New Orleans

CHICAGO – Lila Neugebauer has made the transition complete. The well-known stage director morphed into a behind the camera director, beginning with TV and culminating in her recent Apple TV+ film debut “Causeway,” featuring Jennifer Lawrence and Brian Tyree Henry in a film of hope and redemption.

CHICAGO – Lila Neugebauer has made her transition complete. The well-known stage director morphed into a behind-the-camera director, beginning with TV and culminating in her recent Apple TV+ film debut “Causeway,” featuring Jennifer Lawrence and Brian Tyree Henry in a film of hope and redemption.

CHICAGO – One of the most prominent Americans musicians in the 20th Century, if not one of the greatest, was Louis Armstrong. The memorable black trumpeter, vocalist and outsized personality found success in the Jim Crow era, and how he did it is spotlighted in Sacha Jenkin’s documentary “Louis Armstrong’s Black & Blues,” now streaming on Apple TV+.

CHICAGO – Exceptional films that reflect honest relationships are rare, but the latest film “Don’t Make Me Go” – streaming on Prime Video on July 15th – accomplishes the father/daughter dynamic with authentic situations and emotions. John Cho and Mia Isaac portray that relationship, in a film directed by Hannah Marks.

CHICAGO – Patrick McDonald of HollywoodChicago.com audio film review on the new documentary about the art world, “The Lost Leonardo,” in select theaters, including Chicago’s Music Box Theatre, on August 27th, 2021.

CHICAGO – When you are not black in America, you cannot imagine the societal indignities (to say the least) that are endured on a daily basis, both macro and micro. A new documentary on a particular indignity, “The Neutral Ground,” by first time director CJ Hunt, premieres on PBS’s “POV” on July 5th, 2021. Click for details.

CHICAGO – America is at a boiling point. The pandemic, the election, the divisiveness and general atmosphere has reformulated us in many profound ways. Director Derrick Borte explores those themes in the new release “Unhinged,” which also has the distinction of being the first film to be distributed to all open nationwide theaters on Friday, August 21st.

CHICAGO – Had you told a person 50 years ago that someday we would be able to personally record television and broadcast it to the whole world, they might have laughed and said maybe on the futuristic cartoon “The Jetsons.” But the future is now, and it lives in “Presenting Princess Shaw.”

CHICAGO – There are show business stories, and then there are show business miracles. In the tech age we’re living through, the needle-in-a-haystack hope that a song, video or rant will go “viral” online is part of the experience. Singer Samantha Montgomery was one such singer, and her story is in “Presenting Princess Shaw.”

CHICAGO – With their town ravaged by Hurricane Katrina and their neighborhood under government-ordered quarantine, one New Orleans couple decided to combine their artistic strengths into one cohesive project. Their goal was to portray their beloved city in a way that was strikingly different from the representation popularized by HBO’s “Treme.”