📽️ CRUCIAL VIEWING
Jean-Luc Godard's PIERROT LE FOU (France)
Chicago Film Society at the Music Box Theatre – Monday, 7pm
Jean-Luc Godard made 14 feature films during the first phase of his filmmaking career, the celebrated French New Wave period that began with BREATHLESS in 1960 and ended with WEEKEND in 1967. PIERROT LE FOU premiered two years before the latter film and similarly uses the story of a bourgeois couple in flight to engage in some wildly absurd scenarios. Jean-Paul Belmondo plays a bored husband who runs off with his beautiful babysitter (Anna Karina, Godard's wife at the time) to the south of France. Never serious or sensible, the film is well described by New Yorker film critic Richard Brody as a collage of "sociology, philosophy, poetry, politics, and outright caprice." Godard was known for putting together his films on the fly, and such spontaneity is evident here, with random plot developments (Belmondo driving his car into a river) casually merging with set pieces (a short play about the Vietnam War). And littered throughout are the cultural artifacts that Godard so liked to reference: static shots of posters and paintings, repeated mentions of consumer goods, a cameo by Samuel Fuller. Mostly playful, the film nevertheless dabbles in the type of film essay that would mark Godard's post-1967 turn towards more political and experimental works. There are surely politics here, but they're hidden within the comic angst of the leads, who, like many in the 1960s, were quite sure of what they were fighting against, but less sure of what they were fighting for. Preceded by Chuck Jones' 1953 cartoon short DUCK AMUCK (7 min, 35mm). (1965, 110 min, 35mm) [Martin Stainthorp]
Looney Tunes on 35mm
Music Box Theatre – Saturday and Sunday, 11am - 3pm [Free Admission]
As integral as the characters of the Looney Tunes (Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, you know the rest, I hope) have become to our modern day lives and vernacular, some might be hard-pressed to describe the short adventures of this wacky bunch as "cinema." But how else are we to categorize the artful grandiosity of WHAT’S OPERA, DOC?, the surrealist experimentation of DUCK AMUCK, the grand array of silent antics found in any number of Wile E. Coyote vs. Roadrunner shorts? The Looney Tunes—​concocted by, but not limited to, the likes of actor Mel Blanc, writer Michael Maltese, and illustrious directors including Chuck Jones, Friz Freleng, Tex Avery, and Bob Clampett—​have endured for nearly a century not just because of their excessive entertainment value, but arguably because of how intricately in conversation they are with the history of moviemaking; the rapid ratatat dialogue and anarchic banter between Bugs and Daffy in RABBIT FIRE feel directly pulled from a Three Stooges short, the visual iconography of DUCK DODGERS IN THE 24 1/2TH CENTURY is entirely indebted to the serial adventures of Buck Rogers, and the comic ingenuity of the gags in FASTEST WITH THE MOSTEST would be enough to make Buster Keaton blush. The artists who wrote, voiced, and animated these hilarious feats of filmmaking deserve a worthy mention in the lineage of cinema, fulfilling the promise of silent film’s particular brand of antics by blowing them up via the seemingly endless possibilities within the medium of animation. Above all else, the durability of these films lies in how strong these scenarios have withstood the test of time, how well-defined these characters remain, how each cel of animation bursts from the screen with vivid movement and color. There is undeniably thorough intentionality in the way Bugs Bunny cheekily breaks the fourth wall, or when and how Roadrunner tilts his head for a particular "Meep meep!" Or perhaps it’s just as simple as our collective desire to laugh at silly-looking characters doing funny things. Maybe that is all, folks. [Ben Kaye]
George A. Romero’s DAY OF THE DEAD (US)
Music Box Theatre – Tuesday, 7:30pm
Film scholar Thomas Schatz described the Western as “a familiar iconographic arena where civilized met savage in an interminable mythic contest.” Director George A. Romero’s contribution to cinema history was to push—almost single-handedly—his chosen subgenre of the zombie film into as rich an expression of human drama as that most American of screen traditions. Made with sparse budgets, unknown actors, and cramped locations—but with Romero’s suggestive, subversive scenarios and the innovative gore techniques of collaborator Tom Savini—the early DEAD films (NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, DAWN OF THE DEAD, and DAY OF THE DEAD) suggest the terminal point of the Western conflict, where the facade of civilization has slipped decisively, and the violent instincts kept for a time at bay take dominion over the country. Unconnected to the previous two entries in the series, save for the backdrop of an undead outbreak in medias res, DAY OF THE DEAD concerns a group of survivors at an underground civilian research station in Florida, where both the scientists and their military keepers have begun to regress. The head scientist, Logan (Richard Liberty) has begun to experiment in novel and questionably ethical ways on the zombie subjects, while a tyrannical instigator named Rhodes (Joseph Pilato) has assumed command both of the military unit and of their subterranean society. This new nation’s invented border, deep underground, is a fence at the mouth of a vast cave system populated by thousands of the undead, policed by soldiers who further dehumanize these remnants of civilization with reflexive torrents of misogynistic and racist invective. Rhodes is all for simply wiping out the hordes, but Logan points out that they haven’t the ammunition: “We’re in the minority now, something like 400,000 to 1.” Amidst the tragedy of small-scale collapse is a single specimen, Bub (Howard Sherman), a balding, pumpkin-headed zombie shackled to a wall in Logan’s lab who shows some memories of human behavior. The salute Bub offers the uniformed Rhodes suggests a past life in the military, a bleak suggestion of the kind of conditioning that survives apocalypse. The civilian survivors sequester themselves away from the increasingly mad soldiers in quarters decorated like an ersatz island, a reminder of colonial frontiers foreclosed. Just when the film seems as though it will concern itself exclusively with thematic and ethical questions, DAY OF THE DEAD snaps back into pure genre mode with some of Savini’s finest work: an unholy radiance of grasping hands, bodies pulled apart like pork shoulders. In the final melee, as the ammo dwindles, a pistol becomes the weapon of choice, the emptied-out world a Wild West, and the living dead man a gunslinger. Presented by Metal Movie Night, featuring a pre-party in the Music Box Lounge starting at 5:30pm with DJ Metal Vinyl Weekend spinning records, plus vendor pop-up tables. The Metal Movie Night pre-show of Classic Trailers and Metal Videos starts at 7:15pm. (1985, 96 min, 35mm) [Brendan Boyle]
Robert Altman Centennial
Gene Siskel Film Center – See below for showtimes
Robert Altman's NASHVILLE (US)
Saturday, 2pm
It remains debatable as to whether NASHVILLE is Robert Altman’s crowning work (one could make as strong a case for MCCABE AND MRS. MILLER, THE LONG GOODBYE, or CALIFORNIA SPLIT), yet in no other film, save for perhaps SHORT CUTS, did the director achieve so many of his ambitions in one go. Indeed, the most remarkable thing about NASHVILLE may be how it threatens to collapse on itself at any moment but somehow doesn’t—Altman’s direction of this two-hour, 40-minute opus is comparable to a captain steering an ocean liner around a range of icebergs without even rattling the passengers. The film famously juggles two dozen principal characters and about half as many different storylines, but no less remarkable is the way Altman succeeds with multiple formal experiments that could have easily come off as gimmicky or distracting. Several of these experiments have to do with sound. Building upon the multi-track audio of CALIFORNIA SPLIT, Altman shot much of NASHVILLE with up to 16 separate microphones, seldom letting the actors know who would be recorded directly and mixing the wealth of sonic material in post-production. Roger Ebert once wrote that the beauty of Altman’s films often lies in basking in the music of a room, and by that token, NASHVILLE is a veritable symphony of jargon, offhand remarks, noise, and actual songs. Most of the songs, in fact, were written by the actors who sing them, and another one of Altman’s fascinating experiments was to insist that not all them be good. To reflect the range of quality one finds in Nashville’s music scene, Altman included great songs (like Keith Carradine’s Oscar-winning “I’m Easy” and the classic-style country numbers sung by Ronee Blakeley, arguably the best singer in the cast), hokey songs (like the self-aggrandizing tunes of Henry Gibson’s Haven Hamilton), and even terrible songs (like the ones performed by Gwen Welles’ heartbreakingly naive Sueleen Gay). Similarly, NASHVILLE alternates between a number of tones, ranging from poignant to sardonic to bitter to menacing. Altman creates the impression that he’s discovering the movie as it goes along, which is fitting, given how it was shot. Screenwriter Joan Tewkesbury created characters and situations for the film, but per Altman’s instruction, wrote very little dialogue; that was left to the actors, whom Altman directed to improvise as much as possible. As Altman put it, “We would stage events and then film the events,” resulting in a fiction film that has the look and feel of a documentary. In one way, NASHVILLE is a documentary about post-60s political disillusion in America—one significant through line comes in the form of campaign speeches by an erstwhile third-party presidential candidate named Hal Philip Walker, who roams the city in a tour bus, blasting calls for political upheaval. The movie ends at a Walker campaign rally that goes catastrophically wrong, then regains ground through the giant sing-along of another Carradine-penned number that would seem to contradict the spirit of liberty that’s run through the epic poem that preceded it. For even a few minutes after the credits end, the song’s haunting refrain repeats: “You may say that I ain’t free, but it don’t worry me.” (1975, 160 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]
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Robert Altman's 3 WOMEN (US)
Wednesday, 6pm
Inspired by a dream, Robert Altman made a film that can only be explained using dream logic. Pinky (Sissy Spacek) starts out as a young, naive girl new to a bleak desert California outpost. She starts a job at a spa for seniors where she meets Millie (Shelly Duvall) and quickly attaches herself to her in an unhealthy way. They become roommates at a rundown apartment complex run by a sleazy former movie cowboy and his wife, Willie (Janice Rule), who’s pregnant and wanders around somnambulantly, painting mythological murals around the property. Each of the women is visually associated with a color at the beginning—Pinky’s red, Millie’s yellow, Willie’s blue. But colors, moods, even entire identities shift and switch as things go on. I’ve seen this film three or four times and fall under its trance/spell every time. Unencumbered by the constraints of somebody else’s screenplay, as he often was in much of his other work, Altman can free-associate dialogue and not worry at all about making narrative sense. There are resonances with films like Bunuel’s THAT OBSCURE OBJECT OF DESIRE (1977) and Polanski’s ROSEMARY’S BABY (1968) in the ways that male directors reckoned with the changing roles of women in contemporary society, but Altman’s take is more abstract and poetic. Still, it’s very much a man’s point of view that informs this almost entirely female-centric film. There’s an added interest to watching it now during another time of societal change in terms of gender roles. Or, you can just let its slippery vibe carry you off into the desert where these women may still be mutating into and out of one another to this day. (1977, 124 min, DCP Digital) [Dmitry Samarov]
Ayoka Chenzira's ALMA'S RAINBOW (US)
Museum of Contemporary Art – Saturday, 2pm
While all Black filmmakers need more recognition, independent producer, director, and animator Ayoka Chenzira has been particularly in need of rediscovery. Visual media have been made richer by her focus on developing stories of Black life and educating the next generation of Black filmmakers, including her daughter HaJ, her collaborator on HERadventure, an online, interactive fantasy film posted on Chenzira’s website and YouTube channel. Now, Academy Film Archive, The Film Foundation, and Milestone Films have produced a 4K restoration of her only feature film, ALMA’S RAINBOW, in which a teenage girl, her mother, and her aunt all come of age in different ways. Rainbow Gold (Victoria Gabrielle Platt) is a tomboy whose hip-hop dance crew comes apart as her two male partners become more interested in chasing girls than in rehearsing. Her mother, Alma (Kim Weston-Moran), gave up her sister singing act to make a living for the two of them by opening a beauty salon in the Brooklyn home she inherited from their mother. On the tenth anniversary of the founding of Alma’s salon, her long-absent sister, Ruby (Mizan Nunes Kirby), returns. Rainbow is fascinated with her flamboyant, larger-than-life aunt and hopes to follow in her footsteps as a singer-dancer, setting up a clash between Ruby and Alma, who wants Rainbow to seek a secure future. ALMA’S RAINBOW is itself a festive rainbow of color and community, loaded with discrete scenes loaded with humor and humanity. The beauty salon (Chenzira has spent large chunks of her creative life making films about hair) is the wonderful gathering place for the neighborhood women, all of whom are deeply involved in getting the all-business Alma together with Blue (Lee Dobson), a handyman who clearly is sweet on her. Another plot point is Alma’s work for William B. Underdo III (Sydney Best), the local undertaker who funded her business and would like more than a professional relationship with her. His mint-condition classic car says so much about his character as a respectable older man who, like Alma, just needs to let his hair down. The one character who has no trouble letting loose, Ruby, provides the manic energy that shakes up the Golds’ straitened life while revealing her almost desperate restlessness. Her flamboyant costumes contrast the darkly rich wood and traditional furnishings of Alma’s home and the funeral home where a smitten Underdo allows her to perform “Beautiful Blackness in the Sky,” a rather morbid song written by Chenzira, for her family that is a uniquely weird experience. The excellent score by Jean-Paul Bourelly mixes jazz and contemporary sounds in much the same way that cinematographer Ronald K. Gray intersperses sexy dream sequences and black-and-white memories with the bright, crisp present. In the end, all of the Gold women confront themselves and their desires for a truly satisfying multigenerational coming-of-age story. Screening as part of the Sisters in Cinema series, the Black Women’s Film Canon. Followed by a conversation between Chenzira and Jacqueline Stewart. (1994, 85 min, DCP Digital) [Marilyn Ferdinand]
Louise Weard’s CASTRATION MOVIE (US)
Music Box Theatre – Wednesday, 7pm
It wouldn’t be difficult to map the lineage of filmmakers whose fingerprints are all over CASTRATION MOVIE, the epic, multi-part cinematic brainchild of director Louise Weard. Equal parts Jacques Rivette, Richard Linklater, Jean Eustache, and Claudia Weill, Weard’s commitment to an artistic atmosphere steeped in unabashed truth and realism is admirable and refreshing in an era of overwhelming manufactured cinema. All the more admirable, too, is her commitment to the project’s noted maximalism, this four-hour-plus feature being just the first half of Weard’s ongoing saga, with the second half promising (threatening?) to be at least six hours, the combined opus looking to challenge the likes of OUT 1 (1971) and LA ROUE (1923) in overall filmic girth. But it feels unfair to keep looking to the past to praise Weard’s work, as she has succeeded in crafting something new and inimitable and singular, a trans epic that oscillates between overt doomerism and abject, heartfelt compassion. Split up into two chapters, the film opens with “Incel Superman,” an aggressively heterosexual falling-out-of-love story concerning a young soon-to-be-incel named Turner (Noah Baker), setting up the film’s visual language alongside its exploration and deconstruction of gender dynamics. Shot entirely on digital camcorders, Weard’s epic is as low-fi as they come, most scenes shot entirely in single takes, feeling as if a random passerby pulled out a camera and recorded each moment. Further blurring these the lines of truth and fiction are the myriad moments of unsimulated sexual acts throughout, the film littered with oral sex, masturbation, and characters getting pissed on. The main participant in these acts is Michaela “Traps” Sinclair (played by Weard herself), a trans sex worker with a heart of gold and a mouth of brimstone, who acts as the main protagonist of the film’s second chapter “Traps Swan Princess. Traps surrounds herself with fellow queer miscreants (Magda Baker, a gorgeously heartfelt Aoife Josie Clements), chaotic drug peddlers (the hilarious trio of Cricket Arrison, Vera Drew, and Alice Maio Mackay) and various clients who run the gamut of genuine emotional interest. CASTRATION MOVIE is, above all else, honest; it’s honest about how nasty its characters can be to each other, honest about the joy and mundanity of sex work, and honest about how equally joyous and maddening the world can be for working-class queer people. Amidst the grainy, shaky digital cinematography of the film sit images that immediately grab your attention, of characters giving themselves hormone injections, staring out into snowy landscapes in the aftermath of receiving bad news, of broken men staring into the darkness wondering why the world hasn’t given them everything they think they deserve. Perhaps this is most concise way to convey the film’s dueling hearts; alongside the film’s empathetic subtitle, “The Fear of Having No One to Hold at the End of the World,” CASTRATION MOVIE opens with an immortal Norm MacDonald quotation, “Now this might strike some viewers as harsh, but I believe everyone involved in this story should die.” I couldn’t think of a better way to enter Weard’s magnificent world. (2024, 275 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Kaye]
📽️ ALSO RECOMMENDED
Abbas Kiarostami's WHERE IS THE FRIEND'S HOUSE? (Iran)
Comfort Film at Comfort Station (2579 N. Milwaukee Ave.) – Wednesday, 8pm
Abbas Kiarostami's WHERE IS THE FRIEND'S HOUSE? is compact in its run-time and narrative range—it's a brief film with few characters and little narrative complexity—but is luxuriant with its poetry, cinematic inventiveness, and grace. The story is simple. Eight-year-old Mohamed keeps forgetting his school notebook, and if he forgets it again the schoolteacher will have him expelled. Our humble hero, Ahmed, accidentally takes Monhamed's notebook after class and has to journey to return the book, facing troubles from the terrain and unsympathetic adults. The little visual and narrative rhymes that pop up throughout the film are typified in the first moment of the film. For many mysterious minutes, the films credits roll over the swinging worn-blue door of the schoolhouse, a little later a handyman installing new doors provides the most frustrating and insensitive conflict for the young Ahmed, then a blue door returns to give Ahmed hope that he has found the right house, and during a nighttime odyssey through the neighboring town those new doors create a beautiful nocturnal light-show on the walls of the strange town. The modest door imagery is heightened with poetic simplicity, and an equally modest shoe is imbued with comedic potential. Ahmed is criticized for his shoes by his exasperated grandmother; he has a bit of naive slapstick getting the shoes on and off throughout, and late in the film one of the kindly adults he encounters is granted a moment of beautifully framed Chaplinesque action as he takes off his shoes to go upstairs. The child's viewpoint is privileged throughout the film, as adults become disembodied behind laundry and mules and brush. All of Kiarostami's considerable strengths are here—getting compelling work from nonprofessional actors, achingly gorgeous and striking landscapes—to create a plainspoken and undeniable masterpiece. Co-presented by Independent Labor Club Chicago. (1987, 84 min, Digital Projection) [Josh B. Mabe]
Constance Tsang’s BLUE SUN PALACE (US)
FACETS – Sunday, 5:30pm
Filmed almost entirely indoors and in tight medium shots, BLUE SUN PALACE is a markedly claustrophobic movie. Writer-director Constance Tsang, making her feature debut, denies the spectator views of the city, or even the neighborhood, the characters inhabit, despite the fact that her film takes place in Flushing Chinatown, a rapidly growing (and presumably bustling) community in Queens, New York. This dichotomy between setting and formal approach does a lot in the way of characterization, allowing Tsang to dive into her subjects’ lives without having to provide much explicit exposition. The viewer senses right away the characters’ disconnect from American culture—from much of anything, really, beyond their work, their apartments, and the people in the immediate vicinity. Amy and Didi are middle-aged women from Taiwan and mainland China, respectively, who work at a NYC massage parlor; Didi is also involved with Cheung, a Taiwanese emigré presently working in construction. Tsang presents the relationships between these three characters delicately and sympathetically, finding humanity where many other filmmakers would see nothing but dehumanization. She's aided to no end by Lee Kang-sheng, one of contemporary cinema’s great presences, who plays Cheung. For those who know Lee only from his work with Tsai Ming-liang, his performance in BLUE SUN PALACE may come as a shock; he speaks and moves his body much more than he ever does in Tsai’s films and installations. At the same time, Lee can’t help but maintain the opacity he’s kept up for decades with Tsai—no matter how much Tsang or Amy or Didi want to get to know Cheung, he remains in some ways unknowable. The viewer doesn’t even learn when or why Cheung came to the United States until halfway into the film, another sad reflection of how these characters’ value as cheap labor precedes their identities. (2024, 117 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]
Martin Ritt's HUD (US)
Doc Films (at the University of Chicago) – Thursday, 4pm
A sardonic, hard-drinking anti-hero, Paul Newman's Hud Bannon is both lamentable and irresistible. Based on Larry McMurtry's first novel Horsemen, Pass By, HUD is a steamy take on a male melodrama that pits Hud, his father Homer, and his impressionable nephew Lonnie in a family conflict where nothing less than the values of the next generation are at stake. Homer, an honorable cattleman nearing the end of his life, discovers a possible devastating outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease among his stock. Homer wants to abide by the law; Hud wants to do everything but; Lonnie is caught between his father figure and the rebel he admires. Patricia Neal delivers an equally compelling (and Oscar-winning) performance as Alma, the sultry though world-weary maid who confounds Hud, rebuffing his so-called charm. Hud is something of a filmic brother to Frank Sinatra's Dave Hirsch in SOME CAME RUNNING: both have no regard for people or rules, both are incompatible with their surroundings, and both ultimately can never be truly happy. And like SOME CAME RUNNING, HUD is set in the recent past of a postwar small town that appears static—see the quaint Kiwanis Club fair—but where its inhabitants are constantly evolving. Shot in black and white, the film evokes a tempered nostalgia for a grittier but simpler West. As David Kehr put it, the film puts "a little too much dust in the dust bowl," but it is nonetheless effective in drawing a stark contrast between rudderless Hud and his principled father; where the west was and where it is going. Screening as part of the Neo-Westerns of the ’50s and ’60s series. (1963, 112 min, 35mm) [Brian Welesko]
Jia Zhang-ke’s CAUGHT BY THE TIDES (China)
Gene Siskel Film Center – See Venue website for showtimes
Jia Zhang-ke reflects on the last two and a half decades of Chinese history through the filter of his own work—the title seems to be referring to the tides of time itself. CAUGHT BY THE TIDES was assembled from mostly unseen footage that Jia shot for three of his earlier films: UNKNOWN PLEASURES (2002), STILL LIFE (2006), and ASH IS PUREST WHITE (2018). Using this material, Jia constructs a story about a woman (Zhao Tao, naturally) who spends much of the 21st century in search of her missing lover. Her journey takes her across the country and permits her to bear witness to various changes that modern China has experienced. The film hinges on her visit to the region that would become the Three Gorges Dam in the mid-2000s. As Jia showed in STILL LIFE, the area was completely demolished and the denizens were forcibly relocated to make way for the project; the filmmaker clearly sees the event as a telling moment in China’s history insofar as it marked the triumph of “progress” over concern for the citizenry. In this regard, Zhao’s quest represents an attempt to locate humanity amidst state concerns that threaten to overwhelm it entirely; she also suggests a tenacity that Jia seems to be saying is necessary to survive in this ever-shifting landscape. In one of the film’s most memorable shots, Zhao contends with a man determined to keep her on a parked bus, pushing her down every time she attempts to leave. The pattern repeats several times until the man finally lets her go, signaling a reprieve in Zhao’s torment and a rare occasion where the proverbial tide breaks for a determined swimmer. (2024, 111 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]
Joe Dante’s PIRANHA (US)
Alamo Drafthouse – Tuesday, 9:30pm
Towards the beginning of PIRANHA, our protagonist Maggie (Heather Menzies) is seen playing the Shark Jaws arcade game. Like the film, the game is also reflective of the popularity of Steven Spielberg’s seismic JAWS. Maggie is playing fervently, the screen quite visible. It’s a clever immediate acknowledgment of PIRANHA’s status as a JAWS rip-off, allowing the audience to smile and move on, enjoying this take for what it is; Spielberg himself appreciated this most among the many spoofs of his film. Instead of one big shark, what we have here is a gang of mutant stop-motion piranhas (done by visual effects legend Phil Tippett), an establishing of director Joe Dante’s love of lots of little guys on screen; this feature also feels a bit cyclical, as Dante’s later GREMLINS, produced by Spielberg, would spawn a plethora of imitations and sendups. But what really shines about PIRANHA is its tone, blending the B-movie with something deeper. This is in no small part due to John Sayles' script, which is both wacky and grounded. It’s also a hallmark of Dante who so often knows how to balance the cartoonish with real emotions. Maggie is exemplary of an off-kilter character who nonetheless is presented as real; this is true of the many storylines that intersect as the escaped killer piranha make their way through a resort area. Dante knows so well how to combine the unimaginable with the sincerity of normal, everyday living, and his charm as a director is how he never loses sight of either. Dante’s insightful engagement with the late 20th century cultural and political landscape is also already evident in PIRANHA, as he clearly recognizes that the horror of the unimaginable B-movie scenario isn’t all that far off. Screening as part of the Terror Tuesdays series. (1978, 94 min, DCP Digital) [Megan Fariello]
Wong Kar-wai's IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE (Hong Kong)
Music Box Theatre – See Venue website for showtimes
Taking place in 1960s Hong Kong or in the memory of 1960s Hong Kong—that city deemed too modern, many of the film's exteriors were shot in Bangkok, after all—Wong Kar-wai's film is a beautiful rumination on its title. Much has been made of IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE's restraint, and there is that: a couple, married to other people who are themselves having affairs, become intimate in every way but physical—save for slight, loaded gestures and tight spaces. The film is pregnant with the overwhelming feeling of infatuation, executed in a lusciousness that recalls something from a dream. But for every restraint there is a counterpoint in excess: Maggie Cheung's many gorgeous dresses are as flamboyant as they are confining; the musical score is both pitch-perfect and overwhelming, familiar and foreign; the cinematography is so rich and meticulous that its multitude of color is evocative of Douglas Sirk's melodramas. IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE has hit upon such acclaim because of its local particularity—a commemoration of sorts for Hong Kong's transfer of sovereignty that had not yet happened—as well as its thematic universality as a transnational melodrama. As characters move through Hong Kong, Singapore, the Philippines, Cambodia, and the film shifts forward and backward in time, we are reminded of the fluidity of borders, time, and memory. The moment is paramount, and Wong Kar-wai gives us a series of beautiful, sumptuous moments that we can live in forever. Preceded by Wong's 9-minute short IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE 2001. (2000, 98 min, DCP Digital) [Brian Welesko]
Spoiler Alert
Gene Siskel Film Center – See showtimes below
Henri-Georges Clouzot's DIABOLIQUE (France)
Saturday, 6pm
A once-shocking, influential thriller now more suited to killing a cold, rainy afternoon, DIABOLIQUE (LES DIABOLIQUES)—based on a 1952 Boileau-Narcejac novel—is somewhat equally popular with deeper-digging aficionados of Hitchcock (whom director Clouzot beat out for the screenplay rights) as well as feminist film theorists, who mined the (wholly subtextual) lesbian relationship between the two suburban boarding-school teachers (Simone Signoret and Clouzot's wife, Véra) who conspire to murder the headmaster with whom they are both involved (Paul Meurisse). It's worth observing how Clouzot's comparatively breezy genre-interpolation (from suspense, to supernatural horror, to twist-ending policier) was transformed by Hitchcock into films that could instead only be decrypted in psychoanalytic terms (e.g., THE BIRDS). Intriguingly bookended in Clouzot's filmography by the nail-biting classic WAGES OF FEAR (1953) and the hallucinatory/meditative MYSTERY OF PICASSO (1956), DIABOLIQUE is also notable for its third-act arrival of the retired police inspector Fichet (Charles Vanel), disheveled and disingenuous, whom Cine-Filers of a certain age will recognize as the template for Peter Falk's Lieutenant Columbo. (1955, 114 min, 35mm) [Michael Castelle]
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Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s SLUETH (US)
Tuesday, 7:45pm
Joseph L. Mankiewicz began his career as a sharp-witted writer in the Hollywood studio system, debuting with FAST COMPANY (1929), a title that ironically contrasts with his long, deliberate filmmaking journey. By 1936, he transitioned into producing, leaving his mark with polished fare like A CHRISTMAS CAROL (1938) and THE PHILADELPHIA STORY (1940). But it wasn’t until DRAGONWYCK (1946) that he stepped into the director’s chair, beginning a run of smart, literate films through the early 1970s. In that span, Mankiewicz helmed both critical darlings and costly misfires. CLEOPATRA (1963) nearly sank 20th Century Fox. Yet his reputation for verbal dexterity and theatrical precision endured in works like THE GHOST AND MRS. MUIR (1947), ALL ABOUT EVE (1950), and GUYS AND DOLLS (1955). His screenplays played like stage dramas: characters fencing with language, revealing motives and class through cadence and cunning. Dialogue, not spectacle, was his sword. Enter SLEUTH, his final and arguably most devilish film. Based on Anthony Shaffer’s Tony-winning play and adapted for the screen by Shaffer himself, the film marries Mankiewicz’s love of theatricality with Shaffer’s obsession with duplicity and class-based mind games. Shaffer, also known for FRENZY (1972), THE WICKER MAN (1973), and DEATH ON THE NILE (1978), was a literary trickster with a flair for psychological intrigue. SLEUTH is a drawing-room thriller disguised as a chess match, with Laurence Olivier’s Andrew Wyke and Michael Caine’s Milo Tindle clashing over a woman, but more deeply over class, identity, and intellect. Wyke, a wealthy crime novelist, invites Tindle—his wife’s lover and a working-class hairdresser—into his baroque manor under the guise of offering his blessing. But from the moment Tindle must navigate a literal hedge maze to reach the house, we know we’re in metaphorical territory. Wyke proposes a fake burglary: Tindle will steal his wife’s jewels so both men can be free of her. Tindle, perhaps too eager, dons a clown mask and oversized shoes underscoring the humiliation built into Wyke’s game. And it is only the first. The pleasure of SLEUTH lies in watching Olivier and Caine tango through escalating psychological trials; they are written as intellectual gladiators sparring in a hall of mirrors. The estate itself is a character: filled with puzzles, chessboards, mechanical toys, and secret compartments, it reminds us constantly that manipulation is the point. Mankiewicz and Shaffer trade a traditional three-act structure for a trilogy of games, each raising the stakes until only one man remains. It’s Agatha Christie by way of 12 ANGRY MEN (1957), a single location where character’s manners are replaced by malice, and every smile sharpened. Mankiewicz directs with elegance and theatrical bombast, grounding the artifice in rhythm and precision. Shaffer’s script bristles with irony and class satire, a parlor trick that becomes a war. As a finale to Mankiewicz’s storied career, SLEUTH earned him a Best Director nomination, alongside Best Actor nods for both stars. It’s a brainy, baroque swan song that is clever without smugness and theatrical without excess. Just when you think you’ve solved it, the film resets the board. Because in SLEUTH, as in life, the real sin is underestimating your opponent… especially when he’s got a pair of clown shoes. (1972, 138 min, DCP Digital) [Shaun Huhn]
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Robert Weine's THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI (Germany/Silent)
Thursday, 6pm
THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI is the definitive German Expressionist film, one in which all the elements of the mise-en-scene (lighting, set design, costume design, makeup, props, the movement of figures within the frame, etc.) have been deliberately distorted and exaggerated for expressive purposes. The end result, a view of the world as seen through the eyes of a madman, single-handedly inaugurated Expressionism in the movies in 1920, a movement that would then go on to dominate German cinema screens for most of the rest of the decade. No mere museum piece, the influence of THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI is happily still very much with us today (Martin Scorsese's SHUTTER ISLAND, John Carpenter's THE WARD, and Tim Burton's entire career would be unthinkable without it), and if you care at all about film history then you need to see this. Long seen only in faded, scratched and often incomplete prints, this new digital restoration—based on the original camera negative—runs 75 minutes and renders a ridiculous amount of never-before-seen detail in the film's striking visual design, including even paint brush strokes on the intentionally artificial-looking sets that surround the actors. (The first reel of the camera negative is missing so note how the image quality makes a leap around the 10-minute mark from looking merely excellent to looking as if it were shot yesterday.) (1920, 75 min, DCP Digital) [Michael Glover Smith]
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Also screening as part of the Spoiler Alert series is Pedro Almodóvar’s 2011 film THE SKIN I LIVE IN (120 min, DCP Digital) on Saturday at 8:15pm and Billy Wilder’s 1957 film WITNESS FOR THE PROSECUTION (116 min, DCP Digital) on Sunday at 2pm.
Jim Abrahams, David Zucker, & Jerry Zucker's TOP SECRET! (US)
Davis Theater – Monday, 7pm
TOP SECRET! stands tall among movie spoofs because its narrative logic is as clever as any of the gags. It isn’t just a send-up of spy movies (as the purposely generic title promises), but also Elvis movies, prison escape movies, THE BLUE LAGOON (1980), and films about the French resistance, and a lot of the fun comes from seeing which title or genre is coming up next for parody. In his screen debut, Val Kilmer plays an Elvis-like singing sensation who falls, Hitchcock-style, into an espionage plot in East Germany that culminates in rescuing a scientist who’s being held captive by the state. The plot is essentially a framework for a smorgasbord of visual, verbal, and even sonic jokes that play out so rapidly that it doesn’t matter if some of them aren’t funny. Paul Thomas Anderson cited the film as an influence on INHERENT VICE (2014), noting how he drew from the Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker team’s tendency to stage gags in the margins or background of shots; others have likened the frames to MAD Magazine panels come to life. At its best, TOP SECRET! feels like the lowbrow equivalent of Jacques Tati’s PLAYTIME (1967) in that the filmmakers use every inch of the shot to advance their comic vision; just like Tati’s masterpiece took place in a dream city that could only exist in the movies, so too does TOP SECRET!, with its dreamlike flow between genres, conjure up a wholly cinematic space. Some of the gags might be described as more ambitious than funny, like the scene that was shot backwards or the underwater barroom fight at the movie’s climax, yet these retain the ingratiating, vaudeville-style showmanship that motors the whole thing. Screening as part of the Big Screen Classics series. (1984, 90 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]
Shoshannah Stern’s MARLEE MATLIN: NOT ALONE ANYMORE (US/Documentary)
Gene Siskel Film Center – See Venue website for showtimes
There aren’t many things about which my bedroom suburb of a hometown, Morton Grove, IL, can boast, but being the place Marlee Matlin originally called home is one of them. At 21, Matlin became the first deaf actor to win an Academy Award, which recognized her for her powerful lead performance as Sarah in CHILDREN OF A LESSER GOD (1986). That experience kindled her passionate and abusive romance with costar William Hurt, then 36 and, according to Matlin, jealous of her success. But we learn in the expansive, conversational documentary MARLEE MATLIN: NOT ALONE ANYMORE that Matlin accepts responsibility for her poor choices, which included not only Hurt, but also drugs and dysfunctional behavior. With a felt understanding of the person she is profiling, deaf director Shoshannah Stern helps us take a deep dive not only into Matlin’s career, but also the seminal role Matlin played almost by accident as an advocate for the deaf and the complicated world of growing up deaf in a hearing family that never really learned to sign. Matlin says repeatedly that she knew nothing about the life into which she entered, having no role models and no one to teach her some of the life lessons she needed to learn. Coming up in the tiny theatre community by and for deaf Chicagoans, Matlin was part of a nationwide search for someone to bring Sarah from the stage to the big screen. Her innate talent and presence were recognized instantly by Randa Haines, who directed LESSER GOD, and her Oscar promised to open doors for her. Alas, with few roles for deaf actors, Matlin scrambled for years to keep her career going largely with TV guest appearances. Aaron Sorkin, who is interviewed here, had to be convinced to cast her in The West Wing. We also learn how instrumental actor Henry Winkler was in discovering her in Chicago when she was 12 and encouraging her to stick with acting. Stern covers the civil rights crusades Matlin chose and that chose her. She was incensed when she couldn’t share one of her favorite films, THE WIZARD OF OZ (1939), with her children because it lacked captioning, leading her to lobby the US Congress on the issue in 1990; a year later, Congress voted to require all broadcast television to be captioned. She became a somewhat unwilling advocate in the movement that ended the hegemony of hearing presidents at Gallaudet University, the nation’s only dedicated institution of higher learning for the deaf. Troy Kotsur, who won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor in CODA (2021), says there is no him without Matlin. As this documentary makes clear, being the first of anything often is hard and lonely. For Matlin, Kotsur’s win 35 years after she made history means that she is not alone anymore. (2025, 96 min, DCP Digital) [Marilyn Ferdinand]
Joel & Ethan Coen's NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN (US)
Music Box Theatre – Sunday, 9pm and Monday, 4pm
America ain’t what it used to be, and what it used to be, ain’t what it used to be. NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN places us in West Texas during the 1980s, with the Coen brothers bringing us another facet of Americana. Presented as a mishmash of western and thriller, NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN investigates the myth of the quiet, heroic cowboy through a contemporary lens. Here, our cowboy Ed Tom Bell, played by Tommy Lee Jones, questions the only life he’s ever known as a descendent in a line of sheriffs. He sarcastically jests as he's reluctantly dragged into a new case, one that slowly starts to seem beyond his means. What is an aging small-town sheriff to do when the playing field continues to expand and the players themselves have grown more elusive and powerful? Shortly after investigating one of a multitude of crime scenes, Bell and another older sheriff amusingly suggest the issue is teens with green hair. They are right—something has certainly changed—but green-haired punks have and will always exist. Roger Deakins' cinematography depicts massive empty landscape shots of Texas at day and night, beautiful views we’ve come to associate with cowboys and their horses. Meanwhile, Carter Burwell's minimal score, in conjunction with great sound design, suggests a place that is altogether quiet, unsettling, and familiar. If the world itself hasn’t changed, then what has? Bell is a cowboy stuck in the void of an old world with new rules: no longer are disputes settled “mano a mano” but rather through proxy bloodshed. As a result, the law doesn’t come close to finding the real ring leader, and for that the average American will pay the price. The game has changed and the cowboys no longer show up to resolve conflicts but rather put red tape up afterwards. Perhaps at that point it’s just best for someone like Bell to give up the myth and wake up. (2007, 122 min, DCP Digital) [Drew Van Weelden]
Andrew DeYoung's FRIENDSHIP (US)
FACETS – See Venue website for showtimes
There are moments where you almost feel bad for Craig Waterman, the chaotically average protagonist of Andrew DeYoung’s FRIENDSHIP, as he plods through life, struggling to maintain any kind of stable relationship, be it platonic, professional, or romantic. The problem, however, is that Craig is played by Tim Robinson, one of contemporary comedy’s premier lunatics, a man known for yelling, growling, and stink-facing his way through any and all social interactions to the point of sheer absurdity. Robinson’s comedic voice has solidified over the past decade, primarily through his Netflix sketch-comedy series I Think You Should Leave, but FRIENDSHIP represents something sharper and sadder, a prime leading-man vehicle for Robinson that wholly succeeds by keeping one foot firmly planted in crushing reality and the other maniacally flailing for its life. Stemming from the similar strains of comedic DNA that birthed last year’s RAP WORLD (2024)—along with sharing some of the same cast members—DeYoung’s debut feature is a potent examination of toxic masculine culture’s erosion of traditional male friendship dynamics, a system of aggression and dominance that leaves men like Craig with nowhere to turn but inward, toward chaos and anxiety and constant, unending fear. Craig’s seemingly voluntary isolation is put to the test when he meets his new neighbor, Austin (Paul Rudd, making a triumphant return to theatrical comedy after years in the Marvel superhero desert), an effortlessly cool and collected weatherman who takes Craig under his nurturing wing of friendship by way of adventures like exploring the underground sewer system and foraging for mushrooms. Naturally, things go the way of FATAL ATTRACTION (1987) as Austin realizes that, to put it simply, Craig’s just not that great of a hang. The repercussions of this friend break-up prove fatal, as Craig’s feelings of inadequacy infect every facet of his pathetically mundane existence, most notably his relationship with his oft-neglected wife, Tami (a brilliantly committed Kate Mara, in what might otherwise be a thankless role). Whenever the overall structure of FRIENDSHIP threatens to become nothing more than loosely collected sketches, each scene evolves into a deeper dive into Craig, a character brought to life by Robinson’s gripping traits as a performer, his physical and emotional instincts birthing new expressions of comedic id and ego with every passing moment that oscillate between hilarious and nightmarish (of particular note, a mid-film sequence centered around a drug trip unlocks newfound vistas of comedic potential I never thought possible). It would be unfair to reveal the specifics of FRIENDSHIP’s final scenes, but DeYoung and co. let this tale of unrequited brotherhood lead to its logical conclusion, where loose ends tie up in the most rip-roaring fashion possible, and Craig—for better or worse—learns what it means to be a friend. (2025, 100 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Kaye]
📽️ ALSO SCREENING
âš« Alamo Drafthouse
Kim Ki-young’s 1977 film IO ISLAND (112 min, DCP Digital) screens Wednesday, 6:30pm, as part of the AGFADROME series.
Nikos Nikolaidis’ 1990 film SINGAPORE SLING (111 min, DCP Digital) screens Wednesday, 9:30pm, as part of the Weird Wednesday series. More info on all screenings here.
âš« Chicago Filmmakers
Ulrike Ottinger’s 1979 film TICKET OF NO RETURN (108 min, Digital Projection), rescheduled from several weeks ago, screens Friday, 7pm, in collaboration with the Goethe-Institute Chicago as part of the Berlin Nights series. More info here.
âš« Chicago Public Library
View all screenings taking place at Chicago Public Library branches here.
âš« Cinema/Chicago
Ernesto Contreras’ 2017 film I DREAM IN ANOTHER LANGUAGE (103 min, Digital Projection) screens Monday, 7pm, at the Chicago Cultural Center.
César Heredia’s 2021 film SALVADOR (87 min, Digital Projection) screens Wednesday, 6:30pm, at the Chicago History Museum. Both screenings are free to attend with registration, though I DREAM is currently standby only. More info on all screenings here.
âš« Doc Films (at the University of Chicago)
Craig Brewer's 2005 film HUSTLE & FLOW (116 min, DCP Digital) screens Friday, 4pm, as part of the Needle Drop: A Hip-Hop Film Sample series.
David Miller’s 1962 film LONELY ARE THE BRAVE (107 min, 35mm) screens Friday, 7pm, as part of the Neo-Westerns of the ’50s and ’60s series. More info on all screenings here.
âš« FACETS
Anime Club presents Masaaki Yuasa’s MIND GAME (103 min, Digital Projection) on Saturday, 8pm, preceded by a live City Pop DJ set by Van Paugam. More info here.
âš« Gene Siskel Film Center
The 2024 National Theatre Live production of Anton Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya, called Vanya, directed by Sam Yates and starring Andrew Scott, screens Saturday and Sunday at 2:15pm.
July’s Mystery Movie Monday takes place Monday at 6pm. More info on all screenings here.
âš« Music Box Theatre
It’s officially Music Box Garden Movies season! See Venue website for lineup and showtimes.
Luis Ortega’s 2024 film KILL THE JOCKEY (96 min, DCP Digital) begins screening and Wes Anderson’s 2025 film THE PHOENICIAN SCHEME (101 min, DCP Digital) continues. See Venue website for showtimes.
Crying at the Shed presents Cooper Raiff’s 2025 film HAL & HARPER (120 min, DCP Digital) on Friday, 9pm, followed by a conversation with Raiff and a solo musical performance by Lomelda.
A special preview screening of Ari Aster’s 2025 film EDDINGTON (148 min, DCP Digital) takes place at 7pm, with Aster in person. Note that this screening is sold out.
Jay Roach’s 1997 film AUSTIN POWERS: INTERNATIONAL MAN OF MYSTERY (89 min, 35mm) screens Saturday, 11:30pm, preceded by a live performance of Dr. Evil vs. Cinema: Live From The Evil Lair, directed by Matt Carr.
Stacey and Michael's Showcase of Shorts X screens Wednesday at 7pm.
The opening night screening of the 2025 Cinema Femme Short Film Fest takes place Thursday at 7pm, preceded by an opening night welcome reception at 6pm and followed by an opening night party. More info on all screenings and events here.
âš« Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts (915 E. 60th St.)
“The Act of Recording is an Act of Love: The South Side Home Movie Project” exhibition is on display in the Gallery through Sunday, August 24.
In the Screening Room, Maya Angelou’s 1998 film DOWN IN THE DELTA (112 min, Digital Projection) screens Sunday, 1pm, as part of the Mothering on Screen: Film + Discussion Series.
Also, a singalong of Bill Condon’s 2006 film DREAMGIRLS (130 min, Digital Projection) takes place Thursday, 4:30pm, as part of LCCA Sounds of Summer. More info on all screenings and events here.
âš« VDB TV (Virtual)
Selections from the Phil Morton Memorial Research Archive, in conjunction with the announcement of the Phil Morton Memorial Research Archive Collection, streams free on VDB TV. More info here.
CINE-LIST: June 11, 2025 - July 17, 2025
MANAGING EDITORS // Ben and Kat Sachs
CONTRIBUTORS // Brendan Boyle, Michael Castelle, Megan Fariello, Marilyn Ferdinand, Shaun Huhn, Ben Kaye, Josh B. Mabe, Dmitry Samarov, Michael Glover Smith, Martin Stainthorp, Drew Van Weelden, Brian Welesko