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Review(s): Columbus and Menashe
Two quiet independent films slip into theaters soon, and each is worthy of your attention. Both premiered in Chicago earlier this year at the Chicago Critic's Film Festival, a week-long affair that's proving to be a local film staple previewing the year's best fare. It was there I saw A Ghost Story, The Little Hours,…
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Review: STEP
Founded in 2008, the Baltimore Leadership School for Young Women is a charter school with a goal of seeing all its graduates succeed in college. Its educators and administrators set high standards and expect greatness from the girls in their charge. Academics are paramount, and failure is not an option. For the students at BLSYW, though,…
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Review: The Big Sick
Two pieces of information preceded my screening of The Big Sick, Kumail Nanjiani and Emily V. Gordon’s adaptation of their real-life, unconventional love story, and I’m afraid those two pieces of information ultimately impacted my enjoyment of this quite lovely, quite wonderful, modern romantic comedy. First, I’d come across Nanjiani’s own twitter thread articulating his…
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Review: Band Aid
I don’t remember exactly when I became a fan of Zoe Lister-Jones, but it happened at some point, because now I follow her on Instagram. Last July, she posted a headline that she’d be making her directorial debut with Band Aid, a feature she also wrote and would produce and star in. By January, that little feature…
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Watch This: Chicago’s DOC10 Film Festival
Next week, Chicago Media Project presents DOC10, an annual film festival that presents the most compelling documentary films of the year over the course of a few days. This year, organizers have partnered with the newly-revamped Davis Theater in Lincoln Square to showcase films covering subject matter from music and film to social justice and…
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Watch this: I Am Not Your Negro
“Not everything that is faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed until it is faced.” -James Baldwin The hardest part about watching I Am Not Your Negro, easily 2016’s best documentary and most essential viewing, is watching it. More than once, I cringed, winced, looked away, closed my eyes; it was all I could…