Michael Phillips

4 weeks ago | hastingstribune.com | Michael Phillips

"Sinners" is all over the place yet somehow all of a piece. Its themes aren't new, but the variations feel fresh. Telling a fantastical tale of dark forces in plain sight, fed by the seductive power of music, "Sinners" also feels like apt timing for 2025 America, where the only thing we have to fear is no longer fear itself. It's also a movie made for movie theaters. Shooting in 65mm IMAX and Ultra Panavision 70, Coogler hands his steady collaborator Michael B.

1 month ago | chicagotribune.com | Michael Phillips

There’s enough nervous, life-and-death texting afoot in “Drop,” now in theaters, to make you swear off smartphones. Director Christopher Landon does everything under the sun to vary the visual depiction of these messages. As digitally dropped threats from an unknown predator grow increasingly sinister during the protagonist’s big date at a swank Chicago restaurant, the messages blast across the big screen in huge letters, or plaster an entire wall of the ladies’ restroom.

1 month ago | thederrick.com | Michael Phillips

CHICAGO — Temperamentally different as they are, the playwright, screenwriter and Northwestern University professor Brett Neveu, a peppy, zigzaggy thinker and talker, has a lot in common with the formidable actor, musician and first-time film director Michael Shannon. The commonalities begin with a propensity to juggle more projects, more or less simultaneously, than would seem humanly plausible. Their joint collaborations spring from the Chicago storefront theater mainstay A Red Orchid Theatre.

1 month ago | mahoningmatters.com | Michael Phillips

CHICAGO - Temperamentally different as they are, the playwright, screenwriter and Northwestern University professor Brett Neveu, a peppy, zigzaggy thinker and talker, has a lot in common with the formidable actor, musician and first-time film director Michael Shannon. The commonalities begin with a propensity to juggle more projects, more or less simultaneously, than would seem humanly plausible. Their joint collaborations spring from the Chicago storefront theater mainstay A Red Orchid Theatre.

1 month ago | chicagotribune.com | Michael Phillips

Under wraps or busting out all over, inconvenient yearning is everywhere in the films of Alain Guiraudie. And like most of his characters, the French writer-director likes to keep his options open. No one genre suits him.