Seen and Felt: The Magic of Roger Deakins
You know great cinematography is working its magic on you when it delivers a visceral jolt to the senses. You’re no longer a passive observer but an active participant within […]
Category Archives: Indie Spotlight
First 20 Interviews for RogerEbert.com
One of the most incredible and humbling parts of my job at The Ebert Company has been the opportunity to write for RogerEbert.com. It’s an honor simply to have work […]
Indie Outlook: Third Anniversary
Nothing excites me more than discovering an artist whose work is unlike anything I’ve seen before. The third year of Indie Outlook, my labor of love devoted to covering cinema’s […]
Joanna Arnow on “Bad at Dancing,” “i hate myself :)”
There’s a scene in Joanna Arnow’s galvanizing 2013 documentary, “i hate myself :)”, where her ex-boyfriend, fearless poet-provocateur James Kepple, defends his use of offensive words, arguing that they exert […]
Here’s to You, Mrs. Henderson: Albert Brooks’s “Mother”
At nearly two decades old, Albert Brooks’s wonderful film, “Mother,” offers many nostalgic staples of ‘90s Americana: cutting-edge “picture phones,” gasoline priced at $1.21 per gallon and smart comedy for […]
Top Ten Spielberg Summer Movies
Steven Spielberg is not only the undisputed king of summer movies, he invented them. Films were no longer mere entertainments, they were grand cultural events. The highest compliment one can […]
All Things Shining in Terrence Malick’s “The Tree of Life”
Four years ago this month, Terrence Malick’s “The Tree of Life” premiered at the Cannes Film Festival. I published the following piece at HollywoodChicago.com on June 3, 2011. “Where is […]
Jim Hemphill on “The Trouble with the Truth”
He was the American journalist who vanishes after the Chilean coup d’état in Costa-Gavras’ 1982 classic, “Missing.” She was Marty McFly’s mother in Robert Zemeckis’ ageless 1985 crowd-pleaser, “Back to […]
My Favorite Performance in the History of Cinema
It all starts with that helicopter shot. The Twentieth Century Fox logo twinkles in silence before fading out, as a billowing wind starts to sound. Suddenly, the audience finds itself […]
Persona Non Grata: The Persona of 3 Women on Mulholland Drive
I wrote the following essay back in college and later presented it at the University of Notre Dame’s Midwest Undergraduate Film Conference. It was written for Dan Rybicky’s class on […]
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