Austin Pendleton and Ann Whitney on “Calumet”
The mind boggles when attempting to summarize the careers of Austin Pendleton and Ann Whitney. They are two of the finest actors ever to grace the stage in Chicago, and […]
Tag Archives: The Wise Kids
Top 20 Films of 2017: Part I
Over the past 11 years I’ve spent on the movie beat in Chicago, there have never been as many contenders for my annual “best of” list as there are in […]
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 […]
Sadie Rogers on “RPG”
I’ve often thought of Sadie Rogers as Stephen Cone’s good luck charm. She would always pop up in his early films, including “The Wise Kids,” which is one of the wisest […]
Top 20 Films of 2015: Part I
It’s a weird time to be talking about movies. We are perched at a precarious point in the history of our species, with cultural divisions and ideological extremism threatening to […]
Stephen Cone, Cole Doman, Nina Ganet, Pat Healy and Elizabeth Laidlaw on “Henry Gamble’s Birthday Party”
“Henry Gamble’s Birthday Party,” the seventh feature from director Stephen Cone, is a masterpiece of nuance. It assembles a large cast of characters, observes their behavior as they interact during […]
Top Twenty Films of 2014: Part I
These films mean so very much to me. The best thing an end-of-the-year list can do is entice readers to seek out movies they might have otherwise overlooked, and that […]
Stephen Cone and Stephen Cefalu, Jr. on “This Afternoon”
Two people meet in a sex addiction support group. One is a young housewife. The other is a repressed young man who mistakenly thought he was attending an info session […]
Ten Underrated Performances in 2014
As the summer fades to black, critics are already bracing themselves for the aggressive onslaught of awards campaigns that will be vying for their attention in the coming months. We’ll […]
Wandering in the Wilderness: Christian Indies of 2014
At its highest level, cinema can serve as a religious experience. It can strengthen our spiritual connection to the world around us while bringing us closer to life’s mysteries, illuminating […]
