:: FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 21 - THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 27 ::

📽️ CRUCIAL VIEWING

Amy Halpern’s FALLING LESSONS (US/Experimental)

Block Cinema (at Northwestern University) – Friday, 7pm

Oftentimes the best experimental films are stunningly simple, born of rudimentary ideas that become complex by virtue of execution. They’re all the more impressive for this—emanations of life’s most elemental impulses, helping us understand  (or at least express what may be beyond understanding) our existence. One such entry into this particular canon is the late experimental filmmaker Amy Halpern’s FALLING LESSONS. Her only feature-length film, it’s composed of over 200 living beings—adults, children and animals—sequenced vertically over the course of its run time, each brief vignette then falling into the ether. Some of the faces may be familiar: Michael Snow, Shirley Clarke, Alex Cox, Julie Dash, and Chick Strand (who called it the strangest film she’d ever seen) are among the otherwise anonymous Los Angeleans who become characters in and of themselves, as sometimes indicated by suggestive movements, lines of dialogue or outrightly dramatic situations. These micro-narratives exist for as long as they’re on the screen, no more or less. The stunningly simple idea that prompted this film was, as Halpern says in an interview with Senses of Cinema, her being “a New Yorker and it comes straight out of being a child in New York city, where you see, intimately, people’s faces, in particular their eyes, all the time, but they don’t give you a direct look. And there is a sense of people flowing by you on streets, passing you like a stream, and I like streams in vertical, in a sense that when you are living on the planet, facing east, the planet is turning in that direction and all of us are falling in that direction.” One gets the sense that these figures persist in some alternate universe, continuing whatever they were doing in their short time on screen; like real life in that regard, it reveals a simple but profound truism about human existence: that the more we see, the less we may actually know. Preceded by Halpern’s 2022 short film VERGE FOR MY SISTERS (5 min, 16mm) and her 2012 short film PALM DOWN (6 min, 16mm). Laura Paul, author of the recently published Film Elegy, a book-length poem exploring her time working as Halpern’s apprentice, will introduce the film and then afterwards offer reflections on the work and selections from her poem. (1992, 64 min, 16mm) [Kat Sachs]
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This event is part of a city-wide celebration of Halpern’s films, Palm Down: The Films of Amy Halpern, presented in partnership with Pilsen’s Inga Bookshop, which will host Paul for a reading and a screening of Halpern’s short 16mm films on Saturday starting at 6pm; and with experimental film programmer and Tone Glow publisher Joshua Minsoo Kim, who will host a two-part program of Halpern shorts films at Elastic Arts on Sunday beginning at 1:30pm

Howard Hawks' TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT (US)

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

Adapted by William Faulkner and Jules Furthman from what Howard Hawks described as Ernest Hemingway's worst novel, TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT stars Humphrey Bogart as a professional fisherman named Harry Morgan and Lauren Bacall as Marie "Slim" Browning, with whom Harry falls in love. Set in Martinique in the summer of 1940 shortly after France fell to the Nazis, a bartender at Harry's hotel pleads with him to transport members of the French Resistance between the islands, but Harry stubbornly refuses, determining to stay out of politics. He soon changes his mind when a former client skips out on paying him needed money. Hemingway denied Hawks' ability to make a good film out of "a god damned bunch of junk," but Hawks responded, "Yes I can. You've got the character of Harry Morgan." Although TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT features the budding romance between Harry and Slim, it also centers on Harry's place within the fight between Vichy France and the Resistance on a small Caribbean island. Throughout the film's entirety, Harry repeatedly emphasizes his unwillingness to take sides, in consequence isolating himself from a society that demands he choose. In a brief conversation about the end result of politics and its wars, he may tell us his reason, "I've handled quite a lot of gunshot wounds." Hawks often recycled themes and plots; his most common theme resembles that of Hemingway: to fulfill one's duty in the face of daunting odds.  Although Harry does not fight for a cause, he still follows a code that first requires him to be a moral human being. Harry's code compels him to protect Slim and his friend Eddie and to save the lives of two members of the Resistance simply because it is the right thing to do. In his great essay on Hawks from the early 1950s, Jacques Rivette said, "Hawks epitomizes the highest qualities of the American cinema: he is the only American director who knows how to draw a moral. His marvelous blend of action and morality is probably the secret to his genius. It is not an idea that is fascinating in a Hawks film, but its effectiveness. A deed holds our attention not so much for its intrinsic beauty as for its effect on the inner workings of his universe." Hemingway's character of Harry Morgan adapted by Faulkner and Hawks provided the master director with the perfect vehicle to express his singular form of genius. Screening as part of the Silver Fox: Howard Hawks Matinee series. (1944, 100 min, 35mm) [Candace Wirt]

Paul Schrader’s LIGHT OF DAY (US)

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

Paul Schrader conceived of LIGHT OF DAY as a star vehicle for Bruce Springsteen, but he turned down the part, deciding he’d rather not try his hand at acting. The film’s mix of blue-collar ambiance and Americana rock is still evocative of many Springsteen songs, and one can’t help watching the movie without thinking of what it might be like if Springsteen were in it. At the same time, LIGHT OF DAY is really only about music as much as John Milius’ BIG WEDNESDAY (1978) is about surfing; music provides the connection between characters and even defines them over time, but ultimately it’s the passage of time that Schrader is most interested in. Joan Jett (in her first screen performance) and Michael J. Fox (in his first serious role) star as siblings in a blue-collar part of Cleveland who dream of making a living with their band. The film charts their lives over the next several years as they pursue their dream, only for it to fizzle out and reality to reassert its ugly head. There’s a prominent subplot involving the siblings’ relationship with their devoutly religious mother (Gena Rowlands, great as always), which allows Schrader to integrate perennial themes of religious guilt and the burden of the past. These themes become central to the film in its third act, but until then Schrader interweaves them elegantly with his other concerns, among them the decimation of America’s working class, the economics of a fledgling touring band, the emotional dynamics between adult siblings, and blue-collar Midwestern towns. Schrader gets enough of these things right, or at least displays great effort in trying to get them right, that one can overlook the occasional awkwardness of the lead performances or the fact that little of the music is distinctive. The last ten or fifteen minutes of LIGHT OF DAY also outshine any of the movie’s flaws. As good as anything Schrader has done, the final passages climax with an extended closeup of Rowlands as she achieves a Bergmanesque degree of fine-chiseled characterization. The synergy between director and performer is typically strong in Schrader’s work, and in this scene it is extraordinary. Preceded by Julien Temple’s 1991 music video for Tom Petty’s “Into the Great Wide Open.” (7 min, 35mm). (1987, 107 min, 35mm) [Ben Sachs]

An Evening with Anahita Ghazvinizadeh (International/Experimental)

Conversations at the Edge at the Gene Siskel Film Center – Thursday, 6pm

What Iranian filmmaker Anahita Ghazvinizadeh says she admires most about the films of Abbas Kiarostami, from whom she took a workshop during her second year at Art University of Tehran, is “that, emotionally, the people in his films are impenetrable, and it was important for me to find that in his films. The way that I’m showing emotions in my films, my camera does not want to go inside.” Having not seen any of her earlier work (though now decidedly interested in doing so), this resonated with my experiencing watching her latest film, MY LIFE IS WIND (A LETTER) (79 min, Digital Projection), in which a young refugee, Myriam, relocates to Iowa from Iran. Sara Hosseini Kolkou appears as Myriam, but Hiba Ghrir performs the narration of a letter Myriam is writing to her grandmother back in Iran (her parents and younger brother were killed), who we see toward the beginning of the film through video calls. Myriam the presence does not speak in the film; only at one point does she make a sound, viewers learning of her inner thoughts primarily through the epistolary voiceover. She notes early on that her grandmother once told her that “it is good that we should wait in silence,” but she also observes that her silence is often mistaken by her helpers in this new country as not understanding what she’s being told. Rather for her silence is a place in which her parents and brother reside in her memory. Also screening as part of the program are three short films that resonate with Ghazvinizadeh. Forugh Farrokhzad’s 1963 documentary THE HOUSE IS BLACK (22 min, Digital Projection) needs no introduction, widely considered, as it is, to be among the best of Iranian cinema. Its subject is a leper colony in northwest Iran, but this is no traditional documentary; voiceover plays a crucial part in this, too, as Farrokhzad, also a renowned poet, quotes from the Bible, the Qur’an and her own work to accompany what cannot be denied are often shocking images of people suffering from various degrees of the illness. It might be the purest example of something considered to be “ugly” (though it’s not kind to think of anyone as being so) made beautiful—or even more so, considering the inherent beauty of everything—by an artist’s perspective of it. British-Palestinian artist Mona Hatoum’s 1988 video MEASURES OF DISTANCE (15 min, Digital Projection) also features narration in the form of letters, from Hatoum’s mother in Lebanon, where her family went to from Palestine, to herself in London, where she stayed when the Lebanese Civil War broke out, detailing their increasingly intimate relationship as Hatoum probes more into that part of her mother’s life. The images on screen are from the reunion that the mother references in the letter, where Hatoum took photos of her showering, which discomfited her father. These images are overlaid with the actual handwritten letters, and Hatoum’s narration is overlaid on top of some audio recordings of her family. Both this and Ghazvinizadeh’s film deal with themes of displacement and the distance that creates between those whose bonds are otherwise unbreakable, stretched thin only by horrible circumstance. I’ve written about Saif Alsegh’s 2023 short film BEZUNA (7 min, Digital Projection) before for Cine-File, noting that “a literal binary—one of images—is present in the film, where split-screen is used to seem almost intentionally distracting. The images, sometimes bifurcated unevenly and ostensibly random, include a stunning klipspringer contrasted against a manicured hand holding a cigarette and an extremely fragmented collage of images including a close-up of a horse and a wider shot of a horse galloping around, carved at an angle underneath a non-image of black void. On top of these, Alsaegh’s mother recalls the story of a cat who’d taken up residence near the family’s home in Baghdad, lamenting how the cat would have litters of kittens, some of which would get “chopped up” after seeking warmth inside the family’s car. Bezuna, as a title card at the end tells us, is an Iraqi-Arabic word for cat, the feline here a symbol for what’s left behind when one must leave a place suddenly. Another voice, Alsaegh’s, lists things not to pack, among them your hairbrush, your rough but oddly comfortable towels, the actual way you pronounce your name, your older sister. The more banal items assume greater significance in total but also serve to emphasize the more important things that get sacrificed to the ravages of war. Images of migrants and refugees toward the end cohere everything that came before it, illuminating the cyclical nature of this global trauma,” much like the other films in this illuminating program. [Kat Sachs]

Joshua Oppenheimer’s THE END (Denmark/Germany/Ireland/Italy/United Kingdom/Sweden)

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

After the release of his devastating duology of documentary films interrogating the tragic aftermath of the Indonesian genocides of the 1960s, one may be right to gawk at director Joshua Oppenheimer’s long-awaited follow-up project: a movie musical about wealthy elites hiding underground post-apocalypse. But Oppenheimer seems to be following the same impulses that led him towards THE ACT OF KILLING (2012) and THE LOOK OF SILENCE (2014), continuing to dissect the ripple effects of power and megalomania. The task of actually filming the existential dread of the upper class holed up in a bunker for decades was sadly an unrealistic one, so Oppenheimer looked to tackle his curiosities by leaping head-first into the genre of musical theater, perhaps as far away from realism as possible. Here, Oppenheimer collaborates with composer Joshua Schmidt on the songscape, creating a score that follows along the singularly intellectual path of musical theater songwriting started by Stephen Sondheim and which has continued with late 20th and early 21st century composers like Michael John LaChiusa and Dave Malloy. In this mode, the songs are more interested in artful experimentation than populist appeal (in a moment of bizarre musical theater kismet, Sondheim’s final musical, Here We Are, is similarly about a group of rich people trapped in a room during the end of the world). Schmidt’s most notable prior outings in the theater realm were adaptations of classic stage works, previously transliterating Elmer Rice’s surrealist tendencies into the atonal chaotic melodies of Adding Machine: The Musical and turning George Bernard Shaw’s Victorian era wit into the heartfelt chamber operetta A Minister’s Wife. For THE END, where parents and children and lost souls spend their eternity in the empty salt mines underneath the carnage overhead, Schmidt channels a Michel Legrand score on the verge of a nervous breakdown, with melodies weaving together jazz, vaudeville, and opera and melding across songs and characters as they grasp for what could have been had they not been driven underground by their own hubris and disregard for one other. As George MacKay and Moses Ingram, the youngest residents of the bunker, wonder if escape from apocalypse is an option, they engage in a stunning pas de deux amongst the vast wasteland of their prison. Tilda Swinton, the matriarch forever rearranging artwork on the walls, sings of letters she has (or wishes she had) sent to her parents upon her descent into this state of purgatory. Michael Shannon, the patriarch whose energy company was a likely culprit in accelerating the above-ground wasteland, dreams of the landscapes and scenery that he likely helped destroy. Above all else, THE END is a film about the rich lying to each other (and themselves) for the sake of comfort, to ease the pain and wash away the guilt of their own sins, and only in song can they truly open up and hope for something better and more honest. How disturbingly fitting then that, in musical theater, an art form where songs typically propel action and emotion, these characters are left with literally nowhere to go, singing beautifully towards nothing, forever. Oppenheimer in person for post-screening Q&A. (2024, 148 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Kaye]

James N. Kienitz Wilkins's STILL FILM (US/Experimental)

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

Premiering at New York’s Museum of Modern Art in early 2023, STILL FILM feels right at home in a gallery, the focus on the artistry of still imagery and circuitous, alienating conversation ripe for an audience of museum-goers dipping into a darkened back room for five minutes in between wandering hallways packed with inanimate objects. How joyous then to catch it in a cinematic context, "trapped" with all 72 minutes of a slideshow of photography from decades of film history, taken from press packages and promotional materials. Think of it as a Hollywood-sponsored riff on Chris Marker’s LA JETÉE (1962)—something Kienitz Wilkins conveniently points out to us in just in case the reference went over our heads—underscored by a fictional legal deposition that shifts between interrogation and philosophical lecture. The fact that all four "characters" of the piece are voiced by Kienitz Wilkins with no discernible vocal shifts makes the attempt to follow along with the proceedings even more disorienting, your mind trapped between who is the lawyer, who is the witness, and why the voice off screen is talking about going to see 1990’s DICK TRACY at the same moment there’s a still image from WATERWORLD (1995) being displayed. That dissonance between subject matter and visual presentation is a neat element of tonal variety, but when photos from INDEPENDENCE DAY (1996) emerge upon discussions of deranged Hollywood conspiracy theories, that’s when the sense of a darkly comic thesis statement begins to emerge. The endless quick patter of Kienitz Wilkins’ speech paired with the nostalgic discovery of seeing behind-the-scenes footage of Arnold Schwarzenegger holding a prop head in TOTAL RECALL (1990) or Spike Lee directing Damon Wayans in BAMBOOZLED (2000) keeps you on your toes about where this might be going, before reaching an inevitable conclusion about the terrifying and tightening grip that the movies have on all of us. And with such a cavalcade of arresting imagery before us, it’s hard not to see why. Wilkins in person for a post-screening discussion and audience Q&A. (2023, 72 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Kaye]

Philip Rabalais and Auden Lincoln-Vogel’s LOST BOYS, STOLEN TRUCKS (US/Experimental)

Gene Siskel Film Center – Monday, 6pm

This deadpan shorts program of Midwest cinematic excellence opens with Philip Rabalais’s DREAM BOY (2017, 23 min), a MiniDV slipstream horror odyssey that tracks a young man’s tense and mundane encounters with an elusive other who steals his truck, drinks his beer, breaks his TV, repairs it again, shapeshifting matter-of-factly through multiple identities, bodies, and costume changes. The black and white homegrown videotape masterfully blends practical and digital effects in a tidy loop of spectral surprises. The second work in the program, Auden Lincoln-Vogel’s BILL AND JOE GO DUCK HUNTING (2021, 22 min), takes its title from Jacques Rivette’s CÉLINE AND JULIE GO BOATING (1974) and takes decided cues from Kelly Reichardt’s OLD JOY (2006), teasing out the offbeat intimacy of two old friends retreading their placid tradition of a trip to the lake. Following an awkward start, the film explodes its genre from within, presaging the slow-burn camping trip provocations of Joel Potrykus’s latest dark buddy comedy VULCANIZADORA (2024). Warding off the darkness is Philip Rabalais’s MOONROOF (2024, 20 min), a film primarily structured by a sunny, late-afternoon fixed perspective of a parked car’s interior roof and skyward window view. Against this frame, or through, two young men entertain each other with absurdly whimsical would-you-rather prompts that dip in and out of erotic and surrealist poetry. As with the other works in this program, a sublime twist awaits in the form of unexpected visitation and spatial anomaly. Finally, Auden Lincoln-Vogel’s CRIME FILM (2025, 10 min) tops up the program with the noir buyer-seller exchange of a truck’s vehicle title, consecrated on expired 16mm film stock. As the character Buella cryptically muses in the opening episode of David Lynch’s TWIN PEAKS: THE RETURN (2017), “It’s a world of truck drivers.” Presented as part of the Film Center’s Off Center experimental film series. Filmmakers in attendance for a live performance. [Elise Schierbeek]

📽️ ALSO RECOMMENDED

Wolfgang Staudte’s THE MURDERERS ARE AMONG US (Germany)

Goethe-Institut Chicago (150 N. Michigan Ave., Suite 420) – Tuesday, 6pm [Free Admission]

As a birder, I learned early on that one of the best places to see a wide variety of birds is in edge habitat, a confluence of several types of habitat that can attract various species. So, too, I’ve learned that films that blend successfully more than one genre, tone, or look can enrich the themes they wish to explore. Such a film is THE MURDERERS ARE AMONG US, the first movie issued by the Deutsche Film Company (DEFA), a studio founded by the Soviet Union to advance denazification in Germany following World War II that became the state-owned studio of East Germany. Its director and screenwriter, Wolfgang Staudte, made his start directing shorts and documentaries during the mid 1930s, but infamously was an actor throughout World War II and appeared in the notorious antisemitic film JUD SÜß (1940). Perhaps to atone for his contributions to the Nazi propaganda machine, he took his commitment to facing historical facts seriously. THE MURDERERS ARE AMONG US is fascinating as a transitional film that looks at various strata of German society and how the war affected not only their physical lives, but also their emotional lives. Wilhelm Borchert plays Hans Mertens, a nonpracticing doctor and former Werhmacht officer who lives in a ruin of an apartment block in Berlin and comes home drunk every night to the consternation of two of his morally “superior” neighbors—collaborators if ever I saw one. One day, the former occupant of Mertens’ apartment, Susanne Wallner (Hildegard Knef), returns after having spent three years in a concentration camp. Mertens refuses to leave, and so the pair become roommates, with Susanne working industriously to make the apartment livable. Through happenstance, Mertens comes face to face with his former commander, Ferdinand Brueckner (Arno Paulsen), who ordered the retribution murder of 150 Polish civilians. Will the guilt-ridden Mertens avenge their deaths, or will his newfound love with Susanne soften his heart? As one can see from this description, Staudte faced the crimes of the immediate past directly…well, sort of. One look at the blonde, probably blue-eyed Susanne begs the question of why she was sent to a concentration camp. Was she a German partisan? Maybe a communist? (Interestingly, Knef actually spent three harrowing months in a Soviet prison camp disguised as a German soldier before she was able to escape.) Sympathy overflows for a kindly, dying optometrist (Robert Forsch) who awaits the return of his son from the German army. By contrast, Brueckner, a jolly, prosperous fellow blithely revels in his good fortune, dismissing his summary execution order as “war.” Aside from Borchert, whose scenery-chewing close-ups are literally in your face, the actors do a creditable job even as the film slides into melodrama with some frequency. As with the neorealists in Italy, Staudte made use of the ruins of Berlin for his trümmerfilm (rubble film) that may have been an inspiration for the look and settings of Christian Petzold’s PHOENIX (2014). The cinematography is expressionist for the most part, both German and Soviet, with crazy zooms that jack up the emotions. However, except for a brief look at a newspaper whose headline reads “Two Million Gassed at Auschwitz,” this film is as Aryan as it gets; it even ends in a cemetery filled with crosses. The schizophrenic atonement for the murder of innocents mixed with grief for the non-Jewish Germans lost during the war and a revenge plot tangled with a sentimental romance shows the struggle Staudte and DEFA had trying to face some overwhelming truths that could engage a postwar audience. While not perfect, THE MURDERERS ARE AMONG US offers a sincere attempt at a reckoning from which other countries dealing with their own crimes could take a lesson. Screening as part of the Berlin Nights series. (1946, 81 min, DVD Projection) [Marilyn Ferdinand]

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

Gene Siskel Film Center – Tuesday, 6pm

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. Screening as part of the Shadows of War lecture series. (2023, 94 min, DCP Digital) [Kat Sachs]

Osgood Perkins’ THE MONKEY (US)

Alamo Drafthouse and the Music Box Theatre – See venue for showtimes

A blood-drenched Adam Scott torches a drum-banging toy monkey with a flamethrower, but the cursed relic returns to his twin sons, Hal and Bill (Theo James). Too late, the boys realize that winding the key brings only suffering. Desperate, they discard it in a well, where it remains silent for twenty-five years—until the drumming starts again. No one is safe. Osgood Perkins adapts Stephen King’s short story from Skeleton Crew but takes creative liberties, transforming a tale about suppressed trauma finding its way back into a visceral expression of trauma. Perkins’ film unfolds along multiple threads: two orphaned brothers growing estranged, a son struggling to reconnect with his absent father, and an overarching meditation on inherited anguish. The monkey—don’t call it a toy—becomes both a harbinger of death and a metaphor for generational suffering. Perkins even stitches his own past into the film, drawing from the loss of his mother on 9/11 and the enigmatic shadow of his father, Anthony Perkins. One character states outright that 9 and 11 are just numbers, which highlights the point Perkins is trying to make about the absurdity, pointlessness, and ultimate randomness of death. By shifting the tone of the source material, Perkins makes the story more interactive. Seeing THE MONKEY in a packed theater is the best way to experience this carnival ride. Step right up and see a man's intestines stretched the length of a pawn shop. The FINAL DESTINATION films attempt these feats of Rube Goldberg-style death traps with sincerity, but Perkins strips away the earnestness, leaving only the absurdity. Balancing horror and comedy is no small feat, but a strong narrative and razor-sharp dialogue make it work. The quarrelling and hopeful reconciliation of the twin brothers is an element added by Perkins. Osgood is the older brother of singer-songwriter Elvis Perkins, and within the twin brothers of Hal and Bill there is sibling rivalry, estrangement, and resentment, but theirs is a story of coming back to one another. Whatever relationship the Perkins brothers may have had in the past, they certainly work well together now. Elvis provided scores for THE BLACKCOAT'S DAUGHTER (2015) and also LONGLEGS (under the name Zilgi). There is something larger at work within Perkins' variation of King's short story. A reflection of the paradox of human experience where suffering and laughter console each other. Moments of gallows humor offer a relief from the tragedy, while the tragedy itself deepens the stakes of the comedy. The Structuralist view of this link says that tragedy moves from order to chaos and comedy moves from chaos to order. This leaves only a liminal space for laughter and sorrow to greet one another. This absurdist quest to find meaning where there is none, stays within the confines of that liminal space and is on full display in THE MONKEY. Within the stages of grief, moments of dark humor can be necessary and healthy. Perkins' own tragic past works its way into his narratives. He has called his own work a Trojan Horse for exploring his own loss, using genre as a vehicle for deeply personal storytelling. THE BLACKCOAT’S DAUGHTER dealt with sorrow and longing through possession while his other films have been attempts at connecting with his father, his mother, how attachments to the past can get in the way of growth, and now with THE MONKEY, the lasting effect of laughter in the face of incomprehensible pain. Obviously, gallows humor and Grand Guignol spectacles may not elicit catharsis for everyone, but it absolutely did for Perkins, which shows in every frame. Staring into the void has never been this much fun. (2025, 95 min, 35mm) [Shaun Huhn]

Matthew Rankin’s UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE (Canada)

Gene Siskel Film Center – See Venue website for showtimes

This is one cozy film. Between the soft palettes, wide shots that seem to engulf you, and its soft, absurd surrealism, UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE creates such a lovely atmosphere to tell its stories. We’re in a liminal Canada where Farsi is the common language of Winnipeg. Where we see two girls find money frozen in ice and want to get it out, a local tour guide walking a confused group around, and a government worker traveling to visit his mother. Children here dress up like Groucho Marx and go to school. The film is very serious about being a bit silly. It’s beautifully shot with gorgeous and playful framing. The details are so perfectly tuned and we’re given a whimsy that never goes near becoming saccharine or cloying because there’s a game-like feel to the way Rankin plays with things like muted existentialism, broad comedy, serendipity, and cinematic pranksterism. It’s such a delight to watch. It’ll be worth going outside in the dead of winter and getting a chill on the way to the cinema. Honestly, it might even help you enjoy it all the more. (2024, 89 min, DCP Digital) [Raphael Jose Martinez]

Sergio Corbucci's THE GREAT SILENCE (Italy)

Music Box Theatre – Wednesday, 7pm

Some westerns—whether traditional, Spaghetti, or revisionist—seek to ennoble the American West (or at least aspects of it, from the formidable landscapes to its various populations), while others mine the genre to more expressly suggest the futility of any so-called organized society. Sergio Corbucci’s THE GREAT SILENCE, considered one of the superlative Spaghetti Westerns, embodies the latter, offering a stunningly beautiful—and stunningly bleak—anti-authoritarian allegory that was propelled into being by the assassinations of Che Guevara, Malcolm X, and Robert Kennedy. The plot (influenced in part by Marcello Mastroianni once remarking to Corbucci that he wanted to play a mute gunslinger because he couldn’t speak English) centers on the titular Silence (Jean-Louis Trintignant), a quasi-vigilante who’s made a career out of slaying bounty hunters—but only if they shoot first. He’s called Silence because of an injury sustained after his parents’ murder, a harrowing scene shown in flashback. Silence is drawn into a revenge plot by two women, the mother of a young boy killed by one bounty hunter and the wife of a man killed by another, the notorious Loco (Klaus Kinski). At the same time, a venerable soldier (Frank Wolff) is made sheriff of the surrounding region by the governor, who wants to imbue order amongst the treacherous bounty hunters and their starving prey, criminals whom Corbucci implies are either innocent or else driven to crime out of desperation. Pauline (Vonetta McGee), one of the women who solicits Silence’s help, is herself preyed upon by a local banker, a crucial figure in the mysterious renegade’s origins. She wants Silence to kill Loco; the banker wants Loco to kill Silence; Loco and his gang conspire to bait the fugitives hiding out in the snowy expanse so that they may kill them and collect the rewards; and the sheriff wants order for all. As this is happening, Silence and Pauline fall in love, adding a tender foil to the otherwise brutal affair. It’s interesting that the bounty hunters are portrayed here as the bad guys, a revisionist aspect of the film that serves Corbucci’s intentions in creating a parable about the assassinations of key political figures, whom it could be said are like the film’s unjustly pursued and often extrajudicially punished “criminals.” The snow-laden Utah settings (in the days leading up to the Great Blizzard of 1899) are atypical for a western, but they finely evoke the purity of some characters’ roughhewn idealism and the stinging chill of capitalism, which spurs people to commit murder for financial gain. Shot by Silvano Ippoliti, THE GREAT SILENCE retains some key traits of the Spaghetti Western style, though the severe settings (filmed in Italy’s Dolomite Mountains) and solemn tone refine its coarser edges. The cast is superb, from Trintignant’s thoughtful silence to Kinski’s unnerving waggishness to McGee’s skill in carrying scenes wherein she’s the only one speaking. Also of note is Corbucci’s subversiveness in portraying an interracial relationship between Silence and Pauline; race isn’t at the forefront of the plot but again complements Corbucci’s political objective. Finally, Ennio Morricone’s dauntless score aids in conveying Corbucci’s disenchantment with the civic landscape and his reverence toward the physical one. Screening as part of the Mud, Blood, & Marinara: Spaghetti Westerns series. Preceded by an introduction from Andrew Stasiulis, faculty member at DePaul University’s School of Cinematic Arts. (1968, 105 min, DCP Digital) [Kat Sachs]

Andrzej Żuławski's POSSESSION (France/West Germany)

FACETS Cinema – Friday, 7pm

Originally hacked down for American release to a schlocky—and downright absurd—ninety-minutes, POSSESSION has been restored to Zulawski's original cut, showing in a new 4K digital restoration. The added footage doesn't necessarily make the infamous tentacled-monster sex thing any less nuts, because it still is a shocking sight to behold. But its purpose is more nuanced and creepy when the film really goes off the rails. Drawing from his own divorce, Zulawski's film follows the collapse of Mark and Anna's marriage and the impossibility of Mark ever fully knowing, or possessing, his wife in love. Largely set in an apartment near the Berlin Wall, Mark is confronted with divorce and descends into severe depression. He emerges in a near-psychotic state intending to reclaim Anna and their son. He soon becomes aware of Anna's lover, but after confronting him, both men realize Anna is seeing someone—or something—else. Zulawski keeps the camera in almost constant motion, pushing in and pulling back during confrontations between Mark and Anna as their fights escalate to bloody moments that are somehow both expected and completely terrifying. In one scene, Anna grinds meat as Mark maniacally berates her. The noise of the kitchen rises with the tension and Anna, tired of the diatribe, takes an electric knife to her neck. Paired with scenes of their individual genuine tenderness toward their son, POSSESSION is filled with mirrors. Mark meets his son's school teacher, a benevolent doppelganger for his wife, and a double of Mark appears with Anna at the end. Even the setting is exploited for an otherworldly nothingness and an exactness in East and West Germany, itself perversely mirrored. The unrestrained acting—Anna thrashing hysterically could describe many scenes—adds to a heightened reality where Anna's possession is not demonic, but love can be. (1981, 124 min, DCP Digital) [Brian Welesko]
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Followed by Shinya Tsukamoto’s 1988 film TOKYO FIST (87 min, DCP Digital) at 9:30pm as part of the monthly Cold Sweat double feature.

Greg Kwedar’s SING SING (US)

FACETS Cinema – Sunday, 3pm and 5pm

Against the dehumanizing stranglehold of the prison-industrial complex, there are initiatives that seek to nourish, rather than deny or punish, the humanity of incarcerated individuals. One such project is the nonprofit Rehabilitation Through the Arts (RTA), which brings theater, writing, music, dance, and other arts to inmates in a number of New York state prisons, including Sing Sing Correctional Facility. Set mostly within the walls of that prison, SING SING offers a narrative dramatization of RTA using a cast of formerly incarcerated men who are themselves alumni of the theater program, playing versions of themselves. They’re joined by two professional actors playing real people: Colman Domingo, as RTA doyen Divine G, and Paul Raci, who portrays theater director Brent Buell. A self-styled thespian and member of the RTA steering committee, Divine G believes wholeheartedly in the ability of the arts to empower and rehabilitate his fellow inmates. He finds a particular chance to prove his belief when he recruits the prickly, hot-headed Divine Eye (Clarence Maclin) to the program. As the inmates develop their new play, “Breakin’ the Mummy’s Code” (a hilarious time-traveling reimagining of “Hamlet” featuring ancient Egyptian rulers, gladiators, and Freddy Krueger), the idealistic Divine G locks horns with the embittered Divine Eye, who sees little hope in RTA improving his circumstances. Gradually, the two men form a close friendship that only becomes fortified by their eventual, divergent prospects of release. Domingo, Oscar-nominated for his performance here, is outstanding; in his character’s clemency hearing late in the film, he piercingly conveys via extreme closeup a man struggling to maintain the air that has suddenly been knocked from his sails. Maclin, equally good, and the rest of the cast of non-professionals imbue SING SING with an undeniably poignant verisimilitude, their re-staging of their own experiences adding testimony to the restorative power of performance. The film’s masculine tenderness, often rare in prison dramas, is amplified by Pat Scola’s lambent 16mm cinematography, which finds deep warmth behind Sing Sing’s forbidding concrete walls. (2023, 105 min, DCP Digital) [Jonathan Leithold-Patt]

Akira Kurosawa’s RASHÔMON (Japan)

Gene Siskel Film Center – Wednesday, 6pm

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

Alfred Hitchcock's VERTIGO (US)

Gene Siskel Film Center – Friday, 8:15pm and Sunday, 5pm

Despite its massive popularity and canonization as the classic film, VERTIGO remains one of the most insidious, disturbing movies of all time, particularly as it relates to the tortuous labyrinth of the psyche. Out of all the films in the Hitchcock oeuvre, VERTIGO resonates with the most Freudian overtones. Indeed, there exists a strong thematic thread between the two men: both are essentially concerned with peeling back the facade of normalcy to reveal something perverse lurking underneath. As with psychoanalysis, nothing is as it seems in VERTIGO. The story—about Scottie (James Stewart), a former detective being lured out of retirement to investigate the suspicious activities of Madeleine (Kim Novak), his friend's wife—is a pretense for an exploration into the (male) creation of fantasies, a subject that's integral to how we experience movies on the whole. From the very beginning of the film it's almost as if Scottie is subconsciously aware that Madeleine is an unattainable illusion. When he gazes at her in the flower shop, it feels as if the two are situated in different realms of reality. Even when Scottie and Madeleine are at their most intimate, he's kept at a distance by the enigma of her femininity. It's precisely because of this Delphic quality that Madeleine is elevated to the status of fantasy object after her death. In fact, her death only enhances her desirability, the notion that sex/Eros and death/Thanatos are intimately intertwined being one of Freud's most groundbreaking theories (though partial credit should be given to Sabina Spielrein, as David Cronenberg's A DANGEROUS METHOD suggests). Scottie's transformation of Judy into Madeleine in the second half of the film suggests that male desire hinges on the alignment of fantasy and reality; however, Judy is complicit in her metamorphosis from her true self into a fantasy object, evoking John Berger's supposition that "Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at." The famous silhouette shot of Judy in the hotel room emphasizes the bipartite nature of the female psyche—a woman might love you, but she'll simultaneously take part in a nefarious murder plot at your expense. In the end, Judy/Madeleine is anything but a certified copy—she's tainted, corrupt, and cheapened. VERTIGO suggests that one cannot (re)create something that never truly existed in the first place. As Slavoj Zizek puts it: "We have a perfect name for fantasy realized. It's called nightmare."  Screening as part of the Persistence of Memory series. (1958, 128 min, New 4K DCP Digital Restoration) [Harrison Sherrod]

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

Gene Siskel Film Center – Friday, 4pm

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

Andrei Tarkovsky's MIRROR (USSR)

Gene Siskel Film Center – Saturday, 7pm

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

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

Gene Siskel Film Center – Wednesday, 8pm

A hushed and floating aureole of a film, Apichatpong Weerasethakul's UNCLE BOONMEE captivates and holds us firm in some timeless stupor. The northern Thai jungle throbs patiently—with past lives and past events, monkey ghosts and ethereality—while Boonmee comes full circle, or doesn't. The film centers on an elderly Thai farmer, Uncle Boonmee, who is dying of kidney disease. Fading in his farm home, his son and wife appear as spirits (in easily one of the most affecting family dinner scenes on film) to ease Boonmee into non-being. As in SYNDROMES AND A CENTURY and TROPICAL MALADY, Weerasethakul's Buddhism informs the fluidity of time and body, though here he forgoes the formal duality of those films for something like a drifting continuum. Boonmee laments his karma, having killed in the past either too many communists or bugs on his tamarind farm, and later dreams of a stunted future where images of one's past are projected until they arrive. Are we some Baudrillard-like copy of a copy, reborn and born again—or perhaps a continual permutation of events and memories? As in his past work, Weerasethakul lets us linger just long enough in dense but controlled compositions. The distance of his subjects in the frame methodically draws us deeper into his hypnotic world where the sound of our breathing heightens anticipation. It amplifies the pulse and hum of the darkened, textured jungle on screen. But the frame here is also Weerasethakul's most purposeful one, leading us gently into fabled recollection, and cunningly deep inside a haunting cave-womb. History and spirit have a composite curiosity that envelops both Boonmee and the viewer. Weerasethakul's latest masterwork offers as much as one is willing to ask.  Screening as part of the Persistence of Memory series. (2010, 114 min, DCP Digital) [Brian Welesko]

David Lean's LAWRENCE OF ARABIA (UK)

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

If there is a single sequence in the history of film that tells you what watching a movie on a big screen really means, and how that larger-than-life way of experiencing a movie can be so important, it's in LAWRENCE OF ARABIA. A breathtaking long-shot of the desert. A view extending to the horizon. At first, we see nothing more than a shimmer. A mirage. Then a speck. Then, finally, a rider on a horse. Trotting toward us at a deliberate pace. All at once an Arab in the foreground rushes to his own horse, pulls out a gun—and is shot. His body falls to the ground, a streak of blood across his black robe. It lies on the sand. Peter O'Toole looks down at it. After a time, the rider sidles right up to him and undoes his veil. Omar Sharif. They exchange words. The Pinteresque intimacy of their dialog is startlingly paired with the infinite vastness of the desert. It's only one of countless great moments in this truly great film. And when the ten-minute intermission occurs, I dare you not to go to the concession stand and buy yourself a drink. Screening as part of the Inner Voyages series. (1962, 216 min, DCP Digital) [Rob Christopher]

Johan Grimonprez's SOUNDTRACK TO A COUP D'ETAT (Belgium/France/Documentary)

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

If you don’t know about the CIA’s involvement in the overthrow of democratically elected Congolese leader Patrice Lumumba in 1960, SOUNDTRACK TO A COUP D’ETAT offers an essential history lesson; and befitting a movie with soundtrack in the title, the music is killer as well. That’s because, in addition to being about geopolitics, SOUNDTRACK covers one of the most robust periods in jazz history, touching on the bebop and free jazz movements through such figures as Dizzy Gillespie, Max Roach, and Charles Mingus. These artists, along with Nina Simone and Louis Armstrong, were also unwitting actors in the Cold War, it turns out. Drawing on impeccably documented research, SOUNDTRACK explains how their music was used to sell American culture to people around the world (particularly behind the Iron Curtain) and how “goodwill concerts” in African nations were often fronts for espionage activity organized by the CIA. Director Johan Grimonprez cuts between footage of various jazz giants and vintage documentary material of the United Nations, the Congo, and other crucial sites in the short history of the Pan-African movement, culminating with Lumumba’s assassination; in doing so, he conveys how far-reaching the Cold War was while creating an engaging sense of counterpoint between political and artistic histories. The musicians profiled here represented the vanguard of Black creative expression, while some of the other subjects (Lumumba, Kwame Nkrumah, Malcolm X) represented the vanguard of Black political thought; they’re united by the fact that the CIA undermined them all. Grimonprez highlights this historical obscenity by relating the excitement around both jazz and revolutionary Black political movements in the late 1950s, which inspired people to believe in alternatives to white supremacy in both culture and third world politics. Ultimately, the film is about how different the world seemed when these alternatives were being seriously considered and the dominance of Western corporate interests over global affairs wasn’t so depressingly certain. Screening as part of the Pan-African Cinema series. (2024, 150 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]

Gints Zilbalodis' FLOW (Latvia/Animation)

FACETS Cinema – Sunday, 1pm

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

Mickey Keating's INVADER (US)

Music Box Theatre – Friday and Saturday, 9:30pm

Joe Swanberg wields a sledgehammer like a conductor of cacophony to smash his way through drywall and countertops. He busts a door down, he throws chairs across the room, and he stares in delight at the chaos around him. INVADER begins with a foreboding intertitle that says: “According to the FBI, a break-in occurs every 30 seconds in the United States.” We gather Swanberg is the invader in question. He revels in the destruction without any discernible reason and as quickly as one house falls to ruin, he leaves out the back door to lay waste to the next. Writer-director Mikey Keating decided exposition regarding Swanberg’s character would only bloat the lean 70-minute runtime. This minimalist approach works to sow the seeds of dread throughout the rest of the film. At a deserted Metra stop in a Chicago suburb, Ana (Vero Maynez) is getting kicked off the train. She is offered the full Chicago experience as the train is four hours late due to downtown traffic. Ana attempts to contact her cousin, Camila (Ruby Vallejo), who she is supposed to stay with, but Camila never answers. A taxi arrives, but the creepy cabbie inside asking her if she is all alone gives her second thoughts about taking a ride. Ana has the hypervigilance that is required when it is four in the morning and you are, indeed, all alone. After being chased by the driver who either wanted to cause harm or was upset about the loss of a fare, Ana decides to walk the five miles to her cousin’s house. Keating’s walk montage includes Ana walking past buildings in various stages of decay along with shots of American flags waving in the wind. When she finally arrives at her cousin’s house, no one answers the door. Ana even checks for her cousin at the market where she works. There she meets an employee, Carlo (Colin Huerta), who works with her cousin. He decides to help. Carlo calls the police and reports a disturbance at Camila’s home as a ploy for a wellness check. After Ana and Carlo see Swanberg come out of the house and talk to the police, Keating pushes the film into another gear. Between the kinetic movement of Mac Fisken’s handheld cinematography and Valerie Krulfeifer’s rapid-pace editing, Keating’s film sprints to the finish line. The camera acts as both a fly-on-the wall watching the proceedings and as an active participant in the horror. A point-of-view shot will pivot around a corner allowing the audience to see what the characters can’t. It is in these moments that the film becomes our own experience. We are trying to find the right moment to pass an open hallway so we don’t get caught. Other times, the camera will follow too closely to a character and obstruct our view. This constant shift in viewpoint causes disorientation which helps to add to the film’s relentless tension. The wordless Swanberg gives a disturbing performance with a lasting impact and nods to PEOPLE UNDER THE STAIRS (1991) and HALLOWEEN (1978). He is animalistic in his unstoppable instinct to invade, destroy, and repeat. With its minimalist narrative and aggressive filming techniques, INVADER is successful in reducing horror to its purest form. Keating in person for a post-screening Q&A following the Friday showtime; Keating and producer Joe Swanberg in attendance for a post-screening Q&A following the Saturday showtime. (2024, 70 min, DCP Digital) [Shaun Huhn]

John Waters' CRY-BABY (US)

Alamo Drafthouse – Sunday, 4:30pm and Monday, 9:15pm

Despite John Waters' propensity for shock and outrage, it's arguable that his subversion is more effective when rendered palatable by mainstream affectations; however, many diehard fans didn't, and still don't, see it that way. As he once told Out magazine about his film FEMALE TROUBLE, "there are people who saw [it] who said, 'You sold out; you tried to cross over.' It's hard to imagine, but they did say that, because after PINK FLAMINGOS I never tried to top myself." He continued: "But if I hadn't moved on, I wouldn't be working today." Indeed, Waters certainly toned it down to make both HAIRSPRAY (1988) and CRY-BABY, the former of which put him on the mainstream radar and got him a bigger budget with which to direct the latter. Produced by Ron Howard's Imagine Entertainment for $12 million, it's a musical again set in Waters' beloved Baltimore, but this time in the 50s. It parodies the leather-laden vulnerable-tough-guy movies of that era, further subverting a genre that had already lent its sympathies to society's underdogs. Waters mixes the tortured beautiful with the beauteous grotesque to create a right riotous mélange of misfits and models. Of course, Kim McGuire as Hatchet-Face is the quintessential Waters character with her smokin' bod and messed-up face, but that's not to say traditional beauty is considered ugly in this world. Allison (played by Amy Locane) is a square with wholesome good looks, yet she easily transitions into being a rebellious "drape." Just as many say that beauty comes from within, Waters seems to suggest that weirdness as well as beauty is in the eye of the beholder. And in addition to being the film that helped Johnny Depp challenge his pretty-boy appeal (he followed CRY-BABY with Tim Burton's EDWARD SCISSORHANDS), Waters used stunt casting to marvelous effect. Troy Donahue plays Hatchet-Face's father and Patty Hearst brilliantly plays Traci Lords' character's mother. "Stunt casting is used as a negative term," he also said in the aforementioned interview, "but with CRY-BABY I certainly helped invent it." So yes, a classic Romeo and Juliet scenario largely set in 50s suburbia may not have the same shock value as the shit-eating drag queen from PINK FLAMINGOS, but much like square-turned-drape Allison, it's what's beneath the surface that counts. (1990, 85 min, DCP Digital) [Kat Sachs]

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

Gene Siskel Film Center – See Venue website for showtimes

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

2025 Oscar Nominated Animated Shorts

The Davis Theater and the Music Box Theatre – See Venue website for showtimes

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

📽️ ALSO SCREENING

⚫ Alamo Drafthouse
Roberta Findlay’s 1977 film A WOMAN’S TORMENT (87 min, DCP Digital) screens Tuesday, 9:30pm, as part of the Terror Tuesday series.

Michel Gondry’s 2013 film MOOD INDIGO (94 min, DCP Digital) 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.

⚫ Chicago Reader + Thalia Hall (1807 S. Allport St.)
Penelope Spheeris’ THE DECLINE OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION (1981, 100 min, Digital Projection) and THE DECLINE OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION PART II: THE METAL YEARS (1988, 93 min, Digital Projection) screen Sunday at 5pm and 8pm, respectively, at Thalia Hall as part of a fundraiser benefiting the Chicago Reader. Between screenings there will be a market, music videos by local bands, a photobooth, and costume contest. More info here. 

⚫ Doc Films (at the University of Chicago)
A new 4K DCP Digital Restoration of Margarida Cordeiro and António Reis’ 1982 film ANA (115 min) screens Saturday, 4pm, as part of the Peasants of the Cinema: António Reis & Margarida Cordeiro series. 

Luca Guadagnino’s 2024 film QUEER (137 min, DCP Digital) screens Saturday, 7pm and 9:30pm, as part of the New Releases and Restorations series.

The Chicago Palestine Film Festival presents Sarah Ema Friedland and Rami Youniss’ 2023 film LYD (78 min, DCP Digital) on Sunday at 4pm. Free admission.

Michael Snow’s 1991 film TO LAVOISIER, WHO DIED IN THE REIGN OF TERROR (52 min, 16mm) and his 1990 film SEE YOU LATER/AU REVOIR (19 min, 16mm) screen Sunday, 7pm, as part of the Back and Forth, Around and Around: Michael Snow on 16mm series.

Raoul Walsh’s 1956 film THE REVOLT OF MAMIE STOVER (92 min, DCP Digital) screens Monday, 7pm, as part of the Raoul Walsh: Adventures in Filmmaking series. 

A new 2K DCP Digital Restoration of Margarida Cordeiro and António Reis’ 1976 film TRÁS-OS-MONTES (108 min), preceded by António Reis and César Guerra Leal’s 1963 film PAINÉIS DO PORTO (20 min, DCP Digital) screens Wednesday, 7pm, as part of the Peasants of the Cinema: António Reis & Margarida Cordeiro series.

Michael Schultz’s 1985 film THE LAST DRAGON (109 min, DCP Digital) screens Thursday, 7pm, as part of the “Martial” Arts series. 

James Foley’s 1990 film AFTER DARK, MY SWEET (114 min, 35mm) screens Thursday, 9:30pm, as part of the Lust & Intrigue: Erotic Thrillers series. More info on all screenings here.

⚫ FACETS Cinema
Beyond the Red Carpet, hosted by critic Lee Shoquist and featuring a pre-recorded interview with Oscar-nominated SING SING director/co-writer Greg Kwedar, takes place Saturday starting at 3pm with an opening reception, the program at 3:30pm, and a dessert reception at 5pm.

Sean Baker’s 2024 film ANORA (138 min, DCP Digital) screens Saturday at 8:15pm.

Halina Reijn’s 2024 film BABYGIRL (114 min, DCP Digital) screens Saturday at 6pm and Thursday at 6:30pm. More info on all screenings here. 

⚫ Film Studies Center (at the University of Chicago)
David Schickele’s 1971 film BUSHMAN (75 min, DCP Digital) screens Friday, 7pm, presented in partnership with Court Theatre in conjunction with their production of A Raisin in the Sun. Note that reservations for the event are currently full. Seating is limited, and a reservation does not guarantee a seat at the screening; doors open and seating will begin at thirty minutes to showtime, so plan to arrive early. More info here. 

⚫ Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago
Mary Louise Schumacher’s 2024 film OUT OF THE PICTURE (98 min, Digital Projection) screens Saturday, 11am, in the Edlis Neeson Theater, followed by a post-screening Q&A with the director and writers Jen Graves and Lori Waxman. More info here.

⚫ Music Box Theatre
Michael Schaack’s 1994 film FELIDAE (78 min, DCP Digital) screens Friday and Saturday, 11:45pm, as part of the Animation Adventure series. Note that both screenings are sold out.

Keenen Ivory Wayans’ 2000 film SCARY MOVIE (88 min, 35mm) screens Friday and Saturday at midnight. There’s a sampling by Moor’s Brewing Co. in the lounge one hour before each screening.  

Gina Prince-Bythewood’s 2022 film THE WOMAN KING (135 min, DCP Digital) screens Sunday, 8pm, as part of the Melanin, Roots, and Culture series. Preceded by J Bambii’s 2024 short film CHURCH FAN (6 min).

The short film program Life Within the Lens, a celebration of Black Chicago filmmakers, screens Tuesday, 7pm, as part of the Melanin, Roots, and Culture series. Programmed by Tyler Michael Balentine and followed by a Q&A with the filmmakers. More info on all screenings and events here. 

⚫ The Reel Film Club
Silvina Schnicer and Ulises Porra’s 2021 film CARAJITA (90 min, Digital Projection) screens Tuesday, 7pm, at FACETS, with a reception starting at 6pm and a conversation following the screening. More info here. 

CINE-LIST: February 21, 2025 - February 27, 2025

MANAGING EDITORS // Ben and Kat Sachs

CONTRIBUTORS // Rob Christopher, Jeremy M. Davies, Marilyn Ferdinand, Shaun Huhn, Tristan Johnson, Jonathan Leithold-Patt, Ben Kaye, Raphael Jose Martinez, Elise Schierbeek, Harrison Sherrod, Brian Welesko, Candace Wirt