If rats can’t get fair treatment in the court of public opinion, they can at least get justice from the next best judicial institutions: Hollywood movie studios, where people treat each other right.
Author Archives: Joey Shapiro
Posted inFilm
Review: The Nun II
The Catholic horror wheel isn’t reinvented, but the jump scares are so nonstop and occasionally clever that I was left wondering: is this the most fun I’ve had at the movies all summer?
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Review: The Equalizer 3
There are dad movies, and then there’s the Equalizer, a John Wick-adjacent franchise composed of 50 percent semi-retired assassin Denzel Washington inflicting bone-crunching violence on the criminals of the world, and 50 percent average Joe Denzel Washington performing community service with a smile. Neither of the first two movies in the series are all that […]
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Godzilla is coming to the Music Box Garden
The Music Box Theatre and Chicago film critic and programmer Katie Rife are showing several different sides of Godzilla with four screenings of his later, lesser-seen classics, playing at sundown in the Music Box Garden every night from July 24-27.
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Review: The Boogeyman
It fits neatly into this lineage of trauma monster movies like Smile, Men, and Hatching that want to be sure—really sure—you understand what the big scary monster represents. Thankfully, despite the lack of subtlety inherent to that approach, it’s probably the best of the bunch so far.
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Review: Fast X
Fast X continues the franchise’s mission to scale bigger and campier heights with each movie, and there are moments that will have you full-volume hooting and hollering in your seat, but it’s undone by the gravest sin of this cinematic universe: it breaks up the family.
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Review: Kandahar
If I’m going to watch this man retcon the war on terror to look heroic, it should at the very least be over-the-top enough to be entertaining.
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Review: Evil Dead Rise
The first sequel in a full decade, this should feel like getting an Evil Dead reunion, but instead it’s more akin to a so-so tribute band.
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Review: Magic Mike’s Last Dance
Splitting the difference between the tightly structured drama of the original and the looser, feel-good energy of the sequel, Magic Mike’s Last Dance continues to embody the series’ central thesis that a lap dance has the power to change lives.
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Review: M3GAN
This won’t pop up on any top ten lists by the end of the year, but for a genre film released in a month typically reserved as a dumping ground for studios, this is all you could hope for.
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A love letter to ‘snakies’
Why did it have to be snakes? I don’t have especially strong feelings about them, and yet in the last few years I’ve accidentally become an expert on the deranged world of snakesploitation horror cinema.