2017 Chicago Irish Film Festival: Shorts Program
As it plays out its thirteen minutes, “First Kiss” is hilarious and charming in its tidy simplicity. Written by Fitzpatrick himself and directed by Patrick O’Shea, the short film generates the right amplitude of sparks cooled by the right temperament of sweetness.
Read MoreThis year’s Academy Award nominees for Best Animated Short are an eclectic bunch. One of them, “Borrowed Time,” I have previously reviewed in full on this website. Here are my collected capsule reviews of the slate of five, complete with my signature life lessons. Look for the theaters this month bundling these nominees together for public viewing and ticket opportunities.
Read MoreCall me a softy or a sunny optimist, but I will take "The Space Between Us" over the next "Percy Jackson and the Hunger Maze Runner City of Bones Games with the 5th Wave of Divergent Mortal Instruments." The YA movie marketplace is overfilled with militarized kid-on-kid peril in the science fiction department. “The Space Between Us” is cheesy, corny, and pretends to be better than it really is, but, gosh darnit, the film has a charming and positive core that is hard to ignore.
Read MoreRenowned Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodovar seizes our attention and lights the fires of intrigue with human simplicity in “Julieta,” his 20th feature film and Spain’s entry this year for the Best Foreign Language Film Academy Award. Concocting a brew of passion coupled with remorse across personal history young and old, Almodovar unspools the tangled threads of a guilt-ridden woman’s heart. Adapted from three Alice Munro short stories, “Julieta” is a strong return to the female-focused storyscapes that have made him a legend.
Read MoreDirected by Christoforos “Christopher” Papakaliatis, “Worlds Apart” presents three narratives and three different flavors of passion. Each surrounds a Greek native in a burgeoning romantic relationship with an immigrant from another land. Thematically, all that transpires in the film riffs on recurring imagery and commonality with the mythical story of Eros, the Greek god of love. Layering a topical worldview tinged with allegory every step of the way, “Worlds Apart” is a mature and beguiling romantic drama.
Read MoreEvery influential man or woman had a formative period of their life where their impressionable knowledge coalesced into cemented principles that would guide them going forward. The outgoing 44th President of the United States, Barack Obama, is no different. The new Netflix and VOD entry “Barry,” from director Vikram Gandhi, muses on the internal and external catalysts that shaped the then-20-year-old piece of unformed clay into the future leader of the free world.
Read MoreEven with my access to more-than-most with festival coverage and press credentials, I can’t see everything. What I can do is prop up some hidden gems that I was lucky enough to see and review. Here are 16 under-seen winners from 2016. The qualifier for the list was title earning less than $1 million at the box office. They are ranked from highest-scoring review to least.
Read MoreI’ll have you know that this is the latest this website has ever posted a “10 Best” list in its six-plus year history. I want to say that 2016 exhausted me, but it didn’t. “Every Movie Has a Lesson” published a personal-best 114 film reviews in 2016. Even after a record year, there is part of me that sits here and knows there was room for more. The to-do list of recommended films and overdue titles is never empty.
Read MoreThe 28 film critics and voting members, including yours truly, of the Chicago Independent Film Critics Circle completed their final ballots in 25 categories for their first annual CIFCC Awards. The CIFCC hosted an invitation-only awards reception at Transistor Chicago on January 8, 2017.
Read MoreCapping off their inaugural year, the members of newly-formed Chicago Independent Film Critics Circle, of which I am a director and co-founder, have announced their nominees for their first annual CIFCC Awards. Their voting membership of 28 members strong completed ballots over the holidays with the goal of three final nominees in 25 categories. They will commence a final round of voting ending on January 1, 2017 and host an invitation-only awards banquet at Transistor Chicago on January 8, 2017.
Read MoreIn a tonal shift from the trumpeted and showy norm of Oscar bait, “Lion” is yet another performance-driven dramatic film of 2016 entering this holiday season favoring prudence over theatrics. The feature film debut of award-winning commercial director Garth Davis, is a love letter instead of a power ballad that delivers genuine emotional heft all on its own, without the need to manufacture it for the sake of a movie.
Read MoreMesmerizing describes the film as a whole and its incomparable lead performance from Academy Award winner Natalie Portman playing First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy in the immediate hours and days following her husband's 1963 assassination. Far from a biopic and more of a psychological examination, Portman and Larrain sear the screen with emotion and imagery that is as captivating as it is difficult. It is astonishing that it takes a foreign director to create the most empowering portrait of American history put to film in years.
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