[Get the exclusive video version of these weekly reviews each Friday by becoming a paid subscriber!] My Film Critic pants are quite fetching; they are on, pressed, and ironed. I'm ready to review five new movies in this week's capsule (short) movie reviews for Friday, March 13th, 2026. 1) REMINDERS OF HIM Every once in a while, you sit down in a movie theater, and you’re stunned, not in a good way, not in the “wow, that blew me away” sense, but in that slack-jawed,...

With the release of the new remake of Youngblood out in theaters, I thought, you know what, this is as good an excuse as any to sit down and really think about Rob Lowe . Because here’s a guy who has been part of my moviegoing life since 1983. Since Francis Ford Coppola put him in The Outsiders and suddenly this impossibly handsome kid with the jawline and the hair and that movie-star glow was everywhere. And I mean everywhere. Robert Hepler Lowe, born March 17, 1964, in C

So with Scream 7 in theaters, I thought, okay… this is the moment. Not to talk about whatever corporate committee is keeping Ghostface on life support like a horror franchise CPR dummy, but to talk about the guy. The guy who mattered. The guy who actually had a brain, a point of view, a sense of humor, and a real filmmaker’s instinct for how to scare you and also how to mess with you while he’s scaring you. Wes Craven . The real deal. The master. And yes, before anybody ge

[Get the exclusive video version of these weekly reviews each Friday by becoming a paid subscriber!] My Film Critic pants are quite fetching; they are on, pressed, and ironed. I'm ready to review six new movies in this week's capsule (short) movie reviews for Friday, March 6th, 2026. 1) THE BRIDE! I really wanted The Bride! to work. I like Maggie Gyllenhaal . I admired her first film as a director, The Lost Daughter . The cast here is phenomenal. And the idea itself, revisi

It’s that time again. My favorite time of the month. The second Wednesday, when I get to take over the big house at the Classic Cinemas Lake Theater in Oak Park , pick a movie I love, put it on the biggest screen possible, introduce it, and watch it the way it deserves to be seen. And now, on top of all that, these screenings have become book-signing nights too, which still kind of blows my mind. So yes, you can come see the movie, you can come talk movies with me, and you c

It’s that time of year again. The time when I start pacing around the house muttering about snubs. The time when I rewatch acceptance speeches from 1974. The time when I yell at nominations, cheer surprises, and prepare myself emotionally for the inevitable moment when the Academy gets something spectacularly wrong. Oscar Sunday is coming. And this year, we’re doing it live. In Chicago. The right way. Before the 98th Annual Academy Awards air on March 15th, I’ll be on stage