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The new Netflix miniseries THE QUEEN’S GAMBIT is chock full of riveting themes: obsession, sexism, and addiction…to name just three. The fictional journey of an orphaned girl in the late 1950s [...]

The new horror film COME PLAY does so many things right in the genre, it’s almost as shocking as some of the scares within it. The movie refreshes tired tropes, infuses wit and suspense into [...]

  Is there a more daring or dangerous comic than Sacha Baron Cohen working today? Since his Ali G days, the Englishman has been playing “Gotcha!” with various stuffed shirts, primarily in [...]

  Few films get darker than THE COLUMNIST, a twisted revenge tale that also serves as a middle finger to social media. Playing as part of the Chicago International Film Festival this week, [...]

Writer Roald Dahl’s work THE WITCHES must have felt like catnip to filmmaker Robert Zemeckis. Dahl’s story has all the hallmarks of the majority of Zemeckis’ best movies: vivid characters, an [...]

If one wanted to do a proper examination of the legendary filmmaker Stanley Kubrick, a 13-hour miniseries – one hour for each of his feature films – would still feel woefully [...]

The new documentary BELUSHI kicked off the 56th Chicago International Film Festival this past week and the strong film explores the late, great comedian John Belushi as well as stands as a [...]

A strict music teacher shames an unremarkable student by impugning her lack of fire. When she asks why he thinks her twin sister is a better pianist, the teacher replies, “Because she plays like [...]

Netflix’s THE HAUNTING OF BLY MANOR is often confusing and too long by at least two hours, but creator Mike Flanagan is one of the few horrormeisters working today who understands that [...]

I wish Hollywood would give Sofia Coppola money to make a movie every year. Her films are not ginormous productions with all kinds of bells and whistles, but rather, adult stories concentrating [...]