:: FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 14 - THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 20 ::

📽️ CRUCIAL VIEWING

Raoul Walsh's THE BIG TRAIL (US)

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

An experiment in widescreen cinema, THE BIG TRAIL is a showcase of Raoul Walsh’s genius for the carnal, the action-packed melodrama. John Wayne stars in this barely plotted adventure, leading a group of settlers across the Oregon Trail, tracking a group of murderers, and wooing a mostly offended but predictably seducable woman on the wagon train. I say ‘barely plotted’ because the film rapidly seems to lose interest in its characters, using them as opportunities to play with the vastness of its 70mm aspect ratio. Walsh’s best films (THE BOWERY, MANPOWER, PURSUED) tend to be driven by society’s need to reject male rage, and this is no exception. Indeed, it takes the theme to its limits in a way, exploring an unforgiving, inhuman space of dust and terrain against which the mere humans are figures of weariness, inadequacy, and futility.  The men in this film rage, but as they rage against one another—revenging slights, swindling comrades, assassinating one another—the landscape surrounds them, dwarfs them, shows the insignificance of their arguments. The world being penetrated, colonized, is one that not only does not welcome people but one for which the presence of people is irrelevant.  The wind will continue to blow. The chasms widen. The rivers flush to sea.  It is a vision of technological hubris: in our quest to ‘tame’ the wilderness through our machinery (the wagon, the crane, the firearm) we end up only domesticating ourselves. It is an elegiac, meditative film (an outlier for Walsh!) that mourns the loss of uninhabited land. Screening as part of the Raoul Walsh: Adventures in Filmmaking series. (1930, 122 min, 35mm) [Kian Bergstrom]

Michael Snow’s WAVELENGTH (Canada/US/Experimental)

Doc Films (at the University of Chicago) – Sunday, 5pm

“A perfect example of the cinema of stillness,” wrote Amos Vogel in Film as a Subversive Art, “[WAVELENGTH] weaves its charms so subtly that those who come to scoff remain transfixed. A speculation on the essence of the medium and, inevitably, of reality, the real protagonist of this film is the room itself, the private life of a world without man, the sovereignty of objects and physical events.” The room in question is Michael Snow’s Manhattan loft studio; the film begins with a wide-angle shot of the main living area and ends, without the camera ever changing position, with a close-up of a picture on a wall in between two sets of windows. (Stanley Kubrick paid tribute to the film’s conclusion at the end of THE SHINING [1980].) The imperceptibly slow zoom inward is the movie’s chief event, and it dwarfs the significance of whatever human beings appear in front of the camera. A few people do turn up in WAVELENGTH, yet they enter and exit fairly quickly, and Snow presents them in such a withholding manner as to render all human activity banal, even the onscreen death of a random man and the subsequent discovery of his corpse. The unrelenting nature of Snow’s style has a lot to do with the movie’s hypnotic charge, and the unique soundtrack adds to this effect. Snow created the eerie extended glissando with an audio oscillator; the noise heightens the film’s abstract quality, keying your attention to the formal construction. Snow devised WAVELENGTH in 18 segments, with each one determined by a different position of the zoom lens. This plan, which allows for a predetermined form to guide the content, makes the film a perfect example of structuralist cinema too. Screening with Snow’s 1976 short film BREAKFAST (TABLE TOP DOLLY) (15 min, 16mm) as part of the Back and Forth, Around and Around: Michael Snow on 16mm series. (1967, 16mm) [Ben Sachs]
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Snow’s 2005 short film SSHTOORRTY (20 min, 35mm) and 1964 short film NEW YORK EYE AND EAR CONTROL (35 min, 16mm) screen Sunday at 7pm as part of the same series.

Tod Browning's THE UNKNOWN (US/Silent)

Chicago Film Society at the Music Box Theatre – Sunday, 7:15pm

Tod Browning's masterful THE UNKNOWN is a perverted and haunting hallucination of a film in which Lon Chaney plays Alonzo, an armless knife-thrower for a traveling circus whose obsession with Nanon, his assistant—played with electrifying sensuality by Joan Crawford—grows more intense with every flick of his toe-thrown blades. But she loves the strongman, and Alonzo is secretly a serial killer specializing in strangulation.  In roughly an hour's worth of runtime, Browning packs in a lifetime's worth of passion, bad life-choices, sexual fetishes, and unruly, dangerous bodies. Containing Chaney's greatest, most disturbing performance, the film is fatalistic, hopeless, and sublime. With live accompaniment by Whine Cave (Kent Lambert and Sam Wagster). Preceded by Heather McAdams and Chris Ligon's 1997 short film COMES TO A POINT LIKE AN ICE-CREAM CONE (18 min, 16mm). (1927, 63 min, 35mm) [Kian Bergstrom]

Surface Tensions: Seven Films Caught Between the Image and Its Depths (US/Experimental)

Chicago Filmmakers – Saturday, 6pm

For this second iteration of Chicago Filmmakers' bravura new Picture Restart series, programmer Ben Creech's trawls through a long-dormant 16mm film catalogue (for more context regarding the archival project at hand, check out Cine-File contributor Joshua Minsoo Kim's piece for the Chicago Reader) have resulted in an exceptionally playful program whose seven films shimmer and shake in a tremulous dance with one another, each work lithely free-floating and singular yet revealing a richesse of thematic harmony when presented in tandem—an experience not unlike watching microscale aquatic organisms busy themselves in a tide pool. Karen Johnson's classic erotic short ORANGE (1970, 3 min, 16mm) opens the program, transmuting the surface of its titular fruit into a series of alien landscapes through extreme close-ups of shredded pith and excreted essential oil. I always experience a surge of relief watching this one when lips and fingers begin to intrude on the abstract compositions, those little signs of life dispersing the pallor of fleshy abstraction and rendering the piece into a simple paean to the messy act of bare-handing a piece of fruit. Chel White's WET (1984, 5 min, 16 mm), a dazzling optical printer-assisted study of the surface of water, follows in the program, unfolding like Will Hindle's recently-screened WATERSMITH (1971) in miniature and evoking the dreamiest passages of Gakyuru Ishii's AUGUST IN THE WATER (1995). This is a marvelous little sliver of proto-vaporwave, capturing swimmers' bodies obscured by the dappled patterns of listless pool water in an array of polychrome expressions, all scored by the filmmaker's own hypnotic synthesizer compositions. In Gary Bedler's formally dazzling HAND HELD DAY (1976, 6 min, 16mm), a time lapse unfolds within the frame of a hand-held mirror, dutifully held aloft (by hand) directly in front of the camera and revealing a horizon line far beyond the scope of the camera itself. The gradations of the elapsed time are subtle, until all of a sudden they aren't, as the sun sets and the mirror is engulfed in deep crimson hues, ending on a note that is nearly indistinguishable from a smoldering fire or a volcanic expanse. There's something so moving about the mirror trick employed here with regards to the camera itself; it's like hoisting up a household pet in novel vantage points to give them views of spaces that they would otherwise never be able to see. Another quick time lapse is presented next in the form of Lewis Alquist's FRAME (1991, 3 min, 16mm), which trains its lens on an innocuous white frame, soon revealed to be a drive-in movie screen once the sun sets and several feature films whizz by in accelerated motion. Sheri Will's INTERIOR SCHEMES (1992, 9 min, 16mm) is a diaristic film in which the narrator, over a visual backdrop of magazine cutouts and hand-painted domestic scenes, meditates on her desire to arrange a perfect home for herself and her boyfriend. The rambling narration obfuscates the film's precise dialectical nature, wherein pristine catalogue-ready designer homes are juxtaposed with footage of a woman methodically rearranging her furniture. The real gut punch comes when an outburst of anger punctures the film's delicate ambience, stopping the narration dead in its tracks and leaving at first only a heavy silence, then the droning sound of the television set. THE FETISHISM OF COMMODITIES AND THE SECRET THEREOF (1990, 7 min, 16mm), a pithy work of ironic juxtaposition from Ines Sommer, is the program's penultimate piece. Here, recordings of televangelist preachers espousing the need to rid oneself of the devil (and also, pointedly, donate enormous sums of money to the church) play out over innocuous images of foodstuff in a grocery store. In further pursuit of the television, the program ends on a sublimely porn-toned note of video scuzz with video art pioneer William "Willie Boy" Walker's debut film LIFE WITH VIDEO (1971, 14 min, 16mm), a goofily transgressive piece of sketch-erotica that was notably included on the 1974 compilation of the BEST OF THE NEW YORK EROTIC FILM FESTIVAL. A man known as Captain Video appears on a television set, assures the woman watching that great technological advances have been made and that he is really in the room with her, and proceeds to pleasure her through the TV with enormous gusto. Lest the whole affair begin to feel too stuffy, this is a terrifically counter-intuitive send-off for the program that literalizes the title proposition of suspension between an image and its depth. [David Whitehouse]

Ernst Lubitsch’s THE LOVE PARADE (US)

Chicago Film Society at Northeastern Illinois University (The Auditorium, Building E 3701 W. Bryn Mawr Ave.) – Wednesday, 7:30pm

The Lubitsch Touch, which distinguishes the German auteur from his peers then and now, is not about the presence of something but rather its absence. One does not see the mechanic behind the effect at play; one barely registers the effort with which it’s undertaken, so subtle is that so-called cinematic palpitation. This being the case even for his first “talkie”—the beginning of a transitional era rife with aural crudeness; it was also fashioned as a silent for theaters not yet outfitted for sound—is appropriate but no less impressive, especially so because it’s a musical. (In his book on Lubitsch, film historian Joseph McBride asserts that THE LOVE PARADE “can be fairly credited with creating the musical genre on film,” even though it’s not literally the first.) Much of the awkwardness inherent to this period was technical; the camera was static and both it and the camera operator were encased in large soundproof boxes, and, if music was required, an orchestra played nearby off-screen. Still, the film moves lightly, brightly, intermixed with song in a way that enhances the overall linearity of the admittedly slight story, based on the French play Le Prince Consort, rather than those sections feeling like mere musical addendums to the limited action at hand. The film debut of Jeanette MacDonald, it was the first of four films she’d make with Lubitsch, three of which co-starred human Pepé Le Pew Maurice Chevalier. She stars as the unmarried Queen Louise of Sylvania; Chevalier appears as Count Alfred, military attaché to the country’s embassy in Paris, whom we see in the beginning of the film being made to leave his post due to his philandering with the wives of local dignitaries. He reports back to the queen, and against all odds they fall in love and soon marry. The problem then becomes not Alfred’s womanizing ways but his lack of responsibility and overall emasculation as the prince consort. There’s a class-conscious rhyme in the count’s valet, Jacques (Lupino Lane), and the queen’s maid, Lulu (Lillian Roth), who undertake a relationship in tandem with their employers. An elegant superjoke (to quote Billy Wilder about what this is, “You had a joke, and you felt satisfied, and then there was one more big joke on top of it. The joke you didn't expect. That was the Lubitsch Touch…”) at the beginning establishes the motif; as the count laments his pending departure from Paris via song, his valet too sings his goodbyes to the chagrin of many local maids. Finally, the count’s dog follows suit, but, you know, barking. Three of a kind they are—men can be dogs, and sometimes dogs can be like men! If anything, sound helped to add that which you didn’t expect; the innuendos, too, become even funnier with the commensurate word play. Jean Cocteau greatly admired the film, saying it’s “a Lubitsch miracle, a melange of Andersen fable and the brio of Strauss, not forgetting that extraordinary domestic couple right out of an opera-bouffe of Mozart.” Indeed, it’s a miraculous blend of spurious fairytale and high and low modes of art and entertainment, rendered effortlessly by that which can not be seen nor hardly qualified, respective only to Lubitsch himself. Preceded by Murray Roth’s 1929 short film LITTLE MISS EVERYBODY (8 min, 35mm). (1929, 109 min, 35mm) [Kat Sachs]

Christian Nyby’s (and/or Howard Hawks’) THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD (US)

Music Box Theatre – Saturday, 11:30am

Christian Nyby began his film career as a carpenter before transitioning to editing, forming a close partnership with Howard Hawks. He edited several Hawks classics, including TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT (1944), THE BIG SLEEP (1946), RED RIVER (1948), and THE BIG SKY (1952). His directorial debut came with THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD, produced by Hawks’ Winchester Pictures and released by RKO. Though Nyby received sole directing credit, debate over the film’s true authorship persists. This debate itself is Hawksian, reflecting his ethos of professionalism and group synergy over individual egos. THE THING certainly exhibits Hawks’ trademarks: seamless ensemble dynamics, overlapping dialogue, and utilitarian valor. Some argue Nyby’s credit was a formality to secure his Directors Guild membership, with Hawks dictating the film’s direction. Cast members offer conflicting accounts—some recall Hawks directing extensively, while others claim Nyby managed most decisions. A similar controversy surrounds POLTERGEIST (1982), credited to Tobe Hooper but widely seen as Spielberg’s vision. Both films benefited from strong collaborations. THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD adapts John W. Campbell’s novella Who Goes There?, published under the pseudonym Don A. Stuart while he served as editor on the magazine Astounding Science Fiction. Campbell, a genre-shaping force, mentored Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, and Arthur C. Clarke, elevating sci-fi above pulp fiction. Unlike John Carpenter’s 1982 remake, which adheres to Campbell’s paranoid vision of an alien shapeshifter, Hawks and Nyby strip away the paranoia, presenting a clear-cut battle of humankind versus other. In all versions, researchers at a frozen outpost discover a spacecraft and its soon-thawed occupant that threatens humanity. Hawks and Nyby’s creature—more plant than animal, surviving on blood—is a ruthless vampire carrot. The true conflict, however, lies in ideological clashes between pragmatic military officers and ambitious scientists. This dynamic mirrors Hawks’ skepticism toward intellectualism seen previously in HIS GIRL FRIDAY (1940) and BALL OF FIRE (1941) while reflecting Cold War anxieties. Hawks championed action over rhetoric, survival over sentimentality. THE THING embodies this ethos, prioritizing camaraderie and competence over fear. Unlike other sci-fi films of the time such as THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL (1951) or INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS (1956), which explore Cold War paranoia and the fear of infiltration, THE THING exudes confidence. As the soldiers toss lit kerosene all over a soundstage—in the first full-body fire stunt put on film—the military never wavers, responding to the alien threat with unshaken resolve. Even the embedded journalist celebrates their success rather than highlighting division. The film’s famous closing line—“Watch the skies!”—has been read as an anti-Communist warning but also aligns with Hawks’ worldview: professionals stay vigilant, always prepared for the next challenge. If THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD was truly Nyby’s vision, his debut was a flawless homage to his mentor. Regardless, Hawks’ influence looms over the film like its extraterrestrial menace—powerful, inescapable, and ultimately shaping the fate of all involved. Screening as part of the Silver Fox: Howard Hawks Matinees with an introduction and post-screening discussion with author Alec Nevala-Lee. (1951, 87 min, 35mm) [Shaun Huhn]

Atom Egoyan’s EXOTICA (Canada)

Doc Films (at the University of Chicago) – Thursday, 9:30pm

For me, this film comes down to the moment when an auditor (Bruce Greenwood), reviewing expense records in the dingy backroom of an exotic pet shop, innocently opens a desk drawer and finds a pistol. Atom Egoyan presents the discovery with a sinuous camera movement around the desk, an elegant device that heightens the excitement and mystery of the scene. It should be acknowledged, however, that Egoyan’s dramatic invention here is borderline absurd: an auditor finds a pistol in an exotic pet shop? Luís Buñuel might have been proud; the Spanish master may have also appreciated that Egoyan inserted this strange little scene in the middle of a movie that’s ostensibly about a strip club. At least in the United States (where it was distributed by Miramax Films), EXOTICA was marketed as if it were softcore pornography, with an ad campaign that centered on Mia Kirshner’s strip tease routine. And while Egoyan may be interested in eroticism, he tends to regard it as an expression of psychological need more than anything else. He also presents sex as just one piece of the larger puzzle we call the human experience. EXOTICA is a great puzzle movie, introducing characters as they engage in strange, compulsive behavior, then gradually revealing information about their pasts to explain how they got to be that way. The principal characters include the owner of the exotic pet shop (Don McKellar), who’s first shown smuggling rare eggs into Canada; the owner of a gentleman’s club (Arsinée Khanjian), who’s so devoted to the place that she continues to run it in her third trimester; the club’s emcee (Elias Koteas), who likes to harangue the clientele with Bergmanesque monologues about the nature of specific fetishes; the club’s star performer (Kirshner), who frequently performs to Leonard Cohen’s “Everybody Knows”; and the frequent customer who’s obsessed with her and who happens to be auditing the pet shop owner. EXOTICA was Egoyan’s most ambitious and most literary script to that point, interweaving these stories with the mastery of great fiction. Even the outlandish developments feel like the products of a robust imagination. Screening as part of the Lust & Intrigue: Erotic Thrillers series. (1994, 104 min, 35mm) [Ben Sachs]

Howard Hawks’ ONLY ANGELS HAVE WINGS (US)

Music Box Theatre – Sunday, 11:30am

Over thirty minutes into ONLY ANGELS HAVE WINGS, a clock face appears to signal the movie’s first ellipsis; the opening sequence—in which Jean Arthur’s ex-chorus girl Bonnie Lee makes land in the South American port town of Barranca, meets the men of the local airmail operation, witnesses its tragic potential up close, then bonds at a piano with dashing airline boss Geoff Carter (Cary Grant)—unfolds more or less in real time. The film’s reputation as some kind of apotheosis of the classical Hollywood style rests almost entirely on this overture, among the most illustrative passages of a single director’s artistic sensibility. A few dissolves later, Bonnie finds that the Geoff who returns from flying is less chivalrous than the one who goes up (“I don’t know whether this is me or another fella,” she says, still in the glow of the night before), establishing the double meaning of the film’s title: the pilots face death to chase an ideal of manhood they can’t live up to and secretly hope the heel within will get the fiery fate he has coming to him. The philosophical groundwork laid, the story proper introduces a spectre out of the past—the moody and suggestively named Bat MacPherson, played by Donald Barthelmess, silent-era star of BROKEN BLOSSOMS and later of Hawks’s THE DAWN PATROL, now sporting surgical scars under his matchlight eyes as reminders of a lost boyhood. MacPherson turns out to be the disgraced pilot Kilgallen, who bailed out of a doomed flight while his mechanic—brother of Geoff’s right-hand man, the Kid (Thomas Mitchell)—perished behind him. With Geoff’s old flame Judy (Rita Hayworth) at MacPherson’s side, a sturdy melodrama unfolds within this cracker-jack cosmos, courtesy of screenwriter Jules Furthman, who in his earlier collaborations with director Josef von Sternberg built snow-globe settings that contained universes (viz. THE DOCKS OF NEW YORK, MOROCCO, SHANGHAI EXPRESS). The Hawksian woman is split here between Judy, a vessel of desire whom Geoff holds in contempt, and Bonnie, at once love interest and audience surrogate drawn in against her better judgment by these men and their Andean oasis, nestled at the foothills of eternity. Isolated from the context of wartime service or American industry (see again THE DAWN PATROL, plus Hawks’ CEILING ZERO and later AIR FORCE), Bonnie sees the pilots as the death-haunted exiles they are, led by their roguish captain in all his devil-may-care fatalism. Two years before SUSPICION, Hawks deserves credit for seeing the latent darkness in Grant’s persona; the question of whether a suicidal urge or Cupid’s arrow is really nipping at Geoff’s heels suffuses the sublime coin-flip of an ending. Stanley Cavell, writing of Hawks’s 1938 film with Grant, BRINGING UP BABY, had the killer line: “the attempt at flight is forever transforming itself into (hence revealing itself as) a process of pursuit.” Screening as part of the Silver Fox: Howard Hawks Matinees series. (1939, 121 min, New 4K DCP Digital Restoration) [Brendan Boyle]

Raoul Walsh's THE MAN I LOVE (US)

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

Unclassifiable in that distinctive Walsh way, this punchy/miserable film noir disguised as a melodrama (and vice versa) stars Ida Lupino as a singer caught between the moody musician (or is it just his choice of music?) she loves and the sleazeball gangster she doesn't. There's a lot to be said about Walsh's approach to form in directing (or, in a film this rich, one could almost say "inventing") THE MAN I LOVE, but that might overshadow his crackerjack handling of the actors, who seem to have been driven to the breaking point; this is one of Lupino's finest, fiercest, and most nuanced performances (presaging, in certain ways, Gena Rowlands' work with Cassavetes), and Gary Cooper sound-alike Bruce Bennett musters a surprising amount of depth as the pensive pianist. Out of all the classical studio directors, Walsh had the best nose for milieu, and the film is pungent with late-night nightclub atmosphere: musicians' sweat, cigarette smoke, bad perfume, spilled beer, alleyway piss. Seamy, steamy, brittle stuff. Screening as part of the Raoul Walsh: Adventures in Filmmaking series. (1947, 96 min, 16mm) [Ignatiy Vishnevetsky]

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Akira Kurosawa’s RASHÔMON (Japan)

Gene Siskel Film Center – Friday, 6:15pm

Ever since it won the Golden Lion at the 1951 Venice Film Festival, RASHÔMON has been many a westerner’s gateway to Japanese cinema. It’s also routinely taught in film schools and high school literature classes (I remember having to write a paper comparing it with the two Ryûnosuke Akutagawa stories it’s based on in freshman English), and even the title entered the popular lexicon as shorthand for a narrative with multiple narrators. Yet RASHÔMON remains electrifying in spite of its ubiquity—Akira Kurosawa’s mastery over such filmmaking fundamentals as composition, blocking, performance, and editing ensures that every shot draws the viewer directly into some aspect of the characters’ emotional experience. (If you want to know why Spielberg, Lucas, and Coppola have always revered Kurosawa, look no further than RASHÔMON.) For a movie about the elusive nature of truth, it’s awfully easy to engage with; Kurosawa’s direction is so effective in moving the narrative forward that you rarely stop to think about how it works. Nonetheless, the film’s puzzle-like structure, with its flashbacks that conflict and yet build upon one another, is worth scrutinizing once you get past the surface-level brilliance. Kurosawa cited silent cinema as the primary influence on RASHÔMON, and this principally comes through in the rich atmosphere. Who can forget the rain pouring down on the muddy ruins of the temple gate at the film’s opening, or the clearing of the rain at the end? Another thing that often gets overlooked about the film is that it has only three locations—the vividness of each setting, combined with the multitude of perspectives, makes the story feel more expansive than it actually is. At the same time, the film’s themes are epic, and its conclusions about human nature are profound. Donald Richie has argued that RASHÔMON achieves a heroic finale when Kurosawa makes a case for the importance of human goodness in a world marked by randomness and evil. As to whether the conclusion marks an organic coda to the story or a sentimental cop-out on Kurosawa’s part, we’ll be debating that for generations to come. Screening as part of the Persistence of Memory series. (1950, 88 min, 35mm) [Ben Sachs]

Ingmar Bergman's WILD STRAWBERRIES (Sweden)

Gene Siskel Film Center – Sunday, Noon and Thursday, 8:30pm

Summer is a very special, brief time of the year in Sweden, known as the time of messy Midsummer rituals, joyful hedonism, and sexual spontaneity and abandon. How could it be otherwise in a country where the summers are so exquisitely balmy, fleeting, and intensely alive, compared to the harsh severity and darkness of the more famous Swedish winters? One of Bergman’s greatest odes to summer is WILD STRAWBERRIES [SMULTRONSTÄLLET]. (It is worth noting that the smultron featured in the Swedish title is not the same fruit as the strawberry grown in the U.S., but a much sweeter, alpine variety that is an unofficial sort of symbol of national pride in Sweden, returned to by Bergman in several of his films as a recurring motif for personal fulfillment and the short-lived pleasures of life.) Bergman’s 18th directorial feature, WILD STRAWBERRIES is a film often singled-out for special praise as his most poignant and stirring cinematic achievement—and it is also surely the most beloved, enduring personal favorite of both classic European arthouse enthusiasts and more ironic, Nouvelle Vague-inclined, closeted Bergman fans alike (of which this reviewer humbly counts herself as one). Made during a significant personal, midlife crisis for the director—marked by the dissolution of both his marriage to his third wife Gun Grut, as well as the end of his affair with Bibi Andersson—WILD STRAWBERRIES is a film about the crucial importance of recognizing close familial relations and interpersonal warmth as the sustenance that will save you from the coldness of life’s crushing indifference (in fact, Bergman suggests, in a deadened world, it is the only thing that can). Starring the great Swedish silent film director and actor Victor Sjöström (THE PHANTOM CARRIAGE, HE WHO GETS SLAPPED) in his final screen appearance as Professor Isak Borg, the film’s main narrative innovation is its 24-hour frame during which the action consists of the professor’s journey with his daughter-in-law (Ingrid Thulin) by car from Stockholm to Lund to receive an honorary degree. This seemingly simple road-trip premise is strikingly intercepted by a series of flashbacks, memories, unexpected encounters, and hauntingly vivid and nightmarish dream sequences—the latter in particular reminding us of Bergman’s underappreciated surrealist genius (high-strung symbolism and Dutch angles galore!), and anticipating the grand guignol imagery still to come in THE MAGICIAN. Balanced admirably between representations of both the bleak realities as well as the unexpected joys of living, what Bergman gives us in WILD STRAWBERRIES is an unforgettable lesson that life—even when you don’t deserve it—hands you little gifts of camaraderie and friendship, little windows of opportunity for connection, reminders of all the ways that life and cinema can be beautiful. Screening as part of the Persistence of Memory series. (1957, 91 min, 35mm) [Tien-Tien Jong]

Teruo Ishii’s BLIND WOMAN’S CURSE (Japan) and Yasuharu Hasebe’s STRAY CAT ROCK: SEX HUNTER (Japan)

Davis Theater – Sunday, 6pm

Teruo Ishii’s BLIND WOMAN’S CURSE (1970, 85 min, DCP Digital) and Yasuharu Hasebe’s STRAY CAT ROCK: SEX HUNTER(1970, 86 min, DCP Digital) are both defining films of their era, each embodying the anarchic spirit of Japanese genre cinema while exploring different facets of violence, power, and retribution. While one blends supernatural horror with yakuza melodrama, the other weaponizes mod-era cool to dissect societal decay. Both feature Meiko Kaji in electrifying early roles, yet they channel her magnetism in starkly different ways. To watch these films side by side is to see the full breadth of what Nikkatsu Studios had to offer in the 1970s: an intoxicating mix of stylized brutality, genre experimentation, and social critique wrapped in pulp aesthetics. Ishii’s BLIND WOMAN’S CURSE feels like it was conjured in a fever dream—a yakuza tale laced with supernatural horror and avant-garde theatrics. Kaji plays Akemi Tachibana, a gang leader whose act of violence—accidentally blinding an innocent woman during a sword fight—sets off a karmic chain reaction of vengeance and eerie apparitions. The film is drenched in gothic atmosphere where grotesque carnival figures slither through the periphery, and Butoh dance legend Tatsumi Hijikata writhes and lurches as if reality itself is unraveling. Ishii constructs a world where violence isn’t merely physical but spiritual, where every strike has consequences beyond the grave. The film’s aesthetic is a collision of vibrant blood splatters, surreal set pieces, and kabuki-infused horror, making it a hypnotic experience rather than a straightforward gangster film. Kaji, already refining the icy stoicism that would define her later roles, imbues Akemi with a weary intensity—less an avenging warrior than a woman ensnared by fate. In contrast, STRAY CAT ROCK: SEX HUNTER is a raw, electric pulse of a film, trading Ishii’s nightmarish poetry for punk rock fury. Kaji’s Mako isn’t burdened by supernatural retribution but by the suffocating realities of a male-dominated world. Here, she and her Alleycats prowl through Tokyo’s neon wasteland in the middle of a gang war fueled by racism, with Tatsuya Fuji’s Baron heading the Eagle gang and leading a crusade against mixed-race outsiders. Hasebe directs with unrelenting kineticism—cameras zoom and tilt with reckless abandon, fights explode in frantic bursts, and the film’s nightclub settings ooze with sweat, desperation, and rebellion. SEX HUNTER isn’t just a gang film; it’s an indictment of postwar Japan’s unresolved tensions, where nationalism and masculinity intertwine into something ugly and combustible. Kaji’s Mako is both an observer and disruptor, moving with a quiet confidence that renders the film’s men impotent in comparison. Where Akemi in BLIND WOMAN’S CURSE is haunted by her past, Mako in SEX HUNTER seems to have already seen the future and knows exactly how it ends—with men crumbling under the weight of their own illusions of control. Despite their differences, the films share an unshakable sense of doom—whether supernatural or societal. Both revel in pulp violence but wield it with purpose. BLIND WOMAN’S CURSE uses horror to magnify the inescapable cycle of vengeance, while SEX HUNTER uses gang warfare to expose Japan’s festering wounds. And at the heart of both, Kaji remains an unflinching force, embodying two women who understand that in a world dictated by men, survival often means knowing when to fight—and when to simply walk away. These films don’t just exist within the pantheon of Nikkatsu cult cinema or pinky violence films; they define them. Co-presented by the Oscarbate Film Collective and film historian and author Samm Deighan. [Shaun Huhn]

Aki Kaurismäki’s THE MAN WITHOUT A PAST (Finland/Germany/France)

Gene Siskel Film Center – Sunday, 6:15pm and Wednesday, 8:30pm

The uncanny thing about Aki Kaurismäki’s films is that they’re timeless—not necessarily that they’re applicable to any time, per se, but rather that they seem of a very specific time that exists only in his films. Their anachronistic nature is both whimsical and droll, hardly an original combination but one that Kaurismäki executes with a lugubrious je ne sais quoi that substantiates an otherwise dubious affectation. The second in his Finland Trilogy with DRIFTING CLOUDS (1996) before it and LIGHTS IN THE DUSK (2006) after, THE MAN WITHOUT A PAST, is a little less melancholic than usual for the director. The title character (played by Markku Peltola) is seen at the beginning coming into Helsinki and almost immediately being attacked by a group of violent young men, declared dead, and then, after fleeing the hospital, discovered by a family living in an abandoned shipping container by the sea. Identity unknown, he nevertheless finds a community amidst the city’s downtrodden, acquiring his own empty shipping container for a home and a job at the local Salvation Army, where he meets Irma (Kati Outinen, a frequent presence in Kaurismäki’s films) and, just as serendiptiously, the organization’s humble music group that he turns into a rock ‘n’ roll band. Later he realizes his skills as a welder, helping him to begin piecing together his true identity, later revealed after a fortuitous bank robbery. In Kaurismäki’s world, solidarity amongst the marginalized is another timeless virtue, a safety net more reliable than what is provided by capitalistic society. As critic and film scholar Peter von Bagh articulated, “Kaurismäki has not forgotten things that are simple on their surface, but which have become stunningly unusual. Altruism. Solidarity. The notion that poverty is not evidence of stupidity. The conviction that every person is an end in herself.” Von Bagh aligns him in this endeavor with such filmmakers as Charlie Chaplin and Frank Capra, and indeed, not just is THE MAN WITHOUT A PAST of a piece with those filmmakers’ humanistic viewpoints but also incorporates humor and pathos similarly, evincing a naivete aligned with the aforementioned simple things and those who embody them most. Screening as part of the Persistence of Memory series. (2002, 97 min, DCP Digital) [Kat Sachs]

Andrei Tarkovsky's MIRROR (USSR)

Gene Siskel Film Center – Sunday, 2pm

Long before the great TREE OF LIFE euphoria of 2011, another film (from another director's famously sparse oeuvre) went off uncharted into the space between memories past and present, mapping onto them a universal significance. Andrei Tarkovsky's THE MIRROR may lack dinosaurs and metaphorical doors in the desert, but it does set a mean precedent for everything a passion project can be when an auteur is working on such an intensely personal level. Long a dream project of Tarkovsky's, it was only in the wake of SOLARIS that he was able to secure funding, and armed with a meager allotment of film stock, he began production in late 1973. Given the non-linear, dreamlike progression of the film, such obstacles aren't hard to comprehend, and they perhaps explain why this is his most fleeting film outside his debut, IVAN'S CHILDHOOD. Drawn across the middle of the 20th century, THE MIRROR takes a stream of consciousness journey through familial memories, with actors in dual roles as father and son, as wife and mother. Woven in are poems penned by Tarkovsky's own father, assorted clips of wartime newsreel footage, and the quiet, ethereal imagery characteristic of all his films. It all makes for a hazy dream of cinema, one from which you tragically wake too early. But lest the length should fool you, this is not Tarkovsky for beginners. No surprise that at his most personal he's also at his most esoteric, so an afternoon spent with one of his aforementioned films would be a good primer. As for those already in his thrall, this is imperative viewing. Screening as part of the Persistence of Memory series. (1975, 108 min, DCP Digital) [Tristan Johnson]

Terence Davies' DISTANT VOICES, STILL LIVES (UK)

Gene Siskel Film Center – Saturday and Monday, 6pm

Terence Davies' first feature is one of the most original and accomplished debuts of the 1980s, and a masterpiece of personal filmmaking. Fixated on memory, Davies makes films whose unorthodox structures create a sense of present-moment immediacy while reinforcing the idea that the viewer is watching a past event; for this overtly autobiographical diptych (the film actually consists of two 40-minute narratives: DISTANT VOICES and STILL LIVES), he mines his childhood in postwar Liverpool to create an impressionistic, chronologically-jumbled portrait of working-class British life. By inventing a style that reflects his own memories, Davies touches upon a universal theme: our relationship to the past. A visionary work. Screening as part of the Persistence of Memory series. (1988, 85 min, DCP Digital) [Ignatiy Vishnevetsky]

Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Yuval Abraham & Rachel Szor’s NO OTHER LAND (Norway/Palestine/Documentary)

Music Box Theatre – See Venue website for showtimes

“This is a story about power.” Basel Adra, a lifelong resident of the Masafer Yatta region of the West Bank, speaks these words to cap off a story about former British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s visit to the region, a visit that—while perhaps nothing more than a publicity stunt—resulted in the IDF's previously scheduled demolitions of Palestinian schools and homes to be called off. But this film, NO OTHER LAND, is also a story about power, about needless emotional and physical damage, about the constant barrage of senseless destruction of peoples’ livelihoods that so many around the world have either become desensitized to or have found labyrinthine methods of justifying to themselves this continued degradation of humanity. The framework of the onscreen narrative stretches from the summer of 2019 through October of 2023, and it focuses on the growing friendship between two of the film’s directors: the aforementioned Basel and Yuval Abraham, an Israeli journalist who has arrived to learn more about the continuing Israeli mission of Palestinian subjugation. The footage we see is, at the very least, rage-inducing: homes and schools and entire villages senselessly bulldozed to oblivion, supposedly for the flimsy excuse of being turned into “military zones.” The ensuing carnage and accompanying attitudes perpetrated by the Israeli soldiers captured on film oscillates between “duty-bound” apathy or entitled machismo, in one instance resulting in a soldier shooting and paralyzing a friend of Basel’s, Harun Abu Aram. The law is, indeed, on the side of the Israelis, so why should these Palestinian children be so upset when their homes are destroyed in broad daylight when it’s perfectly “legal” to do so? The filmmakers make a point to highlight the intentional existential ploy being pulled off here, where Israelis can come and go as they please throughout the West Bank, whereas Palestinians are legally bound to the region and otherwise othered in all aspects of Israeli society (Basel notes, despite having a law degree, he would only realistically be able to find a job as a construction worker were he to move to Israel). Throughout it all—perhaps to actively combat it all—there are still laughs shared among family members, there are still games played in the snow during winter, and the children still play and swing around and try to find some semblance of joy amidst their displacement. Underneath the political mire of the “complicated” banner so often thrown at the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, there are simply families wanting to share a meal together, mothers caring for sons, fathers keeping businesses afloat, and countless young people staring at their phones, because what else is there? That the directing team is comprised of both Israelis and Palestinians points towards some kind of hopeful future where a shared understanding of the horrors at hand can be truly realized (some of the more noteworthy and thorny passages arise when various Palestinians question Yuval’s own complicity in the continued settlements of the region, though the film leaves these points dangling rather than digging deeper, for better or worse). Additionally, that the film failed to find US theatrical distribution, while still receiving an Academy Award nomination for Best Documentary Feature, speaks to how open endorsement for Palestinian rights tends to only go so far. Perhaps the true power of NO OTHER LAND, and of this entire story, is the continued resilience and drive in Palestinians capturing the reality on the ground and urgently spreading the truth as far as possible. Here, the camera proves mightier than the sword. (2024, 96 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Kaye]

Tony Scott’s TRUE ROMANCE (US)

Music Box Theatre – Friday and Saturday, Midnight

“You’re so cool!” Alabama (Patricia Arquette) scribbles on an Ambassador Hotel napkin complete with a tiny heart doodle, a note to her husband, Clarence (Christian Slater), near the violence climax of TRUE ROMANCE. In the midst of the serious trouble that brought this young couple to Los Angeles, Alabama is still moony for Clarence, unable to let the horror she’s experienced taint their comic book love. TRUE ROMANCE is really about an imagined picture of love, one that stems from a warped obsession with Americana. In fact, the couple meets in a Detroit movie theater, where Clarence unwittingly falls for Alabama, a sex worker hired by his boss as a birthday present. They get married after she tearfully confesses and admits she’s fallen for him too in this one night. Elvis-obsessed, Clarence is told by a shadowy apparition of the king (played in a choice cameo by Val Kilmer) to kill Alabama’s abusive pimp. He does, but also ends up with a massive amount of cocaine, and the two lovers set out on the run, deciding LA is the place to sell the drugs. Their passion is driven by their ideas of true romance, clearly shaped by an obsession with pop culture that drives a blurring for the characters between reality and fiction. Directed by Tony Scott with a script by Quentin Tarantino, the combination of auteurs smartly balances a grounded setting—transitioning from gray Midwest to sunny California—with a barrage oddball side characters (played by Gary Oldman, Christopher Walken, Bronson Pinchot, to name a few); it’s an impressively pulled off mix of daydreamy fantasy and harsh reality. While reminiscent of many lovers-on-the-run films that came before, TRUE ROMANCE takes particular inspiration from Terrence Malick’s BADLANDS (1973), evident in the use of the same musical theme and Alabama’s distinct, calm voiceover. The difference here is Alabama’s agency throughout; one harrowing scene involves her being attacked by a gangster (James Gandolfini) looking for Clarence. She’s also an early '90s fashion icon, her red lip and colorful mismatched clothing feel both vintage and wholly modern. While Slater’s Clarence is off kilter fun, it’s truly Arquette’s performance that makes the dance between the absurd, amoral violence and sweetness work. As Alabama’s voiceover states at the beginning of the film on their dire circumstances and of the difficulty of romance, “Usually, that’s the way it does, but every once in a while, it goes the other way, too.”  (1993, 118 min, DCP Digital) [Megan Fariello]

2025 Oscar Nominated Animated Shorts

Music Box Theatre – See Venue website for showtimes

It’s a joyful rarity to find that this year, all of the Academy Award-nominated animated short films happen to be thematically linked, as if these five disparate teams of animators took the prompt of “how do we find connection in this world?” and answered it in their own varying ways. Each of these shorts comes filled with deep longing and desire, though some of the films make that more obvious than others. Certainly the two most whimsical shorts of the bunch, Daisuke Nishio’s MAGIC CANDIES (21 min) and Loïc Espuche’s YUCK! (13 min), with their focus on young people, finds their respective yearning resting in the idealism of youth and the discovery of the new. MAGIC CANDIES—a charmingly rendered piece of 3D-modeled anime—does so with gumballs that reveal the innermost truths and wants of those surrounding our youthful protagonist, each awakened thought (be it from the child’s sofa, or the spirit of his late grandmother) reminding our youthful hero that true adventure is never experienced alone. YUCK!, though not centered around literal candy, aims for simpler, sweeter fare, a cartoonish 2D confection about a group of kids retching at the sight of summertime kissing, only for two of the kids to realize that lip-locking might be something worth experiencing. Delving into the more serious and adult fare, while still staying in the realm of 2D-animation, Hossein Molayemi and Shirin Sohani’s IN THE SHADOW OF THE CYPRESS (20 min) leans fully into an emotional blend of realistic and expressionistic storytelling, its psychological depictions of grief manifesting through contorted bodies and graphic novel-esque imagery, all in service of a story of a father and daughter trying to stay afloat. Sadness floats to the top of Nicolas Keppens’ BEAUTIFUL MEN (18 min), a humorously depressing work of stop-motion drudgery, where three brothers—all follically challenged—travel to Istanbul for hair transplants, only to be further subsumed by their own limited perceptions of masculinity. Of all the shorts though, it’s Nina Gantz’s WANDER TO WONDER(14 min) that provides the most fascinating experience, beginning with a stop-motion/live-action hybrid children’s television show—something reminiscent of Teletubbies or The Wombles—before turning into a chilling meditation on loss, filled with the haunting energy of watching a home movie from your childhood that you forgot existed. It’s a dark and idiosyncratic work that feels both too limited by its short runtime, yet still enticing in its brief mysterious designs to hook you completely. [Ben Kaye]
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See showtimes for the other Oscar nominated shorts programs here. 

Apichatpong Weerasethakul's UNCLE BOONMEE WHO CAN RECALL HIS PAST LIVES (Thailand)

Gene Siskel Film Center – Saturday, 3:30pm

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. Weerasethakul's latest masterwork offers as much as one is willing to ask. Screening as part of the Persistence of Memory series. (2010, 114 min, DCP Digital) [Brian Welesko]

Alain Resnais' LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD (France/Italy)

Gene Siskel Film Center – Sunday, 4:15pm

Fewer and further between than they once were, any screening of MARIENBAD is an always-welcome opportunity to revisit the site of the master provocateur Alain Robbe-Grillet's great denting of international popular culture. There is, of course, another Alain involved, director/collaborator Resnais; and if MARIENBAD is in many ways an inappropriate public face for posterity to have welded onto both these giants' oeuvres, it remains an object lesson in Robbe-Grillet's particular notions about the uses of cinema (seen mainly as a field of play for semi-ironic explorations of the seduction and/or exploitation of distant, unattainable objects of desire), in Resnais' then-ongoing exploration of chilly mise-en-scène and disjunctive chronology, and, strangely enough, in the mechanics of chic, which saw this inscrutable and forthrightly odd formal experiment take on a faddish cool that lingered and drew resentment for years (c.f. Pauline Kael). Leaving aside the frightening wealth of talent contributed by the Alains, however, Sacha Vierny's photography alone (which even on video tends to elicit gasps of astonishment from the uninitiated) means that every screening of MARIENBAD must be cherished. Screening as part of the Persistence of Memory series. (1961, 94 min, DCP Digital) [Jeremy M. Davies]

Fritz Lang's M (Germany)

Goethe-Institut Chicago – Thursday, 6pm

Jonathan Rosenbaum regularly cites Fritz Lang’s M as one of the greatest films ever made. One of the film’s more remarkable qualities is how it masters the conventions of silent movies while creating new ones for sound cinema. The way that Peter Lorre’s unforgettable child murderer often whistles the same melody from Peer Gynt, for instance, makes his character as instantly recognizable as a visual cue would in a silent (think of Chaplin’s walk), but Lorre’s haunting monologue at the movie’s climax maximizes the actor’s voice as an expressive instrument. When he wrote about the film in 1997, Rosenbaum highlighted the social awareness behind Lang’s aesthetic inventions, noting that “[a]rguably, no other thriller has so effectively combined exposition and suspense with a portrait of an entire society, and M does this through a dazzling system of visual rhymes and aural continuities, spatial leaps and thematic repetitions that virtually reinvents the art of movie storytelling.” Screening as part of the Berlin Nights series. (1931, 99 min, Digital Projection) [Ben Sachs]

Leos Carax's IT'S NOT ME (France)

Doc Films (at the University of Chicago) – Saturday, 6pm and Sunday, 3pm

One particularly revealing moment in Leos Carax’s essay film IT’S NOT ME occurs during a discussion of a tracking shot from Murnau’s SUNRISE (1927). Narrating over the scene in which George O’Brien walks guiltily through the bulrushes, Carax rhapsodizes that camera movements on old tracks evoke the heavy gaze of gods; this feeling is absent in moving images today, he argues, when a tracking shot can be achieved with just a cell phone. How do we recapture the perspective of the gods? Carax ponders, effectively summing up the chief concern of his filmmaking career. The French director has often expressed affinity with silent age filmmakers, and his six features to date teem with the sort of try-anything enthusiasm that distinguishes the first few decades of cinema. His affinity transcends cinephilia and approaches something like a spiritual quest, with the goal being to recapture the wonder with which cinema was greeted when the medium was new. Early cinema isn’t the only spectre hovering over IT’S NOT ME; the work is also indebted to Jean-Luc Godard’s HISTOIRE(S) DU CINEMA (1988-’98) in its heady mix of intertitles, autobiographical detail, visual and aural quotations, and wordplay. And like Godard in his later works, Carax is trying here to understand his place within film history, and he does so, in part, by inserting clips of his own films among the montage. At the same time, IT’S NOT ME feels more concerned with the present moment than anything else Carax has made, with references to the global rise of totalitarian movements interspersed with the cinematic musings. It may seem disjointed at times, but the film is more than the sum of its parts, presenting how the flow of sounds and images can approximate that of private thought. Screening as part of the New Releases and Restorations series. (2024, 42 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]

Michel Gondry's ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND (US)

Gene Siskel Film Center – Friday, 8:15pm and Monday, 8pm

Museums and mugs and food and flannels, everyone has mementos and memories they cherish. The cult classic ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND asks what if you could rid yourself of these treasures, or rather, what if you could rid yourself of these burdens. The concept which originally comes from conversations had by director Michel Gondry is expertly fleshed out by writer Charlie Kaufman, who brings that realness you can always expect from him. Kaufman suffuses the cast of characters with quirks and traits that round them out and make them almost lovable despite some of their moral failings, and perhaps that is because Kaufman isn’t afraid to say the things that we really feel and show the way we really are. Without this humanist touch, some of Kaufman’s high concept ideas and stories would likely fall flat without that grounding connection. Throughout the film, our protagonist Joel Barish (Jim Carrey) desperately races through his own memories searching for a way to keep himself connected to his beloved Clementine (Kate Winslet) after irreversibly walking down a path of forgetting. Gondry excels here as he shifts the viewer between sweet, intimate moments and terrifying, half-aborted recollections of some of Joel and Clementine’s worst times. Maybe after going down that rabbit hole, it would be easy to see that the relationship is just not worth it, with the lacerating remarks, corrosive jealousy, unfounded distrust. But, there’s also the way her hair smells, the shy smiles beneath the sheet, how she looks in her flea market find. I’m not sure any of us really know the answer. Screening as part of the Persistence of Memory series. (2004, 118 min, 35mm) [Drew Van Weelden]

Wes Anderson's MOONRISE KINGDOM (US)

Doc Films (at the University of Chicago) – Friday, 7pm and Saturday, 9:30pm

If MOONRISE KINGDOM is any indication of Wes Anderson's future trajectory as a filmmaker, then making FANTASTIC MR. FOX may prove to have been decisive. The medium of stop-motion animation has a unique set of demands. For starters, a scene is not included unless it's already been thoroughly pondered, discussed, dissected, and designed; if a scene isn't integral to the story or at least the characters, it's usually jettisoned before it's even executed, no matter how clever or colorful the ideas behind it might be. In the world of animation, it's simply too laborious and expensive to go off on a tangent. That way of working seems to have spurred Anderson to create his most focused film since RUSHMORE. It's about the same length as THE DARJEELING LIMITED, yet feels much tighter, and he's chosen a story that's simple and sweet in all the ways that THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS was rococo and acrid. His trademark whimsy is still there (the non sequiturs, the natty production design, the carefully curated soundtrack, and so on). But, crucially, this time around those elements actually tell us something about the characters and their environs, rather than just serving as evidence of Anderson's exquisite taste. The bric-a-brac feels charming, not heavy-handed. As usual, Anderson has summoned a brilliant cast. Jared Gilman and Kara Hayward, awkward and tentative, are perfect as the runaway youngsters. Standing out from the rest of the excellent star-studded ensemble is Bruce Willis, at long last given another chance to do the kind of the comedy he does best: his wry, earthy, low-key performance is exactly the kind of humble grit that keeps MOONRISE KINGDOM anchored to recognizably human characters. Screening as part of the Inner Voyages series. (2012, 94 min, 35mm) [Rob Christopher]

Halfdan Ullmann Tøndel’s ARMAND (Norway/Netherlands/Germany/Sweden)

Gene Siskel Film Center – See Venue website for showtimes

ARMAND is a perfect film for our times. While it has an intimate family drama as its spine, director/screenwriter Halfdan Ullmann Tøndel addresses larger issues surrounding the perception of truth, the spread of rumors, belief systems, and personal and institutional responsibility. That’s a lot to tackle, but Ullman Tøndel packs his scenario tightly and keeps his camera glued to the faces of his ensemble as their emotional journeys gain both complexity and clarity. Renate Reinsve plays Elisabeth, a recently widowed actress raising her six-year-old son Armand in a Norwegian town. Her dead husband’s sister, Sarah (Ellen Dorrit Petersen), and brother-in-law Anders (Endre Hellestveit) have been called to the school Armand and their son Jon, also six, attend to discuss the possible physical beating and sexual assault Jon suffered at Armand’s hands. Elisabeth, seen at the beginning of the film speeding through a harrowing drive to the school, seems highly agitated, though she doesn’t know what she has been summoned to discuss. The accusation catches her completely off-guard, and the situation gets worse and worse over the course of the afternoon as the ill-prepared school officials try to minimize the seriousness of the issue. Ullman Tøndel throws doubt on all of the stories the characters tell each other and themselves—showing Anders’ obvious attraction to Elisabeth counterpointed by Sarah’s seeming knowledge of the egotistical tricks an actress like Elisabeth plays to win the attention and sympathy of everyone around her. The director includes some experimental scenes—Elisabeth dancing to jazzy music with the school janitor that the principal (Øystein Røger) seems to watch and having a group of parents gathered to plan an end-of-term celebration comforting and then swarming Elisabeth in a threatening frenzy—that seem symbolic of the way creative people are viewed with suspicion and draw the ire of a normative school community. The film tidies up this intriguing puzzle too quickly and definitively, but its pat conclusion does nothing to negate the brittle, hothouse atmosphere of mistrust Ullman Tøndel and his gifted cast have created. (2024, 116 min, DCP Digital) [Marilyn Ferdinand]

Theodore Witcher's LOVE JONES (US)

Doc Films (at the University of Chicago) – Friday, 9:30pm

LOVE JONES is one of the all-time great Chicago movies and almost certainly its best romantic comedy (more of a dramedy, technically, but I dare not leave any room for some jabroni to claim that MY BEST FRIEND’S WEDDING or, god forbid, THE BREAK-UP has a truer claim to that title). As cliche as it is to say, it’s true that the city is its own character here, the omnipresent third party in the protagonist duo’s burgeoning romance. Nina (Nia Long) is a photographer who’s sworn off love after being ghosted by her fiance; Darius (Larenz Tate) is a poet who works for Newcity, a job he’s leaving to focus full-time on writing a book. They meet at a nightclub on a poetry night during which Darius proclaims his attraction to Nina by way of an improvised poem after they meet at the bar. It’s a literary meet-cute, representative of the way the arts play a role both in their lives and their burgeoning relationship. They meet again at a record store and soon have their first official date, ending their night at the Wild Hare, a real-life venue that was once Chicago’s only full-time reggae club. These locations aren’t incidental; who Darius and Nina are as people, specifically upwardly mobile, Black creative types, is suggested by these locales, sparing writer-director Theodore Witcher (who’s from the Chicago suburbs and is also a Columbia College alum) from having unnecessarily to explicate the characters’ milieu. In this way Witcher tells not just a love story but the story of a city, transformed in the early 20th century by the Great Migration, during which more than 500,000 of the approximately seven million African Americans who were moving away from the South settled in Chicago. And in favoring more subtle references to the social and racial factors that surround Darius and Nina, Witcher foregrounds their relationship while not sacrificing a richness of depth owing to the all-encompassing but still breathable mise-en-scene. A similar richness tinges the couples’ love story in spite of the overall formulaic approach, consisting of the meet-cute, the idyllic courtship, and then the routine roadblocks that put the ostensible happily ever after into jeopardy. The story may be stereotypical, as most movie romances are, but the characters are not; from their respective creative passions to their idiosyncratic trademarks (Darius smokes, Nina has a shoulder-length bob and favors 90s-friendly berry lips), both the protagonists and those in their orbit, Darius’ robust friend group and Nina’s wily BFF, are finely drawn characters whose races aren’t an explicit point of focus. Its title is a variation on jonesing, or yearning, for love; it’s this elusively simple yet enduringly complex feeling that supersedes all else. Tate (who was chilling in MENACE II SOCIETY) and Long have chemistry with one another and us viewers, too, as do the extended cast comprised of Isaiah Washington, Bill Bellamy, Lisa Nicole Carson and Bernadette Speakes, among others. Chicago-born musician Darryl Jones did the film’s score, “modeled [after] Miles Davis’s score for the 1958 suspense film ELEVATOR TO THE GALLOWS, which was recorded in a cavernous old building, as the movie played, in order to heighten the mood of the compositions,” per Danielle Amir Jackson’s excellent essay on the film for its Criterion release, which details the importance of its soundtrack, featuring music by Lauryn Hill, Maxwell, Cassandra Wilson, with hints of Chicago legends Buddy Guy and Curtis Mayfield in the film itself. (1997, 109 min, DCP Digital) [Kat Sachs]

Gints Zilbalodis' FLOW (Latvia/Animation)

FACETS Cinema – Sunday, 1pm

As a film enthusiast fixated on the art of animation who also just so happens to be a cat owner, I was somewhat predisposed to have a visceral emotional response to Gints Zilbalodis’ FLOW, a dialogue-free animated adventure centered on a feline protagonist thrown into various episodes of peril. But my own personal biases aside, the joys of Zilbalodis’ feature become self-evident early on, the painterly images and gentle atmosphere immediately creating a world you’re thrilled to inhabit for its nimble less-than-ninety-minute runtime. Animated entirely on the open-source software Blender, Zilbalodis and his team have created something almost akin to an open world video game like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, with charmingly rendered creatures navigating treacherous environs with puzzle-like intuition of how to get from one destination to the next. The narrative details of the world are purposefully thin, with preference given to a show-don’t-tell mode of storytelling that trusts the audience to imagine what may or may not have led to this world of abandoned homes and cityscapes surrounded by ever-growing greenery. Even within us filling in the world-building gaps, the ever-rising waters and lack of any human inhabitants can easily lead us down some climate-fueled apocalyptic rabbit holes. One can imagine the worse version of the film, the animal cast (here; a cat, a capybara, a secretarybird, a lemur, and several adorable dogs) given snark-fueled vocal performances from celebrity actors that completely burst the bubble of sincerity. Thankfully, what we have instead is a crew of creatures grunting and meowing and barking, nowhere near approaching anthropomorphism, but still granted enough distinct personality for us to become invested in their journey. Something almost spiritual starts to take over the film, the journey of our lead cat hero becoming less and less about reaching a set destination, and more so merely attempting to find some sense of peace and community with this new pack of disparate animal friends amidst a world falling apart in disarray. Above all else, FLOW succeeds in doing what animation does at its most holy: forgoing the rules and expectations of “real world” cinema to create something singular and spectacular from whole cloth. Most thrillingly, it’s in service of a story about stopping in one’s tracks to take in all that is bigger than ourselves and finding the beauty in knowing that none of us are alone in our journey. (2024, 85 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Kaye]

📽️ ALSO SCREENING

⚫ Chicago Public Library
View all screenings taking place at Chicago Public Library branches here.

⚫ Consignment Lounge (3520 W. Diversey Ave.)
Quentin Tarantino’s 2007 film DEATH PROOF (87 min, Digital Projection) screens Monday at 7pm. Doors open at 6pm. Co-presented by Cine-File contributor Meg Fariello. More info here. 

⚫ Doc Films (at the University of Chicago)
Mati Diop’s 2024 film DAHOMEY (68 min, DCP Digital) screens again Saturday, 4pm, as part of the Pan-African Cinema series.  

Jean-Pierre Dikongué-Pipa’s 1975 film MUNA MOTO (90 min, Digital Projection) screens Tuesday, 7pm, as part of the Pan-African Cinema series.

Kaori Oda’s 2019 film CENOTE (75 min, DCP Digital) screens Wednesday at 7pm. 

Tom Dey’s 2000 film SHANGHAI NOON (110 min, DCP Digital) screens Thursday, 7pm, as part of the “Martial” Arts series. More info on all screenings here.

⚫ FACETS Cinema
Sean Baker’s 2024 film ANORA (138 min, DCP Digital) screens Friday at 7pm and Saturday at 7:15pm.

Halina Reijn’s 2024 film BABYGIRL (114 min, DCP Digital) screens Friday at 9:30pm and Saturday at 5pm. On Friday treat yourself to an anti-Valentine’s Day double feature by using code VALENTINE at checkout to get $9 tickets to both films. More info on all screenings here. 

⚫ Garfield Park Conservatory
Mark Decena’s 2023 documentary FARMING WHILE BLACK (75 min, Digital Projection) screens Saturday at 12:30pm. There will be a post-film dialogue facilitated by GPC Alliance Exhibits Specialist Onyx Engobor. More info (including where to RSVP) here.

⚫ Gene Siskel Film Center
Walter Salles’ 2024 film I’M STILL HERE (136 min, DCP Digital) screens Saturday at 12:30pm and Sunday at 3:15pm.

Christopher Nolan’s 2000 film MEMENTO (118 min, 35mm) screens Saturday, 8pm, and Wednesday, 6pm, as part of the Persistence of Memory series.

Clint Eastwood’s 2014 film AMERICAN SNIPER (133 min, 35mm) screens Tuesday, 6pm, as part of the Shadows of War lecture series. 

Matthew Rankin’s 2024 film UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE (89 min, DCP Digital) screens Thursday, 6pm, with Rankin in person for a post-screening Q&A. The film opens more widely next week. More info on all screenings here.

⚫ Music Box Theatre
Rob Reiner’s 1987 film THE PRINCESS BRIDE (98 min, DCP Digital) screens Friday at 9:30pm. This is a special interactive Valentine’s show with prop bags. 

Alex Thompson’s 2022 film ROUNDING (90 min, DCP Digital) screens several times this week. Thompson and actors Namir Smallwood and Bradley Grant Smith in person for a post-screening Q&A following the Saturday, 7pm screening.

Osgood Perkins’ 2025 film THE MONKEY (95 min, 35mm) screens Tuesday at 9:15pm. 

Amanda Drexton and Michael Drexton’s 2023 film SOUR PARTY (84 min, DCP Digital) screens Tuesday, 7pm, with the filmmakers and actress Samantha Westervelt in person for a post-screening Q&A.

Sergio Sollima’s 1967 film THE BIG GUNDOWN (99 min, DCP Digital) screens Wednesday, 7pm, as part of the Mud, Blood, & Marinara: Spaghetti Westerns series. Preceded by an introduction from Andrew Stasiulis, faculty member at DePaul University’s School of Cinematic Arts. 

A celebration of Black Chicago filmmakers, the short film program Life within the Lens, programmed by Tyler Michael Balentine, takes place Wednesday, 7:30pm, followed by a post-screening Q&A with the filmmakers, as part of the Melanin, Roots, and Culture series. 

Sean Baker’s 2015 film TANGERINE (88 min, DCP Digital) screens Thursday at 9:45pm. Presented by Rated Q and Ramona Slick! - A Celebration of Queer, Camp, & Cult Cinema, and guest hosted by Bambi Banks-Couleé and featuring a live drag show before the film. More info on all screenings and events here.

CINE-LIST: February 14, 2025 - February 20, 2025

MANAGING EDITORS // Ben and Kat Sachs

CONTRIBUTORS // Kian Bergstrom, Brendan Boyle, Rob Christopher, Jeremy M. Davies, Megan Fariello, Marilyn Ferdinand, Shaun Huhn, Tristan Johnson, Tien-Tien Jong, Ben Kaye, Drew Van Weelden, Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, Brian Welesko, David Whitehouse