Review: Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is the sequel to the Academy Award-winning Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, which blew audiences away, setting the bar for CG-animated films in terms of digital artistry and writing. It’s hard to follow up such a success, but Across the Spider-Verse (the second of a planned trilogy) takes the action and the... Read More
Review: Shooting Stars
Sorry for mixing sports metaphors, but Shooting Stars has big hurdles to jump. First, anyone interested in LeBron James’s early years knows how high school ended. (Spoiler: He has four NBA championships.) Shooting Stars needs a will-he-make-it finale on par (sorry) with Hoosiers, or The Natural, or even Back to the Future, which it doesn’t... Read More
Review: Reality
In 2017, the FBI raided a nondescript suburban Georgia house rented by NSA translator Reality Leigh Winner. In 2018, Winner was given a five-year jail sentence, the longest ever for releasing unauthorized government documents. Reacting to a toxic work environment in which Fox News blared on TVs in the office nonstop and all her complaints... Read More
Review: The Quiet Epidemic
When I was younger and oh-so-naive, I mistakenly believed that if I were sick, I’d go to the doctor and they’d know what was wrong with me. Then, as the logic went, they’d make it better. I’ve wised up since then, both from seeing folks I know and love suffer from inexplicable illnesses to having... Read More
Review: Past Lives
Near the beginning of Past Lives, Na Young (Seung Ah Moon) reveals her crush to her mom. Like most first crushes, he’s her best friend, Hae Sung (Seung Min Yim). And like many “first dates,” the two kids meet, chaperoned by their mothers, as they run around the park. The scene is a familiar memory,... Read More
Review: The Boogeyman
We’re living in a post-Babadook world, and movie monsters are no longer content to simply be scary; they have to stand for something important, like mental health awareness or what it’s like to have a complicated relationship with your mom. The Boogeyman, Rob Savage’s adaptation of a 1973 Stephen King story of the same title,... Read More
The spice must flow with Tasting India and Friends at the next Monday Night Foodball
On Memorial Day I rubbed some fat, Red Wattle pork chops with Vadouvan Masala, and the golden turmeric crust they developed on the grill lit up the night. Last summer I got my mitts on some ramen noodles freshly cut from a half-ton sentient machine and couldn’t think of a better prep than a raw... Read More
Keeping it real about musical marriages
For better or (probably for) worse, The Real Housewives of (enter location here) reality TV show franchise is an American institution that has infiltrated mainstream society. The show documents the incredibly intimate details of the partners and mostly stay-at-home wives of prominent public figures. Peeling back the layers of the housewives’ professional and personal lives... Read More
Worth the risk?
To understand queer cinema one needs some appreciation of its relationship to low-budget, underground filmmaking, especially one particularly maligned approach within that category: pornography and X-rated movies. Not only do these works offer some of the earliest examples of queer life and desire committed to film by and for the LGBTQ+ community, but they also... Read More
Just stick to it
As the saying goes, Chicago is a big small town. We’re always bumping into each other. Artist, photographer, zine maker and promoter, curator, event organizer, and lifetime Chicagoan Oscar Arriola, 51, is one of those welcoming, familiar faces often present at the coolest, most underground happenings. As an appreciator, connector, and maker, Arriola is a... Read More