On Friday, March 31, Professor Carla Davis and her Race, Self, and Society class took the train into Chicago to the Gene Siskel Film Center to watch a documentary written by James Baldwin and entitled I Am Not Your Negro. The documentary was released in
Trainspotting is my favorite movie. The 1996 cult classic, which tells the tale of a group of Scottish heroin addicts trying to make the perfect score, has become something of a cultural touchstone. Thanks to its innovative direction by Danny Boyle, whip-smart dialogue penned by
The closest I can come to a description of Toni Erdmann’s tone is to ask that you imagine a nearly three hour absurdist episode of The Office, where the cringe worthy moments have been dialed up to eleven but the catharsis of a laugh out
In 1896, Alice Guy-Blache directed one of the world’s first ever narrative films, La Fée aux Choux (The Cabbage Fairy). For the next 10 years, it’s guessed by historians that she was probably the only female director in the world. Female representation behind the camera
A historical drama set in Japan, in which the spiritual struggles of a foreign protagonist played by Andrew Garfield provides the central concern of the plot. A passion project stuck in development hell for numerous years made by a controversial director who had previously filmed
This weekend, the Spanish Film Festival kicked off with a showing of Ixcanul, an award-winning film made by Jayro Bustamante. Ixcanul, which translates to volcano, follows the life of a seventeen year old girl named María as she is coming of age. At the beginning
From the director that brought us the Academy Award winning movie Whiplash, comes another Oscar bound movie, La La Land, the story of a struggling actress and jazz musician trying to make it big in Hollywood. La La Land presents us with a plot that
A brief apology and disclaimer before I begin this article: I was assigned to cover the #GETWOKE presentation and discussion of Ava Duvernay’s highly acclaimed documentary 13th on Friday. Instead I went to the Chicago protest against Trump’s inauguration, and in doing so missed the
It has been more than a month since I saw Rogue One, the first standalone film in the Star Wars franchise, and I still cannot decide if I was pleasantly surprised or a little disappointed. I suppose it was a little of both. On many
To date, no science fiction films have ever collected the top prize of Best Picture at the Academy Awards. With any luck, that might just change this year thanks to Arrival, a heady and stunning slice of hard sci-fi that strokes just about every cinematic