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In hindsight, perhaps I shouldn’t have assigned a star rating to Short Term 12, a new indie drama I reviewed for this week’s issue—my response to the film was so personal that I spend half of the review outlining my bias. Apart from the sense of vindication I get from the movie’s loving depiction of direct-care providers, I appreciate Short Term 12 for its realism (indeed, it’s one of the most accurate portraits of social work I’ve seen in a fiction film), strong performances, and unsentimental humor. It opens today at River East 21, the Landmark Century, and Evanston’s CineArts, so you have the chance to draw your own conclusions. This week’s issue also features a short review of Riddick, which Drew Hunt considers within the oeuvre of writer-director David Twohy, and a spotlight on Faces of Women, a breakthrough 1985 feature from the Ivory Coast that’s screening as part of the Return of Blacklight Cinema series. Incidentally, I profile the programmer of that series, Floyd Webb, in this week’s big Fall Arts Preview.
