illustrated

The Chicago Indie Critics have announced our 2021 film award winners and THE POWER OF THE DOG did very well. They won three awards including Best Studio Film, Best Director, and Best Adapted [...]

THE TRAGEDY OF MACBETH is William Shakespeare’s shortest and bloodiest drama. The story of an honorable warrior who is overcome by ambition has been told on many stages and screens, and now it’s [...]

If you’re expecting Aaron Sorkin’s latest film BEING THE RICARDOS to capture the merriment of I LOVE LUCY, you might be shocked. What writer/director Sorkin’s film concentrates on instead is what [...]

When it was announced a few years back that director Steven Spielberg and screenwriter Tony Kushner were going to remake 1961’s WEST SIDE STORY, many asked, “Why?” Indeed, why mess with a [...]

Few biopic characters come as ginormous as Richard Williams. The force of nature who dominated his family with equal parts love and discipline is the subject of the new film KING RICHARD. Early [...]

The story of a bullying cowboy making life miserable for all those around him in 1925 Montana is one of the best acted, most beautifully shot, and eerily scored films of 2021. Yet, despite all [...]

Triple threat Kenneth Branagh doesn’t get nearly the credit he deserves. His 1989 take on William Shakespeare’s HENRY V was one of the most auspicious debuts of any director/actor/writer ever. He [...]

Princess Diana has been portrayed on stage and screen many times before. Emma Corrin almost won an Emmy for her turn on the sublime fourth season of Netflix’s THE CROWN. Naomi Watts gave the part [...]

Director Denis Villeneuve is a superb world-builder. The rainy, forever-gray neighborhood in PRISONERS, the heat-drenched Mexico in SICARIO, the egg-shaped, alien ships in ARRIVAL…his landscapes [...]

Pedro Almodóvar’s new film isn’t scheduled to open in the United States till Christmas, but it’s one of the big foreign features at this year’s Chicago International Film Festival. It was shown [...]