Review: Julia
RECOMMENDED Erica Zonca made an indelible impression with his “Dreamlife of Angels” (1998) but managed only to produce one other feature since. In his erratic but fascinating “Julia,” Tilda Swinton is...
View ArticleNewcity’s Top 5 of Everything 2009: Film
Top 5 U.S. Films “The Hurt Locker,” Kathryn Bigelow “The Limits of Control,” Jim Jarmusch “A Serious Man,” Joel and Ethan Coen “Two Lovers,” James Gray “The Fantastic Mr. Fox,” Wes Anderson —Ray Pride...
View ArticleReview: I Am Love
RECOMMENDED As Milan is dusted with late winter snow, the first pulsations of music under the credits of Sicilian director Luca Guadagnino’s sumptuous, scrumptious “I Am Love” (Io Sono L’Amore)—a...
View ArticleThe Top 5 of Everything 2010: Film
Top 5 Domestic Films “The Social Network,” David Fincher “Winter’s Bone,” Debra Granik “Ghost Writer,” Roman Polanski “Exit Through the Gift Shop,” Banksy “Inception,” Christopher Nolan — Ray Pride Top...
View ArticleReview: European Union Film Festival Week 3
RECOMMENDED The three most striking films previewed from this week’s offerings at the Siskel Film Center’s European Union Film Festival each have powerful women at their center. Andrea Dunbar was a...
View ArticleReview: !Women Art Revolution
RECOMMENDED Writer-director-shooter-editor Lynn Hershman Leeson draws from almost forty years of her own observation (and filming) of makers of feminist art to compile her personal secret history since...
View ArticleSeason’s Screenings: Chicago International Film Festival at forty-seven
By Ray Pride After summer’s somersaults, autumn through Christmas is when the grownup movies come out to play, and the forty-seventh edition of the Chicago International Film Festival has a lot to...
View ArticleI Wake Up Screening: Another Week of Chicago International Film Fest at...
By Ray Pride No matter even if you truly wanted to, there’s no way a single viewer could give you an overview of an international film festival with more than a hundred events: you can surmise all you...
View ArticleReview: We Need To Talk About Kevin
RECOMMENDED Scottish director Lynne Ramsay’s last released feature was 2002′s “Morvern Callar”; among the heartbreaks along the way was “The Lovely Bones” being wrested away from her for a directorial...
View ArticleChildren of Paradise: Unboxing Wes Anderson’s “Moonrise Kingdom”
By Ray Pride A list of readily identifiable possible influences streaming into Wes Anderson’s symphonic romance “Moonrise Kingdom” would quickly become a trainwreck at the cinémathèque. (Think “outlaw...
View ArticleTo Be Or Not To Be Wes: History Under the Influence at “The Grand Budapest...
By Ray Pride If on a winter’s night, a screenwriter… Wes Anderson’s dense, compacted, throwback-look forward, comic mock-operetta of a mythic Mitteleuropa seemingly patterned after the...
View ArticleReview: Snowpiercer
RECOMMENDED With “Snowpiercer,” the eminently talented South Korean genre-bender Bong Joon-ho (“The Host,” “Barking Dogs Never Bite,” “Mother”) aims beyond the fences again with his fevered free...
View ArticleReview: I Am Love
RECOMMENDED As Milan is dusted with late winter snow, the first pulsations of music under the credits of Sicilian director Luca Guadagnino’s sumptuous, scrumptious “I Am Love” (Io Sono L’Amore)—a...
View ArticleThe Top 5 of Everything 2010: Film
Top 5 Domestic Films “The Social Network,” David Fincher “Winter’s Bone,” Debra Granik “Ghost Writer,” Roman Polanski “Exit Through the Gift Shop,” Banksy “Inception,” Christopher Nolan — Ray Pride Top...
View ArticleReview: European Union Film Festival Week 3
RECOMMENDED The three most striking films previewed from this week’s offerings at the Siskel Film Center’s European Union Film Festival each have powerful women at their center. Andrea Dunbar was a...
View ArticleReview: !Women Art Revolution
RECOMMENDED Writer-director-shooter-editor Lynn Hershman Leeson draws from almost forty years of her own observation (and filming) of makers of feminist art to compile her personal secret history since...
View ArticleSeason’s Screenings: Chicago International Film Festival at forty-seven
By Ray Pride After summer’s somersaults, autumn through Christmas is when the grownup movies come out to play, and the forty-seventh edition of the Chicago International Film Festival has a lot to...
View ArticleReview: Zero Theorem
RECOMMENDED Shoestring Terry Gilliam is better than no Terry Gilliam at all, and in the sweetly mad master’s latest revision of dystopia takes on the pixel-kapow of corporate-designed image-drench and...
View ArticleHey Hey In The Hayloft: The Preston Sturges Whirl Of “Hail, Caesar!”
By Ray Pride I miss medical marijuana. Not so much the stuff itself, more so the women I’ve known who partake and partake, and then watch and rewatch Coen brothers movies. It goes all the way back to,...
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