MOVIE REVIEW: 1945

The end of a large war is always a turning point that trickles down from the front lines and the soldiers at arms to the home front with those that maintained their respective communities when their fighters were away. Wars benefit some community members while tragically redefining others. 1945 is a small and intense microcosm of that dichotomy demonstrated over the course of one fateful day in the aftermath of World War II. Shot in bracing black-and-white, this film exudes strong themes of guilt across several points of view.

MOVIE REVIEW: Cold War

In Cold War, Jon and Maggie’s misery is our delight and played for side-splitting laughs. The level of vomit in the film is as voluminous as the dark humor. This comedy is the brainchild of writer J. Wilder Konschak making his feature-length screenplay and co-directing debut with Stirling MacLaughlin. His created scenarios and pitfalls are bracingly honest for both their entertaining embarrassment and sinister believability.

2018, 4 STARS, ADVANCE MOVIE REVIEW, Independent Film, MOVIE REVIEW, Film Festival, Video on DemandDon ShanahanApril 3, 2018Comment

MOVIE REVIEW: Ready Player One

Ready Player One is the liveliest Spielberg film in a decade or more. You could spend hours pausing every frame of this film to discover and relish in the multitude of buried treasures, making the film’s rewatch and replay value tremendous. The nostalgia factor of this film should be a high-score badge of achievement and not a knock of pitiful pandering. Dream fulfillment is a worthy and ambitious target for audience inspiration. That tangible sensation equals the desired blissful excitement this film delivers.

Film Festival, 2018, MOVIE REVIEW, 4 STARSDon ShanahanMarch 27, 2018 Comments

MOVIE REVIEW: Mohawk

Their maddening pursuit for prisoners takes the opponents into a rustic valley of Mohawk turf with a river bordering one side and the full war on the other. One by one, grizzly deaths dwindle numbers on both sides until the prophetic zinger line of “we’re the only monsters left out here” brings forth another plane of peril. The aggressive hunt turns ethereal and truly primal towards a crackling climax of mist and fire.

2018, 4 STARS, Independent Film, MOVIE REVIEW, Film Festival, Video on DemandDon ShanahanMarch 25, 2018Comment

MOVIE REVIEW: Flower

Though measured as a small independent film, Flower is an undoubted showcase platform for the soaring talent of Zooey Deutch. Clad in her plain tank-tops and empowering a character with all kinds of obscene confidence, not even the worst behaviors on display can take away the magnetism of her frank and jarring performance. For most of the film, she shines repulsiveness with unmatched charisma.

MOVIE REVIEW: Submission

Stanley Tucci is a cinematic treasure of sarcasm. What that man can shell out in a throwaway line, a raised eyebrow, or a pause of bated breath is on another level to most of his peers and contemporaries. When Stanley cranks that mockery up with profanity, it only gets sharper. It would take quite the rug pull to disrupt that man’s mojo. Tucci meets that tumultuous turmoil in Submission

2018, 3 STARS, Film Festival, Independent Film, MOVIE REVIEW, Video on DemandDon ShanahanMarch 19, 2018ArcLight ChicagoComment

MOVIE REVIEW: Colors of the Wind

The melodramatic preposterousness of Colors of the Wind is two-fold. The first layer is good old-fashioned stage magic, everything from card tricks to disappearing acts. The second comes from the notion of doppelgangers, the fanciful term for doubles, ghostly counterparts, and alter egos that have been a storytelling trope before in film. Both elements create spirited and soapy intrigue in the film when combined with the romantic destiny of star-crossed lovers.

MOVIE REVIEW: Beauty Mark

Many internal and external situations can cause feelings of desperation. Straits get so dire that horrible choices become the only choices. For Angie in Beauty Mark, played by emerging TV actress Auden Thornton, the burdensome weights (and they are sure plural) around her neck are overbearing. When those burdens and stresses pile on at the same time, the desperation of her situation becomes overwhelming in this excellent and hardscrabble family drama from writer-director Harris Doran.

SHORT FILM REVIEW: The Photographer

Underneath the on-screen actions in director Mark Sobol’s dynamic short film The Photographer, the motif of voyeurism is dissected from a presented theory. A male narrator orates an internal monologue opening on the notion “a subject is so much more beautiful when it doesn’t know its being watched.” Assigning beauty to a moment that is not the observer’s to share in begs a few life lessons.

2018, 2017, 5 STARS, Film Festival, Independent Film, MOVIE REVIEW, SHORT FILMSDon ShanahanMarch 8, 2018The PhotographerComment

EDITORIAL: 19 films to watch for the 2019 Oscars

In what has become an annual day-after-hangover and post-Oscars tradition, I have this editorial that closes the book on one awards season and declares the next one open for competition. Each year, I pull out the crystal ball and look into the murky future to prognosticate which films coming in 2018 will we be applauding for at this time next year for the 91st Academy Awards. Here are 19 films to watch for the 2019 Oscars.

CAPSULE REVIEWS: 13th Beloit International Film Festival

Now entering its thirteenth year, the Beloit International Film Festival, hosted across the “Cheddar Curtain” border in Wisconsin, is no slouch of a gathering for film lovers. For ten days, the organizers, backers, and lucky audience members have the pleasure of discovering over 100 national and international films of all genres. The visiting filmmakers are welcomed by full venues and eager audiences looking to share the love of independent filmmaking. I honored to have absentee press access to the BIFF and it’s my pleasure to share reviews of its highlighted films.

2018, CAPSULE REVIEW, Film Festival, Independent Film, SPECIALDon ShanahanMarch 3, 2018Comment

MOVIE REVIEW: Rogers Park

Constantly bucking stereotypes made about the perceived flaws of the Second City, the progressive and affluent enclave of Rogers Park statistically contains the highest level of racial diversity in Chicago. It is as great a place as any in the urban metropolis to tell a blended story of the hardened hearts within hard-working people. A blanketing sunrise over the freshwater surf of that aforementioned Great Lakes welcomes viewers to Rogers Park.

EVERY MOVIE HAS A LESSON

by Don Shanahan

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