ChicagoFilm

Tuner, an offbeat character study about a troubled young New York piano tuner, is like a keyboard whose ivories are touched too lightly but beg for a more resonant plunk. From director Daniel Rohner, whose 2022 doc Navalny won an Oscar, it’s capably made and well-acted, but told in a low-key register that can sometimes feel uncommitted. It ha...

The most welcome surprise of the 2026 movie year comes in Is God Is, a richly atmospheric tale of vengeance so dripping with attitude and atmosphere it practically oozes off the screen like humidity before a storm. Written and directed by first timer Aleshea Harris adapting her Obie award-winning 2018 Off-Broadway drama, the audacity of this picture—a souther...

In Blue Heron, Canadian-Hungarian filmmaker Sophy Romvari excavates a powerful, semi-autobiographical family history through memory and form. It’s a movie about reconciling childhood and loss through fragments to understand a trauma that, from a child’s view, felt incomprehensible. Only decades later can the full weight of a tragedy come into focus in Ro...