American Fiction adds rich depth to its main character and becomes a more abundant movie. A movie of all industry schemes might veer to the cockamamie. Likewise, a movie of all family drama would get encumbered by the shuffle of heaviness. With American Fiction, those emotions balance each other, and audiences get the best of both worlds with arguably the year’s best satire packaged within a tissue-pulling, affecting drama.
Read MoreOur main actors, the film’s only two and ambitious pairing at that, step to the occasion to address this microcosm with a sliding range of bravery and humor. While playing pretty aligned to their types, Duplass and Brown both generate and confront their fair share of WTF moments playing off each other during the compounding crisis. Naturally, viewers will be waiting for cracks of composure to arrive.
Read MoreThrough impressive performances from Support the Girls star Regina Hall and This is Us Emmy winner Sterling K. Brown, Honk for Jesus. Save Your Soul has caricatures so believable that they transcend the winking-at-the-camera trope with vivid potency. There’s another level of “commitment to the bit.” We, the audience are not normally supposed to believe what we see from the characters but, with these two, we buy it.
Read MoreThe 53rd Chicago International FIlm Festival brings over 1,000 films of all genres and sizes to our fair city. There are premieres aplenty, between those making their world, North American, or Chicago debuts. Opening with a red carpet premiere of Marshall, peaking with the centerpiece of Greta Gerwig’s Lady Bird, and closing with the Oscar contender The Shape of Water from Guillermo del Toro, the 53rd CIFF fills the AMC River East 21 for two weeks. For the fourth year in a row, Every Movie Has a Lesson has been granted press credentials to cover the CIFF and here are my capsule reviews.
Read MoreCan you learn about a popular band by listening to their B-sides instead of their greatest hits? Can you get a sense of the brilliance within a writer from their early drafts and not their published masterpieces? Can you spot the traits of a future Hall of Fame sports legend solely by their work in college or the minor leagues before the professional ranks? The answer to each is quite likely the same: sometimes, but not always. Tally one in the sometimes column for Reginald Hudlin’s Marshall and its biographical podium choice.
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