Michael Glover Smith’s sophomore feature, “Mercury in Retrograde,” is a lyrical ode to the unspoken truths tucked between words. It follows three couples on a weekend vacation to a cabin […]
Most of us have a movie that we dream of making someday. It’s what we fantasize about in the midst of our daily routine, imagining what an audience’s response might […]
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 […]
There is no foolproof guidebook on how to make a living as an artist. For Michael Glover Smith, his passion for film has taken him many places before he arrived […]
Long before the Internet existed, filmmakers were fascinated by the human face. Some of the most transfixing moments in a film by Ingmar Bergman or Woody Allen occur when the […]
Some wonderful things happen in the moments prior to a film screening. Strangers in the audience strike up a conversation, connections are made and in some cases, lives are forever […]
In the fall of 2014, I was covering the Chicago International Film Festival when I stumbled upon Dietrich Brüggemann’s German drama “Stations of the Cross.” It was a shattering portrait […]
There comes a point when a film festival turns from a casual diversion and into an obsession. That happened to me last year during the Chicago International Film Festival, when […]
Perhaps only John Lasseter could’ve transformed an ordinary table lamp into the next Mickey Mouse. In his Oscar-nominated 1986 short, “Luxo Jr.”, Lasseter ingeniously brought a lamp to life by […]
