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The new Film Critics pants fit like a glove, so I am wearing them to review another week's worth of new film releases—and this week, there are a lot of new ones. We have a glut of movies this week as studios rush to get the leftover 2024 releases into theaters. Six new films are featured in this week's capsule (short) movie reviews for Friday, January 10, 2025. 1) HARD TRUTHS The singular, brilliant, and prodigiously talented British writer/director Mike Leigh  ("Secrets and

Last Wednesday, December 11th, the Chicago Film Critics Association  kicked off the film awards season with its annual Awards Dinner at Budweiser Brickhouse Tavern  on Gallagher Way , right next to Wrigley Field (yeah, where the Yum Yum Donuts  used to be). I have been a member of the CFCA, on and off, since the organization began in 1989. I've presented awards, made phone calls, tallied votes, set up chairs, and even driven celebrity presenters and winners to and from the a

Below is my list of the 20 Best Movies of 2024 in my order of preference, with the first being the Best Film of the Year 2024 was a solid year for movies—not great, but solid. You will notice that there are many films on my list that aren't on many other critics' lists, as there are many films that are NOT on my list that are included on my colleagues' lists. That's not on purpose; it's just how it worked out. A huge number of extraordinarily overrated movies were released th

The 60th annual Chicago International Film Festival , with its screenings, special events, tributes, and other events, has ended. It was quite a successful festival that was a pleasure to cover. Here are my final four exclusive reviews of CIFF movies; these will be commercially released or available for streaming in the coming weeks. 1) THE RULE OF JENNY PEN John Lithgow terrorizes Geoffrey Rush in the new horror film "The Rule of Jenny Pen." I didn't do enough reading on thi