MOVIE REVIEW: Stay the Night

Stay the Night plays out smarter than the usual rom-coms or “one wild night” movies of thrust-together strangers. Like its lead woman, it is reserved and far more realistic with its urban sauntering. In different and disinterested hands, the floozy-plus-dreamboat formula would be in full effect. There would be some zany impossibility or preposterous monkey wrench thrown into the narrative for excitement’s sake. All the conflict you need is right here–between its ears, in its beating heart, and within the held hands–of this gratifying and understated film.

2022, 3 STARS, Film Festival, Independent Film, MOVIE REVIEW, StreamingDon ShanahanOctober 5, 2022Stay the Night, Andrea Bang, Joe ScarpellinoComment

MOVIE REVIEW: Blonde

The controversial new film Blonde swirls surreal cinematic brushstrokes meant to express the hushed nightmares beyond the celebrity dreams of Norma Jean Mortenson and compose a reminiscent and heartbreaking portrait of the legendary star. The audiences’ applause of adoration is replaced by cries of anguish and pain often unseen by anyone. It is those tears that paint this film. For better or worse, those tears are what you now remember more than the smiles when it comes to Marilyn Monroe.

2022, 5 STARS, ADVANCE MOVIE REVIEW, Film Festival, Independent Film, MOVIE REVIEW, StreamingDon ShanahanSeptember 23, 2022Blonde, Ana de Armas, Andrew Dominik, NetflixComment

MOVIE REVIEW: Marcel the Shell With Shoes On

Marcel the Shell With Shoes On is emphatically wholesome to no end. Revealing so much wonderment in plain domesticity, this movie decorates the micro-ordinary in wildly unique ways worth celebrating. It may not be your children’s shiny new favorite movie for endless replay, but, when absorbed with receptiveness and appreciated for its singularity, Marcel the Shell With Shoe On will become a charming and formative right of passage experience held dear and passed down for generations to come.

MOVIE REVIEW: That Night

That Night may buzz around the living spaces and late-night haunts of the Windy City on a path to sunrises, but every pitfall or bit of good luck comes back to our main leads with karma and consequence. Through the boozy haze, Stacey and Lily confronting their uncertain futures is the locked core of the movie. Montenegro and Gester demonstrate excellent chemistry in their shared conversations where will-they/won’t-they cliches are challenged every step of the way.

2022, 3 STARS, ADVANCE MOVIE REVIEW, Film Festival, Independent Film, MOVIE REVIEW, EVENTDon ShanahanApril 26, 2022That Night, The Logan TheatreComment

MOVIE REVIEW: Marvelous and the Black Hole

Serendipitously so, the opposite becomes the case. That line, among many others that follow, could sneakily summarize the FilmRise Sundance darling Marvelous and the Black Hole. Little wonders and big feelings percolate, intersect, smear, and overwhelm a collection of very unique yet relatable people in this film, and the effects could not be more touching and soul-stirring. For folks willing to seek it out in limited theaters, a rewarding hidden gem awaits you.

MOVIE REVIEW: Everything Everywhere All at Once

The Daniels writing and directing team of Daniel Scheinart and Dan Kim (Swiss Army Man) apply surrealism that zips and zings to an extreme level in creating a very domestic multiverse movie that subverts superhero motifs. All the dazzlement laid before the audience funnels levels of familial love more connective and invincible than any costumed paragon from a bigger movie. To absorb this exhilarating and passionate flurry, you will need far more than 10% of both your brain and your heart.

MOVIE REVIEW: Fresh

Maybe Fresh’s exotic menu is not a good place for that “no thank you bite.” However, please, please, pretty please with sugar on top, only apply that very fair dismissal to the controversial cuisine on display and not the actual movie. You would be missing a very interesting movie, one you might laugh at or become scared to death to experience. That sensation is worth its morsel of escapism.

2022, 3 STARS, Film Festival, Independent Film, MOVIE REVIEW, StreamingDon ShanahanMarch 15, 2022Fresh, Sebastian Stan, Daisy Edgar-JonesComment

MOVIE REVIEW: Strawberry Mansion

That exchange is one of few that typifies the giddy hospitality and the bizarre allure of Strawberry Mansion from the writing and directing team of Kentucker Audley and Albert Birney. The movie extends a coy and welcome hand to join its descent into weirdness while still spinning plenty of heady oddities to rattle cages of normal sensibilities. Go ahead and take this movie’s leap into the surreal. You may just like what you find.

MOVIE REVIEW: Minamata

Minamata reminds us what Johnny Depp’s charisma can do outside of his fantasy wheelhouse and Tim Burton security blanket. Pushing through aging makeup, a potty mouth, and other curmudgeon behavior, Depp channels a unique and dour bluntness as W. Eugene Smith. True to the usual inspirational movie path, the heart of this dire story helps reduce the quirk factors and allows the actor to pleasantly play something straight and affecting.

2022, 3 STARS, Film Festival, MOVIE REVIEW, StreamingDon ShanahanFebruary 13, 2022Minamata, Johnny DeppComment

MOVIE REVIEW: Rifkin's Festival

Even with a blindfold, an astute movie fan could play “Pin the Tail on the Proxy” with the films of Woody Allen from the past two decades. The likes of Timothee Chalamet, Justin Timberlake, Jesse Eisenberg, Colin Firth, Joaquin Phoenix, Owen Wilson and others have taken on the signature scripted blather of the male leading roles the writer-director used to play himself when he was younger than the 86 he is now. For his newest film, Rifkin’s Festival, cherished character actor Wallace Shawn assumes the short New Yorker vessel for this romantic comedy jaunt.

2 STARS, 2022, Independent Film, Film Festival, MOVIE REVIEWDon ShanahanJanuary 26, 2022Woody Allen, Wallace Shawn, Rifkin's FestivalComment

MOVIE REVIEW: Belfast

All of these lessons centered on Buddy’s experiences speak to the greater hopeful streak of generational bonds at the heart of the film. Backed by a soundtrack of reminiscent Van Morrison songs, the exit emotions of Belfast strike terrific chords for the power of home beyond brick and mortar. Branagh’s movie closes with a three-pronged tribute of “For the ones who stayed,” “For the ones who left,” and “For all the ones who were lost” as it transitions back to a current Northern Ireland where the healing has regenerated a viable city and region.

2021, 5 STARS, Chicago Film Festival, Film Festival, Independent Film, MOVIE REVIEWDon ShanahanNovember 23, 2021Belfast, Kenneth BranaghComment

MOVIE REVIEW: Spencer

Try as she may, though, I look at the woman playing Princess Diana, even with all the clear personal commitment, and all I see is Kristen Stewart. Thanks to her own natural twitches under her blonde helmet of hair, Stewart’s same agape expressions and same exasperating line deliveries land a lip bite or two away from showing us it’s more her than who’s she playing.