Chuck Koplinski

Sometimes, an artist is so close to his or her subject that objectivity becomes a casualty.  Such is the case with Lorene Scafaria’s The Meddler.  While the film is meant to be a tribute to her father and the impact he had on her mother and herself, the result is simply a series of lightly comic […]

There’s no question as to what director Lorene Scafaria’s intentions were with her new movie The Meddler. “I wanted to make a movie about my father and the two women who loved him most,” she said during a recent visit to Chicago.  Needless to say, she accomplished what she set out to do as the […]

John Carney has a gift. Not simply in the way he uses music in his films and understands its power but how he’s able to create characters that on the surface could be dismissed as clichés but wind up having genuine heart and soul.  He’s also not afraid to wear his heart on his sleeve, […]

Director Jeremy Saulnier’s 2013 thriller Blue Ruin, was a film that effectively employed a long-fuse strategy to build a sense of dread. A simple revenge tale, it was the sort of movie that was perpetually overcast, both physically and thematically, one you knew would end badly, yet so compelling in execution that you had to […]

It would be hard to defend Ariel Vromen’s Criminal so I’m not going to try.  Right off the bat I will admit the film’s premise is something akin to what you’d find in a sci-fi comic book and the movie’s logic is so riddled with holes it makes Swiss Cheese look like a diary product […]

 What with 12 years having passed since the release of Barbershop 2: Back in Business, one would think that the “sell by” date for yet another sequel to Ice Cube’s surprise 2002 hit would have passed.  However, as even the most casual filmgoer knows, there is no statute of limitations where sequels are concerned.  Thankfully […]