Thrills, Kills, and Chills: A Deep Dive into the Dark Side of Cinema
Horror Genre Evolution The perplexing evolution of the horror genre throughout cinematic history is a whirlwind of shifting storytelling techniques…
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Pulse-Racing Adventure Films
Action-packed Thrillers Immersed in a whirlwind of heart-pounding action and high-stakes drama, audiences are captivated by the adrenaline-fueled adventures that…
Family Movie Night Ideas – Kid Films
Best Animated Films for Family Movie Night When faced with the task of choosing an animated film for a cozy…
The 25 Best TV Series of 2024
It feels like everyone is a little frustrated by television in the 2020s. The most common complaint is that there’s too much out there on too many platforms. How can one find what’s actually worth watching through all the noise? When there are 100 new shows every month across companies like HBO, Netflix, Prime Video,…
The Criterion Channel’s January 2025 Lineup Features David Bowie, Nicole Kidman, Sean Baker & More
January 2025 could mark a bleak month for very specific reasons, but in that month one can watch a nicely curated collection of David Bowie’s best performances. Nearly a decade since he passed, the iconic actor (who had some other trades) is celebrated with The Man Who Fell to Earth, Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence, The…
“The Brutalist,” “Nickel Boys” Lead 2024 CFCA Awards
The Chicago Film Critics Association presented their awards last night and RaMell Ross was the big winner, taking home prizes for Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, and the Milos Stehlik Breakthrough Filmmaker Award. His “Nickel Boys” also won Best Cinematography for Jomo Fray (a former Ebert Fellow!). But Brady Corbet’s “The Brutalist” took home the…
Endless Summer Syndrome Review: An Incest Drama With Depth
In a much-clipped moment from his Criterion Closet video, philosopher and cultural theorist Slavoj Žižek pulls a DVD copy of Louis Malle’s Murmur of the Heart from the shelf and remarks upon it warmly as “one of those nice gentle French movies where you have incest.” Žižek’s enigmatic comment springs to mind watching Endless Summer…
“Dragon Age: The Veilguard” Builds Out Dense Mythology with Interesting Characters
This review of EA’s “Dragon Age: The Veilguard” is much later than most of them for two reasons. One, it’s the busiest season of the year for just about everything in the entertainment world, and this review copy came late on a run of major video games, movies, TV shows, etc. Two, I wanted to…
Brady Corbet Reveals First Details for Next Film, Inspired by Horror and Westerns
With just a week to go until Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist, ranking quite highly on our best films of 2024, arrives in theaters, we’re getting new details on what the filmmaker has up next. Although it took six years for him to get his latest off the ground, thankfully it doesn’t look like the wait…
My Night at the Critics Choice Celebration of Black Cinema and Television
I started attending film awards ceremonies with my late husband Roger almost thirty-five years ago. In those early years, I observed that few ceremonies included Black entertainers as award winners or even attendees. Over the years, there has been a movement to bring attention to the issue. And between the inception of the African-American Film…