:: FRIDAY, AUGUST 14 - THURSDAY, AUGUST 20 ::

📽️ CRUCIAL VIEWING

Paul Thomas Anderson’s BOOGIE NIGHTS (US)

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

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

Hirokazu Kore-eda’s SHEEP IN THE BOX (Japan)

Siskel Film Center — See Venue website for showtimes

The title of Hirokazu Kore-eda’s sci-fi lullaby refers to a scene in The Little Prince where the narrator is drawing sketches of sheep for the eponymous character. After failing to produce one that the Prince likes, he finally succeeds by drawing a box with air holes in it, which permits the Prince to imagine exactly the sheep he wants inside. The scene provides a tidy metaphor for our relationship to artificial intelligence, a technology that proposes to address our questions and desires by recycling preexisting information into a reflection of something it presumes we like. This relationship is also the subject of Kore-eda’s film, a characteristically muted drama about a well-to-do married couple who “adopt” a robot facsimile of their seven-year-old son who died two years earlier. Comparisons with Steven Spielberg’s A.I. ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (2001) are inevitable, but SHEEP IN THE BOX is both less creepy and less sentimental, and it never feels epic in its proportions. Kore-eda approaches the question of what life with robots might be like in much the same way as he considered the hereafter in AFTER LIFE (1998)—that is, he fixates on a concrete domestic scenario and realizes it in as many particulars as he can imagine. As the film presents the couple’s efforts to socialize the robot boy and make him part of their lives, which includes forming relationships with their parents, it starts to feel like a sci-fi variation on the director’s STILL WALKING (2008), which considered an extended family through their annual mourning ritual for a dead relative. Death is a recurring theme in Kore-eda’s work, and it’s critical to SHEEP IN THE BOX, not only in the central premise of a robot taking the place of a dead human, but in its definition of A.I. as a technology that feeds on “dead” material to create the illusion of “living” intelligence. (Radu Jude arrived at a similar definition in his A.I. film, DRACULA [2025].) Late in the film, one robot asks, “Who do the dead belong to?” and he may as well be addressing the audience; no other character provides an answer. It’s typical of Kore-eda, one of the most thoughtful Japanese filmmakers, to ask his spectators to wrestle with the film’s moral concerns after it ends. (2026, 126 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]

Brian De Palma's PHANTOM OF THE PARADISE (US)

Alamo Drafthouse — Thursday, 7pm

A hit only in Winnipeg (a city then and now of exquisite good taste), PHANTOM OF THE PARADISE seems to have everything going against it. Music by the anti-cool songsmith Paul Williams, who also plays one of the leading roles, an alienating, mannered, downright strange performance by William Finley in the title role, a visual scheme exuberant with kitsch, gaudy colors, and off-putting compositions, and a tone of jokiness and self-mockery resolutely at odds with the deadly seriousness of the subject matter: at first glance, there's nothing about the movie that's not at odds with itself. It's the same with the plot line, which is so absurdly constructed and disconcerting as to fairly defy summary. Winslow Leach, bespectacled composer of a cantata about Faust, has his music stolen by the Svengali-esque Swan, a producer and nightclub owner. Framed as a heroin dealer, Winslow is sent to Sing Sing, where all his teeth are extracted in an experimental medical procedure. He soon escapes, however, when he hears his own songs on the radio being butchered and breaks in to Swan's record-pressing plant, only to have his head trapped in the machinery. Now with the grooves of the hated record inscribed on his face, and his own voice destroyed, he determines to destroy Swan's nightclub, disguising himself as a cybernetic owl, only to be waylaid in his quest for revenge when he falls in love with the ingénue Phoenix, played by the great Jessica Harper. And that's just the first two reels. There are a dozen musical numbers, elaborately staged and hilariously parodic, and a series of terrible murders, committed grotesquely by the otherwise sympathetic hero, Winslow, all of which work to prevent any attempt on our part to figure out what in the world we're watching. PHANTOM OF THE PARADISE never lets us get comfortable, and this is not merely on the level of plot. The film's strange, distracting style and other-worldly sights and sounds are just artificial enough to suggest that the work is wholly within a fantasy land, the fairy-tale world of the classic Hollywood musical, and just nasty, explicit, and corporeal enough to indicate that we're seeing a version of reality. After Winslow becomes the Phantom, he plants a time bomb in the trunk of a prop car about to be rolled onto a stage crowded with his enemies. It's a dead ringer for the bomb we see in the opening seconds of TOUCH OF EVIL, and what follows is nothing less than a stunning one-upping of that film's luxurious and deadly first shot. Not content with one mobile camera, De Palma shoots his car-bombing in split-screen and during a song-and-dance routine. On one level, it's an exercise in audacity and confusion and suspense, a great director showing off. But, as in all aspects of PHANTOM, the segment serves to unnerve the viewer tonally, preventing us from fully enjoying the technical mastery of the style or from enmeshing ourselves within the story and feeling unmitigated suspense and horror, from either condemning or identifying with the characters and their actions. Hilarious, horrifying, mortifying, embarrassing, engrossing, and delirious all at once, PHANTOM's masterful control over every aspect of cinema makes it impossible to truly come to terms with, but makes it one of the most profoundly pleasurable experiences in American cinema. (1974, 94 min, DCP Digital) [Kian Bergstrom]

Quentin Tarantino's DEATH PROOF (US)

Siskel Film Center — See Venue website for showtimes

Though originally released theatrically in the US as Quentin Tarantino’s half of the exploitation-inspired double feature GRINDHOUSE, DEATH PROOF is perhaps more effective in its standalone form. Remnants of its connection to Robert Rodriguez’s contribution, PLANET TERROR, are there, but the film is distinctive in its female-led meticulous examination of 70s exploitation and slasher films. DEATH PROOF is split into two distinct segments, each following a group of friends as they are stalked by the murderous Stuntman Mike (played by an ominously off kilter Kurt Russell)—his weapon of choice being muscle cars. It all culminates in a wildly impressive extended car chase sequence, featuring stuntwoman Zoë Bell playing a fictional version of herself. In between moments of escalated violence, DEATH PROOF is predominantly a hangout film, unhurriedly lingering on minutia as it builds characterization for its ensemble cast—all the while the tension grows. Unsurprisingly, it’s stuffed with detailed conversations about pop culture, hammered home by blatant references to films like VANISHING POINT; each group of women also work in media, the first led by a local radio DJ and the other part of a film production. Tarantino cleverly draws on a pastiche of oft-considered lowbrow subgenres while also dissecting their unique tropes. There is clear affection for these films without ignoring their much darker elements and turning them on their head. The film ends with a fantastical freeze frame encompassing female rage, resilience, and joy that has continued to stick with me almost fifteen years since its release. I still, too, regularly listen to DEATH PROOF’s commanding soundtrack, filled with one standout song after the next—it’s Tarantino’s most exceptionally curated compilation. Screening as part of the Vroom, Screech series. (2007, 127 min, DCP Digital) [Megan Fariello]

📽️ ALSO RECOMMENDED

Peter Greenaway's THE COOK, THE THIEF, HIS WIFE, & HER LOVER (UK)

The Davis Theater — Tuesday, 7pm

The film opens with dogs fighting in the gutter over rotting flesh. Following them, rogues and thieves arrive for yet another night of fine dining at the posh restaurant, La Hollandais. A man owes money to renowned London gangster, Albert Spica. As a penalty for not paying up, Spica’s cronies force-feed and cover the man with dog feces. Albert and his wife Georgina dine at La Hollandais every night. Michael, a bookshop owner and another regular at the establishment, catches Georgina's eye, and they begin an affair in the restaurant bathroom. Albert uncovers his wife's extramarital activities, then hunts down Michael at home and murders him by stuffing pages from books into the bibliophile’s mouth. Furious at her husband, Georgina plots a revenge on par with Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus. THE COOK was one of a group of films that forced the MPAA to reconsider its evaluation system. Harvey Weinstein wanted Miramax to distribute the film in the United States but knew it would receive an X rating if seen by the MPAA (the film had just escaped an X in the United Kingdom). Miramax went ahead and distributed the film with no rating. This initiated other independent distributors to follow suit, causing leadership at MPAA to reconsider their structure, leading to the creation of the NC-17 rating. Helen Mirren and Michael Gambon were already regarded as heavyweight actors in England, but the whole ensemble is stunning, including a young, vibrant Tim Roth and Ciaran Hinds. Peter Greenaway has painted his entire life. He places the utmost emphasis on color for each shot: a shade of green for the kitchen, red for the restaurant, stark white for the scenes in the bathroom. Between the intense gambit of color-coded sets and the visceral violence, the audience walks out of the theater, as Mirren stated in one interview, feeling "like they’ve been mugged." COOK takes major influence from Flemish painters such as Peter Paul Rubens and Anthony van Dyck. Greenaway places Frans Hals’ The Banquet of the Officers of the St George Militia Company in 1616 in the background of Spica’s table. The film’s visual style is not the only aspect inspired by the Baroque period. Michael Nyman’s score cranks through the film like a squeezebox borrowed from the likes of Kurt Weill or Dmitri Shostakovich, taking the melody of Henry Purcell’s “What Pow’r Art Thou?” from his 17th century opera King Arthur for the main theme. It’s reasonable to ask why Greenaway insisted on using 17th century art to influence his film released in 1989. There are two possible answers. First, its placing emphasis on the stark contrast between cultured, high-echelon delights and the brutish, dark souls who enjoy them exclusively. The second possibility requires a bit more historical context. With the rise of large industrial trading companies in the mid 17th century, England’s Parliament enacted the Tenures of Abolition Act 1660 into law. This event is considered the first baby steps toward modern capitalism and the contemporary notion of private property. When the legislative ink was still fresh on the page, the new ideas surrounding ownership made their way across Europe, informing art and philosophy. At the time of its release, many saw COOK as a condemnation of society’s obsession with materialism, Thatcher, and her financial reform that favored the powerful. Greenaway has exhibited political awareness since his career began. He started as an editor of propaganda for the Central Office of Information from the early 1960s and continued all the way through the counterculture revolution. Moreover, COOK's theatrical presentation and parable of rewarded thieves echo Brecht’s Threepenny Opera. Like Brecht, Greenaway chooses to identify characters by their occupations or function in society; the cook cooks, the thief thieves, and the wife obeys. There’s no given psychological explanation to their actions; they are fulfilling their role subscribed by society, cogs in a machine. Michael, although a bookstore owner in occupation, disrupts the status quo as a lover and is punished for it. Although the thief faces consequences for his actions, the audience finds no relief. Even Roger Ebert believed Albert was let off the hook too easy for his crimes of the flesh. Screening as part of the Staff Picks series. (1989, 124 min, DCP Digital) [Ray Ebarb]

Elaine May's A NEW LEAF (US)

Alamo Drafthouse — Tuesday, 6:45pm

Cine-File co-managing editor Ben Sachs, also my husband, once wrote for this site that F.W. Murnau’s SUNRISE is “probably one of the greatest [movies] ever made about love.” I disagreed, arguing that I didn’t think it was very loving for a husband to try to kill his wife. It was my opinion that, at the bare minimum, romance should be free of attempted murder, something I expect as much from my auteurs as I do my spouse. But Elaine May’s A NEW LEAF has swayed me, at least in the filmic sense. (Ben and I are eight years into a murder-free marriage, and I don’t foresee myself altering those preferences.) May was the second woman after Ida Lupino to direct a major Hollywood feature; she was the first to both write and direct one, and she also stars in this woefully underappreciated black comedy. Walter Matthau plays Henry Graham, a seemingly asexual playboy who decides to marry after exhausting his inheritance. He sets his sights on May’s character, Henrietta Lowell, a wealthy heiress who teaches botany and dreams of discovering a new species of fern. Such a description should provide an insight into why Henry picks her as his intended target. Except he doesn’t intend just to marry her, but also to kill her, so that he can assume her riches and continue his life of leisure. A few critics have described the film as cockeyed, a sentiment May would likely agree with for different reasons. The original version was a whopping 180 minutes, and she fought to have her name removed from it after Paramount edited it down to its current length. I can only imagine that it seemed as lopsided to her as the present iteration might seem to some. Still, the brilliance of May’s careful direction and Matthau’s subtle dramatics are fully evident by the film’s end. Just as the set-up recalls SUNRISE, the climax is reminiscent of Roberto Rossellini’s JOURNEY TO ITALY. But instead of a religious procession inspiring a romantic miracle, it’s a fern that prompts Henry’s characteristically supercilious epiphany. (1971, 102 min, DCP Digital) [Kat Sachs]

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

AMC River East 21, the Davis Theater and the Siskel Film Center — See Venue websites for showtimes

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

Elliot Tuttle’s BLUE FILM (US)

FACETS — Saturday, 2:30pm and Sunday, 1pm

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

Angela Schanelec's MUSIC (Germany/France/Greece/Serbia)

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

The plots (or what exists of them) of Angela Schanelec’s films usually feel like pretexts for exploring her particular set of rules with regard to narrative problematics, pushing her plots to avant-garde levels of abstraction. You’re left with less information than you need, and indeed the characters often are too, with Schanelec linking communication breakdown in both form and life. When a fog rolls over a hill in the opening shot of her newest feature MUSIC, it feels almost like a self-aware joke acknowledging her usual narrative opacity as she jumps into the music-free opening 40 minutes of the film. The film follows Ion (Aliocha Schneider), a man orphaned as a baby after an accident that leaves his parents dead on a hillside. In adulthood, jailed after killing a man in an altercation, Ion strikes up a friendship and later a relationship with a prison employee, Iro (Agathe Bonitzer), who records music for him to nurture his passion for singing. Despite its overall stillness and disaffection, this is one of Schanelec’s more emotionally open films just by virtue of Jon’s music, a sort of plainspoken chamber pop. A contrast with Schanelec’s otherwise withholding tone, the film’s sparsely deployed but warm sound cues are the main deviation from the film’s muted, symbolic retelling of the Oedipus myth. It’s this art-within-art that’s the locus of her usual play with interpretation, providing an extra layer of obfuscation wherein the music can be critically judged in a way independent of its purpose in the script. It seems, given her track record and the title, like this is maybe the point, this presentation of art as the only truly ineffable thing as the same narratives play out repeatedly through history. But it makes for something difficult to read both in meaning and intention, with even Schanelec’s Bressonian symbols stumbling over each other, as disembodied hands occupy the full spectrum of action and similarly still bodies are alternately dead, injured, and sleeping. Anyone familiar will know to expect this challenge of meaning-creation, but there are still conventional pleasures to be found for the uninitiated too, especially in DP Ivan Marković’s framing of Greece’s craggy hills and seasides. The beautiful lands function similarly to the film’s music, adding something to the mix that’s less within Schanelec’s control, suggesting graciously that she herself may be searching alongside the audience this time. Screening as part of the Four by Angela Schanelec series. (2023, 108 min, DCP Digital) [Maxwell Courtright]

Richard Tuggle (and Clint Eastwood)’s TIGHTROPE (US)

Alamo Drafthouse — Tuesday, 9:30pm

When considering the large and winding filmography of one Clinton Eastwood Jr., it's wise to remember that the renegade director has remained a fiercely original, sometimes experimental, truly independent-in-every-sense-of-the-word filmmaker since the start of his career. Up until now, Clint has always had the backing of a major studio yet has somehow managed to make his films exactly the way he wants with little to no interference--a true oddity in the current Hollywood studio model. However, with TIGHTROPE, Eastwood decided not to have his name featured under the title of director. Instead, he gave the directing reins to Richard Tuggle, a screenwriter known for writing Don Siegel’s ESCAPE FROM ALCATRAZ (1979), the movie that arguably set Eastwood on his path away from acting and towards directing (he only starred in four movies the next decade). Filmmaking was becoming everything for Clint in the 1980s, with acting fitting in whenever he could find the time. As in the case of his work directed by his sometimes-stunt coordinator Buddy Van Horn (ANY WHICH WAY YOU CAN, THE DEAD POOL, PINK CADILLAC), it’s safe to assume Eastwood had his say in a fair amount of what went on with TIGHTROPE. He let Tuggle keep directing credit, even though he took over the duties when he found that the screenwriter worked too slow. What could’ve been the reason Eastwood did the work as director, but didn’t want the credit? It's not that the movie is in any way a lesser Eastwood film or even that stylistically distinct from the rest of his body of work. Sure, it employs more color gels than ever before in an Eastwood movie, which gives some the idea that he may have been influenced by the giallo films coming out of Italy in the ‘70s or at least by filmmakers who had imported that style to the United States, like William Friedkin with CRUISING or Alan J. Pakula with KLUTE (it's hard to imagine Eastwood plunking down in a sticky grindhouse theater to watch THE NEW YORK RIPPER, but Eastwood did get his start shooting spaghetti westerns, so anything is possible). SUDDEN IMPACT, his Dirty Harry rebrand from the previous year, shares some stylistic traits with TIGHTROPE, but if the issue for Eastwood wasn’t style, could it have been the film’s premise or perhaps the traits that made up essential parts of its main character? The story deals with Detective Wes Block, played by Eastwood, a divorced-family man living in New Orleans with his two daughters. In typical Eastwood fashion, his character has to disappoint his daughters by breaking plans to go to a football game in order to help solve the murder of a young woman and catch her killer. Family squabbles, most likely incidents that were taking place in his personal life, were never verboten for Eastwood (case in point the speed-race stroller sequence from TRUE CRIME [1999]), as he showcases these uncomfortable truths about himself in a naked manner. Could his directorial anonymity have less to do with family matters and more to do with his relationships with women, and possibly men? Wes Block finds himself unable to solve the murder, mostly because he cannot stop laying down the proverbial pipe with many of his female witnesses. At some point in the movie, his character begins to feel like a large child shoving endless sweets down his gullet, leaving the viewer uncomfortably full of Block’s sexual appetite. In reality, Eastwood’s personal life doesn’t seem that dissimilar to the character’s onscreen antics, as Eastwood was well-known for his womanizing, having had many affair-driven dust-ups with his wives, ex-wives, and the many women with whom he had brief trysts. It’s possible that TIGHTROPE’s display of voracious sexual hunger made him uneasy (it’s certainly his sleaziest film until ABSOLUTE POWER [1997]), leading him to remain in the shadows as director. It could amount to the scene where Eastwood’s character goes to a sex club and gets propositioned by a male patron who scoffs at Eastwood’s refusal for a good time. The patron exclaims to Eastwood, “How do you know if you haven’t tried?”, to which Eastwood dryly responds, “How do you know I haven’t?” Could Eastwood have been suggesting his character, or possibly he himself, had secretly dabbled in bisexuality? It wouldn’t be shocking to discover that Eastwood felt some shame about such manners (the guy was born in 1930, after all, and times were very different then), so it’s possible he felt that certain parts of the story were hitting too close to home. Bisexuality and homosexuality would continue to pop up in Eastwood’s filmography, usually with characters who cannot admit their sexuality to themselves and certainly not to most of the people around them. Another New Orleans-set film that Eastwood officially directed, MIDNIGHT IN THE GARDEN OF GOOD AND EVIL (1997), focuses on a man hiding his sexuality from the public during a murder trial, while J. EDGAR (2011) spends a great deal of time homing in on the former FBI head’s closeted homosexuality, with the scenes between Edgar and his longtime, yet secret, partner being some of the most tender Eastwood has ever filmed this side of THE BRIDGES OF MADISON COUNTY (1995). Even JERSEY BOYS (2014) has a key scene where one of the characters tries to psych himself up for a hotel room orgy by watching TV. It’s clear from this character’s hesitancy and silence (along with what we know about the actual person) that he's trying to cover up any traces of what could be perceived as queer in order to make himself seem more manly by watching RAWHIDE on television, specifically a scene starring that show’s main actor… Clint Eastwood. The cutting between the character’s face and the image of Eastwood on screen works like a reflecting mirror, suggesting a possibly hidden confession of a potentially closeted past. Whatever the case may be, TIGHTROPE is more than a curiosity in the director’s storied career and a major moment for the detective genre as a whole, situating itself between two of Eastwood’s other fantastic 1980s genre-revisions: SUDDEN IMPACT and PALE RIDER. Screening as part of the Terror Tuesday series. (1984, 115 min, DCP Digital) [John Dickson]

John Waters' FEMALE TROUBLE (US)

Music Box Theatre — Thursday, 9:45pm

FEMALE TROUBLE stands out as the high point of John Waters' '70s cycle, and a pivot point in his artistic trajectory. He had already established his proficiency as a tasteless provocateur, but this is the film where his equally irrepressible tastefulness as a filmmaker (evidenced in his tight screenwriting and potent cultural criticism, which only get sharper as his career continues) becomes obvious. Instead of trying to top the shit-eating gimmicks of PINK FLAMINGOS, here he takes a turn for the operatic, creating a trashy, tragic, hilarious meditation on glamour, crime, filth, and celebrity that invokes several artists from his pantheon—the Kuchar brothers, Douglas Sirk, Andy Warhol—and does justice to each of them. It's also his most fully realized collaboration with Divine, whose unforgettable Dawn Davenport brilliantly transforms from a rebellious teen to a degenerate art star to a blissfully deluded death row inmate over the course of the film's three acts—a narrative arc that feels epic in spite of its modest run time. Divine even breaks out of drag (his most famous talent, but certainly not his only one) for a few scenes, to co-star opposite himself as the man who deflowers Dawn and becomes the deadbeat father to her petulant child. But while FEMALE TROUBLE is unquestionably Divine's movie, Waters' entire cast of Dreamlanders provides amazing support. Chief among them is Edith Massey, as the sordid, sultry, straight-hating Ida, decked out in a strappy vinyl suit that can barely contain her abundant flesh. Massey manages to steal almost every scene she's in and has the honor of delivering the film's best line—an astute observation that could very well stand as the thesis of Waters' entire oeuvre: "The world of heterosexuals is a sick and boring life." Presented by Rated Q and Ramona Slick! - A Celebration of Queer, Camp, & Cult Cinema with preshow drinks and a DJ in the Music Box lounge at 9pm and a dragshow performance in the Main Theater at 9:45pm, with the screening to follow.  (1974, 89 min, 35mm) [Darnell Witt]

Jane Campion's THE PIANO (New Zealand/Australia/France)

Alamo Drafthouse — Friday, 11:15am and Sunday, 3:15pm

It says something about Jane Campion that her most celebrated film before THE POWER OF THE DOG could be both extraordinarily perverse and a critical and commercial triumph. (Obligatory firsts, here dutifully noted: the film shared that year's Palme d'Or, making Campion the first woman to win it, and earned her an Academy Award nomination for Best Director, only the second for a woman in this woefully estrogen-shy category.) That combination is a notable achievement, given that it's eluded many a filmmaker; for example, Emerald Fennell sought a similar outcome with her recent overwrought yet pandering WUTHERING HEIGHTS adaptation. Incidentally, Campion cites Brontë as an inspiration, yet THE PIANO, set also in the 19th century, doesn't feel like Brontë by way of the New Zealand bush, but rather Campion's singular vision of a contumacious love affair. Though it's been argued, occasionally with a hint of grievance, that the film has much in common with Jane Mander's 1920 novel The Story of a New Zealand River, its plot nevertheless feels strangely of its own, wryly idiosyncratic, focusing on a mute Scottish woman, Ada (Holly Hunter), who's sent to colonial New Zealand with her young daughter for an arranged marriage with a pious settler, Alisdair (Sam Neill, compelling as ever despite his character's terribleness). The reason for her elective muteness, as well as the father of her daughter Flora (Anna Paquin), whom she had out of wedlock, are unknown. What we do know is that she's an ardent lover of her piano, which is left on the beach and then later used as the object of a bargain for sexual favors with George Baines (Harvey Keitel), a white compatriot of her husband who's adopted Māori customs and communicates intimately with them. That the love affair between Ada and Baines begins as an exchange of sexual favors for the piano he’s bought from her husband is perverse; that it’s erotic and eventually romantic as a result implicates the viewer as much as the participants in this wayward haggling. Campion's sex scenes are never sexy for being explicit—it's often what's not shown, or what's specifically shown, that accounts for any quivers one might feel in their heart and nether regions. For example, when Baines, who's taken a position on the floor watching Ada play the piano, fingers a hole in her stocking. Or, even more sensually, when he takes off his sleepshirt to dust the piano in a moment of privacy, signaling a deep affection in spite of his holding her most prized possession (that's been sold to another man as if it didn't even belong to her) over her head for sex. But more perverse than Baines—or even Alisdair, who later chops off one of Ada’s fingers in a fit of rage after learning of her affair—is Ada’s daughter, Flora, whose preciousness borders on sociopathy. Paquin became the second-youngest winner in Oscar history for her performance, and decades later it still astounds as one of the great turns by a child; she’s menacingly adorable and genuinely terrifying in equal measure. But through all this perversion, Baines’ and Flora’s and even Ada’s embodiment of it is ultimately a defiance of repression that Alisdair and the other settlers can’t overcome. As with all of Campion’s films, it looks somehow both sumptuous and foreboding, even at its most unexpectedly whimsical. Across her work with various cinematographers, Campion has always managed to craft enduring images; this is her second of three collaborations with Stuart Dryburgh, the others being AN ANGEL AT MY TABLE (1990) and THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY (1996), each collaboration mounting its own distinct visual thesis. Michael Nyman’s score is as abiding as any of the film’s images. He composed the music as if it were Ada herself writing it, the score serving as her figurative voice, and the now-multiplatinum soundtrack startles with emotional clarity. Campion's films are all fully realized; of those she'd made by then, however, this feels the most complete, which is no small claim given TWO FRIENDS (1986), SWEETIE (1989), and AN ANGEL AT MY TABLE before it. She had wanted to make something like this since she graduated from film school, but did not feel mature enough at the time. Her patience paid off: the film is remarkably sophisticated, not least because of its tonal particularity, which distinguishes it from anything else of its era and, outside Campion's own oeuvre, from almost everything since. It’s also worth noting that with this new restoration, supervised by Campion and Dryburgh, the Miramax logo is no longer displayed. Screening as part of the Sad Girl Cinema Club. (1993, 120 min, New 4K DCP Digital Restoration) [Kat Sachs]

Gregg Araki’s MYSTERIOUS SKIN (US)

Alamo Drafthouse — See Venue website for showtimes

MYSTERIOUS SKIN marked Gregg Araki’s first attempt at adapting someone else’s work, a significant deviation from the previous six films that burst out fully formed from the skull of the New Queer Cinema titan. Yet this effort, an adaptation of Scott Heim’s 1995 novel of the same name, feels emotionally tethered to the rest of Araki's oeuvre, excising some of his usual arch humor and abrasive wit but still remaining as curious and empathetic. Within Heim’s text—a devastating work navigating the long-term effects of childhood sexual abuse—Araki clearly identified thematic elements that resonated with him: queer isolation, chosen family, our varying relationships with sex and intimacy, and, of course, aliens. Trauma finds itself wandering in multiple directions as two young boys, both the victims of sexual abuse by an older man, find vastly different methods of coping with their respective experiences. Brian (Brady Corbet) has fully erased the experience from his mind, cocooning himself deeper and deeper into the belief that this bizarre blip in his memory must be the result of a freak encounter with a UFO. Alternately, Neil (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) begins projecting his experience onto his continued sexual relationships with older men, eventually turning to sex work to perhaps regain some form of bodily autonomy over his sense of desire. Araki has always created characters who wear their emotions naked on their sleeve, and here is no different, his young actors yearning for escape and understanding, conveyed through dual narration from Neil and Brian, echoing the literary source material. In the filming of MYSTERIOUS SKIN, Araki went to noble lengths to make sure his youngest actors would not fall prey to the same mental abuses of the characters they were portraying, providing them with abridged scripts that only contained specific scenes and actions, with much of the more toxic sexual content crafted through shots and moments cemented back together again in the editing room. This careful, considerate filmmaking practice ultimately became an artistic boon for Araki, resulting in a film that never feels exploitative, toxic, or cruel, but rather built upon the implied relationship of images with one another, memories becoming refracted and distorted and eventually finding their way back together again. (2004, 105 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Kaye]

Bruno Bozzetto's ALLEGRO NON TROPPO (Italy/Animation)

Music Box Theatre — Saturday and Sunday, 11am

Perhaps the biggest compliment you could give ALLEGRO NON TROPPO—the highwire act of artistic buffoonery from legendary Italian animator Bruno Bozzetto— is how often his attempts at lampooning the hubris and grandeur of Walt Disney’s FANTASIA (1940) genuinely threaten to surpass his subject of ridicule. Thankfully, things do kick off with plenty of eye-poking and thumb-biting; presented as a means of trying to one-up the bigwigs over in Hollywood (“Grisney? Prisney?” our perfidious host scoffs), Bozzetto immediately frames this film as a work of class imbalance, with the wealthy producers and upper crust consuming their entertainment by literally wheeling in an orchestra of old Italian women like cattle being spared from slaughter while the sole animator at hand is literally unchained from a dungeon to perform his duties. The black-and-white live-action interstitials provide the narrative spine, providing political satire and physical comedy that are frequently more cartoonish than the actual animated segments. When we do hop into the animated sequences, we find a healthy balance of comic whimsy, tragic storytelling, and abstract visual splendor. As with its American predecessor, ALLEGRO NON TROPPO takes classic works of orchestral composition and pairs them with animated segments. Where Disney’s efforts brought dancing hippos, flowers, and magical mice to life with frolicking, fluid motion, Bozzetto’s artistry leans towards non-literal backgrounds and movements, these more abstract and impressionistic styles of animation providing a thrilling alternative to the happy-go-lucky style of the House of Mouse. And even here, Bozzetto’s hand-drawn vistas arrive all-but-entirely infected with the ills of modern society. Stravinsky’s Firebird—eventually used in the lesser FANTASIA 2000 (1999)—accompanies the snake from the Adam-and-Eve Bible story succumbing to the apple of knowledge and witnessing the demonic plagues of contemporary life, while Dvořák's Slavonic Dance No. 7, Op. 46 provides bounding energy to a caveman’s attempts at modernization being aped by his crudely drawn contemporaries. Animals show up here too, though they are all too often at the mercy of the more domineering human species; Vivaldi's Concerto in C major, RV 559 perfectly underscores a buzzing bee and her troubles as she faces off against a horned-up human couple in a field, while Sibelius’ melancholic Valse triste brings to life a wasteland where a cat wanders among the detritus of their home that once was. Outside of the general structure and frame, only two segments emerge as direct responses to Disney’s epic: Debussy’s Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune sees the idyllic Greek mythology previously seen in the Pastoral Symphony section of FANTASIA transliterated into the tale of an eternally horny satyr. The standout work, though, sees FANTASIA’s Rite of Spring sequence, with dinosaurs conquering the screen, here turned into a march through the evolutionary cycle of an alien species that has emerged from a bottle of Coca-Cola, all scored to the pulsating rhythm of Ravel’s Bolero. As with the rest of ALLEGRO NON TROPPO, it is at once absurd, mesmerizing, ridiculous, stunningly rendered, and nothing like what Walt Disney could’ve ever dreamed up. Screening as part of the Animation Adventures series. (1976, 75 min, New 2K DCP Digital Restoration) [Ben Kaye]

Guy Maddin's CAREFUL (Canada)

FACETS — Saturday, 12:30pm; Sunday, 3pm; and Thursday, 7pm

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

Mike Nichols' WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF? (US)

Northbrook Public Library (1201 Cedar Ln., Northbrook) — Tuesday, 7pm

There’s an intoxicating, venomous spirit running through the veins of Edward Albee’s seminal work Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? that seems so indebted to its life as a living, breathing stage play that it’s something of a minor miracle that—​in his debut directorial feature, no less—​Mike Nichols was able to transplant that feeling to the screen. Just a few years prior, after concluding his storied double-act comedy career with fellow comic-turned-director Elaine May, Nichols proved his bona fides as an artist adept at navigating complex romantic relationships with his stage directorial debut, Neil Simon’s Barefoot in the Park, another dramatic work about a married couple, though in this case one more plainly comedic than Albee’s festering ulcer of a piece. Under the tutelage of producer/screenwriter Ernest Lehman, Nichols’ success with Albee’s work is ultimately a masterclass in identifying tragedy and comedy as flip-sides of the same coin. The vollying barbs between history professor George (Richard Burton) and his wife Martha (Elizabeth Taylor) provide perfect bait for their late-night guests, a younger academic, biology professor Nick (George Segal) and his wife Honey (Sandy Dennis), with each vicious insult and threatening remark equally laced with bitter contempt and playful wit. Owing to its theatrical origins, the breakneck pace is enough to convince you that the film exists as one two-hour-long single take, like we’re sitting in George and Martha’s living room as well, equally falling prey to their conversational games of provocation and intrigue. As characters, George and Martha exist as fun-house mirror reflections for Nick and Honey, an eerie premonition of the toll that such a toxic marriage can take down the line, yet within that toxicity lies something magnetic and alluring. As stellar as the entire quartet of players is here, it’s Taylor and Burton, of course, who get the meatier roles, not so much chewing the scenery as they are knocking the set down and spreading the wreckage across an eight-course tasting menu, their hatred and adoration for each other appearing so entangled as to become utterly meaningless by the inevitable moment when, finally, after the rubble has been cleared, the sun rises above it all. (1966, 132 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Kaye]

Satoshi Kon's PAPRIKA (Japan/Animation)

The Davis Theater — Thursday, 7pm

PAPRIKA was Satoihi Kon's final film, and what a wonderful way to wrap up a remarkable career. Kon passed away in 2010 due to pancreatic cancer at the early age of 46, but his work has left a lasting impression on cinema, inspiring filmmakers worldwide and even garnering some copycats, to put it nicely (just Google it). In PAPRIKA, we see the culmination of themes and stylizations that occur throughout his work; it also represents a boundlessly creative approach to the anime medium. Kon often blurred the line between reality and fantasy, and in PAPRIKA he addresses the world of dreams and its position in our worldview. The titular Paprika is the dream persona of a psychologist who enters patients' dreams to help guide their rehabilitation. Things get chaotic when someone steals a device that makes Paprika's dream-hopping possible and starts to use it for nefarious purposes. PAPRIKA successfully juggles a multitude of genres—it’s a horror movie, comedy, and psychological thriller at the same time. Kon, like a few of his contemporaries, recognized the similarities between cinema and dreams. Filmmakers like David Lynch and Apichatpong Weerasethakul are known for utilizing dream logic in their films, and Kon deserves to be mentioned in the same discussions about the close relationship between these two forms. In PAPRIKA, Kon recognizes that cinema has the power to manipulate and replicate dreams, and he questions the morality of cinema's ability to do so. Is it wrong to toy freely with dreams, places of purity and unbounded freedom and safe havens from the harsh reality that plagues our waking lives? Kon decides that, through cinema we can take the joy and freedom of our dreams and transplant them into our day-to-day lives for everyone to enjoy. Screening as part of the Staff Picks series. (2006, 90 mins, 4K DCP Digital Restoration) [Drew Van Weelden]

David Wain's WET HOT AMERICAN SUMMER (US)

The 400 Theater and the Alamo Drafthouse — See Venue websites for showtimes

Based on the director's personal experiences at Jewish summer camps, David Wain’s WET HOT AMERICAN SUMMER draws from '80s summer-camp comedies like MEATBALLS and summer-camp horror like SLEEPAWAY CAMP to portray a crash course in expertly interweaving modern humor and silliness. Wain co-wrote WET HOT with Michael Showalter, with whom Wain worked as part of the '90s comedy sketch team The State, a group represented by members of the large ensemble cast (Showalter, Joe Lo Truglio, and Ken Marino). Taking place over the last full day of camp in the summer of 1981, the film follows the counselors and staff of Camp Firewood as they navigate love, sex, stressful theatrical productions, and astrophysics. The cast includes Janene Garofalo, David Hyde Pierce, Molly Shannon, Paul Rudd, and Bradley Cooper, to name just a few of the many familiar faces (H. Jon Benjamin provides a familiar voice). WET HOT grounds moments of pure absurdity, overacting (Rudd’s performance stands out here), and fantasy with some of true sincerity; a friend of mine mentioned this movie as representing the cinematic representation closest to his own summer camp experiences. Wain parodies familiar 1980s film tropes in outrageous ways, including an incredible take on '80s montages, as camp cook and Vietnam vet Gene (Christopher Meloni) teaches counselor Coop (Showalter),how to dance for an audition for the camp’s talent show. The montage is set to an original song that perfectly mimics the inspirational rock songs of the period. The entire soundtrack is spot on—​for me, Jefferson Starship's "Jane" is synonymous with the film. While not a critical or financial success upon release, partially due to its distribution, WET HOT found its audience on cable and home video. It had two spin-off Netflix series in 2015 and 2017 with the original cast returning, one a prequel set on the first day of camp and the other catching up with the gang ten years later. (2001, 92 min, DCP Digital) [Megan Fariello]

Gregg Araki's SMILEY FACE (US)

The 400 Theater — Saturday, 2:15pm and Tuesday, 9:30pm

In Gregg Araki’s SMILEY FACE, Anna Faris is Jane F, an unemployed actress who accidentally ingests an excessive amount of pot-laced cupcakes that her roommate (Danny Masterson) left in the fridge and sets off an incredibly stoned misadventure to pay $384 back to her drug dealer (Adam Brody) before he takes all her furniture, including her beloved bed, as collateral. From the moment a neon screen appears to introduce the animated opening credits, you know you’re in for a whimsical tale. SMILEY FACE lives almost entirely in Jane’s head, and Faris is committed and deft as a woman wading through the world in a drug-induced haze. The comedy of the film comes from the exceedingly observant, albeit baked thought process that runs through her inebriated mind juxtaposed with the real world. Whether acting on paranoia, impaired cognitive function, or pre-existing stupidity, Jane can never get any interaction quite right. Nonetheless, she’s one of the most charming characters to cross the screen in the last two decades. Unambitious and endlessly spacey, Jane captures the humanity of figuring it all out as you go along, even if you might be a few steps behind. A follow up to his stunning, heart-wrenching, and exploratory coming-of-age sexual drama MYSTERIOUS SKIN (2004), SMILEY FACE must have been a much-needed change for Araki. He uses Dylan Haggerty's light-as-air script to experiment with form to comic effect. Sound effects, onscreen text, animation, overlays, rewinds, and dramatic cross-fades all serve as opportunities for humor. Akin to a live-action cartoon, the film has a pitch-perfect cinematic accentuation of whatever hijinks are occurring. The texture of the 35mm cinematography allows for a rich glow to wrap around every image, situating us within Jane's hazy, dreamlike state, though the film truly revolves around Faris. It is nearly constantly focused on her face or physicality, and when it's not, we await the reappearance of her goofy smile and half-lidded eyes. SMILEY FACE is a compulsively rewatchable and quotable romp with a punk edge, a slacker’s heart, and a stoner’s mind. And, perhaps most importantly, it is a love letter to bubbly, lovable-despite-it-all stoner girls everywhere who just really, really love their beds. (2007, 84 mins, DCP Digital) [Olivia Hunter Willke]

Andrzej Żuławski's POSSESSION (France/West Germany)

The 400 Theater — Saturday and Thursday, 9:30pm

Originally hacked down for American release to a schlocky—and downright absurd—ninety-minutes, POSSESSION has been restored to Zulawski's original cut in a new 4K digital restoration, showing in a new 35mm print. The added footage doesn't necessarily make the infamous tentacled-monster sex thing any less nuts, because it still is a shocking sight to behold. But its purpose is more nuanced and creepy when the film really goes off the rails. Drawing from his own divorce, Zulawski's film follows the collapse of Mark and Anna's marriage and the impossibility of Mark ever fully knowing, or possessing, his wife in love. Largely set in an apartment near the Berlin Wall, Mark is confronted with divorce and descends into severe depression. He emerges in a near-psychotic state intending to reclaim Anna and their son. He soon becomes aware of Anna's lover, but after confronting him, both men realize Anna is seeing someone—or something—else. Zulawski keeps the camera in almost constant motion, pushing in and pulling back during confrontations between Mark and Anna as their fights escalate to bloody moments that are somehow both expected and completely terrifying. In one scene, Anna grinds meat as Mark maniacally berates her. The noise of the kitchen rises with the tension and Anna, tired of the diatribe, takes an electric knife to her neck. Paired with scenes of their individual genuine tenderness toward their son, POSSESSION is filled with mirrors. Mark meets his son's school teacher, a benevolent doppelganger for his wife, and a double of Mark appears with Anna at the end. Even the setting is exploited for an otherworldly nothingness and an exactness in East and West Germany, itself perversely mirrored. The unrestrained acting—Anna thrashing hysterically could describe many scenes—adds to a heightened reality where Anna's possession is not demonic, but love can be. (1981, 124 min, DCP Digital) [Brian Welesko]

Gregg Araki’s I WANT YOUR SEX (US)

Music Box Theatre — See Venue website for showtimes

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

📽️ ALSO SCREENING

⚫ Alamo Drafthouse
Gideon Aroni’s 2025 film PURE SCUM (92 min, DCP Digital) screens Wednesday, 9:45pm, as part of the Weird Wednesday series. More info here.

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

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

⚫ Cinema/Chicago
Morii Yusuke’s 2024 film ROUTE 29 (120 min, Digital Projection) screens Saturday, 1pm, at the Chicago History Museum (1601 N. Clark St.), as part of Cinema/Chicago's Free Summer Screenings series. Free admission; note that tickets are sold out online, but a standby line will be available at the venue. 

Felix Herngren’s 2022 film DAY BY DAY (109 min, Digital Projection) screens Wednesday, 6:30pm, at the Chicago Cultural Center (78 E. Washington St.), also as part of Cinema/Chicago's Free Summer Screenings series. Free admission; note that tickets are sold out online, but a standby line will be available at the venue. More info on all screenings here.

⚫ Comfort Film at Comfort Station (2579 N. Milwaukee Ave.)
Johnny Lange’s 8 HOURS WITH SCOTT (65 min, Digital Projection) screens Wednesday at 8pm. More info here.

⚫ The Davis Theater
The Oscarbate Film Collective presents Trust Fall: The Oscarbate 5-Year Anniversary Show on Saturday at 7pm. More info here.

⚫ FACETS
Optical Noise presents Revisiting Desire: A Beth B Retrospective, a two-part program of the early film and video work of Beth B, on Friday, with program #1 at 6:30pm and program #2 at 9pm. A pre-recorded conversation between the filmmaker and Dr. Kirin Wachter-Grene will screen in between.

Olivia Wilde’s 2026 film THE INVITE (107 min, DCP Digital) screens Saturday at 4:30pm, Sunday at 5pm, and Thursday at 9pm as part of the Must-Watch Indies series. The Thursday screening will be followed by a talkback with Angelica Jade Bastien.

Special advance screenings of Annapurna Sriram’s 2025 film FUCKTOYS (106 min, DCP Digital) are on Saturday at 6:30pm and 9:30pm and on Sunday at 7:30pm. Please note that all screenings are sold out.

Sweet Void Cinema presents a screenwriting workshop on Wednesday from 6pm to 9pm in the Facets Studio. More info on all screenings and events here.

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

⚫ Music Box Theatre
Jane Schoenbrun’s 2026 film TEENAGE SEX AND DEATH AT CAMP MIASMA (112 min, 35mm) begins and Alysa Nahmias's 2026 documentary COOKIE QUEENS (89 min, DCP Digital) and Christopher Nolan’s 2026 film THE ODYSSEY (172 min, DCP Digital) continue. See Venue website for showtimes.

Music Box of Horrors presents Addison Heimann’s 2025 film TOUCH ME (99 min, Unconfirmed Format) on Friday and Saturday at Midnight.

CatVideoFest 2026 (70 min, DCP Digital) screens Saturday and Sunday at 11:30am and Monday at 7pm.

Jodi Wille’s 2023 documentary WELCOME SPACE BROTHERS (101 min, DCP Digital) screens Tuesday, 7pm, with Wille and producer Caryn Capotosto in attendance for a post-show Q&A. This screening is free for Music Box members.

The Unariun Brotherhood’s 1980 “DIY sci-fi lodestone” THE ARRIVAL (54 min, DCP Digital) screens Wednesday at 6:30pm, preceded by a 30-minute “Unarius Mixtape.” More info on all screenings here.

⚫ Siskel Film Center
Karim Aïnouz’s 2026 film ROSEBUSH PRUNING (95 min, DCP Digital) begins screening. See Venue website for showtimes.

Kleber Mendonça Filho’s 2012 film NEIGHBORING SOUNDS (131 min, DCP Digital) screens Friday at 6pm; Saturday at 2pm; Monday at 6pm; and Wednesday at 5:45pm, as part of the 25 For 25 series, revisiting standout titles from the Siskel's State Street history.

Jacques Tati’s 1971 film TRAFFIC (96 min, DCP Digital) screens Friday at 8:30pm; Saturday at 11:30am; Monday at 6:15pm; and Tuesday at 8:30pm, as part of the Vroom, Screech series.

National Theatre Live presents the Stephen Daldry-directed production of The Audience (2013, 150 min, DCP Digital) on Saturday at 11am and Sunday at 2pm. More info on all screenings here.

⚫ Uprising Theater and Cafe (2905 N. Milwaukee Ave.)
Brett Sullivan's 2026 film HADESTOWN: THE MUSICAL (141 min, Digital Projection), a live theater capture of the Broadway musical, screens Friday and Saturday at 4:15pm and and Sunday at 11am and 1:40pm.

Lee Kirk's 2026 film NIMRODS: A GREEN DAY COMEDY (102 min, Digital Projection) screens Friday at 7pm and 9:15pm; Saturday at 7pm; and Sunday at 4:20pm and 6:30pm. More info on all screenings here.

MANAGING EDITORS // Ben and Kat Sachs

CONTRIBUTORS // Kian Bergstrom, Maxwell Courtright, John Dickson, Ray Ebarb, Megan Fariello, Ben Kaye, Doug McLaren, Drew Van Weelden, Brian Welesko, Olivia Hunter Willke, Darnell Witt