Meet the Critic: Robert Daniels
In the Chicago Critics Film Festival’s new “Meet the Critic” series, we’re introducing our readers to some of the many talented members of our Chicago-area print, online and broadcast critics group, which celebrates the art of film and film criticism.
In today’s feature, meet Robert Daniels, an Associate Editor at RogerEbert.com. He’s expressed a passion for films since, as a child, his father first introduced him to John Ford’s movies. He’s also written for New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Reverse Shot, Screen Daily, and the Criterion Collection. When he’s not covering film festivals locally (Sundance) or internationally (Cannes, Toronto, Berlinale, and Locarno), he resides in Chicago and is a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association.
Read his answers to our inaugural Meet the Critic Q&A below.
How has being based in Chicago informed your criticism?
I’m more than based in Chicago. I was born and raised here, and it’s the only place I’ve ever lived. Coming of age on the westside of Chicago, near Garfield Park, during the 1990s and 2000s, I grew up watching Siskel and Ebert (and later Ebert and Roeper). They were a constant presence that wasn’t located in some distant part of tv land. They were here in this city. So I’m intimately aware of that legacy, of always seeing people who care deeply about movies talk deeply about those movies. But it’s more than their memory, it’s also the very bones of this city. Chicago has a particular rhythm, a poetic pace and unbroken aesthetic that seeps into you the longer you live here. The rumbling clickety-clack of the L, the moss green grass of the spring, the purple hues of a summer sky kissing the sun to bed, and the nakedly structured architecture that appears to match the straightforwardness of the people who inhabit it. I think the spirit of all those images appear in my writing, in my cinematic interests and the stories I gravitate toward.
What’s a title from our line-up that you’re excited for people to see? (or a title that the festival has programmed in the past that you’ve loved)
Lurker, from writer/director Alex Russell, absolutely blew me away during Sundance. It was such a rough festival in terms of quality, but this movie came like a bolt of lightning through your ear. Théodore Pellerin as the lovesick fan in a parasocial relationship with an R&B artist played by an equally brilliant Archie Madekwe, is so unforgettably creepy in the way Anthony Perkins often was. By the time their relationship takes the grim turn you expect it to take, Russell manages to still think up a few surprises that had me clapping like an inebriated seal.
What’s a piece that you’ve written that you’re most proud of and why?
Like most writers this answer often changes. A couple days ago someone asked a similar question and I responded with my review of Barry Jenkins’ incredible limited series The Underground Railroad for Polygon. But I think it might actually be my debut for RogerEbert.com; I wrote about the importance of Black homeownership in The Last Black Man in San Francisco, and it’s still the only piece where I wouldn’t change a single word or flip any sentence. I also think I wrote to the absolute boundaries of my writing talent, at the time, and I really hit hard on a few emotional beats that I needed to process without devolving into navel-gazing. It's the closest I've come to putting all of myself in my writing.
Follow Robert at Letterboxd, X, Bluesky, and Instagram.
