…in conclusion, the Chicago Critics Film Festival brings people together for a real theater experience and showcases movies that are just better than Marvel movie slop and I’m just so happy to have had so much fun seeing movies with cool new friends yo shout out my boi Sean who was there he’s wild as heck haha anyway see you all next year don’t forget to like and subscribe!
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No. It’s more than that. To me, anyway.
I’ve been going to the Chicago Critics Film Festival at the Music Box Theatre for the last three years. The first year, I was only able to go via my credentials with Starburst Magazine, for whom I am still a lead writer. I wrote seven reviews for them on genre films like Last Stop in Yuma County and Oddity. That year, I even penned my favorite review thus far for Jane Schoenbrun’s I Saw The TV Glow, the movie I still consider the greatest of the 2020s two years later. I wore my now signature green suit jacket like a boy trying on his father’s clothes. I handed out business cards and did my best to seem and feel like I belonged. I still have more than half of those I initially printed in 2024.
I amazed myself last year by applying for press accreditation on my own two feet rather than Starburst’s, and discovering that CCFF was happy to oblige. I wrote for Starburst about only four films, focusing more on my own reviews and including more coverage of the festival itself, including a press line interview with Dylan O’Brien and James Sweeney for their comedy Twinless. This was the year I solidified contact with critics like Zachary Lee, Brian Tallerico, Erik Childress, Marya Gates, Farrouk Kannout, Nikko Caruso, Adrian El Critico, and Adam Patla. I felt like so much was ahead of me, and I could carve out a space in criticism.
Then I lost my car, and with it lost my drive. Without it, I could barely afford to take my girlfriend to the movie theater for the live-action Lilo and Stitch, let alone Marty Supreme or even The Naked Gun. I wrote very little after that festival as I struggled to manage my time between multiple part-time jobs and my personal life. I have continued my very silly podcast, but otherwise have found little to spark my cinematic inspiration. As my third year of the festival approached, I worried I’d lose my place among the critics just as I’d lost myself, and yet they accepted me.
I obtained another press badge for CCFF, and, for the third year in a row, I felt something beautiful and fulfilling in that popcorn/sweat scented red theater and lovely lounge. Making new friends and reconnecting with old ones, speaking about films, seeing so much great cinema in the theater, and listening to Dennis Scott’s organ greet me as I walked in brought me to life in a way I don’t get to feel often. Getting to be among people who really care, passionately, about the things that bounce within my skull gives me such hope.
The Chicago Critics Film Festival has been a surreality, a liminal space in which I get to be the person that I want to be. Wrapping up in the Music Box Lounge this past week, talking to Zachary Lee about existential questions, asking Brian Tallerico why Power Ballad was in the festival, and embarrassing myself by bringing up TikTok triggers with Daniel Westheimer made me feel like…well…me again. That green suit jacket has felt less like a costume and more like an old cape that I don once more.
I still feel like a runt in the shadows of great critics, even the ones my age. But if I can keep fighting this system that keeps me so financially run down, keep writing about all the art I see (even the trashy stuff), and keep discovering great spaces like the Chicago Critics Film Festival, then maybe, just maybe, I can come back next year feeling like I have earned the amazing opportunity I’ve been given.
This article was posted on May 13th 2026 to the AnthonyReviews Substack. Subscribe to read there first!
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