illustrated

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 [...]

President Barack Obama once gave an interview where he talked about the two black athletes that really influenced him as a child. One was Muhammed Ali and the other was Arthur Ashe. There’s [...]

For fans of the James Bond spy franchise, it’s always a matter of degrees. Where does everything in the oeuvre fit on the spectrum from serious to silly? Indeed, the Bond franchise has yielded [...]

The new movie musical EVERYBODY’S TALKING ABOUT JAMIE is ironically titled as too few of such stories concerning the LGBTQ community get talked about enough. Quite often, when such stories do [...]

There’s an adage in Hollywood that every film is about two things: the plot, and the real story. The plot of SEVEN concerns a serial killer offing victims according to the Seven Deadly Sins. The [...]

The marketing department at Netflix may have gotten a bit overzealous in trying to create a buzz around their new documentary BOB ROSS: HAPPY ACCIDENTS, BETRAYAL & GREED. Menacing music plays [...]

The summer is almost over but finally, a big tentpole film comes along that shows just how such escapist fare should be done during the season. FREE GUY is a fun, exciting, and cheeky CGI-laden [...]

I know I’m late to the dance regarding my review of the documentary SUMMER OF SOUL, but I am here to sing, dance, and extoll its virtues as the feel-good movie of the summer. I was smiling the [...]

It has been said that a cynic is merely an idealist who’s been repeatedly burned. That could be apropos for celebrity chef and television host Anthony Bourdain. And in ROADRUNNER: A FILM ABOUT [...]

Rita Moreno’s fascinating life of 89 years has been so full of work, acclaim, love, barrier-breaking, and longevity, it probably deserves a limited series more than a documentary. Still, if [...]