Olmo Omerzu on “Winter Flies”
Olmo Omerzu has quickly emerged as one of my favorite filmmakers yet to be discovered by the majority of Americans. By age 33, the Slavic director has helmed three features […]
Tag Archives: John Cassavetes
Top 100 Favorite Films: 2017 Edition
A few years ago, I was asked by a friend to rank my Top Five Favorite Films. It was so daunting to limit my list to only five titles that […]
CIFF 2016 Preview: “La La Land,” “Moonlight” and More
Movie lovers in the Windy City have a massive treat in store for them when the Chicago International Film Festival kicks off this week. Boasting the strongest line-up in recent […]
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 […]
Love Is Honesty: The Catharsis of “Almost There”
There’s a brief close-up that occurs early on in Dan Rybicky and Aaron Wickenden’s documentary, “Almost There,” of hands covered in glitter, those infuriating particles so often caked onto supposedly […]
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 […]
Damon Maulucci and Keir Politz on “Detonator”
Nothing shatters the dreams of youth quite like the inescapable march of adulthood. As soon as there are mouths to feed apart from one’s own, the days of uncertainty and […]
Top Ten Female Performances in a Woody Allen Film
If there is anything that has remained consistent in the films of Woody Allen, it has been the juicy complexity of his female characters, from Tina Vitale and Linda Ash […]
Patrick Wang on “In the Family”
Watching Patrick Wang’s 169-minute masterwork, “In the Family,” with a packed house at this year’s Ebertfest was one of the great moviegoing experiences of my life. Rarely have I felt […]
Indie Outlook 