Interview with Nick Alonzo, director of SHITCAGO
In my late night procrastinating ways, I’m lucky to find a fellow film enthusiast to talk to. I find such an individual in local filmmaker, Nick Alonzo. I got a chance to chat with him online about “Shitcago”, his directorial debut which he wrote, produced, edited as well as directed in 2014. You meet people in the most random and coincidental ways. I happened to have been recently taking a film class at Harold Washington College here in Chicago, that his brother, Noah (who stars in his film) was also taking, which was being taught by another local filmmaker, Michael Glover Smith. Small world. Not long ago, Nick reached out to me, letting me know about his film and asking me if I’d review it. I had heard about it through Michael – it has a name that’s hard to forget. Read more…
SHITCAGO (2015) review
written by: Nick Alonzo
produced by: Nick Alonzo
directed by: Nick Alonzo
rated: unrated
runtime: 65 min.
U.S. release date: November 11, 2105 (Comfort Film), April 2, 2016 (Transistor), June 10-11, 2016 (Pilson Outpost)
Let’s start off by getting over the provocative title, shall we? We hear the four-letter-word (and worse) all the time. Every day, in fact. Like the title of a book, a movie title should grab us, take hold of our attention and get us either curious or send us on our way. Well, “Shitcago” is a film title that obviously caught my curiosity when I heard about it last year – how could it not? I live in Chicago and I certainly have at times felt like the Windy City has epitomized the sentiments of that title, but I found myself curious as to what local writer/director Nick Alonzo had going on in his directorial debut. Is there substance in his film beyond the provocative title and does it present something Chicagoans or those in other cities can connect with? Read more…
THE CONJURING 2 (2016) review
written by: Chad Hayes, Carey Hayes, James Wan & David Leslie Johnson
produced by: Peter Safran and Rob Cowan
directed by: James Wan
rated: R (for terror and horror violence)
runtime: 134 min.
U.S. release date: June 10, 2016
Can you call it a film series after just one sequel? With the release of James Wan’s supernatural horror movie, “The Conjuring 2”, they (the press, the media, the internet – what have you) are calling this movie and his atmospheric and legitimately scary “The Conjuring” from 2013, a film series. Maybe they’re counting the Wan-produced “Annabelle”, the spin-off from 2014 that revolved around the creepy doll from the first movie. Still, it seems presumptuous to call two – maybe three movies – a series. But we’re in a climate where a Hollywood movie has to be packaged and labeled a certain way. Studios (and the internet, apparently) look at what their “product” can potentially be. We can’t just slow down and consider a movie for its own merits anymore, I guess. Read more…
THE FIRST MONDAY IN MAY (2016) review
produced by: Fabiola Beracasa, Skot Bright, Dawn Ostroff & Sylvana Ward Durrett
directed by: Anrew Rossi
rated: PG-13 (for brief strong language)
runtime: 90 min.
U.S. release date: April 13, 2016 (Tribeca), June 3-10, 2016 (Gene Siskel Film Center) and June 15, 2016 (limited)
Director Andrew Rossi’s latest, “The First Monday in May”, focuses on the preparation and planning that goes into the Met Gala, the annual event that takes place on the titular date at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. I liken my interest in fashion to my interest in sports. I’d rather attend a game or actually play in a game than watch a game at home or in a bar. Not to mention, I have no idea or desire to know who’s playing for what team and how long their contract is for, etc. The same goes for fashion – I could care less who’s wearing whom on what occasion, but that doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate fashion designers. I’m not alone, considering the abundance of recent documentaries such as “Valentino,” “The September Issue,” and “Scatter My Ashes at Bergdorf’s.” I suppose viewers with a greater knowledge of the industry will get more out of the movie, but I appreciated the discussion of how and why art, fashion, commerce and celebrity collide. Read more…
Dan Halsted is in Chicago this weekend, bringing his traveling Grindhouse Film Festival to the beautiful Music Box Theatre. Halsted is the head film programmer at the Hollywood Theatre in Portland, OR, where he has founded the theater’s monthly “Grindhouse Film Festival” and “Kung Fu Theater” series’. An avid film collector with a passion for Hong Kong cinema, Halsted unearthed a massive collection of extremely rare 35mm kung fu films in 2009. For his unorthodox film preservation efforts, he was dubbed “The Indiana Jones of film archivists” by the Willamette Week newspaper. How did he get into these films and what are some of his favorites? Halsted recently answered some of my questions via email. You can find them and a full schedule of the festival below…. Read more…
DHEEPAN (2015) review
written by: Jacques Audiard, Thomas Bidegain and Noé Debré
produced by: Jacques Audiard and Pascal Caucheteux
directed by: Jacques Audiard
rated: R (for violence, language and brief sexuality/nudity)
runtime: 115 min.
U.S. release date: October 16, 2015 (Chicago International Film Festival), May 13, 2016 (limited) and June 3, 2016 (limited)
There is a certain honesty and straightforwardness present in Jacques Audiard’s “Dheepan” that sets it apart from recent films I’ve seen. That’s no surprise to those who’ve seen the writer/director’s last couple of films, the intense crime drama “A Prophet” and the compelling romantic drama “Rust and Bone“, both of which had a memorable realism about them, offering a look at French denizens on the fringe. “Dheepan” also closely follows characters in France who are just left of center, not of their own preference but moreso out of a hope for a better life. In this refugee tale, Audiard carefully unveils who these characters are and how they arrived where they’re at by slowly peeling back the layers that reveal harrowing backstories and vulnerable truths. Deeply moving and thought-provoking, this is a picture that looks at a destructive past, a precarious present and an uncertain future. Read more…
SUNSET SONG (2016) review
written by: Terence Davies
produced by: Sol Papadopolous, Roy Boulter and Nicolas Steil
directed by: Terence Davies
rated: R ( for sexuality, nudity and some violence)
runtime: 135 min.
U.S. release date: May 13, 2016 (limited)
Rarely will a film leave me curious enough about its source material to lead me to consider reading the book it’s based on, but that’s what happened with this movie. So enraptured was I by British auteur Terence Davies beautiful and tender “Sunset Song”, that I found myself curious about the beloved 1932 novel of the same name by Scottish writer Lewis Grassic Gibbon. I’d never heard of it, despite the fact that there have been numerous stage versions and TV adaptations prior to this film version that Davies had secured financing for back in 2000. On that note, I hadn’t even seen a film by Davies before viewing his vividly shot “Sunset Song”, which features evocative tragedy and sensitive longing in a kind of old school genuine manner that just isn’t found in theaters anymore. Read more…
X-MEN: APOCALYPSE (2016) review
written by: Simon Kinberg (screenplay) Bryan Singer, Simon Kinberg, Michael Dougherty & Dan Harris (story)
produced by: Simon Kinberg, Bryan Singer, Hutch Parker & Lauren Shuler-Donner
directed by: Bryan Singer
rated: PG-13 (for sequences of violence, action and destruction, brief strong language and some suggestive images)
runtime: 144 min.
U.S. release date: May 27, 2016
About three weeks before its release, 20th Century Fox decided to screen “X-Men: Apocalypse” the latest in a franchise which started sixteen years ago with Bryan Singer’s “X-Men”. This new film is Singer’s fourth movie focusing on Marvel Comics mutants (if you don’t know what those are, don’t worry – there’s a voice intro during the opening credits, much like Patrick Stewart did in the very first movie) created by Stan Lee back in 1963, after his blockbuster hit “X-Men: Days of Future Past” in 2014 and it is indeed uncanny and quite odd for a Hollywood studio to screen a movie for critics that early before its release date and lift the embargo, allowing critics to post their reviews super early. I couldn’t figure it out. Read more…
ALICE THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS (2016) review
written by: Linda Woolverton
produced by: Tim Burton, Joe Roth, Suzanne Todd, Jennifer Todd
directed by: James Bobin
rated: PG (for fantasy action/peril and some language)
runtime: 113 min.
U.S. release date: May 27, 2016
The best moments in Walt Disney Pictures “Alice Through the Looking Glass” can be counted on two fingers – one is the beautifully tailored costumes by Oscar-winner Colleen Atwood and the other can be found during the end credits, when a text appears on-screen dedicating the film to the late great Alan Rickman. That’s it though for this forgettable and needless sequel to Tim Burton’s annoying CGI leaden “Alice in Wonderland“, the 2010 surprise blockbuster hit (that raked in over a billion globally) that kicked off Disney’s live-action adaptation of their classic animated features craze. Read more…
THE CHICAGO FILM CRITICS ASSOCIATION announces Winner of Audience Award of THE 4th ANNUAL CHICAGO CRITICS FILM FESTIVAL
Taika Waititi-directed comedy, “Hunt for the Wilderpeople,” is the top choice of attendees of the just-completed film festival.
