Michael Phillips

How many fabrications can one fact-based, fiction-forward movie handle, before the movie falls forward and can’t get up? More than you’d think. A tremendous amount of fabrication, in fact. Historically...

An acquisition of Chicago-based Music Box Films, the austere and compelling drama “Vazante” lives in visual proximity to a recent Music Box success, the black-and-white Polish export “Ida,” which ended...

A time capsule from recent Chicago fine-dining history, Jack C. Newell’s documentary “42 Grams” is the latest nonfiction film addressing a specific, narrow story of the city’s restaurant culture, and...

“I frankly thought it would never come to pass,” Oak Park resident and Chicago-based documentary filmmaker Steve James told me Monday about his expansive 10-part nonfiction series “America to Me.”...

Hours before its world premiere screening Monday at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, Participant Media (“Spotlight”) and Chicago’s Kartemquin Films announced director Steve James’ 10-part nonfiction series,...

In our current slew of 2½-star movies (seriously, everything’s in the middle this week), “Den of Thieves” rates as the most curious tug-of-war, yanked back and forth between what works...