Roger Ebert Reviews

Last year, at the Il Cinema Ritrovato festival in Bologna, I saw a newly restored version of “Tony Arzenta” (called “No Way Out” in the U.S.), a 1973 Italian thriller from director Duccio Tessari, although even in that sophisticated audience few had heard of or cared about the director. We were there, several hundred of […]

XL Film Festival & Summit, founded by Creative Cypher’s Troy Pryor, has returned to Hyde Park for year two, once again hosted at Hyde Park’s Polsky Exchange Center. This year, XL Fest expanded with a series of shorts screened around the corner at the Harper Theater for the August 15-18 weekend. Since its reopening in 2021,

Based on the bestselling novel of the same name by Edward Kelsey Moore, “The Supremes at Earl’s All-You-Can-Eat” is a throwback movie to those comforting, star-studded dramedies that used to be box office bread and butter. Mostly set between 1968 and 1999, the film follows best friends Odette (Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor and Kyanna Simone), Clarice (Uzo

On a rainy weekend in Chicago, MUBI, the indie film streaming powerhouse that champions both emerging and established filmmakers, launched MUBI FEST, an international film festival. MUBI FEST is about building community around the love of film, transcending the limits of streaming to bring audiences face-to-face with the raw essence of cinema. Chicago, known for its

One of the shining jewels of Apple TV+’s lavish yet underseen output—”Ted Lasso” and “Severance” aside—”Pachinko” stood out in 2022 as one of the most layered, complex shows on the streamer. An epic, novelistic tapestry woven through generations of a Korean family’s struggle through Japanese occupation, cultural assimilation, and all manner of personal boondoggles. While

What happens when you take DIY auteurs and put them on a professional movie set? That was what happened when Toby Poser and John Adams traveled to Serbia to make “Hell Hole,” the latest film from half of the team known as the Adams Family.  For those who haven’t met them yet, the Adams are

The hardest part about attending a film festival strictly as a critic, is knowing you have little chance of seeing the wealth of retrospective titles programmed. It’s just so difficult to divide your time away from the newer titles, mostly because, quite frankly, those pay the bills. Often you just hope your local repertory movie

The Chinese WW2 spy thriller “Decoded” stands out for a number of reasons, mostly in spite of its conventional and hackneyed depiction of a troubled mathematician who deciphers encrypted messages for the mainland army. For starters, “Decoded” provides a dramatic change of pace for two marquee-worthy names: soft-spoken heart-throb Liu Haoran, who takes an unusual

Immigrant stories put a fresh frame around lives that native-born citizens don’t think too deeply about. Science fiction movies can do the same, but in a more exaggerated fashion, revealing the surreal eeriness of the “normal.”  You see this dynamic at work in “The Becomers,” writer-director Zach Clark’s movie about extraterrestrials coming to earth and assuming the bodies of

Not gonna lie, this had me in the first half. In its first hour, Tina Mabry’s “The Supremes at Earl’s All-You-Can-Eat” is a bubbly, melodramatic story about the multi-decade friendship shared by three Black women. Based on Edward Kelsey Moore’s same-titled novel, the comedy zigs—despite its name, it’s not actually about the musical group—and zags