NOTE: Nationally known film critic Connie Corcoran Wilson is providing coverage of this year’s Chicago International Film Festival for QuadCities.com. The closing film of this year’s Chicago International Film Festival, “Arrival” is a great alien sci-fi film in the tradition of such classics as “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” and “Contact,” and fans of those films should enjoy it when it hits theaters nationwide on Nov. 11. Amy Adams plays a linguist named Louise Banks who is drafted by the military to figure out how to communicate with aliens who land in 12 locations around... Read More

NOTE: Nationally known film critic Connie Corcoran Wilson is providing coverage of this year’s Chicago International Film Festival for QuadCities.com. “Olympic Pride, American Prejudice”: The Untold Story of the 1936 Olympics is a gripping film. This film from Director Deborah Riley Draper examined the 28 athletes who traveled to Berlin in 1936 for the Olympic games held when Hitler was in power. Everyone remembers the name Jesse Owens from those games. But there were 17 other African American or Jewish athletes who participated as part of the U.S. team of 400 who remain largely forgotten,... Read More

NOTE: Nationally known film critic Connie Corcoran Wilson is providing coverage of this year’s Chicago International Film Festival for QuadCities.com. When you tell me that Michael Fassbender is starring opposite veteran UK actor Brendan Gleeson in a film, I’m there. I’m expecting good things. These are two great actors and the plot, set across 3 generations of the Cutler family of criminals, sounds exciting. THE GOOD The Cutler family live as outlaws in their own anarchic corner of Britain’s richest countryside. (At one point the patriarch of the clan suggests they move on to Kent, where... Read More

NOTE: Nationally known film critic Connie Corcoran Wilson is providing coverage of this year’s Chicago International Film Festival for QuadCities.com. The Last Laugh by Director Ferne Pearlstein provoked crowds at the Chicago International Film Festival by mining tragedy for comedy with one of the most infamous tragedies of the 20th century. Can the Holocaust be funny? Is “Springtime for Hitler” in bad taste, and, if it is, should we not have laughed at it in Mel Brooks’ “The Producers”? It’s a great concept. At times, the documentary is funny and witty. It discusses decades of humor... Read More

“Bright Lights,” a documentary from Fisher Stevens (Oscar-winning “The Cove”) and his wife Alexis Bloom played the Chicago Film Festival and was absolutely one of my favorite films of the entire festival. It is the story of screen icons Debbie Reynolds (“Singin’ in the Rain”) and Carrie Fisher (“Star Wars”) showing two generations of show business life in a fantastically entertaining warts-and-all portrait as they battle aging, celebrity and each other. Fisher Stevens told us on the Red Carpet, “Carrie called me to film her and her mother and she thought it might be kind of... Read More

NOTE: Nationally known film critic Connie Corcoran Wilson is providing coverage of this year’s Chicago International Film Festival for QuadCities.com. British director Steve McQueen came to Chicago to receive an award on the 20th anniversary of the Chicago International Film Festival’s Black Perspectives program. Jacqueline Najuma Stewart, professor of Cinema and Media Studies at the University of Chicago, interviewed him onstage. Prior to Ms. Stewart’s questioning, McQueen spoke to us on the Red Carpet and answering a question about the climactic hanging scene in “12 Years A Slave,”... Read More

NOTE: Nationally known film critic Connie Corcoran Wilson is providing coverage of this year’s Chicago International Film Festival for QuadCities.com. 93 Days Genre: Medical Thriller 124 minutes Director: Steve Guka Actors:  Danny Glover, Abimbola Akintola, Zara Udofia Actor Danny Glover (“Lethal Weapon”) came to Chicago to support the Nigerian film “93 Days,” a tough, taut medical thriller, and received the Chicago International Film Festival’s Visionary Award from Cinema Chicago founder Michael Kutza. The film, directed by Nigerian director Steve Gukas, is based in truth and deals... Read More

NOTE: Nationally known film critic Connie Corcoran Wilson is providing coverage of this year’s Chicago International Film Festival for QuadCities.com. Abacus:  Small Enough to Jail Genre:  Documentary 88 minutes Director:  Steve James (“Hoop Dreams”) As the Cinema Chicago program said, this is a saga of the Chinese immigrant Sung family who own and run the Abacus Federal Savings Bank in New York’s Chinatown. I remember reading the Matt Taibbi investigative piece on this case when it came out, which is in his book “The Divide.” (Taibbi’s last investigative work gave birth to the... Read More

NOTE: Nationally known film critic Connie Corcoran Wilson is providing coverage of this year’s Chicago International Film Festival for QuadCities.com. The Oath Genre: Thriller Director:  Baltasar Kormakur 110 minutes Actors:  Baltasar Kormakur (Finner), Hera Hilmer (Anna), and Gisli Orn Gardarsson (Ottar) This film from Iceland (with English subtitles) was my favorite drama from the 52nd Chicago International Film Festival. Directed by Baltasar Kormakur, who also directed the Hollywood films “Everest”, ‘Contraband” and “2 Guns,” this action-packed story of a successful heart surgeon ... Read More

Continuing my coverage of the Chicago International Film Festival this week, I had the opportunity to interview a legend of the silver screen over the past five decades, Peter Bogdanovich, auteur of such films as Paper Moon, Last Picture Show and What’s Up Doc? “One Day Since Yesterday:” A Documentary About the Work of Peter Bogdanovich, debuts this week at the Chicago International Film Festival. The documentary “One Day Since Yesterday” was directed by Miami native Bill Teck and produced by Victor Brazo and focuses on Peter Bogdanovich’s film “They All Laughed.” This was the film... Read More