:: FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 28 - THURSDAY, DECEMBER 4 ::

📽️ CRUCIAL VIEWING

Masaki Kobayashi’s KWAIDAN (Japan)

Chicago Film Society at the Music Box Theatre – Monday, 7pm

Masaki Kobayashi was best known as a director of social issue dramas (THE THICK-WALLED ROOM, BLACK RIVER, THE HUMAN CONDITION) and social issue dramas masquerading as samurai films (HARAKIRI, SAMURAI REBELLION), which makes KWAIDAN an outlier in his career. The film is a quartet of ghost stories set in the distant past, each of them adapted from early 20th-century writings by a Greek-Irish émigré named Lafcadio Hearn (who became a Japanese citizen and adopted the name Yakumo Koizumi) and all of them presented in an intricate, deliberately non-naturalistic style. The most expensive Japanese production to date at the time of its making, KWAIDAN was shot, in TohoScope and rapturous color, on vast soundstages constructed inside two adjoining airplane hangars; the film suggests the influence of Kobayashi’s mentor Keisuke Kinoshita’s THE BALLAD OF NARAYAMA (1958) in its use of beautiful albeit artificial-looking sets to reflect our emotional distance from the past. That distance is twofold here, as Geoffrey O’Brien noted in his 2015 essay for the Criterion Collection. “Hearn’s books… were calculated to appeal to a Western appetite for the mysteries of ‘ghostly Japan’; but they were also, it might be supposed, to some degree exotic to a Japanese readership then in the midst of the modernizing Meiji period. That era too, in light of all the cataclysms that followed, had by 1964 acquired its own patina of nostalgic myth. Myth within myth, then, exoticism within exoticism…” The film is eerie in the same way as Harry Nilsson’s underrated album A Little Touch of Schmilsson in the Night (1973), which employed state-of-the-art technology to render Tin Pan Alley songs more pristine and cinematic than they ever sounded to begin with. While rarely out-and-out frightening, KWAIDAN is nonetheless suffused with an unplaceable strangeness that amplifies whatever dread the characters are feeling. The last and shortest episode, “In a Cup of Tea,” serves as a Rosetta Stone for the rest of the film, with its frame narrative of a Meiji-era author who becomes haunted by his own story; however, each of the three preceding chapters would still be enveloping without it. The first story, “The Black Hair,” feels like a widescreen update on one of the narrative threads from Mizoguchi’s UGETSU (1953), as a samurai abandons his poor but dutiful wife to marry the daughter of a wealthy feudal lord, only to find himself haunted (first figuratively, then literally) by the woman he left behind. That tale is followed by “The Woman of the Snow,” which shows what happens when a woodcutter makes a deal for his life with a snow spirit. “Hoichi the Earless,” the third and longest story, begins with a flashback to a great sea battle in the 12th century, then shifts focus to a blind monk a few centuries later who’s called to perform for the ghosts of warriors who died in that skirmish. Each of the three longer stories trades in folk wisdom and stark morality, which Kobayashi defamiliarizes through his mix of theatrical and cinematic devices. Special mention also should be made to Toru Takemitsu’s inventive music and sound effects, which create an otherworldly atmosphere through minimal means. Please note that the version screening is the 161-minute “international cut,” not the 183-minute original version that is available for home viewing. Preceded by Xander Marro’s 2005 short film L’EYE (3 min, 16mm). (1964, 161 min, 35mm) [Ben Sachs]

Harmony Korine's GUMMO (US)

Music Box Theatre – Tuesday, 7:15pm

Harmony Korine was just 22 years old when he made GUMMO, and the movie just spews youthful energy. The writer-director tries out all sorts of styles and techniques—Werner Herzog is clearly an influence, but so are vaudeville comedy and skateboarding videos—resulting in exciting shifts in tone that recall the 1960s films of Jean-Luc Godard. The film is alternately crass and tender, exploitive and loving; it revels in the sorts of contradictions that only cinema can engender. Certain images have stayed in my memory for decades: the stone-faced little boy eating spaghetti in a bathtub filled with green water; the Black midget wearing a Hatikva T-shirt cheering on an impromptu fight club; a shirtless boy with cloth bunny ears loitering on an expressway overpass. These images are all weird and sad and distinctly middle-American; indeed, the movie showcases a certain homegrown, regional decay one rarely sees outside of exploitation fare. Shot in derelict portions of Nashville, Tennessee (but set in post-tornado Xenia, Ohio), GUMMO evokes, to paraphrase Lisa Alspector’s rave review in the Chicago Reader, a climate in which there’s nothing to do except break social taboos. The preteen characters roam the streets, killing cats and sniffing glue; one man pimps out his developmentally disabled wife to two boys; a teenage girl dreams of becoming a stripper. Where the director’s sometime collaborator Larry Clark might adopt a sad, moralizing attitude toward such people, Korine throws a party with them—there’s a “let’s put on a show” quality to GUMMO that rivals the films of Busby Berkeley. Linda Manz, the indelible star of Malick’s DAYS OF HEAVEN and Hopper’s OUT OF THE BLUE, returned to movies for the first time in almost 20 years to play one of the boys’ affectionate, tap-dancing mom. She’s one of the few cast members with any professional experience—Korine found most of the players from his hometown and daytime TV talk shows—yet everyone onscreen seems to jive with the director’s celebratory attitude. The inventive cinematography is by Jean-Yves Escoffier, best known for his work with Leos Carax. 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 7pm. (1997, 89 min, 35mm) [Ben Sachs]

Abraham Polonsky’s TELL THEM WILLIE BOY IS HERE (US)

Siskel Film Center – Thursday, 6pm

Of Abraham Polonsky’s blacklisting in the early 50s and 20-year gap between his directorial debut, FORCE OF EVIL (1947)—considered by Andrew Sarris to be one of the great films of modern American cinema—and TELL THEM WILLIE BOY IS HERE, New York Times critic Roger Greenspun wrote that it was “perhaps the most wasteful injustice of the late 1940s Hollywood blacklisting” and subsequently “invested Polonsky with considerable exemplary glamour and saddled him with a reputation no director of a second film should have to justify.” He later goes on to call TELL THEM WILLIE BOY IS HERE “another one of the best American movies” à la Polonsky’s prodigal first effort, declaring that it “lives most brilliantly on a third level, not unrelated to the action or the allegory, but deeper, more mysterious, more fully felt. I will not characterize this level except to note that it had to do with giving personal signs and signals, and that it informs every major gesture and image of the movie.” I quote Greenspun’s review at length because, coming across it, I felt it perfectly captured my own, ambivalent feelings about the film, which expresses a profound subtlety about the political implications of the story at hand. I may not feel about it quite the same way, but I acknowledge the convictions that might inspire such sentiments. An adaptation of Harry Lawton’s 1960 book Willie Boy: A Desert Manhunt, which tells the real-life story of Willie Boy, a Chemehuevi–Paiute Native American who evaded capture by a posse of white men for over 500 miles in the Coachella valley in 1909. It’s been called  “the last great manhunt of the West.” The New Jersey-born Robert Blake, who began his career as a child star playing a Native American boy, Little Beaver, in the RED RYDER series, plays Willie; similarly to the story as it occurred in real life, he goes on the run with his paramour Lola (Katherine Ross), after he accidentally kills her father during a scuffle (in real life it’s unknown whether or not it was provoked), which in their culture means they’re now wed. Robert Redford plays the town’s sheriff; he’s torn on one side by the mythos of his father, a prolific killer of Native Americans, and the other by a tortured ambivalence toward them. Not quite acceptance, say, but rather a disinterest for the animosity that drove his father and his father’s friend, who’s on the hunt with Redford’s Cooper and takes every opportunity to boast of their murderous exploits way back when. Cooper’s perspective is also impacted by the well-educated superintendent of the reservation, played by Susan Clark, with whom he’s having a torrid affair driven as much by animosity as lust. Compounding Willie’s situation in the film (as well as in real life) is a visit to the region from President Taft, which made the manhunt national news. The film’s politics are understated; Willie’s is a fate that feels predestined, the result of bigotry and misjudgment that he couldn’t possibly rationalize his way out of. Polonsky may have felt a kinship with such material for obvious reasons—there’s also the subversion of a genre which, at least superficially, represented much of what Polonsky resisted through his radical politics. Even Clark’s superintendent, well-meaning as she is well-educated, is representative of an emerging liberalism that doesn’t fully contend with the past or the present, an impasse with which Polonsky was uniquely familiar. (1969, 98 min, 35mm) [Kat Sachs]

Peter Medak’s THE CHANGELING (US)

Alamo Drafthouse – Tuesday, 9:30pm

Peter Medak fled a collapsing world and spent his life studying power with the wary eyes of an exile. Born in Budapest and shaped by the 1956 uprising, he escaped a brutal regime but carried with him a lifelong distrust of institutions and wealth. That perspective runs like a dark current through his films—from the aristocratic rot of THE RULING CLASS (1971) to the criminal dynasties of THE KRAYS—and flows cleanly into THE CHANGELING, where the shadow of a powerful senator looms over the story. The script by Russell Hunter, William Gray, and Diana Maddox takes its spine from Hunter’s own experience in the late 1960s. While renting the Henry Treat Rogers Mansion near Denver’s Cheesman Park, he discovered an abandoned attic, a child’s diary, and a striped rubber ball. What followed was a pattern of disturbances he believed connected to an ill boy locked away and replaced with a healthy child adopted from an orphanage, his body buried near a former maid’s home. Though no official records confirmed the tale, the setting itself carried its own unearthed history. Cheesman Park was built atop a poorly exhumed cemetery, its bodies mishandled for political expediency. Between the scandal in 1893 and continued discoveries of remains as late as 2010, an estimated 5,000 bodies remain beneath the manicured lawns. Medak seizes on that metaphor: abandoned graves and abandoned children echo one another as casualties of the powerful burying their mistakes. Hunter’s séance transcript—insisted to be copied word-for-word—becomes one of the film’s most chilling scenes, played not for shock but as fragile testimony from a child in pain. Medak layers the film with mourning, framing sorrow itself as a haunting. The ghost of young Joseph Carmichael becomes both a restless witness demanding truth and a mirror for George C. Scott’s John Russell, a man locked inside his own emotional afterlife. Cinematographer John Coquillon, known for his work with Sam Peckinpah, uses dollies, cranes, and a panaglide to create constant motion within a house that should feel still. With the rare 17mm lens built for Stanley Kubrick, he and Medak stretch corridors into looming cathedrals and lift ceilings to impossible heights. The house becomes a mausoleum that could swallow Russell or guide him toward release. Russell’s story begins with brutal simplicity: a broken-down station wagon, a family pushing together, and a sudden collision that ends his former life. The freeze-frame that concludes the sequence burns itself into his memory. When he returns to composing and teaching, the historical society finds him a cavernous mansion—a place he wanders like Joseph, each a ghost searching for meaning. Scott’s performance redefines his screen persona. Gone is the volcanic intensity of PATTON (1970) or the manic charge of DR. STRANGELOVE (1964). Here his fury simmers beneath grief’s weight. Working alongside his wife, Trish Van Devere, Scott allows vulnerability to soften his edges, most famously in the scene of him weeping in bed. He refuses the standard trappings of horror performance: no shrieks, no frantic escapes. A man who has watched his family die has little fear left for slamming doors. He meets the supernatural with exhausted logic, anger, curiosity, and sorrow. Every disturbance becomes a reopened wound. The film shapes the haunting as an investigation. The house’s moans, the locked attic hidden by a secret door, and the trembling music box are breadcrumbs laid by Joseph, a child murdered to preserve a legacy. Scott’s quiet resolve turns the mansion into a courtroom where the past testifies. When the senator is confronted with the truth, he cannot withstand it. By the end, both Joseph and Russell appear released from their purgatory, the music box’s melody trailing through the credits like history insisting it will not stay buried. Screening as part of the Terror Tuesdays series. (1980, 106 min, DCP Digital) [Shaun Huhn]

Zhang Yimou & Yang Fengling’s JU DOU (China/Japan)

Siskel Film Center – See Venue website for showtimes

JU DOU was shot in Technicolor long after the process was discontinued in the United States, and the filmmakers take full advantage of it, making color an integral part of the film. The story takes place in a dye works, so the action is punctuated with literal pools of color; in critical moments, the characters are practically enveloped by richly hued fabrics. Nowhere does this device feel more purposeful than in the film’s first love scene, when the consummation of an illicit romance seems to bring about the falling of a long, deep red roll of fabric from the ceiling into a dye pit. Because of the film’s correlation between color and passion, that romance is telegraphed from the start of JU DOU, when the title character is sold into marriage with the older widower who owns the dye works. Ju Dou quickly discovers that her new husband is impotent and abusive, which leads her to seek affection from her husband’s nephew from a previous marriage. The ensuing tension recalls The Postman Always Rings Twice, even if the narrative follows a different course, showing what happens after Ju Dou and her lover conceive a child out of wedlock. The results, befitting a film about uncontrollable passion, are highly operatic, foreshadowing Zhang Yimou’s later work as a director of operas. Indeed, the whole of JU DOU exhibits a lushness that exemplifies Zhang’s contribution to the Fifth Generation of Chinese filmmakers, not only in its use of color and heightened emotion, but in its sumptuous mise-en-scène, which evokes a romantic perspective on the 1920s setting. The film also advances an amorous view of star Gong Li, with whom Zhang was involved in a romantic relationship at the time of its making. The couple had been together starting with the making of Zhang’s debut feature, RED SORGHUM (1987), and would remain an item until they collaborated on SHANGHAI TRIAD (1995). One can sense the director’s feelings for his star in her numerous closeups and in the richness and resilience of her character; in this regard, JU DOU recalls the collaborations between Josef von Sternberg and Marlene Dietrich. (1990, 95 min, New 4K DCP Digital Restoration) [Ben Sachs]

Yuen Woo-ping’s DREADNAUGHT (Hong Kong)

Music Box Theatre – Friday, 11:30 pm and Monday, 4pm

In DREADNAUGHT, the murderous White Tiger (Yuen Shun-yee) is out for revenge for the death of his wife, played in a brief performance by Yuen Qiu, who, decades later, would go on to play the iconic Landlady in KUNG FU HUSTLE (2004). Mousy (Yuen Biao), a nervous laundry worker, finds himself in the middle of a murder mystery, navigating a series of mistaken identities on his journey to face White Tiger. In a role he played dozens of times throughout his career beginning in the 1940s, Kwan Tak-hing also appears as the legendary Wong Fei-hung: folk hero, martial arts master, and doctor. Wong is among the many colorful characters that fill DREADNAUGHT, creating a distinctively a lived-in feel to the film’s setting. The film combines kinetic camera movements and amusing edits with exciting physical performances; the comedic elements never overshadow the impressiveness of the martial arts, instead bolstering the effectiveness of each. The stand-out set pieces, including a noteworthy laundry sequence and a battle in a back alley, exemplify director Yuen Woo-ping’s ingenious use of not just space but everyday objects and even costuming to create energizing unpredictability. That unpredictability is a boon to both comedy and choreography, and DREADNAUGHT demonstrates the absolute joy in watching something so carefully crafted and yet completely surprising. The many connections to the likewise genre-melding KUNG FU HUSTLE, which was also choreographed by director Yuen, suggest not simply the significant influence of the earlier film, but an involved history of martial arts comedies, deserving of more consideration. Screening as part of the Merciless Mayhem: Martial Arts Midnights & Matinees series. (1981, 95 min, 35mm) [Megan Fariello]

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Robert Aldrich’s AUTUMN LEAVES (US)

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

“He’s giving you the bum’s rush,” I screamed, as Millie Wetherby (Joan Crawford) agreed to marry much-younger Burt Hanson (Cliff Robertson) after a whirlwind courtship. Did she listen? Not a chance! Millie, a never-married freelance typist in her 40s who gave up on love to care for her ailing father (Selmer Jackson), sees Burt as her one hope of escaping a future of loneliness and isolation. And sure enough, after a brief few weeks of happiness, Burt’s past and subsequent mental collapse plunge Millie into a nightmare she thought might come because of their age difference, but that came from a very different source. Welcome to AUTUMN LEAVES, Robert Aldrich’s one plunge into a woman’s film, undertaken so he could prove he was capable of more than the violent, bleak films with which he was associated. Aldrich, however, was handed a complex script by blacklisted screenwriters Jean Rouverol and Hugo Butler (fronted by Jack Jevne) that hopped across romance, film noir, and psychoanalytic melodrama. Aldrich ably handles the shifts in tone, but it is Joan Crawford who gives a career-best performance here. Millie’s work efficacy extolled by several satisfied customers represents a real source of pride for her, yet her lack of a social life means she spends most of her time at her typewriter to fill the void. A particularly effective scene comes when she attends a classical concert alone. Filmed as the lit center of an otherwise black screen, Millie flashes back to the moments when she sent her boyfriend away, despite the urgings of her father to forget about him. The stricken, mournful face Crawford presents is almost too much to bear; she reportedly brought Aldrich to tears, cementing their good working relationship after initial friction. She plays Millie’s caution exactly right, and her sensuous, delirious happiness after marrying Burt feels like floodgates opening. The plotline involving Burt’s father and ex-wife (Lorne Greene and Vera Miles), the source of Burt’s mental breakdown, has a noirish feel that doesn’t really pay off properly. But Robertson deftly suggests Burt’s strange impetuousness, and one violent outburst against Millie is truly frightening. It’s something that an Aldrich film ends on a happy note, but given the full-bodied characterization Crawford graces us with, it feels entirely realistic and earned. Bonus points for Nat King Cole’s classic rendition of the title song, “Autumn Leaves.” (1956, 107 min, DCP Digital) [Marilyn Ferdinand]

Wes Anderson’s THE PHOENICIAN SCHEME (US)

Siskel Film Center – Monday through Thursday, 8:15pm

After he spent a few features constructing elaborate narrative nesting dolls, THE PHOENICIAN SCHEME finds Wes Anderson returning to a relatively straightforward linear plot, albeit one that doesn’t abandon any of the thematic and aesthetic energy that have become his signature. Arguably more than any other contemporary American filmmaker, Anderson has been parodied and pilloried in online circles to a frustrating degree, be it by incurious generative-AI evangelists aping his style for odious tech demos, or by social media trolls baselessly accusing Anderson’s films of being derivative and repetitious, as if the very idea of an artist developing their own artistic footprint is reason enough for public ridicule. It’s all in the details, however, as one needn’t look past the production call sheet here to see how this film is a vast departure from Anderson's previous work; remarkably, THE PHOENICIAN SCHEME is the first live-action film in Anderson’s entire career that doesn’t feature Robert Yeoman as his director of photography. Here, Bruno Delbonnel occupies the role of cinematographer, and while it's not a vast departure from the palette of Anderson’s previous work, one wouldn’t be far off in noticing something slightly afoot in the visual methodology here. THE PHOENICIAN SCHEME is another hodgepodge of artistic influences that have seeped into Anderson’s brain, the grand vistas and cavernous painterly spaces calling to mind the works of Powell & Pressburger, the frequent tableaus of black-and-white religious imagery evoking memories of Luis Buñuel, and the entire energy of the film feeling most reminiscent of a dark and seedy Tintin graphic novel come to life. Delbonnel’s camera strobes and shakes and waits and wonders, the whims of the characters dictating the moods and rhythms of the frame. It must also be noted that—though never a completely dour filmmaker—THE PHOENICIAN SCHEME is easily Anderson’s funniest film in decades, each frame compact with verbal and visual humor, the movie’s menagerie of dastardly no-goodniks and political tyrants volleying daggers of the literal and metaphorical sense. As exciting as it is to see Anderson’s work continue to expand and contort in this period, it’s undeniable that, like any great filmmaker, his work is packed with frequent variations on the same themes, and his prominent fixation on fatherhood (or the lack thereof) is on full display here. Benicio del Toro’s Zsa-zsa Korda, amidst a grand labyrinthine plot of financial extortion and imperial economic planning, must come to terms with his blooming paternal relationship with his distant, religious daughter, Liesl (a scene-stealing Mia Threapleton), his long-held beliefs in capitalist domination and extortion not sitting so well with a loved one steeped in morality and humanity. The characters of THE PHOENICIAN SCHEME are trying to find meaning in something larger than themselves; is it Capitalism? Religion? Infrastructure? Something indescribable and unknowable? Anderson ties us in knots in his trademark charming and madcap fashion, his gargantuan ensemble cast filled with performance marvels from Michael Cera, Richard Ayoade, Jeffrey Wright, and Mathieu Amalric, with del Toro towering above them all, his self-assured performance of comic superiority a joy to witness, truthful to the goals of Anderson’s project, but—as ever, with Wes’ work—entirely new and entirely distinctive. (2025, 101 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Kaye]

Gene Saks' BAREFOOT IN THE PARK (US)

Siskel Film Center – Tuesday, 6pm

The relentless fluff and silliness of BAREFOOT IN THE PARK continues to satisfy over half a century since the premieres of the original Neil Simon Broadway play and subsequent film adaptation in 1967, although some of its jokes and gender roles may not have aged as well. Robert Redford starred in the original play as pragmatic and sarcastic lawyer Paul Bratter and reprised the role in the film. Director Gene Saks collaborated with Simon on this and other adaptations of Simon's plays, although none seem to have gelled quite like BAREFOOT IN THE PARK. Despite much of the action taking place inside a cramped studio apartment in Midtown Manhattan (For only $75 a month! What a steal!), the film airs out the claustrophobia that can ensue from play adaptations by throwing the characters on to a ferry, into a park, and even onto a rooftop ledge for a harrowing climax to the relationship drama. Jane Fonda plays Corie, a free spirit who falls in love with Paul and impulsively marries him, despite them seeming to be polar opposites. Fonda had recently seen comic success with CAT BALLOU (1965) and immediately followed BAREFOOT with BARBARELLA (1968), an even sillier camp classic. This trio marked her as an effervescent comic actress, but she pivoted later to drama and even founded a production company in the 1970s to build more complex roles, refusing to be pigeonholed as a comedian. Redford had starred in some television and Broadway before 1968, but BAREFOOT marked his major Hollywood debut. He also followed up this light comedy with a series of dramatic roles and lauded films that helped shape 1970s American cinema. Despite their gravitas in later films, Redford and Fonda both pepper even their most serious performances with light comic turns in many of those films that seem influenced by the witty repartee they exchange in Simon's screenplay, like Redford's playful bantering with Dustin Hoffman in ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN (1976) and Fonda's snide comments toward Michael Douglas in THE CHINA SYNDROME (1979). BAREFOOT IN THE PARK is rounded out with supporting roles by Hollywood legend Charles Boyer as Victor Velasco, a rakish and eccentric old man, and Mildred Natwick as Corie's reserved, widowed mother, also reprising her role in the Broadway play. Natwick was nominated for an Academy Award for her skillful, understated turn and bringing more dimension to the role than expected, given the fluffy script. Ultimately, BAREFOOT is a harmless and delightful comedy and a treat for fans of Fonda and Redford to witness perfect comic timing and slapstick shenanigans. Screening as part of Golden Boy: A Robert Redford Retrospective. (1967, 106 min, DCP Digital) [Alex Ensign]

Harry Kümel's DAUGHTERS OF DARKNESS (Belgium)

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

Belgian director Harry Kümel’s DAUGHTERS OF DARKNESS recycles the tropes of lesbian vampires in this stylish horror film based on the probably slanderous story of powerful noblewoman Elizabeth Báthory, a Hungarian countess born in the 16th century who purportedly used the blood of more than 600 murdered girls to maintain her youthful appearance. A luminous Delphine Seyrig portrays the elegant and seductive Báthory, who arrives with her companion (Andrea Rau) at a near-deserted hotel in a small town in Belgium where newlyweds Stefan (John Karlen) and Valerie (Danielle Ouimet) are staying after missing the mail boat to England. Immediately drawn to the beautiful Valerie, the countess books a suite next to the couple from the hotel clerk (Paul Esser) who mistakes her for the woman who stayed there 40 years before. That’s our first hint that Báthory may be an ageless vampire out to seduce another victim. Our second hint is a report of bloodless corpses in Bruges, which Stefan finds mesmerizing when he and Valerie take a day trip to the city in time to see another body hauled out of her home to a waiting ambulance. Kümel’s strongly atmospheric film depends on the charged mood it creates to gin up the dread. Karlen, perhaps best remembered as the Renfield-like character in the daytime TV series Dark Shadows, is as creepy as Seyrig is charming—both have a mean streak a century long. Kümel is coy about his film’s violence, preferring to shoot Stefan beating Valerie from a distance through a veiled window and eschewing graphic depictions of the deaths that occur with quick cuts and a bit of blood. So, too, his sex scenes are fairly short and discreet. For him, language is the vehicle of sexual excitement, as Stefan and the countess rapturously describe in detail the 16th century Elizabeth’s torture and murder of the girls whose blood she would bathe in. Rau hasn’t got much to do, and Ouimet is the usual blonde-haired target whose vulnerability is matched only by her stupidity. A strange phone call Stefan has with his mother is a weird surprise I won’t spoil, but the beating Valerie gets afterward put me in mind of a short story from Hubert Selby Jr.’s Last Exit to Brooklyn. Cinematographer Eduard van der Enden creates a beautiful color palette that emphasizes red and makes the most of the West Flanders landscape, especially during some ghoulish goings-on at a North Sea beach. Screening as part of the Ethical Vampire: The Moral Dilemma of Vampirism series. (1971, 100 min, DCP Digital) [Marilyn Ferdinand]

Terry Gilliam's BRAZIL (UK)

Alamo Drafthouse – Monday, 11:45am and 9:30pm & Tuesday, 12pm

Terry Gilliam and Sam Lowry—two impossible dreamers haplessly lashing out against the powers that be—are the twin heroes of BRAZIL, one behind the camera and the other before it. The behind-the-scenes narrative of this dystopian masterpiece has attained mythic status, with Gilliam locked in heated battle against Universal over their insistence on a more audience-friendly cut of the film, all while the fate of put-upon office drone Lowry (played with beleaguered bafflement by Jonathan Pryce) hangs in the balance. In fairness, it's not hard to see how a studio would look askance at the film before them. Gilliam takes his budget and constructs what is essentially just a child's blanket fort on the largest scale imaginable; a bureaucratic quagmire built of tubes and cardboard, at times dangerously close to coming apart at the seams. It's a world where instability is constantly threatening to undermine the tightly wound internal logic that governs everything, where loose cogs in the machine like Sam Lowry become threats simply because the system isn't wired to accommodate them. Under these conditions, there's a very thin line between getting imaginative and getting mad, so it's little wonder Gilliam followed a similar path to his protagonist. BRAZIL, among the most fantastically dark and detail-rich science fiction flicks ever, was—and remains—a visionary work worth fighting for. Screening as part of the Alamo Time Capsule 1985 series. (1985, 142 min, DCP Digital) [Tristan Johnson]

Joel Coen's FARGO (US)

The Davis Theater – Tuesday, 7pm

Inarguably pivotal in the Coen brothers’ oeuvre, FARGO is a midwestern fable. It’s not based on a true story, as the opening text claims, and only the first scene takes place in Fargo, North Dakota; it’s primarily set in Minnesota, which is fitting for a film about things never being exactly as they seem. It’s also about how evil isn’t always calculated, but often completely, hilariously inept—which doesn’t make it any less destructive. In desperate need of money, bungling car salesman Jerry Lundegaard (William H. Macy) hires two criminals (played with perfect bizarre chemistry by chatty Steve Buscemi and the mostly silent Peter Stormare) to kidnap his wife and petition his wealthy father-in-law for the ransom. It doesn’t go well, and after some violent mishaps, Brainerd police chief Marge Gunderson (Frances McDormand) becomes involved in solving the crimes. Seven-months pregnant Marge, who doesn’t appear on screen until more than 30 minutes in, stands out as a unique, impactful cinematic hero; we watch her slowly realize how mundanely insidious the world can be beyond her kind, no-nonsense demeanor. Well-known for its comedic juxtaposition of Minnesota nice accents and snow-covered landscapes with violence, FARGO is ultimately about Marge’s resilience to search for good in the world, despite the messy horrors she witnesses; her final scenes expressing this are heartbreakingly unassuming. Influential on the black comedy genre for decades after, the film’s best successor is the FX series of the same name. Inspired by FARGO and all the Coen brothers’ works, the anthology series excellently expands and complicates the film’s themes and its fascinating side characters. Screening as part of the Christmas, etc. series. (1996, 98 min, DCP Digital) [Megan Fariello]

Rodgers & Hammerstein's THE SOUND OF MUSIC Sing-A-Long

Music Box Theatre – See Venue website for showtimes

Of all the epic musicals to emerge from 1960s Hollywood, THE SOUND OF MUSIC is arguably the grandest. The much-awarded film (five Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director for Robert Wise) is based on the much-awarded stage production (five Tony awards, including Best Musical) that was the last collaboration between composer Richard Rodgers and lyricist Oscar Hammerstein. Of the seven stage-to-screen adaptations of their works, THE SOUND OF MUSIC, shot on location in glorious 70mm Todd-AO color is the most successful transfer. Through the method Rodgers and Hammerstein invented, this film effortlessly tells the story of the real-life Von Trapp Family Singers through songs that advance the story and reveal the state of mind of its characters. The nuns foretell a different life for their lively postulant in “Maria,” Maria earns the trust of the obstinate Von Trapp children in “My Favorite Things,” and the family bids Austria good-bye in “So Long, Farewell.” In between, director Wise makes the most of Austria’s natural and built environments, a soaring opening shot of the Alps affirming the glories of the homeland lovingly proclaimed later in “Edelweiss” and snapshots of Salzburg accompanying Maria and the children as she teaches them to sing in “Do-Re-Mi.” There are wisps of another epic, GONE WITH THE WIND (1939), as Maria makes play clothes for the children out of curtains and war intrudes on a prosperous, aristocratic family. But the villains remain mostly offstage in this family film that seeks to inspire and gently provoke reflection about duty, loyalty, love, and sacrifice. (1965, 172 min, DCP Digital) [Marilyn Ferdinand]

Sepideh Farsi’s PUT YOUR SOUL ON YOUR HAND AND WALK (France/Occupied Palestinian Territory/Iran/Documentary)

Siskel Film Center – See Venue website for showtimes

Fatma Hassona’s smile is infectious. Her beaming face, kind and inviting, appears near-constantly throughout Sepideh Farsi’s heartbreaking documentary, built from a series of video conversations between Farsi and Hassona, a photojournalist born and residing in Gaza. Fatma’s smile pokes out when talking about her love of cats, while quoting THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION, and while talking about her religion, but this emblem of joy can’t help but poke out during darker conversations too; Farsi’s film mostly chronicles conversations held in 2024, right in the darkest moments of Israel’s military assault against the people of Gaza, with Fatma and her family members constantly struggling to find stable portions of food to keep them going, let alone a stable internet connection (many of Farsi and Hassona’s conversations are underscored by lagging screens and frequently interrupted signals). Throughout it all, Fatma maintains a hopeful disposition, early on proclaiming her belief that “There’s nothing that is without reason,” all of this carnage and chaos clearly part of some higher plan. Farsi remains a more cynical voice in this regard, as her own history as an Iranian artist and activist in opposition to her home country’s authoritarian government has led to a life where action takes priority above fate. Farsi fills the rest of the film with Hassona’s photography, stunning canvases of the utter destruction that has been wrought on the Palestinian people and their land, these images sitting alongside news broadcasts covering the futile efforts to bring peace to the region through empty promises of ceasefire. Fatma’s mood does noticeably change as the film goes on, a natural exhaustion and frustration sinking in over the months, compounded by the numerous documented attempts of Israel refusing aid to malnourished Palestinians. But Fatma smiles through it, knowing that there will be (and must be) something better on the other side, that the oppression of her people will somehow, some way, come to an end. “Whatever they do to us,” she proudly exclaims, “however they try to destroy us, or even if they kill us, we will laugh and live our lives, whether they want it or not. They can’t defeat us.” In a grand, horrible way, she was right; PUT YOUR SOUL ON YOUR HAND AND WALK was accepted into the Cannes Film Festival on April 15th, 2025. On April 16th, 2025, Fatma Hassona and six members of her family were killed in a targeted airstrike by the Israeli government. Fatma is not here, but this film is, a series of beautiful and terrifying images that chronicle a living record of a wonderful, smiling, shining life that could never be defeated. (2025, 113 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Kaye]

John Cameron Mitchell’s SHORTBUS (US)

Doc Films (at the University of Chicago) – Tuesday, 4pm [Free Admission]

John Cameron Mitchell’s SHORTBUS belongs to the class of films that many have only encountered in articles or on lists of non-pornographic films featuring unsimulated sex. This alone (along with the fact that contemporaneous viewers had trouble seeing past the sex to the actual film) has made regular screenings a challenge, so it’s a blessing that the film has gotten a 4K restoration. Mitchell’s comparatively gentle second feature after his cult adaptation of his stage musical HEDWIG AND THE ANGRY INCH (2001), SHORTBUS is still a Gregg Araki-indebted jumble, wearing its punk ethos proudly. The film is an ensemble piece set mostly at the titular club, and it follows a depressed filmmaker; his boyfriend, who wants to open up their relationship; a relationship counselor who has never had an orgasm; a dominatrix; and numerous bit players who seem to be competing for the award of most stylish at the club. Beginning with the film’s title, Mitchell seems proud of the boundaries he smashes regarding good taste, yet he tries to situate the more outré elements in a casual, good-vibes-only environment where the filmic transgressions serve to lift up the characters, not antagonize the viewer. The film still feels ahead of present-day narrative films' treatment of sex, despite its very-2006 atmosphere (an Animal Collective-soundtracked orgy being a highlight). And for all of Mitchell's tell-not-show approach, SHORTBUS tells us very little about Shortbus. Aside from providing a convenient narrative function of being a place where the characters can meet and anything can happen, the club doesn’t really feel like anything. But that seems to be by design; community doesn’t just cohere around a stated purpose, sometimes it can just be around a vibe. Shortbus is all things to all of its patrons, an implicit acknowledgement that queer life is not reducible to separate categories of queer art, queer sex, etc. It’s a melting pot that calls for fluid community spaces to foster it. The film’s tonal mix reflects this idea—Mitchell refuses for the film to be boxed in as a sex comedy or a queer tragedy. The notorious sex scenes aren't intended to shock or titillate, but to serve as matter-of-fact snapshots of a milieu where sex is necessarily part of the scene-setting. This presentation allows the film some of its more effective analogies, drawing parallels between carnal pleasure and the more personal or spiritual transcendence that everyone searches for somehow. Co-presented with the Parrhesia Program for Public Thinking and Discourse. Mitchell in attendance for a post-screening Q&A. (2006, 101 min, DCP Digital) [Maxwell Courtright]

Richard Donner's LETHAL WEAPON (US)

Alamo Drafthouse – Monday, 6:30pm

I grew up in an environment of deep-seated yet quiet oppression, in a state with stunning racial homogeneity and without the slightest awareness of my own whiteness and befuddled by the complex constructedness of my sexuality and gender. It was never made explicit, of course, but I was trained by my community in sexism and white supremacy, ingraining them inside me so deeply that I’ll never be able fully to undo their pernicious influence. Deeply unpopular, awkward, and introverted as a child, much of my pre-college years were spent in the basement watching movies on cable television. They trained me as well, in many of the same ideas and prejudices, and watching some of the same movies today with an eye on sharing them with my son has brought me a lot of joy, but much more sadness as I’ve forced myself to recognize moments of racist, homophobic, and sexist myth-making and bigotry in them, moments that in my shame I digested as a child without a second thought and that I would never want my child to digest similarly. I remember watching LETHAL WEAPON as a teenager, falling in love with its witty, creative characterizations and the effortless rapport between the two leads, Danny Glover and Mel Gibson. The scene, so chilling when I watch it now, of Glover and Gibson interrogating a group of Black children who are terrified they’ll be locked up or shot simply because they’re Black and might be witnesses to a crime struck me as especially funny. The character of Endo, a torturer working for evil drug smugglers, seemed just a cool, super badass guy who could safely be killed without moral consequence. I missed the connection to the repeated discussions of the Vietnam War and strong implication that Endo is a North Vietnamese captive, abducted and enslaved by ex-CIA mercenaries. The threat of rape and forced prostitution that Glover’s character’s daughter endures went entirely unnoticed. These elements are unmistakably in the film, and now that those are things I can see, they enrich and deepen it at the same time as they show it to be a film in deep tension with itself, a movie that, to use Robin Wood’s phrase, is an incoherent text. The screenplay by Shane Black is taut, sad, conscious and careful of its portrayals of all its characters, and, juvenile though it undoubtedly is, takes seriously its setting in a Los Angeles on the brink of a racial uprising. Richard Donner’s direction seems blissfully unaware of all of that, blandly delivering the appropriate shocks and laughs at the appropriate intervals and in general just staying out of the way of its actors. (Black, it is worth noting, went on to distinguish himself as one of the greatest screenwriters alive while Donner would make three increasingly awful sequels to this and the beyond-dreadful MAVERICK.) LETHAL WEAPON is far from a great film. Donner’s by-the-book direction renders it quite visually bland, but the electricity sparking from its script and the wealth of hints of the movie that it could have become make it a film that is almost alive with possibility. Perhaps this is merely turning the proverbial sow’s ear into a silk purse, but there is a political frankness and life to LETHAL WEAPON that was rarely seen in the Hollywood 1980s. It is a textbook case of knowing what it’s doing while doing everything wrong, of not flinching away from showing the terrors of bigotry while casually reinforcing racial and gender stereotypes at every turn, and that alone is enough to fascinate me. (1987, 110 min, DCP Digital) [Kian Bergstrom]

Julie Taymor’s ACROSS THE UNIVERSE (US/UK)

Music Box Theatre – Saturday, 11:15pm

“Sounds of laughter, shades of life are ringing / Through my open ears, inciting and inviting me / Limitless undying love which shines around me like a million suns / And calls me on and on across the universe.” These lyrics from The Beatles’ 1970 song “Across the Universe” provide a title, plot, and visual motif for Julie Taymor’s ACROSS THE UNIVERSE. Taymor, known for her phantasmagoric theatrical and film work, has created a romantic musical out of more than 30 Beatles strung together to chronicle the enduring love affair of Liverpudlian artist Jude (Jim Sturgess) and Lucy (Evan Rachel Wood), an all-American girl, as they navigate 1960s counterculture and antiwar America. There are very few aspects of those changing times left out of this energetic film. For example, early in the film, lesbian teen Prudence (T.V. Carpio) sings the most heartfelt version of “I Want to Hold Your Hand” I’ve ever heard while gazing at a blonde cheerleader. Having lost her boyfriend, who volunteered to serve in Vietnam, Lucy moves into an artists’ conclave in Greenwich Village and becomes an antiwar activist to the strains of “Revolution.” The film features Joe Cocker, Eddie Izzard, and Bono in various small parts who contribute versions of “Come Together,” “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite,” and “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,” respectively, in vignettes that channel the psychedelia and hippie ethos of the times. My favorite vignette involves Lucy’s brother Max (Joe Anderson) reporting to his draft board to the strains of “I Want You (She's So Heavy),” where a poster of Uncle Sam comes alive and Max and other recruits end up on an assembly line with soldiers wearing identical masks dancing around them. The visual splendor of ACROSS THE UNIVERSE is often jaw-dropping, and the singing by the actors themselves is so full of feeling and meaning that many of the songs were made new for me. This film is a must for Beatles fans and a thrilling and surprisingly timely experience for the rest of us. (2007, 132 min, DCP Digital) [Marilyn Ferdinand]

Guillermo Del Toro's CRIMSON PEAK (US/Mexico)

The Davis Theater – Thursday, 7pm

Guillermo del Toro's CRIMSON PEAK was released in theaters just before Halloween and on DVD just before Valentine's Day. The day of horror and the day of love—all things considered, very appropriate for del Toro's Gothic romance. Or is it Gothic horror? Perhaps a date between those holidays would have been better, as the film similarly toes the line between the two subgenres of Gothic fiction. (Jessica Kiang astutely pointed out in a piece for the Playlist that the distinction "ultimately means less than you might think: it's more a difference of degree than of actual type.") It was a hot-as-hell topic, however, in the weeks leading up to the film's release, as del Toro gave interview after interview asserting that it is indeed a Gothic romance in spite of its marketing, which many critics felt was misleading. Or was it? Set in the late nineteenth century, the film is about the virginal daughter of a wealthy American businessman who marries a dashing English baronet and goes to live with him and his sister in their decaying mansion. She's an aspiring writer and he's a failed inventor, while the sister is something of a career lunatic. The plot itself surrenders to atmosphere; there isn't a single set, costume, or special effect that doesn't move the story along better than any line of dialogue. The trailers—and, to a lesser extent, the posters—certainly highlight the artistry of the film's production design. In fact, the official trailer on Legendary's YouTube channel begins with almost 30 seconds of shots of the macabre mansion. In most every other trailer, Mia Wasikowska can be heard breathlessly exclaiming in a voiceover that "ghosts are real." The romantic bits weren't minimized, either; a rather provocative waltz is featured in several versions of the trailer, and I think one or two even hint at the steamy sex scene. Gothic architecture plays a central role in Gothic texts (both romance and horror), as do supernatural elements like ghosts and spirits, and while the trailer doesn't give away the twist in regards to the bizarre love triangle, it definitely hints at the sexy stuff. So was CRIMSON PEAK misleadingly marketed as a horror film—Gothic or not—or simply misunderstood as a work of Gothic romance, which contains many of the same elements of its scary counterpart? Perhaps both, but neither is a reason not to see it. And even though many critics and filmgoers alike claim it isn't that scary, this critic begs to differ. Certainly nothing terrifies me more than watching two people engaged in a protracted knife fight... in the snow... while wearing white! Screening as part of the Christmas, etc. series. (2015, 119 min, DCP Digital) [Kat Sachs]

John Boorman’s DELIVERANCE (US)

Wilmette Theatre (1122 Central Ave., Wilmette) – Thursday, 6pm

Since the plot of this film is so widely known, let's talk about the artists and the issues. Ned Beatty was never better, Jon Voight showed us that MIDNIGHT COWBOY was not a fluke, and Burt Reynolds played the hell out of the most perfect role he was ever given. But they all had to kick back and watch when Ronny Cox and Billy Redden gave us the most iconic bluegrass jam ever to grace the silver screen. These performances were buttressed by the impeccable authenticity that cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond delivered, making use of natural lighting almost throughout. Danger and moral ambiguity are still tangibly felt upon repeat viewings, owing mainly to the depth of James Dickey's script (and not hurt by his appearance as the Sheriff of Aintry, GA). It could be labeled a celebration of machismo, earned through a journey of conquest and killing—an appeasement of the male ego through self-reflexive masochism. Of course the film does this as a questioning of the position of men in white, suburban America in the early '70s. As Stepanie Farber said in her 1972 New York Times review: "In the film the journey has no purpose; nothing is achieved, nothing gained. The last images express a sense of total desolation. There is no sentimentality in the film; it is a serious and meaningful challenge to the belief in rites of manhood." (1972, 110 min, Unconfirmed Format) [Jason Halprin]

Greta Gerwig's LITTLE WOMEN (US)

Alamo Drafthouse – Tuesday, 6pm

As one of literature’s greatest hits, Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women has been an endless source of identification for generations of girls. But do the four March sisters still have something to offer to modern women who live comfortably in a gender-fluid, marriage-optional world that is far removed from the types of constrictions Alcott’s characters faced? Perhaps we haven’t come as far as we think, if the considerable appeal of Greta Gerwig’s version of LITTLE WOMEN is any indicator. Gerwig has done a masterful job of scrambling the timeline of the story, beginning with Jo (Saoirse Ronan) selling her first story to a Boston newspaper, thus announcing a fresh take on the familiar story for a new generation. Gerwig creates an energetic, teeming mise-en-scène in which the sisters’ actions are much more relatable and real. Meg (Emma Watson), for example, is much less the staid and proper sister in this version, even voicing her frustration with her marriage to a man of modest means. The biggest shift Gerwig, as screenwriter, has made is moving Jo into a less commanding position and focusing more attention on Laurie (Timothée Chalamet) and Amy (Florence Pugh). I surmise this was done to play to Chalamet’s fan base, but it also downshifts the message of independence Jo has always represented to wallow in the excess of Downton Abbey-style riches. Also jarring was a Friedrich Bhaer played with a pronounced French accent by dreamy Louis Garrel, son of French director Philippe Garrel. Was the good professor Alsatian after all? And not to quibble, but could Gerwig not have found a single American actress to play the American March sisters? While Gerwig’s LITTLE WOMEN has not dislodged Gillian Armstrong’s emotionally resonant 1994 version from my heart, it is a worthy adaptation by one of our most gifted filmmakers. (2019, 134 min, DCP Digital) [Marilyn Ferdinand]

📽️ ALSO SCREENING

⚫ Alamo Drafthouse
Duke Johnson and Charlie Kaufman’s 2015 film ANOMALISA (90 min, Digital Projection) screens Wednesday, 9:30pm, as part of the Weird Wednesday series. More info here.

⚫ Alliance Française de Chicago
Myriam Zumbuehl’s 2022 documentary MASTER OF CHEESE (90 min, Digital Projection) screens Wednesday, 6:30pm, in collaboration with the Consulate General of Switzerland in Chicago and the Goethe Institut. Followed by a complimentary reception of Swiss cheeses and wines and an opportunity to speak with the director. Please enter via 54 W Chicago Ave. More info here.

⚫ Doc Films (at the University of Chicago)
A sneak preview of Josh Safdie’s 2025 film MARTY SUPREME (149 min, DCP Digital) screens Tuesday, 9:15pm, followed by a Q&A with Safdie moderated by Kyle Westphal.

Pedro Costa’s 1994 film CASA DE LAVA (105 min, DCP Digital) screens Wednesday, 7pm, as part of the Sounds of Shaking Earth: Landscapes of Portuguese Cinema series.

Adolfo Arrieta’s 1974 film THE ADVENTURES OF SYLVIA COUSKI (72 min, 16mm) screens Thursday, 9:30pm, as part of the Celluloid Is Out: Queer Freedom and Subculture of the 1970s series. More info on all screenings here.

⚫ FACETS
Sweet Void Cinema presents a screenwriting workshop in the FACETS Studio on Wednesday at 6pm.

Critics Cut 2025: The FACETS 50 Wrap Party takes place on Thursday at 6pm. More info on all events here.

⚫ Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago
For Day With(out) Art 2025, Visual AIDS presents Meet Us Where We’re At, a screening that foregrounds the experiences of drug users and harm reduction practices as they intersect with the ongoing HIV crisis, on Sunday at 2pm. Free admission (or pay what you can). More info here.

⚫ Music Box Theatre
Joachim Trier’s 2025 film SENTIMENTAL VALUE (133 min, DCP Digital) and Noah Baumbach’s 2025 film JAY KELLY (132 min, 35mm and DCP Digital [check showtime to confirm]) continue screening this week. See Venue website for showtimes.

Kurtis David Harder’s 2025 film INFLUENCERS (110 min, DCP Digital) screens Tuesday at 9:30pm. Note that the screening is free; reserve ticket on Venue website. More info on all screenings here.

⚫ Siskel Film Center
A new 2K digital restoration of Sherman Alexie’s 2002 film THE BUSINESS OF FANCYDANCING (103 min, DCP Digital) begins screening this week. See Venue website for showtimes.

Finn den Hertog’s 2025 National Theatre Live production of David Ireland’s THE FIFTH STEP (100 min, Digital Projection), starring Jack Lowden and Martin Freeman, screens Saturday and Sunday at 2pm.

Rachael Holder’s 2025 film LOVE, BROOKLYN (97 min, DCP Digital) screens Monday and Wednesday at 6pm. More info on all screenings 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: November 28 - December 4, 2025

MANAGING EDITORS // Ben and Kat Sachs

CONTRIBUTORS // Kian Bergstrom, Maxwell Courtright, Alex Ensign, Megan Fariello, Marilyn Ferdinand, Jason Halprin, Shaun Huhn, Tristan Johnson, Ben Kaye