[Get the exclusive video  version of these weekly reviews each Friday by becoming a paid subscriber on Patreon !] My Film Critic pants are quite fetching; they are on, pressed, and ironed. I'm ready to review four new movies in this week's capsule (short) movie reviews for Friday, December 12th, 2025. 1) ELLA MCCAY It has been fifteen years since James L. Brooks  made a film, and that is far too long to wait for one of the greatest writers and directors this country has ever

Imaginary friends... everybody knows them. Everybody’s heard of them. Everybody knows somebody who had them. And honestly, imaginary friends go back way further than people think. Psychologists were studying imaginary companions back in the 1890s, and even before that, adults throughout history had their own versions: guardian angels, household gods, muses whispering in their ears. These weren’t “imaginary friends” in the modern sense, but they filled the same role, to provid

A mystery film, at its core, revolves around the solution of a problem or a crime. Someone gets murdered, something terrible happens, and the whole movie is about figuring out who did it and why. You’ve got a detective (sometimes a brilliant professional, sometimes a scrappy private investigator, sometimes just a nosy amateur sleuth) and they go through the classic motions: inspecting clues, interrogating suspects, decoding motives, and finally unveiling the killer in that gr

[Get the exclusive video  version of these weekly reviews each Friday by becoming a paid subscriber on Patreon !] My Film Critic pants are quite fetching; they are on, pressed, and ironed. I'm ready to review four new movies in this week's capsule (short) movie reviews for Friday, December 5th, 2025. 1) FIVE NIGHTS AT FREDDY'S 2 I'm going to start this by saying something that will immediately get me yelled at by teenagers, Twitch  streamers, TikTok  lore theorists, and anyon

On Wednesday, December 10th at 7:00 p.m., I’m beyond thrilled to present a very  special edition of Classic Cinemas 'Nick's Pix'  at the beautiful Lake Theater in Oak Park: a big-screen 4K screening of one of the greatest Batman movies ever made: Tim Burton’ s twisted, hilarious, and gloriously Gothic masterpiece Batman Returns . And yeah, I said one of  the greatest… but let’s be real: for 30 years, this was  my favorite Batman movie of all time. It held the top spot for th

Hey folks, it’s Nick Digilio here, and I’ve got a little question for you: Why not pick up a copy of my new book 40 Years, 40 Films  today? Seriously, it’s out, it’s real, you can hold it in your hands, and with the holidays upon us, it makes a fabulous, film-nerd-approved gift. You’ve got people in your life. They like movies. They like stories. Buy them the book. Boom: holiday hero. But listen, while you can absolutely order it online, I’d really love it if you came out to