:: FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 13 - THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 19 ::

📽️ CRUCIAL VIEWING

Cecil B. DeMille's UNION PACIFIC (US)

Music Box Theatre – Sunday, 11:30am

The construction of the transcontinental railroad in the 1860s is given the robust, spectacular Cecil B. DeMille treatment in this big-budget historical epic. The director, aptly described by the New York Times as the "P.T. Barnum of the movies—a showman extraordinary," was in the midst of a prolific and profitable Paramount Studios period in which costume dramas became his specialty. UNION PACIFIC (1939) mostly falls in line with the rest. Train robberies, mountain wrecks, buffalo stampedes, and Indian battles. Millions of dollars spent in production and millions more gained at the box office. Much like the ambitious railroad itself, the film wholly endorses a heroic American vision of progress and profit and renders any criticism absent or impotent. It depicts a nation largely united, flexing its muscles and waving the flag as the empire stretches out against the land. There are a few villains, to be sure: striking workers, Indians fighting displacement, and shady politicians. But they're valiantly put down by rail cop Jeff Butler (Joel McCrea), love interest Mollie Monahan (Barbara Stanwyck), and her fellow suitor Dick Allen (Robert Preston). It's perhaps no surprise that DeMille went on to become one of Hollywood's leading anti-Communist crusaders in the 1950s, while directing his two last, and most celebrated, films, THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH (1952), and THE TEN COMMANDMENTS (1956). Screening as part of the Working Girl: The Films of Barbara Stanwyck series. (1939, 133 min, 35mm) [Martin Stainthorp]

Douglas Sirk's WRITTEN ON THE WIND (US)

Chicago Film Society at the Music Box Theatre – Tuesday, 7pm

On their bright, Technicolor surfaces, the films of Douglas Sirk can appear as so many reiterations of the well-worn genre of the classical Hollywood melodrama. Lush domestic interiors, weeping women, maudlin mothers, betrayal, and heartbreak all make their obligatory appearances; all are familiar markers of a predictable narrative structure that will inevitably deliver the triumph of heterosexual union and affirm the solidity of the patriarchal family. This, however, is only the proverbial tip of the iceberg, with vicious currents stirring underwater. WRITTEN ON THE WIND, undoubtedly one of Sirk's strongest films, demonstrates precisely why the director underwent significant critical reevaluation in the 1970s, leaving behind a reputation of glitz and fluff to become the darling of cinephiles, feminists, and Fassbinder alike. Working within and against the conventions of genre, Sirk's over-the-top excess forces the recognition of fissures and cracks that lurk within the dominant ideology the film superficially endorses. The glossiness and artificiality of Sirk's surfaces gives way to a complex meditation on the contradictions of gender, class, and sexuality. Dave Kehr sees the film as "a screaming Brechtian essay on the shared impotence of American family and business life... that draws attention to the artificiality of the film medium, in turn commenting on the hollowness of middle-class American life." The film stands as an excellent introduction to Sirk for those unfamiliar, but repeat viewings do not disappoint: as Pedro Almodóvar said, "I have seen WRITTEN ON THE WIND a thousand times, and I cannot wait to see it again.'' Preceded by George Kuchar's 1965 masterpiece HOLD ME WHILE I'M NAKED (15 min, 16mm). (1956, 99 min, 35mm) [Erika Balsom]

Sydney Pollack’s THEY SHOOT HORSES, DON’T THEY? (US)

Block Cinema (at Northwestern University) – Thursday, 7pm [Free Admission]

Despite the name, dance marathons of the 1930s were not athletic competitions but a highly managed form of traveling entertainment. Partners comprised a mix of first-timers, veterans who followed the marathons from town to town, and professional plants; the object was to sustain the spectacle, and hence public interest, for as long as several weeks or months. With small meals served standing up perhaps a dozen times a day, competitors were often better fed than those fending for themselves in Depression-era America, and the grueling gauntlet served as a kind of grim diversion from a grimmer reality outside, with the slender hope of a cash prize at the end. Robert McCoy’s 1935 novel They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?, a kind of carnivalesque Camus set at one such marathon, found little appreciation until its 1969 screen adaptation, for which star Jane Fonda had to be talked into the part by first husband Roger Vadim; the book was better known in Europe than Stateside. Michael Sarrazin plays the drifter cast as her partner, while other contenders include Bonnie Bedelia, Bruce Dern, Susannah York, Robert Fields, and Red Buttons. (The role of round-the-clock ringmaster went to Gig Young, whose biographical arc from Oscar to oblivion provides another sordid shiver of recognition.) Like his friend John Frankenheimer, director Sydney Pollack was a product of the television boom of the 1950s, and a former actor who had branched out to helm episodes of The Defenders, The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, and Kraft Suspense Theatre. TV impresarios like Defenders creator Reginald Rose (and Rod Serling, for whom Pollack had played a theatre director, one of his early screen credits, in a Twilight Zone) advanced the medium as an instrument of social cohesion, addressing topics of racial discrimination, abortion, and criminal justice in weekly teleplays. THEY SHOOT HORSES, DON’T THEY? suggests the dance marathon as an analogous negative phenomenon, providing the masses with a long-running series starring a self-replenishing ensemble of pitiable, deluded dreamers, proving that some other sucker always has it worse. McCoy’s choice to set the story in Santa Monica further contrasts the marathons with the nearby mirage of Hollywood glamour, a symbiotic relationship in which prestige and desperation feed each other to sustain the entertainment industries with willing new flesh. The picture has influenced everything—from NASHVILLE (1975) to Suzanne Collins’s novel The Hunger Games and the Gilmore Girls episode where Dean and Rory break up—despite a bleakness which should not be mistaken for hollow shock tactics; the story finally reveals itself as a parable of moral confusion, with Sarrazin’s blank gaze substituting for the impressionable viewer who mistakes the industry’s worst excesses of exploitation for the law of the natural world. (1969, 120 min, 16mm) [Brendan Boyle]

Mike de Leon’s KISAPMATA (Philippines)

Siskel Film Center – Saturday, 6pm; Monday, 6:15pm; and Tuesday, 6pm

Mike de Leon and his cowriters based KISAPMATA on a true crime story from the early 1960s, yet the film has been widely read as an allegory for the Philippines’ era of martial law, which lasted from 1972 to 1981. Audiences around the world saw in this story of domestic tyranny a microcosm of Philippine society, with its climate of terror and fear; as the film’s Ferdinand Marcos stand-in, Vic Silayan gives a scarifying performance for the ages. KISAPMATA tells the story of Mila, a young woman who lives in Manila with her retired police officer father and homemaker mother. At the beginning of the film, Mila announces to her parents that she’s pregnant and intends to marry her coworker Noel. Her parents agree to the marriage, but her father (who seems from his first shot like someone you wouldn’t want to cross paths with) insists that Noel moves in with them immediately after the wedding. KISAPMATA unfolds over the next couple of months as Mila and Noel endure the father’s increasingly strict rules and obsessive, dictatorial behavior. De Leon succeeds in establishing sympathy for the newlyweds right away, so you suffer vicariously with them. Indeed, the film can be excruciating to watch—the father is so domineering with the people around him that it can feel like the air is closing in around you. At the same time, de Leon and Silayan recognize the humanity in this character, provide him with a modicum of paternal concern, so that the father often comes across as pathetic in his need for control. The film is astute in its recognition of behavior common to most tyrants and bullies—note how the father plays the victim whenever someone tries to stand up to him or how he always tries to convince the people he tyrannizes that they need him. Is KISPAMATA a horror film masquerading as a character study or the other way around? (1981, 99 min, New 4K DCP Digital Restoration) [Ben Sachs]

Mira Nair's MISSISSIPPI MASALA (US)

Film Studies Center (at the University of Chicago) – Friday, 7pm [Free Admission]

Featuring one of the truly outstanding onscreen romances, Mira Nair’s MISSISSIPPI MASALA is also a multifaceted film about race. After their forced expulsion from Uganda by the dictatorship of Idi Amin, Mina (Sarita Choudhury) and her Indian family end up settling in rural Greenwood, Mississippi. Here, she falls deeply in love with Black business owner Demetrius (Denzel Washington), but their relationship reveals prejudices from both their families and communities. Nair’s camera moves to highlight the deep connections and profound rifts between characters. The gorgeous cinematography lends itself to Choudhury and Washington’s chemistry, which is completely realized; this is evidenced by a scene early in their relationship when they’re on the phone and still their passion is palpable and so sincere. MISSISSIPPI MASALA is grounded in its detailed and charismatic characters. The film is also very much historically grounded, especially with regards to Mina’s father, Jay (Roshan Seth), and his relationship to his homeland of Uganda, a framing plot likewise about love and heartbreak that's interweaved throughout. MISSISSIPPI MASALA never shies away from complicated issues such as displacement, racism, and colorism and concurrently maintains its sweetness as a charming and sexy romance; it’s not a juxtaposition but rather an effective illustration by Nair of the complexities of these cultures and communities. (1991, 117 min, 35mm) [Megan Fariello]

Johnnie To’s THROW DOWN (Hong Kong)

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

Dedicated to Akira Kurosawa, Johnnie To’s THROW DOWN makes direct references to the Japanese director’s first film, SANSHIRO SUGATA (1943). Made during the midst of the SARS epidemic in Hong Kong, THROW DOWN is a touching film that acknowledges struggle and celebrates perseverance, featuring a down-on-their luck trio, each one searching for something. Bo (Louis Koo) is a club owner and former judo champion who’s drowning in gambling debts. He’s approached by Tony (Aaron Kwok), a current judo competitor looking to prove himself by fighting the best. Mona (Cherrie Ying) is an aspiring singer, eager at the chance to find some fame singing at Bo’s club: the After Hours Bar and Lounge. Bo and Mona’s enthusiasm draws Bo into a journey of redemption and determination, set against the underground night scene of Hong Kong. To uses pops of bright neon color which constantly splits the blue-gray dark of the city. Lights spill onto characters like spotlights, especially in the bar scenes. THROW DOWN also features a lot of music, with characters performing at the bar and a score that shifts between orchestral arrangements and jazz. The lighting and dreamy use of music creates some fantastical moments; the film is staged at times like a classic Hollywood musical. At one point the camera spins around the three protagonists, as each holds a conversation at an adjacent table before they all come together at one, their overlapping individual stories reflected in the cycles. Also notable is the repeated imagery of games and toys. A few key sequences take place in an arcade, and, most notably, there is a scene in which the three wordlessly and playfully work together to get a red balloon unstuck from a tree. The balloon scene reflects the film’s overall themes and how it can feel both powerful and childish to let go, ask for help, and start over. Screening as part of the Revolution of Their Time: 30 Years of Milkyway Image series. (2004, 96 min, DCP Digital) [Megan Fariello]

Sarah Maldoror's SAMBIZANGA (Angola/France)

Siskel Film Center – Wednesday, 6pm

The vexation of Kafka joined with the ferment of colonialism, Sarah Maldoror’s SAMBIZANGA—the first film produced by a  Lusophone African nation, by some accounts the first feature to have been directed by a woman in sub-Saharan Africa, and the prolific Marxist filmmaker's second feature—is especially unnerving as it deals in the real-life terror of subjugation. Set in the titular village of Luanda (the capital city of Angola), the film follows the sudden arrest of Domingos, a manual laborer, on suspicion of being part of a covert resistance movement against the Portuguese colonialists; it also concerns his wife Maria as she tries to discover what’s happened to him, navigating a Trial-esque bureaucracy with their baby son fastened to her back. SAMBIZANGA was adapted from José Luandino Vieira’s 1961 novella The Real Life of Domingos Xavier by Maldoror, her partner Mário Pinto de Andrade (a founder of the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola [MPLA], as well as its first president), and French novelist Maurice Pons. The story navigates between Domingos’ detention and Maria’s journey, with suggestions of the larger anti-colonialist liberation movement interwoven amidst them, showing how whisper networks of subversion facilitate the larger, eventual rebellion. Maldoror’s background is as varied as it is impressive. The daughter of a French mother and Guadeloupean father, born in southwestern France, she studied drama in Paris, where she was one of the founding members of Les Griots, a troupe of African and Afro-Caribbean actors. She later studied film in the Soviet Union under the tutelage of Mark Donskoy at the Moscow Film Academy, overlapping with Senegalese filmmaker Ousmane Sembène during his time there. In SAMBIZANGA, she adroitly communicates information in tandem with the narrative, resulting in something that edifies the curiosity of outsiders and immerses all spectators in the narrative trajectory. At the beginning of the film, a sheath of text augurs a real-life uprising that took place on February 4, 1961 in Luanda, when “a group of militants set out from Sambizanga… intending to storm the capital's prison. At the same time, they gave the signal for the armed struggle for national independence that has engulfed Angola ever since.” Domingos and Maria’s trials come to represent that which spurs the eventual uprising, which is fueled by the poverty and exploitation thrust upon them by the colonialist interlopers—a justifiable resentment patiently nurtured until the clandestine became justly impudent. Shot in the People’s Republic of the Congo, the film is not just a testament to the Angolan liberation movement of which the MPLA was a significant part but to the spirit of Pan-Africanism in general; Maldoror sees in various locales around the continent a common goal that transcends geography. That’s evident in the casting as well: primarily working with amateurs (with the exception of French actor Jacques Poitrenaud, who plays the white authority figure who tortures Domingos), Maldoror recruited Domingos Oliveira, an Angolan exile working in the Congo, to appear as the character of the same name, and Cape Verdean economist Elisa Andrade, who appeared in Maldoror’s 1968 short MONANGAMBÉ, plays Maria. Filmically it’s a stunning work, the expressive cinematography lending additional contours and its soundtrack another layer of emotional depth to the characters and thus the country’s harrowing struggle. Screening as part of the African Cinema from Independence to Now Lecture series. (1972, 97 min, DCP Digital) [Kat Sachs]

Éric Rohmer’s THE AVIATOR’S WIFE (France)

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

When you watch the films of Claude Chabrol, you can tell right away that he cowrote the first book-length critical study of Alfred Hitchcock. When you watch the films of that book’s co-author, Éric Rohmer… well, not so much. THE AVIATOR’S WIFE, however, is the exception that proves the rule, a movie that revisits some of Hitchcock’s favorite themes and motifs (doubling, surveillance, the limits of knowledge) and puts them in the service of a romantic comedy. François (Philippe Marlaud, who died in a tragic accident shortly after the film was released) is a young man of 20; he works nights at the post office and takes college classes by day. He’s also somehow involved with a beautiful 25-year-old named Anne (Marie Rivière, in the second of her four films with Rohmer). Anne had been involved with a married airline pilot, Christian, but shortly after the movie starts, he drops in on her to tell her his wife is pregnant and he has no intention of renewing the affair. Walking by, François sees Anne and Christian leave her building together just after Christian has broken things off. Like many a Hitchcock hero, François is left unaware of key developments that the director shares with the audience; he spends a good deal of the rest of THE AVIATOR’S WIFE snooping on Christian, hoping to get some dirt on him or at least find out if he’s still seeing Anne. While fumbling at his detective work, François catches the eye of a curious 15-year-old named Lucie, who strikes up a conversation with him and in moments decides to join him on his quest. If this were a Hitchcock movie, François and Lucie would likely fall in love over their mutual curiosity, but Rohmer has other things in mind for his characters. The film culminates with the reunion of François and Anne, who go through an emotionally messy encounter in her studio apartment that finds her doing most of the talking. This development—or rather, the autonomy and eloquence that Rohmer grants to Anne—marks a sharp turn away from the male-narrated Six Moral Tales that the director made in from the 1960s to the early 1970s. THE AVIATOR’S WIFE marked the beginning of Rohmer’s second series, called Comedies and Proverbs, that made up most of his 1980s output. For Dave Kehr, writing about the film in 1982, the difference between the two series lay in Rohmer’s shit to “a subjectivity that moves from one character to another, giving them all a greater degree of freedom, more room to improvise, more contradictory and complex humanity.” He added, “The five-year spacing of the ages, and the discrete psychological stages the four main characters fall into—Lucie’s open flirtatiousness, François’ moody romanticism, Anne’s uncertainty, and Christian’s newfound domesticity—suggest a very rigid kind of schematization. But there’s no trace of it in Rohmer’s superbly languorous understated direction. When there’s this much understanding of behavioral detail—the small, circuitous ways in which people move from point A to point B—the fixed, hard points of plot and structure no longer stand out; they’re subsumed by character.” Screening as part of the City Serendipity series. (1981, 106 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]

📽️ ALSO RECOMMENDED

Optical Noise presents Jon Moritsugu's TERMINAL USA and MOD FUCK EXPLOSION (US)

FACETS – Friday, 7pm (TERMINAL) and 9pm (MOD)

More movies like this should be funded by American taxpayer money. No question. Please, raise my taxes 20% if it means more movies with characters named Fagtoast. Or filled with people like Marvin, a seemingly perfect, straight-A model minority son who secretly calls gay sex chatlines and masturbates to skinhead beefcake pin-up porn. Films where the only normal person is the protagonist Kazumi, the punk rock fuck-up who hates everything because everything is worth hating. While many films attempt transgressiveness, TERMINAL USA (1994, 54 min, DCP Digital) couldn't be palatable if it tried. Honestly, it's barely consumable to even the most degenerate scumbags. This is a film where a "wholesome" family happily waits for Grandpa to die so they can cash out his legal claim for being exposed to deadly chemicals at work. Where the only possible happy ending involves potential child sex trafficking. Total scumbag stuff. But even with a crudity that is almost offensive in its mere existence, TERMINAL USA takes on 20th-century Americana with a vitriol that needs absolutely no metaphor in order to land. Directly skewering the ahistorical American nuclear family tropes invented by 1950s-'70s American mass-media culture, Moritsugu throws in the cultural blowback that was '80s American hardcore punk culture (is this the only use of seminal DC cult band Void in a narrative film?) as counterweight to the prevailing idea that cultural order had been somehow restored by Ronald Reagan and f(r)iends. But everything is fair game to Moritsugu. So, while whitewashed Americana is an easy target, he takes equal aim at immigrant/ethnic minority culture, both its perception by the white majority and the lived experience of the groups themselves. And guess what? He's fed up with all that bullshit too. When you hear the father complaining about getting yet another death threat with the dialogue, "Jeez, I can't believe they still think I'm a chink. I am not a chink. I'm a Jap. We are Japs. Chink is not the same as Japanese. Big, big difference," you realize that underneath all the fuck-you sleaze and debauchery, TERMINAL USA actually has some surgically precise critique happening. I'm not Asian, but this scene hit me hard the first time I saw it. I could relate as a Latino growing up in the '80s and being called a beaner and my immigrant family saying, "...but you're not Mexican, you're Cuban-Colombian. Can't they tell the difference?" No, they can't. And even if they could, they wouldn't care anyway. Also, you apparently don't actually care that they hate people just like us; you're just hoping they don't hate us specifically. Moritsugu knows the fundamental truth about America: everybody is absolutely fucked up and only looking out for themselves. It'd be easy to call this a pointless exercise in nihilism by a piece of wet gutter trash who conned PBS (and therefore the American taxpayers) into writing him a check, but that would be embarrassingly dismissive. A quick scan of Moritsugu's background, with his Ivy League education in semiotics and critical theory, absolutely belies TERMINAL USA's patina of disgusting ineptitude. This is true punk rock subversion. An exercise in calculated extremity. And just like the Ramones, our godfathers of punk, TERMINAL USA may be dumb, but far from stupid—and could have been made only in the good ol' US of A. Introduced by Dr. Kirin Wachter-Grene, Associate Professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, who will also lead a post-screening discussion following the film. [Raphael Jose Martinez]
---
MOD FUCK EXPLOSION (1994, 67 min, DCP Digital) is among the great films about teenagers, an avant-garde masterpiece that breaks taboos and tests audience members' patience in equal measure. It's the story of disaffected teenager London (Amy Davis, Moritsugu's longtime muse and partner) mooning around listlessly, bemoaning her meaningless life, against a backdrop of pending war between a Japanese biker gang (led by Moritsugu) and a gang of Mods. She wants a leather jacket; she wants to lose her virginity; she wants to know what it all means. The closest she gets to any of that is with M16 (Desi del Valle), an androgynous Sal Mineo type who sometimes calls her to read horrific stories from the newspaper. The dominant mode is a sort-of satire of corporate movies about earnestly moody teenage angst: WEST SIDE STORY is the easy choice, but it exists alongside aspects of REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE, THE WILD ONE, and any number of featureless 1950s and 60s (and 1990s and 2000s) angry-teenager movies. A lot of it is loud and obnoxious and amateurish by design; the camera is too far away from the actors, the lighting is inadequate so the scenes are murky, it looks like the film was developed in a urinal, and the dialogue is a distracting mix of post-sync and location sound, often in the same scene. The actors stand around awkwardly, delivering their lines about youth and despair in loud, bored voices. But don't let any of this fool you: Moritsugu knows what to do with a camera, how to use limited lighting in evocative ways, how to work magic with his grainy 16mm stock. He throws in shots of delicate beauty that come and go so abruptly that it's almost like he's winking at the audience before going back to spitting in their faces. He's also a brilliant satirist; I know I haven't laughed so hard this year as I did during a scene where London flips through her record collection, cataloging records by invented bands like Dildo and Shit-Matrix according to their resale value like a hipster on Record Store Day. Other portions are sweetly disarming, like a scene when London and androgynous gang leader M16 are bragging about imagined sexual experiences. The soundtrack, apparently recorded for the film by punk bands Unrest and Karyo Tengoku, is an unheralded masterpiece that slyly comments on the film. I'm emphasizing these fleeting, beautiful things because it would be very tempting to miss them or discount them in the often-nonsensical swirl of violence, bad acting, profanity, deliberate offense, and enervating pacing that sometimes surrounds them. I suspect that Moritsugu is an incredibly talented filmmaker who can do just about anything he wants, and this is what he wanted to do—all of it. [Michael W. Phillips Jr.]

Jean-Luc Godard’s HAIL MARY (France/Switzerland/UK)

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

HAIL MARY was personally condemned by Pope John Paul II, and Jean-Luc Godard made a point of noting this in the film’s ad campaign; however, both the condemnation and Godard’s cheeky response seem out of keeping with the film itself, which is one of the director’s most probing and sincere works. HAIL MARY imagines an immaculate conception taking place in contemporary western Europe, with the mother being a relatively ordinary adolescent. Godard’s Marie is a young woman of roughly 18; her parents own a gas station, her boyfriend Joseph drives a taxi, and she plays on her high school basketball team. One day, Marie receives divine signal that she’s pregnant, even though she’s barely allowed Joseph (or any other man) to touch her. Godard depicts her epiphany in modernist fashion, shifting from Marie to the sound and then image of an airplane taking off, then following that with a breathtaking shot of a sunset accompanied by a blast of symphonic music (the score consists of excerpts from Bach and Dvořák). As with much of the filmmaker’s post-‘70s work, HAIL MARY shows Godard finely attuned to the beauty of the natural world; the frequent cutaways to lakes and skies invoke the serenity of Creation, which stands in contrast to the violence of Marie’s internal transformation. Godard’s depiction of the latter is what got the film in hot water, as Marie is often nude when she contemplates her soul and her desire to break free of her corporeal form. Yet these scenes would strike only the most reactionary viewer as pornographic. Like in PASSION (1982), Godard is striving to connect cinema with the enduring beauty of classic paintings, many of which consider the human form in the nude. He’s also dealing with the very nature of having a body, as distinct from having a soul. HAIL MARY amounts to a rather personal exploration of Christian morals in particular and religious faith in general, with many of the conversations revolving around whether other characters can believe that Marie is pregnant and still a virgin. “The cinema, like Christianity, isn’t founded on historical truth. It gives us one account of the story and asks us to believe it,” Godard later said in HISTOIRE(S) DU CINÉMA, and HAIL MARY marks a serious exploration of what it means to live with such unwavering belief. (1985, 79 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]

Luchino Visconti’s CONVERSATION PIECE (Italy/France)

Siskel Film Center – Saturday, 2pm and Monday, 6pm

Even when making a chamber drama, Luchino Visconti was the most opulent director on the block. CONVERSATION PIECE, the Italian master’s penultimate film, never leaves the confines of a two-story palazzo in Rome, but Visconti shot it in widescreen anyway, and the frames are still overflowing with detail. Burt Lancaster stars as a retired professor who spends his time collecting paintings and books; he also lives among his collection, making his apartment something like a private museum. Unmarried and friendless, he barely leaves his apartment or develops relationships with other people until his lawyer convinces him to rent the upstairs apartment to the estranged wife of a far-right industrialist, her teenage daughter, and the wife’s paid companion, a younger man named Konrad. Helmut Berger, Visconti’s muse in THE DAMNED (1969) and LUDWIG (1973), plays Konrad, and the mutual fascination that develops between him and the introverted professor has been described as a reflection of the director’s relationship with the actor. The film has also been described as Visconti’s working-through of his ambivalent feelings about Italy’s tumultuous political climate of the 1960s and ‘70s. Konrad, the film reveals, had been a leading figure in the student movement of 1968 before he fell into partying and drugs; his new career as a gigolo (and in the service of a Countess, no less) marks the complete disavowal of his ideals. The wife, on the other hand, is portrayed as a monster from the get-go—she doesn’t seem to have had any ideals to begin with. The professor ends up forming personal connections with all of his new neighbors, perhaps in spite of himself, and his effort to find feelings for others before it’s too late in life makes for poignant drama. Lancaster’s finely etched performance (a sort-of inversion of his work in Visconti’s THE LEOPARD [1963]) goes a long way in establishing the elegiac tone, though the widescreen compositions comprise the film’s most brilliant touch. Setting these petty souls against centuries of enduring art and literature, Visconti seems to ask, “What good is all this culture if you can’t appreciate the life it reflects?” (1974, 121 min, New 4K DCP Digital Restoration) [Ben Sachs]

Luis Buñuel’s THE PHANTOM OF LIBERTY (France/Italy)

Alliance Française de Chicago (Enter via 54 W. Chicago Ave.) – Monday, 6:30pm

“Chance governs all things; necessity, which is far from having the same purity, comes only later,” Luis Buñuel wrote in his memoir, My Last Sigh (which I must note here that I purchased at the International Museum of Surgical Science gift shop on the occasion of having seen Buñuel’s ashes a few months ago, in conjunction with the Buñuel: Master of Dreams exhibition). “If I have a soft spot for any one of my movies, it would be for THE PHANTOM OF LIBERTY, because it tries to work out just this theme.” The memoir is riddled, also, with references to moments or ideas that eventually made their way into the film; as a result it’s extraordinarily personal whilst also still being absurdly surreal, knowingly intimate but also deliriously nebulous. A picaresque by way of the exquisite corpse parlor game, there’s no plot, per se, but rather a series of vignettes that segue one into another. Among its most memorable sequences, at least to me, are one at the beginning, during the Napoleonic occupation of Toledo in 1808, when a statue of a deceased nobleman moves its arm to wack a soldier on his head—this is the beginning of all the pandemonium; another toward the beginning (the previous scenario was being read in a book, then transitions to then-present-day Paris) wherein an old man gives two little girls a set of pictures, which are later revealed to be photographs of beautiful monuments, which her parents lament as being obscene (an excoriation of so-called “good taste”); another in a longer sequence that takes place in a roadside inn, where a couple stage a BDSM scene in front of, among others, a cadre of monks; a party that takes place largely at a table where the chairs are all toilets, and guests must excuse themselves to eat in a small, bathroom-like enclave; and when a mother and father report their daughter as having gone missing, despite her still being there (an idea he’d once randomly had). I’d liken this film to a charm—less discreet, more so literally discrete—bracelet or something similar, where all its individual parts have been collected—some souvenirs, some extraneous tokens—and assembled to form something that’s quite random but still beautiful, with a dangling sort-of cohesiveness. It was also conceived by Bunuel and his cowriter Jean-Claude Carrière by sharing their dreams every morning, more chiming of the amassed follies. Chance can certainly charm, providing instances of pleasure or humor; however it can also, and seems here mostly to, lead to undesirable outcomes. The overall sensibility is jovial yet sometimes pernicious (such as when a young man becomes sexually aggressive with his aunt), sometimes macabre (such as when a man shoots people from atop Paris's Tour Montparnasse). As is the case with surrealist work, it’s almost beguilingly straightforward in its messaging. The title announces it, that freedom—in life and all else—is an illusion, a bourgeois spectre that still yet grows pointlessly, like the hair of a dead woman from her casket. Despite the impact of these suggestions, there are still, as always with Buñuel, more questions than answers—there are no answers, really, and just endless questions. His penultimate film, THE PHANTOM OF LIBERTY is sandwiched between THE DISCREET CHARM OF THE BOURGEOISIE (1972) and THAT OBSCURE OBJECT OF DESIRE (1977); they’re often referred to as a trilogy of sorts (sometimes with THE MILKY WAY considered as another similar entry). If anything they all reflect an apex of inquisitiveness and reflection. To quote Gary Indiana in his 2004 essay on THE PHANTOM OF LIBERTY for Criterion, his final three completed films are “his most uninhibited, and his best-realized. Not every artist has the fortune to hit his highest pitch at the end of a career. But it’s evident in all the written residua . . . that Buñuel remained, all his life, insatiably curious about questions many people give up asking themselves long before reaching old age. He acquired wisdom, an unfashionable concept but a quality rather more libertine than those allergic to it imagine.” Meanwhile “Long live chains!” is the bookending refrain, at once irony and affirmation. In reality freedom might be but an illusion, chance the ultimate arbiter, but in one's imagination both that phantom can really come alive. The film stars, among others, Monica Vitti and Michel Piccoli. Screening as part of the February Fantastique Film Festival. (1974, 104 min, Digital Projection) [Kat Sachs]

Michael Almereyda’s NADJA (US)

Alamo Drafthouse – Tuesday, 9:30pm

Director Michael Almereyda shot key moments of NADJA on a toy PXL2000, or Pixelvision camera. Released in the late ‘80s, the camera had a revival in the ‘90s, liked by indie directors like Almereyda for its accessibility and distinct visual style. The Pixelvision scenes in NADJA center around vampires, switching into a fantasy horror mode unable to escape the video era. NADJA is filled with juxtapositions of classic vampiric elegance and ‘90s disaffectedness. Drawing on a slew of inspirations, from vampire novels and their cinematic adaptations as well as André Breton’s surrealist novel Nadja, the film imagines what a world full of vampires would look like in the ‘90s. After Count Dracula is staked through the heart, his daughter, Nadja (Elina Löwensohn), goes on a mission to collect the body and reconnect with her sick brother (Jared Harris). Along the way she seduces Lucy (Galaxy Craze), who’s married to Jim (Martin Donovan), the nephew of Van Helsing (Peter Fonda). Van Helsing, who has dedicated his life to tracking down Dracula and his children, enlists Jim’s help to track them all down. Shot entirely in black in white, NADJA feels in line with Abel Ferrara’s film of the same era, THE ADDICTION (1995); both feature vampire women waxing poetically about their circumstances as they wander the streets of New York. Cloaked and constantly smoking, Löwensohn’s Nadja is sophisticated, her words lyrical, and she’s strikingly presented against the urban setting. Her melodramatic presence, along with Van Helsing’s steadfast devotion to his mission, clashes with the low\-budget visuals, creating an oddball sense of humor throughout the film. Almereyda’s clashing use of visual style in combination with classic horror film references and a modern setting present a distinctive version of the vampire story. Its eccentric approach was not widely appreciated, even during production. Executive producer David Lynch ended up funding NADJA himself; he makes a cameo early in the film as a morgue attendant. Screening as part of the Terror Tuesday series. (1994, 93 min, DCP Digital) [Megan Fariello]

Jamie Blanks’ VALENTINE (US)

Music Box Theatre – Friday and Saturday, Midnight [Sold Out]

Jamie Blanks was raised on Ozploitation films; eventually he’d edit Mark Hartley’s NOT QUITE HOLLYWOOD, which is seen as the definitive documentary on Australian filmmaking through the ‘70s and ‘80s. Colin Eggleston’s LONG WEEKEND (1978) was foundational for him, a film he loved enough to remake. No masked boogeyman, no supernatural force, just consequence. That sensibility makes it almost ironic that Warner Bros. tapped him for a glossy holiday slasher. A 16mm short at Melbourne’s Swinburne Film School brought Blanks into the orbit of directors circling SCREAM (1996). He was sent the script for I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER (1997) and shot a trailer to prove himself. When that fell through, he was promised the next horror project, which became URBAN LEGEND (1998). His next project came as the script for VALENTINE, which was loosely adapted from Tom Savage’s 1996 novel. The book’s mystery writer protagonist was discarded; what remained were threatening Valentines and fragments of the killer’s perspective. Rather than lean into the post-SCREAM meta-horror trend, Blanks aimed for a straight-faced slasher, walking a narrow line between American slasher beats and giallo fatalism. VALENTINE was doomed from the start. The late-’90s cycle had already begun to sour. Columbine made studios leery of violence. SCARY MOVIE (2000) deflated the cycle and outperformed SCREAM 3 (2000) at the box office. A glossy revenge slasher set around Cherib masks, nosebleeds, and maggot chocolate was never going to thrive in that climate. And later that year, 9/11 would change the landscape of horror forever. Seen 25 years later, VALENTINE plays differently. Blanks opens with the inciting wound: awkward Jeremy Melton asking five junior high classmates—Shelley, Lily, Paige, Dorothy, and Kate—to dance. Each rejects him cruelly, except Kate. Dorothy briefly kisses him but, when discovered, claims he attacked her. The boys strip and beat him while the school laughs. Thirteen years later, those teens, now played by Katherine Heigl, Jessica Cauffiel, Denise Richards, Jessica Capshaw, and Marley Shelton, begin receiving Valentines. Then they begin dying. Red herrings are planted liberally, as Blanks stated he uses each male character to “show the myriad of toxic male characteristics by assigning one to each of the men.” Actively providing a glimpse into a world where unwanted sexual advances are so common, Richards’ character is desensitized and vigilant. Shelley goes on a date with third-person speaking Jason, Lily’s boyfriend Max creates dismemberment ads as a video installation art, Paige has multiple men harass her even the detective on the case, Dorothy welcomes a con man into her home, and Kate’s fair-weather sober alcoholic boyfriend Adam (David Boreanaz) round out the caricatures. There is also Scary Gary, who lives in Kate’s building. He would say it was fate to live next to Kate. One of them has waited thirteen years to exact his revenge. The killer, Jeremy Melton—whomever that may be, represents a mockup of what culture would later define as an Incel. Today, it’s easy to see the toxic masculinity, sexual harassment, and gaslighting for what it is. Women who said NO to a boy, are murdered one-by-one more than a decade later by a killer who just might get away with it. Because men still get away with it. It’s within these murky waters, the defeatism of a giallo surface. Blanks declares with authority that the monster wearing the mask is usually not the most frightening man in the room. There is one, meta-horror moment that stands out for fans of Buffy. Kate insists of Adam, “He’s no angel, but he’s not a murderer.” Twenty-Five years later, time has finally caught up to VALENTINE as it has become an honored annual tradition for most horror fans. Screening presented by Gaudy God. (2001, 96 min, 35mm) [Shaun Huhn]

Amanda Kramer’s BY DESIGN (US)

Music Box Theatre – See Venue website for showtimes

At the Sundance Film Festival premiere of Amanda Kramer’s latest cinematic curio, BY DESIGN carried with it a brief but tantalizing logline; “A woman swaps bodies with a chair, and everyone likes her better as a chair.” Kramer, in her own idiosyncratic way, has always been fascinated by the physical and emotional limitations of the human body, whether as a fragile vessel for entertainment and public consumption in GIVE ME PITY! (2022), or as a canvas to be imploded and reassembled to escape the confines of systemic gender roles in PLEASE BABY PLEASE (2022). It was only a matter of time, then, before this continued exploration of bodily autonomy—told through Kramer’s signature aesthetic gumbo of modern dance, garish aesthetics, and melodramatic performance—would find itself venturing into the world of magical realism via literal soul-switching transformation. Enter: the chair, a stunning piece of design—bright wooden features, curved arms, a sensible squeak when sat upon—that captures the eye of Camille (a daringly committed Juliette Lewis), a woman who seemingly has never felt jealousy towards any woman before, but feels a burning, passionate desire to be seen the way the world sees this damn chair. And so, a wish is granted, and our Freaky Friday But With Furniture narrative kicks off. With the aid of running narration from Melanie Griffith that evokes the tenderness and absurdity of a George Saunders short story, BY DESIGN turns this seemingly bizarre premise of interior design dramatics into something truly human, that universal itch to walk a mile in someone else’s shoes (or seat, I guess) providing the engine for Camille’s emotional journey, finally becoming “someone’s favorite thing,” if only for a fleeting moment. As the chair, Camille falls under the ownership of Olivier (Mamoudou Athie, giving a balletic fireball performance), a down-on-his-luck piano player who turns all his energy and attention into a life devoted to his new seated soulmate. Meanwhile, Camille’s body, a lifeless blob resting in her apartment, inexplicably becomes more open and available to the people around her, her literal nothingness providing a springboard for her nearest and dearest to project themselves upon. How depressing that in her very absence, Camille becomes the person her friends have always wanted her to be? Kramer fills the margins with a delicious ensemble cast, with the likes of Betty Buckley, Clifton Collins Jr., and the late Udo Kier providing texture to this world, alongside a soundtrack filled with soothing Gershwin and Irving Berlin covers, and the spaces not filled with monologue otherwise enveloped by dance. (Kramer has never met an interior emotion she couldn’t transform into a movement piece.) BY DESIGN is, fittingly enough, just like the stunning chair at its center: sleek, well made, familiar yet slightly off-kilter, and containing more beneath the surface than you could imagine. I know that I’ll never look at a chair the same way again. (2025, 92 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Kaye]

Paul Thomas Anderson's PUNCH-DRUNK LOVE (US)

The Davis Theater – Tuesday, 7pm

Paul Thomas Anderson made PUNCH-DRUNK LOVE after two major hits, BOOGIE NIGHTS (1997) and MAGNOLIA (1999), and before what many consider to be his greatest achievement, THERE WILL BE BLOOD (2007). Unlike those other three films, PUNCH-DRUNK LOVE stands somewhat oddly as Anderson's intensely stylized and anxiety-ridden attempt at a romantic comedy, as myopically focused on its main character as his other films arrange epic storylines and ensemble casts. Starring Adam Sandler in a role that marked a major departure from his juvenile and unhinged comedies, PUNCH-DRUNK LOVE stunned audiences at the time with Sandler's range and ability to portray a complex and sympathetic character, opening many doors for him to play later dramatic roles. Though it is, on the surface, a romantic comedy, it is also a P.T. Anderson film, upending and twisting those generic conventions with a masterful manipulation of tone, achieved through Jon Brion's unnerving and anxiety-inducing soundtrack, a focused and muted color scheme anchored by the bright blue suit worn throughout by Sandler's character, Barry Egan, and psychedelic sequences by visual artist Jeremy Blake. The absurd plot of PUNCH-DRUNK LOVE revolves around Barry’s loneliness and hair-trigger temper; he’s an incredibly shy man who is emotionally abused by his seven sisters and struggling to run a bathroom supply business. Supported by a talented cast— including Emily Watson as Barry's love interest, Lena, Philip Seymour Hoffman as a con artist who attempts to extort Barry for money after Barry calls a phone sex service run by Dean's girlfriend, and Mary Lynn Rajskub as the sister who introduces Barry to Lena—PUNCH-DRUNK LOVE solidly and steadily builds an atmosphere of dread, discomfort, and embarrassed laughter that genuinely surprises the viewer, both visually and sonically, when a breath of fresh air arrives in the form of a pure love affair between Barry and Lena. Though it was a box office disappointment at the time and considered by some critics at the time to be a mere palate cleanser after Anderson's more serious efforts, PUNCH-DRUNK LOVE has earned greater acclaim as time has passed. Like SLEEPLESS IN SEATTLE (1993), THE BANDWAGON (1953), and the films of Jacque Tati, to list just a few of Anderson’s points of reference, PUNCH-DRUNK LOVE exists as a strangely timeless, charming oddball of a film, and an underrated entry in the auteur's impressive canon. Though flawed—Lena's character could have been more exaggerated to bring dimension to her interest in Barry, for example—it is, like Anderson's other films, expertly executed. (2002, 96 min, New 4K DCP Digital Restoration) [Alex Ensign]

Lionel Rogosin’s COME BACK, AFRICA (South Africa/US)

Siskel Film Center – Sunday, 12pm

Filmed in secret under the guise of being a travelogue, Lionel Rogosin’s pioneering docufiction COME BACK, AFRICA is a testament to cinema’s role as witness. Though born into privilege (his father was a textile mogul), Rogosin—whose first film, ON THE BOWERY, he made to practice for this one—came back from serving in World War II vowing “to fight racism and fascism wherever [he] saw it.” This led him to South Africa, where he hoped to pull back the veil on apartheid. Rogosin was heavily influenced by Robert Flaherty and Vittorio De Sica, both of which are starkly evident. COME BACK, AFRICA is, like ON THE BOWERY, an almost perfect amalgamation of the modes those filmmakers were instrumental in refining—Rogosin’s use of non-actors and transformation of documentary realism into a rousing fiction still rooted in filmic verism. He spent more than a year researching in South Africa, talking to activists and writers such as Lewis Nkosi, Bloke Modisane, and Can Themba, all of whom wrote for DRUM magazine, helped to craft the film’s story, and appeared in it; he cast the film before he began writing it, using the performers and crews’ experiences to inform the narrative. The film centers on Zachariah, a young Zulu man who goes to Johannesburg (though he resides in Sophiatown, a poorer area outside the city, which was home to many notable South African cultural luminaries) to find work so that he can support his family back in their village. He starts in the gold mines, but in attempting to find better work must navigate the country’s Kafkaesque pass laws, which necessitate draconian oversight by the white, ruling class. In spite of that, he goes through several jobs, working in a house, at a garage, and in a restaurant, each presenting its own obstacles. Eventually his wife and children come to live with him; though the film is impactful in its depiction of apartheid South Africa, there are many moments of joy and camaraderie that undergird its revolutionary spirit. There are also blatant instances of this in the form of meetings and conversations centered on the political circumstances of Black South Africans in the apartheid state. (The film’s title is taken from the African National Congress’ slogan, “Mayibuye iAfrika!”) I mentioned Sophiatown above; one such luminary from there was Miriam Makeba, also known as Mama Africa, a well-known South African singer and activist. She appears in the film and performs a song. Rogosin later bribed officials to get Makeba out of the country so that she could appear with the film at the Venice Film Festival, which garnered her international recognition. Not for nothing, the distributor of the 2005 restoration, Milestone Films, declares COME BACK, AFRICA to be “one of the bravest and best of all political films.” It’s still alive with a fineness that’s neither didactic nor austere, but rather reflective of the good people in a bad situation. Screening as part of the African Cinema from Independence to Now Lecture Series series. (1959, 83 min, DCP Digital) [Kat Sachs]

Kahlil Joseph's BLKNWS: TERMS & CONDITIONS (US)

Siskel Film Center – Sunday, 5:15pm

“I know what you’re thinking… But this is not a documentary.” With this bit of cheeky onscreen text—hilariously presented with accompanying memes of a smiling Denzel Washington and a relieved Vivica A. Fox—Kahlil Joseph interrupts himself practically mid-sentence to extend an olive branch to his audience, letting us know that we are not, in fact, about to be subjected to two hours of droll, academic analysis. There are still hints of that sprinkled throughout Joseph’s expansive and purposely uncategorizable BLKNWS: TERMS & CONDITIONS, a film that dares to live and luxuriate in what acclaimed art curator Okwui Enwezor called "the space between the spectator and the work of art." Joseph’s imagery and artistry has been viewed by millions around the world, even if they don’t know his name, as he's collaborated on music videos and visual albums with the likes of Beyoncé, Travis Scott, and Kendrick Lamar, cementing his bona fides as an artist in direct conversation with some of the most influential Black performers of the day. Here, Joseph’s interests have led him to a grander project, using the Africana Encyclopedia—a massive text birthed from the ambitions of W.E.B. DuBois—as a jumping off point to interrogate Black history in four dimensions. Past, present, future, and even alternate realities are extrapolated and interrogated, “BLKNWS” itself popping up as a fictional in-universe news source and Tumblr page, an artistic corrective to re-center and reclaim Black and African culture in the larger diaspora. Joseph intentionally blurs and remixes the lines between reality and fiction, even evoking a charming quotation from Agnes Varda, “What is bad for cinema is the categories; this is real fiction, fake fiction, real documentary, fake documentary. This is a film.” Varda’s not alone as inspiration here, as Joseph’s work, with its intense montage spanning millennia and onscreen text both supporting and contrasting the images presented—recalls Chris Marker’s SANS SOLEIL (1983) and especially the late-career essay films of Jean-Luc Godard, all filtered through an unabashed contemporary Black lens, ancient artifacts and sculptures and cinema positioned alongside memes and TikToks and reality television. The barrage of montage is interspersed with fictional reenactments of the lives of DuBois and Marcus Garvey, alongside beautifully textured explorations of the Nautica, an epic, futuristic ocean vessel looking to retrace the Transatlantic Slave Route but in reverse (a homecoming-turned-luxury liner). Here, a young journalist explores the onboard TransAtlantic Biennale, a place for Black art to be reimagined and recontextualized, perhaps a direct reference to Joseph’s own presence in the art gallery space, where BLKNWS was seen in its early forms. There is certainly something of a museum quality to Joseph’s work; the film warrants intense dissection and analysis, but it could also be easily consumed in short bites by wandering travelers, something to be both memed and studied. This bold attempt at reconfiguring cinematic language and form positions Joseph as a talent to reckon with and watch; his eye for our current moment and what may come next makes him as exciting as any filmmaker out there. (2025, 113 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Kaye]

Andrei Tarkovsky's STALKER (USSR)

Siskel Film Center – Saturday, 5:15pm; Sunday, 2pm; and Thursday, 5:30pm

Loosely based on the Soviet novel Roadside Picnic by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, Tarkovsky's STALKER creates a decrepit industrial world where a mysterious Zone is sealed off by the government. The Zone, rumored to be of alien origin, is navigable by guides known as Stalkers. The Stalker of the title leads a writer and a scientist through the surrounding detritus into the oneiric Zone—an allegorical stand-in for nothing less than life itself—on a spiritual quest for a room that grants one's deepest subconscious wish. Tarkovsky composes his scenes to obscure the surroundings and tightly controls the audience's view through long, choreographed takes. Shots run long and are cut seamlessly. Coupled with non-localized sounds and a methodical synth score, sequences in the film beckon the audience into its illusion of continuous action while heightening the sense of time passing. The use of nondiegetic sounds subtly reminds us that this may be a subjective world established for the Stalker's mystical purpose. Where sci-fi films tend to overstate humanity's limitless imagination of the universe, Tarkovsky reappropriates the genre's trappings to suggest the cosmos' deepest truths are in one's own mind. STALKER posits—perhaps frighteningly—that, in this exploration of the self, there is something that knows more about us than we know ourselves. The writer and scientist, both at their spiritual and intellectual nadir, hope the room will renew their métier; the Stalker's purpose, as stated by Tarkovsky, is to "impose on them the idea of hope." But STALKER is a rich and continually inspiring work not for this (or any other) fixed meaning but rather for its resistance to any one single interpretation. Screening as part of the Lo-Fi Sci-Fi series. (1979, 163 min, DCP Digital) [Brian Welesko]

Martin Scorsese's RAGING BULL (US)

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

Trapped in a hospital bed, Martin Scorsese was at death’s door. After years of pushing his body through intense working hours, prescription drug abuse, and sacrilegious amounts of cocaine, the then-35-year-old suffered internal bleeding, boarding brain hemorrhaging. Years prior, Robert De Niro was handed Raging Bull, the memoir of one-time middleweight champion boxer Jake LaMotta. Notorious for letting opponents pulverize his body into a numb chunk of meat to the point of exhaustion, LaMotta drank heavily, beat his wives, and racked up a charge for allowing the prostitution of a 14-year-old girl at his club. By the release of his book, he was an out-of-shape entertainer with brain damage working rundown night clubs to feed himself, reciting Shakespeare and cracking Don Rickles-esque crowd work. Seeing Jake’s potential as a character, De Niro pitched the story to Marty. Occupied by his promising follow-up to TAXI DRIVER (1976), Scorsese was deep into production planning for a nostalgic musical revue, NEW YORK, NEW YORK (1977), convinced he'd secure his spot as one of the great American directors. Navigating a turbulent marriage and an affair with his lead actor, Liza Minelli, there was no time for others’ passion projects; besides, he had no interest in a sports movie, with little exposure to boxing growing up. DeNiro would persist over the next few years. When the musical was a critical and financial disaster, Scorsese could not believe it, having given his all. Pushing closer to the edge, Marty had a revolving door of girlfriends and drug habits. In 1978, he was taken to the emergency room for coughing up blood and collapsed at 109 pounds. Watching the tubes keeping him alive coming in and out of his body, he saw how far he’d fallen from the son of two garment workers in Little Italy, a boy who had fallen under the influence of a charismatic priest and at one point considered becoming a seminarian. He recounts, “I prayed. But if I prayed, it was just to get through those 10 days and nights. I felt [if I was saved] it was for some reason. And even if it wasn’t for a reason, I had to make good use of it.’” He realized his self-destructive tendencies could bring anguish to anyone in his orbit, including those he loved, just like LaMotta. Finally, the director was ready. De Niro and Scorsese began putting a draft together from LaMotta’s text, then they brought Paul Schrader to work on a draft. After Schrader handed in his work in under six weeks, Scorsese and DeNiro put their finishing touches on Schrader’s structure, adding their favorite scenes from the memoir. The studio’s first reaction was, “Why would you want to tell a story about a human cockroach?” The preproduction research for both director and actor serves as a template for contemporary filmmakers and actors. De Niro’s preparation for the role inspired an entire generation of actors looking to commit their entire body, a standard that has become its own acting school. Scorsese and designers attended boxing matches, studied boxing photography books for composition, consulted LaMotta and his former trainers for accuracy, and home movies for the family’s interpersonal relationships. Having lost a fight, De Niro’s Jake mutters, “I’ve done a lot of bad things, Joey. Maybe it’s coming back to me.” After dancing with death, Scorsese worked on RAGING BULL as if it were the last film he’d ever make. Borrowing from the great masters, he weaves the most graceful brutality of the latter 20th century put to celluloid. Hitchcock’s PSYCHO (1960) shower sequence served as template for Jake’s annihilation on the robes, followed by a shot of Ray’s glove taken from Samuel Fuller’s THE STEEL HELMET (1951). One of the first boxing films of the sound era to place the camera inside the ring, director of photography Michael Chapman (TAXI DRIVER, THE LAST WALTZ and AMERICAN BOY) and Scorsese play with frame rates within takes, flying the camera through the action, and relishing in all they have at their disposal. To add an extra layer to the period piece, the production chose black and white film stock. The great Thelma Schoonmaker cut the film; this was her first feature as editor. Together with the director, she elevated the work to a vicious level of grit violence. Famously, when asked how such a nice lady could edit such violent films (for Scorsese), she replied, “Ah, but they aren’t violent until I’ve edited them.” In all its barbarity and beauty, the film gives a naked depiction of humanity. It delivers a vision as complex as its subject. To call RAGING BULL one of the greatest movies of the 1980s is a misnomer. The level of experimentation and personal filmmaking could only fit in the realm of 1970s New Hollywood. Along with THE KING OF COMEDY (1982), LaMotta’s story received a greenlight during a golden age of American cinema, only to release during the postmortem of United Artists and the cinematic wasteland of studios. Artists’ work is often cited as therapeutic. RAGING BULL offers a new light, proving that it can also be the first step towards repentance of sins. As the film is viewed for a 4K restoration, we should keep in mind how much the director has accomplished over the years. In the decades since the film’s release, Scorsese has continued to uplift new voices in cinema through the World Cinema Project and educate through the Film Foundation. The now-80-year-old director has made it clear his penance for his early years is permanent. Screening as part of the Screen Play: Cinematic Visions of Video Games and Sports series. (1980, 129 min, DCP Digital) [Ray Ebarb]

Gina Prince-Bythewood’s LOVE & BASKETBALL (US)

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

Based on her own experiences, Gina Prince-Bythewood’s LOVE & BASKETBALL is an outstanding example of the romantic drama. A first feature, it’s also an impressive sports film and coming-of-age story; it elegantly combines all three genres, none overpowering the other, resulting in a grounded, modern film for the turn of the millennium. At a time, too, when women of color were so often limited to supporting roles in mainstream romantic films, LOVE & BASKETBALL’s personal perspective brings a multifaceted genuineness to its story and characters. This is especially true of Monica (Sanaa Lathan), whose goal since childhood has been to be a great basketball player. She and her family move to Los Angeles, where she meets her next-door neighbor, Quincy (Omar Epps). The son of a professional player, Quincy seems destined for success, while Monica faces more struggles and scrutiny as a female athlete. Broken into four quarters, the film covers Monica and Quincy’s often rocky relationship from childhood through to their professional careers. LOVE & BASKETBALL is truly dedicated to the ampersand in the title; neither element is more important than the other. This is especially true for Monica, who’s constantly told her tough attitude and obsession with the game isn’t appropriate. Her argumentative relationship with her stay-at-home mom (Alfre Woodard), as well as her more stable connection with her older sister (Regina Hall), and friendship with teammates all emphasize a subtle yet multidimensional examination of identity as a Black woman and an athlete. Monica, however, is also always consistent in her self-confidence, and the film is never more about her relationship than her figuring out what she wants for herself. Prince-Bythewood presents her scenes on the court as graceful and commanding, her athleticism and love for the game the focus. The romance between her and Quincy is ultimately all the more satisfying due to how truthfully the film features the everyday reality of balancing life. Screening as part of the Screen Play: Cinematic Visions of Video Games and Sports series. (2000, 124 min, DCP Digital) [Megan Fariello]

Michèle Stephenson's TRUE NORTH (US/Canada/Documentary)

Alliance Française de Chicago (Enter via 54 W. Chicago Ave.) – Thursday, 6:30pm

Former human rights attorney Michèle Stephenson masterfully weaves photographs, archival footage, and one-on-one interviews into TRUE NORTH a black-and-white documentary that retells the story of the 1969 student protest at Sir George Williams University (now Concordia), from the perspectives of the event’s Black participants and witnesses. The film shines light on a lesser-known center of the civil rights movement, Montreal, and examines more insidious forms of racism and xenophobia that entrenched Canada at the time. Against our current upswing of bigotry, this film proves to be glaringly timely. The incident, named “The Sir George Williams Affair,” began when several Black students accused a university professor of racially prejudiced grading. When the university refused to take the matter seriously, peaceful protest escalated into an occupation, and many participants faced grave consequences that lasted years into their lives. “Crossing borders—whether through forced migration, the pursuit of freedom, escape, or exile—lies at the heart of the Black diasporic experience.” Such is the epigraph that sets the tone. These movements of crossing, pushing, and transgressing not only emerge from the intimate interviews—almost always shot in a close-up to the dimly side-lit face—with the protest leaders or participants, a cohort composed of figures such as Dr. Norman Cook, Brenda Dash, Josette Pierre-Louis, Philippe Fils-Aimé, and Dr. Rodney John. Images also gain their poetic and metaphoric meanings when these movements are implied through archival footage of boats riding the waves, of dazzling sunlight through the leaves, of trains, of a shaky camera that has captured nameless Black people running, dancing, protesting, rejoicing. There’s a kind of powerful simplicity in Stephenson’s camera work and non-linear editing that galvanizes, not unlike the way Rosie Douglas—the Dominican international student and main leader of this occupation—spoke on TV, so concisely but eloquently, so on-target and without an extra word to spare. “I’m going to feast at the welcome table,” the refrain of one of civil rights movement’s anthems recurs throughout the film, leaving echoes that still reverberate today. Guests will enjoy complimentary Canadian beer and maple treats and a post-screening conversation with Madeleine Féquière, the Consul General of Canada in Chicago, Naeema Jamilah Torres, award-winning documentary filmmaker, and Colleen Duke, Senior Foreign Policy and Diplomacy Services Officer at the Consulate General of Canada in Chicago. (2025, 96 min, Digital Projection) [Nicky Ni]

Frank Capra's THE MIRACLE WOMAN (US)

Music Box Theatre – Saturday, 11:30am [SOLD OUT]

Frank Capra's THE MIRACLE WOMAN was one of only two films of his from the 1930s to lose money, and though this was later attributed to the film's censorship in Britain by their Board of Film Classification, it could also have been due in part to its initial critical reception. Critics at the time praised star Barbara Stanwyck's fiery opening monologue, in which she, as "Sister" Florence Fallon, takes a congregation to task after her priest father dies penniless and having recently been terminated from his position, but the film was largely criticized for opening on such a strong note, thus causing the rest of the film to simmer in comparison. Following Florence's impassioned outburst, the rest of the film details her decision to join forces with a con man and "punish" religious hypocrisy by fleecing those who attend her evangelical road show. She then meets John, a blind man who was previously shown as having decided not to commit suicide after hearing one of Florence's sermons on the radio. They soon fall in love, and Florence seeks to extricate herself from the con. Though the film is never as surprising or exciting as its vehement opening credo, it is exceptionally well written, and at times even genuinely humorous. It's based on the play Bless You Sister by John Meehan and Robert Riskin, which was inspired by evangelical superstar Aimee Semple McPherson, or "Sister Aimee" as she was more popularly known. Adapted to the screen by longtime Capra collaborator Jo Swerling, it's said to largely retain the play's witty dialogue and fast-paced narrative. Capra did compromise, though, by inserting the con man character (Bob Hornsby, played by Sam Hardy) and making Sister Florence appear to have been exploited rather than willfully complicit in the scheme. Perhaps decided upon in part because of objections raised by Harry Cohn, then head of Columbia Pictures, it eventually became Capra's greatest regret about the film that was largely forgotten until 1970, when it played in a retrospective sidebar at the New York Film Festival. According to Dr. James Robertson's book The Hidden Cinema: British Film Censorship in Action 1913-1972, "some forty years after the event Capra was to admit that he had pulled his punches over the film by shifting the blame for religious confidence tricksterism onto an unscrupulous promoter and away from the disillusioned evangelist." The film's script is nonetheless estimable with its earnest ruminations and smart romantic dialogue, and the performances more than seal the deal. Capra once called Stanwyck a "primitive emotional," a characteristic that's evident in the pulpit and out. David Manners proficiently characterizes John, subtly transforming him from suicidal cynic to romantic jokester against Stanwyck's more outwardly emotive portrayal. Despite Capra's regret over his concession, there's still some moral ambiguity left in both the film and Stanwyck's performance. As he recounted in his autobiography, "[Hornsby] cons Fallon into it. He gets wealthy. She becomes his flamboyant stooge. Did she or did she not believe those 'inspiring' sermons delivered in diaphanous robes, with live lions at her side? I didn't know, Stanwyck didn't know, and neither did the audience." Though Capra is now remembered primarily for films such as MR. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON and IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE, which are more conventionally constructed, THE MIRACLE WOMAN is two third-acts sandwiching a second, and altogether a delightful insight into the early careers of Capra and company. Screening as part of the Working Girl: The Films of Barbara Stanwyck series. Please note this screening is sold out. (1931, 90 min, DCP Digital) [Kat Sachs]

Kleber Mendonça Filho's THE SECRET AGENT (Brazil)

FACETS – Saturday and Sunday, 6pm

The films of Kleber Mendonça Filho unfold like novels, immersing viewers in the specificities of place while gradually revealing aspects of the principal characters that aren’t immediately apparent. They also abound in digressions and supporting characters, neither of which advance the plot so much as expand on it so that the world of the movie seems as rich as the one we inhabit. The richness of THE SECRET AGENT has a lot to do with how the film engages with Brazilian history. Mendonça Filho doesn’t confront the legacy of his nation’s military dictatorship head-on, but rather obliquely and circuitously, dramatizing how citizens lived under the terror of the period until that terror enters the foreground of the action. The story takes place mainly in 1977, at the height of the dictatorship; per a title card that comes near the beginning, this is a time of “great mischief,” one of several euphemisms for state-sponsored violence that arise during the film. Wagner Moura stars as a technical analyst who returns to his hometown of Recife after an unspecified time away. He wants to reconnect with his young son, who’s currently living with his maternal grandparents, but circumstances (also unspecified) keep the two from residing together. Mendonça Filho evokes a climate of fear and secrecy through his presentation of the intricate community networks that Moura’s character must navigate to stay safe in Recife. The writer-director also sometimes jumps forward a few decades to consider some young women in the present who are researching the character’s life, suggesting that Brazil is far from done with its culture of surveillance. These flash-forwards aren’t the only curveballs in THE SECRET AGENT, which also features a fascinating subplot about a human leg found in the body of a shark that’s washed up on the Recife coast (an event that coincides with the local popularity of JAWS) as well as a thorough account of how Recife’s police department functioned under dictatorship. The sheer volume of narrative detail recalls the films of Arnaud Desplechin, and Mendonça Filho adds to the complexity with his inspired direction, employing innovative widescreen compositions, unpredictable montage, and daring shifts in tone. Indeed, the film’s technical brilliance is so astonishing as to almost distract from the story, which is another way of saying that this towering achievement probably requires multiple viewings to reveal all it has to offer. Screening as part of the New Releases series. (2025, 160 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]

Park Chan-wook's NO OTHER CHOICE (South Korea)

FACETS – Saturday, 3pm and Thursday, 6:30pm

Neon, the distribution company handling the US release of NO OTHER CHOICE, put out an exquisite piece of PR: “On behalf of Director Park Chan-wook's new film, we are cordially inviting all Fortune 500 CEOs to a special screening of NO OTHER CHOICE. This is truly a film that speaks to our gracious executive leaders and the culture they have cultivated.” Whether any CEO accepted the invitation is beside the point—the provocation lands cleanly. NO OTHER CHOICE looks directly at the class that treats labor as an abstraction and asks them to sit with the human residue left behind. Audiences have embraced the film for its sharp wit and plainspoken clarity, recognizing themselves in its vision as the world lurches each day closer toward economic collapse. The film follows Man-su (Lee Byung-hun), a veteran paper-industry professional whose stable life implodes after an abrupt layoff during corporate restructuring. What unfolds is a slow erosion marked by repetitive job interviews leading nowhere, mounting debts, and quiet domestic compromises. Months stretch into a year. Man-su’s sense of dignity becomes increasingly bound to professional reinstatement, and his family home, formerly a symbol of personal history and stability, becomes a pressure cooker. Park shapes Man-su’s moral descent with procedural discipline. Routine governs the rhythm. Each decision emerges through deliberation, framed as practical problem-solving rather than impulse. Park’s labyrinthine tales of vengeance like LADY VENGEANCE (2005) are traded here for a straightforward logic. The tension at each moral quandary comes from recognition. Every step makes sense. And morality becomes another variable to manage. This framework traces back to Donald E. Westlake’s 1997 novel The Ax, a corporate satire that charts violence as career strategy. Park retains the architecture while reshaping the emotional terrain. Man-su is no longer alone inside his reasoning like the novel’s protagonist Burke Devore. The film places him within a family whose survival depends on shared silence and mutual implication. Responsibility spreads outward. Consequences echo inward. Glimpses of other laid-off workers provide a mirror for Man-su: men who have given up, workers who have been spit out and forgotten. Within Park’s body of work, NO OTHER CHOICE occupies a transitional space. His precision remains unmistakable: calibrated compositions, ironic musical cues, an enduring fascination with self-justifying ethics. Yet the film abandons the operatic violence of his other films like OLDBOY (2003), THIRST (2009), and THE HANDMAIDEN (2016). Violence here feels laborious and draining. Murder aligns with job hunting, interviews, and evaluations. It becomes another task to complete, another box to check. Dark humor, awkward missteps, and poorly executed plans brush against slapstick, an unexpected lightness that keeps Man-su recognizably human. By shifting focus away from revenge and obsession toward systemic design, NO OTHER CHOICE emerges as Park Chan-wook’s most direct examination of work as ideology. Employment defines dignity. Automation signals erasure. Survival demands compromise. The film offers no relief, only a clear-eyed portrait of a system accelerating toward collapse, guided by those insulated from its costs. Build identity around labor, strip it away, demand adaptation, and call it opportunity. Eventually, resistance becomes inevitable. There is no other choice. Unless, of course, a few CEOs attended the premiere and decided to reduce profits and expand their workforce. Cinema inspires miracles all the time; maybe that’s why the film was released on Christmas day. (2025, 139 min, DCP Digital) [Shaun Huhn]

David Lynch's TWIN PEAKS: FIRE WALK WITH ME (US)

Alamo Drafthouse – Saturday, 9:45pm; Sunday, 10pm; and Monday, 10:15pm

I once knew a survivor of childhood sexual abuse who told me that David Lynch's TWIN PEAKS: FIRE WALK WITH ME is the only film that ever really got it right. The way incest deranges you, the unprocessable betrayal, the PTSD. Describing her abuse, she said she'd had her own personal Freddie Krueger, and Lynch portrays Laura Palmer's final days as a horror movie—scarier than most, and truer. Critics missed the thrust of this baffler, calling it the worst thing Lynch ever did, if not one of the worst films ever made. Today, it looks like a flawed masterpiece, exhausting and exhilarating. It's a singular portrayal of "garmonbozia" (pain and sorrow), the cream corn of evil—with all the Lynchian disjunctures that sentence implies. It's abrasive at every level, from Lynch's screaming, whooping sound design to the punishing immersion into Laura's hell. But its extremism is the source of its hypnotic power, and Lynch's corybantic surrealism fits the theme. Sheryl Lee is astonishing as doomed, anguished Laura; Ray Wise is terrifying (and, in deranging moments, loving) as her molester father. Then there's that first 35 minutes, which play like a savage parody of the TV show, with Chris Isaak and Keifer Sutherland investigating a murder in Deer Meadow, a negative image of our favorite Pacific Northwest town. Here, the coffee's two days old, the diner is seedy, the small-town cops are jerks, and the dead woman is not exactly the homecoming queen. (One suspects that the cherry pie would be damn poor.) The "Lil the Dancer" scene is a delightful thumbnail illustration of semiotics, and Harry Dean Stanton is on hand as Carl, manager of the Fat Trout trailer park. Angelo Badalamenti's score is creamy and dreamy, mournful and menacing. Actually, I suspect that if you're not already well-versed in the lore of Bob, Mike, the One Armed Man, The Arm a.k.a. The Man From Another Place, Mrs. Tremond and her grandson, and the Owl Cave ring, then you might have stumbled upon this site by accident. I'd guess our readers share my excitement that the stars, and the passage of 25 years, have aligned so that we are actually poised to reenter the Black Lodge. If you haven't boned up on this prequel, then hie to this revival. (Or even if you have: you'll see something new every time.) (1992, 135 min, DCP Digital) [Scott Pfeiffer]

Alfonso Cuarón's CHILDREN OF MEN (US/UK)

Northbrook Public Library – Tuesday, 7pm

Rarely is a movie at once upsetting and invigorating, yet Alfonso Cuarón’s CHILDREN OF MEN manages to embrace that paradox for pretty much its entire running time. The film imagines a dystopian near-future where no children have been born for 18 years. Humanity is in its death throes, and late capitalism has entered a hideous, extreme state, with pockets of extreme wealth surrounded by abject misery all over the world. The planet on display is all the more horrifying for looking so similar to the one we already inhabit, the filmmakers exaggerating, but only just so, present-day images of inequality, environmental devastation, and social unrest. (Slavoj Zizek has provocatively described the movie as a sequel to Cuarón’s Y TU MAMA TAMBIEN in its skeptical portrait of class relations.) It’s also a fully realized world, designed in such remarkable detail that one gets a sense of what life is like for people across different social classes and in most areas of experience. The innovation doesn’t stop there. Throughout CHILDREN OF MEN Cuarón and cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki execute extraordinary mobile long-takes that cover multiple complicated actions and narrative developments; the music selections are thoughtful and jarring; and Michael Caine delivers one of his best latter-day performances as a dope-smoking political cartoonist who serves as one of the movie’s few figures of sanity. All told, it's one of the supreme achievements of studio filmmaking in the first decade of the 21st century. (2006, 109 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]

Celine Sciamma's GIRLHOOD (France)

Alamo Drafthouse – Monday, 1:15pm and Thursday, 3:30pm

Delivering on the promise of her 2007 Louis Delluc award-winning debut WATER LILLIES, and her impressive second feature TOMBOY, Celine Sciamma's GIRLHOOD is another lively snapshot from a singular French filmmaking talent about adolescent girls constructing their identities in the face of societal pressure. The film centers on Marieme (remarkable newcomer Karidja Toure), a black teenager living in the outskirts of Paris who is being raised, along with two younger sisters and a possessive older brother, by an overworked single mother. Marieme finds an alternative family when she is taken under the wing of a trio of brassy older girls who promptly rename her "Vic" and initiate her into a new world of shoplifting, street-fighting, and more glamorous fashions and hairstyles. While GIRLHOOD is an exemplary coming-of-age picture, it isn't quite the universal story that its English-language title implies. A more accurate translation of the original French title, "Band of Girls," would better capture the film's flavor since Sciamma is interested in exploring the dynamics of a group identity within a specific cultural milieu. Sciamma's focus on the "band" is underscored by a deft use of the now-unfashionable CinemaScope aspect ratio, which is conducive to grouping multiple characters together. This aesthetic choice pays dividends in the film's undisputed highlight: a scene in which the girls check into a hotel room for the sole purpose of dressing up, getting drunk, and dancing with each other while listening to Rihanna's "Diamonds." The feeling of sisterhood imparted by this sequence, bolstered by the buoyant performances and gorgeous blue-tinted lighting, makes it a far better showcase for the song than Rihanna's official music video. Even if it weren't any good, GIRLHOOD would be worth seeing just because its focus on the intimate lives of black female characters makes it something of an anomaly. Fortunately for movie lovers, the result also shines bright like a diamond in the firmament of contemporary cinema. Screening as part of the Sad Girl Cinema Club. (2014, 112 min, DCP Digital) [Michael Glover Smith]

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

Siskel Film Center – Friday and Saturday, 8:30pm

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

Crying at the Shed

The Salt Shed – See showtimes below

Gus Van Sant’s MY OWN PRIVATE IDAHO (US)
Friday, 9:30pm
In a mystical turn about a half-hour into MY OWN PRIVATE IDAHO, a Falstaffian character (William Richert) appears onscreen and suddenly the film becomes a full-on Shakespeare adaptation. It’s one of many notable qualities of the film that combine to create a dreamlike atmosphere. Characters wander in and out and poetically remark to themselves while the colorful illusions weave into one another, all set to a wistful pedal steel guitar score; it’s a reflection of the transformative power of character and cinematic storytelling. MY OWN PRIVATE IDAHO is nevertheless grounded in the reality of its main characters, the dreamscapes emphasizing a wide world of harsh boundaries and possibilities. The film follows two young hustlers, Mike Waters and Scott Favor (River Phoenix and Keanu Reeves, in transcendent performances), living in Portland, Oregon. Mike, a narcoleptic constantly forced in and out of dreams, seems to be hustling out of necessity, while Scott, the son of the mayor (and the Prince Hal of this Shakespearean tale), is biding time until his inheritance kicks in. Amongst a noteworthy supporting cast—which includes Grace Zabriskie, Udo Kier, and Flea—the two find themselves traveling the country and even to Europe in search of Mike’s mother. A story of unrequited love and subsequent heartbreak, MY OWN PRIVATE IDAHO is a significant film of the New Queer Cinema movement of the early 1990s. Early on, the film features a few of Mike’s experiences with clients and interviews with side characters about their experiences hustling and their dreams of the future; it gives the proceedings an almost documentary style, drawing empathy from both the dreamy narrative and real-world experiences. This is found wholly in Phoenix, whose performance as Mike is as compassionate as it is powerful. It’s stuck with me so much over the years that I still find myself wondering and worried about sweet Mike’s ambiguous fate, hoping he makes his way home. (1991, 102 min, Digital Projection) [Megan Fariello]
---
Alice Rohrwacher’s LA CHIMERA (Italy/France/Switzerland)
Saturday, 4:15pm
For Arthur, there’s little that separates the living from the dead. Played by a steely, towering Josh O’Connor, most often seen sidling through scenes donning a detritus-laden white linen suit, he spends his days wandering about with his merry band of "tombaroli," pilfering the tombs hidden beneath their feet across Italy, raiding a myriad of resting places for long-lost Etruscan treasures that, in their eyes, aren’t doing the dead any good just sitting about. Arthur’s mind wanders about, too, to his long-lost love Beniamina, a figure seen in flickers, dreamlike, perhaps also sitting in that nebulous zone between what we know is gone but what we wish was still here. Indeed, our first glimpse of Arthur is of him riding a train back home after the end of his prison sentence, his own resurrection back into the land of the "living." Alice Rohrwacher’s film tends to navigate various planes of existence, often changing aspect ratios, film stocks, even genres; the story curves through tropes found in heist thrillers, comedies, and romances, employing techniques found within the realms of silent film, experimental essay, and documentary filmmaking. Her collage of storytelling ends up falling somewhere—​spiritually and thematically—​between a fairy tale and a ghost story, weighing the love of the present with the love of that which is long past, of building your life in deference to death, of weighing one’s soul against the thrill of unearthing objects not meant for human eyes. Arthur himself is gifted with an otherworldly spirit of divining, of knowing in his very soul where these underground treasures lie, with Rohrwacher’s camera literally performing revolutions to find Arthur in another visual plane, familiar yet upside-down. What a gift to find a film so brimming with passion, humor, and otherworldly desire brimming from every frame for those curious enough to pull on the threads Rohrwacher leaves lying before us. Perhaps a glimmer of light will shine through after all that digging. (2023, 130 min, Digital Projection) [Ben Kaye]
---
Sofia Coppola’s LOST IN TRANSLATION (US/Japan)
Saturday, 9:40pm
LOST IN TRANSLATION is to some early-2000s indie film aficionados what certain Yo La Tengo and Wilco albums are to record store clerks and Gen Z vinyl collectors: a piece of art which exemplifies the era in which it was made, advancing an aesthetic that can be appreciated by viewers who were college-aged at the time of its release and younger cinephiles obsessively posting screen grabs of Scarlett Johansson in a wig with Bill Murray. If the film’s beautiful photography of scenic Tokyo isn't enough of a selling point, then Sofia Coppola’s expertise in crafting emotionally driven narratives makes this essential viewing. Coppola is uninterested in her characters' everyday activities; she opts instead to explore their shortcomings, their unattainable expectations, and other disappointments that have bubbled to the surface of their lives. For Johansson fans, the film contains one of her earliest and most impressive leading roles as Charlotte, an unemployed graduate of Yale’s philosophy program who aimlessly wanders Tokyo, trying to develop a better understanding of her mixed feelings about her marriage and career. For Murray fans, this delivers another classic character of his: former movie star Bob Harris, who spends his trip drowning both familial problems and dissatisfaction with successes in Suntory, the alcohol that he's promoting in Japan. Coppola’s writing really excels in the unspoken, awkward chemistry that fills each scene. The platonic nature of the film’s central relationship seems like it could tip at any time; one wonders how things could have been different for the characters had they met under different circumstances, in a different place, or in a different time. As this relationship unfolds, Coppola invites us to explore our own feelings of self-doubt and regret through the lens of two hyperspecific, yet endlessly relatable characterizations—a technique which earlier melancholic filmmakers passed down to her and which younger filmmakers she's influenced have tried with mixed results to borrow. (2003, 120 min, Digital Projection) [Michael Bates]
---
Also playing are Mike Mills’ 2010 film BEGINNERS (105 min, Digital Projection) on Friday at 5pm, Alfonso Cuarón’s 2001 film Y TU MAMÁ TAMBIÉN (106 min, Digital Projection) on Friday at 7:15pm, and Walt Disney’s 1955 film LADY AND THE TRAMP (76 min, Digital Projection) on Saturday at 2:30pm.

📽️ ALSO SCREENING

⚫ Alamo Drafthouse
Free Victory screenings of Frank Darabont’s 2007 film THE MIST (126 min, DCP Digital) and Gore Verbinski’s 2002 film THE RING (110 min, DCP Digital) are on Friday at 7pm and 9:45pm, respectively.

Robby Rackleff and Alan Resnick’s 2025 film DANCE FREAK (97 min, Unconfirmed Format) screens Wednesday, 9:30pm, as part of the Weird Wednesday series. More info on all screenings here.

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

⚫ The Davis Theater
Analog presents Nastasya Popov’s 2026 film IDIOTKA (82 min, Digital Projection) on Monday, 7:30pm, with Popov and star Anna Baryshnikov in attendance for post-show Q&A, moderated by Joe Swanberg. Note that the screening is currently sold out. 

⚫ Doc Films (at the University of Chicago)
Joachim Trier’s 2025 film SENTIMENTAL VALUE (135 min, DCP Digital) screens Friday, 9:30pm, and a new 4K DCP Digital restoration of João César Monteiro’s 1992 film THE LAST DIVE (88 min) screens Saturday and Sunday, 4pm, both as part of the New Releases and Restorations series.

Rob Reiner’s 1989 film WHEN HARRY MET SALLY… (96 min, DCP Digital) screens Saturday, 7pm, as part of the Board Picks series.

The final program of Films by Rose Lowder (2015-2021, Total approx. 55 min, 16mm) screens Sunday at 7pm as part of the Cinema’s Garden: The Films of Rose Lowder series.

Anne-Marie Miéville’s 1985 short film THE BOOK OF MARY (28 min, DCP Digital) and 1988 feature MY DEAR SUBJECTS (96 min, DCP Digital) screen Tuesday, 7pm, as part of the Anne-Marie Miéville: Not Reconciled series.

Boris Barnet’s 1957 film THE WRESTLER AND THE CLOWN (95 min, 35mm) screens Wednesday, 7pm, as part of the Boris Barnet: A Cinema Despite Life series. More info on all screenings here.

⚫ Dorothy (2500 W. Chicago Ave.)
Dee Rees’ 2015 film BESSIE (115 min, Digital Projection) screens Monday, 7pm, for Dorothy’s first Queer Movie Mondays screening. RSVP and entry are free. More info here.

⚫ FACETS
Maïlys Vallade & Liane-Cho Han’s 2025 animated film LITTLE AMÉLIE OR THE CHARACTER OF RAIN (78 min, DCP Digital) screens Sunday at 11am.

Tyler Michael Balantine presents…Sunday’s Best with Films by Brain Studios on Sunday, 2pm, followed by a Q&A with Brain Studios and a reception with food in the studio.

Sweet Void Cinema presents Josh Heaps’ CITY WIDE FEVER (73 min, DCP Digital) on Thursday, 9pm, followed by a Q&A with Heaps. More info on all screenings here.

⚫ Hans Goodrich (1747 S. Halsted St.)
K8 Hardy's 2016 film OUTFITUMENTARY (82 min, Digital Projection), "a diaristic self-portrait and cultural record of a lesbian artist coming of age at the onset of the 21st century, screens Friday at 7pm. Free admission. More info here.

⚫ Haymarket House (800 W. Buena Ave.)
Gabriel Silverman’s 2025 documentary THE SPIES AMONG US (94 min, Unconfirmed Format) screens Thursday, 6pm, followed by a discussion led by members of the Lucy Parsons Labs. More info here.

⚫ International Museum of Surgical Science (1524 N. Lake Shore Dr.)
The closing reception of BUÑUEL: MASTER OF DREAMS, An International Exhibition Celebrating 100 Years of Surrealism takes place Thursday at 6pm. Free with RSVP. More info here. 

⚫ Music Box Theatre
Matt Johnson’s 2025 film NIRVANNA THE BAND THE SHOW THE MOVIE (95 min, DCP Digital) begins screening. See Venue website for showtimes.

Jim Sharman’s 1975 film THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW (95 min, 35mm) screens Friday at midnight.

Rob Reiner’s 1987 film THE PRINCESS BRIDE (98 min, DCP Digital) screens Saturday at 11am and 9:15pm.

Dennie Gordon’s 2001 film JOE DIRT (91 min, 35mm) screens Saturday at midnight.

Bob Persichetti and Peter Ramsey’s 2018 animated film SPIDER-MAN: INTO THE SPIDERVERSE (117 min, 3D DCP Digital) screens Monday, 1:15pm, as part of the Brothers From Another Planet series.

Strange/Found VHS presents: The First Annual 1-Year Anniversary Show on Wednesday at 7pm.

Keenan Ivory Wayans’ 2004 film WHITE CHICKS (109 min, DCP Digital) screens Thursday at 9:45pm. Screening co-presented by Rated Q and Ramona Slick. Preshow drinks and DJ set in the Music Box lounge beginning at 8:45pm. Drag show performance in the Main Theater at 9:30pm. More info on all screenings and events here.

⚫ National Public Housing Museum (919 S. Ada St.)
Join the National Public Housing Museum for Werkz in the Archive, a screening, dance cypher, and reflections, featuring films inspired by the work of Dr. ShaDawn “Boobie” Battle, the National Public Housing Museum’s 2023 Artist as Instigator, on Thursday starting at 5:30pm. Free admission. More info here.

⚫ Siskel Film Center
Sook-Yin Lee’s 2024 film PAYING FOR IT (85 min, DCP Digital) and Akinola Davies Jr.’s 2025 film MY FATHER’S SHADOW (93 min, DCP Digital) begin screening this week. Lee and author Chester Brown will be in attendance for the Friday, 6pm, show of PAYING FOR IT and will take part in a postshow discussion moderated by Newcity’s Ray Pride. More info on all screenings here.

⚫ Uprising Theater and Cafe
Kaouther Ben Hania’s 2025 film THE VOICE OF HIND RAJAB (90 min, Digital Projection) screens several times over the next week. See event listing for showtimes. More info here.

CINE-LIST: February 13 - February 19, 2026

MANAGING EDITORS // Ben and Kat Sachs

CONTRIBUTORS // Erika Balsom, Michael Bates, Brendan Boyle, Ray Ebarb, Alex Ensign, Megan Fariello, Shaun Huhn, Ben Kaye, Raphael Jose Martinez, Nicky Ni, Scott Pfeiffer, Michael W. Phillips Jr., Michael Glover Smith, Martin Stainthorp, Drew Van Weelden, Brian Welesko, K.A. Westphal