Michael Wilmington

In some ways, you could argue that Mikio Naruse was the great realist among the four Golden Age Japanese masters, the other three being Yasujiro Ozu, Kenji Mizoguchi and Akira...

(U.S.; Bob Hercules and Cheri Pugh, 2005) There are some examples of forgiveness and humanity so all-embracing they surpass much of our understanding. In "Forgiving Dr. Mengele," we watch one...

(U.S.; Barbara Kopple, 1976) "Harlan County, U.S.A."--Barbara Kopple's fiery documentary about the 1973 Brookside coal miners' strike against Eastover Mining Co.--came out in 1976, and there have been few better...

(U.S.; Debra Granik, 2004) It begins like a piece of mundane kitchen-sink realism, shot cheaply with a hand-held video camera. But, by the end, director/co-writer Debra Granik's "Down to the...

"Glory Road," a stand-up-and-cheer basketball tale taken from real life, is a drama that, almost inevitably, falls short of its subject. But what a subject! This Jerry Bruckheimer-produced movie re-creates...

The Chicago Film Critics Association named director-writer Paul Haggis' L.A. ensemble drama "Crash" as its best film of 2005. A multistranded examination of the corrosive effects of racism on a...

In one of the closest votes in the 40-year history of the National Society of Film Critics, Bennett Miller's "Capote," a bio-drama about the story behind author Truman Capote's true-crime...

Mikio Naruse, subject of a new series at the Gene Siskel Film Center, was a great but lesser-known Japanese filmmaker from that country's cinematic golden age, the 1930s through the...

The following is from a previous review by Tribune movie critic Michael Wilmington. Orson Welles' great 1958 byzantine thriller "Touch of Evil" still seems close to the pinnacle of film...

In "Casanova," director Lasse Hallstrom turns his genial eye on one of history's most famous seducers, Giovanni Giacomo Casanova, the legendary woman-chasing diplomat, soldier, spy and author whose very name...