📽️ CRUCIAL VIEWING
Joseph Cates' WHO KILLED TEDDY BEAR? (US)
Music Box Theatre – See Venue website for showtimes
Norah (Juliet Prowse), a young twenty-something new to the city, is recently hired as a DJ at a New York nightclub. Shortly after beginning her job, she discovers that she has a stalker, who telephones her nightly to say increasingly sexual things. Her stalker is often filmed shirtless and from the neck down and solely in closeups, suggesting a kind of intimacy with Norah that could only be known by someone from her everyday life. Meanwhile, Lieutenant Madden (Jan Murray) is assigned to her case and shows a special interest in her situation due to his wife having been tragically murdered while walking home from the movies years prior. Released at a time when film censorship was loosening and the Hays Code nearly at its end, Joseph Cates’ film is able to tackle heavy subject material, including both perversion and misogyny. Voyeurs, sadists, and fetishists are all examined from a lifestyle point of view as part of Madden’s investigation as well as serving as points of social commentary on the male-dominated world of the 1950s and early '60s. Women are not the only ones sexualized here; men receive their fair share of the treatment, especially Norah’s athletic co-worker, Lawrence (Sal Mineo, in a particularly striking role). Sensitive issues like sexual harassment and rape are commonplace talking points in TEDDY BEAR. It is a film unafraid to unearth the darker side of the human condition. A film full of mystery and red-herrings, WHO KILLED TEDDY BEAR? is a sobering take on some of the seedier aspects of New York City and a Freudian-like exploration into the human sexual psyche. Free screenings for Music Box Members. Pick up your tickets the day of the show. (1965, 94 min, New 35mm Print) [Kyle Cubr]
Kahlil Joseph’s BLKNWS: TERMS & CONDITIONS (US)
Siskel Film Center – Sunday, 12pm
“I know what you’re thinking… But this is not a documentary.” With this bit of cheeky onscreen text—hilariously presented with accompanying memes of a smiling Denzel Washington and a relieved Vivica A. Fox—Kahlil Joseph interrupts himself practically mid-sentence to extend an olive branch to his audience, letting us know that we are not, in fact, about to be subjected to two hours of droll, academic analysis. There are still hints of that sprinkled throughout Joseph’s expansive and purposely uncategorizable BLKNWS: TERMS & CONDITIONS, a film that dares to live and luxuriate in what acclaimed art curator Okwui Enwezor called "the space between the spectator and the work of art." Joseph’s imagery and artistry has been viewed by millions around the world, even if they don’t know his name, as he's collaborated on music videos and visual albums with the likes of Beyoncé, Travis Scott, and Kendrick Lamar, cementing his bona fides as an artist in direct conversation with some of the most influential Black performers of the day. Here, Joseph’s interests have led him to a grander project, using the Africana Encyclopedia—a massive text birthed from the ambitions of W.E.B. DuBois—as a jumping off point to interrogate Black history in four dimensions. Past, present, future, and even alternate realities are extrapolated and interrogated, “BLKNWS” itself popping up as a fictional in-universe news source and Tumblr page, an artistic corrective to re-center and reclaim Black and African culture in the larger diaspora. Joseph intentionally blurs and remixes the lines between reality and fiction, even evoking a charming quotation from Agnes Varda, “What is bad for cinema is the categories; this is real fiction, fake fiction, real documentary, fake documentary. This is a film.” Varda’s not alone as inspiration here, as Joseph’s work, with its intense montage spanning millennia and onscreen text both supporting and contrasting the images presented—recalls Chris Marker’s SANS SOLEIL (1983) and especially the late-career essay films of Jean-Luc Godard, all filtered through an unabashed contemporary Black lens, ancient artifacts and sculptures and cinema positioned alongside memes and TikToks and reality television. The barrage of montage is interspersed with fictional reenactments of the lives of DuBois and Marcus Garvey, alongside beautifully textured explorations of the Nautica, an epic, futuristic ocean vessel looking to retrace the Transatlantic Slave Route but in reverse (a homecoming-turned-luxury liner). Here, a young journalist explores the onboard TransAtlantic Biennale, a place for Black art to be reimagined and recontextualized, perhaps a direct reference to Joseph’s own presence in the art gallery space, where BLKNWS was seen in its early forms. There is certainly something of a museum quality to Joseph’s work; the film warrants intense dissection and analysis, but it could also be easily consumed in short bites by wandering travelers, something to be both memed and studied. This bold attempt at reconfiguring cinematic language and form positions Joseph as a talent to reckon with and watch; his eye for our current moment and what may come next makes him as exciting as any filmmaker out there. (2025, 113 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Kaye]
Gunther von Fritsch and Robert Wise’s THE CURSE OF THE CAT PEOPLE (US)
Music Box Theatre – Sunday, 6:45pm
A curious sequel to Jacques Tourneur’s CAT PEOPLE, producer Val Lewton’s follow-up THE CURSE OF THE CAT PEOPLE finds the three adult protagonists from its predecessor in a wholly new environment. Oliver (Kent Smith), whose first wife Irena (Simone Simon) died at the end of CAT PEOPLE, is now married to Alice (Jane Randolph), his long-suffering former assistant who ultimately won Oliver’s affection when Irena’s supposed delusions went too far. They reside in Tarrytown, New York, from where the legend of Sleepy Hollow originates (Lewton as a boy had spent time near there, where his aunt, actress Alla Nazimova, lived), and have a daughter, Amy (Ann Carter), who’s turning six. Amy is rather unusual, preferring her imaginary world to the company of other children, though her father, seeing in Amy his late wife’s tendency toward the fantastical, urges her to interact with other kids. Through a rather convoluted turn of events—Amy goes to the house of an elderly neighbor, a retired actress, who gives her a wishing ring—she is able to materialize a new friend in the form of Irena. It’s a hefty premise, tension between a father and his daughter because she reminds him of his ex-wife who believed that she would turn into a panther if sparked by passion. (Alice is quite a wife, seeming awfully tolerant of Irena’s ongoing presence in their new life, to the point that her daughter is more similar to her husband’s ex-wife than herself.) Things come to a head when Oliver punishes Amy for her continued belief in her imaginary friend, after which all the horror motifs being utilized—eerie child, imaginary person, senile actress with vengeful daughter, and the headless horseman himself—provide for a climactic finale. This was highly personal stuff to Lewton, who co-wrote the film with CAT PEOPLE screenwriter DeWitt Bodeen; as a child, he was similar to Amy and later told his wife that he never felt he entered the real world as an adult. This personal element imbues the film with a specificity and a seriousness that elevates its otherwise secondary status as a lesser sequel, directed by both Gunther von Fritsch and, when production went overlong, Robert Wise in his feature directorial debut, neither of which would reach the mastery of Tourneur before them. Ann Carter is a talented child actress, embodying all that’s inherently spooky about children and their limitless imaginations. Though having moved to the suburbs, Lewton and co. reveal that urban legends don’t necessarily have to be so urban. And as for its title being potentially misleading (it was also heavily marketed at the time as being similar to its predecessor, with studio publicity going so far as to suggest theater owners stencil paw prints leading up to the premises), critic James Agee noted of his experience seeing it that, “when the picture ended and it was clear beyond further suspense that anyone who had come to see a story about curses and were-cats should have stayed away, they clearly did not feel sold out: for an hour they had been captivated by the poetry and danger of childhood and it showed in their applause.” Preceded by Kier-La Janisse's 2025 short film THE OCCUPANT OF THE ROOM (30 min, DCP Digital). Co-presented by Severin Films. (1944, 70 min, 35mm) [Kat Sachs]
Nicholas Ray's REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE (US)
Music Box Theatre – Tuesday, 7pm
Nicholas Ray’s favorite of the films he directed, REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE represents the peak expression of the director’s sympathy for misfits and maladroits, which can be found in nearly all his features. It’s also one of the most personal films ever made by a Hollywood studio; Ray not only received a remarkable amount of creative control over the project, but he developed close-knit, borderline familial relationships with most of the cast and managed to smuggle allusions to his own bisexuality into the film’s very narrative structure. REBEL was conceived when Ray told executive Lew Wasserman that he most wanted to make a movie about the problems of young people growing up at the time. Wasserman then sent Ray to Warner Bros., where he was recommended to adapt a non-fiction book about a “criminal psychopath.” The finished film kept the book’s title and nothing else; the final script drew on drafts by several writers (Ray had control over which writers he got to work with, and he fired at least two before landing on one whom he felt shared his vision), research Ray conducted by spending time with actual LA street gangs (members of which appear in the movie), and improvisations elicited from the cast. The lead actor, of course, is James Dean, who died about a month before the film’s premiere and whose spectral celebrity will be forever intertwined with the film’s popularity. Ray spent a lot of time getting to know Dean during preproduction, and he ended up constructing the film around him, encouraging him to mentor the other young actors so that his influence could be felt in the acting on the whole. (Dennis Hopper later recalled that he thought Dean was directing the movie, not Ray.) “In Dean, Ray had found his ideal actor,” opined Ray biographer Bernard Eisenschitz, “not because of his association with the Method and the Actors’ Studio, but because of their mutual understanding of codes of conduct or morality: Dean’s ‘urgent, inquisitive curiosity,’ his ‘kind of pathological desire for tension’ (as Leonard Rosenman put it), the actor’s very arrogance, in which Ray recognized his own fence mechanism against the Hollywood circus. Dean had the capacity, in a backfire effect from direction, to lead the filmmaker into areas of which Ray himself was unaware.” The film’s sense of revelatory discovery is heightened by Ray’s majestic use of CinemaScope, a format which was then only a couple of years old. Writers like to connect Ray’s dynamic widescreen compositions to his having studied architecture under Frank Lloyd Wright, but this has the unfortunate effect of downplaying the director's profound emotional intuition, which always guided the way he organized actors in a frame. Eisenschitz comes closer to the mark when he writes of the “constant interplay between the closest personal relationships and vast space” in REBEL, and this points to why the film is such an overpowering aesthetic experience. (1955, 111 min, 35mm) [Ben Sachs]
Jafar Panahi’s IT WAS JUST AN ACCIDENT (Iran/France/Luxembourg)
Doc Films (at the University of Chicago) – Saturday, 7pm
There’s a scene in this film, where the group of Iranians who have kidnapped their supposed torturer in hopes to identify him beyond a shadow of a doubt so that they may enact their own justice and ruin his life as he had theirs, are pushing the van that contains the man’s prostrate body—tranquilized but not yet dead, and in a wooden box that foreshadows his intended fate—after it has run out of gas. It’s a humorous scene, ironic but also openly laughable because one of the “kidnappers” is a bride wearing her wedding gown. But as the group pushes the van, one or two others, strangers, rush to help them. As much as it’s a film about a torturer, it’s also a film about helpers; there’s no clear connection between Panahi and Mister Rogers, but this thought brought to mind his famous statement that, “When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’” The overall narrative of helping pertains to the central drama. A family pulls over after their car breaks down; at the place where they stop and are helped by a random person also works Vahid (Vahid Mobasseri) who, upon hearing the squeak of what sounds like a prosthetic leg, suspects that the father might be Iqbal, or Peg Leg, the man who tortured him and countless others while detained as political prisoners several years prior. He meets some of those others when referred to another victim by his friend, also a victim but who doesn’t want to be involved; ultimately a ragtag group is assembled, which includes a photographer, her troubled ex-boyfriend, and a bride and her groom (they'd been taking pre-wedding photos with the photographer), all one-time political prisoners who are first eager to confirm the torturer is in fact who they think he is and then to decide what to do with him. Ambiguity is inherent to Iranian cinema, as much of it embodies a sense of irresoluteness. But while I wouldn’t go so far as to say this is a bait and switch, it at first seems more enigmatic than it ends up being. Eventually it becomes about retribution and whether it will ease their trauma; it’s a consideration on the prolongation of violence, not really about if the torturer is who they think he is, and if that violence will ever end if they exact revenge. This is obviously personal for Panahi, who has been imprisoned twice for dissent, most recently in 2022; he had been previously unable to leave the country and made this film, as well as many others, without permission from the Iranian government. The film’s meditation on the futility of revenge finds a real-world parallel: just as the characters confront the limits of retribution, Panahi receives support from a global network of artists and audiences, proving that solidarity, not violence, is what carries lasting power. Screening as part of the New Releases and Restorations series. (2025, 103 min, DCP Digital) [Kat Sachs]
Jack McCoy's STEP SIX and Harvey Pullings II’s THANKS FOR THE RIDE, AILEEN (US)
FACETS – Wednesday, 7pm
Sweet Void Cinema, despite shuttering their microcinema at the end of last year, have kept a strong presence in Chicago’s indie film scene through producing films and hosting workshops at FACETS. Two of their most recent projects form this double bill. In Jack McCoy’s feature STEP SIX (2024, 80 min, Unconfirmed Format), mechanic Lewis (Michael E. Martin) reluctantly agrees to spend his vacation house-sitting for his boss Russel, only to get mixed up in a dire case of mistaken identity when a hired killer breaks in looking for the owner of the house. In a panic, Lewis accidentally kills the hitman, then has to pose as him when a “Cleaner” (Guy Wilhoite) comes to help dispose of the body that he thinks is Russel’s. The Cleaner is methodical, following a detailed series of steps in his work that requires the two men to hole up in the house and live the life of the target while they work on dismantling his corpse. Amid all the high-concept identity play are all-too-recognizable indignities of a life under capitalism: Lewis, a wage worker who just wanted a vacation, leads an isolated life that he quickly realizes mirrors that of the hired gun he’s impersonating, going as far as fantasizing about actually having killed his real boss himself. McCoy and DP Trina Mulligan make the most of their limited location by leaning heavily on unconventional and canted angles, sometimes shooting action from behind characters or while focusing on some minor object in a room (a particularly memorable shot looks up from under the apartment’s window, which Lewis opens to let out smoke from a burnt pizza). Harvey Pullings II’s short THANKS FOR THE RIDE, AILEEN(2025, 20 min, Unconfirmed Format), Sweet Void’s newest production, premieres at this screening and presents a similar case of doing a lot with a little. The film follows a day in the life of Aileen (Michaela Petro), a teacher on strike who’s moonlighting as a rideshare driver when she picks up the genial Harrison (Eric Nenninger) under mysterious circumstances. A woman named Amanda had called the ride from a sequined phone, but he insists that it was actually meant for him and gets in the car, being aggressively genial over the course of the ride. He’s friendly but is also the kind of person to regularly note people’s races in conversation, and refer to gentrified areas as “good” as opposed to “bad” neighborhoods. Like STEP SIX, a strong script teases out their tete-a-tete, which is bolstered by two magnetic performances by Petro and TV-veteran Nenninger (Malcolm in the Middle fans will be especially excited to see him again). Confined spaces and novel camera movements dominate the short, which is bookended by long rotating shots covering Aileen’s phone calls, first within a car looking outward and then within her living room gazing through the apartment and out to the street below. Taken along with STEP SIX, it’s a reminder of how far ingenuity and community can go toward making great films. [Maxwell Courtright]
📽️ ALSO RECOMMENDED
Dino Risi’s IL SORPASSO (Italy)
Doc Films (at the University of Chicago) – Friday, 7pm
The impact of IL SORPASSO’s pioneering mismatched buddy road trip comedy can be felt throughout the decades in American cinema, from films like '90s SNL star vehicle TOMMY BOY to the more recent, and underseen, THE LONG DUMB ROAD. Like those films, IL SORPASSO examines a cultural understanding of masculinity through male friendship and humor, focusing on the pros and cons of unpredictability and escapism. Its familiarity doesn’t detract from its distinctive feel, as its tone reflects the relationship between the two protagonists, contrasting fast-paced disruptiveness with measured social commentary. Staying back in a mostly empty Rome during the summer Ferragosto holiday, reserved law student, Roberto (French auteur darling Jean-Louis Trintignant), is bombarded by boisterous stranger, Bruno (midcentury Italian film mainstay Vittorio Gassman), who’s just looking to use a phone. Roberto ends up joining Bruno in his sportscar for a road trip up the Via Aurelia, drinking, meeting women, and visiting both of their families along the way. Brimming with Italian pop songs and a jazzy, upbeat score by Riz Ortolani, IL SORPASSO’s bouncy nature is restrained by a sense of subtle contemplation; Roberto’s fleeting internal monologue and distinct shots of Bruno reflected in the rearview mirror stand out here. The film’s impressive black and white cinematography by Alfio Contini likewise exposes the starkness of the landscapes and towns in which Roberto and Bruno travel, giving the sensation that the spontaneity of their journey is inherently muted. Exemplary of the commedia all’italiana genre, IL SORPASSO is also notable for its commentary on the shifting ideologies during the Italian economic miracle period post-World War II, featuring a more modern culture, driven by consumerism and individualism—the film was re-titled THE EASY LIFE for English-speaking audiences. Its original Italian name translates literally to “the overtaking,” a more multifaceted title, especially considering the film’s utterly disquieting ending. Screening as part of the Conversations in Cars: Road Trips and Relationships series. (1962, 105 min, DCP Digital) [Megan Fariello]
Leo McCarey's AN AFFAIR TO REMEMBER (US)
Doc Films (at the University of Chicago) – Saturday, 4pm
The 1950s were an exciting time for lush, romantic "women's pictures," as the CinemaScope format provided Hollywood an opportunity to differentiate itself from the 4:3 format of television. Films like HOW TO MARRY A MILLIONAIRE (1953), A STAR IS BORN (1954), and PILLOW TALK (1959), were all shot in this format, requiring more creative cinematography to fill the new wide frame. AN AFFAIR TO REMEMBER (1957) was also shot in CinemaScope, although it doesn't seem to fully embrace the format as heartily as A STAR IS BORN with its Broadway spectacle or PILLOW TALK with split-screen antics. Nonetheless, AN AFFAIR TO REMEMBER remains one of the most fondly remembered romantic dramas of the era, starring two stunning leads, Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr, who radiate chemistry and warmth. Somewhat unusual to AN AFFAIR TO REMEMBER as a rather traditional "women's picture" is the outcome of the story—familiar to anyone who has watched SLEEPLESS IN SEATTLE, Nora Ephron's 1993 romantic comedy that references the film throughout and acts as homage to the 1957 film and its enduring allure. In AN AFFAIR, Kerr (as Terry McKay, a former nightclub singer turned kept woman) and Grant (as Nickie Ferrante, a charming playboy and kept man) act as two travelers on a cruise ship from Europe to New York who strike up a light romance despite their pre-existing romantic ties awaiting them in New York. The romance turns more serious after Terry meets Nickie's grandmother at Janou's Mediterranean villa. This poignant scene does utilize CinemaScope more dramatically than others to immerse the viewer in the exterior and interior of the attractive and otherworldly home, deepening the spell that Janou seems to cast over Terry and Nickie's burgeoning affection and the spectacle of Terry singing the title song of the film as Janou plays piano. Terry and Nickie, concerned about their current state as less-than-savory characters who have no careers and no money of their own, decide to make a pact to meet again in six months at the top of the Empire State Building after they have broken ties with their significant others and gotten steady jobs. Tragedy strikes Terry on that fateful evening six months later, but she refuses to let Nickie know the truth, out of some strange mixture of pride and shame over her new disability. Some needlessly long scenes of children's choirs reiterating moral platitudes delay the denouement that continues to surprise me, no matter how many times I watch: unlike the punishment meted to many a "fallen woman" in these dramas of the 1940s and 1950s, Terry is somehow able to redeem herself as a music teacher at a Catholic school and reunite with Nickie, who has now become a self-sufficient artist and rejected his former ways. As a romantic fantasy, the film delivers, mainly due to the wonderful chemistry between Grant (who starred in an earlier McCarey film, THE AWFUL TRUTH [1937]) and Kerr, who endures as one of the most subtle and talented actresses of the era, able to deliver sassy quips in her banter with Grant and pivot to surprisingly convincing pathos, despite the unreality and unintentional camp of the more dramatic lines of dialogue. Their sincerity rises above clunky elements of the film and makes it a romance (and comedy) to remember. Screening as part of the New Releases and Restorations series. (1957, 115 min, DCP Digital) [Alex Ensign]
Abraham Polonsky’s TELL THEM WILLIE BOY IS HERE (US)
Siskel Film Center – Saturday, 4:30pm
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]
Tokuzō Tanaka’s THE SNOW WOMAN (Japan)
Alamo Drafthouse – Tuesday, 9:30pm
Beginning his career as an assistant director for filmmakers like Akira Kurasawa, Tokuzō Tanaka went on to direct many films in period franchise series Zatoichi and Nemuri Kyōshirō. In his visually arresting THE SNOW WOMAN, however, he builds upon the traditional Japanese ghost story of Yuki-onna, developed from Lafcadio Hearn’s collection, Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things. In feudal Japan, a master sculptor and his apprentice, Yosaku (Akira Ishihama), are wandering through the snow-covered woods when they find the perfect tree from which to generate a statue of Buddhist goddess Kannon. They take shelter from a blizzard in a cabin where, in the night, the supernatural Snow Woman (Shiho Fujimura) appears and freezes the master to death. After making Yosaku swear to never speak of incident, she lets him live. As he tries to move on, attempting to finish his master’s work and create a life and family for himself, the effects of his encounter with the Snow Woman eventually catches up with Yosaku. Tanaka and cinematographer Chikashi Makiura deliver a haunted visual quality, not just in their use of misty lighting and blue and purple-toned snowy imagery, but with their camera placement; it peers from behind forest trees and around doors within house, suggesting an ever-present yet invisible and unnerving witness to the occurrences. This shadow is narratively evident, too, through Yosaku’s statue, as he attempts to fashion an otherworldly feminine presence out of nature. The lesson of THE SNOW WOMAN lies in his folly of trying to hold too tightly to the inexplicable. Screening as part of the Terror Tuesday series. (1968, 80 min, DCP Digital) [Megan Fariello]
Apichatpong Weerasethakul's UNCLE BOONMEE WHO CAN RECALL HIS PAST LIVES (Thailand)
Siskel Film Center – Tuesday, 6pm
A hushed and floating aureole of a film, Apichatpong Weerasethakul's UNCLE BOONMEE captivates and holds us firm in some timeless stupor. The northern Thai jungle throbs patiently—with past lives and past events, monkey ghosts and ethereality—while Boonmee comes full circle, or doesn't. The film centers on an elderly Thai farmer, Uncle Boonmee, who is dying of kidney disease. Fading in his farm home, his son and wife appear as spirits (in easily one of the most affecting family dinner scenes on film) to ease Boonmee into non-being. As in SYNDROMES AND A CENTURY and TROPICAL MALADY, Weerasethakul's Buddhism informs the fluidity of time and body, though here he forgoes the formal duality of those films for something like a drifting continuum. Boonmee laments his karma, having killed in the past either too many communists or bugs on his tamarind farm, and later dreams of a stunted future where images of one's past are projected until they arrive. Are we some Baudrillard-like copy of a copy, reborn and born again—or perhaps a continual permutation of events and memories? As in his past work, Weerasethakul lets us linger just long enough in dense but controlled compositions. The distance of his subjects in the frame methodically draws us deeper into his hypnotic world where the sound of our breathing heightens anticipation. It amplifies the pulse and hum of the darkened, textured jungle on screen. But the frame here is also Weerasethakul's most purposeful one, leading us gently into fabled recollection, and cunningly deep inside a haunting cave-womb. History and spirit have a composite curiosity that envelops both Boonmee and the viewer. It offers as much as one is willing to ask. Screening as part of the Interiority on Screen lecture series at the Film Center. (2010, 114 min, DCP Digital) [Brian Welesko]
Paul Brickman's RISKY BUSINESS (US)
Alamo Drafthouse – Friday, 1:45pm, Saturday, 9:45pm, and Tuesday, 3:45pm
In SCREAM (1996), Kevin Williamson jokes that pausing RISKY BUSINESS reveals Tom Cruise in all his glory, a sly wink at how the film was long misread as a teen-sex trifle. Studios wanted to sell it as another PORKY’S (1982). Its reputation calcified early: the underwear slide, the CTA tryst, the makeshift brothel. These images turned into pop-culture cutouts, much like THE GRADUATE (1967), whose iconic frames—Mrs. Robinson’s angled leg, Benjamin drifting in the pool, the wedding crash—eclipsed the darker pulse beneath. Both films trace boys seduced by systems larger than themselves, mistaking desire for autonomy until the trap springs shut. Williamson’s own misreading resurfaced in 1999 when Dawson’s Creek opened season three with “Like a Virgin,” swapping Joel Goodsen for Dawson Leery, who wrecks his father’s boat while chasing sex and scrambles to pay for the damage. He falls in with a stripper, hosts a chaotic house party, and winds up punished back into puritanism. The joke lands: RISKY BUSINESS had been reduced to a glossy emblem of 1980s misbehavior. Brickman, however, was crafting an anti-capitalist satire smuggled inside the language of a teen romp. The Trojan horse is obvious, complete with ice cream cones and adolescent fantasies. Inside it, Brickman hides a critique of Reagan-era prosperity and the market logic that colonizes adolescent dreams. Joel Goodsen isn’t merely a college-bound kid losing control; he’s a willing apprentice to an ideology that turns everything, including people, into negotiable assets. His Future Enterprisers club teaches him to compress life into profit margins: desire becomes cost, risk becomes capital, and Lana (Rebecca De Mornay), who is magnetic, unreadable, and alive in a way Joel barely understands, enters his life as both temptation and market disruption. Brickman’s tone oscillates between exuberance and dread. Cruise’s improvised slide feels buoyant and innocent until the Porsche sinks into Lake Michigan. A sacrifice to the gods of ambition. That tonal slipperiness baffled the studio, which wanted uncomplicated fun rather than an indictment of structural economics. Producer David Geffen battled Brickman over the ending, a conflict that sharpened the film’s thesis: the cost of doing business is always collected, even from the artist. Brickman’s near-silence as a director after 1983 reads like the film’s final warning. The film’s sensuality also leans toward something more adult than its reputation suggests. Cruise’s loosened charm, De Mornay’s luminous wariness, and the off-screen volatility of their relationship bleed into the film’s dreamlike atmosphere, heightened by Tangerine Dream’s score. What emerges isn’t voyeurism, but the fragile rhythm of two people briefly outrunning the world that will inevitably reclaim them. By the time Joel Goodsen delivers his infamous line, “I deal in human fulfillment,” the film has already exposed the greed behind the dark sunglasses. It’s easy to imagine Joel aging into Frank T. J. Mackey from MAGNOLIA (1999), a man who finally perfects the sales pitch he learned as a teenage manager of sex workers. Brickman shows us the price of confusing capitalism with identity, the way a boy can glide across a polished floor believing he’s free while the system surrounding him quietly tallies his value. RISKY BUSINESS shows that you can buy the American Dream for the low price of moral corrosion. But sure, try to pause it to see Tom Cruise’s penis. Programmed by Josh Safdie for the Alamo Guest Selects series. (1983, 99 min, DCP Digital) [Shaun Huhn]
Harry Kümel's DAUGHTERS OF DARKNESS (Belgium)
Doc Films (at the University of Chicago) – Saturday, 9:30pm
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]
Kelly O'Sullivan & Alex Thompson's GHOSTLIGHT (US)
The Davis Theater – Tuesday, 7:30pm
There are days where Chicago’s storefront theater scene can feel like the city’s best-kept secret; abandoned rooms and buildings scattered across the city that have been converted into shelters for imagination and earnest emotional excavation, created by people sharing stories with live audiences for little-to-no money, simply for the pleasure of nourishing that deep, artistic part of the human spirit. It’s corny and scrappy and painful and oftentimes exploitative, and in its best moments, it’s a place where—despite it all—art for art’s sake comes alive in a most hopeful and earnest fashion. It’s somewhat surprising that such a potent artistic subculture has rarely been seen as an environ for cinematic exploration, but Kelly O’Sullivan and Alex Thompson’s GHOSTLIGHT succeeds in mining this world for all it’s worth, tying this all to a story of familial grief and cathartic retribution that, of course, can only be unearthed through the power of theater. In this case, a hastily tossed-together production of Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet does the trick, with construction worker Dan (Keith Kupferer) inexplicably joining the cast after wandering away from his worksite. Sullivan’s script slowly teases out the true narrative meat plaguing Dan’s life, a tragedy of human proportions that finds eerie parallels to the tragic Shakespearean love story Dan and his theatrical cohort (led by a harsh-yet-tender Dolly de Leon) have found themselves exhuming in a dingy storefront in the Chicago suburbs. The layers of authenticity are further deepened by the fact that Kupferer’s real-life family inhabit those same roles on screen here; Tara Mallen (a Chicago theater all-star in her own right) plays Dan’s beleaguered wife, and their daughter Katherine Mallen Kupferer delivers an adolescent tornado of a performance as their rebellious teen offspring. Their shared onscreen family trauma (unfurled late in the film at a deposition hearing in a stunning piece of performance from Kupferer) is always boiling under the surface of their lives, with Dan and his daughter eventually finding a home for these repressed feelings to thrive within the Bard’s text. O’Sullivan and Thompson deliver the final blow with one fleeting image near the end of the film, hiding in the shadows, bringing Dan closer to a breaking point of meaning and understanding than he’s ever felt before. As messy and as slapdash as storefront theater often is, truth and vulnerability always find a way to shine through. This event is a 30th anniversary benefit for the Rivendell Theatre Ensemble. Preceded by a VIP reception at 6pm and followed by a Q&A with the filmmakers and cast. (2024, 110 min, DCP) [Ben Kaye]
Gene Saks' BAREFOOT IN THE PARK (US)
Siskel Film Center – Saturday, 2:15pm
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]
Spike Lee’s HIGHEST 2 LOWEST (US/Japan)
Alamo Drafthouse – Saturday, 6:15pm
HIGHEST 2 LOWEST marks Spike Lee and Denzel Washington’s fifth collaboration together, beginning with MO’ BETTER BLUES (1990). Washington plays David King, legendary record producer and owner of Stackin’ Hits records; he's sold a portion of his company and looks to retake control by putting everything on the line. His plan is upended when kidnappers apprehend his son Trey (Aubrey Joseph) and his friend Kyle, the son of his friend and chauffeur Paul Christopher (Jeffrey Wright). When the kidnapper releases Trey by mistake, David is faced with the choice to buy back power or risk it all for Kyle’s ransom. The film follows the outline of Kurosawa’s HIGH AND LOW (1963), but the insecurities of the collaborators saturate the story. For a majority of the runtime, this feels less like a crime thriller and more like a Bergmanesque meditation. Living in his ivory tower of pop culture relics, King lives fully aware his prime has passed. While his home decor fills the frame with images of James Brown, George Foreman, Muhammad Ali, and Michael Jackson, he feels restless. Washington, a surrogate for Lee, tries to keep up in an unrecognizable world after experiencing the greatest success in his field. Some have argued the film is a metaphor for Lee’s pivot towards conservative politics, glorifying ownership of production; but the character’s motivation lies in pursuit of mojo rather than salivating over exploitation. HIGHEST 2 LOWEST feels like two separate genre films colliding head on at 90 miles an hour. The first half presents a day in the life with sprinkled uneasiness by way of New Wave-ish editing style. As father and son enter the gym, the camera trucks along on Steadicam. As family talks to the coach, Lee cuts between parallel shots slightly punched in for coverage, a big no-no according to most accredited film schools yet a choice made by the artistic director of NYU Tisch’s film program. During one of Washington’s greatest monologues, Lee’s editing interrupts the actor to communicate the character’s frustration past the abilities of skilled oration. Lee’s intervals keep us on our toes, shocking us awake in case we were sleeping. An actor’s brilliance comes from his spontaneity; a good actor prepares, but a great actor prepares not knowing what will come out. Every frame of Denzel Washington exudes truth and vulnerability. In interviews, Lee appears quietly apprehensive sitting next to Washington, quietly observing a force of nature. The film pairs his chops with other heavy hitters such as Wendell Pierce and delightfully surprising A$AP Rocky. The final confrontation between rhyming foes deserves a seat next to the coffeeshop scene from HEAT (1995). For a film about an artist ruminating on the past, we witness the best images of the auteur’s career. HIGHEST 2 LOWEST is not OLDBOY (2013). Instead of remaking, this Spike Lee Joint riffs in its own direction, using the classic as a launchpad into the final phase of his career. (2025, 133 min, DCP Digital) [Ray Ebarb]
Radu Mihaileanu’s LE CONCERT (France)
Alliance Française (Enter via 54 W. Chicago Ave.) – Tuesday, 6:30pm
While films about Jewish persecution during the Holocaust are legion, little attention has been paid to the oppression of Jews under Soviet rule, a situation that caused every synagogue I passed in the 1970s and ’80s to post a “Save Soviet Jewry” sign near its front door. Romanian director Radu Mihaileanu returns to that time with his fast-paced fantasy comedy LE CONCERT. The film opens with an orchestra—the Bolshoi, to be exact—rehearsing in a concert hall. A man is conducting, but strangely, his eyes are closed. When a cellphone goes off, we learn that this conductor, Andrei Simoniovich Filipov (Aleksei Guskov), has been standing in the balcony. Formerly the official conductor of this orchestra, Filipov was reduced to janitor thirty years earlier for hiring Jewish musicians. Admonished by his supervisor, he returns to cleaning and inadvertently intercepts a fax from the Châtelet Theater in Paris pleading with the orchestra to be a last-minute replacement in three weeks’ time. Filipov seizes the chance to return to the podium and enlists 65 musicians, largely Jews who were dismissed or banned, to masquerade as the Bolshoi. The hijinks in the film, especially those involving the Roma who arrange fake passports for the musicians and contribute a violinist (Anghel Gheorghe) of unconventional artistry, are genuinely funny, and the mystery of why Filipov insists on having a French virtuoso violinist played by Mélanie Laurent as the featured soloist unfolds with surprising poignancy. Importantly, Filipov’s choice to program Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto in D Major—the title concert, a term that refers to the concerto form, not the performance—has special significance for him and ties the disparate characters of the film together. The only flaw—but a big one—was to reinforce the stereotype of Jews as money grubbers when the father and son trumpeters who are the most obviously Jewish of the musicians almost miss the concert because they are selling cellphones and caviar on the streets. Screening as part of the Cinémélodie series. Guests will enjoy a complimentary glass of Louis Jadot Bourgogne and a chance to win a $50 gift certificate to the Sofitel Magnificent Mile’s très chic Le Bar. (2009, 119 min, Digital Projection) [Marilyn Ferdinand]
Anime Club presents Satoshi Kon's TOKYO GODFATHERS (Japan/Animation)
FACETS – Thursday, 7pm
Of the quartet of feature films that Satoshi Kon directed in a revelatory career tragically cut short, TOKYO GODFATHERS remains the most fascinating outlier. Unlike the reality-bending dramatic thrillers that came to define his career—PERFECT BLUE (1997), MILLENNIUM ACTRESS (2001), and PAPRIKA (2006)—TOKYO GODFATHERS is Kon’s only film that can unabashedly be categorized as a comedy, if a highly melancholic one. The Christmastime tale about three unhoused miscreants—the drunkard Gin, the matriarchal Hana, and the runaway teenager Miyuki—who happen upon an abandoned baby is less interested in the formal experimentation of Kon’s other works than in pushing the boundaries of what kinds of mature, emotionally layered stories can be told in the medium of animation. An episodic wild goose chase ensues through the snow-littered streets of Tokyo, with the heroes encountering mob bosses, drag queens, and mystery after mystery of who left this young child behind, the ever-unfurling backstory leaving breadcrumbs of resonance with the hidden tales of our central trio; each united in isolation, shutting themselves off from a world that has rejected them, or vice versa. The quest for found family amidst a cruel and confusing world shines a beam of thematic potency through an otherwise maniacally comic outing, with Kon’s expert skills as an editor and weaver of imagery working together for wonderfully comic purposes here. It’s a testament to Kon's mastery of storytelling that this delightful holiday excursion still packs a wallop two decades later, standing as continued proof of the open curiosity of Kon’s vision of animation as a medium of boundless narrative potential. (2003, 93 min, Unconfirmed Format) [Ben Kaye]
Brian Henson's THE MUPPET CHRISTMAS CAROL (US)
FACETS – Sunday, 2pm
Along with bearing the emotional weight of being the first theatrically released Muppet film made after the untimely passing of creative visionary Jim Henson, THE MUPPET CHRISTMAS CAROL carries the mighty task of representing two of the most beloved staples of American culture: The Muppets, a troupe of felt and fur vaudevillian puppets initially created and pioneered in the mid-to-late 1970s by the late, great Henson, and Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, a mid-19th-century novella warning against the perils of greed that has inexplicably become the signature cash-cow stage adaptation for regional theaters nationwide. Under the direction of Brian Henson, one of Jim’s children devoted to carrying on the Henson legacy, this high-concept literary adaptation is far from the contemporary comic antics that had previously been seen in Muppet Cinema. Rather than playing versions of themselves, Kermit the Frog, Miss Piggy, Fozzie Bear, and the rest of the delightful squad of weirdos are tasked with acting out classics of canonized literature (cemented by their next film, MUPPET TREASURE ISLAND), here playing the roles of various Dickensian characters, anchored by a lead human actor (the irreplaceable Michael Caine) as Ebenezer Scrooge. As tricky of a task as this could have been, the undeniable success comes in this being less so a Muppet-ized spin on A Christmas Carol, but rather a supremely well-crafted cinematic Dickens adaptation that just happens to star Muppets in prominent roles. Each Muppet brings their well-defined characteristics to their respective roles in ways that are comically potent, but never getting in the way of their assigned role (Miss Piggy’s Emily Cratchit is still a diva, and Statler and Waldorf’s Marley Brothers still heckle up a storm). It’s the central performance from Caine that really cements the tone here, exchanging dialogue with talking frogs and pigs as if he were performing on the National Theatre stage. His journey of personal redemption is treated with utmost sincerity and grave seriousness, with the primary moments of comic deviation coming from the narration of Charles Dickens, here portrayed with gusto by The Great Gonzo, alongside his trusty sidekick Rizzo the Rat (as himself, natch) providing ribald Mystery Science Theater-esque commentary. As with any successful Muppet film, earnestness wins out, with the comic foibles at hand balanced out by Paul Williams’ tuneful and tearful earworms, plus Henson’s keen sense of magic and horror that has been key to Dickens’ tale for generations. Even with his passing, the spirit of Jim Henson’s artistry—that inimitable balance of laughter and heart—finds itself ever alive in this now-well-established holiday classic. And so, as we observed, Henson bless us, every one! Chicago puppeteer and Chicago Danztheatre Ensemble teaching artist Christine Marie will introduce the film with a short performance. (1992, 85 min, Unconfirmed Format) [Ben Kaye]
Tim Burton’s BATMAN RETURNS (US)
The Davis Theater – Wednesday, 7pm
No one else captures the nostalgic kitsch and dark melancholy of Christmastime with perfect balance like Tim Burton. His first feature after one of his other Christmas classics, EDWARD SCISSORHANDS (1990), BATMAN RETURNS shifts the gloomy holiday cheer from the suburbs to Gotham City. The constructed sets and detailed production design have produced some of the most iconic images in a career filled with memorable visuals. The story involves Gotham industrial businessman Max Shreck (Christopher Walken) teaming up with twisted crime lord Penguin (Danny DeVito), who’s searching for his origins. Superhero vigilante Batman (Michael Keaton) is out to stop them, but everyone’s plans are complicated by Selina Kyle (Michelle Pfeiffer), Shreck’s meek secretary who seeks revenge against her boss as the formidable, whip-brandishing, latex-wearing Catwoman. It's hard to argue that this isn’t Pfeiffer’s movie, as the submissive cat lady violently transforms into the dominant Catwoman, one of the great cinematic femme fatales. Her early scenes, set in her baby pink apartment, where Selina talks to herself to cope with the loneliness of her life are unexpectedly moving, so much so that her story looms over the other characters'. Through her, the film presents complex themes about duality and female sexuality. She also helps to make the film more noir than anything else, despite its titular superhero; like its conflicted approach to the holiday season, BATMAN RETURNS is funny and morbid, beautiful and grotesque, ridiculous and sincere—one of Burton’s best. Screening as part of the Christmas, etc. screening. (1992, 126 min, DCP Digital) [Megan Fariello]
Ridley Scott's LEGEND (US)
Doc Films (at the University of Chicago) – Friday, 9:30pm
Grounded in the real world, it’s easy to understand why a fantasy film like LABYRINTH (1986) has found its audience in the years since its release. Ridley Scott’s LEGEND, on the other hand, hasn't had as widespread a nostalgic resurgence. Plagued by post-production squabbles about the length and soundtrack, the film has ended up with several theatrical versions and a director’s cut. All that, however, overshadows what is, in any of its forms, a spellbinding piece of fantasy filmmaking. Light on dialogue, the film's visual texture is so corporeal that its make-believe feels equal parts beautifully and terribly tangible. Though Brothers Grimm-inspired in its threatening tone, LEGEND doesn’t make clear its childhood lesson. Rather, it’s an amorphous tale about good versus evil, and the loss of innocence—perhaps even in relation to the natural world; contrasting scenes of light and dark are effectively rendered, the mise-en-scene feeling fully authentic despite the fantasy. Drawn in as bait, innocent Princess Lili (Mia Sara) touches a wild unicorn, allowing a literal and figurative Darkness (an iconic, devil-horned Tim Curry) to descend upon a magical forest. Woodland resident Jack (Tom Cruise) adventures with a band of magic creatures to rescue Lili and save the unicorn. If there is a notable theme to be found, not that there needs to be, it perhaps lies with Lili and the unicorns in a heavily visually symbolic coming-of-age story. One outstanding scene occurs as Lili wanders Darkness’ castle, spellbound by an enchanted dancing black dress, allegorically seduced by Darkness; the garment entices her so much that she becomes one with it, following its choreography and eventually magically transforming from her now tattered white gown to a dramatically gothic princess. A final note on LEGEND’s scores: the American release features an essentially '80s fantasy synth score by Tangerine Dream that regularly features in my personal playlists. Screening as part of the Charting Imaginary Worlds: Three Fantasy Films series. (1985, 89 min, DCP Digital) [Megan Fariello]
Charlie Shackleton’s THE ZODIAC PROJECT (US/Documentary)
Music Box Theatre – See Venue website for showtimes
What do you do if you can’t make the movie you want to make? Perhaps make a movie about just that. This is what British filmmaker Charlie Shackleton (whose 2021 film THE AFTERLIGHT, a haunting collage of scenes from global cinema featuring only now-deceased actors, was distributed via a single 35mm print) did when he couldn’t secure the rights for Lyndon Lafferty’s 2012 book The Zodiac Killer Cover-Up: The Silenced Badge. Rather than deliver the true crime documentary he originally set out to make, Shackleton instead crafts an essay film not just about the aborted project but also about its ostensible genre, which has beguiled the nation these past several years in the form of books (more proliferate and hastily written than ever before), podcasts (the playground of privileged white women), and documentaries, now often made as docuseries and stretched out into overly long, ethically dubious narrative sagas. There’s no denying that his subject, the infamous Zodiac Killer, is a pervasive one, though this does allow for the formal playfulness of his consolation-prize-project to assume prominence. At one point in the film, over the course of which Shackleton is sporadically shown sitting in a sound booth recording the narration, he explicitly says that he has no desire to rehash the details of the Zodiac Killer’s crimes, something he claims is a minor alleviation of not having secured the rights to Lafferty’s book. Of course not getting the rights is merely a technicality, as much of what Lafferty wrote about, sans a few key twists, has been discussed publicly and could therefore be disclosed in the film. Where Shackleton fills in the gaps are with what he would have done had he been able to make it, the kind of shots he’d set up or the sort of evocative B-roll he’d use in certain spots. What I found most illuminating about these parts is where he would show a location, say, and clarify that it wasn’t the exact location of wherever he was talking about, but that for the sake of the film it would do. Perhaps unintentionally Shackleton is pulling back a veneer of deceit around this so-called “true” crime content that prioritizes what might either be more exciting or convenient than what is real. He explores this more obviously in references to the consistent filmic grammar of other such documentaries, with examples from these films and series side-by-side on screen. This takes it into more film essay territory, which is interesting to compare and contrast to his own creative approach and ruminations over the entertainment and follies of the genre. His film is like an investigation, both into a hypothetical and a literal, perhaps in such a juxtaposition the ultimate true crime documentary. Or at least the ultimate in the “fake it til you literally make it” variety. (2025, 91 min, DCP Digital) [Kat Sachs]
Shane Black's KISS KISS BANG BANG (US)
Alamo Drafthouse – Sunday, 3:30pm
Shane Black's gimmicky, giddy directorial debut Frankensteins together a mid-period action movie and WILL SUCCESS SPOIL ROCK HUNTER? into a lot of smartly-executed dumb fun. Robert Downey, Jr. (in what could be called "the Tony Randall role") plays a New York thief who stumbles into a Hollywood satire and in the process of getting whisked off to LA gets entangled in a thriller plot that involves his childhood crush (Michelle Monaghan) and hard-boiled private eye Gay Perry (Val Kilmer). Black has a grating tendency to "cynically" mock his own crowd-pleasing plot mechanics (before, of course, indulging in them), but he makes up for it with a strong command of formal gags, including Downey's self-aware narration, which would seem post-modern if it wasn't so firmly rooted in the cartoon humor of the 1950s. An appropriate introduction might be a double feature of GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES and THE GIRL CAN'T HELP IT. (2005, 102 min, DCP Digital) [Ignatiy Vishnevetsky]
Elizabeth Lo's MISTRESS DISPELLER (China/US/Documentary)
Alamo Drafthouse – Saturday, 4pm and Monday, 3:45pm
A shockingly intimate documentary, MISTRESS DISPELLER highlights a new industry on the rise in China. With the goal of keeping couples together, a "mistress dispeller" can be hired to infiltrate family dynamics and bring harmony back to marriages flailing due to infidelity. Featuring the challenges of modern relationships, dating, marriage, family, and loneliness, the film creates space for everyone involved, demonstrating sincere empathy for all sides of the love triangle. MISTRESS DISPELLER follows a couple, Mr. and Mrs. Li, as the wife reaches out to Teacher Wang, a mistress dispeller who skillfully inserts herself into their dynamic, discovering the innermost details of the relationships involved to save the marriage; her purpose, however, expands to helping everyone, including the mistress. The film insightfully draws connections between personal relationships and larger cultural norms and expectations. Frank conversations, shot with arresting stillness, many featuring close-ups, are juxtaposed with lingering shots of Chinese art, landscapes, and cityscapes. Throughout, as well, there are interludes with images of new brides, lonely hearts ads, dating seminars, and matchmaking services, illuminating the cultural pressures that exist in finding and maintaining successful relationships—so much so that industries spring up to fill the need. What is most surprising is how director Elizabeth Lo got everyone involved to agree to willingly participate; a fact she is clear to emphasize with text at the beginning of MISTRESS DISPELLER. The result is true cinematic melodrama in documentary form. (2024, 94 min, DCP Digital) [Megan Fariello]
Mike Cheslik's HUNDREDS OF BEAVERS (US)
Music Box Theatre – Friday, 10pm
A largely silent film that draws on Looney Tunes aesthetics as well as video game logic, HUNDREDS OF BEAVERS balances slapstick, sight gags, and sound effects with a genuinely arresting visual aesthetic, combining live action with animated elements. While all the features are familiar, together they create an imaginative modern approach and clever take on cinematic comedy. Jean Kayak (Ryland Brickson Cole Tews, who also co-wrote the film) is a popular applejack salesman, but when he loses his business in an explosion, he’s forced to find a way to survive in the snowy Midwestern wilderness. Desperate to find food, Kayak must learn the ways of a northern fur trapper, receiving help from some locals, though mostly struggling on his own to succeed; his goal to earn better equipment—and ultimately the hand of a local merchant’s daughter—by selling pelts is where HUNDREDS OF BEAVERS draws on a video game style, including recognizable sound cues, animations of how many pelts earn him which tools, and Kayak’s sneaking into the beavers’ hideout; it all adds to the uniqueness of the film’s storytelling. The cunning animals themselves are an annoying barrier to Kayak’s success. Larger creatures (such as the titular beavers) are performed by actors in mascot costumes, but director and effects designer Mike Cheslik also rounds out the animal residents with animation, puppets, and stuffed animals—which themselves are filled with stuffing guts; there’s a constant concurrence of the adorable, the gross, and cartoonish violence. Shot in black and white in both Wisconsin and Michigan, the film also looks striking, the backdrop of the forest landscape grounding the silly antics that ensue. Due its silent nature, the jaunty score by Chris Ryan is also an important driving force in the film, demonstrated in its first few moments with a catchy theme song about Kayak’s popular applejack. (2022, 108 min, DCP Digital) [Megan Fariello]
The 42nd Annual Music Box Sing-a-Long & Double Feature
Music Box Theatre – See Venue website for showtimes
Frank Capra's IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE (US)
Like Steven Spielberg today, Frank Capra was associated more with reassuring, patriotic sentiment than with actually making movies; but just beneath the Americana, his films contain a near-schizophrenic mix of idealism and resentment. In this quality, as well as his tendency to drag charismatic heroes through grueling tests of faith, it wouldn't be a stretch to compare Capra with Lars von Trier. There's plenty to merit the comparison in IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE alone: The film is a two-hour tour of an honest man's failure and bottled-up resentment, softened only intermittently by scenes of domestic contentment. Even before the nightmarish Pottersville episode (shot in foreboding shadows more reminiscent of film noir than Americana), Bedford Falls is shown as vulnerable to the plagues of recession, family dysfunction, and alcoholism. All of these ills weigh heavy on the soul of George Bailey, a small-town Everyman given tragic complexity by James Stewart, who considered the performance his best. Drawing on the unacknowledged rage within ordinary people that he would later exploit for Alfred Hitchcock, Stewart renders Bailey as complicated as Capra himself—a child and ultimate victim of the American Dream. It's because the film's despair feels so authentic that its iconic ending feels as cathartic as it does: After being saved from his suicide attempt (which frames the entire film), Stewart is returned to the simple pleasures of family and friends, made to seem a warm oasis in a great metaphysical void. (1946, 130 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]
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Michael Curtiz's WHITE CHRISTMAS (US)
Critics agree that Mark Sandrich's HOLIDAY INN (1942), the first musical comedy to feature Bing Crosby, an inn, and Irving Berlin's "White Christmas," is a better film than this partial remake. Yet it turns out that it's the revivals of this Technicolor, VistaVision version that people look forward to this time of year. WHITE CHRISTMAS incorporates the history of its own title song, which, while it would go on to become perhaps history's largest-seller, actually seemed a flop at first. Music historians Dave Marsh and Steve Propes note, "What saved 'White Christmas' were requests made by GIs to Armed Forces Radio around the world. Soldiers away from home, many of them in the South Pacific or North Africa, uncertain of whether they'd ever again see family and friends, let alone a snowfall, responded passionately to Berlin's understated evocation of the mythic romance of Christmas Past." This history is folded into the opening scene: it's Christmas Eve, 1944, somewhere on a World War II battlefield, and Crosby sings the song to fellow troops amidst some very fake rubble, as bombs explode in the background. The movie's got Crosby and Danny Kaye as music-and-lyrics team Wallace and Davis, and Vera-Ellen and Rosemary Clooney as sister act the Haynes. They're a treat to watch even just sitting around a railroad passenger car singing "Snow," bound for Pine Tree, Vermont, where the inn turns out to be run by ex-General Waverly (Dean Jagger). When people gather for a screening of this movie, I doubt they worry that it may not rank with Michael Curtiz's best work (CASABLANCA, YANKEE DOODLE DANDY, MILDRED PIERCE). They come to mark the change of years together. If there's a season for nestling in the warmth of nostalgia, it's this one. Plus, there's the camp appeal of Crosby and Kaye doing "Sisters." (1954, 120 min, DCP Digital) [Scott Pfeiffer]
📽️ ALSO SCREENING
⚫ Alamo Drafthouse
Julie Jackman's 2025 film 100 NIGHTS OF HERO (90 min, DCP Digital) screens this week. See Venue website for showtimes.
John Badham’s 1997 film SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER (118 min, DCP Digital) screens Tuesday, 6:45pm, and Wednesday, 3pm, by Josh Safdie for the Alamo Guest Selects series.
Andy Milligan’s 1968 film SEEDS (84 min, DCP Digital) screens Wednesday, 9:30pm, as part of the Weird Wednesday series. More info on all screenings here.
⚫ Chicago Film Society
Uncle Nick and the Chicago All-Stars: Newly Preserved Films from the Filipino American Historical Society of Chicago (approx. 80 min, 16mm) screens Wednesday, 8pm, at Constellation (3111 N. Western Ave.). More info here.
⚫ Cinema/Chicago
Undercover No Longer: THE SECRET AGENT and Kleber Mendonça Filho, part of the ongoing Digging Deeper into Movies with Nick Davis series, takes place Saturday, 11am, at the Alliance Française de Chicago (810 N. Dearborn St.). Includes excerpts from NEIGHBORING SOUNDS (2012) and PICTURES OF GHOSTS (2023). More info here.
⚫ Claudia Cassidy Theater at the Chicago Cultural Center (78 E. Washington St.)
Robert Townsend's Pop-Up Film Festival, which includes a screening of his 1993 film THE METEOR MAN (100 min, Digital Projection), takes place on Sunday starting with the screening at 11am, followed by a Q&A. More info here.
⚫ The Davis Theater
The Oscarbate Film Collective’s next Trust Fall screening takes place Thursday at 7:30pm. More info here.
⚫ DOC CHICAGO
The Doc Chicago mini-conference takes place through Saturday, with a Doc Chicago Shorts showcase of regionally produced films on Friday, 7pm, at Chicago Filmmakers and a gathering at the Chicago Cultural Center on Saturday from noon to 5pm, fa day of connecting with other filmmakers, speakers, panels, and more. More info here.
⚫ Doc Films (at the University of Chicago)
Ondi Timoner’s 2025 short film ALL THE WALLS CAME DOWN (38 min, DCP Digital) screens Friday, 5pm, followed by a Q&A with Timoner.
“Chantal Akerman by Chantal Akerman” (1997, 63 min, DCP Digital), Akerman’s episode of the French TV series Cinema of Our Times, screens Sunday, 4pm, with a series of short films made by Akerman as part of her entrance exam to INSAS, both as part of the Marta Mateus: Carte Blanche series.
The final screening of the Infinite Cinema: The Films of Hollis Frampton series takes place Sunday at 7pm. More info on all screenings, including the short films screening as part of the Frampton program, here.
⚫ FACETS
The Chicago Short Film Festival takes place through Sunday.
My First Movies presents the 1976 Rankin/Bass classic FROSTY’S WINTER WONDERLAND and additional short films on Sunday, 10:30am, followed by a Winter Wonderland Puppet-Making Workshop at 11:30am.
The premiere of DELIVERY FEE, a celebration of the horror film and a showcase of filmmakers across Chicago, screens Monday at 7pm. More info on all screenings events here.
⚫ International Museum of Surgical Science
Surreal Cinema - The Films of Segundo de Chomón, with 66 silent films by the filmmaker, screens Thursday, 7pm, as part of the Buñuel: Master of Dreams exhibition. More info here.
⚫ Music Box Theatre
Joachim Trier’s 2025 film SENTIMENTAL VALUE (133 min, DCP Digital) continues screening this week. See Venue website for showtimes.
Matt Johnson’s 2025 film NIRVANNA THE BAND THE SHOW THE MOVIE THE TOUR (95 min, DCP Digital) screens Friday, 7pm, with Johnson and co-writer/star Jay McCarrol in person for a post-screening Q&A.
Jim Sharman’s 1975 film ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW (100 min, 35mm) screens Saturday at midnight.
Peter Berg’s 2004 film FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS (118 min, DCP Digital) preceded by a pep rally from the award-winning William Taft High School Marching Band and MBSN Broadcast Team.
The 2025 HUMP! Film Festival screens Thursday at 6:30pm and 9pm. More info on all screenings and events here.
⚫ Siskel Film Center
Julie Jackman's 2025 film 100 NIGHTS OF HERO (90 min, DCP Digital) and Ivan Macdonald, Ivy Macdonald, and Daniel Glick’s 2024 documentary BRING THEM HOME (78 min, DCP Digital) screen this week. See Venue website for showtimes.
Maura Smith’s 2025 documentary STEVE SCHAPIRO: BEING EVERYWHERE (72 min, DCP Digital) screens Friday at 6pm; Sunday at 2:30pm; and Wednesday at 6pm, with Smith in attendance for all screenings.
Rachael Holder’s 2025 film LOVE, BROOKLYN (97 min, DCP Digital) screens Monday and Wednesday at 6pm.
George Roy Hill’s 1973 film THE STING (129 min, DCP Digital) screens Wednesday, 8:15pm, as part of the Golden Boy: A Robert Redford Retrospective series. 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: December 5 - December 11, 2025
MANAGING EDITORS // Ben and Kat Sachs
CONTRIBUTORS // Maxwell Courtright, Kyle Cubr, Ray Ebarb, Alex Ensign, Megan Fariello, Marilyn Ferdinand, Shaun Huhn, Ben Kaye, Scott Pfeiffer, Ignatiy Vishnevetsy, Brian Welesko