Six years after his critically derided third feature “Chappie,” Neill Blomkamp has finally returned to the scene with “Demonic,” a sci-fi/horror film that he made in the middle of the pandemic, limiting his resources in a way that could have sparked his creative potential (as I would argue happened with Ben Wheatley and his best…

“The past can haunt a man” is the first superficially melancholic line that gets muttered in “Reminiscence,” a moody, snail-paced mix of neo-noir and sci-fi, overflowing with similarly indistinct wisdoms about time and nostalgia. It does aptly define the tone for “Westworld” co-creator Lisa Joy’s narrative feature debut as a writer/director, however. Set sometime in…

There was a period in which the prodigiously talented actor Sean Penn’s personal demeanor and behavior was his own worst enemy. And he knew this. I’ve cited before the words from his acceptance speech when he won the Best Actor Oscar for his work in “Milk”: “I know how hard I make it to appreciate…

Maggie Q and Michael Keaton have such snappy, sexy chemistry with each other in “The Protégé,” it’ll make you wish their connection were in the service of a better movie. Instead, they bounce off each other—often quite literally—in this capable but ultimately forgettable late-summer action-thriller. The film from veteran director Martin Campbell, whose journeyman pedigree…

RogerEbert.com publisher Chaz Ebert will be hosting a screening of Julie Dash‘s 1991 masterpiece, “Daughters of the Dust” at 7pm this Saturday, August 21st, which will kick-off the Gene Siskel Film Center’s Chicago Favorites Film Series. The series consists of eight films curated by a cross-section of notable Chicagoans including Steve James, Dr Allison Arwady and Ayana…

Sonny Chiba became a name you knew in 1975. He was previously Shinichi Chiba, a movie star who was discovered in a 1959 talent contest by Japan’s Toei film studio. Chiba was also Sadaho Maeda, an athlete and would-be gymnast, born in 1939. Most people remember him as Sonny Chiba, the star of the blood-soaked…