Underground Bee, February 20, 2017 — See my choices for the best films of 2016.
Best Movies of 2016
Category Archives: Film
Q&A with Steve James
Chicago magazine, March 2017 — Read my Q&A with filmmaker Steve James, part of an issue on the theme “Why We Love Chicago.”
Photo: Zbigniew Bzdak/Chicago Tribune
‘Breakfast at Ina’s’ at Chicago Film Festival
Chicago Magazine, October 2015 — Ina Pinkney can’t leave her house in Buena Park without being recognized. “There isn’t a time when somebody doesn’t say, ‘I miss your restaurant’?” she says. “Grocery store, Staples, the Apple Store—I mean, just anywhere I go.” As the owner of a bakery and three popular eateries over a span of 33 years, Pinkney became known simply as “Ina” to the countless customers she greeted each morning. Read the story.
Photo by Chris Strong
‘Rosenwald’ documentary
Chicago Magazine website, September 10, 2015 — In the era of Jim Crow segregation, photos of a Jewish millionaire from Chicago hung on the walls of schoolhouses across the South. The African-American children in these classrooms sometimes asked: Who is that man? “We were told it was the man who built the school,” educator Frank Brinkley recalls in the new documentary Rosenwald. Read more at the Chicago Magazine website.
Photo: Chicago Tribune Archives
Film review: ‘Hogtown’
Chicago magazine, February 2015 — Go See Hogtown, a Murder Mystery in 1919 Chicago. Our 30-second review of the immersive movie, which screens this week at the Gene Siskel Film Center. Read my review in Chicago magazine.
Photo: 9:23 Films
The 10 best Chicago documentaries
Chicago magazine, February 2015 — Life Itself, Steve James’s tribute to Roger Ebert, comes out on DVD February 17, a good excuse to catch up on other great Chicago documentaries. Read more in Chicago magazine.
Photo: Kartemquin Films
Best of 2014
Christian Marclay’s ‘The Clock’
The Huffington Post, September 2, 2014 — Dear Chicago museums and galleries: Would one of you please show “The Clock”? … Read my blog post at The Huffington Post or at Underground Bee.
How a documentary captured Roger Ebert’s last months
Chicago magazine, July 2014 — The movie critic became the star in Steve James’s adaptation of Ebert’s Life Itself memoir—a film that celebrated Ebert’s life, and unexpectedly showed its end. Read my story in Chicago magazine.
Photo by Anna Knott
11 Questions for Harold Ramis
Chicago magazine, February 24, 2014 — In 2008, before the release of Year One, Ramis talked about working with Bill Murray, filming in Chicago, and how religion shaped his “Buddish” philosophy. Read my interview in Chicago magazine.
Photo: Second City