6 Best Family Releases on Max

Local filmmakers, horror & desire are all given the spotlight at the Chicago International Film Festival's shorts program. This piece was written during the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike. Without the labor of the actors currently on strike, the work being covered here wouldn't exist. The first program of shorts featured at this year's Chicago International Film Festival, titled “City & State,” highlighted local voices with astounding range. Dustin Nakao-Haider’s film Ethan Lim: Cambodian Futures is a poignant and complex film highlighting Chicago chef Ethan Lim and his hope for a different future that moves Cambodian food in revolutionary directions. Director Linh Tran’s Video Funeral grapples with similar issues of loss, (re)connection, and family brought about by diaspora. Like Linh Tran, Ian Kelly’s animated short Soft Lights and Silver Shadows is a tender testament to how art and media can help transcend time, distance, and mortality. Equally fascinated with different domestic dynamics, Tetsuya Mariko intently investigated what makes a family against crumbling infrastructure in his tense Before Anyone Else. Continue Reading →

There’s no easy way to live your dream. But if you and your quirky, goth friends can open up a business that conjures up fake macabre events for money, it becomes a very real possibility. HBO’s Los Espookys, one of the best shows of 2019, returns after a long COVID hiatus with a second season abundant with the show’s trademark deadpan humor, random visual gags, and, above all, its big heart. Continue Reading →

Being a pet owner can enrich your life and open your heart to certain movies you may otherwise ignore. If I had watched DC’s new animated children’s film, League of Super-Pets, before being a proud doggy dad, I would have rolled my eyes. I likely would’ve declared it a blatant cash grab that distracts kids with cute talking animals, loud explosions, mediocre animation, and plenty of needle drops that date the film quicker than Shrek.  Continue Reading →

To quote Mystery Science Theater 3000, “It’s the 80s! Do a lot of coke and vote for Ronald Reagan!” Continue Reading →

The small, fictional town of Jellystone is like other close-knit communities across America. It’s quaint, charming, and filled with jittery citizens on the edge of a nervous breakdown. HBO Max brings back the beloved characters of Hanna-Barbera (the first since their deaths in the 2000s) for a newer, more anxious generation with, an animated show that’s as hilarious as it is self-aware. Continue Reading →

Let’s get one thing out of the way: the original Space Jam, released in 1996, isn’t a good movie. It’s an extended Nike commercial with an iconic soundtrack that tricked the brains of '90s kids into keeping it warm with nostalgia. So, it’s only fair that 25 years later, a new generation of children are forced to experience a similar kind of cash grab. Continue Reading →