Reviews of “Bugonia” and “Eternity,” along with a Chicago Film Festival wrap-up, are all in the latest Movies with Meaning post on the web site of The Good Media Network, by clicking here ...

Tune in for the latest Cinema Scribe segment on Bring Me 2 Life Radio, beginning Tuesday November 25, available by clicking here. You can also catch it later on demand on Spreaker, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, iHeartRadio, Castbox, Podchaser, Audible, Deezer, Podcast Addict and Jiosaavn ...

“Eternity” (2025). Cast: Miles Teller, Elizabeth Olsen, Callum Turner, Da’Vine Joy Randolph, John Early, Olga Merediz, Barry Primus, Betty Buckley, Tailya Evans, Panta Mosleh, Ryan Biel, David Z. Cohen. Director: David Freyne. Screenplay: Patrick Cunnane and David Freyne. Web site. Trailer. Life can sometimes present us with hard choices. However, strange as it might sound, death might actually hand us some even bigger ones. That might throw us for a huge, unexpected loop, especially if we go into the afterlife envisioning it as a stress-free experience, one assumed to be characterized by unending happiness and bliss. Such is the dilemma posed to a recently deceased woman who now faces a decision that’s not at all what she anticipated, a choice far greater and more difficult than anything she experienced while alive. These are the curiously confusing conditions examined in the entertaining and enlightening new romantic comedy-drama-fantasy, “Eternity.” Many of us might perceive death as an intimidating prospect, but, at the same time, many of us also look upon it as a time of eternal joy and contentment, a chance to recover from life’s difficulties, a time to truly rest in peace. That generally seems to be what Joan Cutler (Betty ...

Tune in for the latest Cinema Scribe segment on Bring Me 2 Life Radio, beginning Tuesday November 11, available by clicking here. You can also catch it later on demand on Spreaker, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, iHeartRadio, Castbox, Podchaser, Audible, Deezer, Podcast Addict and Jiosaavn ...

“Bugonia” (2025). Cast: Emma Stone, Jesse Plemons, Aidan Delbis, Alicia Silverstone, Stavros Halkias. Director: Yorgos Lanthimos. Screenplay: Will Tracy and Jang Jiin-hwan. Source Material: Jang Jiin-hwan, writer-director, “Save the Green Planet!” (“Jigureul jikyeoral!”) (South Korea) (2003). Web site. Trailer. In an age where distinguishing what seems genuine from something that’s clandestinely veiled, it may be difficult to know what to believe. As a result, we might abandon any attempt to identify inherent (and potentially significant) differences. Or, by contrast, we may become so obsessed with reconciling the truth behind such discrepancies that we descend into a sea of paranoia and conspiracy theories, potentially seeing shadows at every turn and placing ourselves on the sidelines of reality with virtually no credibility to our names. In actuality, the “truth” probably resides somewhere in between, but where and how do we draw the lines of accurate and meaningful distinction? That’s a key question posed in the new darkly satirical comedy-drama-sci fi fantasy, “Bugonia.” Michelle Fuller (Emma Stone) has built a career that has enabled her to become one of the country’s (if not the world’s) most successful CEOs. As the head of the pharmaceutical giant Auxolith, she has positioned her organization on the ...

Photo by Trevor Laster With this year’s 61st edition of the Chicago International Film Festival in the books, I’ve completed my screenings for 2025. In my first year as a member of Chicago Indie Critics and the press corps covering the event, my experience was significantly different from past festivals though certainly eminently enjoyable. I viewed 20 films in all, which is considerably more than in recent years, and my thoughts on those pictures appear below. They are ranked in descending order from what I liked best to what I liked least. Films with equal festival-based rating scores are listed in alphabetical order. It should also be noted that my festival-based scores may not identically match my scores on the movie ratings web sites to which I regularly post (Letterboxd, Imdb.com, TMDB.com), with some web site-based ratings being higher or lower than what I accorded the films in my festival ratings. In addition to the titles, ratings and countries of origin for the various films I watched, I have also included information (where available) on the pictures’ web sites, trailers, film clips, relevant festival competition categories and awards, festival premiere status, and related hashtags. Given the volume of films shown ...