Screen
Art reflecting Ebert
The Chicago Sun-Times obituary by Neil Steinberg couldn’t have said it better: “Roger Ebert loved movies.” Considering that he reviewed thousands upon thousands of them, it was a good thing. From 1967 to his death in 2013, Ebert was the film critic for the Chicago ...
The future of the American family
Verizon Wireless has “Friends & Family.” Sprint calls it “Framily.” Facebook calls it “Friending” (even if your own mother just “friended” you). If the 20th century focused on the nuclear family, then America in the 21st century shifted importance to those friends ...
Grade A-Holes
The proliferation of comic book movies has reached its cultural apex, so thoroughly dominating the box office and public consciousness that a backlash was practically invited. While the public plays Oliver Twist, wallets open and begging for more, those who ...
Fuzzy focus
Time has whittled mainstream memory of the original late 1960s/early 1970s Planet of the Apes franchise down to an image of Charlton Heston’s clenched fist and the Statue of Liberty tanning her torchy top half on the beach. However, the original series was actually ...
Lucy goosey
It doesn’t work this way with people, but there’s a level of confident stupidity a movie can display that makes it endearing. Lucy is that kind of stupid. Cocksure and confidently, it swaggers around, daring you to question any of the unimaginable number of ...
Coming of age
Since his 1991 debut, Slacker, writer/director Richard Linklater has quietly become the most reflective director in American cinema. In the documentary Double Play: Jack Benning and Richard Linklater (Gabe Klinger 2013), currently available via Video on Demand, he ...
A boy’s best friend is his cow
The 1925 Buster Keaton classic Go West opens, “Some people travel through life making friends wherever they go, while others — just travel through life...
