moments of their lives. When Suze and Gage come to say “I’m really glad you’re here,” you will find yourself nodding in agreement about the sweet movie itself, and it all started with a convincing himbo.

2025, 4 STARS, Independent Film, Home Media, Streaming, MOVIE REVIEWDon ShanahanFebruary 4, 2025Suze, Michaela Watkins, Charlie GillespieComment

MOVIE REVIEW: Green and Gold

With its idyllic morals and rural accoutrements, Green and Gold champions hopeful and wholesome vibes. Green and Gold embraces that soft touch without thumping Bibles to support and celebrate the challenges and resilience found in the endangered American farmer. There’s an under-filled soft spot place for quaint family fare tipping a hat like this.

2025, 3 STARS, ADVANCE MOVIE REVIEW, Independent Film, MOVIE REVIEWDon ShanahanJanuary 31, 2025Green and Gold, Craig T. NelsonComment

MOVIE REVIEW: Wish You Were Here

The grand searches for meaning and the combination of their little ventures are not quite expressive or poignant enough to sear hearts and call upon the need to tug on the tissues, despite a promising effort from Julia Stiles taking on a new role in her lifelong medium. While Wish You Were Here may not fully succeed for many, she deserves more chances in the big chair.

MOVIE REVIEW: Disfluency

As the flashbacks thicken the ugly and sordid details, every call for caution is correct, and every sincere attempt at concern is warranted. But, with every chewed fingernail of unchecked nerves, Jane refuses to talk or share any shred of explanation. Through its sobering effort to present an always-successful-until-now young woman carrying unhealed pain, Disfluency sheds light on an ominous emotional burden far too many people have experienced and far too many people have sought to carry silently.

2021, 2025, Independent Film, MOVIE REVIEWDon ShanahanJanuary 20, 2025Disfluency, Libe Barer, Ariela Barer, Anna Baumgarten, Molly HaganComment

MOVIE REVIEW: Autumn and the Black Jaguar

What could possibly hurt the good intentions and try-hard effort of Autumn and the Black Jaguar? The answer, unfortunately, manifests in one abundantly blunt place. It’s the insertion of a distracting supporting character that steals the oxygen and becomes the movie’s regrettably more dominant mouthpiece.

2025, Independent Film, MOVIE REVIEWDon ShanahanJanuary 16, 2025Autumn and the Black Jaguar, Lumi Pollack, Emily Bett RickardsComment

MOVIE REVIEW: Somewhere in Montana

Count Somewhere in Montana writer-director Brandon Smith as a wiser gentleman who avoided, for the most part, reaching for those types of low-hanging fruit. These featured men are surprisingly deeper than their outward tropes, and their qualities thicken, ever so slightly, what could have been a narrow movie.

MOVIE REVIEW: Nickel Boys

By Ross’s own words, the camera intensifies objectivity and that speaks volumes for Nickel Boys. Its well-executed impact begs audiences to become further informed on the tragedy after finishing the film. In the end, we cannot let go of what the eyes and arms want, especially if those needs cannot be attained due to the grim circumstances of the story. Better than many works by peers and contemporaries, Nickel Boys longs for us to hold dear the bonds of protective brotherhood with a fascinating filmic experience.

CAPSULE REVIEWS: The Inaugural Oak Park, Illinois Film Festival

This past fall, the eclectic western Chicago suburb of Oak Park, Illinois put on their inaugural film festival. The Oak Park, Illinois Film Festival. Divided into five thematic programming blocks, the festival organizers and leading board members curated a total of 17 films. Three of them were feature-length, and two of those were documentaries. Holding firm to local roots, each film entry had to have an Oak Park connect in front of or behind the camera to be eligible.

MOVIE REVIEW: Los Frikis

Strong with the aforementioned wisdom and historical truth channeled through Medina, Los Frikis was unafraid to present the squalor the brothers rose from and, unfortunately, how AIDS would sever and silence any cultural growth or lasting personal legacies. The result is a difficult and no-less-impressive film that smashes the spirited human condition against aspects of fulfilling indepdence people should never take for granted.

INFOGRAPHIC: Family-Friendly Movies to Watch Over the Holidays

The study by image editor experts Remove BG, analyzed IMDb ratings, Rotten Tomatoes scores, and Google user scores for movies filmed throughout the US from 1990 to the present. The scores on these sites were then averaged out each to give a score out of 100, with non-family-friendly movies (anything rated above PG-13) being omitted from the ranking.

2024, Column, Independent Film, EditorialDon ShanahanDecember 23, 2024Comment

MOVIE REVIEW: The Brutalist

The trouble is The Brutalist cannot decide whether to peck at that facade with an awl or swing at it with a sledgehammer. Too often, it hands the wrong figurative tool to the actors for the wrong moments. Appreciably, Adrien Brody and Guy Pearce are formidably locked into their roles and stalwart in their respective characters’ competing visions and varying sins of pride. However, big moments get unsuccessfully needled while small ones get overly demolished, which ultimately betrays more characters than Brody’s and Pearce’s

EVERY MOVIE HAS A LESSON

by Don Shanahan

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