My Courses

The first few songs in Hulu’s “Up Here” are like a DIY musical in the worst way—they’re earnest and melody-less, the sort of numbers you’d expect from musical theater students at your local community college. “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend,” this is not. But as the series continues, it finds its grove, musically and with its two central…

Editor’s note: Earlier this month, as part of their University of Illinois College of Media Roger Ebert Fellowship, the 2022-24 Ebert Fellows undergraduates Lee Beckett, Andrew Stover, and Tania Trejo got an eyeful of nonfiction wonders at the True/False Film Festival in Columbia, MO. Here are their reports.  Lee Beckett True/False was the first film…

It’s clichéd to say this about someone after they’re gone, but a show or movie changed when Lance Reddick showed up. He brought a quiet intensity and refined gravity to everything he did. So when his face appeared on screen, everything was somehow instantly elevated. Think about when he appears late in Adam Wingard’s “The…