MOVIE REVIEW: Thelma

Well, eat your f’n heart out, Tom Cruise! In the first lead performance of her seven-decade career, June Squibb proves she can get around just fine at a venerable age of 93! Sure, the speeds of the pursuits are exponentially slower and the heights of the obstacles are far closer to the ground, but, make no mistake, there are thrills to be had and laughs to be enjoyed with Thelma. With all due respect to Ryan Gosling, Will Smith, Martin Lawrence, and Glen Powell, June just leapfrogged them all to be the must-see action hero of the 2024 summer blockbuster season.

2024, 4 STARS, Independent Film, MOVIE REVIEWDon ShanahanJune 18, 2024Thelma, Josh Margolin, Richard Roundtree, Clark Gregg, Parker Posey, Fred Hechinger, Sundance Film Festival, 2024 Sundance Film FestivalComment

MOVIE REVIEW: Menashe

Weinstein writes and directs what constitutes as a love letter to a culture, a community, and to the essence of fatherhood. The lead’s personal plight is a compelling one done with grace and admiration for attaching the right layer of empathy. It’s not overly heavy in any particular way, but Menashe carries enough honesty, enough will, and enough power to break any father’s heart. There’s strength to be found in that.

Chicago Film Festival, Film Festival, Independent Film, 2017, 3 STARS, MOVIE REVIEWDon ShanahanAugust 3, 2017foreign langugage film, Yiddish, Festival coverage, podcasting, Podcast, fathers, CIFCC, Menashe Lustig, Feelin' Film Podcast, Borough Park, Don Shanahan, podcast, Torah, film festival, life lessons, Sundance Film Festival, movie fathers, A24, Mr. Mom, podcast guest, 5th Chicago Critics Film Festival, 2017, Brooklyn, Every Movie Has a Lesson, 2017 Sundance Film Festival, Donald Shanahan, podcast discussion, film fathers, movie dads, Hasidic Jews, Ruben Niborski, film dads, A24 Films, Menashe, Yoel Weisshaus, life lessons from movies, Feelin' Film, life lessons from film, Meyer Schwartz, films about fatherhood, life lessons from foreign films, Festival review, fathers in film, CFCA, independent film, Joshua Z. Weinstein, movies about fatherhood, Chicago Critics Film FestivalComment

MOVIE REVIEW: A Ghost Story

Welcome to the polarizing gamut of engagement, acceptance, and disquiet of A Ghost Story. This is a wholly original film that takes preparation, patience, absorption, and reflection that some, or even many, may not be ready for. Presented in the rounded and claustrophobic corners of a centered 1.33:1 aspect ratio, it is safe to say, you will see nothing like this all year and maybe several more.

2017, 3 STARS, Film Festival, Independent Film, MOVIE REVIEWDon ShanahanJuly 12, 2017Music Box Theatre2017, 2017 Chicago Critics Film Festival, 5th Chicago Critics Film Festival, David Lowery, A Ghost Story, Sundance Film Festival, 2017 Sundance Film Festival, Casey Affleck, Rooney Mara, Andrew Droz Palermo, Terrence Malick, Emmanuel Lubezki, Daniel Hart, Dark Rooms, I Get Overwhelmed, Annell Brodeur, Ain't Them Bodies Saints, aspect ratio, polarizing, CIFCC, Music Box Theatre, Virginia Woolf, A Haunted House, patience, ghost stories, life lessons, independent film, A24 Films, A24, life lessons from movies, life lessons from film, film review, movie review, film commentary, movie commentary, Donald Shanahan, Don Shanahan, Every Movie Has a Lesson, Pete's Dragon, social commentary, film critics, film critic, movie critic, movie critics, Chicago Film Critics Association, film festival, Festival coverage, Festival reviewComment

MOVIE REVIEW: Manchester by the Sea

There is an unmistakable layer of “people-watching” cinema brings to its artistic atmosphere and aesthetic. An omnipresent camera grants private points-of-view, shines light on secrets, and challenges the observational skills of the audience. Kenneth Lonergan’s “Manchester by the Sea” introduces the wearisome life of one solitary man and proceeds to unearth the repressed sorrow and unspoken emotions that lie underneath his mundane exterior. The most praiseworthy character-driven films have the patience to cultivate its truths with substance and the wisdom to never give you everything. Lonergan’s near-perfect jewel is a new exemplar of such qualities and one of the finest films of 2016.

MOVIE REVIEW: Certain Women

Spareness and simplicity can either be a fountain of nuance and austerity or it can be a vacuum of plainness and lethargy. Filmmaker Kelly Reichardt is a celebrated torchbearer of the minimalist film movement and her newest feature, “Certain Women,” boast three strong female leads in Laura Dern, Michelle Williams, and Kristen Stewart. Despite that base of acting forte and the patronage of Todd Haynes as an executive producer, the void outweighs any wellspring.

MOVIE REVIEW: The Birth of a Nation

Circling back to the “timely” label, the film bears the designation in equally positive and negative connotations, depending of your personal capacity. Consider “The Birth of a Nation” to be the antithesis to “Selma” two years ago. This film’s depiction of violent retaliation reverberates far differently than Martin Luther King’s example of nonviolence. Audiences will wrestle with that polar opposite being empowering or troubling in justification.

MOVIE REVIEW: Swiss Army Man

As ambiguous as this sounds, your love or hate of the new film and Sundance favorite, “Swiss Army Man,” will say something about your inner quirkiness, mindset, and, most of all, your heart. Packed with detail and imagination beyond belief, this film defies classification and destroys the hyperbole, pretense, and comparative euphemisms that normally define films about friendship, the genre of buddy movies, and even unconventional screen love stories. Movies that tug our heartstrings with a smile normally kill us with kindness. The polarizing “Swiss Army Man” kills us with weirdness. This film lets its WTF freak flag fly and encourages you to do the same.

EDITORIAL: The Best of 2016 (so far)

Many of my personal most-anticipated picks and my crystal ball Oscar prognostications are still coming, but I have been lucky enough to see over 50 film films in the first half of 2016. Since it's only been a half-year, I'll split a year-end "10 Best" list into a Top 5. True to this website's theme, I present you my picks for the "Best of 2016 (so far)" coupled with their best life lesson from my full reviews.

2016, Editorial, Best Films, 10 Best, Column, SPECIALDon ShanahanJune 30, 2016most anticipated movies, Lo and Behold, Everybody Wants Some, Best Movies of 2016, Deadpool, 2017 Oscar Predictions, Louder than Bombs, Batman V. Superman: Dawn of Justice, Life Animated, 2016 films, 2017 Oscars, Oscar contenders, 10 Best, Top 5 list, Column, Coming Through the Rye, most anticipated films, Race, Oscar hopefuls, Born to Be Blue, Best of 2016 (so far), 2016, Lo and Behold: Reveries of the Connected World, Elvis & Nixon, High-Rise, Hunt for the Wilderpeople, SXSW Film Festival, Kung Fu Panda 3, Sundance Film Festival, In a Valley of Violence, Tribeca Film Festival, Cannes, 10 Best Films of 2016, Hail Caesar!, Midnight Special, Editorial, Best Films of 2016, Captain America: Civil War, Cannes Film Festival, La Belle et la Bete, Beauty and the Beast, Top 10 list, Best of 2016, List, The Invitation, The American SideComment

MOVIE REVIEW: James White

51st Chicago International Film Festival U.S. Indies special presentation

Much of the resisted maturation journey playing out for the title character in Josh Mond's "James White" feels petulant and half-hearted, much like the character himself. We learn that effort is by design because he is a character that needs fixing. The only way James White can mature is through bottoming out and finding emotion in places other than himself. "James White" is a difficult and unflinching look at both terminal illness and wasting one's life on selfish excesses.

MOVIE REVIEW: Digging for Fire

Joe Swanberg is a leader of the "mumblecore" movement, which primarily employs naturalistic everyday settings with improvisational dialogue and a loose story structure. Such an approach has been found to be a double-edged sword of open-endedness. Either it's fresh and interesting enough to keep you guessing or it's maddeningly lost and too unstructured for not really coming to a conclusion or making a point. This film adds another miss to the list for Swanberg. This writer loves what he stands for, but hates the underwhelming results.

MOVIE REVIEW: Z for Zachariah

Playing concurrently in limited theatrical release and on Video On Demand outlets after debuting at January's Sundance Film Festival, "Z for Zachariah" is based on Robert C. O'Brien's 1974 novel of the same name. Written in the form of a diary during the paranoid peak of the 1970's, the post-apocalyptic novel reverberated with tension and clashes of survival. Even with a trio of talented actors that turn heads, you would never know such crackle existed from the resulting film that falls flat at every turn.

MOVIE REVIEW: Me and Earl and the Dying Girl

By tackling the subject of cancer and doing so in the guise of a quirky high school comedy, "Me and Earl and the Dying Girl" stands out as proof that a movie can be earnest and humorous at the same time. It can be understated in one moment and then completely outgoing the next. It is a film that can feel facetious and yet still be profound. It takes the modern high school setting that is deliberately riddled with innate tropes, stereotypes, and cliches and masterfully steers around every single one of them to offer you something smart, touching, and, most of all, original. That is no small feat and something to stand up and celebrate.

EVERY MOVIE HAS A LESSON

by Don Shanahan

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