:: FRIDAY, OCTOBER 3 - THURSDAY, OCTOBER 9 ::

📽️ CRUCIAL VIEWING

Hollis Frampton's ZORNS LEMMA (US/Experimental)

Doc Films (at the University of Chicago) – Sunday, 7pm

Zorn's lemma as defined by set theory: Every partially ordered set contains one maximal totally ordered subset. With the birth of cinema came the emergence of a new form of communication and, although the likes of Eisenstein, Dziga Vertov, and Pudovkin explored the medium's manipulative abilities, each acting as early cinematic linguists, Hollis Frampton was certainly the most successful, if not the first, at breaking this new language down to study its syntax and phonemes. Of Frampton's work, no better example of this analysis exists than ZORNS LEMMA, in which he aims to catalog cinema's inherent traits as well as dissect filmic language into its constituent parts. The film sets in place early a one-second pulse, used as a unit of measurement for his exercises, as he ties together language, grammar, and conceptual visual representations. An early American text teaching grammar and the alphabet is read over black leader and is followed by the establishment of the film's pulse as it cycles through the English alphabet with images of word that begin with each letter. As this middle sequence continues, Frampton makes visual the definition of writing: the graphic use of abstract characters to represent phonetic elements of speech. Words representing letters of the alphabet are eventually replaced with an image (ocean waves, a fire, etc.), sublimating any previous representation into a purely visual symbolic language—from now on, Frampton is telling us, we communicate with images; we write with light. The capstone of our conversion to a visual alphabet is a choral reading of medieval philosopher Robert Grosseteste's "On Light," which discusses the inherently problematic role that the nature of light plays in one's understanding of objective reality. Considering all three sections of the film, ZORNS LEMMA posits cinema as a new system of thought, complete with its own lexicon, capable of shaping and defining reality by way of its manipulation of light. Screening as part of the Infinite Cinema: The Films of Hollis Frampton series. (1970, 60 min, 16mm) [Doug McLaren]

João César Monteiro’s VEREDAS (Portugal)

Doc Films (at the University of Chicago) – Wednesday, 7pm

Per the program notes from an upcoming João César Monteiro retrospective at MoMA, “VEREDAS reconfigures [Portugal]’s cultural identity and aesthetic traditions, replacing politically fabricated imagery dictated by decades of fascism with a vibrant, inventive mise-en-scène that paved the way for a renowned docufiction tradition in contemporary Portuguese cinema.” The film is a mélange of narrative and poetic episodes about life in a remote mountainous area of Portugal; the stories mainly come from regional folklore. (Surely, this was an influence on Miguel Gomes’ ARABIAN NIGHTS trilogy of 2015.) Monteiro works with elemental imagery and advances a strict realist aesthetic reminiscent of later Rossellini or Straub and Huillet, rendering natural landscapes palpable and human behavior opaque. He shot the film on location over roughly two years (starting about one year after the fall of fascism), and the film has a hard-won physical quality—it looks like it emerged from the earth. Regardless of whether VEREDAS, which means trails, depicts laborers at work or honest-to-goodness miracles, Monteiro maintains the same unvarnished approach. This presentation gives the fantastical elements the kind of blunt power one associates with folklore, with its unrefined but direct moral vision; on the other hand, the natural world comes to seem magical, since Monteiro clearly regards it with such reverence. For most of its run time, VEREDAS trades in rustic imagery and makes no reference to the modern world, invoking a Portuguese past that exists in legend as a means of interrogating fundamental aspects of the national character. But late in the film, Monteiro presents the home of a modern-day fascist, which comes complete with a soft-spoken but bloodthirsty priest who seems to have stepped out of a Buñuel film; the effect is at once jarring and strangely familiar. Consistent throughout VEREDAS are rapturously beautiful shots of the Portuguese countryside that grant honor to the national landscape. The film abounds with an offbeat but undeniable sense of patriotism. Screening as part of the Sounds of Shaking Earth: Landscapes of Portuguese Cinema series. (1978, 116 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]

Michael Curtiz's MILDRED PIERCE (US)

Doc Films (at the University of Chicago) – Monday, 7pm

In her journey from page to screen, Mildred Pierce underwent quite a transformation, going from long-suffering working woman who aimed to get stinko following her bratty daughter’s abandonment to a more genteel version played with painful elegance by Joan Crawford, whose Mildred is more hard-working than hard-living and for whom getting stinko simply means drinking whiskey straight. But the most bizarre iteration was likely William Faulkner’s, one of several writers (including Catherine Turney and Ranald MacDougall, who eventually received the screenwriting credit) brought on by producer Jerry Wald to attempt the feat. “Faulkner’s 101-page draft screenplay turned melodrama into Hollywood gothic,” writes Alan Rode in his book, Michael Curtiz: A Life in Film. “Mildred sleepwalks with circles under her eyes that are found to be mascara, Veda swallows poison on her mother’s wedding night… [h]is sole contribution was the addition of Lottie, the… maid in the film who was portrayed by Butterfly McQueen.” More than just an interesting factoid, it highlights the nuances by which this woman’s picture-cum-noir classic could have been entirely different had someone else written it, begging an altogether separate question: what if someone else had directed it? Crawford’s Mildred is a housewife turned businesswoman who’s driven by a desire to win the affection of her oldest daughter, Veda (Ann Blyth). There are men, of course: first, her first husband, Bert, whom Mildred divorces after their marriage disintegrates due to her fixation and his philandering; along the way, Wally, a skeevy suitor who nevertheless helps get her restaurant franchise off the ground; and finally, Monte, a slick playboy who agrees to marry Mildred so she can sufficiently appease Veda’s desire to live the high life. Crawford is undoubtedly the glue holding all this together—previously considered “box office poison” at MGM, her performance in this Warner Brothers film is said to have revived her career, earning her the Academy Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role even though she was reportedly third choice to play Mildred after Bette Davis and Barbara Stanwyck. If Crawford is the glue in this picture—a mosaic of uneven elements, from the undue intensity of Blyth’s young villainess to the almost-too-brilliant comical asides from McQueen to the queer allure of Zachary Scott’s Monte—Curtiz would then be its assembler, the artiste taking pre-existing elements, elements perhaps better at home in another work but whose fate has sent them elsewhere, here, and piecing them together into something that appears cohesive. One might say that’s the job of any director, but Curtiz’s gift lies in his ability to make all those uneven pieces fit via a “workmanlike” finesse, to borrow a phrase from Don Druker’s Chicago Reader review. The result is at once artful and solid, appreciable for its goodness and admirable for the sense one gets that no one could have hoped for better. Screening as part of the Joan Crawford: Actress as Auteur series. (1945, 111 min, 35mm) [Kat Sachs]

Chano Urueta’s THE WITCH’S MIRROR (Mexico)

Block Cinema (at Northwestern University) – Friday, 7pm

Demonstrating the evident Universal influence in many of the films from this Golden Age of Mexican horror, THE WITCH’S MIRROR stands out for its moody atmosphere, impressive practical effects, and commanding central performance. Director Chano Urueta is perhaps more well known for THE BRAINIAC, which has become a cult object for American horror audiences. Another of the films made during the horror boom of the time—ushered in by production company Cinematográfica ABSA—THE WITCH’S MIRROR takes on a more twisted and darker tone, driven by its focus on the women at its center. The film features Mexican icon Isabela Corona as Sara, godmother and housekeeper to Elena (Dina de Marco). A witch with a strong connection to the supernatural—and Satan—Sara learns from her magic mirror that Elena will be murdered by her husband, Eduardo (Armando Calvo), a doctor with questionable practices. Unable to stop the hand of fate, Sara contacts Elena in death, facilitating the haunting of Eduardo and his new wife, Deborah (Rosita Arenas). The liminal space of Sara’s magic mirror and the haunting of the gothic old house in which the characters reside yield some arresting and downright shocking special effects, grounded by sweeping camerawork that takes advantage of the gothic setting. Corona’s Sara is both devoted to her goddaughter and the dark arts, allowing her to completely delight in the terror she wields. It’s superb to watch her work; her smug facial expressions as she wreaks havoc on Eduardo and Deborah, surrounded by shadows and smoke as she’s shot from low angles, are wholly exemplary of her Mexican cinema diva status. Followed by a Q&A (in English with Spanish translation) between Northwestern PhD student Emily Masincup and Chicago film programmer Raul Benitez. (1962, 75 min, DCP Digital) [Megan Fariello]

Bill Forsyth's HOUSEKEEPING (US)

Siskel Film Center – Tuesday, 6pm

Before Natalie Portman and Zooey Deschanel were halfheartedly manic-pixie-dream-girling it up for the likes of Zach Braff and the Fox network, Christine Lahti was brilliantly being the real deal in Scottish director Bill Forsyth's 1987 film HOUSEKEEPING. Based on the modern classic by Marilynne Robinson, it's about two young girls in the fictional town of Fingerbone, Idaho whose aunt comes to live with them after their grandmother—who'd been taking care of them since their mother committed suicide years earlier—passes away. Lahti's Aunt Sylvie drifts into the sisters' lives just as they begin to drift apart; the younger one yearns for normalcy while the oldest is a dreamer of sorts who doesn't fit in with her peers. Sylvie recognizes a kindred spirit in the latter niece, and Forsyth (and perhaps Robinson--I haven't yet read the novel) uses the parallel between both generations of sisters to consider the world in terms of a binary outlook. The darkness of this implication lingers over an otherwise ethereal film in which Sylvie and her niece's eccentricities are complemented by a variety of gorgeously haunting landscapes that rival Terrence Malick's in their sublimeness. Forsyth's first American production, HOUSEKEEPING advances an aesthetic in his work that was seemingly influenced by the exquisite beauty of his home country. There's also a Jarmuschian lyricism in his depiction of nature; it shares its wisdom with Sylvie and her niece but never relinquishes its supreme power over them. This further emphasizes that they aren't merely quirky but instead genuinely alienated outsiders who experience the world in a different way. It's also a small but noteworthy fact that Sylvie is estranged from her husband, ostensibly at her own discretion. She's beholden to no man--or woman, for that matter, unlike her younger niece who has fallen prey to the opinion of others. Many of Forsyth's films are similarly charismatic, though none that I've seen are as bewitching as this one, likely owing to the originality of the source material. (Forsyth himself has said as much.) Screening as part of the Interiority on Screen lecture series. (1987, 116 min, DCP Digital) [Kat Sachs]

📽️ ALSO RECOMMENDED

William Friedkin's CRUISING (US)

Doc Films (at the University of Chicago) – Friday, 9:30pm

This movie that once caused the gay community to protest its making and release is now something of a cult sensation amongst today's generation. At the time, the film was deemed controversial for the way it seemed to correlate homosexual attraction and serial killing and for its mainstream coverage of S&M bars, a rather marginal part of gay life. After AIDS, the movie has found new appreciation in the queer community and beyond. Its new fans are curious about the life it portrayed, its ethos as much as its dress codes, the latter of which has to an extent even been appropriated by today's hipster scene (the bandanna as a signifier of sexual solicitation transformed into a signifier of irony). Al Pacino gives a bizarre performance as a cop who increasingly begins to identify with the gay world he was sent out to cover in light of a series of killings in the community. CRUISING has its faults, in its plotting and other aspects, and many ambiguities, but today those deficiencies are either forgiven in favor of its strengths or are seen as meaningful mysteries to ponder over. Part of its incomplete feel is accounted for by the 40 minutes cut out to appease the MPAA, who then dropped the initial X rating to an R (the missing footage mostly consisting of more scenes at the S&M bars). The print shown should include the infamous disclaimer that was dropped from the DVD release: "This film is not intended as an indictment of the homosexual world. It is set in one small segment of that world, which is not meant to be representative of the whole." Screening as part of the Board Picks series. (1980, 102 min, 35mm) [Kalvin Henley]

Ted Kotcheff’s WAKE IN FRIGHT (Australia)

Music Box Theatre – Sunday, 11:30am

Ted Kotcheff, whose whiplash filmography includes THE APPRENTICESHIP OF DUDDY KRAVITZ (1974), RAMBO: FIRST BLOOD (1982), and WEEKEND AT BERNIES (1989), made one of the essential Australian New Wave films, WAKE IN FRIGHT. Kotcheff’s Outback film depicts entrapment, then enacts it. The audience, like John Grant, a schoolteacher marooned in a desert town, finds themselves pulled into a ritual of intense heat, booze, and unchecked masculinity. From its first sun-bleached frames, the film transforms an accidental layover into a slow, sickening descent into a nightmare too vivid to dismiss as metaphor. Critics often fall back on the cliché: “This film made me want to shower afterward.” Overused as it is, WAKE IN FRIGHT earns it more than most horror or exploitation films. It’s a sand-in-the-face, beer-soaked initiation rite, one that makes the Outback less a place than a state of sensory assault. Every image feels invasive: the glare of the sun that blinds, the heat that soaks through shirts, the buzzing of flies that drills into the skull. The film doesn’t just depict excess; it seeps into your pores. At its center is Grant, portrayed by Gary Bond with a fragile beauty that makes him stand apart from the leathery, sweat-stained men around him. His teaching post has already marked him as a reluctant exile, but in the fictional Bundanyabba (“the Yabba”), his outsider status is amplified. He is scrutinized not only for his good manners but for his refusal to fully submit to masculine rituals. If he isn’t drinking until collapse, gambling away his pay, hunting kangaroos at night, or performing sex on demand, he’s derided as weak, effeminate, suspect. Here, the film’s queer coding emerges with startling clarity. Bond—an English actor and singer who died in 1995 after a long battle with HIV/AIDS—was not closeted, but carried into the role his own fears of rejection. Grant’s slender frame, refined accent, and visible discomfort among the men mark him as a figure of unspoken difference. His interactions with Donald Pleasance’s alcoholic doctor, “Doc” Tydon, veer toward seduction and violation. At one point, Grant passes out only to awaken with the implication of an unwanted sexual encounter. Kotcheff avoids sensationalizing the moment; instead, it deepens the sense that masculinity in the Yabba is both inescapable and predatory. Throughout WAKE IN FRIGHT, Grant is forced into masculine performances while simultaneously punished for failing to embody them. A sadistic dialectic where he just can’t win. His “weakness” attracts predation, yet his half-hearted participation including clumsy gambling, reluctant hunting, and nausea at the thought of heterosexual sex only makes him more alien. Queerness here becomes more than sexual; it is existential, the condition of a self that cannot fully assimilate, whether masked or revealed. The infamous kangaroo hunt crystallizes this tension. A drunken blur of headlights, bullets, and blood, shot with a kinetic hand-held precision, it positions Grant as both complicit and nauseated, a proxy for the viewer’s horror. The sequence captures the grotesque intersection of masculinity, cruelty, and group belonging, where Grant is trapped between resistance and participation. Ultimately, he’s unable to escape either. What makes WAKE IN FRIGHT timeless is its refusal to resolve. There is no catharsis, no purging of the nightmare. Grant returns to his post outwardly unchanged yet inwardly hollowed. The Outback has revealed not only the brutality of others but his own capacity for degradation. His queerness that is never named but always implied becomes another vulnerability turned against him. To call WAKE IN FRIGHT a horror film undersells it. It is a study in entrapment, addiction, and the fragility of identity under social pressure. Decades on, it remains a film that lingers in the body like sweat that won’t wash off. Screening as part of Music Box of Horrors: Dead and Loving It! series. (1971, 109 min, DCP Digital) [Shaun Huhn]

Abel Ferrara's THE ADDICTION (US)

Doc Films (at the University of Chicago) – Thursday, 7pm

Existentialism and themes of human nature and religion are inherent to vampire stories. In Abel Ferrara’s THE ADDICTION, these themes are made completely explicit. Kathleen (Lili Taylor) is a timid doctoral student of philosophy at NYU who becomes addicted to human blood after she's bitten on the neck by a mysterious woman on the street. Her personality begins to shift completely, her philosophical thinking now spurring on more violent and sinister actions; her transformation is her study in practice, and Taylor’s performance impressively depicts her drastic change and inner struggle. Shot in black and white, THE ADDICTION is referential to the shadows of Murnau's NOSFERATU—Ferrara's use of light and shadow in some shots is strikingly constructed—even as its setting and allegory of vampirism to drug addiction feels quite modern. What is most interesting here is how Ferrara, as he so often does in his films, balances modern mundanity with characters trying to make sense of a world that has become increasingly nonsensical; these characters frequently conclude that they can only achieve that through violence and, in THE ADDICTION, the climax is a frenzied vampiric orgy at a graduation party. The black and white images force the audience to focus less on the blood and scrutinize more closely, as Kathleen does in her studies, the human actions driving the occurrence. Screening as part of the The Ethical Vampire: The Moral Dilemma of Vampirism series. (1995, 82 min, DCP Digital) [Megan Fariello]

Jean Rollin’s FASCINATION (France)

Alamo Drafthouse – Tuesday, 9:30pm
Music Box Theatre – Thursday, 9:30pm

The marriage of the erotic and the macabre becomes an inescapable force in Jean Rollin’s FASCINATION, a sensual nightmare of a movie. The longer we find ourselves trapped in the abandoned castle inhabited by temptresses Eva (Brigitte Lahaie) and Elisabeth (Franca Maï), the deeper we realize that the choice between fear and temptation has slowly become one and the same. It’s 1905, and the preening macho, Marc (Jean-Marie Lemaire), has succumbed to a greed that has pitted his den of thieves against him, leading to his hideaway in the aforementioned castle. His persistence in trying to tame Eva and Elisabeth—women far more interested in the love and lust they see in each other than anything Marc can offer them—builds to the point where, joined for a larger cabal of blood-hungry maidens, his doomed fate is practically written in stone. Rollin’s camera shifts between raw intimacy and stately observation, running up and down staircases to capture the madcap action before serenely and patiently sitting still, capturing the fantastical images at hand. Due to a series of financial disappointments in his filmmaking career, Rollin spent much of his later years making explicitly pornographic cinema, though works like FASCINATION make the case for the artistry that sensuality and sexuality play in the world of the moving image. It’s no wonder one of FASCINATION’s most iconic images remains Brigitte Lahaie wandering across a bridge, her nude body wearing a black cloak carrying a domineering scythe, her breast artfully escaping from underneath, that magical bond between death and desire perfectly captured onscreen. Screening as part of the Terror Tuesday series at Alamo Drafthouse and part of Music Box of Horrors: Dead and Loving It! series at Music Box. (1979, 80 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Kaye]

Neo Sora’s HAPPYEND (Japan)

Siskel Film Center – See Venue website for showtimes

Nestled within this examination of a near-future Japan living under the omnipotent threat of an earthquake and increasing surveillance is a touchingly familiar high school drama. In Neo Sora’s captivating fictional debut HAPPYEND, senior students are subject to a newly installed surveillance system at their high school that records and reports their every move. Under rising national tensions and the impending earthquake, two buddies, Yuta (Hyato Kurihara), a Japanese citizen, and Ko (Yukito Hidaka), a Korean immigrant born in Japan, respond in different ways, causing friction between them. The minimalist aesthetic approach, sharp framing, considered blocking, and wide shots allows room for the budding angst to breathe and move without suffocating the viewer with overripe observation as the teens roam the city and navigate their industrial high school. A strikingly lilting piano score by Lia Quyang Rusli and occasional accompaniment by the unmistakably distinct—and shirtless—DJ, Yousuke Yukimatsu, add an evocative and representative equilibrium between the two diverging friends. Although urgent, the film never feels cynical, instead opting for a deeply humanist approach. Impeccably balanced between political commentary and tender teen malaise, HAPPYEND is not only a compelling consideration of a likely imminent reality due to the climate crisis; it a testament to the moralistic youthful spirit, and an inspiration that the fight for autonomy and free-will in a quickly changing world is necessary. (2024, 113 min, DCP Digital) [Olivia Hunter Willke]

Erle C. Kenton's ISLAND OF LOST SOULS (US)

Music Box Theatre – Saturday, 11:30am

There are few things in cinema more worthwhile than pre-code horror films. Still excited by the advent of sound but lingering in the shadows of German expressionism. Shamelessly perverse but bizarrely tender--and never without a sense of humor. They appear to come out of some thousand-year-old society, one that's left itself to ruin to pursue goals more worthwhile than personal maintenance (murder, bestiality, reconstructing the living and the dead); a place that has abandoned itself. They're made from recycled soundstages, trap doors, and torture chambers made for "cutting living men to pieces." THE ISLAND OF LOST SOULS, where a young Charles Laughton lords over his half-human, half-animal experiments, is one of the very best of these filmic relics. The camera peers down on Laughton's creations in a way that elicits both fright and sympathy, and it moves with a fluidity that is rarely seen in early sound films--a fluidity that gives grace to savages. A contorted take on Freudianism, ISLAND OF LOST SOULS is also a wonderful film for vegetarians. Bela Lugosi leads the group of butchered half-breeds: "What is the law?" "Not to eat meat, that is the law. Are we not men?" A stretch, but not a great one when you consider that the film uses the terms "long pig" and "human" interchangeably. Perhaps Paul Hurst, as Captain Donahue, said it best: "This is quite a place you've got here, doc." Screening as part of the Music Box of Horrors: Dead and Loving It! series. (1932, 70 min, DCP Digital) [Julian Antos]

Paul Thomas Anderson’s ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER (US)

Music Box Theatre and other theaters – See Venue website for showtimes

A motif of flooded landscapes recurs in Thomas Pynchon’s novels about the midcentury American counterculture. In Vineland (1990), radical filmmaker turned counterinsurgent Frenesi Gates confesses a recurring vision of disappeared beaches she calls the Dream of the Gentle Flood, set to a siren song promising the return of “whatever has been taken… whatever has been lost….” Pynchon renders this uncommonly emotional scene with a blue-green melancholy, a generational lament for stolen futures and failed alternatives employing the same haunted imagery that Inherent Vice (2009) conjures in one of P.I. Doc Sportello’s aborted reveries, analogizing the broken promise of the hippie decade to the excavation of a mythical underwater continent: “some undrowned Lemuria, risen and redeemed, where the American fate, mercifully, failed to transpire…” Said American fate is the subject of Paul Thomas Anderson’s new film ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER, a loose Vineland adaptation that strips one of the book’s central plots—a government spook returns to hunt an ex-radical’s teenage daughter, living in hiding with her burnout papa sixteen years after the destruction of their revolutionary cell—out of the Reagan ‘80s and plants it in an apocalyptic present tense recent-past-near-future so up-to-the-minute it could have wrapped production this week. (Anderson isn’t a prophet, he’s just paying attention.) In the Californian hamlet of Baktan Cross, forcibly retired explosives expert Bob “Ghetto Pat” Ferguson (Leonardo DiCaprio) tries to keep daughter Willa (newcomer Chase Infiniti) alive by sending her to self-defense classes with Sensei Sergio (Benicio Del Toro) and policing her use of technology, but can’t protect her from the arrival of a federal dragnet led by Col. Steven J. Lockjaw (Sean Penn), whose past entanglement with Willa’s mother Perfidia (Teyana Taylor)—and possible fathering of a mixed-race daughter—threatens his initiation into the inner sanctum of a white supremacist cabal. So the thugs surge into town, an old ally (Regina Hall) spirits Willa away, and Bob teams with Sergio to rendezvous with what remains of his network before Steven can smoke them out. Anderson’s treatment of this scenario—angry, funny, frantic—distills the experience of our 21st-century late-capitalist crack-up at a moment when the potential for organized mass resistance has slowed to an ebb tide. The diluvial theme in Pynchon resonates with Hunter S. Thompson’s oft-mythologized monologue in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, which describes California at the end of the 1960s as “that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.” The Fitzgeraldian, Lost Generation lilt of Thompson’s prose typifies the rueful sentiment of much post-’60s literature (including Pynchon’s), and Anderson’s reliably knotty, suggestive character work here locates failures aplenty in Bob’s scattered movement: chiefly, the equation of Bob and Steven as parallel father figures with mutual responsibility for the shrunken future offered to Willa, and whose fetishization-slash-idolatry of Perfidia shares Anderson’s roving authorial eye. Bob has another parallel in Sergio, whose work speeding a hidden community of undocumented migrants to safety serves as a quiet contrast to the revolutionaries fixated upon code words and armed resistance. Sergio knows when to lie low and when to run for the high ground, as do the skateboarders they meet whose blissed-out ride for freedom amidst a militarized crackdown sums up this movie’s command of motion and message in a single feather-light shot. If Anderson ultimately wills some optimism into his vision of a shaky generational truce, ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER also acknowledges that an ungentle flood is here, and the tides are climbing high. The American fate may not be to recover what was lost but to move with the rising waters—as in the final chase that sees Willa hurtling through an undulating desert road, mastering its crests and troughs, surfin’ U.S.A. (2025, 161 min, 70mm) [Brendan Boyle]

John Waters' FEMALE TROUBLE (US)

Doc Films (at the University of Chicago) – Thursday, 9:30pm

FEMALE TROUBLE stands out as the high point of John Waters' '70s cycle, and a pivot point in his artistic trajectory. He had already established his proficiency as a tasteless provocateur, but this is the film where his equally irrepressible tastefulness as a filmmaker (evidenced in his tight screenwriting and potent cultural criticism, which only get sharper as his career continues) becomes obvious. Instead of trying to top the shit-eating gimmicks of PINK FLAMINGOS, here he takes a turn for the operatic, creating a trashy, tragic, hilarious meditation on glamour, crime, filth, and celebrity that invokes several artists from his pantheon—the Kuchar brothers, Douglas Sirk, Andy Warhol—and does justice to each of them. It's also his most fully realized collaboration with Divine, whose unforgettable Dawn Davenport brilliantly transforms from a rebellious teen to a degenerate art star to a blissfully deluded death row inmate over the course of the film's three acts—a narrative arc that feels epic in spite of its modest run time. Divine even breaks out of drag (his most famous talent, but certainly not his only one) for a few scenes, to co-star opposite himself as the man who deflowers Dawn and becomes the deadbeat father to her petulant child. But while FEMALE TROUBLE is unquestionably Divine's movie, Waters' entire cast of Dreamlanders provides amazing support. Chief among them is Edith Massey, as the sordid, sultry, straight-hating Ida, decked out in a strappy vinyl suit that can barely contain her abundant flesh. Massey manages to steal almost every scene she's in and has the honor of delivering the film's best line—an astute observation that could very well stand as the thesis of Waters' entire oeuvre: "The world of heterosexuals is a sick and boring life." Screening as part of the Celluloid Is Out: Queer Freedom and Subculture of the 1970s series. (1974, 89 min, 35mm) [Darnell Witt]

Bernhard Wenger’s PEACOCK (Austria/Germany)

Siskel Film Center – See Venue website for showtimes

The tragic irony of the life of Matthias (Albrecht Schuch) is how brilliantly he knows how to be literally anyone else but himself. As the most favorable client at My Companion, a Vienna-based "friend-for-hire" agency, Matthias can step in to whatever role you need him to play; maybe he's your social companion at cultural events around the city, or your doting son at your upcoming sixtieth birthday celebration, or even someone to coach you through relationship troubles. It’s that last one that gets especially tricky, for as colorful and expressive as Matthias can be on the job, he’s practically a blank canvas in his home life, to the point where things between him and his partner Sophia (Julia Franz Richter) have arrived at a disastrous breaking point. Bernhard Wenger’s debut feature has a distinct short story-esque feeling to it, painting in broad strokes about concrete themes and values, doing so with notably stylish editing and production design, frames meticulously assembled and eye-catching. Wenger fills his story with endless notable sequences, from an opening image of a golf cart on fire, to the frequent and deliberate use of animals throughout, from dogs of all sizes, to hordes of ducks, to the eponymous peacock wandering through a meditation garden. Just like that feathered friend, Matthias finds that his whole lot in life is nothing more than performance after performance, to the point where—in the film’s messy and bombastic finale—his own attempt at true personal expression is deemed nothing more than an act. For Matthias, for better or worse, all the world’s a stage. (2024, 102 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Kaye]

Mike Nichols' WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF? (US)

Alamo Drafthouse – Monday, 4pm

There’s an intoxicating, venomous spirit running through the veins of Edward Albee’s seminal work Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? that seems so indebted to its life as a living, breathing stage play that it’s something of a minor miracle that—​in his debut directorial feature, no less—​Mike Nichols was able to transplant that feeling to the screen. Just a few years prior, after concluding his storied double-act comedy career with fellow comic-turned-director Elaine May, Nichols proved his bona fides as an artist adept at navigating complex romantic relationships with his stage directorial debut, Neil Simon’s Barefoot in the Park, another dramatic work about a married couple, though in this case one more plainly comedic than Albee’s festering ulcer of a piece. Under the tutelage of producer/screenwriter Ernest Lehman, Nichols’ success with Albee’s work is ultimately a masterclass in identifying tragedy and comedy as flip-sides of the same coin. The vollying barbs between history professor George (Richard Burton) and his wife Martha (Elizabeth Taylor) provide perfect bait for their late-night guests, a younger academic, biology professor Nick (George Segal) and his wife Honey (Sandy Dennis), with each vicious insult and threatening remark equally laced with bitter contempt and playful wit. Owing to its theatrical origins, the breakneck pace is enough to convince you that the film exists as one two-hour-long single take, like we’re sitting in George and Martha’s living room as well, equally falling prey to their conversational games of provocation and intrigue. As characters, George and Martha exist as fun-house mirror reflections for Nick and Honey, an eerie premonition of the toll that such a toxic marriage can take down the line, yet within that toxicity lies something magnetic and alluring. As stellar as the entire quartet of players is here, it’s Taylor and Burton, of course, who get the meatier roles, not so much chewing the scenery as they are knocking the set down and spreading the wreckage across an eight-course tasting menu, their hatred and adoration for each other appearing so entangled as to become utterly meaningless by the inevitable moment when, finally, after the rubble has been cleared, the sun rises above it all. (1966, 132 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Kaye]

Robert Zemeckis' DEATH BECOMES HER (US)

The Davis Theater – Monday, 7pm

My first exposure to DEATH BECOMES HER, which came long before watching the film itself, was from seeing images in a coffee table book about the history of Industrial Light & Magic. Directed by the special effects-attentive Robert Zemeckis, it holds up as a visual marvel 30 years after its release: a stunning combination of practical and groundbreaking digital effects. It remains relevant as a camp classic, however, from its shrewd blending of genres and over-the-top performances; all combined, DEATH BECOMES HER, while maybe not flawless, is like the best of Zemeckis’ films, a perfectly satisfying watch. A biting commentary on aging in Hollywood, the film stars Meryl Streep and Goldie Hawn as frenemies waging war for the attention of a Beverly Hills plastic surgeon played by Bruce Willis. Driving their rivalry and need for revenge is a desperation to find the secret to everlasting youth. They each discover a mysterious socialite (Isabella Rossellini) who claims to have a magic potion to reverse the aging process, but its side effects come at quite a disturbing cost. DEATH BECOMES HER’s combination of dark comedy and body horror is balanced seamlessly by the added melodrama of the four main performances—it's hard to argue a standout when they're all so great. The clever, slow-revealing camerawork and giant set pieces never let the iconic special effects scenes fall completely into the cartoonish, balancing the absurd and the grotesque. The film’s fun is in its constant teetering on the edge; DEATH BECOMES HER manages to express complete uninhibitedness with precise visual filmmaking. Screening as part of the Big Screen Classics series. (1992, 104 min, DCP Digital) [Megan Fariello]

Satoshi Kon’s PERFECT BLUE (Japan/Animation)

The Davis Theater – See Venue website for showtimes

Many consider PERFECT BLUE to be Satoshi Kon's magnum opus—and for good reason. The film’s impact on culture reaches far beyond that of most other anime films, arguably rivaling the work of contemporaries like Hayao Miyazaki and AKIRA creator Katsuhiro Otomo. Those filmmakers regularly utilize the format to explore new, colorful worlds of fantasy and science fiction, which was also true of Kon. However, his work in the late '90s and early 2000s was more grounded in reality, exploring a dreamy aesthetic instead through his characters’ psychoses and fractured senses of self; Kon's approach led him to adapt Yoshikazu Takuchi’s novel of the same name, its story acting as a vehicle through which he could explore these themes. The film introduces us to Mima Kirigoe, a pop singer who leaves her idol group to become an actress. Between disappointed fanboys, mysterious deaths in her agency’s circle, and an acting role that increasingly mirrors her struggle to self-identify, Mima begins to lose herself in the horrors around her. This film would not be the last time Kon used cinema to tackle a character’s identity; he further explored the concept in his next original screenplay, MILLENNIUM ACTRESS, which he penned with frequent collaborator and PERFECT BLUE screenwriter Sadyuki Murai. Where that film uses cinema as a positive additive, heightening a tale of lost love and legacy to dramatic peaks, PERFECT BLUE hones in on the anxiety of performance, depicting an actress who loses herself both on camera and in the public eye. To categorize this film as a great work in anime is to do it a disservice; it's a masterclass in psychological horror that holds its own in one of the latter genre’s most memorable decades. (1997, 81 min, New 4K DCP Digital Restoration) [Michael Bates]

Terrence Malick's THE TREE OF LIFE (US)

Siskel Film Center – Sunday, 12pm

At the beginning of Terrence Malick's THE TREE OF LIFE, a mother says, "The nuns taught us there are two ways through life—the way of nature and the way of grace." Shortly after, her son, a middle-aged architect named Jack O'Brien, remembers the death of his younger brother, R.L., at the age of nineteen. Jack then travels back to his idyllic childhood in 1950s Waco, Texas to find this brother that he lost. In a larger sense, THE TREE OF LIFE explores the nature of being, including those aspects of it neither children nor adults understand. It questions birth and death throughout the history of time, beginning with the origin of the universe, continuing through the evolution of the species, and finally to the untimely death of this one young man. Malick renders the small family at the center of the story as grand as the life of the universe itself. Why do we not see the world this way? What prevents our sense of wonder? We no longer experience life, so we turn to cinema. TREE OF LIFE appears to be a collection of memories and imaginings. It is a film of images more than of words. Malick focuses on imagery of the family and, in particular, the three boys, capturing them in close-up and only natural light. The audience often views the spontaneous unfolding of life from a child's eyes, which look up to encounter the world. Malick's camera behaves like a human being in its own right, expressing a variety of emotions in its movement. He films the world, both great and small, with such reverence that every image of it is truly beautiful. To return to the film's beginning, the mother continues, "You have to choose which one you'll follow. Grace doesn't try to please itself. It accepts being slighted, forgotten, disliked. It accepts insults and injuries. Nature only wants to please itself, get others to please it, too. Likes to lord it over them, to have its own way. It finds reasons to be unhappy and all the world is shining around it and love is smiling through all things. They taught us that no one who loves the way of grace ever comes to a bad end. I will be true to you whatever comes." THE TREE OF LIFE is a man's testament to Spirit that captures the phenomenon of being in its glory. Screening as part of the Interiority on Screen lecture series. (2011, 139 min, DCP Digital) [Candace Wirt]

📽️ ALSO SCREENING

⚫ Alamo Drafthouse
Ronan Day-Lewis’ 2025 film ANEMONE (126 min, DCP Digital) screens this week. See Venue website for showtimes.

Mike Nichols’ 2024 film CLOSER (104 min, DCP Digital) screens Sunday at 12:30pm and Tuesday at 2:30pm.

Wes Craven’s 1996 film SCREAM (111 min, DCP Digital) screens Saturday and Sunday at 10:15pm and Tuesday at 11:15am.

Jeremy Saulnier’s 2007 film MURDER PARTY (79 min, DCP Digital) screens Wednesday, 9:30pm, as part of the Weird Wednesday series. More info on all screenings here.

⚫ Alliance Française de Chicago
Susanna Fanzun’s 2023 documentary I GIACOMETTI (104 min, Digital Projection) screens Wednesday, 6:30pm, as part of Your Alberto, a series exploring Swiss sculptor Alberto Giacometti. The screening will be followed by a reception featuring complimentary Swiss wine and light bites. Please enter via 54 W. Chicago Ave. More info here.

⚫ Chicago Public Library
View all screenings taking place at Chicago Public Library branches here.

⚫ Comfort Film at Comfort Station (2579 N. Milwaukee Ave.)
Comfort Film and Terrorvision present Maurice Devereaux’s 2007 film END OF THE LINE (95 min, Digital Projection) on Wednesday at 8pm. Free admission. More info here.

⚫ The Davis Theater
Alejandro Montoya Marin’s 2025 film THE UNEXPECTEDS screens Sunday at 11:30am. Note this film also screens at the Malcolm X College Screening Center (1900 W. Jackson Blvd.) on Saturday, 3:30pm, as the closing film of Latina Expo 25. Tickets are free for both screenings. 

Gus Van Sant’s 1995 film TO DIE FOR (106 min, DCP Digital) screens Wednesday at 7pm. More info on all screenings here.

⚫ Doc Films (at the University of Chicago)
Greg Mottola’s 1996 film THE DAYTRIPPERS (87 min, DCP Digital) screens Friday, 7pm, as part of the Conversations in Cars: Road Trips and Relationships series.

James Gunn’s 2025 film SUPERMAN (130 min, DCP Digital) screens Saturday, 4pm, as part of the New Releases and Restorations series.

A preview screening of Luca Guadagnino’s 2025 film AFTER THE HUNT (139 min, DCP Digital) takes place on Saturday at 7pm. Free for University of Chicago students.

David Čálek and Benjamin Tuček’s 2024 film WAR CORRESPONDENT (78 min, DCP Digital) screens Sunday, 4pm, as part of the New Releases and Restorations series.

Luis Buñuel’s 1959 film NAZARÍN (94 min, DCP Digital) screens Wednesday, 7pm, as part of the Buñuel in Mexico series. More info on all screenings and events here.

⚫ FACETS
Kristina Dufkova’s 2024 film LIVING LARGE (80 min, Digital projection) screens Saturday, 11am, as part of the Czech That Film festival.

Hollywood Graveyard presents Chicago Movie Matinee on Saturday, 3:30pm, with screenings of the short films THE TOMB OF NOSFERATU and GRAVES FROM THE BLACK LAGOON, followed by a Q&A and meet-and-greet with the cast and crew.

Anime Club presents Black Magic Blood Bath, a double feature that fuses futuristic horror and supernatural dread, on Thursday starting at 7pm. Free and exclusive to Film Club members. More info on all screenings and events here.

⚫ Gerber/Hart Library and Archives (6500 N. Clark St., 2nd Floor)
Jose Luis Benavides’ short films AMIGAS LATINAS FOREVER and LULU EN EL JARDÍN screen Friday, 6:30pm, as part of the Queer History Symposium.  Followed by a discussion about LGBTQ+ mental health and resources with Dr. Xiomara Cervantes-Gómez. More info here.

⚫ Music Box Theatre
Carmen Emmi’s 2025 film PLAINCLOTHES (95 min, DCP Digital) and Ben Leonberg’s 2025 film GOOD BOY (72 min, DCP Digital) begin screening this week. See Venue website for showtimes.

Also screening as part of the Music Box of Horrors: Dead and Loving It! series are Ernest R. Dickerson’s 1995 film TALES FROM THE CRYPT: DEMON KNIGHT (92 min, DCP Digital) on Friday at 11:30pm; Donald Farmer’s 1995 film RED LIPS (77 min, DCP Digital) on Monday at 9:30pm; Demián Rugna’s 2017 film TERRIFIED (88 min, DCP Digital) on Tuesday at 9:30pm; and Jet Eller’s 1989 film MARLEY’S REVENGE: THE MONSTER MOVIE (83 min, DCP Digital) on Wednesday at 9:30pm, co-presented by VHSHITFEST! More info on all screenings here.

⚫ Siskel Film Center
Rana Segal’s 2024 documentary THE LIGHT OF TRUTH: RICHARD HUNT'S MONUMENT TO IDA B. WELLS (66 min, DCP Digital) screens Saturday at 12:30pm and Monday at 6pm, with Segal in attendance at both screenings.

Sharon Hayes: RICERCHE: FOUR (2024, 80 min, Digital Projection) screens Thursday, 6pm, as part of Conversations at the Edge, followed by a conversation with Hayes and audience Q&A. More info on all screenings here.

⚫ Tone Glow and Cinema-Luz
Tone Glow and Cinema-Luz present Treasured Living: Films by Les Blank & Lua Borges on Saturday, 7pm, at Patchwork Farms (2825 W. Chicago Ave.). More info here.

⚫ VDB TV (Virtual)
oliverio rodriguez and Victoria Stob's 2018 short film LYNDALE (24 min) and Sandi DuBowski's 1993 short film TOMBOYCHIK (15 min) stream for free on VDB-TV.  Programmed by Cine-File contributor Elise Schierbeek. More info here.

CINE-LIST: October 3, 2025 - October 9, 2025

MANAGING EDITORS // Ben and Kat Sachs

CONTRIBUTORS // Julian Antos, Michael Bates, Brendan Boyle, Megan Fariello, Kalvin Henley, Shaun Huhn, Ben Kaye, Doug McLaren, Olivia Hunter Willke, Candace Wirt, Darnell Witt