📽️ CRUCIAL VIEWING
Frank Borzage's HISTORY IS MADE AT NIGHT (US)
Chicago Film Society at Northeastern University (at Northeastern Illinois University, The Auditorium, Building E, 3701, W. Bryn Mawr Ave.) – Wednesday, 7:30pm
The quintessential Frank Borzage film, HISTORY IS MADE AT NIGHT is what most screenwriters seem to have in mind when invoking the romanticism of The Movies. The story takes place among the wealthy and in the bohemian paradise of what Ernst Lubitsch called "Paris, Hollywood." Hard social realities seem not to exist; all that counts is whether good-hearted people find love—a matter of life-and-death significance for Borzage. The film is most often remembered for its climax, clearly inspired by the sinking of the Titanic—a sequence that still generates tension and disbelief in equal measure. But there are moments of light comedy, melodrama, and slapstick just as grandly conceived. Indeed, few films better recreate how all emotions are felt more intensely upon falling in love. On the run from her jealous tycoon husband (Colin Clive, James Whale's Dr. Frankenstein), Jean Arthur shares an enchanted evening in Paris with maitre d' Charles Boyer. A spate of complications keeps the spirited couple from reuniting for more than a year; and when they finally do, it's on board that fateful ocean liner. The film contains numerous changes in tone more reminiscent of the early talkies than what Hollywood was regularly making by this time (though the nuanced cinematography, by David Abel and an uncredited Gregg Toland, looks forward to certain technical breakthroughs of the 1940s); given the fluidity of the transitions and the overall poetics, perhaps the 19th-century symphony would be a better point of reference than any film. The three leads, incidentally, were never better, so comfortable in their performances as to make all the narrative curveballs feel perfectly tenable. Preceded by the Three Stooges in Charles Lamont’s 1937 short film PLAYING THE PONIES. (15 min, 35mm). (1937, 97 min, 35mm) [Ben Sachs]
Trinh T. Minh-ha’s WHAT ABOUT CHINA? (China/Documentary)
Conversations at the Edge at the Gene Siskel Film Center – Wednesday, 6pm
In her inimitable style, film essayist Trinh T. Minh-ha considers Chinese history, social traditions, and contemporary concerns, alternating between these subjects in a manner that evokes the flow of free thought. The images consist of video footage that Trinh shot in China in 1990s; as she explains in a typical digression, the look of the footage appeals to her because, in contrast to the slick appearance of Hollywood films, video from this time looks grainy and dirty, reflecting the texture of the earth. The soundtrack, which consists of voiceover from multiple narrators, comprises Trinh’s personal reflections along with poems, testimonies from others, and a wealth of information. There are numerous through lines that connect these aspects, but one of the more prominent concerns the fate of China’s peasantry. In one section, Trinh talks about the contentious relationship between peasants and urbanites during the Cultural Revolution, when Mao uprooted people from the latter group and moved them to the countryside to better understand the rural, working population; in other parts, the filmmaker reflects on the gradual disappearance of the peasantry due to the country’s urbanization of the past several decades. WHAT ABOUT CHINA? can be despairing in its consideration of contemporary history, touching on internet censorship and other ways in which the State interferes with daily life. Trinh’s view of earlier times is hardly any cheerier, however; there’s a particularly chilling episode when the filmmaker looks at the communal Hakka houses that were erected by the Communist government all over rural areas and remembers how much domestic violence she witnessed in one of these communities as a child. Despite its pervasive darkness, WHAT ABOUT CHINA? is generally a stirring experience, not only for the breadth of Trinh’s thematic scope but for the stimulating frisson between sound and image that marks the sophisticated decoupage. Trinh in person for a post-screening conversation. (2022, 135 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]
James Benning’s AMERICAN DREAMS (LOST AND FOUND) (US/Experimental)
Music Box Theatre – Saturday, 11:30am
A disturbing portrait of American mass culture and psychosis, comparable to Don DeLillo's great novel Libra in the way it gets under your skin. AMERICAN DREAMS (LOST AND FOUND) is an hour-long fugue in which the soundtrack, images, and onscreen text relate different things and whose interrelatedness is never made entirely clear. The imagery mostly consists of baseball cards and other memorabilia related to Hank Aaron, the pioneering Black athlete who at one time held the record for the most home runs hit by any major leaguer; the soundtrack is a mix of sound bites and popular songs from the years Aaron played in the major leagues (1954-1976); and scrolling across the bottom of the screen like ticker tape are excerpts from The Assassin’s Diary by Arthur Bremer, the man who shot George Wallace in 1972. Benning presents each of these elements the way he normally presents landscapes: in a direct, repetitive manner that allows each one to become the locus of meditation. Taken together, the sources of information can be overwhelming, not so much because it’s hard to take it all in but because the overlay of facts and personal testimonies hints at so many possible interpretations. What do the people on the soundtrack (among them Martin Luther King, Patricia Hearst, and Richard Nixon) have to do with Hank Aaron? And what does Aaron have to do with Bremer? Each viewer will have their own answers to these questions, which speaks to the elasticity of the various celebrities and political actors in the general imagination. Screening as part of Play Ball! A Baseball Series. (1984, 53 min, 16mm) [Ben Sachs]
Paul Verhoeven’s STARSHIP TROOPERS (US)
Music Box Theatre – Friday and Saturday, Midnight
It may be hard to believe now, but in 1997, a sizable portion of the viewing public—including a fair number of American critics—didn’t recognize that STARSHIP TROOPERS was a satire. But then again, how many people were talking about the subtext of Douglas Sirk melodramas in the 1950s? Like Sirk before him, Paul Verhoeven is a leftist European intellectual (with a double PhD in mathematics and physics, no less!) who understands the conventions of Hollywood pulp all too well; his commentaries on American soullessness and material excess deliver the surface pleasures of genre cinema so effectively that one can forgive audiences for being too distracted to read between the lines. Containing as much nudity and carnage as the MPAA would allow in an R-rated film (it had to be trimmed several times to dodge an NC-17), STARSHIP TROOPERS indeed offers plenty of mindless distraction; at the same time, it blatantly equates American imperialism with Nazism, and some of the cutaway jokes about all-American bloodlust (like the commercial for a televised execution) are so over the top as to recall Mel Brooks. Based on a novel by the far-right sci-fi writer Robert A. Heinlein, the film takes place in a distant future where America’s colonization of the entire world has come to pass and the planet is divided into “citizens” (who have served their government) and “civilians” (who haven’t and are thus denied such basic rights as the ability to vote). Now colonizing the galaxy, America (or, “Earth”) decides it must eliminate a widespread species of giant killer bugs on a far-off ring of planets for reasons that are never really clear, at least not until the bugs start defending themselves. The story follows a group of high school friends as they enlist in the army after graduation, go through basic training, and enter into combat. Ed Neumeier’s script is a knowing composite of war movie clichés (there’s even an idealistic recruit who says he’s going to be a writer), and much of the deliberately bland cast seems to have stepped out of an underwear ad. The war and all the people in it come off as stupid; it’s not inappropriate to cheer for the bugs. To that end, Verhoeven realizes the spectacle of giant insects mutilating and killing human beings both vividly and giddily—there’s an undeniable kinetic charge to the film’s battle sequences. The wide shots therein are rife with garish, comic book-style detail, much like STARSHIP TROOPERS on the whole. The “news break” sequences (which have become a lot less funny since the ascendancy of Fox News) are short blasts of righteous humor, recasting American infotainment in the visual language of Nazi propaganda films and highlighting the chilling similarities between the two. (1997, 129 min, 35mm) [Ben Sachs]
Sergei Eisenstein's OCTOBER: TEN DAYS THAT SHOOK THE WORLD (USSR)
Doc Films (at the University of Chicago) – Tuesday, 7pm
Eisenstein's retelling of the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 is a breathtaking piece of silent filmmaking. A swift and sweeping treatment of the struggle between the bourgeois provisional government and the Lenin-led Bolsheviks, OCTOBER recreates events with such ambition that they appear documentary in style. Conversely, the film benefits from the maturation of Eisenstein's theories of the montage—moving from one of locations in STRIKE to one of "intellect" and metaphor. From Senses of Cinema: "The power-mad dandy Kerenskii is intercut with a mechanical peacock and, through multiple exposures, a tank smashes a statue of Napoleon on Kerenskii's desk." Today, these visualizations of metaphor and symbol are so ingrained in the language of film, it is curious to read of Eisenstein's sanctioning by the Party Conference on Cinema for his "bourgeois formalism." Despite this, OCTOBER connects with audiences through its celebratory narrative. Eisenstein evokes a passion in his propaganda held over from the heady time his film depicts. Volunteers massed at the revolution's landmarks—many still standing in renamed Leningrad—to film key battles and events, and this awe adds to the film's intensity. Still raising heart rates decades later, OCTOBER is a landmark in its own right. Screening as part of the State and Revolution: Film Under the Boot series. (1928, 110 min, 16mm) [Brian Welesko]
Matias Piñeiro’s YOU BURN ME (Spain/Argentina)
Gene Siskel Film Center — See Venue website for showtimes
In Matias Piñeiro’s new mini-feature YOU BURN ME, adaptation is the subject. This has been an interest of his in previous features like VIOLA (2012) and HERMIA & HELENA (2016), both of which regard performances of Shakespeare, but here he adds a new twist by adapting an adaptation. The text in question is Cesare Pavese’s "Diologhi con Leucò," an imagined meeting between the Greek poet Sappho and the nymph Britomartis. Piñeiro presents Pavese’s text and others as physical works within the film, often appearing on screen as annotated book pages between scenes where his stand-ins for the compatriots type their dialogue back and forth on WhatsApp (here he should be commended for not trying any labored special-effect where text messages appear in thin air—the phones are, like the books, physical and malleable objects on screen). The focus is on the language, his performers functioning more as models that represent the idea of a character. The result is probably the truest adaptation that could be made of a poem or a dialogue, one that does away with action in favor of forcing deep semantic focus on each word and its attendant image, both what they say individually and their unique blends of meaning when reordered. Early on, for instance, the titular phrase “you burn me” is repeated in voiceover with a new image accompanying each individual word, before the words drop out and the viewer is left with the now semantically-charged sequence of images, trained in their meaning for when they reappear later in the film. This trick repeats and expands with other phrases and images, sometimes rearranged in order (and the slips in syntax that happen across translated language complicating things more). If this sounds complicated that’s because it is, the film eventually becoming a Wittgensteinian treaty on the nature of language in film. But that description robs the film of its aching, romantic heart. Sappho and Britomartis both suffered in love and ultimately died, the former by her own hand and the latter while running from an advancing man. Their exchange is delicate, ruminations on love that could only be written by a third party with the knowledge of the tragedy to come. The relationship, then, between the poetic text and Piñeiro’s machinations seems to change from moment to moment—past, future, and an imagined third place commingling within sun-kissed 16mm photography to bathe us in language. Heady as it may be, a film this brimming-over with pleasantness can’t help but be inviting. (2024, 64 min, DCP Digital) [Maxwell Courtright]
Charles Burnett’s THE ANNIHILATION OF FISH (US)
Gene Siskel Film Center – See Venue website for showtimes
It all but goes without saying that Charles Burnett is a national treasure and any movie he’s made is crucial viewing. Yet these facts bear repeating in light of THE ANNIHILATION OF FISH, a deeply eccentric comedy that so bewildered some viewers that its original distributor was afraid to give it a proper release. While it may not be on the level of such masterpieces as KILLER OF SHEEP and NIGHTJOHN, the film nonetheless displays Burnett’s trademark empathy and cultural specificity. James Earl Jones plays Fish, a Jamaican immigrant who’s spent ten years in a New York mental hospital when the movie opens. Due to budget cuts, Fish is deinstitutionalized, despite the fact that he still sometimes sees—and wrestles with—a six-foot-tall demon. Around 70, widowed, and living on a small pension, he decides to move to Los Angeles and start life over again. Meanwhile in San Francisco, a woman named Poinsettia (Lynn Redgrave) must end her love affair with the ghost of Italian composer Giacomo Puccini when she fails to find anyone who will marry them. She too heads for Los Angeles, where she finds a room to rent in the same apartment building as Fish, which is managed by a jovial widow (Margot Kidder) who’s almost as kooky as they are. Poinsettia keeps her distance from Fish at first (Burnett is upfront about acknowledging the character’s racism), but she comes to accept him after he nurses her off a bad hangover; gradually, a romance blossoms between them. One could get into how realistic the film’s depiction of mental illness is (not very), but the overall tone is so gentle and fable-like that to fault the movie for its unrealistic qualities would be missing the point. Working from a script by Anthony C. Winkler (a Jamaican writer who wound up in California), Burnett exhibits great tenderness toward the characters, making you care about whether they succeed in life and love; it helps that Jones and Redgrave are both at their best, giving sensitive, even lovable performances. THE ANNIHILATION OF FISH makes the case that everyone is entitled to companionship, which makes it a radical statement in line with Burnett’s other work. (1999, 102 min, New 4K DCP Digital Restoration) [Ben Sachs]
📽️ ALSO RECOMMENDED
John Sayles’ EIGHT MEN OUT (US)
Music Box Theatre – Sunday, 11:30am
One of John Sayles’ favorite devices is to have a set of characters enter a shot in the middle of a conversation, then have the camera follow those characters as they continue their discussion somewhere else. While it’s economical and cool-looking to present multiple conversations in the same shot, this device also points to Sayles’ societal perspective, his interest in how different groups of people weave through each other's lives and impact one another in ways they may not even realize. For that reason, many of Sayles’ films (including this one) lack main characters and intercut between groups of people instead, typically reaching their climax when most of all of the principal subjects come together. In the case of a film like CITY OF HOPE (1991), the narrative strategy encourages you to reflect on the make-up of a modern American metropolis; in the case of EIGHT MEN OUT, it allows you to marvel at the various elements that go into producing a conspiracy. The movie depicts the undoing of the 1919 World Series, when eight players on the Chicago White Sox accepted bribes to lose on purpose. Sayles considers the players, the schemers who hatched the plot, the crooked millionaires who bankrolled it, and the dedicated sports journalists who uncovered it all. He also brings together an incredible cast of character actors: John Cusack, who plays Buck Weaver, is the movie’s closest thing to a star, but he’s handily upstaged by the likes of John Mahoney (who plays Coach Kid Gleason), Christopher Lloyd (as one of the gamblers), Michael Lerner (as one of the bankrollers), and, in a rare acting turn, Chicago’s own Studs Terkel, who plays journalist Hugh Fullerton (Sayles, playing fellow journalist Ring Lardner, seems to be awe of the local legend whenever they’re on screen together). In terms of tone, EIGHT MEN OUT is one of Sayles’ lightest films, even though the chief subject is corruption—the filmmaker’s appreciation for America’s pastime and Jazz Age ambiance come through in every scene. Screening as part of Play Ball! A Baseball Series. (1988, 120 min, 35mm) [Ben Sachs]
Robert Bresson's PICKPOCKET (France)
Gene Siskel Film Center – Monday, 8:30pm
PICKPOCKET, a brief, existentialist date movie (filmed in the same Parisian Summer of 1959 as BREATHLESS) is—with its emphasis on glances, gestures, cafés, and other material ephemera—certainly a cinephiliac classic. Constrained by a truly minimal plot (with familiar elements from both Camus and Dostoyevsky), Bresson produces an extraordinary quality of dreamlike estrangement via deliberately awkward stage direction (to the usual assortment of unfamiliar non-actors); shots of doors and other passageways that linger just a little too long before and after the characters' entrance and exit; and (especially) an obsessive attention to sound design which heightens the impact of every slight movement, above a perpetually noisy background of urban clatter. The result is a laid-back erotic thriller (ironically set to the aristocratic Baroque compositions of Jean-Baptiste Lully) that sees everyday life under capitalism—for a movie director, or anyone else—as a sequence of audacious, small-scale robberies whose aggregate karmic debt must ultimately be repaid in appalling tragedy. The "erotic" aspect is, of course, derived from the pickpocket's perpetual state of being: an intimate touching, with or without explicit recognition—like two arms resting by each other in a movie theater. Screening as part of the Curated by Paul Schrader series. (1959, 75 min, DCP Digital) [Michael Castelle]
Schrader's HARDCORE (US)
Gene Siskel Film Center – Saturday, 8:30pm
Paul Schrader’s sophomore film as director, following his debut BLUE COLLAR, sets the tone for the director’s own personal output of films to follow. Made only two years after Schrader’s screenwriting credit for TAXI DRIVER, HARDCORE follows Jake Van Dorn (George C. Scott), a devoutly Calvinist father in search of his missing daughter, who happens to have found her way into the underground world of porn. Jake hires a private detective (Peter Boyle) to track his down his daughter, and finds himself completely un-ready for what information the detective might turn up. Much like the plot of TAXI DRIVER, Scott takes it upon himself to venture into this seedy world and reclaim his daughter on his own, to “save her” from a reality he feels she can’t understand or endure. His search takes him to Los Angeles, where Jake finds himself at odds with a changing world, far from his Grand Rapids hometown where the more communal, small-town ways of life still reside; the journey he takes to find his daughter becomes more of a black-comedic nightmare than anything, as Jake prowls the corridors of neon-lit porn stores and brothels, pointing towards the removed sexual-atmospheres of his surprise hit AMERICAN GIGOLO and the deeply-underrated LIGHT SLEEPER. The film was made at the end of the so-called New Hollywood-generation, with Schrader being late to the directing chair; it bears many of the bitter, raw attitudes that awaited a film-world about to be consumed by the likes of STAR WARS (which receives an ominous and hilarious jab at a strip club, an in-joke of the likes we’ll probably never be able to see again). Humor looms large in a film that, on the surface, appears bleak and unforgiving. HARDCORE retains a very curious position that tries to align with and pity Jake, but also can’t help giggle at his discomfort, as in the scene where he nervously paces around a sex shop, looking at dildos while Neil Young’s “Helpless” plays on the store’s hi-fi; or where, in an attempt to locate one of his daughter’s male “co-stars,” he holds a casting call in his hotel room, confronting a group of young men so eager to be a part of something, they casually revert to exposing themselves in an effort to be wanted. It's despite these satirical barbs that the film rests itself upon a bed of real, naked emotion, as in the scene where Jake is shown the porno his daughter has been found performing in. Scott’s father figure breaks painfully and earnestly, in a stellar series of cuts and camera positions, reinforcing the power of film to show us the disquieting howls of an unforgiving world, through the complicated mechanics of artifice. This is a film about discomfort and loneliness (something that would become trademark for Schrader) in which its characters just simply want to belong, to be a part of something, anything, resembling any notion of a comforting reality; what HARDCORE comes to depict, ultimately, is a reality where moral conviction itself is not enough to change a world at odds with certain notions of decency, it is instead a world where all one can do is stop the projector and look away. Screening as part of the Directed by Paul Schrader series. (1979, 109 min, DCP Digital) [John Dickson]
Paul Schrader’s AMERICAN GIGOLO (US)
Gene Siskel Film Center – Thursday, 8:30pm
As Julian Kay (Richard Gere) confidently saunters through his lavish, sunny, mid-century modern LA environs, he resembles an opulent item to possess. The camera captures the same appreciation for his high cheekbones and coiffed hair as his swanky apartment, tailored to a T Armani suits, or sleek black Mercedes. He is a luxury object among luxury objects. Julian is a male escort, catering to the older, wealthy women of the Los Angeles area. Managed by a procurer, Anne (Nina Van Pallandt), and pimp, Leon (Bill Duke), he takes pride in his appearance and the status it affords him. While lounging at a hotel bar, eyeing potential clientele, he meets Michelle Straton (Lauren Hutton), a state senator’s wife. Upon learning who she is, he backs away and leaves abruptly. That same night, Leon calls him in need of a “substitute” in Palm Springs. He arrives at Mr. Reihman’s, a well-off financier, who wants to watch as Julian beats his wife, Judy. It is the opposite type of trick Julian is used to. As if it is a higher calling, Julian is obsessed with giving women pleasure, satisfying them. His own sexual pleasure is nonexistent, he seems to only receive gratification by materialistic means and through transactional performance. Paul Schrader is a connoisseur of lonely men, and Julian Kay is one of his loneliest creations—a solitary soul who has curated a distinctly palatable yet superficial identity but maintains a troubling ambivalence at his core. It is this paper-thin persona on which the entire film hangs, delicately balancing neo-noir turns with a mysterious interrogation of the commodification of pleasure. AMERICAN GIGOLO is a study of the ways in which we erase ourselves to integrate and thrive in a capitalist society, and how, no matter who you are, there is always someone above you willing to take you down to save themselves. Screening as part of the Directed by Paul Schrader series. (1980, 117 min, DCP Digital) [Olivia Hunter Willke]
Jess Franco’s MACUMBA SEXUAL (Spain)
Alamo Drafthouse – Tuesday, 9:30pm
One of the things that stands out most as I dive deeper into the immense oeuvre of Spanish director Jess Franco is his unique presentation of space, both internal and external. A nude woman writhing on a bed, tormented by dreams of a simultaneously tempting and dangerous outside world is a recurring visual in Franco’s work; while explicitly erotic, it also subtly suggests the significance of imagination, fantasy, and desire. It’s meta, in a way, reflecting what his films are and how they function. MACUMBA SEXUAL is no different, a variation on one of Franco’s most well-known films, VAMPYROS LESBOS (1971). Featuring trailblazing trans actress Ajita Wilson, a staple of European exploitation films of the time, MACUMBA SEXUAL follows real estate agent Alice (Franco’s frequent star real-life longtime partner, Lina Romay) who’s plagued by strange and sexual dreams. Seduced from afar by the powerful subject of her fantasies, Princess Obongo (Wilson), Alice and her concerned husband (Antonio Mayans) become ensnared in a set of terribly erotic and bizarre circumstances. The sun-hazed seaside setting only further confuses reality with fantasy, with Franco’s signature mix of stunning vistas, layered imagery, and intense close ups—of raptured naked bodies and objects alike—make it difficult to get a clear sense of time or space. Alice’s journey, from thrashing on her bed to traveling to meet the Princess is all tangled together, is not really meant to question what’s real or imagined for her but suggest that perhaps it’s both at once. It’s part of Franco’s nebulous, wholly unique style of filmmaking that often, like the characters themselves, leaves one with the feeling of waking up from a dream. Screening as part of the Terror Tuesday series. (1983, 80 min, DCP Digital) [Megan Fariello]
Bernardo Bertolucci's THE CONFORMIST (Italy)
Gene Siskel Film Center – Sunday, 3:15pm
THE CONFORMIST is a beautiful and surprisingly assured work that revered Italian director Bernardo Bertolucci and equally respected cinematographer Vittorio Storaro made when they were only in their 20s. The film dropped quickly from sight after its rave reception at several film festivals and only got a very limited run in the United States after the likes of Francis Ford Coppola urged Paramount to release it. The film also was scarce in its native country because of its depiction of the popularity of fascism in 1930s Italy. The story of the conformist, Marcello Clerici (Jean-Louis Trintignant), begins by showing some sort of disconnect between Marcello and his surroundings—a shabby figure moving nervously in an elegant hotel room. Soon, the film reverts to flashback as we watch Marcello move from privileged childhood to fledgling spy for the Italian government. Marcello is friends with a blind fascist named Italo (José Quaglio). This not-very-subtle symbol for Italy under Mussolini broadcasts fascist propaganda on the radio and introduces an eager Marcello to the colonel (Fosco Giachetti), who can help Marcello realize his ambitions. Marcello enters a monumental building, his tiny figure like an ant moving across a vast marble expanse. He enters the wrong room for a brief moment and catches a glimpse of a ranking fascist seducing a woman in mourning attire who is laying across his desk. Marcello’s and the woman’s eyes meet for an instant. Excusing himself quietly, Marcello goes on to the colonel’s office, where he offers to try to infiltrate the antifascist movement through his former philosophy professor, a middle-age man named Quadri (Enzo Tarascio) who is a self-exile in Paris. When the colonel learns Marcello is soon to be married, he considers a honeymoon in Paris as the ideal cover. His fiancée, Giulia (Stefania Sandrelli), is a simple-minded bourgeoise whom Marcello chose because of her sheer ordinariness, her good looks, and her sexually eager nature. Giulia is shown in a black-and-white striped dress, and the shadows created by the light coming through some blinds suggest a noirish atmosphere, but moreso a rigid geometry surrounding Marcello. His desire, like all fascists, is for strict order. The Clericis’ train makes a stop before they proceed to Paris. Once the newlyweds are ensconced in their hotel room, Marcello phones Quadri to suggest a meeting for old times’ sake. When the Clericis arrive at the Quadri home, they are greeted at the door by a large dog and Anna Quadri (Dominique Sanda). Marcello seems thunderstruck by her, and we get the distinct impression that they know each other. In fact, Sanda played the woman in black and a whore Marcello encountered when he met a fascist contact in France. She is clearly the woman of Marcello’s dreams, and he spends the rest of the trip pursuing her. After a shocking and brutal scene in which Marcello carries out his orders, the film fast-forwards to the end of the war and the fall of Italy’s dictatorship. On the street, Marcello has an encounter that upsets everything he ever believed about himself and turns him into a raging lunatic. His fascist control is gone from inside him as well as from the city that swallows him up in the night. So, what is it that drives Marcello? What is it that he believes about himself that leads him to pursue social conformity in spite of the irrational urges that spill forth when he is confronted with Anna and her lookalikes? We are led to believe that a homosexual encounter Marcello had when he was 14 made him feel different. In addition, his mother (Milly) is a morphine addict and his father (Giuseppe Addobbati) is in an insane asylum. It would certainly not be a surprise if Marcello was a little touched himself, or at the very least, fearful of being overtaken by the madness that felled his father and drove his mother’s addiction. Those who seek to fence out the irrational will naturally gravitate to the safe, narrow tracks of society’s rules and, in the extreme, to fascism. Marcello’s attitude toward women is at least as repressed as his other urges. When the Quadris and Clericis go out for Chinese food and dancing, Anna asks Giulia to dance. The two do a seductive tango that disturbs the conventional couples on the dance floor and scandalizes Marcello. Quadri is content with their behavior: “They both look so pretty.” He has accepted the bisexual Anna as she is, whereas Marcello holds his wife in contempt, threatened by the fact that his conventional wife is more sexually liberated that he could have imagined. As the ultimate irrational in a man’s psyche, women must be as predictable as possible for the man Marcello desperately wants to become. Like all of Bertolucci’s films, THE CONFORMIST is deeply sensual. Storaro and film editor Franco Arcalli provides sumptuous visual effects that make the film appear to be a dream inside a dream, with an impressionistic, almost surrealist feel even as they create a mood and narrative drive that build from illusion to horror. Jean-Louis Trintignant, who died on June 17, 2022, at the age of 91, created a memorable character who, ironically, remained an unknowable shadow to himself. Screening as part of the Curated by Paul Schrader series. (1970, 113 min, New 4K DCP Digital Restoration) [Marilyn Ferdinand]
Kyle Henry’s TIME PASSAGES (US/Documentary)
Chicago Filmmakers – Friday, 7pm
Many films came (and are still coming) out from the early days of Covid lockdowns, a time when, amid international turmoil, filmmakers had to navigate drastic changes in how they created and released work. Smaller-scale films boomed out of necessity, and experimental and nonfiction filmmakers became even more reliant on the time-honored traditions of archival filmmaking. For filmmaker Kyle Henry, these aesthetic restrictions drove the structure of his new film TIME PASSAGES, a testament to his mother Elaine. She spent the last years of her life in a nursing home, struggling with dementia and not able to see family in person due to Covid lockdown restrictions. As anyone who has lost a loved one to dementia can tell you, it’s a slow-dawning sort of grief, a loss spread over time that merely hits an apex when the person is actually gone. Because Henry’s relationship with his mother was interrupted twofold, he made TIME PASSAGES as an attempt to recreate the woman in aggregate from older interviews he'd conducted with her, screengrabs of their Facetime conversations from the nursing facility, and other bits both found and invented. The nonlinear timeline of the material puts different parts of her life in stark contrast, showing just how much Elaine lost of herself in her later years. But the material is more celebratory than not; she was a unique woman, outspoken and both a nurturer and breadwinner for Kyle’s family. Even in her later days one can see her warm spirit, with Kyle’s calls (particularly when he sings with her) excavating the real person, much like he’s attempting to do in his archival pulls. One of the film’s stranger gambits involves Henry dressing up as his mom to “interview” her, trying to imagine how she might have responded to the numerous conversations they never got to have before she passed. There’s a palpable grief to these recreations, a pained searching because of just how close these conversations could have been to happening if not for the ravages of time and disease. This is where Henry gets the most direct in confronting documentary ethics, particularly the question of whether this type of portrait is really fair to a person who can’t advocate for themselves anymore. But in a roundabout way, Henry is still the primary subject of the film; these are his stacked griefs, and the film’s aesthetic messiness is not just an essay film byproduct but an intentional reflection of a man trying to organize his own memory. As an ode to the desire to know ourselves by truly knowing those we love, it’s a beautifully sincere film. Henry in attendance for a post-screening Q&A. (2024, 86 min, DCP Digital) [Maxwell Courtright]
Carson Lund’s EEPHUS (US)
Davis Theater and the Music Box Theatre – See Venue websites for showtimes
It’s a beautiful autumn day in Massachusetts, with the trees painting the sky various shades of green and orange, and the clouds taking up just enough space to leave room for plenty of sunshine. Sounds like a great day to play some baseball. Carson Lund’s debut feature—focused around a rec-league of ball players and their final game before the town baseball field is paved over to become a school—revels in this pristine sense of atmosphere, creating a baseball film less interested in who ends up winning than the feeling of watching the sun go down while heading into the ninth inning. Baseball is, after all, more than just the game; it’s the old man in the stalls muttering to himself, the crotchety obsessive keeping score in his worn-out notebook, the food truck parked nearby peddling slices of pizza for passersby, and the friendly barbs thrown back and forth between teammates. EEPHUS somehow lands somewhere between “Slow Cinema” and indie dramedy without ever feeling self-indulgent or crass, its respect for its suburban characters too earnest in practice. There’s something inherently noble and relatable about the seriousness with which the players take their sport; here's a group of men who don’t do this for a living but feel some kind of pull towards the game, whether it's passion, obligation, or just an excuse to get out of the house. That Lund’s film is able to capture the tactility of a New England autumnal day, and carry such emotionally lofty material without feeling overly sentimental, and have some of the funniest dialogue in a film I’ve heard in recent memory, is no small feat. Perhaps it’s notable that the first character we hear in the film is voiced by legendary documentary filmmaker Frederick Wiseman, maybe a nod to the film’s pursuit of capturing life’s circuitousness, the great American pastime acting as grand metaphor for all great things having their great moment in the sun, until we’re well into the night, and it’s time to pack it in. After all, there’s always next year. (2024, 98 mins, DCP Digital) [Ben Kaye]
Alex van Warmerdams's BORGMAN (Netherlands)
Alamo Drafthouse – Wednesday, 9:30pm
It is, while admittedly a pleasant surprise owing to BORGMAN's undeserved drift into obscurity these past ten years, ultimately unsurprising to see Van Warmerdam's cryptic opus crop up for a one-off late-night screening as a "Weird Wednesday" presentation over at the Alamo Drafthouse (who, it's worth noting, also handle the film's domestic distribution). The film itself, a severely underrated highlight of the 2013 Cannes competition slate, is a macabre Marxist fairy tale that embodies all the attendant weirdness and tonal disjunction one would reasonably expect from such a tagline, and whose abundant idiosyncrasies heralded a future cult classic more-or-less on arrival. BORGMAN is one part monster movie and another part home invasion thriller, thoroughgoingly steeped in both German folklore and Kabbalistic theology, and fully beholden to a bone-dry European arthouse sensibility that prevails in spite of the film's brazen surrealism—even its most outré digressions unfold according to a cruel and exacting sense of internal logic. Jan Bijvoet stars as the titular Borgman, a deceptively mild-mannered vagabond who happens upon the rural estate of an affluent couple (Hadewych Minis as the painter Marina and Jeroen Percevel as her business exec husband Richard) and launches a ruthless campaign of psychological subterfuge in order to first infiltrate the inner ranks of their hired help and eventually unravel the family from within. Borgman methodically picks off an array of working-class individuals caught in the cross-fire—starting with the couple's gardener, whom he personally replaces—in order to invite an entire coterie of besuited fiends into the family's orbit. Together, they eviscerate the garden, watch an enormous amount of television, and perform clandestine surgeries on the couple's three young children (to what end I can only hazard guesses). In a series of pitch-perfect recreations of Henry Fuseli's The Nightmare, the Borgman invades Marina's dreams, preying on the guilt she harbors over the family's good fortune and slowly turning her against her boorish husband, who shares none of her repressed class consciousness. It is remarkable to revisit BORGMAN a decade down the line and note the similarities it bears to Bong Joon Ho's PARASITE (2019), from the remarkably analogous narrative frameworks all the way down to the central visual metaphors at play. Where PARASITE had its rain-soaked semi-basement apartments, BORGMAN features frequent shots of the deposed help staff, their heads encased in buckets of concrete, resting upside-down at the bottom of an algae-covered lakebed. (2013, 113 min, DCP Digital) [David Whitehouse]
Mall Madness at the Music Box Theatre
See showtimes below
Jim Wynorski’s CHOPPING MALL (US)
Friday, 11:45pm
Roger Corman’s unofficial film school didn’t just churn out Hollywood titans like Cameron, Coppola, and Scorsese—it also produced scrappy, genre-obsessed auteurs who reveled in B-movie madness. Enter Jim Wynorski, a man who didn’t dream of prestige pictures but of low-budget excess. His love for ATTACK OF THE CRAB MONSTERS (1957) set the stage for a career dedicated to the gleefully absurd. Wynorski began as a Doubleday Books publisher before ditching the literary world for film. A short-lived gig on a canceled Fox series led to a serendipitous plane ride with a Corman associate, and soon, Wynorski was cutting trailers at New World Pictures. His first writing credits included FORBIDDEN WORLD (1982), the erotic SORCERESS (1983), and the PORKY'S knockoff SCREWBALLS (1983). He scraped together funding from a theater owner for his directorial debut, THE LOST EMPIRE (1984). Corman hated it but saw potential in Wynorski’s visual instincts. When Vestron Video wanted a killer-in-a-mall horror film, Julie Corman—Corman’s wife and longtime producer±asked if Wynorski had any ideas. Knowing another slasher film might drown in the 1980s horror boom, he and Steve Mitchell suggested killer robots instead. Thus, CHOPPING MALL—originally KILLBOTS—was born, a delirious mix of slasher, sci-fi, and satire wrapped in a neon glow. The plot? Bare-bones perfection. A high-tech security firm installs robotic "Protectors" in a shopping mall. One fateful night, lightning scrambles their circuits, turning them into mall-bound murder machines. A group of teens partying in a mattress store find themselves locked in with the mechanical menace. The slasher film formula is in full effect during the first act as the teens decide to fool around in the store—a stand-in for a cabin. When the gum-chewing meathead teen leaves the safety of the group he is quickly killed, leading his girlfriend to go out and look for him. The typical slasher film ends when the rest of the group witness her head exploding and the Protectors turn their deadly gaze toward them. CHOPPING MALL endures not for its storyline but its sheer commitment to the bit. The killer robots, expertly crafted by Robert Short from aluminum frames, car batteries, and electric wheelchair bases, move with a practical, eerie charm. The cast? A who’s-who of cult royalty: Kelli Maroney (NIGHT OF THE COMET), Barbara Crampton (RE-ANIMATOR), Russell Todd (FRIDAY THE 13TH PART 2), and Tony O’Dell (THE KARATE KID). But it’s the cameos that elevate the film to cult nirvana. Paul Bartel and Mary Woronov casually continue their roles as the Blands from EATING RAOUL (1982), a decision they made on their own through improvising their way through the scene. Gerrit Graham (PHANTOM OF THE PARADISE) pops in, and Mel Welles, forever Mr. Mushnik from THE LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS (1960), plays a grease-soaked cook. The crown jewel? The legendary Dick Miller, once again embodying Walter Paisley, a variation of the character he played across at least a dozen films since A BUCKET OF BLOOD (1959). Wynorski peppers the film with winking references. Posters for his previous script FORBIDDEN WORLD, directorial debut THE LOST EMPIRE, and another Corman production SLUMBER PARTY MASSACRE adorn the walls. A character invokes “Klaatu barada nikto” from THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL (1951). A TV flickers with TARANTULA (1955) while Maroney gets to know her blind date. The cast raids a gun shop called Peckinpah’s. Maroney gets covered in critters at Roger’s Little Shop of Pets. Even discussions of DIRTY HARRY and RAMBO serve as knowing genre nods. For all its self-awareness, the robots remain genuinely menacing, and Maroney’s character is a textbook ‘final girl’—competent, calm, and resourceful. CHOPPING MALL is a love letter to schlock cinema, a Frankenstein’s monster of horror, sci-fi, and camp assembled with affection. When these elements come together, they make for pure B-movie entertainment, exactly the way Wynorski envisioned it. (1986, 77 min, DCP Digital) [Shaun Huhn]
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Richard Friedman’s PHANTOM OF THE MALL: ERIC'S REVENGE (US)
Saturday, 11:45pm
Who says horror has to be refined? PHANTOM OF THE MALL: ERIC'S REVENGE is an exuberant, mall-crawling slice of late-’80s schlock that revels in its absurdity, delivering a movie that’s part slasher, part soap opera, and entirely too much fun. It takes Gaston Leroux’s Phantom of the Opera legend, drags it kicking and screaming into the era of food courts and big hair, and asks the most important question of all: what if the Phantom had a six-pack? Derek Rydall broods handsomely as Eric, the wronged and disfigured lover-turned-mall-haunting menace, skulking around the air ducts like a denim-clad specter of Reagan-era justice. He’s after his lost love Melody (Kari Whitman), a classic horror heroine who spends much of the film looking appropriately stunned. But the real star of the show is the setting—this is a movie that worships at the altar of consumerism, turning the shopping mall into a playground of excess, where the escalators gleam, the mannequins stare blankly, and the synth score pulsates with ’80s energy. And what’s a mall-set horror film without an appropriately over-the-top supporting cast? Pauly Shore, in an early role, gives us a surprisingly charming turn as the wisecracking best friend, proving that even before his full “Weasel” persona kicked in, he had the kind of presence that made him impossible to ignore. Morgan Fairchild, meanwhile, saunters through as a power-hungry mayor with all the cool detachment of a woman who knows she was born to play characters named after expensive perfume brands. The film is joyfully, almost defiantly, ridiculous in all the right ways. The kills are inventive—a cobra in a locker, an escalator mishap, a severed head that pops up in a most unexpected place—and the action moves with a kind of reckless, giddy energy. There’s no real mystery here; you know exactly where this is going, but the ride is so deliriously fun that it hardly matters. And through it all, director Richard Friedman seems fully aware that he’s making a movie where the Phantom is more likely to pop out of an Orange Julius stand than a shadowy lair. Watching PHANTOM OF THE MALL today feels like uncovering a relic from a wilder, more wonderfully excessive time in horror. It’s not about subtlety or psychological terror—it’s about atmosphere, attitude, and a whole lot of gleeful destruction. And in an era where the malls themselves have become ghosts of their former selves, there’s something strangely poetic about a slasher film that once found horror in the temples of teenage consumerism. It’s the kind of film that feels like it was made for the joy of it, where every ridiculous plot twist and exaggerated set piece only adds to the charm. And if you’re the kind of horror fan who can appreciate a Phantom who lurks not in grand opera houses but in ventilation ducts above a frozen yogurt stand, then PHANTOM OF THE MALL is exactly the kind of cult classic that deserves a second life. Because let’s be honest—if you’re going to watch a Phantom tale, wouldn’t you rather it come with a side of soft pretzels and synth beats? (1989, 91 min, DCP Digital) [Shaun Huhn]
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Programmed and presented by SUPER-HORROR-RAMA! Every ticket includes a limited edition pinback button (new design each night), and every show kicks off with giveaways donated by House of Monsters, The Shadowboxery, Night Natalie, Cryptid Craft Studio, Drive-In Asylum, and Bumps in the Night for the first folks to answer trivia questions correctly. The category is retail horror, so get ready.
Rungano Nyoni’s ON BECOMING A GUINEA FOWL (UK/Zambia/Ireland/US)
Gene Siskel Film Center and the Music Box Theatre – See Venue websites for showtimes
Rungano Nyoni’s transfixing sophomore feature opens in silence and ends in cacophony. The journey from one end to the other is littered with images volleying between painfully accurate recollection and lucid dreaming, sometimes within the same scene, or flowing into one another seamlessly. From the moment our protagonist Shula (Susan Chardy in a revelatory debut performance) finds a dead body in the middle of the road and slowly realizes that the corpse just so happens to be her Uncle Fred, she finds herself (literally) caught between her adult self seeking shelter from the situation and her younger self enraptured by the bizarre scenario before her. Nyoni is deeply fascinated by the rituals of mourning, particularly in older generations, and how the reverent behaviors of preserving someone’s legacy often clash with the sins of the dead. Steeped in the cultural specifics of its Zambian characters and setting, there are still cultural echoes that reverberate, from the aunties’ disappointment in Shula having bathed before the burial, to the lethargic tone that occupies the memorial home. This seemingly holy experience is ultimately threatened by the unfurling revelations of Uncle Fred’s lecherous past, particularly his proclivity towards sexually abusing the younger women of the family. As humorous as early stretches of the film are (Nyoni’s actors nimbly handle early moments of dark comedy with aplomb), the film takes a seamless sour turn, as Shula navigates her own past mirrored against the twists and turns and horrid revelations that lie before her. Visions of the past are resurrected, threatening to upend Shula’s steely exterior, the dam ever in fear of breaking. Perhaps most remarkably, Nyoni’s work of self-actualization finds an ending that confidently navigates narrative ambiguity and thematic closure, seeking justice and retribution and connection through sheer, discordant rage. (2024, 99 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Kaye]
John Cameron Mitchell's HEDWIG AND THE ANGRY INCH (US)
Doc Films (at the University of Chicago) – Thursday, 9:30pm
HEDWIG AND THE ANGRY INCH is a magnificent, glam rock, genderbending film adaptation of an off-Broadway musical by John Cameron Mitchell and Stephen Trask. Mitchell and Trask co-wrote and produced the songs together, and the soundtrack is electric, emotive, cinematic, and unforgettable. Mitchell wrote, directed, and starred in HEDWIG as the titular transgender woman from East Berlin. Hedwig grew up daydreaming about David Bowie and Lou Reed in dreary communist housing with her single mother. A failed misfit at university, Hedwig (then Hansel) is swept off her feet by American Sgt. Luther Robinson, a smooth-talking man who convinces Hansel to leave a little...something...behind in order to get married and emigrate to the US, which had been Hansel's dream. One botched sex change operation and failed relationship later, Hedwig finds herself in a singlewide trailer in the midwestern prairie wondering just what to do with her life. The number "Angry Inch" describes her operation to the extreme discomfort of unsuspecting patrons at the seafood restaurant chain where Hedwig regularly performs with her band, followed by "Wig in a Box," a fantastic number about the iconic women who inform Hedwig's feminine persona as she picks herself back up again. Hedwig's life changes dramatically when she begins babysitting an angsty 17-year-old who becomes Tommy Gnosis under her careful tutelage. They fall in love, Tommy catapults to fame, and he leaves his co-writer and lover in the dust. Hedwig has to pick herself back up once again, re-examine her Platonic ideals (her obsession with Greek and German Idealist philosophy shines through the song "The Origin of Love" and her dissertation title: "You Kant Always Get What You Want"), and figure out what she really wants to do with her life and career. HEDWIG shifts from comedy to pathos with masterful ease, despite this being Mitchell's first movie. He workshopped the script at the Sundance Labs and went on to win a string of awards, including three at Sundance Film Festival. It's not difficult to see why, with the fabulous score, cinematography, acting (Miriam Shor is especially wonderful as Yitzshak, Hedwig's disgruntled, scruffy present-day husband who yearns to don drag himself), and a beautiful animation sequence by Emily Hubley. In the 17 years since I was in high school, when I drove two hours away to Madison, Wisconsin to see HEDWIG AND THE ANGRY INCH and left the theatre feeling exuberant, understood, thrilled, and wonderfully alive, this movie has shaped my understanding and appreciation of the film musical. I am happy to say that it still holds up. After seeing many more musicals since HEDWIG, I am convinced that it is one of the most skillful, gorgeous, and effective film adaptations of a stage musical ever made. This may seem ambitious, but I would count this wacky cult classic alongside FUNNY GIRL and CABARET as successful adaptations that use elements specific to the medium of film to amplify powerful moments within the drama and intensify the intimate connection we as audience feel with the protagonist. Like Barbra Streisand's first semi-sarcastic look in the mirror ("Hello, gorgeous!"), Hedwig's semi-panicked-but-pleased look in the mirror after she dons her Farrah Fawcett wig speaks to something tentative and tenacious in us as we don tenuous personas to tackle our quotidian lives. Though Hedwig's experience is strange and unusual and a general audience may not relate to her particular gender odyssey, the intimacy created by the most cinematic and theatrical moments of HEDWIG AND THE ANGRY INCH makes her quest for self-realization magnetic and compelling. Much like Minnelli's musicals, HEDWIG even seems to veer into the protagonist's mind in the final sequence, bringing an actualized self to life through music. I dare you to watch the final number of this movie and not feel chills. Screening as part of the Doc and Roll: Rockstars of the Silver Screen series. (2001, 95 min, DCP Digital) [Alex Ensign]
Hayao Miyazaki's KIKI'S DELIVERY SERVICE (Japan/Animation)
Davis Theater – Sunday, 1pm
In movies about witchcraft, especially those centered on female teenage protagonists, magic is often a metaphor for the emotional vicissitude that is coming of age. The same is true of KIKI’S DELIVERY SERVICE, except that its director, Hayao Miyazaki, extends it to also include the young witch’s pragmatic development. In this world, derived from Eiko Kadono’s eponymous novel, witchcraft is as much an amendable skill as it is an innate gift; Kiki has a knack for flying (using a broomstick, as a witch does), and her mother is shown using her own magic to brew medicine for the locals. Though their skills are otherworldly in nature, it’s required that witches leave home at 13 to find a town that doesn’t have any witch inhabitants and make a living using their powers. With her sassy black cat Jiji in tow, Kiki starts her own delivery service, transporting various items around town with minimal effort but maximum mishaps. As is the norm with Miyazaki, there is no easy fix for Kiki’s problems—magic, unfortunately, can’t replace tenacity or account for a lack of self-esteem. “Magic in the film is a limited power no different from the talents of any average kids,” he wrote in a director's statement for its DVD release. About Kiki’s gender, which is an identifying factor of the film, that it’s concerned so intently with a young girl’s maturation, Miyazaki also said that “[s]he represents every girl who is drawn to the glamour of the big city but finds themselves struggling with their newfound independence.” This reflects the conflict between tradition and modernity that’s common in much of Miyazaki’s work. Also present is a preoccupation with flight that started in his childhood—his father manufactured fighter plane rudders during World War II. Despite said fascination, he does not give Kiki her powers so easily. At one point, she loses them altogether; talented painter and new friend Ursula tells Kiki that the same happens to her, that sometimes she’s completely unable to create. The film’s profound display of maturity and all that precedes its acquisition is standard for Studio Ghibli fare but decidedly less so for childrens' films in general. Its happy ending is predicated on the understanding that to be happy, one must persevere through bad times, sad times, and any doldrums in between. As always, its animation style is wholly ataractic, much like the Romantic and Impressionist painters beyond whose captivating canvases lay a whole complex world, both halcyon and tremulous, as honest as they are illusory in their artistic dissimulation. (The novel on which it’s based is set in northern Europe, and Miyazaki cited a couple of cities in Sweden as influences on the design. Yet another hat tip to the idea that even the most tranquil seas swell from time to time.) It’s the first Ghibli film distributed by Disney, a partnership that’s only recently come to an end with Disney granting home media distribution rights of the studio’s films to GKIDS, who’ve held the theatrical distribution rights since 2011. Miyazaki originally intended to just produce the film but decided to direct after being reluctant to cede his vision for the project. One can only assume that Kiki, in all her dewy wisdom, would do the same as it pertains to her witchy industry. Final note—and a spoiler: Perhaps the most heartbreaking-to-me scene in cinema is when Kiki stops being able to speak with Jiji, who’d previously been able to talk to her as if he was another human. If there’s a more apt metaphor for the transition from adolescence to adulthood, I have yet to hear of it. Still, though the magic of childhood may cease, there’s still some to be found on the other side. Screening as part of the Coming of Age series. (1989, 103 min, DCP Digital) [Kat Sachs]
Brendan Bellomo & Slava Leontyev’s PORCELAIN WAR (Ukraine/US/Australia/Documentary)
FACETS – Sunday, 4pm and Thursday, 7pm
Slava and Anya are married artists in eastern Ukraine who make intricately designed porcelain figurines. Their division of labor in making the little sculptures reflects the healthy, supportive nature of their partnership, which began when the two were children: he constructs the figurines, and she paints the designs. Their artistic process is so essential to their lives together that they’ve continued making figurines throughout the Russian military invasion of their country, which they also help to fight against. PORCELAIN WAR is a tribute to the citizen-soldiers of Ukraine, who come from all sorts of backgrounds and are united in their patriotism. One of the more eye-opening moments of the film comes when it introduces the people whom Slava and Anya are fighting alongside, relating what everyone’s profession was before the invasion. No one seems to have had any military experience, which makes their bravery in combating the invasion all the more admirable. The film also shows how the war is being fought; there’s even a short introduction to how the citizen-soldiers use drones. But what shines through is the central portrait of the married artists and their efforts to maintain some sense of normalcy amidst calamitous times. Some of the scenes that show them making their figurines are even soothing, showing how art can be a salve during difficult times and why the defense of Slava and Anya’s lives in particular is crucial to the fate of Ukraine on the whole. (2024, 87 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]
Jackie Chan & Chi-Hwa Chen's POLICE STORY (Hong Kong)
Gene Siskel Film Center – Tuesday, 6:15pm
The dubbed thwapping of Jackie Chan’s artfully choreographed fight scenes is a form of ASMR I didn’t know existed. His film POLICE STORY (and it's sequel, POLICE STORY 2) is as tranquilizing as it is rousing, a veritable ballet of brutality with elements of comedy and romance thrown into the mix. Recently restored by Janus Films in high-definition 4K, the first film in the Hong Kong superstar’s popular action series is relentlessly entertaining, so much so that it’s almost difficult to critique. Rather, it's best seen as an artifact of Chan’s prodigious career, which is marked by a skillfulness that’s beyond one’s wildest imagination, rendered so flawlessly that it would seem as if anyone could do what he does. Though often compared to Buster Keaton for obvious reasons—some of Chan’s stunts (which the actor famously performs himself) are almost direct corollaries to those of Keaton’s films—Chan is also similar to Keaton in that he’s directed much of his own best work, having made POLICE STORY after working with James Glickenhaus on THE PROTECTOR (also 1985), which was intended but failed to launch Chan’s career in the United States. Ironically, the film, which took Chan back to Hong Kong, premiered at the 1987 New York Film Festival, doing much more than THE PROTECTOR to grow his stateside reputation. In the film, he stars as a young police inspector, Chan Ka Kui, who’s assigned to guard a crime lord’s secretary (Taiwanese icon Brigitte Lin) after she’s strong-armed into testifying against her former boss. The incomparable Maggie Cheung, whose comedic tenor rivals that of Chan’s own, also appears as the inspector’s girlfriend. A Jackie Chan film often feels like skipping a stone across water, each plunk a show-stopping set piece separated by passages of anticipation; that is to say, the plot, while entertaining, is largely filler until the next conflict, which inevitably yields stunts as yet unimaginable to the average moviegoer. Chan eschews the slow-build in favor of immediate, heart-stopping action, destroying a whole shantytown in the first 15 minutes as ceaselessly as he destroys a luxury mall in the last 15 minutes. Screening as part of the Science on Screen series. Followed by a post-screening discussion with Chicago-based stuntman Christian Litke (THE BATMAN, MAN OF STEEL). (1985, 92 min, DCP Digital) [Kat Sachs]
David Lynch's LOST HIGHWAY (US)
Alamo Drafthouse – Friday, 9:45pm
David Lynch loves to play in the dark. His longtime cinematographer Frederick Elmes once remarked that "with David, my job is to determine how dark we're talking about." There's sort-of-dark, and really-dark, and pitch-black-dark; all of these kinds and more are put to gripping use in LOST HIGHWAY. The most breathtaking example (perhaps echoing a shot from THRONE OF BLOOD) is a scene that takes place in a shadowy hallway. Avant-garde sax player and demi-protangonist Fred Madison slowly moves from lightness to dark, appearing to slowly dissolve before our very eyes. It's the sort of infinitely subtle visual moment that home video just can't adequately reproduce, and LOST HIGHWAY is packed with them. For too long this movie has overshadowed by its more-celebrated follow-up, MULHOLLAND DR. But the fact is the two movies function as a true diptych, exploring similar themes of doubling and identity in ways that complement each other. To ignore LOST HIGHWAY is to discount some of Lynch's most indelible moments: including an unforgettably disquieting sex scene, the eerie Natalie Woodishness of a leather-clad Natasha Gregson Wagner, a gorgeous use of This Mortal Coil's "Song to the Siren," Richard Pryor's out-of-left-field cameo (it was his final film), and of course Robert Blake's unforgettable performance as the sinister Mystery Man. (1997, 135 min, DCP Digital) [Rob Christopher]
Mike Leigh’s HARD TRUTHS (UK)
FACETS – Saturday, 3pm and 5pm
Mike Leigh has long shown a liking for dyspeptic characters, exploiting both the thrill and pathos of individuals taking out their anger on the world. In his gallery of ornery malcontents, only David Thewlis’s Johnny in NAKED (1993) comes close to the voluble, angsty belligerence of Leigh’s newest creation, Pansy. As played by a blistering Marianne Jean-Baptiste, reuniting with Leigh for the first time since SECRETS & LIES (1996), Pansy is a walking stick of dynamite ready to explode at whomever is unlucky enough to be in her vicinity. This is mostly her husband Curtley (David Webber, superb) and adult son Moses (Tuwaine Barrett), whose sullen, passive demeanors suggest they’ve become numb to her incessant tirades. At first, Pansy’s grumpiness is quite funny, and even relatable, as in a dinnertime rant in which she goes from decrying sidewalk charity workers to pockets on baby clothes (“What’s it gonna keep in its pocket? A knife?”). But as HARD TRUTHS goes on, Pansy’s sour mood and all-encompassing contempt grow more untenable and, finally, tragic. Arguably one of the most profound humanists in contemporary cinema, Leigh demonstrates a patience and empathy toward Pansy that is hugely disproportionate to the patience and empathy she extends to others; in the process, he allows us to see the wounded human being beneath the bitterness that is her armor, to understand how the hurt she’s endured is transferred into hurt she perpetuates. HARD TRUTHS hints at reasons for Pansy’s behavior (some expository dialogue with her much happier sister, Chantelle, indicates a traumatic relationship with her late mother), but the film declines to diagnose her, or give her a trite arc of redemption. She remains as severe as Dick Pope’s starkly lit digital images, among the least inviting in Leigh’s oeuvre, and as willfully hemmed-in as the little backyard of her row house that even she fears to venture into. There is no catharsis in HARD TRUTHS, just a prolonged impasse in which honest, mutually productive communication feels like one of the hardest things in the world. (97 min, 2024, DCP Digital) [Jonathan Leithold-Patt]
📽️ ALSO SCREENING
⚫ Block Cinema (at Northwestern University)
Collective Messages: Short Films of Grupo Chaski (1982-1985, Total Approx. 70 min, DCP Digital), a collection of new restorations in Peruvian cinema, screens Friday at 7pm. More info here.
⚫ Chicago Public Library
View all screenings taking place at Chicago Public Library branches here.
⚫ FACETS Cinema
Pedro Almodóvar’s 2011 film THE SKIN I LIVE IN (120 min, DCP Digital) and Lucky McKee’s 2002 film MAY (93 min, Digital Projection) screen Friday, 7pm and 9:30pm, respectively, as part of the Cold Sweat series.
RaMell Ross’ 2024 film NICKEL BOYS (140 min, DCP Digital) screens Saturday at 7pm and Sunday at 1pm.
Open Space Arts and Queer Expression Film Festival present Antoine Chevrollier’s 2024 film BLOCK PASS (103 min, Digital Projection) on Wednesday at 7pm.
Film Trivia takes place Thursday, 7pm, followed by a screening of Joel Schumacher’s 1993 film FALLING DOWN (113 min, Digital Projection) at 9:30pm. More info on all screenings and events here.
⚫ Gene Siskel Film Center
Brenda Matthews and Nathaniel Schmidt’s 2022 film THE LAST DAUGHTER (90 min, DCP Digital) screens Friday, 6pm, with Matthews in attendance for a post-screening discussion.
Paul Schrader’s 1978 film BLUE COLLAR (114 min, 35mm) screens Friday, 8:45pm, as part of the Directed by Paul Schrader series.
Darren Aronofsky’s 2006 film THE FOUNTAIN (97 min, 35mm) screens Saturday, 2:30pm, and Erik Skjoldbjærg’s 1997 film INSOMNIA (96 min, DCP Digital) screens Saturday, 5:30pm, as part of the Science on Screen series.
Off Center, the Siskel Center’s monthly experimental series, presents Experiments in 3D on Monday, 6pm. The program features works by Ken Jacobs, Kerry Laitala, Jodie Mack, Takashi Makino, and Blake Williams. Some works will be presented on 16mm, others will be presented digitally.
Steve McQueen’s 2008 film HUNGER (96 min, DCP Digital) screens Tuesday, 6pm, as part of the Shadows of War series. More info on all screenings here.
⚫Leather Archive & Museum (6418 N. Greenview Ave.)
Bijou Video presents Peter de Rome’s 1976 film THE DESTROYING ANGEL (63 min, Digital Projection) screens Sunday at 7pm. More info here.
⚫ Music Box Theatre
The Brewed presents Ken Wiederhorn’s 1988 film RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD PART II (89 min, 35mm) on Tuesday at 7pm.
Aaron Wertheimer’s 2025 film NOT IF I SEE YOU FIRST (71 min, DCP Digital) screens Wednesday, 7pm, with the director, cast, and crew in attendance for a post-screening Q&A. More info on all screenings here.
⚫ VDB TV (Virtual)
Wendy Clarke: Love is All Around screens as part of VDB's new virtual program, curated by Kristin MacDonough. This program features a selection of five excerpts from Clarke’s iconic LOVE TAPES series, showcasing personal reflections on love from 2,500 diverse individuals. The LOVE TAPES project, ongoing since the late '70s, explores various interpretations of love, from lust and friendship to first love and familial bonds. This VDB TV program highlights newly remastered works, preserved by Clarke and the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research. More info here.
CINE-LIST: March 21, 2025 - March 27, 2025
MANAGING EDITORS // Ben and Kat Sachs
CONTRIBUTORS // Michael Castelle, Maxwell Courtright, Rob Christopher, John Dickson, Alex Ensign, Megan Fariello, Marilyn Ferdinand, Shaun Huhn, Ben Kaye, Jonathan Leithold-Patt, Brian Welesko, David Whitehouse, Olivia Hunter Willke