:: FRIDAY, JULY 14 - THURSDAY, JULY 20 ::

📽️ CRUCIAL VIEWING

Charles Chaplin's MONSIEUR VERDOUX (US)

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

One of the most sublime missteps in the history of cinema gets an always-welcome revival this week—though to call it a misstep is to subscribe to a version of said history that leaves no room for the glorious centaurs Chaplin's post-war, post-Tramp talkie period loosed on the (mainly disinterested) world. Such a view would take it as read that Chaplin's first role after abandoning his beloved mustache and bowler oughtn't to have been a remorseless mass murderer—let alone a mass murderer in a melo-slapstick-satire so sincerely anti-war and anti-capital that all its highly compartmentalized and contradictory attempts to amuse, edify, and/or move us are drowned out in the end by the sound of its auteur's own awkward cri de coeur—but, really, what use is such wisdom? Admittedly, Chaplin is no Brecht: his murder-equals-capitalism-equals-war-equals-murder statement is powerful not due to its novelty or the brilliance of its rhetoric, but entirely for reasons of context: this is Chaplin, for God's sake, dispatching dowagers with charm and wit. Certainly too, the peculiarities of the film's construction (as often lyrical as stage-bound, as often deft as amateurish), plus its Sternbergian mishmash of acting styles and accents, can together easily wrong-foot the inattentive viewer come expecting a homogeneous and cannily constructed Chaplin entertainment. The glory of VERDOUX, however—and all of CC's sound work—is in the ways it refuses to be just that: intent on creating its own vocabulary from the castoffs of early film grammar (your Hitchcocks and Langs and Fords be damned), VERDOUX manages the trick of being gauche and magical all at once. That is, VERDOUX is a continuation of THE GREAT DICTATOR's first fragmentation of Chaplin's poetics; and it points the way to LIMELIGHT's almost inscrutable, outsider grace. The joys of the Tramp films wash away utterly in the light of VERDOUX's impossible disregard for the verities and expectations associated with genre—and narrative itself. It contains Chaplin's greatest performance, and may very well be his finest work. Preceded by Walter Lantz's 1952 short film BORN TO PECK (7 min, 35mm). (1947, 124 min, 35mm) [Jeremy M. Davies]

Revolutionary Filmmaking and Historical Memory in El Salvador (El Salvador/Documentary)

DePaul Art Museum (935 W. Fullerton Ave.) – Saturday, 5pm

It’s a matter of continued importance for filmgoers in the US to engage with Latin American films, particularly ones that push back on the narratives provided by our government about 20th century revolutionary action. El Salvador is a key case for this; their bloody civil war of the 1980s and '90s being partly a product of US funding to the murderous government forces. This program of three films curated by Inga Books’ Jacob Lindgren looks at radical filmmaking from the country during and after this time as a means of correcting the historical record. Two pieces of the program were born of the early days of the civil war, when the guerrilla groups that made up the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front also produced media about their endeavors. Film collective El Taller de los Vagos’ short LA ZONA INTERTIDAL (1980, 14 min, Digital Projection) is the more roundabout of the two, juxtaposing serene nature photography of the country’s coastline and sea life with the aftermath of a teacher’s murder. It’s slightly abstract but no less potent for the way it depicts wordlessly the tenor of terror caused by government suppression. On the other hand, the feature-length CARTA DE MORAZÁN (1982, 58 min, Digital Projection) is as incendiary a film as you’re likely to find, with all its footage coming directly from the media production arm of the FMNL as they organize and train for combat. Its closest analog might be something like Patricio Guzmán’s BATTLE OF CHILE documentaries and their similarly verité approach to deadly government suppression. But even those had a certain remove from the politics of Chile’s 1973 coup d'état, given that much of their footage was taken by theoretically neutral journalists and filmmakers. Here we have a purer agitprop, guided only by radicals and their matter-of-fact depictions of trainings and hostage-takings. The latter is one of the film’s most fascinating artifacts, with the Salvadoran vice minister of defense giving an interview after capture by the group. Far from the disturbing content you might expect from an interview with a POW, he’s genial and relaxed, noting that the FMNL gave him prompt medical treatment once they found him, and that he is not proud of the mass casualties caused by the government forces. The film would be worth watching for this scene alone, but the whole thing holds together as an illuminating piece of direct cinema. Wrapping it all up is ¿POR QUÉ NOS ORGANIZAMOS? (2022, 21 min, Digital Projection), a contemporary look at this period from Kolectivo San Jacinto that shows a diverse group of activists from different age groups coming together to discuss their duty to preserve historical memory as a means of furthering necessary political action. This screening serves a similar function, bearing witness to radical actions of the past to (hopefully) spurn all of our revolutionary spirit in the here and now. Curated by Jacob Lindgren from Inga Books and presented in partnership with DePaul's Center for Latino Research. [Maxwell Courtright]

Mstyslav Chernov’s 20 DAYS IN MARIUPOL (Ukraine/Documentary)

Gene Siskel Film Center – See Venue website for showtimes

What will be most rage-inducing about Ukrainian video journalist Mstyslav Chernov’s firsthand account of the siege of Mariupol at the start of the recent Russian invasion of Ukraine is undoubtedly the graphic depictions of violence perpetrated against the port city’s helpless civilians. Footage of a pregnant woman being carried away from a bombed-out maternity hospital while she grips her lower midsection, in a daze of what appears to be pain and incredulity—we find out later that her pelvis had been completely crushed—will stay with me forever (we also find out later that she and the baby died, a nurse telling Chernov that her injuries were “incompatible with life”), as will the reactions of parents realizing that their children are dead. What may be most shocking, though, isn’t the violence itself; rather it’s the fact that, as the documentary touches upon at several intervals, many believed it to be manufactured. The implication is “fake news,” the two words an oft-mocked, counterfactual dictum that has become as opprobrious as, say, Sieg hiel. Hail victory, the latter means; it’s not too far off to bridge a connection with fake news, a recrimination that always puts its recipient at fault of manipulation and deceit. Thus the utterer is always the victor, never wrong even in the face of fact. It’s not a new concept (at least not anymore), but paired so closely with video documentation of atrocities it assumes that new meaning, becoming a salute to facism and its ability to turn reality into fiction. For example, “The [aforementioned maternity] hospital was turned into a film set with extras and actors,” proclaims a newscaster in a clip included in a montage of fake-news allegations from Russian journalists and military personnel, this person in particular calling one of Chernov’s AP colleagues, Evgeniy Maloletka, a “well-known Ukrainian propagandist.” (Chernov and Maloletka, implied to be the only international journalists who stayed in Mariupol after the siege, and two of their colleagues from the Associated Press would eventually be awarded the 2023 Pulitzer Prize in Public Service for their efforts.) Only segments of Chernov and the team’s footage was transmitted during the siege due to lack of reliable internet connection, but it’s now been more thoroughly assembled into this feature-length documentary; some of the interstitials that show how these images were used in world news are a tad self-admiring, but that’s the least of anything irksome going on here. One hopes to say that because all this footage exists it will be believed, but alas, that is not the case. What purpose, then, does this film serve, if the sheer credibility of its images are questioned by the people who theoretically should be most impacted by it, those seeming to need irrefutable proof that such events are occurring? The documentary doesn’t attempt to answer these questions, nor should it. Cinema transforms, but it’s long been the documentary’s ambition to assert, to act as a witness and record the truth for posterity; what does it mean, then, when people accuse journalists and filmmakers of using cinematic effect to documentary aim? One might be asking themselves these questions, but it’s just as likely that viewers will be so enraged by what they see, these 20 days of the terror being faced by civilians in Ukraine, that such Hegelianist ponderings become secondary to the immediacy of the images. The film seems to suggest that this may ultimately be more effective in the short term—some doctors in the film, for example, are nearly begging Chernov and his team to make these atrocities known, to make the world see—but the disquieting proposition put forth by the film’s assembly (it was edited by Frontline PBS staffer Michelle Mizner), combining the firsthand account with the fake-news speculation, suggests a larger, more ideological war that’s still on the horizon. The 6:15pm screening on  Tuesday will be followed by an in-person, post-screening Q&A with Chernov. (2023, 94 min, DCP Digital) [Kat Sachs]

New Adventures in 70mm

Music Box Theatre – See below for showtimes

Jordan Peele’s NOPE (US)
See Venue website for showtimes
It’s hard to overstate the importance of Jordan Peele’s first feature, GET OUT. It transcended the horror genre to critical and financial acclaim. Its themes about race in America also bolstered a wider interest in genre films that don’t shy away from tackling important social issues. It’s one of the most significant films of the last ten years, in no small part because of its well-defined arguments about race and American history. NOPE, Peele’s third feature, is harder to define as its themes are many, spiraling around one another providing the audience with an overall enigmatic ride. It contains a plethora of movie references (JAWS, FIRE IN THE SKY, BUCK AND THE PREACHER), though never feels derivative as they’re all supported by the film’s complex themes. While by no means the sole interpretation, NOPE resonates for me because of its focus on film history and the industry, and its themes surrounding the erasure of Black performers and filmmakers. It’s thus also about our relationship to the visual and the trauma surrounding both things we witness and what gets erased—the power in both looking and choosing to look away. Peele makes it clear from the first frame this film is about spectacle, about the impact of the visual. As much as its many cinematic references demonstrate a love for the medium, it’s also self-reflexive and an admonishment of Hollywood—perhaps why the film was generally less well-received than his previous films. When their Hollywood horse wrangler father (Keith David) is killed by mysterious falling debris on their California ranch, siblings OJ (Daniel Kaluuya) and Emerald (a standout Keke Palmer) are forced to prove there’s something deadly hiding in the sky. Their neighbor, theme park owner Ricky “Jupe” Park (Steven Yeun) is, at first, a little more aware of what is going on, taking advantage of the situation that quickly begins to reflect the shocking trauma he faced years ago as a child television star. Along with a tech salesman (Brandon Perea) and famed cinematographer (Michael Wincott), OJ and Emerald set out to provide visual evidence of what’s going on in the skies above. Despite its thematic complexities, NOPE is wildly fun, combining the Western with science fiction in smart ways. Its visual construction is immaculate and provides one of the most unsettling scenes I’ve seen in years. NOPE, literally at times, holds a mirror to the industry that perhaps isn’t obvious at first, but Peele’s ability to balance harsh critique and indulgence of summer blockbuster-style cinema is incredibly provocative. (2022, 130 min, 70mm) [Megan Fariello]
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Damien Chazelle’s BABYLON (US)
Sunday, 1pm and Wednesday, 7:15pm
So far in his filmmaking career, Damien Chazelle has been preoccupied with obsessively driven characters who risk life and limb—often literally—to achieve their goals. After chronicling Neil Armstrong’s monomaniacal pursuit of the moon in the sensational FIRST MAN (2018), Chazelle returned to La La Land for an elephantine alt-historical portrait of early Hollywood and its doomed dreamers. The caustic, decadent BABYLON makes the director’s 2016 Oscar-winner, hardly an unambiguous industry paean itself, look positively merry. Beginning with a protracted, dazzlingly choreographed bacchanal at a studio executive’s Bel Air mansion circa 1926, BABYLON establishes an atmosphere of anything-goes hedonism at once grotesque and alluring. It’s more than enough to seduce Manny (Diego Calva), a Mexican immigrant looking to make it big, and Nellie (Margot Robbie), an ingénue from New Jersey with ambitions of stardom. Alongside their intertwining narratives, Chazelle charts the rise-and-fall of a few other fictitious Hollywood players during the rocky transition from silents to talkies: leading man Jack Conrad (Brad Pitt), Chinese-American chanteuse Lady Fay Zhu (Li Jun Li, showcased in a sensual gender-bending number à la Marlene Dietrich in MOROCCO), and African-American jazz trumpeter Sidney Palmer (Jovan Adepo). If Chazelle falters in fully fleshing out these characters beyond basic types, he more than excels in conveying the excitement, debauchery, and folly of the industry to which they’ve devoted their lives. In scene after scene, he crafts extended, raucous set-pieces that ruthlessly and mordantly denude the romance of Hollywood. Among the best: the hectic simultaneous shooting of multiple films, including a medieval war picture, in the desert over one afternoon, in which an extra getting impaled by a spear is the least of anyone’s concerns; and the feverishly bungled attempt to shoot a single take of Nellie’s first talkie, which wrings belly-laughs from the increasingly apoplectic cast and crew’s failure to master the oversensitive sound equipment (eat your heart out, SINGIN’ IN THE RAIN) before sobering us with the horrific result of their labor: the negligent homicide of a cameraman. The juxtaposition between the thrill of making (and watching) movies and the rampant abuses of the Hollywood studio system pervades BABYLON, a film that asks if our entertainment is worth the price of the physical, mental, and financial expenditure that goes into its creation. All the while, it intoxicates us with Linus Sandgren’s bravura sequence shots, Justin Hurwitz’s propulsive jazz score, Tom Cross’s kinetic editing rhythms, and Margot Robbie wrestling a rattlesnake. An emphatically big-screen feast for the senses, BABYLON is a poisoned love letter to the Dream Factory from one of its most virtuosic contemporary auteurs. (2022, 189 min, 70mm) [Jonathan Leithold-Patt]
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Paul Thomas Anderson’s BOOGIE NIGHTS (US)
Saturday, 6:30pm, Sunday, 8:30pm and Monday, 3:30pm
For me, no Paul Thomas Anderson film has yet topped the dynamic experience of watching BOOGIE NIGHTS. This is exemplified by the film’s vibrant pool party scene—set to Eric Burdon and War’s “Spill the Wine”—as the camera follows those just having fun and those deep in significant conversation. It’s a film that perfectly seesaws the audience between scenes of pleasure and of real darkness. It’s hilarious at times while also containing one of the most horrifyingly tense scenes in cinema. It is both brutally honest yet sweetly empathetic to its main characters. It’s dazzling in its meandering and colorful '70s and '80s set pieces, its memorable costuming, and influential soundtrack. Set in Los Angeles during the Golden Age of Porn—and based on an earlier mockumentary short film by Anderson—BOOGIE NIGHTS follows the rise and fall of Dirk Diggler (Mark Wahlberg), a young aspiring adult film star. He is discovered by Jack Horner (Burt Reynolds) and joins his community of filmmakers and stars. This group includes outstanding performances from Julianne Moore, John C. Reilly, Don Cheadle, and Philip Seymour Hoffman, just to name a few. The film combines an overarching narrative with distinct vignettes, making the stories of even the most minor of characters matter. Dirk may be the central figure around which the rest of the characters revolve, but the film makes it clear everyone else is just as significant, just as complicated, and everyone else is also struggling and succeeding in their own ways. Rollergirl (Heather Graham), a porn starlet who never takes off her skates the entire film, could easily be a background character solely based on her visual gimmick but instead is fully allowed to both find joy in and rail against her situation—the striking costume and period setting is so entertaining but never overshadows the characters. BOOGIE NIGHTS constantly takes time for these characters, stressing that their experiences are also essential. The result is intimate while simultaneously suggesting worlds of possibility both on and off camera. (1997, 155 min, 70mm) [Megan Fariello]
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Also screening as part of the New Adventures in 70mm festival is Christopher Nolan’s 2010 film INCEPTION (162 min, 70mm) in a 70mm blow-up struck for the film’s tenth anniversary. See Venue website for showtimes. Nolan’s 2023 film OPPENHEIMER (180 min, 70mm) officially opens on Friday, July 21, but there are two showtimes on Thursday at 5pm and 8:45pm. 

Stanley Tong’s RUMBLE IN THE BRONX (Hong Kong)

Gene Siskel Film Center – Friday, 6pm; Saturday, 7pm; and Sunday, 4pm

In 1989, the Gene Siskel Film Center hosted a festival honoring the cinema of Hong Kong, a film industry then unfamiliar to most American viewers. Through screenings of such films as POLICE STORY (1985), Chicagoans were some of the first Western audiences introduced to Jackie Chan. Already beloved in his home country as a kung fu auteur, Chan was the embodiment of Hong Kong’s essence. He was widely unknown to Western audiences, even though his fusion of martial arts and slapstick humor captured the heritage of Chinese tradition and Western thought saturated through British colonialism of Hong Kong (Chan was an outspoken defender of Hong Kong during the protests at Tiananmen Square). Six years later, RUMBLE IN THE BRONX confirmed Chan as one of the biggest action stars of all time. Compared to other action stars, Chan’s performance style is closer to silent comedic actors like Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd than Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger. Incidentally, RUMBLE IN THE BRONX has a lot of attributes of silent comedy, especially as the vocal dubbing forces the actors to be more physically expressive (everyone performed in their native languages). The climactic sequence with the hovercraft feels like a modern equivalent to one of the set pieces in Buster Keaton’s THE GENERAL (1926). As Roger Ebert wrote in his review of the film, “The whole point is Jackie Chan—and, like Astaire and Rogers, he does what he does better than anybody.” When watching a Jackie Chan movie, dialogue and story are irrelevant. The production barely tries to pass Vancouver (the shooting location) as New York City (there are mountains in the background of the shot). We fall in love with Chan for leading with his joy of being on camera. The filmmaking of early Chan features can never be duplicated now, with the existence of safety and OSHA laws on film sets. While shooting, the then-40-year-old broke his foot performing a stunt. Having more scenes, production sized a sock to cover his cast so he could continue filming. Once they wrapped, he immediately moved on to shoot another movie. Screening as part of the Hong Kong Summer series. (1995, 97 min, 35mm) [Ray Ebarb]

CYBERGRIME (US/Canada/Germany)

FACETS Cinema – Saturday, 7:30pm and 10pm

The films in this weekend’s Cybergrime program are concerned with transgression, using their compact runtimes to sketch out one or a handful of shocking ideas that never overstay their welcome. Some of the films are about kink itself, with individuals trying to transcend their flesh through sex and violence, usually intentionally submitting to it in horrifying ways. It’s a sort of meta-twist on the self-subjugation central to so much extreme cinema, where audience punishment is the name of the game. This is most obvious in the films that play on traditional dominatrix roles, like Jessi Gaston’s BLACK PILL and Kyle Mangione Smith’s ANNIHILATOR, where characters’ desires for self-abasement is taken to terminal extremes. Others seek transcendence through their own creations, like the titular computer program of Asuka Lin’s AI MAMA or the creature paramour of Kaye Adelaide’s MONSTERDYKË. In these, the tamer concept of “found families” takes on a Frankensteinian angle, with lonely souls contentedly lost in worlds of their own making. Others still transcend form itself, like the ever-warping UN PD AVEC PC which calls to mind Bjork’s “Pagan Poetry” video in its line-blurring of pornography and pure abstraction. PURE FILTH also has an association-queering approach, with its barrage of pleasant images marked with text taken from snuff video titles, letting the horrors simply exist in the viewer's head. These two in particular are some of the most potent of the bunch, specifically in how they play with audience expectations around presentations of sex and gore respectively. While the program is quite dark and intense overall (the Facets website lists pretty much every trigger warning you can imagine), it’s not without levity, like the freewheeling phone sex comedy of 1-888-5-BLUE-YOU, or MONSTERDYKË which leans tender when you expect shocking (even though it includes one of the more conceptually strange cum shots you’re likely to see in a film). While reactions may vary from person to person, the program provides a jolt to cinema in a time when studios are still too squeamish around basic heterosexual love scenes, let alone anything more queer or leftfield than that. And if you don’t like it, who cares? As John Waters once put it, bad taste is what entertainment is all about. He’s walked that sentiment back in recent years, but I think we all owe it to him to keep finding new frontiers of transgression. Curated by Henry Hanson and presented in partnership with Full Spectrum Features. Ticket purchase for either screening includes admission to the reception and live music show; doors open at 7pm and the reception and live music starts at 8:30pm. (2018-2022, Total approx. 62 min, Digital Projection) [Maxwell Courtright]

📽️ ALSO RECOMMENDED

Jean-Luc Godard's CONTEMPT (France/Italy)

Gene Siskel Film Center – See Venue website for showtimes

All the films that Jean-Luc Godard made in the 1960s are readily rewatchable for their infectious, trailblazing energy, but CONTEMPT also possesses a magisterial authority that anticipates the poetry of his awesome late period. The primary concern, as always, is Cinema: Taking place on the set of a big-budget film of The Odyssey directed by Fritz Lang (who plays himself), CONTEMPT contains still-pertinent ideas about the ethics of making movies, with Lang representing artistic integrity and producer Jeremy Prokosch (Jack Palance) representing the crassest instincts of the medium. Torn between them is Paul (Michel Piccoli), an ambitious writer coerced into penning the film’s script; not only must he play mediator on the troubled shoot, but his professional commitments are about to cost him his marriage. The way in which Godard sets these conflicts against the classical presence of Homer inspired Jonathan Rosenbaum to write that CONTEMPT is a look at modern man as he may appear to the Greek gods. (Godard, writing in 1963, put it more obliquely: “It is about characters from L’AVVENTURA who wish they were characters in RIO BRAVO.”) But the film is shot through with a sense of immediacy—especially during the 25-minute centerpiece depicting an argument between Paul and his wife (Brigitte Bardot). Playing out in real-time and jumping nervously from antagonism to reconciliation to sympathy, the scene is instantly recognizable to anyone who has experienced the death of a romance. Godard does little to hide the fact that his own marriage to Anna Karina was failing at the time (Bardot even dons a black wig at one point to resemble Karina), and his candor makes CONTEMPT perhaps the most confessional work of his career. Raoul Coutard’s ‘Scope photography—with its bold emphasis on primary colors—creates some of the most stunning images in Godard’s canon as well. (1963, 103 min, New 4K DCP Digital Restoration) [Ben Sachs]

Mikhaël Hers’ THE PASSENGERS OF THE NIGHT (France)

Gene Siskel Film Center – See Venue website for showtimes

It is the evening of May 10, 1981. Down a street lined with revelers celebrating the election of socialist French president François Mitterand moves a car, its driver and passengers wide-eyed with wonder at the sight. Their destination is a spacious, high-rise condo that will be their home until the campaign of Jacques Chirac for the presidency in 1995. In between, Elisabeth Davies (Charlotte Gainsbourg) and her children, Judith (Megan Northam) and Matthias (Quito Rayon Richter), will deal with the unseen husband and father who abandons them for a younger woman in 1984, the arrival of a troubled, young woman (Noée Abita), and the joys and sorrows of independence, romantic love, and empty-nest syndrome. THE PASSENGERS OF THE NIGHT is like a warm hug in an ever-changing world and a wonderful chance to see Charlotte Gainsbourg move away from scatological, dysfunctional roles to inhabit an enormously loving housewife and mother whose gift for listening to people leads her to a fulfilling job and a lasting bond with her maturing teenagers. Newcomer Richter is a charismatic talent who somehow morphs from teen to man as he comes of age, in part through his love for Talulah, the hauntingly beautiful Abita, who tries to heal through the love of the Davies family. Emmanuelle Béart is a familiar and welcome presence as the honey-voiced dyke who hosts through-the-night talk show “The Passengers” and hires Elisabeth as a call screener based only on a moving letter she sent to the show in an attempt to land her first job ever. The period details—bad ’80s hair, padded-out ’80s clothes, and evolving Paris skyline—lend an authentic feel to the film, even as director/co-screenwriter Hers plumbs a lightly nostalgic longing for a more loving, uncomplicated French past. (2022, 111 min, DCP Digital) [Marilyn Ferdinand]

Finntastic! New Films From Finland

FACETS Cinema – See below for showtimes

Hannah Bergholm's HATCHING (Finland)
Friday, 7pm
Part gross-out horror creature feature, part dark fairy tale, Hanna Bergholm’s HATCHING is primarily an evocative coming-of-age story. Shy Tinja (Siiri Solalinna in an astonishing performance) lives in a highly controlled world; her family—led by her mother (Sophia Heikkilä)—are bloggers who meticulously record their curated lives for the internet. This means, too, that Tinja is forced by her mother to achieve no less than the highest standards, especially as a gymnast. Their fraught relationship and themes about parenthood and control drive HATCHING. When a bird crashes into the family home and dies, Tinja takes in an abandoned egg, hiding it in her room. The egg grows abnormally large, and what eventually hatches is a strange bird-like creature that doesn’t quite stay that way. As Tinja and the creature become increasingly linked, its evolution takes on a horrific twist. HATCHING is, overall, an impressive first feature from Bergholm. It's shot much like an advertisement, with the cinematography reflecting the unrealistic sense of perfection that haunts Tinja. The look of the film provides an arresting juxtaposition throughout between the overwhelming pastel florals of Tinja’s immaculate home and the grotesque creature. The creature's design effectively mixes the cartoony and the unsettling. It’s a throwback to 80s family creature films like E.T. THE EXTRA TERRESTRIAL, including in scenes where Tinja’s younger brother Matias (Oiva Ollila) is terrorized by the monster; it’s generally much less heartwarming, though. Like the creature itself HATCHING is creepy, comical, and strange, and confidently conveys its themes until its final disturbing moments. Preceded by Bergholm's 2018 short PUPPETMASTER (15 min, DCP Digital). (2021, 87 min, DCP Digital) [Megan Fariello]
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Jenni Toivoniemi’s GAMES PEOPLE PLAY (Finland)
Sunday, 1pm
However familiar, the premise of a group of friends reuniting after years apart will always carry potential for Chekhovian insights about aging and the effects of time. Jenni Toivoniemi’s debut feature GAMES PEOPLE PLAY delivers such insights, albeit in a decidedly painless manner reminiscent of American mumblecore features. It’s a lightweight film that works best as a sociological study of how millennial Finnish liberals feel about relationships and leisure time; it’s less successful as a dramatic work that builds to any sort of catharsis. Six friends who have known each other since adolescence congregate at a vacation home on a small island to celebrate one of the friends’ 40th birthday, a few with new partners in tow. Some of these folks have found success in the arts, while others toil at jobs they can’t stand; similarly, some are currently in satisfying romantic relationships and others are unhappily single. These lifestyle discrepancies exacerbate old tensions within the group, which resurface over two days of drinking and speaking candidly. Toivoniemi elicits naturalistic performances from the cast, who establish a plausible group dynamic without letting one performance outshine the others; the director also maintains a loose aesthetic that emphasizes the friends’ casually intimate rapport and distracts from the schematic quality of her script. Set during summer, the film makes for pleasant summer viewing, with a generally optimistic tone, flashes of humor, and plenty of sex appeal. Preceded by Toivoniemi’s 2012 short  film THE DATE (7 min, Digital Projection). (2020, 117 min, Digital Projection) [Ben Sachs]
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Miia Tervo’s AURORA (Finland)
Sunday, 4pm
I’ve recently observed that the dearth of smart and affecting romantic comedies made in the United States has resulted in more of these films coming from abroad. And while they may not be the heady, artfully made international fare that stateside cinephiles hope to find at film festivals and bespoke streaming services, at the very least they scratch an itch for those like myself who once upon a time liked to occasionally unwind with something starring Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks (or, going back further, Katherine Hepburn and Cary Grant), but now with subtitles. Miia Tervo satisfies with AURORA, which right off the bat succeeds in showing rather than telling the contours of its premise; the title character (Mimosa Willamo) is trying to ghost a hook-up, sneaking off into the night half-naked. It’s clear she has commitment issues but, as she tromps through the snow in heeled boots for what is made to seem like hours, we see she’s also strong and resilient. We soon learn that her father is both a hoarder and an alcoholic, and that they’re in danger of losing their home. Aurora works as a nail technician, though she and her best friend, with whom she spends much of her time partying to an almost worrisome degree, aspire to bigger and better things (specifically, going to perform colonics abroad… romantic “dramadies” may be a broad concept, but I appreciate the specific little details Tervo has added to the story to make it more idiosyncratic). At the same time, we’re introduced to Darian (Amir Escandari), an Iranian refugee who’s come to Lapland with his young daughter; a doctor at the shelter where they’re staying graciously invites them to stay at her home, though her intolerant husband is initially against the idea. Aurora and Darian meet at a hot dog stand and, in traditional rom-com fashion, start off on the wrong foot. Likely because Darian asks Aurora to marry him for immigration purposes. Once they resolve that misunderstanding, Aurora offers to help him find a wife, setting into motion the events that lead to the conclusion I’m sure anyone could anticipate. But the film is more about the journey than the destination, and it’s quite a fun trip with just the right amount of heart to make it sweet but not sugary. Remember the intolerant husband mentioned above? He comes to see Darian almost like a brother; the serious bits aren’t heavy handed and are subtle enough to be impactful without explicitly preying on the audience’s sympathies. There’s certainly an edge to the film that also tempers any potential for cloy, in part visualized by Arsen Sarkisiants’ gritty cinematography, which makes the capital city of Rovaniemi look less like the official hometown of Santa Claus  (yes, really) and more like a place people want to escape in order to make money flushing out peoples’ bums elsewhere. I’d regret not mentioning a specific aspect of the film that makes me think Tervo was inspired by Agnès Varda, the relationship between Aurora and the wealthy, elderly woman she begins caretaking, which evokes a similar dynamic between Mona and a convivial rich, older woman in Varda’s VAGABOND (1985). It’s the little things about the film that make it what it is, and even though viewers may know what to expect at the end, one can still take pleasure in not knowing what will happen along the way and the fact that the characters don’t either. Preceded by Tervo’s 2015 short film CLUMSY LITTLE ACTS OF TENDERNESS (9 min, Digital Projection). (2019, 106 min, Digital Projection) [Kat Sachs]

John Cameron Mitchell's SHORTBUS (US)

Leather Archives & Museum (6418 N. Greenview Ave.) – Saturday, 7pm

John Cameron Mitchell’s SHORTBUS belongs to the class of films that many have only encountered in articles or on lists of non-pornographic films featuring unsimulated sex. This alone (along with the fact that contemporaneous viewers had trouble seeing past the sex to the actual film) has made regular screenings a challenge, so it’s a blessing that the film has gotten a 4K restoration. Mitchell’s comparatively gentle second feature after his cult adaptation of his stage musical HEDWIG AND THE ANGRY INCH (2001), SHORTBUS is still a Gregg Araki-indebted jumble, wearing its punk ethos proudly. The film is an ensemble piece set mostly at the titular club, and it follows a depressed filmmaker; his boyfriend, who wants to open up their relationship; a relationship counselor who has never had an orgasm; a dominatrix; and numerous bit players who seem to be competing for the award of most stylish at the club. Beginning with the film’s title, Mitchell seems proud of the boundaries he smashes regarding good taste, yet he tries to situate the more outré elements in a casual, good-vibes-only environment where the filmic transgressions serve to lift up the characters, not antagonize the viewer. The film still feels ahead of present-day narrative films' treatment of sex, despite its very-2006 atmosphere (an Animal Collective-soundtracked orgy being a highlight). And for all of Mitchell's tell-not-show approach, SHORTBUS tells us very little about Shortbus. Aside from providing a convenient narrative function of being a place where the characters can meet and anything can happen, the club doesn’t really feel like anything. But that seems to be by design; community doesn’t just cohere around a stated purpose, sometimes it can just be around a vibe. Shortbus is all things to all of its patrons, an implicit acknowledgement that queer life is not reducible to separate categories of queer art, queer sex, etc. It’s a melting pot that calls for fluid community spaces to foster it. The film’s tonal mix reflects this idea—Mitchell refuses for the film to be boxed in as a sex comedy or a queer tragedy. The notorious sex scenes aren't intended to shock or titillate, but to serve as matter-of-fact snapshots of a milieu where sex is necessarily part of the scene-setting. This presentation allows the film some of its more effective analogies, drawing parallels between carnal pleasure and the more personal or spiritual transcendence that everyone searches for somehow. Screening as part of the Fetish Film Forum. (2006, 101 min, Digital Projection) [Maxwell Courtright]

Alan Rudolph’s WELCOME TO L.A. (US)

Doc Films (at the University of Chicago) – Friday, 7pm and Saturday, 4pm

Though he had already directed the quickie horror features PREMONITION (1972) and TERROR CIRCUS (aka BARN OF THE NAKED DEAD) (1973), Alan Rudolph didn’t launch his career as an auteur until WELCOME TO L.A. The film marks the first iteration of the trademark aesthetic that Rudolph would refine (and, for some viewers, perfect) over the rest of his career, a sort-of chocolate-and-peanut-butter mashup of film noir and screwball comedy that combines the bruised romanticism of the former, the outlandish plotting of the latter, and the sharp, aphoristic dialogue common to them both. On first release, this probably looked like a spin-off of Robert Altman’s work, and not without reason: Rudolph had served as an assistant on THE LONG GOODBYE (1973), CALIFORNIA SPLIT (1974), and NASHVILLE (1975), and Altman, in turn, produced WELCOME TO L.A. With its large ensemble cast and revisionist approach to Hollywood genres, the film does bear a passing resemblance to the aforementioned titles, but where Altman delighted in dialogue improvised into being, Rudolph revels in the written word—his characters sound like they came out of a book, and the juxtaposition between their literary airs and the base and otherwise embarrassing things they do creates a wellspring of irony. In later Rudolph films, this irony would become more comedic, but in WELCOME TO L.A., it’s generally bittersweet and somber. Keith Carradine stars as an emotionally stunted soft rock singer who comes home to Los Angeles for the first time in three years and gets tangled up in a messy romantic roundelay that occasionally suggests LA RONDE on red wine and quaaludes. The various paramours include Carradine’s record label president father (Denver Pyle) and his second-in-command (Harvey Keitel), the latter’s wife (Geraldine Chaplin), an enterprising photographer (Lauren Hutton), and a horny housemaid (Sissy Spacek). Everyone seems oversexed and unhappy, and therein lies their shared sense of disappointment. Underscoring the action are a batch of songs written and performed by Richard Baskin (who had composed much of the music in NASHVILLE); sometimes Rudolph interrupts the action to show Baskin performing in a studio à la Alan Price in Lindsay Anderson’s O LUCKY MAN! (1973). The songs are okay but unnecessary, as Rudolph is more than capable of evoking romantic longing without them. Screening as part of the Some Dreamers of the Silver Screen: L.A.'67-'76 series. (1976, 106 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]

Takeshi Mori’s OTAKU NO VIDEO (Japan)

FACETS Cinema – Thursday, 7pm

The world of rabid fans, cosplay experts, pro gamers, and anime incels is persistently ripe for ridicule. OTAKU NO VIDEO, however, shows that enthusiastic consumers of pop culture worldwide have no shame in poking fun at themselves. Otaku is a term that now seems to most frequently refer to anime enthusiasts, but in the context of this anime/docu-fiction hybrid it refers to what we in the West would typically call the nerd. Through this two-part anime OVA, or original video animation made specifically for home video release, we are given a parody of anime tropes as well as a history lesson of sorts on the studio responsible for the film, Gainax. On the anime end, we see the quest of the main character Ken Kubo, who desires to become the Otaku king, or, as he calls it, the “Otaking.” Spliced between these charming animated segments are fictional documentary-style interviews with real people playing a handful of increasingly degenerate otaku who range from videotape collectors to porn addicts and thieves. In a particularly funny bit, a man speaking English talks about how he finds a particular animated devil girl sexy while the dubbed over Japanese voice talks about how cleverly the Japanese have modernized traditional Japanese stories. What makes this particularly charming, and the anime produced by the legends over at Gainax so endearing even today, is that both of these things can be true. The propulsion of a mecha’s jets, a punch that would cave most men’s face in, or the simple power of friendship—what’s not to love? Screening as part of the Anime Auteurs series and followed by a "secret screening" at 9pm. This screening in particular is exclusive to Anime Auteurs and FACETS Anime Club members. (1991, 100 min, Digital Projection) [Drew Van Weelden]

John Huston's THE MALTESE FALCON (US)

Doc Films (at the University of Chicago) – Friday, 4pm and Saturday, 7pm

Based on the novel by private detective-turned-writer Dashiell Hammett, John Huston's directorial debut not only launched the high-profile careers of Huston and star Humphrey Bogart but is widely considered one of the first examples of film noir. Bogart plays Sam Spade, a private eye who meets the enigmatic femme fatale Brigid O'Shaughnessy (Mary Astor) and is then thrust into a world of mystery and intrigue on the search for a priceless ancient relic. The 'dingus' in question is a classic MacGuffin; the jewel-encrusted falcon statuette never appears on screen, and its value is far eclipsed by the pursuit. Spade is baffled by the maelstrom its rumored existence creates but goes along with the chase in search of vengeance for his murdered partner. Despite the onscreen turmoil, Huston fostered a stylistic continuity rare in any genre of filmmaking: except for a few night scenes, he shot the entire film in sequence, taking the viewer from Spade and Brigid's initial meeting to a bleak finale that anticipates the amoral quality of future film noirs. Screening as part of the Programmers’ Picks series. (1941, 101 min, DCP Digital) [Kat Sachs]

Jackie Chan & Chi-Hwa Chen's POLICE STORY and Jackie Chan's POLICE STORY 2 (Hong Kong)

Gene Siskel Film Center – Tuesday and Wednesday, 6pm (POLICE STORY) and Tuesday, 8pm and Thursday, 6pm (POLICE STORY 2)

The dubbed thwapping of Jackie Chan’s artfully choreographed fight scenes is a form of ASMR I didn’t know existed. His films POLICE STORY and POLICE STORY 2 are as tranquilizing as they are rousing, veritable ballets of brutality with elements of comedy and romance thrown into the mix. Somewhat recently restored by Janus Films in high-definition 4K, the first two films in the Hong Kong superstar’s popular action series are relentlessly entertaining, so much so that it’s almost difficult to critique them. Rather, they’re best seen as artifacts of Chan’s prodigious career, which is marked by a skillfulness that’s beyond one’s wildest imagination, rendered so flawlessly that it appears easy, even if it absolutely isn’t so. Though often compared to Buster Keaton for obvious reasons—some of Chan’s stunts are almost direct corollaries to those of Keaton’s films—Chan is also similar to Keaton in that he’s directed much of his own best work, having made POLICE STORY (1985, 92 min, DCP Digital) after working with James Glickenhaus on THE PROTECTOR (also 1985), which was intended but failed to launch Chan’s career in the United States. Ironically, POLICE STORY, which took Chan back to Hong Kong, premiered at the 1987 New York Film Festival, doing much more than THE PROTECTOR to grow his stateside reputation. In the film, he stars as a young police inspector, Chan Ka Kui, assigned to guard a crime lord’s secretary (Taiwanese icon Brigitte Lin) after she’s strong-armed into testifying against her former boss. The incomparable Maggie Cheung, whose comedic tenor rivals that of Chan’s own, also appears as his girlfriend. A Jackie Chan film often feels like skipping a stone across water, each plunk a show-stopping set piece separated by passages of anticipation; that is to say, the plot, while entertaining, is largely filler until the next conflict, which inevitably yields stunts as yet unimaginable to the average moviegoer. Chan eschews the slow-build in favor of immediate, heart-stopping action, destroying a whole shantytown in the first 15 minutes as ceaselessly as he destroys a luxury mall in the last 15 minutes. POLICE STORY 2 (1988, 122 min, DCP Digital), more polished but less frenetic than its predecessor, picks up right after the first and features Chan’s long-suffering girlfriend more prominently. After a bomb goes off at the mall—a setting whose potential for chaos Chan understands as clearly as George Romero—Chan commits himself to finding the perpetrators of the attack; again, a somewhat labyrinthine, even nonsensical plot stands in the service of impressive set pieces. Differentiating the film from its predecessor are the increased involvement of Cheung and the presence of a team of young police officers, many of them women, facets that make its convoluted plot all the more enjoyable. Both films’ end credits feature outtakes and, more interestingly, behind-the-scenes footage of Chan directing, with what appears effortless and near balletic revealed to be the result of rigorous practice and exacting delivery. It’s undoubtedly harder than it looks, but the harmonious execution is hypnotic—never has ass-kicking been so soothing. Screening as part of the Hong Kong Summer series. [Kat Sachs]

Joe Dante's SMALL SOLDIERS (US)

Alamo Drafthouse (3519 N. Clark St., Suite C301) – Wednesday, 7pm

SMALL SOLDIERS is one of Joe Dante's tilt-shift satires, where prejudices/desires/America get miniaturized to the size of toys (see also GREMLINS 2, MATINEE, certain parts of LOONEY TUNES: BACK IN ACTION) and tossed around, burned, played with. Two well-meaning toymakers (a strangely Jerry Lewis-like David Cross, and Jay Mohr doing Dean-lite) design a line of action figures using their parent company's military artificial intelligence chips, unaware of the consequences. When the teenage son of a bumbling toy shop owner talks a delivery truck driver into letting him have a few for his store, they come to life and wreak Chuck Jones havoc (rockets, pop culture references, sound effects gags) on a sleepy town (locals include Phil Hartman and a 15-year-old Kirsten Dunst, seeming more alive than she does in any of her adult roles). Some of Dante's funniest material is here, as is some of his creepiest, like the scene where an army of sentient Barbie dolls tie Dunst while blasting a Led Zeppelin song. (1998, 110 min, DCP Digital) [Ignatiy Vishnevetsky]

Noah Baumbach's FRANCES HA (US)

Alamo Drafthouse (3519 N. Clark St., Suite C301) – Saturday, 11am

The most financially and critically successful of the mumblecore films, FRANCES HA is also Noah Baumbach at his finest and firmly pushed the genre into the wider public eye. Heavily influenced by Woody Allen films (ANNIE HALL and MANHATTAN) as well as the French New Wave, Baumbach's magnum opus showcases the straightforward side to filmmaking and demonstrates how a strong director can make one hell of a film from a simple screenplay. The script is full of sharp, candid dialogue that feels honest and natural. This character study relies heavily on the emotional and disenfranchised power that conversation has in daily life. Greta Gerwig plays the titular Frances, a 27-year-old dancer whose life is crumbling around her with no end in sight. Like a drummer behind the punchline of a joke, Frances is often a beat late in her conversations, her finances, and most importantly, her livelihood. Gerwig's performance serves an apt metaphor for the millennial generation and the obstacles that they face. It's refreshing to see a film provide an authentic look at how a character's life isn't always going to work out in that special, feel-good way. Despite all this, FRANCES HA is inspiring for its views on the influence of personal growth and the highly personal definition of success that exists when people finally find their own little slice of heaven. Frances just wants to find happiness, and it's fascinating to watch her take that intimate journey towards it. (2013, 86 min, DCP Digital) [Kyle Cubr]

Christopher Nolan's INTERSTELLAR (US)

Alamo Drafthouse (3519 N. Clark St., Suite C301) – Saturday, 3:45pm and Sunday, 11am

Throughout the summer and early fall of 2014, INTERSTELLAR was discussed in hushed tones by Oscarologists and box office prognosticators, positioned sight unseen as an automatic blockbuster that would steamroll everything in its path—a feat of original I.P. that would tug at the heart and the wallet.  Projectionists everywhere welcomed director Christopher Nolan's emphatically pro-celluloid public posture and marveled at the clout he exercised in goading Paramount Pictures to commit to a sizable run of 35mm, 70mm, and 70mm IMAX prints months after the studio had quietly abandoned analog distribution. When was the last time a one-sheet listed the available gauges under the contractual credits block? When word leaked that the film was nearly three hours long, the fanboys relitigated their starry-eyed comparisons to Kubrick and Tarkovsky. Physicists Kip Thorne and Neil deGrasse Tyson touted the movie's scientific bona fides. Then INTERSTELLAR actually came out. The reception was icier than the snow-swept landscapes that automatically connote a Nolan movie, a trope appearing in his work almost as frequently as murdered wives and guilt-ridden husbands. (How does Nolan's own spouse, Emma Thomas—also his producer—feel about all that?) It was pretentious, talky, sentimental, and it stopped the nascent McConnaissance dead in its tracks. The sound mix, including Hans Zimmer's Wendy-Carlos-at-the-electromagnetic-church-organ score, was roundly pilloried as unintelligible mud. Nolan and his co-scripting brother Jonathan cited 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY as their Rosetta Monolith, but fell short of their inspiration: if the 1968 film melded the dreamy design of vintage sci-fi illustrations with the weighty, pseudo-spiritual aura of a photo essay in Life, INTERSTELLAR played more like a crumpled issue of the Saturday Evening Post, unstuck in time. All told, INTERSTELLAR is just about the squarest blockbuster to arrive in many a moon. (How square? When the INTERSTELLAR Oscar campaign failed to gain traction, Paramount bought a two-page spread in the Hollywood Reporter that reprinted a recent endorsement from David Brooks in its entirety.)  In any other movie, astronaut Anne Hathaway's monologue about the unsung scientific value of love would come across as a moment of eye-rolling sexism. And it is that, but it's also unquestionably, unabashedly sincere. INTERSTELLAR believes in love and family as real forces in the physical world, and I don't have the heart to tell it otherwise. (It also literalizes string theory as a multicolored pane of time-bending strings behind your bedroom wall. Think about that for a moment!) The ambition of INTERSTELLAR is inseparable from its clean-shaven nuttiness and its discreet romanticism. Its essential value would only become more pronounced in the aftermath of THE MARTIAN, with which it shares many plot points and several cast members. Both films can be construed as infomercials for NASA and a renewed commitment to STEM education, but the smartass quips and transparent ingratiation of THE MARTIAN are utterly alien to straight-arrow awe of INTERSTELLAR. John Lithgow's grandfatherly ramblings just about sum it up: "When I was a kid, it seemed like they made something new every day. Some, gadget or idea, like every day was Christmas." Make America Great Again? (2014, 169 min, DCP Digital) [K.A. Westphal]

Christopher Nolan's TENET (US)

Alamo Drafthouse (3519 N. Clark St., Suite C301) – Monday and Tuesday, 7pm

Christopher Nolan has a fascination with time in nearly all of his movies, whether it’s the dilation of time as in INTERSTELLAR, the deconstruction of narrative time as in MEMENTO, or telling a story utilizing different increments of time as in DUNKIRK. TENET marks the first time in which he actually tackles time travel. The film centers on a CIA agent known only as The Protagonist (John David Washington) who’s placed on a mission to stop a global terror threat that could end the world. His only hope to accomplish this task is through the use of time inversion, which essentially allows him to interact with the world around him while time flows in reverse. TENET is Nolan’s most technically accomplished film, with ornate, awe-inspiring action sequences and impressive visual effects, many of which are accomplished in camera. It’s a clear homage to many of the James Bond films and, particularly, to the grand, often-times outlandish global plots found in that franchise’s entries from the ‘90s and ‘00s. In fact, the entire film seems to be constructed around its grandiose moments of visual splendor. Much of the film’s exposition relies on key-conversations amongst The Protagonist and several other characters, which can be frustratingly difficult to comprehend at times due to TENET’s sound design, which prioritizes the cacophony of its action sequences and its booming score. Nevertheless, the film offers viewers many clues needed to unlock its narrative puzzle, though, like other Nolan films, it may demand multiple viewings to fully decrypt. (2020, 151 min, DCP Digital) [Kyle Cubr]

Wes Anderson's ASTEROID CITY (US)

Music Box Theatre – See Venue website for showtimes

Through ten feature films made over nearly thirty years, Wes Anderson has honed an exacting Lionel Model Train set aesthetic in which human history and emotions often play second banana to design considerations and deadpan humor. Especially since his first stop-motion animation film, FANTASTIC MR. FOX (2009), Anderson's movies have mostly dispensed with any pretense of naturalism in favor of a strictly controlled environment in which the puppeteer's hand often invades the frame to rearrange the furniture or to recast his doll-like charges' fates. Depending on your tolerance for his near-autistic compulsion to demonstrate mastery over his domain, these films can be either an unbearable slog or a charming detour from humdrum reality. I'm an admirer of Anderson's steadfast dedication to his vision but often find that not much about his toy constructions follow me out of the theater after the credits roll. Though he often puts his characters in fraught world-historical settings and programs them to emote after heartbreak or other traumas, these feelings and reactions rarely break through the symmetrical compositions and wind-up gizmos buzzing about in the background. The need to deflect and distract oneself from pain through obsessive hobbyism is a time-honored strategy, especially for men, or, more precisely, boys who refuse to grow up. Anderson's latest has all the hallmarks of his previous work but adds a layer of present-day resonance. Though set in the 1950s, in a small western town on the edge of a nuclear testing site, and featuring a cascade of major and minor movie stars and even an alien landing, the references to COVID lockdown life are everywhere. This time the unreality, panic, and erratic behavior—while still often played for laughs—is not cribbed from beloved short stories or arcana, but from the very recently experienced every day. This gives the film a gravity the previous ones lacked. We all lived through a thing even a control freak like Anderson can't ignore by descending into his basement tinkerer's kingdom and his work is all the better for it. (2023, 105 min, DCP Digital) [Dmitry Samarov]

🎞️ PHYSICAL SCREENINGS/EVENTS –
ALSO SCREENING

⚫ Chicago Film Archives
The Chicago Transit Authority, in partnership with the Chicago Film Archives (CFA), presents a new, one-of-a-kind temporary art installation now playing at the Cicero Green Line station (4800 W. Lake St.). The installation, called we love, is a filmic exhibition of home movies and amateur films selected from collections housed and preserved at CFA. The video, which has a runtime of approximately 48 minutes, will be projected onto a wall in the mezzanine area of the station. The video will run day and night through mid-March next year. More info here. 

⚫ Chicago Filmmakers
BWiFF 2023 takes place at Chicago Filmmakers through Saturday, July 22. More info here. 

⚫ Cinema/Chicago
Natalia Santa’s 2017 Colombian film THE DRAGON DEFENSE (79 min, Digital Projection) screens Wednesday, 6:30pm, at the Chicago Cultural Center (78 E. Washington St.). Note that advance tickets are no longer available. Please pick up a Rush Card when doors open at 5:45pm to reserve your place for a last-minute ticket. Open seats will be made available to Rush Card holders 15 minutes prior to showtime on a first-come, first-served basis. Admission is not guaranteed. More info here.

⚫ Comfort Film at Comfort Station (2579 N. Milwaukee Ave.)
Comfort Film presents “These flowers were for you and other short films by Taylor Yocom” on Wednesday, 8pm, at Comfort Station. Free admission. More info here.

⚫ Elevated Films
Elevated Films presents Cathryne Czubek’s 2023 documentary ONCE UPON A TIME IN UGANDA (94 min, Digital Projection) screens Tuesday, 8:30pm, at a secret location which will be sent to the RSVP list before the event. Preceded by live music starting when doors open at 7pm. More info here.

⚫ Gene Siskel Film Center
The 2022 National Theatre Live production of Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing (180 min, Digital Projection), directed by Simon Goodwin, screens on Saturday and Sunday at 2pm. More info here.

⚫ Intuit: The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art (756 N. Milwaukee Ave.)
The Chicago premiere of Petter Ringbom and Marquise Stillwell’s 2023 documentary THIS WORLD IS NOT MY OWN (97 min, Digital Projection), about artist Nellie Mae Rowe, screens Saturday, 5pm, at Intuit: The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art. More info here. 

⚫ Music Box Theatre
It’s officially Music Box Garden Movies season! See Venue website for films and showtimes. 

Alex Winter’s 2022 film THE YOUTUBE EFFECT (99 min, DCP Digital) begins its full run on Friday. See Venue website for showtimes. More info on all screenings and events here. 

⚫ Sideshow Gelato (4819 N. Western Ave.)
The Sideshow Gelato shop presents Sideshow Sinema!, during which they will screen films connected to the shop theme, every Thursday. More info here. 

⚫ South Of Roosevelt: Short Films Vol. 2
“South Of Roosevelt: Short Films Vol. 2” (93 min, Digital Projection), featuring nine short films from South Side filmmakers, screens Saturday, 8pm, in Whiner Beer Co.’s (1400 W. 46th St.) garden. More info here.

⚫ Sweet Void Cinema (3036 W. Chicago Ave.)
Find information on the Humboldt Park microcinema, including its screening and workshop schedule, here.

🎞️ LOCAL ONLINE SCREENINGS – ALSO SCREENING/STREAMING

⚫ The Cookout: A Community-Based Archiving Conversation
Sixty Inches From Center and The Blackivists present The Cookout: A Community-Based Archiving Conversation on Sunday at 2pm via Zoom. Moderated by Blackivist member Raquel Flores-Clemons, representatives from community partners Illinois Chapter of the Black Panther Party, Lawndale Pop-Up Spot, alt space Chicago, and the Heaux History Project will discuss their work to archive and document themselves and preserve the history of Black Chicago. Following the panel discussion, there will be time for Q&A; registration is free. More info here. 

CINE-LIST: July 14 - July 20, 2023

MANAGING EDITORS // Ben and Kat Sachs

CONTRIBUTORS // Maxwell Courtright, Kyle Cubr, Jeremy M. Davies, Ray Ebarb, Megan Fariello, Marilyn Ferdinand, Jonathan Leithold-Patt, Dmitry Samarov, Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, Drew Van Weelden, K.A. Westphal