Great Movies
TV/Streaming
Home Entertainment Guide: February 2022
The latest on Blu-ray and streaming, including Encanto, Eternals, House of Gucci, and Criterion editions of The Piano and Miller's Crossing.
The latest on Blu-ray and streaming, including Encanto, Eternals, House of Gucci, and Criterion editions of The Piano and Miller's Crossing.
The latest on Blu-ray and streaming services, including Weathering with You, Babyteeth, and a Criterion edition of The Elephant Man.
A preview of the 2019 DOC10 Film Festival (April 11-14) in Chicago, featuring reviews of "Hail Satan?", "Mike Wallace Is Here," "Midnight Family," "The Infiltrators," "Knock Down the House," "Anthropocene: The Human Epoch," "The Biggest Little Farm," "The Distant Barking of Dogs" and "One Child Nation."
Alex Wolff on his emotional performance in the terrifying new film, "Hereditary."
A review of Ari Aster's terrifying "Hereditary," premiered at Sundance and coming out from A24 later this year.
A tribute to Debra Winger, on the occasion of her first leading role in over 20 years in this week's "The Lovers."
A report from TIFF on three films, including the latest from Christopher Guest.
An in-depth preview of the films, including rarities and restorations, playing in the Noir City: Chicago 8 program at the Music Box Theatre.
The year to date in cinema as seen by our contributors.
A fest dispatch on three films from late in TIFF, including "Stonewall " and the closing night of Midnight Madness, "The Final Girls".
An overview of the films that will be theatrically released in the 2015 fall season.
Marie writes: I was looking for something to make Roger laugh, when the phone rang. It was a bad connection, but this much I did hear: "Roger has died." That's how I learned he was gone, and my first thought was of the cruel and unfair timing of it. He'd been on the verge of realizing a life long dream: to be the captain of his own ship.
Marie writes: Intrepid club member Sandy Kahn has found another Hollywood auction and it's packed with stuff! From early publicity stills (some nudes) to famous movie props, costumes, signed scripts, storyboards, posters and memorabilia...
I apologize for the lack of postings the last few weeks. A recent flare-up of heart problems left me with little energy to write. But as the emaciated old man in "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" says: "I'm feeling much better!"
At one point well into Paul Thomas Anderson's "The Master" I thought that the movie was going to reveal itself as a story about the meaninglessness of human existence. But that notion was based on a single piece of aphoristic, potential-thesis-statement dialog that, like much else, wasn't developed in the rest of the movie. Which is not to say that "The Master" isn't about the meaninglessness of human life. The line, spoken by Lancaster Dodd (Philip Seymour Hoffman), the cult guru known to his acolytes as Master, is addressed to the younger man he considers his "protégé," a dissolute mentally ill drifter named Freddie Quell (Joaquin Phoenix), and the gist of it is that the itinerant Freddie has as much to show for his life as somebody who has worked a regular 9-to-5 job for many years. The point being, I suppose, that for all Freddie's adventures, peculiarities and failures, he isn't all that much different from anybody else. Except, maybe, he's more effed-up.
(spoilers)
