Current and archived movie reviews by Chicago-based film critic Josh Larsen.

Josh is the co-host of the radio show and podcast Filmspotting, author of Movies Are Prayers and Fear Not! A Christian Appreciation of Horror , as well as editor/producer for Think Christian , a website and podcast exploring faith and pop culture.

“In Fear Not!, film critic and Filmspotting co-host Josh Larsen walks with zombies, exorcises demons, sprints from Blair witches to The Babadook to Jordan Peele — and reframes every kind of screen horror as a spiritual inquiry few of us have ever contemplated. It is an excellent addition to anyone’s bookshelf.”

Creed is a positive act of cultural appropriation. A positive act of cultural appropriation, Creed takes the white, working-class Rocky legend and refashions it as a story of African-American identity and resilience. It’s a passing of the baton (with none less than Sylvester Stallone doing the handoff) and also a changing of the color guard.

The deeper American Beauty tries to get, the shallower it reveals itself to be.. The feature debut of Sam Mendes (Jarhead, Away We Go, Skyfall), who is working from an original script by Alan Ball, this is a particularly embittered entry in the suburban satire genre.Kevin Spacey stars as Lester Burnham, a middle-class mope who’s berated by his high-strung wife Carloyn (Annette Bening ...

2022年7月25日 · Peak Barbara Stanwyck? Peak Henry Fonda? Peak Preston Sturges? All of that is in play with The Lady Eve, their 1941 collaboration about a con woman (Stanwyck’s Jean) who targets and then falls for an ale heir/snake researcher (Fonda’s Charles “Hopsie” Pike).The movie is written (by Sturges) brilliantly and performed by its leads perfectly.

Suspense mechanics and psychological horror don’t meld quite as seamlessly here as they do in the best Alfred Hitchcock thrillers, but The Wrong Man has more than its share of masterful moments. And there is no doubt that it’s effective: after a doting husband and father of two is falsely accused of armed robbery and ramrodded through a callous legal system, even the …

Greek filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos has often been compared to Stanley Kubrick, so it’s easy to say that The Favourite is his Barry Lyndon.But it’s also accurate. Just as that 1975 film was both a commentary on human nature and a blatant parody of European costume dramas, The Favourite visits the early 18th-century court of England’s Queen Anne to spoof the genre (these have to …

Yi Yi has space for everyone. Shuffling through the photos that were taken by his 8-year-old son, a father notices that every single one focuses on the back of a person’s head.

The only thing I can imagine anyone offering in complaint about Roma is that the movie delivers an uncomplicated depiction of a secular saint. That’s true, to an extent, and yet it’s also what I love about this full-hearted, exquisitely crafted, deeply grateful film.