:: FRIDAY, OCTOBER 31 - THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 6 ::

📽️ CRUCIAL VIEWING

Frank Borzage’s THREE COMRADES (US)

Siskel Film Center – Sunday, 2pm

The German novelist Erich Maria Remarque became an international literary celebrity upon the 1929 publication of All Quiet on the Western Front, his quasi-memoir of the first World War, but Joseph Goebbels banned his work from circulation after a 1932 sequel (The Road Back) expanded his critical eye to the postwar society. After moving to Switzerland, Remarque published Three Comrades in 1936, about a trio of young veterans and the woman whose love gives them common cause amid the chaos of the Weimar era’s hyperinflation and widespread political violence. Producer Joseph L. Mankiewicz brought the book to MGM with director Frank Borzage, who had already filmed Hans Fallada’s novel Little Man, What Now? in 1933, a near-contemporaneous Hollywood treatment of the rise of Nazism. They chose as the film’s screenwriter F. Scott Fitzgerald, recently hospitalized in a bottom-out period he described as “The Crack-Up” and struggling to maintain sobriety while working himself out of a financial hole on script assignments. THREE COMRADES would be Fitzgerald’s sole screenplay credit (though Mankiewicz and co-writer Edward E. Paramore Jr. edited some dialogue), and his talent for filigreed phrasing mated well with Borzage’s musical direction of close-ups and studio artifice, both among the great romantics of their chosen media. Like The Three Musketeers, the title suggests a complete unit expanding to include an essential member. A dashing Robert Taylor (regretfully sans his iconic mustache) leads the cast with co-stars Franchot Tone and Robert Young as Erich, Otto, and Gottfried, veterans running an auto repair shop together when they meet Pat (Margaret Sullavan), a girl of good stock fallen on hard times with a ticking clock in her lungs. Otto and Gottfried’s sweet, chaste encouragement of Erich and Pat’s courtship underlines the symbolic register of Sullavan’s performance, a generational ideal on life support. Lubitsch better used her intelligence and zest in THE SHOP AROUND THE CORNER, but no one idealized Sullavan onscreen like Borzage (viz. the earlier LITTLE MAN, WHAT NOW? and 1940’s THE MORTAL STORM). His direction pairs the visual language of silents with an arresting sound design to image the story’s themes of time running out amidst a nation’s death and rebirth: a close-up of Pat’s starved gaze from a sick bed conveys her slow-moving illness; a wristwatch clangs like an anvil; a wordless shootout takes place at a snowy church scene; the balcony climax arrives with a Wagnerian swell on the soundtrack. In a key dialogue, Pat wishes one could choose “a time to be born… an age of reason and quiet.” American audiences of 1938 might not have grasped Remarque’s warnings of incipient fascism, rather reading into its themes—of sacred bonds threatened by hardship—the Depression era from which many still struggled to emerge. The MGM production, confined to soundstages, could not fully supply the gnawing feelings of unrest just outside the frame; modern viewers are advised to bring their own. (1938, 100 min, 35mm) [Brendan Boyle]

Hollis Frampton's Magellan Cycle (US/Experimental)

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

Hollis Frampton’s most famous and influential works are theory-in-action, often more interesting to think about than to watch. It’s a testament to his genius that they’re often so interesting to think about that they’re pleasurable anyway, drawing one’s attention to structure and the act of meaning-making so that their concepts flower in the mind. His unfinished Magellan cycle poses an interesting interpretive problem in light of his earlier work, one that further opens or closes them to a viewer depending on where you stand. While Frampton’s previous works presented closed systems, theoretically knowable if often obscure to the viewer, the remnants of the Magellan cycle are fragments of a now unknowable whole. It’s debatable as to whether it could have ever been known (the total cycle was proposed to be 36 hours long, and would ideally be screened in daily segments over 371 days, though the specifics changed and expanded until his death), but in the present day a viewer approaches the work defeated at the start, left to construct a grand history from scraps like a cinematic archeologist. This is a blessing in disguise—because of the incompleteness, the viewer is allowed to better appreciate Frampton as a photographer and film processor, and a filmmaker influenced by myriad sources, including action painters. What remains of Magellan includes several incomplete sub-series, presented in this program by CADENZA I & XIV and MINDFALL I & VII. CADENZA I (1977), meant to be the very first section screened and which could be seen as a sort of Rosetta Stone for the whole cycle, an overture of sorts that juxtaposes found and original footage while bookending them with small animated sections that reverse color with each iteration. While they’re each fascinating objects in themselves, one is almost distracted by their fractional quality and numerical distance from one another. The parts of the program that feel more self-contained are the Dreams: MATRIX [FIRST DREAM] (1979) and PALINDROME (1969). Though PALINDROME was completed much earlier than the others, Frampton intended to include it in the Magellan cycle and subtitled it in some places as [SECOND DREAM], this temporal play to look back through time presumably a part of his intended system. They’re each some of the most visually pleasurable works Frampton ever made. In PALINDROME, Frampton gathered cast-off ends of film strips processed in the lab he worked in at the time, collecting 24 frames of unique splotches and arranging them in 40 permuted cycles, then subjecting those to various color treatments. In classic fashion, it’s a programmatic piece, an exercise in mathematics more than feeling. But that would undersell the beauty of the results, each cycle finding new depths in their variations. MATRIX [FIRST DREAM] is also a sort of remixed work, made mostly by superimposing material from his films SUMMER SOLSTICE, AUTUMNAL EQUINOX, and WINTER SOLSTICE altogether. It takes these somewhat minimalist works and, in jamming them together, creates stuttering explosions of pink, yellow and blue with the films’ identifiable forms of cows, grass, and flying sparks blending together in a cosmic gumbo. Frampton said he envisioned the Magellan project as a “hypothetically totally inclusive work of film art as epistemological model for the conscious human universe”. To that end, these films seem to represent the dreams that knead our memories of reality into subconscious goop. Less heady but no less lovely is NOCTICULA (MAGELLAN’S TOYS #1)(1974), whose title refers to bioluminescent sea creatures. The colored orbs we see floating in the film are simpler and gentler than the throbbing chaos of the DREAM films, and seem like Frampton’s tools writ large: grains of light itself dancing on the screen one by one. It’s a fitting end to the program, pulling back from the cycle’s focus on history and semiotics to draw our attention to the simple beauty of the sea and sky at night. Screening as part of the Infinite Cinema: The Films of Hollis Frampton series. (1969-1980, Total approx. 98 min, 16mm) [Maxwell Courtright]

Jafar Panahi’s IT WAS JUST AN ACCIDENT (Iran/France/Luxembourg)

Music Box Theatre – See Venue website for showtimes

There’s a scene in this film, where the group of Iranians who have kidnapped their supposed torturer in hopes to identify him beyond a shadow of a doubt so that they may enact their own justice and ruin his life as he had theirs, are pushing the van that contains the man’s prostrate body—tranquilized but not yet dead, and in a wooden box that foreshadows his intended fate—after it has run out of gas. It’s a humorous scene, ironic but also openly laughable because one of the “kidnappers” is a bride wearing her wedding gown. But as the group pushes the van, one or two others, strangers, rush to help them. As much as it’s a film about a torturer, it’s also a film about helpers; there’s no clear connection between Panahi and Mister Rogers, but this thought brought to mind his famous statement that, “When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’” The overall narrative of helping pertains to the central drama. A family pulls over after their car breaks down; at the place where they stop and are helped by a random person also works Vahid (Vahid Mobasseri) who, upon hearing the squeak of what sounds like a prosthetic leg, suspects that the father might be Iqbal, or Peg Leg, the man who tortured him and countless others while detained as political prisoners several years prior. He meets some of those others when referred to another victim by his friend, also a victim but who doesn’t want to be involved; ultimately a ragtag group is assembled, which includes a photographer, her troubled ex-boyfriend, and a bride and her groom (they'd been taking pre-wedding photos with the photographer), all one-time political prisoners who are first eager to confirm the torturer is in fact who they think he is and then to decide what to do with him. Ambiguity is inherent to Iranian cinema, as much of it embodies a sense of irresoluteness. But while I wouldn’t go so far as to say this is a bait and switch, it at first seems more enigmatic than it ends up being. Eventually it becomes about retribution and whether it will ease their trauma; it’s a consideration on the prolongation of violence, not really about if the torturer is who they think he is, and if that violence will ever end if they exact revenge. This is obviously personal for Panahi, who has been imprisoned twice for dissent, most recently in 2022; he had been previously unable to leave the country and made this film, as well as many others, without permission from the Iranian government. The film’s meditation on the futility of revenge finds a real-world parallel: just as the characters confront the limits of retribution, Panahi receives support from a global network of artists and audiences, proving that solidarity, not violence, is what carries lasting power. (2025, 103 min, DCP Digital) [Kat Sachs]

Guru Dutt’s KAAGAZ KE PHOOL (aka PAPER FLOWERS) (India)

Film Studies Center (at the University of Chicago) – Thursday, 7pm

The backstage melodrama KAAGAZ KE PHOOL might be described as the Bollywood A STAR IS BORN in that it has a similar premise (an alcoholic director discovers a talented young actress, builds her career, and destroys himself), but it also anticipates Bob Fosse’s ALL THAT JAZZ (1979) in its prophetic auto-critique. An innovative actor-director who’s been likened to Orson Welles, Guru Dutt stars as Suresh Sinha, a successful filmmaker about to embark on a new production of Devdas. He casts as the heroine a nonactor named Shanti whom he meets by chance, and in making the movie together, they fall in love. Their affair would seem difficult to manage, as Suresh is currently married (though he hasn’t seen his wife in years; her family forced her to walk out on him when he refused to leave the disreputable business of making films), but having it reported on daily by gossip columnists proves almost too much for the lovers to bear. It’s worth noting that the starlet of KAAGAZ KE PHOOL is played by Waheeda Rehman, an actress whom Dutt discovered and with whom he was widely rumored to be involved in an extramarital affair. This context certainly colors the film, bringing a documentary aspect to the central love story. I don’t know whether any of Dutt’s children persuaded Rehman to break off her involvement with him in real life, as Suresh’s daughter persuades Shanti to do in KAAGAZ KE PHOOL; regardless, the film is courageous in how it dramatizes feelings of guilt that the players may well have been experiencing when it was being made. The end of the affair proves the beginning of Suresh’s downfall, as he soon after loses custody of his daughter, wrecks his career, then rapidly drinks himself to death. Dutt himself would die five years later as a result of mixing alcohol and sleeping pills (it remains disputed as to whether his death was a suicide or an accident), and many speculate that his downfall began with the failure of KAAGAZ KE PHOOL, which bombed with critics and audiences alike and nearly bankrupted the studio that made it. Though he continued to act until his death, Dutt never signed another movie, making this the last of a brilliant directorial career cut way too short. Dutt’s talent and ambition are evident throughout the film, which holds the distinction of being the first Indian movie shot in widescreen; in particular, the ominous lighting schemes, influenced by American film noir, feel unlike most Bollywood output of the time. (1959, 148 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]
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This screening is part of Varieties of Melodrama: Guru Dutt and Ritwik Ghatak at 100, a two-day program held between the Film Studies Center at the Logan Center for the Arts and Cobb Hall. Screenings continue next Friday with Ghatak’s 1965 film SUBARNAREKHA (aka THE GOLDEN LINE) (143 min, DCP Digital) at 10am and Dutt’s 1954 film AAR PAAR (aka THIS OR THAT) (146 min, DCP Digital) at 2pm. Check next week’s list for a write-up of Ghatak’s 1960 film MEGHE DHAKA TARA (aka THE CLOUD-CAPPED STAR), which screens next Friday at 7pm. More info here.

Radu Jude’s DRACULA (Romania)

Siskel Film Center – See Venue website for showtimes

Radu Jude opens his DRACULA with a literary invocation: “O gentle reader, you would find a tale in everything.” The Wordsworth quote is not a mere ornament, but a thesis statement, an admission that narrative, like history, is a proliferation of tales, and that every telling is an act of distortion. In the age of the algorithm, every tale tells itself. From the start, Jude signals that he’s not resurrecting the vampire myth but dissecting it, wielding irony like a crucifix against cliché. What emerges is a meta-fictional farce in thirteen disordered "digressions." A filmmaker, Adonis Tanța, plans a new Dracula yet confesses creative impotence; enter artificial intelligence, that new familiar spirit eager to suck the marrow from myth. Using Dr AI Judex, Tanta indirectly shows AI’s true vampiric identity as it consumes archives, myths, and memes only to spit them back as soulless inaccurate collages. The resulting patchwork of sketches that are part cabaret, part confessional, and part collapse invites its on-screen audience to hunt the performers after a sexual intermission. When the Count sighs, “Cock down, finished,” Jude turns centuries of seductive menace into the world’s bleakest punchline. He doesn’t slay the vampire; he neuters him. Jude’s sense of mischief propels the work. His method is both assembled from found detritus and digital refuse and traditional filmmaking. The nearly three-hour film mimics a social media feed as we doomscroll to the end. DRACULA, with its mixed media approach and barrage of ideology, becomes an homage to the work of Jean-Luc Godard. The digressions include a woman seeking longevity in a Romanian clinic, footage from F. W. Murnau’s NOSFERATU (1922) used to sell erections and tourism, and a Marxist metaphor, to name a few. The Karl Marx parable unfolds in a coding factory. "Capital is dead labor feeding on the living," a line that doubles as both doctrine and diagnosis.  This digression includes a smoking C3PO knock-off and a violent battle between the workers and a living dead army of 1933 Romanian soldiers who shoot at striking workers. Through abundant absurdity, Jude captures the essence of Vlad The Impaler, a figure of genocidal terror who defended his empire from the Ottoman invasion through sadistic impalements. Visually, Jude embraces generated ugliness like an aesthetic manifesto. His AI fragments, warped and waxy, flaunt their synthetic decay. Too many fingers, not enough soul. Where digital artists chase seamless illusion, Jude foregrounds the glitch. Those vehemently opposed to the use of AI in film will adore Jude’s scathing condemnation. Generated images are used for exterior backgrounds, mimicking Francis Ford Coppola’s DRACULA (1992) with anatomically distorted images of vampires and orgies, and for an army of zombies battling the working class. Between these moments of AI, are sets built with the minimalism of DOGVILLE (2003), stages in a restaurant, and outdoor shooting with a stable of actors—many of which have appeared in Jude’s prior films. Most notable is the return of Ilinca Manolache from I DO NOT CARE IF WE GO DOWN IN HISTORY AS BARBARIANS (2018), DO NOT EXPECT TOO MUCH FROM THE END OF THE WORLD (2023), and KONTINENTAL ’25 (2025). The satire here isn’t soulless. Beneath the spatter of irony murmurs a stubborn tenderness. Late in the film, a garbage collector sneaks away from work to watch his daughter recite a poem about Vlad the Impaler. The shot lingers, not on the poet but the father’s distant, embarrassed pride. It’s Jude’s quietest heresy, a faith in empathy amid the noise. Jude’s DRACULA is less a horror story than a requiem for coherence or a laughing elegy. In its fragmented feed of lust, labor, and latency, Jude transforms exhaustion into style. “Dear reader,” his narrator pleads, “you must have read such nonsense in your life. Pray, read this one too, and if some part does not agree with you, take a quill and put down something better, for I only did the best I could.” And so, the film ends where it began, with an invitation. A tale, once bitten, is ready to tell again. (2025, 170 min, DCP Digital) [Shaun Huhn]

Home Movie Day 2025

Chicago Film Archives and the Chicago Film Society at the Chicago History Museum – Saturday, 11am - 3pm (Free Admission)

This yearly, worldwide celebration of home movies is absolutely essential viewing for anyone who cares a whit about motion picture art, history, sociology, ethnography, science, or technology. Anyone who loves the sound of a projector. Anyone who loves deep, luscious Kodachrome II stock that is as gorgeous as the day it was shot. Anyone who loves dated, faded, scratched, and bruised film—every emulsion scar a sacred glyph created by your grandfather's careless handling 60 years ago. Anyone who wants to revel in the performance of the primping and strutting families readying for their close up. Anyone who wants to see what the neighborhood looked like before you got there. So, find your 100-foot reels of 16mm you just had processed from your sister's Quinceañera or your grandfather's thousands of feet of Super 8mm from your uncle's Bar Mitzvah in 1976 or that 8mm your great aunt shot from Daley Plaza in 1963 and come out for Home Movie Day. Just walk in with your films (16mm, 8mm and/or Super 8mm) and staff and volunteers from Chicago Film Archives and the Chicago Film Society will inspect your home movies that day! A selection of those works will be screened; organizers will also offer tips on storage, preservation, and digitization, all for free. Home Movie Day has been happening around the world since 2003. For more information about its history, visit the Center for Home Movies website. With live accompaniment by pianist Dave Drazin. [Josh B. Mabe]

📽️ ALSO RECOMMENDED

Robert Clouse’s ENTER THE DRAGON (Hong Kong/US)

Music Box Theatre – Saturday and Sunday, 11:30am

The legacy and impact of ENTER THE DRAGON can feel more grandiose than the film itself, most notably by way of it being the final film that Bruce Lee would complete in full before his untimely death (he passed during filming GAME OF DEATH), his balletic action making waves in the sphere of international film production in a bittersweet, posthumous fashion. Perhaps this air of tragic finality, garnering more eyeballs on Lee’s fighting than ever before, led to the movie’s immense influence on action films as a whole, its blend of flying fists and spy-movie plot mechanics setting the course for the genre for decades to come. Director Robert Clouse certainly doesn’t have the same bona fides for crafting clockwork physical action like Jackie Chan, nor the grand scale wuxia inclinations of Lau Kar-Leung, but he has a clear respect and adoration for the art of fighting on film, perfectly framing Lee’s fights with clarity and space, with no attempt to overshadow the master’s work at hand. Clouse would act as a conduit for other feats of strength on screen, including those performed by Jim Kelly (another star of ENTER THE DRAGON) in the blaxploitation film BLACK BELT JONES (1974), Olympic gymnast Kurt Thomas in GYMKATA (1985), and even Jackie Chan in THE BIG BRAWL (1980), though his showcase of Lee’s athleticism here undoubtedly trumps them all. ENTER THE DRAGON’s “James Bond meets FIST OF FURY” plotting—focused on Lee’s character infiltrating a martial-arts tournament on the island of the iron-fisted, villainous mastermind Han (Sek Kin)—takes an immediate backseat whenever Lee engages in combat (he choreographed the fight sequences as well). His effortless combat style—punches and kicks volleying with an intentional intensity—provide for a magnetic viewing experience. There’s an utter thrill to Lee’s movements, his bulging muscles operating within his thin frame flowing across the screen and utterly obliterating his opponents. His final sequence—facing off against Han within a hall of mirrors—is a masterful feat of building tension, a slow burn capped off by a brutal takedown. It’s a darn shame that Lee’s cinematic journey was cut short, but ENTER THE DRAGON isn’t the worst way to cement a legacy. Screening as part of the Merciless Mayhem: Martial Arts Midnights & Matinees series. (1973, 103 min, 35mm) [Ben Kaye]

Jean Negulesco’s HUMORESQUE (US)

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

HUMORESQUE holds the distinction of being the only film on which Clifford Odets and John Garfield collaborated, and this alone makes it historically significant. Each one an icon of working-class Jewish American culture, the two had first worked together in the 1930s at New York’s storied Group Theatre, where Garfield acted in the world premiere productions of such Odets classics as Awake and Sing and Golden Boy. In fact, Odets wrote the main character of the boxing drama Golden Boy with the intention of casting Garfield, who had trained as a boxer before he settled on acting full time. In that play, the working-class hero gives up the violin because boxing proves too lucrative; in HUMORESQUE, which might be viewed as a companion piece to Golden Boy, Garfield plays a working-class boy who doesn’t give up the violin and becomes a famous virtuoso as a result. The film is most concerned about whether Garfield’s character, Paul Boray, falls prey to showbiz cynicism or stays true to the modest virtues of his proletarian upbringing. His Jewish family runs a small grocery store in New York City, and while his parents want their son to rise in social status, his entry into a more refined (and predominantly gentile) milieu clearly makes them uncomfortable. The seductiveness and perils of high society are both represented by Joan Crawford’s Helen Wright, a married, alcoholic socialite who helps Paul advance in his musical career and with whom he has a tempestuous affair. It’s rare that a Hollywood film addresses class relations as forthrightly as HUMORESQUE does, even if its insights are sometimes obscured by melodramatic tropes. This isn’t to say that the film is inferior melodrama; indeed, director Jean Negulesco is rather adept at balancing the film’s thematic fixations and crowd-pleasing elements. There’s a marked sensitivity to the scenes in Paul’s family’s store and their apartment above it—rooted, no doubt, in Odets’ poetic dialogue but aided by Negulesco’s delicate handling of actors. Arguably, the film’s real love story is between Paul and his family, not between Paul and Helen. Screening as part of the Joan Crawford: Actress as Auteur series. (1946, 125 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]

Kelly Reichardt’s THE MASTERMIND (US)

Siskel Film Center – See Venue website for showtimes

THE MASTERMIND begins, like so many Kelly Reichardt films, obliquely and suggestively. A man moseys through an art museum, his gaze oddly intense. In another room, a woman, turned away from the camera, ignores her chatty boy; both then ignore another, similar-looking boy who sits down beside the other, nose in a comic book. As a security guard naps in the background, the man nicks a small figurine from a glass case and slips it unnoticed into the woman’s bag before they and the kids leave together. In this quietly observant opening, Reichardt succinctly sets the stage for a film about compromised attention and useless hubris, and how a person’s myopic self-interest ultimately effects a self-defeating estrangement from the world. The ubiquitous Josh O’Connor is smartly cast as James, bringing a soft-spoken affability to a character who is profoundly selfish and dishonest. Living a comfy, conservative middle-class life with his wife (Alana Haim, sadly underused) and two kids in suburban Massachusetts circa 1970, he puts it all on the line by plotting the heist of four Arthur Dove paintings from the museum he was scouting in the opening scene. Only, the unduly confident James doesn’t feel he’s risking anything at all, and after he’s able to successfully steal the paintings with his two accomplices, he thinks he’s in the clear. But things fall apart quickly, not with the frenzy of a traditional thriller but with the placid melancholy Reichardt has honed throughout a filmography populated with the most ordinary and hapless of outcasts and loners. James takes the inverse course to many of the filmmaker’s protagonists, starting from social privilege before becoming increasingly displaced and alienated. Surrounded by news broadcasts of the Vietnam War and the activism of protestors, he can do nothing but retreat ever-inward; his tragedy is not born from his criminal activity but his chronic failure to attend to the things that actually matter. Reichardt’s longtime DP Christopher Blauvelt shoots in glowing autumnal shades that gradually give way to the chilly light of late fall; Rob Mazurek’s lively jazz score is the only element not joining in the sense of regressive drift. By the deeply ironic denouement, thick with societal disillusionment, THE MASTERMIND has repeatedly and dolefully shown that its ostensible hero—perhaps America itself—has no clothes. (2025, 110 min, DCP Digital) [Jonathan Leithold-Patt]

Tony Scott's THE HUNGER (UK/US)

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

Long before Tony Scott was celebrated as the vulgar auteur of DEJA VU and UNSTOPPABLE, he directed THE HUNGER—the infamous midnight movie where sleep scientist Susan Sarandon trades a Big Mac and an obnoxious boyfriend for a glass of sherry and the promise of centuries of vampire sex with Catherine Deneuve. Scott's first commercial feature after a decade and half making student films and advertising spots, THE HUNGER was roundly ignored by audiences (it ranked 95th at the 1983 box office) and ferociously derided by critics. Roger Ebert called it "an agonizingly bad vampire movie ... that has been so ruthlessly overproduced that it's all flash and style and no story." (The only unabashed fans of THE HUNGER were probably horny teenagers who sought out the male-gaze-optimized sex scenes on Cinemax.) This reaction is understandable. With its propulsive but senseless editing, its portentous self-regard, its indifference to exposition, THE HUNGER aggressively imports an overwrought advertising aesthetic to cinema. It plays like a feature-length cologne commercial with soft-core flourishes. Ebert was not wrong about "all flash and style and no story." As a narrative, the failures of THE HUNGER are total, but they are radical, deliberate failures. Instead of individual shots building towards a sequence, each frame dissolves into a miasma of details that refuse assimilation into conventional storytelling rhythm. This strategy is evident from the opening scene, when Bauhaus's performance of "Bela Lugosi's Dead" is continually ruptured by silence and spatio-temporal discontinuity. The shambolic New Grammar (or Neu! Grammar?) of THE HUNGER acts as a blood-letting for classical Hollywood. (The nod to ur-vamp Lugosi isn't the only po-mo touch; between Bessie Love's grotesque cameo, the Schubert cue lifted from BARRY LYNDON, and the left-over doves and smoke machines from brother Ridley's BLADE RUNNER of the previous year, THE HUNGER is an undead edifice of allusion.) It also contains a lovely, low-key performance from David Bowie as Deneuve's deader half, grisly "make-up illusions" from Dick Smith, and an affecting, largely non-fantastic approach to its core mythology. (These vampires don't even have fangs.) If anything, this roundly-ridiculed movie has cast a long shadow over its tonier successors: Jim Jarmusch's pretentious vampire comedy ONLY LOVERS LEFT ALIVE probably owes more to THE HUNGER and less to Marlowe than it would like to admit, and Michael Haneke's AMOUR is a bloodless, glorified remark. Too long dismissed as camp, THE HUNGER actually restores an essential aspect to Susan Sontag's original formulation of that aesthetic—this movie courts absurdity with such guile-free sincerity that it could scarcely see itself in the mirror. Screening as part of the The Ethical Vampire: The Moral Dilemma of Vampirism series. (1983, 97 min, DCP Digital) [K.A. Westphal]

Kiyoshi Kurosawa's CURE (Japan)

Music Box Theatre – Friday, 9pm
Siskel Film Center – Tuesday, 6pm

Identity as a motif has preoccupied numerous filmmakers, from Ingmar Bergman (PERSONA) to Monte Hellman (ROAD TO NOWHERE) and Abbas Kiarostami (CLOSE-UP). Identity is often tied up with psychosis, and psychotics frequently feature in horror and suspense films because they channel the restless, faceless Id that resides in all of us. The idea that any one of us could become a gruesome killer if someone or something pierced our social conditioning is at the heart of Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s CURE. Kurosawa, interested in the shocked comments people invariably make after a neighbor or acquaintance commits a brutal murder (“He was such a nice man. They were an ordinary couple.”), explores the nature of identity and whether our bodies and minds are mere vessels waiting to be filled. On a busy street in Tokyo, a man (Ren Ohsugi) walks through a damp tunnel as cars pass on his right. A fluorescent light illuminating the tunnel blinks and buzzes. We next see the man in a hotel room with a naked prostitute. He is moving about the room, and she is sitting up in bed. Suddenly, he grabs a pipe and bashes her twice on the head. When next we enter the room, it is filled with police investigators. The lead detective, Kenichi Takabe (Kôji Yakusho), observes that a deep “x” has been cut across the prostitute’s neck and chest. The man is found naked, hiding in an air duct in the hallway. When he is questioned at police headquarters by Takabe and police psychiatrist Makoto Sakuma (Tsuyoshi Ujiki), the man has no idea why he killed the woman. Takabe will have several more such murders to investigate as the film goes on, but he must balance this puzzle with the increasing burden posed by his wife Fumie’s (Anna Nakagawa) mental deterioration. As other “x” cases come to the fore, we and Takabe slowly discover what links them together: a young amnesiac who is soon identified as Kunio Mamiya (Masato Hagiwara), a medical school dropout whose disheveled home reveals shelves of books about psychiatry, psychosis, and works about and by Franz Mesmer, a German physician who developed the idea of animal magnetism, or in the term used in the film, hypnosis, to influence behavior. As with most detective-centered stories, Takabe is no ordinary cop. Mamiya entices him with an accurate assessment of the detective’s torment. It is Mamiya’s conviction that most people don’t know themselves, the many selves hidden under the surface, the duality of their generous and vicious impulses. He considers Takabe extraordinary, like himself, for recognizing the split in himself. Kurosawa’s camerawork is beyond good. He scouted locations in and around Tokyo that reek of decay, giving us a fair approximation of a haunted house in the penultimate scene where the final showdown between Takabe and Mamiya takes place. He combines handheld work with static long shots of great beauty and atmosphere. He knows how to create tension by considering the images outside the frame, for example, having Sakuma enter Mamiya’s cell, which has a short wall hiding the toilet area in which Mamiya is standing. We don’t see the prisoner, but we know what he’s capable of, and the fear of actually looking at him infuses this scene powerfully. Indeed, Mamiya is rather like a filmmaker, bringing us under his spell, finding our triggers, and conjuring images through exposition and suggestion. With CURE, Kurosawa has created a powerhouse of psychological horror. Screening as part of the Music Box of Horrors: Dead and Loving It! series at the Music Box and as part of the Interiority on Screen lecture series at the Film Center. (1997, 111 min, DCP Digital) [Marilyn Ferdinand]

Mario Bava’s SHOCK (Italy)

Alamo Drafthouse – Tuesday, 9:30pm

SHOCK, the final theatrical feature directed by Mario Bava, is as palpable as any of his preceding films. This last film serves as a culmination of his obsessions: guilt, memory, the house as a trap, visual trickery, the haunted child, and the unstable mother. The script, initially titled IT’S ALWAYS COLD AT 33 CLOCK STREET and based on Hillary Waugh's novel The Shadow Guest, was written in the early '70s but evolved significantly. Mario’s son, Lamberto Bava, along with Dardano Sacchetti and others, extensively rewrote the script into a manageable production. When it came time to film, Mario oversaw the project and delegated a significant amount of direction to Lamberto. The film opens with Dora Baldini (Daria Nicolodi) returning with her young son, Marco, to the country villa she once shared with her first husband, Carlo, who reportedly died by suicide at sea. Dora is now married to Bruno Baldini (John Steiner), who is often absent. Dora’s psychological state is fragile: she underwent institutionalization and electro-shock therapy after Carlo’s death. Once in the house, strange phenomena begin: Marco behaves oddly, ominously, and Oedipally; Dora suffers frightening flashbacks and dreams; and the atmosphere becomes oppressive. We are never entirely sure whether supernatural possession, repressed guilt, or psychosis is at play. Bruno, initially skeptical, becomes drawn into the unfolding horrors. Dora’s return is profoundly psychological. The house is a metaphor for her past, her buried memory, and the violence committed there. The horror is less about a ghostly menace and more about what the mind refuses to acknowledge. The house triggers Dora's unraveling. The figure of Marco is particularly unsettling: the child is simultaneously a victim and an instrument, either a container for a ghost or a manifestation of a split psyche. SHOCK habitually shifts our sympathies between the mother’s terror and the child’s inscrutability. Bava’s mise-en-scène uses the architecture such as staircases, mirrors, and shadows as places where reality bends. Here, the house becomes an extension of Dora’s mind: corridors are memory pathways, doors hide secrets, and basements entomb trauma. The domestic space is rendered deeply uncanny. This creates one of the film’s central tensions: is the horror spectral or mental? Bava maintains a potent ambiguity, and the possibility of both heightens the dread. While the film reads as Bava’s twilight work, all of the Bava hallmarks are present and often energized by his collaboration with Lamberto. Optical illusions, reflections, stylized lighting effects, and inventive camera movement are all deployed in service of fear. Shadows and oblique angles dominate, building an atmosphere of creeping unease rather than overt terror. While earlier Bava films reveled in saturated colors, by 1977 his palette is more subdued yet still stylized: interiors are drained, shadows pool, and the shot composition emphasizes entrapment. The film builds slowly, mounting dread in the first half before shifting toward more conventional horror set pieces such as a flying box cutter and the dead seeking vengeance. SHOCK is more modest in scale and inward-looking than Bava’s previous work, but as his last major statement, it is richly deserving of study. Even in his final work, Mario Bava continued to influence subsequent horror, particularly with its haunted child, domestic setting, and visual tricks used to destabilize perception. The film acts as a filmmaking elegy, insisting that the torch of his career be passed down. If the unstable Marco represents Lamberto, the film ultimately shows a son who must make his own way but will always have the whispers of his father to guide him. Screening as part of the Terror Tuesday series. (1977, 93 min, DCP Digital) [Shaun Huhn]

Kiyoshi Kurosawa's CLOUD (Japan)

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

Genre master Kiyoshi Kurosawa (PULSE, CURE) revisits familiar territory with a modern twist in his latest film, an anti-capitalist techno-horror that criticizes the rising gig economy with a combination of dark humor and violence. Ryosuke Yoshii (Masaki Suda) is trying to make some quick money reselling items online at markup. Some success leads him to quit his factory job and he, his girlfriend, Akiko (Kotone Furukawa), and a loyal assistant, Sano (Daiken Okudaira), relocate to a remote mountain home to continue business. But his new life is interrupted by strange visitors; many of Yoshii’s items were fakes or faulty, and his buyers are not happy. His handle, "Ratel," is being called out on online message boards as untrustworthy and a ragtag gang of disgruntled customers are rallying to enact vengeance for being duped in person. The seemingly impersonal internet transaction is suddenly taken very personally. It’s a slow build with a few uncanny moments to start, but CLOUD becomes more intriguing as its themes come into focus. It is a film about the gamification of internet-based commerce, and how that plays out in real life. Repeating shots of Yoshii staring blankly at his computer screen as he waits for his posted items to sell are the most unnerving and effective moments; he appears hypnotized, suggesting both the allure and emptiness of his endeavors. While Kurosawa’s cinematography is steely blue and gray, reflecting the coldness of the internet, Yoshii’s stare implies the online space is also always being internalized by the user, with real-world consequences. Screening as part of the New Releases and Restorations series. (2024, 123 min, DCP Digital) [Megan Fariello]

Gregg Araki's THE DOOM GENERATION (US)

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

I loved this film when I first saw the incomprehensible Blockbuster Video cut when I was 13. I had no idea it had been destroyed by Hollywood, and I probably wouldn't have cared if I did know. THE DOOM GENERATION is lab-made for angsty teens in the 1990s. A propulsive industrial/shoegaze soundtrack. Stunt casting featuring Skinny Puppy, Perry Farrell, and Heidi Fleiss. Sex, leather jackets, drugs, blood, and the kind of socio-political messaging and metaphors tailormade for punk teens first reading Chomsky by way of hardcore punk record liner notes. Queer, but not too queer. Like Kurt Cobain wearing dresses on TV queer. It is "A Heterosexual Movie by Gregg Araki," after all. This is a quintessentially American film: a road trip filled with romance, danger, crime, and cases of mistaken identity. The logical end of film noir nihilism at the end of the American Century. And now I love this 4k restoration with the proper letterboxing (finally!) and extended scenes that haven't been seen since its first festival screenings. Originally bought by MGM out of Sundance, it was dropped when Goldwyn himself saw it and was personally disgusted. After it was picked up and brutally butchered by its next distributor (not counting the aforementioned insanely confusing Blockbuster version), who didn't even fix the letterboxing for the film's DVD release, Araki basically left THE DOOM GENERATION to rot until he personally ended up with the rights again. The definition of a cult film, it was barely released in theaters initially, only gaining infamy via word of mouth and VHS rentals—and the absolutely crucial film soundtrack. Thankfully, this time around Araki was able to team up with his old friends at Strand Releasing (who released his previous features THE LIVING END and TOTALLY FUCKED UP) and finally got his film the way he always wanted it. This is the perfect time for THE DOOM GENERATION, and Araki's work in general, to get re-released and reappraised. At a time when American cinema seems bifurcated between mainstream movies of sexless, mindless, puerile frivolity for adult children and indie, eat-your-vegetables, gimme an Oscar, "this is capital-A Art" dryness, THE DOOM GENERATION is the perfect reminder of the halcyon days of '90s American Indie films—when you could have an exciting, sexy, pulpy, dangerous, offensive, action-driven film that still had something to say. In retrospect, the bleak, almost nihilistic, hopelessness of Gen X seems to have been more of a Cassandra curse than bored, apolitical, slacker malaise. Younger millennials and Gen Z understand this on a fundamental level. While us Xennials and Gen Xers saw the world get slowly fucked, they were born into one that was already, well, totally fucked up. I have a feeling (and hope) this film will resonate with them the way it did with us nearly 30 years ago. THE DOOM GENERATION is a powerful film, and we're lucky to finally have it in all its intended glory. Screening as part of the Conversations in Cars: Road Trips and Relationships series. (1995, 83 min, DCP Digital) [Raphael Jose Martinez]

Yorgos Lanthimos’ BUGONIA (US)

Music Box Theatre and various other Venues – See Venue websites for showtimes

Within the dense pages of the Byzantine Geoponica—the sole surviving record of Constantinople’s agricultural methods—lies mention of the Bugonia ritual: a belief that bees were born from the carcass of a cow. Life springing from death. A spontaneous empire of bees birthed from decay. Yorgos Lanthimos’ BUGONIA opens with a similar conception. Teddy (Jessie Plemons), a beekeeper of sorts, narrates, “It all starts with something magnificent,” describing the kingdom of bees and their devotion to the queen. But his question lingers: what happens when the worker bees revolt? From the start, Lanthimos aligns this mythic order with political unrest. Teddy and his cousin Donnie (Aidan Delbis) are disillusioned Americans, suffocating under capitalism’s weight. Teddy, in particular, channels his resentment into a feverish anti-corporate crusade that gradually unravels into delusion. His manifesto—part political revolt, part alien conspiracy—culminates in a conviction that the planet is under threat from the Andromedans, a race of extraterrestrials poised to attack during an impending lunar eclipse. Donnie becomes the third point in this ideological triangle between Teddy and pharmaceutical CEO Michelle Fuller (Emma Stone), whom the cousins kidnap to expose her supposed alien identity. Delbis gives Donnie an aching sincerity; his loyalty to Teddy feels both familial and tragic. “We are not steering the ship, Don,” Teddy warns, as if resigned to cosmic manipulation. Lanthimos juxtaposes the cousins’ rustic world with Michelle’s sterile minimalism—Teddy and Donnie framed in asymmetrical, natural compositions, while Michelle exists in crisp lines and geometric order. Rituals including yoga, running, and kickboxing mirror the discipline of hive behavior, showing the similarities as well as the disparity between the cousins and Michelle. These visual and thematic contrasts build toward confinement: a CEO bound and drugged in a basement, where philosophical arguments mutate into psychological warfare. The scenario echoes a cinematic tradition of class revenge fantasies—SWIMMING WITH SHARKS (1994), THE REF (1994), even NATIONAL LAMPOON’S CHRISTMAS VACATION (1989)—where taking the powerful hostage serves as comic wish fulfillment. But Lanthimos transforms that fantasy into dread. As Teddy demands that Michelle contact the aliens to negotiate humanity’s survival, she retaliates with manipulations of her own. Teddy’s paranoia tries to outpace her corporate cunning. Despite its grim setup, BUGONIA thrives on absurd humor. “Don’t call it a dialogue; this isn’t Death of a Salesman,” Teddy quips, moments before using a homemade electroshock device to the tune of Green Day’s “Basket Case.” His awkward apology, “I didn’t realize you were a Queen; I thought you were just admin,” lands with the strange charm of Lanthimos’ earlier comedies. While less overtly Buñuelian than his previous work, Lanthimos maintains his surrealist flourishes. Flashbacks to Teddy’s dying mother (Alicia Silverstone), suspended by a string he holds like a balloon, reveal trauma fueling his delusions. His crusade against corporate aliens becomes an exorcism of grief and rage toward a pharmaceutical system that poisoned her. Adapted from Jang Joon-hwan’s SAVE THE GREEN PLANET! (2003), BUGONIA reimagines its source within the American landscape of YouTube manifestos, startup jargon, and class inequity. The bees pollinate while a Marlene Dietrich cover of Pete Seeger’s “Where Have All The Flowers Gone?” plays. This seems the most apt visual metaphor. If Teddy’s theories prove correct, like rabbit-hole conspiracies that embolden and foster violent rhetoric, would that mean we are supposed to believe angry young white men who develop clickbait conspiracy? Or are they themselves the front line of our own extinction? CEOs like Michelle Fuller, who present a workplace of false diversity and “self-managed” work hours, are part of the billionaire class—a concept very alien to most of us—who get away with pushing untested drugs and trampling anyone in their way, are equally (if not more) dangerous. The more we hear from Teddy and Michelle, the more we realize that there could be hope in the Bugonia ritual. Maybe one day, from our rotten carcasses a better species will emerge. (2025, 117 mins, 35mm/DCP Digital Projection at the Music Box [see site for formats]; DCP Digital Projection everywhere else) [Shaun Huhn]

Tom Holland's FRIGHT NIGHT (US)

Doc Films (at the University of Chicago) – Friday, 11:45pm

If you’re looking for kitsch, look no further than Tom Holland’s FRIGHT NIGHT. The big hair, the fashion disasters that we thought were so hip and funky, and the technopop music with a driving backbeat that turns you into a bobblehead whether you like it or not—all of these wonderfully awful ’80s artifacts are on splendid display. The story is pretty simple. Charley Brewster (William Ragsdale) is a typical horny teenager. The film opens with him making out with his perky girlfriend, Amy Peterson (Amanda Bearse), on his bedroom floor while his favorite TV show, “Peter Vincent: Vampire Killer” (Roddy McDowell), plays in the background. When she refuses to go all the way, Charley gets mad. They’ve been going together for a year, after all. Charley looks out his window to avoid Amy’s hurt gaze. He doesn’t notice that she has moved to his bed and is willing to give him what he wants. He’s too busy watching an elaborate coffin being moved into the house next door. The next day, Charley passes an attractive woman on the street who is looking for the address of his new next-door neighbor. The fact that she is a hooker initially escaped me because a lot of women dressed like her back then—tight, short skirt in an impossibly bright blue; big, blonde hair; shocking nail polish. When next he sees her using that very ’80s movie accoutrement in movies—binoculars—she is stripping in his neighbor’s house. But his voyeurism ends with a big shock when he sees the man of the house bite her. A very cool shot of three rivulets of blood trickling down her bare back caps the scene. Now Charley is sure his new neighbor, Jerry Dandridge (Chris Sarandon), is a vampire. When he tries to confront Dandridge, he is stopped by smarmy Renfield-like houseboy Billy (Jonathan Stark). To stop Charley from snooping, Dandridge trashes Charley’s already trashy-looking car. Don’t ask me how that’s an effective deterrent. Now Charley is in full vampire hunter mode. He brings a cop over to his neighbor’s home to see the coffin and convince him that the murders being reported in town—in a very blasé way, I might add—are Dandridge’s doing. The cop laughs and leaves. Not only does Charley get dismissed, but as in any self-respecting teen-centered movie, his clueless single mother (Dorothy Fielding) is brought in to trigger a plot twist—inviting the vampire into her home—and then disappears from the film. Charley is now in grave danger because the vampire can enter his home at will. Enter Charley’s favorite vampire stalker, a fraud willing to take a $500 savings bond as payment for services he has no expertise in rendering. The film has the obligatory smoky disco scene, with Dandridge in ’80s dressed-to-kill garb hypnotizing Amy and bringing her onto the dance floor. Suddenly, Amy is transformed into an ’80s-style vamp, her perky, barrette-clad hair poofed into seriously big hair and her unadorned face painted and seductive. We get a lot of disco-beat close-ups of Dandridge manhandling Amy, putting his hand up her skirt, and then whisking her off to his lair, with Charley in hot pursuit. The corny vampire-hunting scenes in Dandridge’s home reveal some of the silliest-looking vampires I’ve ever seen. Roddy, with his clown-whited hair, is perfection in a seriocomic role, performing with conviction to give the kids in the audience a thrill while maintaining a certain ironic distance. This isn’t great art, and it’s not even a major comic addition to the vampire canon. But, all the “don’t worry, be happy” vibes of the 1980s found in the abundant tongue-in-cheek horror movies of the era—in its own way, much smarter than the humor of today—still make for a great evening of popcorn viewing. (1985, 106 min, DCP Digital) [Marilyn Ferdinand]

Christian Petzold's PHOENIX (Germany)

Northbrook Public Library – Wednesday, 2pm and 7pm

Hitchcock's VERTIGO is masterful but decidedly farfetched, whereas Christian Petzold's PHOENIX is farfetched but still realistic, a contradiction that aptly defines this brilliant allegory of postwar guilt and reclamation. (Petzold openly acknowledges the film's relationship to the Hitchcock classic in many interviews.) It's about a Jewish woman—Nelly, played by Petzold's longtime muse, Nina Hoss—who undergoes facial reconstruction surgery after she's liberated from a concentration camp, presumably having been shot in the face by a Nazi. She learns that all of her family and most of her friends are dead, and that her gentile husband may have been the one who betrayed her to the Gestapo. Back in Berlin she looks for him anyway, only to find that he's working in a club called the Phoenix, a blood-red-lit American joint that gives the film its name. (The mythical bird that rises from its ashes is also owed some credit.) Though the surgery significantly altered her appearance, he notices her "resemblance" to his thought-to-be-deceased wife and recruits her to help him acquire her inheritance. Co-written with the late Harun Farocki, "it's a metaphorical movie and it's also not a metaphorical movie," to put it in his words, with the man's guilt (or lack thereof) representing that of a nation and Nelly's regeneration representing that of its oppressed people. On paper it seems absurd, similarly to many of the American genre films that inspired both Petzold and Farocki, but on screen, it's executed with surprising verisimilitude. (2014, 98 min, DCP Digital) [Kat Sachs]

Werner Herzog's NOSFERATU THE VAMPYRE (West Germany)

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

NOSFERATU THE VAMPYRE is Werner Herzog's homage to F.W. Murnau's glooming, swirling, haunting masterpiece—the 1922 original, NOSFERATU, A SYMPHONY OF HORRORS. As moody as its predecessor, this NOSFERATU dwells in the caverns and misty crossings of Herzog's Caspar David Friedrich-esque film landscapes. The centerpiece is Klaus Kinski's performance as Count Dracula—a limping, aching vampire who has lured an ambitious gentleman to his castle. Though radically differing from the original, NOSFERATU THE VAMPYRE does represent an interesting moment in the history of German cinema. Herzog, perhaps more than his contemporaries, is credited with bridging the gap of the so-called "lost years" of German cinema—those between Expressionism and the Neue Deutsche Film. Despite this film and his admiration of Murnau, Herzog has distanced himself from his esteemed predecessor in German film: "SUNRISE is a great movie... but there's really no connection." Agreed. Screening as part of the The Ethical Vampire: The Moral Dilemma of Vampirism series. (1979, 107 min, DCP Digital) [Liam Neff]

Robert Zemeckis' BACK TO THE FUTURE (US)

Alamo Drafthouse – See Venue website for showtimes

Back in the mid-1980s, the white, suburban, heterosexual American male was in crisis, threatened on all sides: globally, by the Middle East's control of oil production; culturally, by the emergence of chart-topping R&B and rap that imperiled the perceived hegemony of heavy metal and unspirited blues-rock; and locally, in the unrelenting crime waves of urban gangs, emerging from a dissolved patriarchy and reportedly expanding ever-outwards from the city centers. The successful reconstitution of this masculinity was produced primarily by Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale's BACK TO THE FUTURE, an admittedly glorious genre-crossing inversion of the Oedipus mythology (protagonist Marty must overcome not a present, unconscious desire for his mother and rivalry with his father, but instead must overcome his mother's desire for him and actively facilitate the transformation of his milquetoast father into a confident figure of authority). The conflict is enacted in the oneiric space of small-town 1955 California, primarily through the repeated ritual humiliation of the seemingly-invincible Teutonic drive-creature Biff, but also through Marty's requisition—on behalf of wimpy caucasians everywhere—of the heritage of both civil rights (encouraging the local malt-shop busboy to become mayor) and rock n' roll (producing, for Chuck Berry and an audience of bewildered squares, "the sound you've been looking for"). All of this (including the role of the Benjamin-Franklin-esque Doc Brown) is then not simply in the service of some trite, individualist Protestant ethic ("if you put your mind to it, you could accomplish anything": murmured mantra-like from start to finish); for those voters still baffled by the persistency of conservative politics, why look any further? Screening as part of the Alamo Time Capsule 1985 series. (1985, 116 min, DCP Digital) [Michael Castelle]

Tim Burton's PEE-WEE'S BIG ADVENTURE (US)

Alamo Drafthouse – Tuesday, 7pm

By 1985, Paul Reubens' bow-tied TV man-child Pee-wee Herman had claimed a successful stage run, HBO series and specials, and sold-out performances at Carnegie Hall. The culmination of this popularity was PEE-WEE'S BIG ADVENTURE. The premise of the BIG ADVENTURE is simple: Pee-wee's beloved bike, an awesome cherry-red cruiser, has disappeared and, bindle in hand, Pee-wee sets across the country to recover it, come what may. In store for Pee-wee are phantom adventures on the American highway, a trip to the Alamo, and the hazards of a thousand other oddball incidents, leading to a roaring, studio-crashing finale that rivals the best of Mel Brooks. PEE-WEE'S BIG ADVENTURE is of course the feature debut of Tim Burton, who is perhaps the perfect directorial match for Reubens' funhouse comedy, and the film offers the curious objects, candy colors, and spoiled suburban malaise that have since become the hallmarks of Burton's all-too successful career. Some of the comedy has become even more relevant and complex (and unintentionally ironic) as the years have gone by, such as when Dottie asks Pee-wee if he would like to take her to the movies: Pee-wee responds that there are things she doesn't know about him—"Things you wouldn't understand, things you couldn't understand... Things you shouldn't understand." The two do eventually end up at the movies together, but thankfully Dottie and the audience are spared a TAXI DRIVER moment.  Screening as part of the Alamo Time Capsule 1985 series. (1985, 90 min, DCP Digital) [Liam Neff]

Richard Donner's THE GOONIES (US)

Alamo Drafthouse – Monday, 4pm

The retreat into infantile adventure as a way to resolve genuine economic problems is a hallmark of the early Spielbergian oeuvre, and Richard Donner's autumnal 2.35:1 children's epic (bankrolled by Spielberg) is no exception. The middle-class gifted children of drizzly seaside Astoria, Oregon, facing eviction of their families by an expanding preppie country club, are inspired by their region's poorly-documented colonial past to literally descend deep into the earth to recover an entombed bounty of pre-fiat riches. Pursued by a small, villainous Italian-American crime family unconsciously preserving the tricks of the pirate trade (robbery, counterfeiting, murder), our perpetually-yelling heroes combine their scholastic talents (mechanical engineering, Spanish proficiency, and sight- reading) to linearly "complete" a variety of video-game-adaptation-ready action sequences and save their steep, hilly neighborhood from becoming what would have been the Pacific Northwest's shittiest golf course. Millions of the film's original viewers, by contrast, would in fact ultimately lose their homes in the housing bubble of the 2000s. Screening as part of the Alamo Time Capsule 1985 series. (1985, 114 min, DCP Digital) [Michael Castelle]

📽️ ALSO SCREENING

⚫ Alamo Drafthouse
Koji Hashimoto’s 1984 film THE RETURN OF GODZILLA (103 min, Digital Projection) screens Monday at 7pm.

Greydon Clark’s 1987 horror film UNINVITED (92 min, Digital Projection) screens  Wednesday, 9:30pm, as part of the Weird Wednesday series. More info on all screenings here.

⚫ Alliance Française de Chicago
In partnership with Villa Albertine and as part of the Chicago Architecture Biennial, Jean-Marie Montangerand’s 2023 documentary FERNAND POUILLON: FRANCE’S MOST WANTED ARCHITECT (52 min, Digital Projection) screens Thursday, 6:30pm, with Montangerand in person. More info here.

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

⚫ The Davis Theater
Nora Ephron’s 1998 film YOU’VE GOT MAIL (119 min, Digital Projection) screens Tuesday, 7pm, as part of the Big Screen Classics and Spotlight on Women series. More info here. 

⚫ Doc Films (at the University of Chicago)
Paulo Rocha’s 1966 film CHANGE OF LIFE (94 min, DCP Digital) screens Sunday, 4pm, as part of the Sounds of Shaking Earth: Landscapes of Portuguese Cinema series.

Marta Mateus’ 2024 film FIRE OF WIND (72 min, DCP Digital) screens Wednesday, 7pm, as part of the Sounds of Shaking Earth: Landscapes of Portuguese Cinema series.

A selection of short films by Curt McDowell, all on 16mm, screens Thursday, 9:30pm, as part of the Celluloid Is Out: Queer Freedom and Subculture of the 1970s series. More info on all screenings here.

⚫ Elastic Arts (3429 W. Diversey Ave., #308)
Homeroom presents Spectralina's 2024 Residency Film Remix, featuring stream footage and videography by Scott Teresi, on Wednesday at 8:30pm (doors open at 8pm). Working in an improvised format, Spectralina creates an image-sound relationship that treats each medium as equal, resulting in performances in which projection and sounds come together as visual music. More info here.

⚫ FACETS
The Italian Cultural Institute and Loyola University Chicago present a free screening of Spike Lee’s 2008 film MIRACLE AT ST. ANNA (160 min, Digital Projection) on Sunday, 4pm, introduced by Silvana Patriarca (Fordham University) and followed by a Q&A with the audience. Note that the event is currently sold out. More info here.

⚫ Film Studies Center (at the University of Chicago)
Rachael Moriarty and Peter Murphy’s 2025 documentary FROM THAT SMALL ISLAND (99 min, Digital Projection) screens Tuesday, 7:30pm, with the documentary’s writer and producer Bríona Nic Dhiarmada and historical consultant and associate producer Professor Jane Ohlmeyer present for a moderated discussion following the screening. More info here.

⚫ First Nations Film and Video Festival
Jules Koostachin’s 2024 documentary NIIMISSAK: SISTERS IN FILM (70 min, Digital Projection) screens Wednesday, 7pm, at FACETS, with Koostachin in person and in conversation with the festival’s founder Beverly Moeser.

The Other 51%: Native American Women Directors, a program of Native American Women-directed short films, screens Thursday, 7pm, with filmmakers in attendance for a post-screening discussion. More info on all screenings here.

⚫ Green Line Performing Arts Center (329 E. Garfield Blvd.)
Chicago Film Symposium, a one-day event celebrating short films by Chicago-based Black and brown filmmakers and for which this year’s theme is “Poetic Just-Us,” takes place Saturday starting at 2pm with a film showcase and then keynote speaker Brianna Clearly at 4:30pm, as well as a featured filmmaker panel moderated by Cortlyn Kelly from The Art Idiot. More info here.

⚫ Mostra Brazilian Film Festival
The Mostra Brazilian Film Festival, the largest Brazilian film festival in the midwest, takes place from this Saturday through Saturday, November 15 at the Cervantes Institute, Chicago Filmmakers, FACETS, University of Chicago, Northwestern University, Nichols Public Library, DePaul University, and the Lincoln Park Room. More info here. 

⚫ Music Box Theatre
The Halloween Edition of Jim Sharman’s 1975 cult classic THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW (100 min, 35mm) screens Friday and Saturday at midnight. Note that these screenings are sold out.

A free screening of Mike P. Nelson’s 2025 film SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT (96 min, DCP Digital) takes place Wednesday, 9:30pm, with Santa costumes encouraged. More info on all screenings here.

⚫ Siskel Film Center
Alfonso Cuarón’s 2013 film GRAVITY (91 min, DCP Digital) screens Sunday, noon, as part of the Interiority on Screen lecture series.

Marta Mateus’ 2024 film FIRE OF WIND (74 min, DCP Digital) screens Wednesday, 5:30pm, followed by a post-screening conversation with Mateus and Jonathan Rosenbaum.

Conversations at the Edge presents Laura Huertas Millán: PHARMAKON ECOLOGIES on Thursday, 6pm, followed by a conversation between Laura Huertas Millán and the artist and writer Claire Pentecost, co-founder of the experimental cultural space Watershed Art & Ecology. More info on all screenings here.

⚫ VDB TV (Virtual)
oliverio rodriguez and Victoria Stob's 2018 short film LYNDALE (24 min) and Sandi DuBowski's 1993 short film TOMBOYCHIK (15 min) stream for free on VDB-TV.  Programmed by Cine-File contributor Elise Schierbeek. More info here.

CINE-LIST: October 24, 2025 - October 30, 2025

MANAGING EDITORS // Ben and Kat Sachs

CONTRIBUTORS // Brendan Boyle, Michael Castelle, Maxwell Courtright, Megan Fariello, Marilyn Ferdinand, Shaun Huhn, Ben Kaye, Jonathan Leithold-Patt, Josh B. Mabe, Raphael Jose Martinez, Liam Neff, K.A. Westphal