Michael Phillips

Nearly 11 years ago, apparently writing for the Federal Bureau of Stating the Obvious, I did a phoner with Jeffrey Wright. He had a movie coming out that week, the...

Like Steven Spielberg's 1985 film version, the new screen edition of "The Color Purple" feels like a musical, the difference being the new one is a musical. It's based on...

"Anyone But You" isn't much ado about anything but "eh." Based, loosely, on some old play by Shakespeare, director and co-writer Will Gluck's riff was filmed in Australia and stars...

The new Broadway-bound "Boop! The Musical" imagines what might happen if the early 1930s animation film-short sensation, born at Fleischer Studios and distributed by Paramount, found herself in modern-day New...

Some years it's easy. This year, the accomplishments of Rogers Park native and current Hyde Park resident Minhal Baig, as she's rarely described in interviews originating outside Chicago, make Baig...

The new "Wonka" works considerably better than its reasons for existence would suggest. It exists because, why not? It's one more brand-familiar origin story, the easiest thing in the movie...

So many good and even great films this year! It's nice to use an unironic exclamation point for the movie year that was, amid a year soaked in political dread...

The lights are bright in Helsinki, at least the selectively focused sunlight and electric glare illuminating the lonely, yearning characters in the films of Aki Kaurismäki. The Finnish writer-director's 20th...

They work on different planets, and they do their superstar thing in very different ways, but the recent Taylor Swift concert film was, you know, fine. Whereas "Renaissance: A Film...