With a light touch and some dark moments, Edd Benda and Stephen Helstad’s offbeat comedy thriller Chili Finger sets two empty-nesters off on a rather wacky and very Midwestern adventure.

Olivia Wilde’s third feature astutely dissects what it’s like to both love and hate parts of your long-term partner.

One of David Cronenberg’s best films and a peak of ‘80s horror, The Fly holds up 40 years later thanks to its gruesome makeup effects, a perfect match-up of Geena and Jeff Goldblum, and a haunting allegory for losing a loved one to aging and disease.

After taking a hiatus from feature films, ‘90s New Queer Cinema provocateur Gregg Araki is back to pervert audiences with an all-star cast in tow.

The narrative feature debut of documentarian and writer-director Daniel Roher follows a reserved piano tuner with a hearing disorder who turns his talents to safecracking.

Coming to you from the Music Box Theatre in Chicago, here are our reviews and other features from the 2026 Chicago Critics Film Festival.

Director Christine Luby on the movies and movie experiences that have made her life sweeter.

Author Erin Carlson on the movies and movie experiences that have made her life sweeter.

Bestselling author, marketer, and email expert Ann Handley picks five of the most essential movie emails and why they matter.

Relationship expert and author Amy Chan on the movies that complement her new book.

Director David Lowery pits Anne Hathaway and Michaela Coel against each other as two former collaborators exorcising the (perhaps literal) ghost of their past estrangement.

12+1 questions with The Lonely Island comedian, writer, and director Jorma Taccone about his new film Over Your Dead Body, balancing horror and comedy, filming in Finland, and more!

Antoine Fuqua’s paint-by-numbers biopic wants to be startin’ somethin’ about the King of Pop—too bad it has nothing to say about its characters’ human nature.

John Sayles’ brilliant 1988 baseball film Eight Men Out absolutely aches with bad decisions that seem practical at the time.

Tonally imbalanced at times and not afraid to cross lines, Jorma Taccone’s Over Your Dead Body is a funny, gruesome rollercoaster with a superb cast and truly killer final section.

Petra Volpe’s new film is not only a compelling work of stripped-down cinema, but also important viewing for non-medical civilians like myself only experience healthcare as a patient.

This one’s for the hardcore horror fans, who have been given the gift of seeing mummified flesh ripped off on an IMAX screen. Enjoy it while you can.

In Steven Soderbergh’s latest, the director deconstructs many of the heist-genre elements he popularized in the Ocean’s Eleven franchise, peeling back the layers to reach a surprisingly touching, emotional core.

Bob Odenkirk’s latest action flick, which is most definitely not a Nobody sequel, is a John Wick-meets-Fargo mashup that works even if it doesn’t go out of its way to do anything special. 

I’m not a sports person, but to me Barry Levinson’s The Natural perfectly encapsulates what baseball is about—and makes me believe that what happens on the diamond is magic.