:: FRIDAY, AUGUST 7 - THURSDAY, AUGUST 13 ::

📽️ CRUCIAL VIEWING

Technicolor Weekend

Chicago Film Society at the Siskel Film Center — See showtimes below

Stanley Donen & Gene Kelly's SINGIN' IN THE RAIN (US)
Friday, 6pm [SOLD OUT]
Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly's self-reflexive musical about the introduction of sound and, soon thereafter, singing in Hollywood feature films is, hands down, one of the most inventive Hollywood musicals ever made. Sure, it's brash and brightly colored but, as far as mainstream Hollywood studio musicals go, it's not simply a rote number. To begin with, it pre-empts the popularity of post-modern strategies in Hollywood cinema even before Jean-Francois Lyotard had diagnosed the condition and it was also heavily inspired by Powell and Pressburger's THE RED SHOES (1948); the surreal and fantastical dream sequence for the song "Gotta Dance" undoubtedly borrows from the 15-minute production of the Red Shoes ballet. Although SINGIN' IN THE RAIN is in many ways inferior, Donen and Kelly's desire to bring some of Powell and Pressburger's inventiveness to Hollywood was a courageous move. Comparisons aside, SINGIN' boasts its own impressive repertoire of brilliant performances, particularly Donald O'Connor's, with his incredible physical comedy routines, sure to make even the most griping curmudgeon crack a smile. Although the most widely remembered scene in the film is Gene Kelly splashing around in the puddles and singing the title song, Debbie Reynolds' steals the show from him on more than one occasion—particularly her performance of "Good Mornin'" (which, contrary to popular rumor, she did sing herself). Throw in the fact that the Technicolor is stunning and the jokes still pack a punch more than 50 years later, and you have a clever, comic masterpiece. SINGIN' IN THE RAIN is a theater-going experience not to be missed—watching it on TV just doesn't do it justice. (1952, 102 min, 35mm) [Beth Capper]
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Terence Fisher’s HORROR OF DRACULA (UK)
Friday, 8:30pm
Hammer Films didn't reinvent Dracula, but their gamble paid off for two reasons: color and blood. Universal's monsters had become nostalgic icons and parodies showing up in ABBOT & COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN. Terence Fisher recognized that Gothic horror needed to up the ante. Fisher also helmed THE CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN the year before HORROR OF DRACULA, which became known as Britain’s first blood and guts film in color. It is difficult to imagine that after the release of CURSE, Fisher had to return to a day job directing episodes of The Mickey Mouse Club. Hammer wasn’t enthusiastic about obtaining Dracula when Universal refused to co-finance another Gothic horror update, but pressed on and independently secured the rights along with an 80-page legal contract enforced by Universal. The whole thing almost fell apart when Jimmy Sangster's screenplay was criticized for being too violent and too sexual. The opening sequence announces an updated version of the beloved Universal classic. Against a  monochromatic tomb that bears Dracula’s name, over-saturated blood splatters and desecrates the grave. Terence Fisher immediately announces that his monsters won’t be hiding behind expressionistic shadows, they’ll pop out of the screen with bleeding teeth and iris scratching contacts in brilliant color. Fisher understood that frightening monsters reflect contemporary anxieties, and postwar Britain was shedding its Victorian restraint. More than any Hammer production, HORROR OF DRACULA belongs to Fisher. After spending two decades as a film editor, he developed an economical style that favored clean compositions and elegance. Production designer Bernard Robinson replaced Universal's cobwebbed Gothic with detailed manor houses and polished interiors. Cinematographer Jack Asher flooded every frame with saturated reds and emerald greens—burning in as much color as technicolor’s three-strip process could take. Sir Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing complete the transformation. Lee's Dracula abandons Lugosi's theatrical swagger for something towering, physical, soft-spoken, and impossibly handsome. He projects an unbearable restraint that ultimately bursts the moment his instincts take over. Lee reportedly viewed Dracula as an impossibly lonely creature who’s not afraid of death and only lives on because the chance to die has yet to arrive. His screen time is remarkably brief but casts a large shadow over horror cinema. Opposite him, Peter Cushing reinvents Van Helsing. He’s not an elderly professor lecturing about folklore; instead, he’s in the trenches and studying fringe science. Cushing attacks problems with precision, confidence, and relentless momentum. Watching what he does with his hands is hypnotic. Every prop becomes a tool, every gesture reveals thought, every movement convinces us he has performed these rituals dozens of times before whether he’s resurrecting the dead or staking a vampire. (Tom Holland’s FRIGHT NIGHT [1985] incorporates a lot of elements from HORROR OF DRACULA, including crosses burning flesh, sunlight vampire dust, erotic vampire lust, and Peter Vincent—Roddy McDowall’s amalgam character Peter Cushing and Vincent Price.) It was Sangster’s script that aided most in Cushing’s naturalistic performance as much of Dracula’s supernatural mythology is dismissed. This version of Dracula is not a shape-shifter; his lust for blood is more akin to a drug addiction. The Count also becomes more grounded due to the pseudo-science of Van Helsing. It also doesn’t hurt that Sir Christopher Lee is sexy as Dracula. All of his victims seem to surrender to something they've been denied. A look of sexual exhaustion after being drained by the Count comes across clear. HORROR OF DRACULA transformed Hammer from an ambitious British studio into horror's defining name, but its greater achievement is proving that every generation deserves its own monsters. Fisher didn't replace the Universal classics. He reminded audiences that the Gothic survives by evolving. In the years since, there have been countless Counts in and out of capes, each offering their variation of Stoker’s character. From Max Schreck to Caleb Landry Jones, but few will genuinely instill fear as Lee’s Dracula does the first time you see him flash his long-toothed smile. (1958, 82 min, 35mm) [Shaun Huhn]
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Douglas Sirk’s MEET ME AT THE FAIR (US)
Saturday, 1pm
The title may suggest a sequel to MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS, and to be fair this Universal Pictures programmer is certainly indebted to the Minnelli masterpiece in that it takes place in a cozy, nostalgic vision of the early 20th century, contains musical numbers, and was shot in Technicolor. But the similarities more or less end there; like any good knockoff, MEET ME AT THE FAIR assumes its own identity as a less ambitious if much odder (and no less memorable) work. Dan Dailey, a former vaudevillian typically relegated to supporting roles, stars as Doc Tilbee, a traveling medicine show man who sings songs, tells tall tales, and sells an elixir that helps with “that run-down feeling.” At the start of the film, a preteen boy who’s escaped from an orphanage sneaks onto the back of Doc’s wagon as he’s leaving his latest town. The boy appeals to Doc and his sidekick with an account of how terrible conditions are at the orphanage, and the men respond by welcoming him to join their show. The great Scatman Crothers, in his first major role, plays the sidekick; when the movie starts to lose steam in the second half, he sings a song about his teeth. In hindsight, MEET ME AT THE FAIR seems like an unusual project for Douglas Sirk, as the German emigré is best remembered for his glossy, subtextually rich melodramas (see, for example, the Barbara Stanwyck vehicle ALL I DESIRE, which was released the same year as this). Yet Sirk was, among other things, a contract man for Universal, and his American career is peppered with musicals, westerns, and adventure stories. While this may have been an assignment for the director, he still infuses it with energy and good cheer. Sirk also plays up the script’s irony of having a huckster as the hero and corrupt politicians (who are the ones responsible for the state of the orphanage) as the villains; he later reflected fondly on the orphan subplot as a continuation of the themes of the last film he made in Europe, a Dutch production called BOEFJE (1939). He also considered MEET ME AT THE FAIR an opportunity to hone his skills with Technicolor, which he’d soon employ masterfully in such films as MAGNIFICENT OBSESSION (1954) and ALL THAT HEAVEN ALLOWS (1955). (1953, 87 min, 16mm) [Ben Sachs]
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Howard Hawks’ HATARI! (US)
Sunday, 4pm
Modern moviegoers are no strangers to the protracted blockbuster that runs two-and-a-half to three hours. Many of those moviegoers, laboring under recency bias, take this to be newly common rather than a recurring trend throughout film history. In 1962, the year HATARI! (which means danger in Swahili) was released, David Lean's LAWRENCE OF ARABIA, Lewis Milestone's MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY, and Stanley Kubrick's LOLITA all exceeded two-and-a-half hours, each meeting with varying degrees of critical and commercial success. At 157 minutes (just a few minutes longer than LOLITA), HATARI! has been criticized, both upon its release and ever since, for being too long. While similar complaints have been leveled at those other 1962 films, HATARI! presents a somewhat different case: its extraordinary length is devoted not to narrative density but to the relative yet appropriate plotlessness of a specifically Hawksian genre, the hangout film, here expanded into epic proportions. Following the success of RIO BRAVO (1959) and again working with his favorite writer, Leigh Brackett, HATARI! stands as late-period Hawks intensified, its characters’ social languor becoming almost a structuring principle. He undoubtedly checked off an item on his bucket list—while almost suggesting a death wish—through the audacious location shooting in East Africa, whose breathtaking wildlife footage remains one of the film's great achievements. It centers on a team of big game procurers led by John Wayne's Sean and staffed by a gang of colorful characters (Red Buttons, Hardy Krüger, Gérard Blain, Elsa Martinelli, Michèle Girardon) as they capture wild animals over the course of a three-month hunting season, though mostly it shows them hanging out between excursions. It's a movie very much of its time—a film about what are essentially big game hunters, even if they’re acquiring animals for zoos and circuses, would not be greenlit nowadays—but the scenes featuring wildlife are awe-inspiring, especially in Technicolor. They were a mammoth undertaking that Hawks makes look simple but that seems almost inconceivable in the hands of a filmmaker without his imagination and ambition. There are practical effects, and then there’s chasing actual rhinoceroses, giraffes, zebras, and wildebeests. The rhinoceros appears in the film’s bookends, the horned animal functioning as a white whale of sorts and providing the film’s only real conflict, aside from minor romantic strife, in an otherwise delightfully aimless film in which the parts matter more than their whole. In Joseph McBride’s Hawks on Hawks, the director admits, “There was quite a little discussion as to how to tell that damn story. We had so much to do that was good, because that thing kept going. The episodes were so good—the story actually wasn’t as good as the episodes.” Hence why HATARI! emerges as the epitome of late Hawks, maybe even of Hawks in general: the logical conclusion of a man more preoccupied with the hangout than with plot. McBride tells Hawks, “Yet I can’t think of any movie with a group of people whose company I more enjoy being in than HATARI!,” to which he replies, “Oh, I know it. I like to be around ’em, too.” In his book on Hawks, Robin Wood identifies Hawks' lack of self-consciousness and total involvement in the making of his films—even if the filmmaker himself described that involvement merely as "having fun"—as the crux of his subtle genius. Yet in the section on HATARI!, Wood writes that Hawks “has been content to be a relaxed entertainer, and the richness of the material leaves one feeling somewhat dissatisfied that more wasn’t done with it—a more rigorous following-through and realizing of its implications.” But in some ways this freewheeling epic and its rejection of conventional narrative momentum may be the apotheosis of Hawks himself, its supposed limitations inseparable from its pleasures. He invites viewers in; whether, after 157 minutes, they feel he’s worn out his welcome is up to them. I, for one, reveled in it. [Kat Sachs]
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Also screening in Technicolor Weekend are William Castle’s 1967 film THE BUSY BODY (101 min, 35mm) on Saturday at 3:30pm; Francis Ford Coppola’s 1974 film THE GODFATHER PART II (202 min, 35mm) on Saturday at 6:30pm; and Robert Stevenson’s 1965 film THAT DARN CAT! (116 min, 35mm) on Sunday at 1pm. Please note that THE GODFATHER PART II is sold out.

Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s THE SAMURAI AND THE PRISONER (Japan)

Siskel Film Center — See Venue website for showtimes

In the winter of 1578, samurai Araki Murashige betrayed the legendary Oda Nobunaga. Murashige fortified his clan within the walls of Arioka Castle as Oda’s grip tightened on surrounding lands. The real-life Oda, the “Great Unifier” of Japan, known more appropriately as “Demon King of the Sixth Heaven,” began a campaign of unification amid the political upheaval of the Sengoku period. At the opening of Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s THE SAMURAI AND THE PRISONER (2026), Oda sends his brilliant war strategist Kuroda Kanbei to inform the rogue samurai of his impending doom. Murashige seizes Oda’s man, throwing him in the dungeon to rot. As the samurai continues to strategize his people’s survival, a series of murders amplifies the distrust and superstition. To maintain order, the rebellious nobleman must find the killer. Aggravating nonconformity, Murashige turns from Kanbei’s inquisitor to counselee. Adapting Honobu Yonezawa’s novel, Kurosawa desired to understand the internal motivation of real-life historical figure Araki Murashige. The director expressed, “I was always curious as to why he was compelled to first betray Oda, but then also why he decided to run away.” Historians label Murashige as a coward who abandoned his people in a very un-samurai like fashion. A worthy addition to the canon of Japanese period films, SAMURAI is a remarkably still jidaigeki war drama—with a lengthy runtime consisting largely of people talking in rooms. SAMURAI feels most akin to Umberto Eco’s groundbreaking novel, The Name of the Rose. Much like that book, SAMURAI challenges audiences with countless names, relationships, and cultural references scarcely repeated, conveyed primarily via conversation. Kurosawa consciously adopts the filmmaking of his predecessors, as the genre demands a tableau approach. To situate an audience in Murashige’s world, all the parts must equal the whole. Period films require more suspension of disbelief compared to contemporary; costumes, architecture and props hold equal weight to an actor’s facial expression. The filmmaking employs wide angle master shots to smoothly marry environment, character, and story as one image—a large reason why Kenzi Mizoguchi and Akira Kurosawa's jidaigeki have so few close ups. While the form may reflect that of 16th century Japanese art, the content reflects contemporary attitudes. Kurosawa stresses filmmakers have no idea what normalcy meant for warriors of the Sengoku period. Contemporary actors deliver lines from a script written by a contemporary filmmaker—the camera captures contemporary behavior and speech. The director compromises through an embrace of period costume (wonderfully constructed by Koji Omura and Michiko Koike), and art direction (beautifully designed by Tetsuo Harada). Already with a filmography against convention, Kurosawa’s approach to jidaigeki contains a lot of talking for a war story. The film milks the dramatic tension for all its existentialism and softcore anarchism. Characters repeat the phrase, “Advance to Paradise, Retreat to Hell,” with crescendos of nihilistic cynicism paralleled to growing iconoclasm. The story evolves from murder mystery to chamber drama atomizing religious and military dogma—displaying the breakdown of a ruling class who have long leveraged the existential dread of an underclass. The immediate crisis on the status quo only becomes further exacerbated by Murashige’s noncompliance with samurai protocol, e.g. his refusal to kill prisoners and turncoats. To recognize Murashige’s unorthodox tendency reveals his moral compass and satisfies Kurosawa’s original curiosity. Masahiro Motoki delivers a graceful rendering of the cornered lord, giving a performance so powerful that the director confessed reluctance about cutting within scenes to savor his lead’s achievement. A pearl in a celebrated filmography, this blends traditional form with modern content, structure, and language to recast a subject that endlessly endures. (2026, 147 mins, Digital DCP) [Ray Ebarb]

Paul Thomas Anderson’s BOOGIE NIGHTS (US)

Doc Films (at the University of Chicago) — Thursday, 5pm

For me, no Paul Thomas Anderson film has yet topped the dynamic experience of watching BOOGIE NIGHTS. This is exemplified by the film’s vibrant pool party scene—set to Eric Burdon and War’s “Spill the Wine”—as the camera follows those just having fun and those deep in significant conversation. It’s a film that perfectly seesaws the audience between scenes of pleasure and of real darkness. It’s hilarious at times while also containing one of the most horrifyingly tense scenes in cinema. It is both brutally honest yet sweetly empathetic to its main characters. It’s dazzling in its meandering and colorful '70s and '80s set pieces, its memorable costuming, and influential soundtrack. Set in Los Angeles during the Golden Age of Porn—and based on an earlier mockumentary short film by Anderson—BOOGIE NIGHTS follows the rise and fall of Dirk Diggler (Mark Wahlberg), a young aspiring adult film star. He is discovered by Jack Horner (Burt Reynolds) and joins his community of filmmakers and stars. This group includes outstanding performances from Julianne Moore, John C. Reilly, Don Cheadle, and Philip Seymour Hoffman, just to name a few. The film combines an overarching narrative with distinct vignettes, making the stories of even the most minor of characters matter. Dirk may be the central figure around which the rest of the characters revolve, but the film makes it clear everyone else is just as significant, just as complicated, and everyone else is also struggling and succeeding in their own ways. Rollergirl (Heather Graham), a porn starlet who never takes off her skates the entire film, could easily be a background character solely based on her visual gimmick but instead is fully allowed to both find joy in and rail against her situation—the striking costume and period setting is so entertaining but never overshadows the characters. BOOGIE NIGHTS constantly takes time for these characters, stressing that their experiences are also essential. The result is intimate while simultaneously suggesting worlds of possibility both on and off camera. Screening as part of the Disco Nostalgia series. (1997, 155 min, 35mm) [Megan Fariello]

Ian Bell’s WTO/99 (US/Documentary)

Music Box Theatre — Tuesday, 7pm and 9:45pm

The 1999 World Trade Organization Conference was the first time that the organization, a shadowy conglomeration of world leaders discussing foreign trade and global labor practices, would convene on US soil, and thus, the first time the controversial global organization would come face to face with the country’s long history of pro-labor organizing. Laborers and activists from across the country, and from across the political spectrum, would unite in Seattle in late November of 1999 to face off against these political giants, amassing a working-class movement whose stated mission of peaceful protest and direct action is genuinely inspiring to watch in retrospect. To see this noble mission, illustrated across Ian Bell’s WTO/99, ending in a state response that all too easily devolves into paramilitaristic carnage, is a harrowing experience, and perhaps far too familiar to those keeping track of contemporary activist movements, whose peaceful protests all too quickly get uprooted by police action that insidiously aggravates to the point of mass destruction. WTO/99—which Bell edited together with Alex Megaro—is told entirely through news coverage, television snippets, and mini-DV footage captured at the scene, creating an archival collage that transports us back to this terrifying moment where the US government realized that the immense power of free speech is no match for an immoral cache of tear gas, pepper spray, and rubber bullets. As terrifying as the literal weaponry on the ground is the swift moral decay within the media apparatus covering the protests, with Bell and Megaro showing us in real time how quickly the news media switched tactics and covered up the reality of the situation at hand. Above all, WTO/99 is a must-watch for those looking for a masterclass in archival preservation, editing, and how to deploy the power of the moving image through montage to craft narrative and express political anxiety. A slew of more contemporary clips throughout the end credits only cements how Bell and Megero’s pre-Millenium chronicling scarily mirrors our nightmare reality of today. Bell and Megero in person for a post-screening discussion after the 7pm screening and to introduce the 9:45pm screening. (2025, 100 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Kaye]

William Greaves' NATIONTIME (US/Documentary)

Film Studies Center (at the University of Chicago) — Friday, 7pm [Free Admission]

William Greaves’ NATIONTIME (sometimes listed as NATIONTIME—GARY) documents the National Black Political Convention of 1972, when Black Americans of all walks of life convened in Gary, Indiana, to draft a platform of national unity. There are no scenes of the break-out sessions that led to the actual drafting; rather, Greaves focuses on the speeches delivered to the Convention as a whole. The opening remarks, delivered by Rev. Jesse Jackson, comprise the film’s longest and most electric sequence, as Jackson stresses the need for Black unity and a proportionally accurate representation of Black people in US government and public offices. (Other prominent speakers include Dick Gregory and Imamu Amiri Baraka.) Best known today for the experimental feature SYMBIOPSYCHOTAXIPLASM: TAKE ONE (1968), Greaves matches Jackson’s excitement with such cinematic techniques as dynamic editing, sudden zooms, and immersive handheld camerawork. NATIONTIME exudes energy from the opening moments, apropos to the historic breakthrough of the Convention; but more importantly, it conveys the immense potential that Black political groups possess, whether through voting or direct social action. Haunting the Convention are the shocking tragedies of the 1960s (Coretta Scott King and Betty Shabazz, widows of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Malcolm X, respectively, are both key speakers), and the film suggests that the call for Black political unity in the early 1970s grew, in part, out of a sense of dissolution following the murders and arrests of too many prominent Black leaders. The Convention didn’t produce a viable platform, since the delegations could not agree on all parts of the document, yet NATIONTIME doesn’t end in a sense of failure. Indeed, a spirit of triumph prevails. Perhaps the Convention’s failure to reach consensus after a few days speaks to the remarkable richness and diversity within the Black American community, which is something worth celebrating. Screening with Skip Norman's 1968 short film CULTURAL NATIONALISM (11 min, Digital Projection) and Simone Leigh and Madeline Hunt-Ehrlich's 2022 short film CONSPIRACY (24 min, Digital Projection). Accompanied by a lecture from Aymar Escoffery. Presented as part of Court Theatre's Spotlight Reading Series, A Century of Black Progress. Free admission with advance reservation at courttheatre.org.  (1972, 80 min, Digital Projection) [Ben Sachs]

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Schanelec x 2

Doc Films (at the University of Chicago) — See showtimes below

Angela Schanelec’s PASSING SUMMER (Germany)
Friday, 5pm
In “The Dehumanization of Art,” Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gosset’s 1925 essay grappling with modernist painting, Ortega makes an aside about the levels of emotional distance one may have from both art and that which it depicts. To him, the abstract painting emerging at the time was a true break from even the most radical of figurative paintings to date, which still usually bore some connection to their most realist predecessors: “The primal aspect of an apple is that in which I see it when I am about to eat it. All its other possible forms—when it appears, for instance, in a Baroque ornament, or on a still life of Cézanne’s, or in the eternal metaphor of a girl’s apple cheeks—preserve more or less that original aspect.” In a dramatic sense, filmmaker Angela Schanelec could be said to be right at this boundary, essentially a Cézanne of the contemporary art film who maps the most abstract reaches of realist drama. There’s no question that her films are born of and depict human conflict, but viewers of the work are reliant on the primal aspects of the archetypes she explores in order for the work to be legible at all. Her early film PASSING SUMMER is an interesting case study in this style, placed between the travelogue-tinged PLACES IN CITIES (1998) and MARSEILLE (2004) but focused on a wandering mind that refuses to change places. Valerie (Ursina Lardi), reluctant to leave for a summer vacation outside of Berlin, decides to rent a different room in the city from Marie (Anne Tismer) in the apartment she shares with her husband and daughter. Marie’s brother Thomas (Andreas Patton) is often around the place as well, becoming an ambiguously romantic prospect at the periphery. As Valerie’s trip intersects with the domestic squabbles of her hosts (Marie is pregnant a second time and doesn’t want to be; Thomas has an uncertain custody situation with his own ex and their son), she’s interrupted by her own father’s sudden illness which brings her back into the folds of her own family. This is a film of absences. While most of Schanelec’s scenes are normal human interactions animated by recognizable conflicts, she omits key details in the dialogue and occasionally jumps through time or into new relationship dynamics that haven’t factored into the film yet. Most scenes involve characters coming together whose communication is colored by their time spent apart. When characters are alone, they’re often in transit, moving between similar scenes of parting or reunification while visually dwarfed by the features of buses and ferries. Avoiding any obvious resolutions for its plot threads, the film’s clearest forward motion is seen in its depictions of dance. There are three dance scenes, the first of which leaves the movement entirely off-camera when Marie’s daughter demands that her nanny dance to Franz Schubert’s Erlkönig, while the camera stays trained on the child’s watching face; the second is a reunion of Valerie and her brother, sharing a cathartic onscreen dance at a club while the brother’s lover looks on from afar; the third is a communal dance at a wedding, one that begins with a father and daughter but grows to include the crowd until there’s no distinction between dancer and observer. This moment threatens to envelop the viewer too, and by the film’s conclusion we, like Valerie, have learned to embrace the unique balance of motion and stasis found in dance, lazy summer vacations, and the films of Angela Schanelec. (2001, 85 min, DCP Digital) [Maxwell Courtright]
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Angela Schanelec's MUSIC (Germany/France/Greece/Serbia)
Thursday, 8pm
The plots (or what exists of them) of Angela Schanelec’s films usually feel like pretexts for exploring her particular set of rules with regard to narrative problematics, pushing her plots to avant-garde levels of abstraction. You’re left with less information than you need, and indeed the characters often are too, with Schanelec linking communication breakdown in both form and life. When a fog rolls over a hill in the opening shot of her newest feature MUSIC, it feels almost like a self-aware joke acknowledging her usual narrative opacity as she jumps into the music-free opening 40 minutes of the film. The film follows Ion (Aliocha Schneider), a man orphaned as a baby after an accident that leaves his parents dead on a hillside. In adulthood, jailed after killing a man in an altercation, Ion strikes up a friendship and later a relationship with a prison employee, Iro (Agathe Bonitzer), who records music for him to nurture his passion for singing. Despite its overall stillness and disaffection, this is one of Schanelec’s more emotionally open films just by virtue of Jon’s music, a sort of plainspoken chamber pop. A contrast with Schanelec’s otherwise withholding tone, the film’s sparsely deployed but warm sound cues are the main deviation from the film’s muted, symbolic retelling of the Oedipus myth. It’s this art-within-art that’s the locus of her usual play with interpretation, providing an extra layer of obfuscation wherein the music can be critically judged in a way independent of its purpose in the script. It seems, given her track record and the title, like this is maybe the point, this presentation of art as the only truly ineffable thing as the same narratives play out repeatedly through history. But it makes for something difficult to read both in meaning and intention, with even Schanelec’s Bressonian symbols stumbling over each other, as disembodied hands occupy the full spectrum of action and similarly still bodies are alternately dead, injured, and sleeping. Anyone familiar will know to expect this challenge of meaning-creation, but there are still conventional pleasures to be found for the uninitiated too, especially in DP Ivan Marković’s framing of Greece’s craggy hills and seasides. The beautiful lands function similarly to the film’s music, adding something to the mix that’s less within Schanelec’s control, suggesting graciously that she herself may be searching alongside the audience this time. (2023, 108 min, DCP Digital) [Maxwell Courtright]
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Both screen as part of the Four by Angela Schanelec series.

Godard x 2

See Venues and showtimes below

Jean-Luc Godard's CONTEMPT (France/Italy)
Music Box Theatre — Saturday and Sunday, 11:30am
All the films that Jean-Luc Godard made in the 1960s are readily rewatchable for their infectious, trailblazing energy, but CONTEMPT also possesses a magisterial authority that anticipates the poetry of his awesome late period. The primary concern, as always, is Cinema: Taking place on the set of a big-budget film of The Odyssey directed by Fritz Lang (who plays himself), CONTEMPT contains still-pertinent ideas about the ethics of making movies, with Lang representing artistic integrity and producer Jeremy Prokosch (Jack Palance) representing the crassest instincts of the medium. Torn between them is Paul (Michel Piccoli), an ambitious writer coerced into penning the film’s script; not only must he play mediator on the troubled shoot, but his professional commitments are about to cost him his marriage. The way in which Godard sets these conflicts against the classical presence of Homer inspired Jonathan Rosenbaum to write that CONTEMPT is a look at modern man as he may appear to the Greek gods. (Godard, writing in 1963, put it more obliquely: “It is about characters from L’AVVENTURA who wish they were characters in RIO BRAVO.”) But the film is shot through with a sense of immediacy—especially during the 25-minute centerpiece depicting an argument between Paul and his wife (Brigitte Bardot). Playing out in real-time and jumping nervously from antagonism to reconciliation to sympathy, the scene is instantly recognizable to anyone who has experienced the death of a romance. Godard does little to hide the fact that his own marriage to Anna Karina was failing at the time (Bardot even dons a black wig at one point to resemble Karina), and his candor makes CONTEMPT perhaps the most confessional work of his career. Raoul Coutard’s ‘Scope photography—with its bold emphasis on primary colors—creates some of the most stunning images in Godard’s canon as well. (1963, 103 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]
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Jean-Luc Godard's WEEKEND (France)
Siskel Film Center — See Venue website for showtimes
The final title cards of WEEKEND announce "FIN DE CONTE. FIN DE CINEMA"—"END OF STORY. END OF CINEMA." The film did indeed mark the end of a golden period of feature films for the newly radicalized Godard. In the years leading up to May '68 and the student movement, Godard was developing a deepening commitment to Marxist-Leninist and Maoist ideology under the influence of his friend Jean-Pierre Gorin. LA CHINOISE and WEEKEND, the final films of this period, shot and released in rapid succession, saw Godard attempting to merge his developing aesthetic vision with his solidifying leftist commitments. The result in WEEKEND is as bitter and cruel to its subjects as it is conceptually thrilling. The cravenly cynical plot follows a young bourgeois woman and her husband as they rush to her mother's deathbed, not out of any sense of filial duty, but rather to ensure that her stepfather does not cut her out of the will. Misfortune and humiliation are by turns caused by and visited on the couple as they wind through country roads strewn with the corpses of crash victims, the twisted wrecks of their vehicles appear with the frequency of mileposts. One remarkable sequence follows the two as they cut through a traffic jam, passing roadside picnickers, a horse-drawn hay cart, a caravan of circus animals, and multiple bloody wrecks. (The nine-minute sequence, accompanied by constant blaring car horns, was shot on a 300-meter-long traveling platform, which comprised the total number of dolly tracks of the same model available in all of France at the time.) A merciless excoriation of the mercenary logic of bourgeois sexuality and marriage, WEEKEND is an exhilarating document of the social and political frustrations that were about to erupt so powerfully. Screening as part of the Vroom, Screech series. (1967, 105 min, DCP Digital) [Peter Raccuglia]

A Night of Annie Sprinkle (US/Adult)

FACETS — Saturday, 7pm

An icon of sex positivity, Annie Sprinkle demonstrates in her film work her desire to combine a celebration of pleasure with education, her lovable, open persona always wholly felt. Her sex work activism and ecosexuality is highlighted in her role as sex educator, presenting playful, tongue-in-cheek guides to modern sexuality. Albert Jaccoma and Johnny Armstrong’s LINDA/LES AND ANNIE (1989, 32 min, DCP Digital) is presented as a love story in which Annie has a sexual encounter with Les Nichols, a transgender man who recently underwent gender-affirming surgery. Sprinkle narrates her introduction to Les, his own personal journey, and their courtship; their sexual experience together is documented. Both films here exude good intentions, though each also contains outdated ideas and terminology concerning gender and sexuality—especially LINDA/LES AND ANNIE—something Sprinkle herself acknowledges with a title card content warning in front of each. Approached with curiosity and empathy rather than exploitation, the film's candidness is buoyed by its evident affection. As discussed in Monika Treut’s 1999 documentary, GENDERNAUTS: A JOURNEY THROUGH SHIFTING IDENTITIES, for the time, LINDA/LES AND ANNIE was a groundbreaking depiction of the trans experience. Sprinkle and Maria Beatty’s SLUTS & GODDESSES WORKSHOP (1992, 52 min, DCP Digital) is a pleasure guide for women, organized around the duality of “slut” and “goddess,” neither favored, but each meant to encourage sexual exploration and self-discovery. Presented as a tutorial, the bubbly Sprinkle appears as both instructor and demonstrator, along with many other women, the lack of men in the film emphasizing their superfluousness for achieving pleasure. The soundtrack features computer beeps and boops, and the visuals evoke a neon retro-futurism; in Sprinkle’s cinematic classes, humor and eroticism are always at play. While there is a whole section devoted to the prolonged orgasm, SLUTS & GODDESSES WORKSHOP ends with a focus on masturbation, with Sprinkle underscoring that self-love is the most important of all. [Megan Fariello]

Elaine May's MIKEY AND NICKY (US)

Alamo Drafthouse — Monday, 7pm and Wednesday, 3:15pm

Letting Peter Falk (Mikey) and John Cassavetes (Nicky) run wild on film can be a dangerous proposition. Sure, Cassavetes got away with it as a director, but he financed his own movies. After shooting 1.4 million feet of film while running 3 cameras at once, Elaine May was understandably over budget and the studio was understandably disappointed. Paramount buried the film after a short run, and it would be 12 more years until she would direct again (ISHTAR). Although the film was panned by critics at the time, May's approach yielded a nuanced portrait of the male ego and of Downtown LA that has rarely been matched. The two close-ups and a master shot approach to cinematography was effective, albeit listless, in generating a claustrophobic world—a structure largely controlled during May's lengthy editing process. Although the two leads play low-level gangsters, they may as well be any of Cassavetes' standard protagonists: cornered by their jobs and social circumstances, and long past fighting to break out of them. We know the hero isn't going to win by the end of the first reel, and we know that he's not much of a hero by the end of the second. But watching May's collaboration with two great method actors in their prime is worth savoring until the credits roll. (1976, 119 min, DCP Digital) [Jason Halprin]

Michael Mann's MANHUNTER: THE FINAL CUT (US)

Alamo Drafthouse — Tuesday, 9:30pm

A turning point in the career of Michael Mann—the film in which ambiance takes on equal importance to the detailed observation of professional ritual—MANHUNTER marks the beginning of this curious director's ongoing fusion of Howard Hawks and Stan Brakhage. Though its story of an FBI agent's pursuit of a demonic serial killer is suspenseful enough and the cast contains stellar turns by Joan Allen, Dennis Farina, and Brian Cox, among others, you may find that your strongest memories of the film are in Mann's eerie use of fluorescent light or an unfurnished suburban home. Much commercial art of the 1980s was built on the fetishization of material excess, often in the form of designer decor or ultra-modern lighting schemes that make commodities out of any subject. In retrospect, many key films of the decade act as subversions of this aesthetic by making material wealth seem either unreal (e.g., Nicolas Roeg's EUREKA, Alain Resnais' MELO) or a thin veneer for existential dread (e.g., Scorsese's AFTER HOURS, Edward Yang's TAIPEI STORY). MANHUNTER definitely belongs to the latter category, although a supermarket confrontation between the main character and his son unexpectedly evokes the work of William Klein. The film's surfaces wouldn't be so compelling, though, if they didn't find counterpoint in Mann's great conflict—the professional's sacrifice of his humanity in the perfection of his craft. Screening as part of Terror Tuesdays. (1986, 120 min, New 4K DCP Digital Restoration) [Ben Sachs]

Robert Klane’s THANK GOD IT’S FRIDAY (US)

Doc Films (at the University of Chicago) — Friday, 8pm

Defending Robert Klane's directorial debut is a thankless task against the barrage of one-star, bomb, and turkey reviews that have followed it for nearly fifty years. Once Casablanca Records became involved, creative decisions prioritized soundtrack sales over character development. The strategy worked commercially. The double-LP soundtrack became a major success, and Donna Summer's "Last Dance," produced by Giorgio Moroder, earned the Academy Award for Best Original Song. For a disco movie, what more could you ask? Klane's film appears to be a SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER cash-in while still offering a fascinating counterpoint to John Badham's dark vision of disco culture. Critics dismissed it, judging it almost exclusively against SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER. Vincent Canby wrote in the New York Times that the film, "written by Barry Armyan Bernstein in the breathless, multi-narrative manner of CAR WASH, gives one the impression that a good deal is happening even when the movie is standing still." Roger Ebert argued that simply describing the plot made the film sound more entertaining than it was. Some films invite audiences to inhabit a place, a moment, enjoy some good music, soak in the atmosphere, and let every character find exactly what they’re looking for over the course of a single night. AMERICAN GRAFFITI had Wolfman Jack, TGIF has Bobby Speed, a DJ at The Zoo discotheque, who has lined up The Commodores to do a live broadcast show. When the band arrives without instruments, Donna Summer, done with asking for permission, steals the spotlight and becomes a diva. Instead of a powerful feminist image, it is John Travolta's white suit, Bee Gees, and finger-pointing that became shorthand for the entire era. SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER is a masculinity-in-crisis film, not-so-much a disco film. Klane’s maligned film comes far closer to capturing what a discotheque felt like. TGIF deserves recognition as a vibrant time capsule. Disco wasn’t born of machismo or misogyny; it was born from marginalized communities and cultivated in underground spaces. Early discos dissolved social hierarchies, replacing them with celebration, self-expression, and communal release. SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER, however, became the dominant cultural image. Tony Manero measures his worth through competition, his swagger masks deep insecurity, and he’s cruel to women. As a portrait of disco culture, it fails. THANK GOD IT'S FRIDAY approaches the nightclub from the opposite direction. Klane fills The Zoo with aspiring singers, awkward romantics, married couples, teenagers, DJs, dancers, bartenders, dreamers, and lovable eccentrics. Rather than centering on a single protagonist, the club itself becomes the main character. The audience is invited to wander through one Friday night, watching lives briefly intersect before drifting apart again. The emotional centerpiece belongs to Donna Summer. Her performance transforms the nightclub into a communal celebration. It is a Black female artist commanding the room through music, bypassing traditional male gatekeepers to become the film's emotional and cultural center. That choice feels remarkably faithful to disco's origins, where diva worship, collective dancing, and shared liberation mattered far more than individual dominance. Viewed today, THANK GOD IT'S FRIDAY preserves the architecture of Los Angeles discos alongside their fashions, choreography, lighting, music, and social rituals at the height of the movement's commercial popularity. More importantly, it captures an ethos. The film embraces a generous, nonjudgmental sense of pluralistic joy, celebrating eccentricity without punishing its characters for seeking escape, connection, or reinvention on the dance floor. History crowned the better drama. It overlooked the better disco film. Screening as part of the Disco Nostalgia series. (1978, 89 min, 35mm) [Shaun Huhn]

Elliot Tuttle’s BLUE FILM (US)

FACETS — Saturday, 2pm and Sunday, 1pm

Elliot Tuttle’s debut feature BLUE FILM is one that risks buckling under the easiest description of its taboo content. As a film that aims to look seriously at the issue of pedophilia, it puts itself instantly in conversation with Difficult Viewing classics like HAPPINESS (1998) and MYSTERIOUS SKIN (2004), films made all the more affecting by their refusal to approach the subject with shorthand, still fielding complex moral ideas in the pockets around a fairly black-and-white issue. It’s a thankless task—MYSTERIOUS SKIN, critical as it is of the practice and its psychological damage, was nearly banned in Australia by authorities who claimed it was essentially a how-to guide. But BLUE FILM is on comparatively steady ground in how it keeps its focus largely on the practice’s ripple effects on both victims and perpetrators years down the line. Aaron Eagle (Kieron Moore) is a camboy specializing in findom, draining the bank accounts of willing submissives who log on to his Twitch streams, demeaning them while performing for the camera. When one of his fans pays a big sum for Aaron to entertain him privately, he goes to his home only to have the stakes shift gradually as the initially-masked stranger Hank (veteran character actor Reed Birney) asks Aaron increasingly personal questions, revealing that the men actually have a shared history. To share more about the nature of their relationship would give away too much, but the pedophilia disclaimer is both a hint and a red herring for the reckoning that occurs over the rest of the evening. Tuttle, for his part, manages to find interesting conceptual angles in the stagy, two-men-talking-in-a-room proceedings. We first meet Aaron through a screen, performing solo and playing up his shit-talking camboy persona before revealing layers of himself as the mediating technologies of cameras and masks are removed over the film, placing each man into the role of emotional exhibitionist at different times. There’s a predictable but no less discomforting “radical empathy” play that the film makes to get its audience to empathize with Hank—this is, as far as we know, a man who recognizes and has tried his best to cure, or least restrain his disease. Perhaps the more unique angle of the film is how it casts aspersions on its lead sex worker, a class of character that’s often marked automatically as an exploitee rather than exploiter. He’s a hustler with no heart of gold, one whose living depends on his ability to humiliate other men, including, no doubt, many as desperate in their moral flailings as Hank. But Tuttle doesn’t indulge in false equivalences between the two either. In each case, he asks us to simply accept the duality of man, a sort of conceptual ambivalence that extends to his use of “When Love is Young” by The Free Design. Sure it’s a cheap joke in context, but even then, it’s hard not to be swept up in the song’s sweet invocation of lost innocence. Without being glib, Tuttle shows us true, tender hurt under the hardest surfaces. Screening as part of the Must-Watch Indies series. (2025, 85 min, DCP Digital) [Maxwell Courtright]

F.W. Murnau’s FAUST (Germany/Silent)

Comfort Film at Comfort Station (2579 N. Milwaukee Ave.)  — Wednesday, 8pm

The last film F.W. Murnau made in Germany before emigrating to Hollywood is surely his most Germanic, an adaptation of one of the most famous tales in his nation’s history. At the center of it is Emil Jannings’ astonishing performance as Mephisto, a collection of outsize gestures and facial expressions that convey the full extent of the demon’s malign power. Indeed, Jannings’ work may be the most expressionistic part of FAUST outside of the brilliant special effects, which incorporate miniatures, superimpositions, and stark lighting to convey a world in the grip of supernatural forces. (Per Jonathan Rosenbaum, “Like Kubrick’s 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, this… integrates its dazzling special effects so seamlessly that they’re indistinguishable from the film’s narrative, poetry, and, above all, metaphysics.”) The sets and costumes, however beautiful, are more naturalistic than those of Murnau’s NOSFERATU (1922) and THE LAST LAUGH (1924), and they provide a baseline of realism that makes the effects stand out even more. It all but goes without saying that Murnau was the most imaginative director of the silent era, and the supreme pleasure of his FAUST lies in watching his imagination run wild. The shots of a gigantic Jannings looming over the town where Faust lives mark just one unforgettable example of the filmmaker’s artistry, yet every scene inspires wonder; some other standouts include the lavish Italian wedding that Mephisto takes Faust to attend, the architectural shots of crowds fleeing a town square at the outbreak of a plague, and the sequences set in the heavens, where Mephisto and an archangel stand flanked by enormous wings. These overwhelming images render towering the film’s essential conflict between good and evil. With a live musical score by French Inhaler. Presented in partnership with the Goethe-Institut Chicago. (1926, 107 min, Digital Projection) [Ben Sachs]

John Carpenter's IN THE MOUTH OF MADNESS (US)

The 400 Theater — See Venue website for showtimes

GHOSTS OF MARS (2001), CIGARETTE BURNS (2005), and THE WARD (2010) all have their defenders (and rightfully so), but IN THE MOUTH OF MADNESS is the last John Carpenter film to win a cult following on par with that of THE THING (1982) or THEY LIVE (1988). Like those earlier Carpenter masterpieces, MADNESS didn’t make a splash on first release, opening in early 1995 to mixed reviews and middling box office returns. Maybe after a year of such grandstanding, elephantine American movies as FORREST GUMP, NATURAL BORN KILLERS, THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION, and PULP FICTION, Carpenter’s tribute to H.P. Lovecraft (another quirky American genre storyteller) seemed too modest in its themes and too goofy in its execution for most people to take it seriously. (Leave it to Jonathan Rosenbaum and the staff of Cahiers du cinéma to buck the trend: the former wrote a thoughtful essay on the film for the Chicago Reader, and the latter named it one of the ten best of the year.) Over time, MADNESS has revealed itself to be a multilayered work that rewards repeat viewings, presenting ideas about the power of storytelling and employing clever meta-cinematic formal jokes—it’s got to be Carpenter’s most self-reflexive movie. Projecting the right mix of charisma and snark, Sam Neill stars as an insurance investigator hired to track down a popular horror writer who’s gone missing. His search takes him to New Hampshire and, ultimately, into the setting of many of the writer’s books—a creepy small town that’s a composite of recurring locales in the work of Lovecraft and Stephen King. This transition from the real world to the fictional world isn’t the first or last time in MADNESS when reality gets shaken by storytelling. Soon after the movie starts, Neill’s character learns that the writer’s latest book is literally driving people insane; near the end, the writer appears and literally unleashes unholy beasts on the world. The story may sound silly on the page, but under Carpenter’s inspired direction, it’s exciting and often quite scary. (1994, 95 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]

William Friedkin's CRUISING (US)

The Davis Theater — Tuesday, 7pm

This movie that once caused the gay community to protest its making and release is now something of a cult sensation amongst today's generation. At the time of release, the film was deemed controversial for the way it seemed to correlate homosexual attraction and serial killing and for its mainstream coverage of S&M bars, a rather marginal part of gay life. After AIDS, the movie has found new appreciation in the queer community and beyond. Its new fans are curious about the life it portrayed, its ethos as much as its dress codes, the latter of which has to an extent even been appropriated by today's hipster scene (the bandanna as a signifier of sexual solicitation transformed into a signifier of irony). Al Pacino gives a bizarre performance as a cop who increasingly begins to identify with the gay community he was sent out to cover in light of a series of killings there. CRUISING has its faults, in its plotting and other aspects, and many ambiguities, but today those deficiencies are either forgiven in favor of its strengths or are seen as meaningful mysteries to ponder over. Part of its incomplete feel is accounted for by the 40 minutes cut out to appease the MPAA, who then dropped the initial X rating to an R (the missing footage mostly consisting of more scenes at the S&M bars). Screening as part of the Staff Picks series. (1980, 102 min, DCP Digital) [Kalvin Henley]

Guy Maddin's CAREFUL (Canada)

FACETS — Sunday, 3pm

CAREFUL, director Guy Maddin's third feature, is a perfect realization of his postmodern appropriation of silent film aesthetics and Freudian psychosexual theories. The film takes place in a small Alpine town where all the residents speak in whispers for fear of starting an avalanche. The suppression of noise in the village naturally makes outbursts of emotion and impulse undesirable—resulting in a rather repressed and inhibited populace. Of course, this is where the real fun starts for Maddin, who lets this scenario devolve to explore his by-now usual interests of incest, mother obsession, hysteria, and sexual deviance. Guy Maddin's expert use of silent film techniques (images by Murnau, editing by Eisenstein) rather effectively provides a burlesque of the popular cultural notion that past times were more decent ones. Screening as part of the Must-Watch Indies series. (1992, 100 min, New 4K DCP Digital Restoration) [Doug McLaren]

Gregg Araki’s I WANT YOUR SEX (US)

The 400 Theater,  Music Box Theatre and others — See Venue websites for showtimes

It feels good to have Gregg Araki and his sex-positive, gonzo energy back on the big screen. After a twelve-year absence from feature-film making (though not for lack of trying, and with plenty of television work to keep his directing muscles active), one of the key figures of the 1990s New Queer Cinema movement remains as true to his spirit as ever, his worlds still full of bright colors, angsty young people, and cartoonish style centered around a disaffected, sex-obsessed culture. Araki was reportedly inspired to dig into I WANT YOUR SEX after a study came out stating that only 30% of Gen Z had been sexually active in the last year. Araki, who had built his career on art investigating a sex-crazed youth culture, knew that he had to respond to such a dire report with his own cinematic debate (carried out with both words and bodies) concerning contemporary sexual habits. Araki resists the temptation to merely finger-wag at younger generations, instead painting an earnest portrait of a young man (the ever-charismatic Cooper Hoffman) entering a submissive relationship with his domineering visual artist boss (a livewire Olivia Wilde) and exploring how such a relationship might manifest itself in 2020s America. I WANT YOUR SEX revels in Araki’s signature garish environments, now rendered in appropriately sickly digital cinematography, filling his frame with eye-popping costumes and deliciously decadent production design (there isn’t a wall that Araki can’t turn into a modern art piece), while his droll characters utter the kind of oddball quirky dialogue that Quentin Tarantino could only dream of. While the early portions of the film focus on the physical dimensions of Hoffman and Wilde’s relationship, much of the remainder of I WANT YOUR SEX attempts to dig deeper into the emotional toll such a power dynamic might take on such a young, impressionable mind. Even Araki, the secret softie that he is, can’t help but let his earnestness get the best of him as the plot unravels, though things are kept appropriately spiky by hilarious supporting turns from Chase Sui Wonders, Daveed Diggs, and Mason Gooding. It’s Hoffman and Wilde’s effortless chemistry, though, that carries even the duller moments in I WANT YOUR SEX, their ease across frequent dialogue scenes—alongside their respective performance styles’ natural fit within the larger Araki-verse—providing a believable and endearing emotional underpinning for a film that frequently tries to have its absurdist cake and eat it too. Naturally, Araki ends things back where they started, in the realm of the ridiculous, reminding us that all relationships are equal parts foolish, rewarding, and repulsive. (2026, 90 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Kaye]

Billy Wilder's SUNSET BOULEVARD (US)

The 400 Theater — See Venue website for showtimes

Drenched in cynicism, Billy Wilder's SUNSET BOULEVARD ranks up there with Robert Altman's THE PLAYER and David Lynch's MULHOLLAND DR. as one of the best critiques of Hollywood's toxic narcissism and cruelty. The last collaboration between Wilder and screenwriter Charles Brackett, SUNSET BOULEVARD centers on Norma Desmond (played with maniacal intensity by Gloria Swanson), a forgotten silent star who spends her days cooped up in her gothic tomb/mansion, obsessing over her glory days and penning the script which will launch her revival. By chance she encounters Joe Gillis, a down on his luck screenwriter. Their working relationship mutates into a strange sexual dynamic, with Gillis eager to escape; however, he ultimately finds himself contaminated by the greed and disillusionment of Hollywood. Wilder enlisted the help of master cinematographer John F. Seitz, who also photographed DOUBLE INDEMNITY, to lend the film a chiaroscuro, noir-ish look. This is notable during one of the film's most memorable scenes, in which an entranced Desmond watches her celluloid self on the movie screen, the light from the projector flickering over her face creating a kind of literal fusion of reality and fantasy. Look for a cameo from silent film icon Buster Keaton (referred to by Gillis as a "waxwork"), as well as Cecil B. DeMille playing himself. (1950, 110 min, DCP Digital) [Harrison Sherrod]

Sidney Lumet’s THE WIZ (US)

Parkway Social and the Sandy Film Festival at the Parkway Ballroom (4455 S. King Dr.) — Friday, 9pm [Free Admission]

Charlie Smalls and William F. Brown’s The Wiz—a grand retelling of L. Frank Baum’s The Wizard of Oz infused with the sound and vision of Black artistry—was one in a line of new musicals on the Broadway stage finally centering Black voices and writers. Works like Purlie, Ain’t Supposed to Die a Natural Death, Raisin, and Don’t Bother Me, I Can’t Cope all found relative levels of success, be it financially or critically, but The Wiz outpaced them all in overall performance count, and remains the only work amongst these to find life on the big screen, albeit under the tutelage of director Sidney Lumet, hot off the heels of more dramatic fare like DOG DAY AFTERNOON (1975), NETWORK (1976), and EQUUS (1977). Many would assume that Lumet, a white director of intensely realistic social dramas, might not be the best fit to helm a work of magical, fantastical Black empowerment like THE WIZ. And in many ways, they’d be right! Lumet’s adaptation often feels like the Tin Man of Oz: a gorgeous and fascinating exterior filled with character, but with no beating heart found within. Tony Walton’s production design is remarkable in its own right, practically Oz-ifying New York City into a world of Munchkins emerging from graffiti, humanoid crows, and subway stations come to life. But there’s little-to-no dynamism in the camerawork of cinematographer Oswald Morris, preferring static wide shots of the action more so than letting the rhythms of the music dictate the movement of the image. Even the most energetic and toe-tapping numbers like “Ease on Down the Road” find themselves charming to look at but with no true pep in their step. The saving graces therein lie with what has always been an impeccable musical score, alongside an absolutely committed cast. Unsurprisingly, Ted Ross (The Lion) and Mabel King (Evillene, the Wicked Witch of the West), the only two actors in the film who originated their roles on Broadway, are the MVPs of the cast, fully committing to the theatricality and playfulness desired of the work. Michael Jackson’s physicality and singing chops as Scarecrow are frequent highlights, and Nipsey Russell’s Tin Man finds moments of delight, even if he’s vocally not as up-to-snuff as his peers. It’s Diana Ross’ Dorothy that remains the most confounding, with Ross insisting she play the role of a teenage girl, here aged up to be a 24-year-old woman (Ross was 33 at the time of filming). Her emotional journey often remains confused throughout the film, yet her final number, “Home,” filmed entirely in an unbroken shot of Ross singing to the heavens, is a musical revelation, a heart breaking and putting itself back together again in musical form. Charlie Smalls’ compositions (from the impassioned “Be a Lion” to the liberatory “Brand New Day”) move and live with such fervor and joy that even in such a constrained context they can’t help but burst from the frame. Lumet and his crew might not have captured the stage spectacle at its best self, but THE WIZ succeeds in spite of itself, constantly tripping itself up at every possible turn but valiantly, heroically standing back up, brushing itself off, and easing down a magnificently entertaining road. Screening as part of the Feature Fridays: Kings on King series. (1978, 136 min, Digital Projection) [Ben Kaye]

David Byrne’s TRUE STORIES (US)

Alamo Drafthouse — Wednesday, 9:30pm

Among other things, David Byrne's film is simultaneously a satire of television and a celebration of television. Two musical numbers specifically appropriate TV. "Wild Wild Life" has various characters lip synching to the song in front of a giant bank of video monitors, which all show a seemingly endless mélange of stock footage. "Love For Sale" is even more direct, featuring Byrne's band Talking Heads interacting with actual 80's era TV commercials before eventually transforming into chocolate-coated, foil-wrapped treats. Byrne's obsession with capturing striking environmental details is perfectly matched with Ed Lachman's cinematography. Visually, TRUE STORIES evokes the shiny pre-fab face of Texas, where money from oil and microelectronics makes everything look new, as well as the dusty, weird Texas, a result of its funky ethnic mix. Yet, at least according to the film's distributor, it was framed for the 1.37:1 aspect ratio. Perfect for TV. Screening as part of the Weird Wednesdays series. (1986, 90 min, DCP Digital) [Rob Christopher]

George Miller's MAD MAX: FURY ROAD (Australia)

Siskel Film Center — See Venue website for showtimes

There's no shortage of films set in a distant future gone horribly awry, but you'd be hard-pressed to find a dystopia as colorful and horrific as the gory Australia George Miller present in MAD MAX: FURY ROAD. The third sequel to MAD MAX (1979) and an effective reboot of its franchise, FURY ROAD felt inescapable upon its release in 2015; it was on the radar of anyone who even mildly identified with nerd culture. After grossing $375 million at the box office and winning plenty of accolades, it still holds up as a raw, relentless depiction of an oppressive, post-apocalyptic world—and a blast from start to finish. Tom Hardy makes his debut here as Max Rockatansky, a role held in the late '70s and early '80s by Mel Gibson. While his brooding performance is captivating, Hardy's real function is to act as the eyes through which we meet Furiosa, portrayed by Charlize Theron. In a wasteland ruled by cult-leader Immortan Joe and his militia of "war boys," Furiosa, Max, and a truck full of Joe's escaped wives must fight for bodily autonomy, basic human rights, and, as Furiosa replies to Max's question of intent, redemption. For fans of the original trilogy, this offers a new world that's true to the aesthetics of its predecessors but unlimited by '80s special effects; for first-timers, it delivers a unique action-adventure universe free of Marvel-style tropes and overbearing cameos. FURY ROAD feels too huge to be contained by any single screen, but with something of this magnitude, finding the biggest one you possibly can is paramount. Screening as part of the Vroom, Screech series. (2015, 120 min, DCP Digital) [Michael Bates]

Griffin Dunne’s PRACTICAL MAGIC (US)

Alamo Drafthouse — Tuesday, 6:30pm

In PRACTICAL MAGIC, a pair of incredibly connected witch sisters struggle to find love while under a curse which prevents the women in their family from finding true love. After the death of her husband—a victim of the curse—Sally (Sandra Bullock), moves with her two daughters back into the family mansion inhabited by her two aunts (delightfully played by Stockard Channing and Dianne Wiest). Meanwhile, Gillian (Nicole Kidman) runs far away from it all but when she falls into a violently abusive relationship, the sisters use their powers to the extreme to keep them all safe—to complicated and dangerous results. PRACTICAL MAGIC is distinctively '90s not only in its cozy October aesthetic—found in its costuming and music choices—but also in its feminism. It does, however, feel radical; a scene toward the end of the film where Sally and all the women in the town—who previously shunned the two witches—gather to save Gillian from her abuser is particularly powerful. Despite the story about finding love, Dunne also generally makes the male characters feel incidental, as either predetermined love interests with little choice or horrifying villains. It’s all about pairs of sisters and the power they find in supporting each other and gathering even more sisters when that support isn’t enough. It’s also a film made even more magical by the effervescent performances of Bullock and Kidman. (1998, 104 min, New 4K DCP Digital Restoration) [Megan Fariello]

📽️ ALSO SCREENING

⚫ Alamo Drafthouse
CatVideoFest 2026 (Digital Projection) screens this week. See Venue website for showtimes.

Brian De Palma's 1992 film RAISING CAIN (92 min, Digital Projection) screens Monday at 10:30pm and Wednesday at 6:45pm.

Dean Fleischer Camp's 2022 film MARCEL THE SHELL WITH SHOES ON (90 min, Digital Projection) screens Monday at 12:30pm and Wednesday at 10:45am as part of the Kids Camp series. More info on all screenings here.

⚫ Chicago Public Library
The Chicago Public Library's Community Cinema program presents free film and TV screenings at dozens of neighborhood branches throughout the week. See the full schedule here.

⚫ ChiTown Drive-In (2343 S. Throop St.)
ChiTown Movies screens outdoor films throughout the week. More info here.

⚫ Cinema/Chicago
Chung Mong-hong's 2016 film GODSPEED (111 min, Digital Projection) screens Saturday, 1pm, at the Chicago History Museum (1601 N. Clark St.), as part of Cinema/Chicago's Free Summer Screenings series. Free admission with online RSVP.

Stroma Cairns's 2025 film THE SON AND THE SEA (99 min, Digital Projection) screens Wednesday, 6:30pm, at the Chicago Cultural Center (78 E. Washington St.), also as part of Cinema/Chicago's Free Summer Screenings series. Free admission; note that tickets are sold out online, but a standby line will be available at the venue. More info on all screenings here.

⚫ Eyewash Station
Dhyana: Meditative Dance Party, a contemplative dance party encouraging mindfulness and meditation,
with live performances by sulffffffffur, takes place Sunday at 5pm.

Artcore Porn presents Radley Metzger's 1973 film SCORE (91 min, Digital Projection) on Tuesday at 7pm.

Bowie Roussel's 2026 film RABBIT ON A HIGHWAY (58 min, Digital Projection) screens Thursday at 7pm. More info on all screenings and events here.

⚫ FACETS
Olivia Wilde’s 2026 film THE INVITE (107 min, DCP Digital) screens Saturday at 4pm and Sunday at 4pm as part of the Must-Watch Indies series.

Sweet Void Cinema presents a screenwriting workshop on Wednesday from 6pm to 9pm in the Facets Studio. 

Anime Club presents Slayers Night, a double feature of theatrical releases starring “everyone’s favorite dragon-slaying sorceress” on Thursday night. The first feature starts at 7pm; the second starts at 8:45pm. Note this screening is exclusively for Film Club members. More info on all screenings and events here.

⚫ Movies in the Parks
The Chicago Park District's Movies in the Parks series continues throughout the summer, bringing free outdoor screenings of Hollywood classics, family favorites, and local films to parks across the city for its twenty-sixth season. Check the Park District website for the full schedule of dates, locations, and titles. More info here.

⚫ Music Box Theatre
Alysa Nahmias's 2026 documentary COOKIE QUEENS (89 min, DCP Digital) begins screening and Christopher Nolan’s 2026 film THE ODYSSEY (172 min, 70mm through Tuesday, then DCP Digital) continues. See Venue website for showtimes.

Don Chaffey's 1963 film JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS (104 min, Digital Projection) screens Saturday and Sunday at 11am as part of the Indoor Kids family matinee series.

David Zucker's 1998 film BASEKETBALL (103 min, Digital Projection) screens Saturday at midnight. More info on all screenings here.

⚫ Siskel Film Center
Penny Lane’s 2026 documentary WILD INSIDE (95 min, DCP Digital) screens Saturday, 11am, with an introduction by Annette Prince of the Chicago Bird Alliance, and Thursday, 8:30pm, with introduction by Matt Igleski of the Chicago Bird Alliance.

Cauleen Smith's 1998 film DRYLONGSO (86 min, Digital Projection) screens Saturday at 2pm; Sunday at 11am; Monday at 6:15pm; and Wednesday at 6pm, as part of the 25 For 25 series, revisiting standout titles from the Siskel's State Street history.

OFF CENTER: KERRY LAITALA takes place Monday at 6pm featuring two expanded cinema pieces projected simultaneously on a dual 16mm setup, plus assorted Chromadepth 3D and other works. More info on all screenings here.

⚫ Tone Glow
I’ll Walk with God: Reflections on Mortality, a program of nine 16mm experimental short films curated by Bay Area filmmaker Kerry Laitala, screens Friday, 7pm, at Elastic Arts (3429 W Diversey, #208). The program features five films by Laitala alongside works by artists who have influenced her: Gunvor Nelson, Chick Strand, Phil Solomon, and Scott Stark. With Laitala in person.

River of Stars: Bruce Wood’s Expressionist Abstractions, a retrospective of nine 16mm films by Massachusetts-based avant-garde filmmaker Bruce Wood, screens Wednesday, 7pm, also at Elastic Arts. More info on all screenings here.

⚫ Uprising Theater and Cafe (2905 N. Milwaukee Ave.)
Cyril Aris’s 2025 film A SAD AND BEAUTIFUL WORLD (110 min, Digital Projection) screens several times this weekend. See Venue website for showtimes. More info here.

MANAGING EDITORS // Ben and Kat Sachs

CONTRIBUTORS // Michael Bates, Beth Capper, Rob Christopher, Maxwell Courtright, Ray Ebarb, Megan Fariello, Jason Halprin, Kalvin Henley, Shaun Huhn, Ben Kaye, Doug McLaren, Peter Raccuglia, Harrison Sherrod