Kenneth Turan – Page 6

‘Music of Strangers’ review: The story behind Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Ensemble

June 10, 2018 at 12:38 p.m.

With a documentary called "The Music of Strangers: Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble," there's no doubting that wonderful sounds will be in store. But that's not all that's...

Nick Cave has been singing about mortality for decades, and he's really good at it. Whether the narratives are biblical or pulpy, the victims innocents or death row convicts, the circumstances comprehensible or cruelly random, Cave's songs are on intimate terms with the infinite ways a life can be extinguished. And yet, "Skeleton Tree", his latest album with his estimable band, the Bad Seeds, is a relatively concise song cycle shadowed by death that feels different than all the rest. <a href="http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/music/kot/sc-music-nick-cave-skeleton-tree-ent-0916-20160916-column.html" target="_blank">Read the full review.</a>

‘Hockney’ review: Documentary probes what makes the artist tick

June 11, 2018 at 10:51 p.m.

How did David Hockney, born and raised in working-class Yorkshire, become perhaps the modern painter most associated with Los Angeles? The lively, affectionate documentary "Hockney" doesn't necessarily answer that question,...

‘April and the Extraordinary World’ review: A girl, her cat and a thief try to save universe

June 10, 2018 at 3:54 p.m.

Though its output is at times overshadowed by work from other countries, French animation is a force to be reckoned with, and never more so than in the strangely wonderful,...

‘Viva’ review: Cuban man dreams of performing and making peace with his father

June 10, 2018 at 4:09 p.m.

Emotional and effective, "Viva" is a torch song melodrama convincingly set in Havana even though it's written and directed by a pair of Irishmen. Nothing happens you won't see coming,...

‘Colliding Dreams’ review: Documentary explores Israel-Palestinian issue

June 8, 2018 at 11:21 p.m.

"Colliding Dreams" is a film of ideas and a film of history, a thorough and engrossing look at the root causes of the tortured relationship between Israel and the Palestinians....

‘My Golden Days’ review: The pangs of first love are felt again

June 8, 2018 at 11:28 p.m.

Arnaud Desplechin's Cannes sensation "My Golden Days" contains an intoxicatingly realistic portrayal of the intense emotionality, the intertwined joy and pain, of first love. It's not the whole film, but...

‘Embrace of the Serpent’ review: Worlds collide in Colombia’s Amazonian jungle

December 17, 2018 at 6:11 p.m.

LOS ANGELES — Beautiful, strange, disturbing, "Embrace of the Serpent" is a film with a lot on its mind. Set in Colombia's Amazonian jungle and a foreign language Oscar finalist,...

‘Ingrid Bergman — In Her Own Words’ review: A surprisingly intimate film

December 17, 2018 at 6:11 p.m.

When director Stig Björkman decided to call his documentary "Ingrid Bergman — In Her Own Words," he was not being poetic but literal. For Bergman — nominated for seven Oscars,...

‘A War’ review: Tobias Lindholm’s portrait of chaotic combat in Afghanistan

December 17, 2018 at 6:15 p.m.

"A War" is a film done exactly right about a situation gone horribly wrong. A powerful foreign language Oscar finalist, it proves yet again that agonizing moral dilemmas make for...

Directors Francois Truffaut, left, and Alfred Hitchcock in a 1962 photograph. Kent Jones' documentary, "Hitchcock/Truffaut," delves into the directors' meeting.

‘Hitchcock/Truffaut’ review: A love letter to film

June 16, 2018 at 8:23 a.m.

Opinions about film are thick on the ground these days, but intelligent discussion is, as always, at a premium. Which is why it's such a joy to welcome "Hitchcock/Truffaut" to...

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