We will highlight physical screenings at the top of the list for theaters and venues that are open, grouped in our standard Crucial Viewing and Also Recommended sections, as well as all other physical screenings, and list streaming/online screenings below.
Remember to check venue websites for information on safety protocols and other procedures put in place for COVID prevention. We recommend verifying those before every trip to the theater.
📽️ CRUCIAL VIEWING
King Vidor's THE CROWD (US/Silent)
Chicago Film Society at the Music Box Theatre – Saturday, 11:30am
One of the masterpieces of the silent era, Vidor's epic vision of American success and failure is also one of the director's greatest achievements. Vidor combines location shooting and outsized sets to compose the film on a gigantic canvas: some of the photographic effects (such as the crowd of the film's final image, which suggests a sea of anonymous humanity stretching out to infinity) still astonish today. Ironically the film's hero is not an epic figure but an ordinary man. John Sims spends his youth boasting of the great things he'll achieve one day, but he ends up a nameless bureaucrat with a home life he resents: an archetype of the modern Everyman. In terms of narrative structure, the film represents a great fall, from ambition to resignation, from idealism to cynicism. Indeed, it's hard to think of another film outside of IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE that feels so cheated by the promise of the American Dream. But the film's artistry is so powerful—and its melodrama is so expressive—that it inspires a sense of awe strong enough to counter the despair. Preceded by John L. Hawkinson's 1927 short CANNED THRILLS (7 min, 16mm). (1928, 98 min, 35mm) [Ben Sachs]
Frank Oz's LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS (US)
Music Box Theatre – Thursday, 9:45pm
Originating from a 1960 film directed by Roger Corman, Frank Oz's LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS is in turn based on Howard Ashman’s off-Broadway musical. It’s one of the rare films based on a stage show that holds on to its theatrical roots while successfully engaging with the cinematic format; Oz keeps the settings simple but uses striking camera angles and edits to make it distinctly filmic. Set in New York in the early 60s, the film is narrated by a doo-wop girl group acting as a Greek chorus. From moment one, the music is incredibly catchy and lyrically sharp; LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS maintains a gentleness without diminishing the underlying dark humor. The story follows timid flower shop employee Seymour (Rick Moranis), who’s desperately in love with his co-worker Audrey (Ellen Greene, reprising her role from the original stage show). Seymour’s fortunes change when he acquires an unusual plant with a taste for human blood—and Audrey’s abusive dentist boyfriend (Steve Martin) makes for a choice first victim. Despite the stellar main cast and delightful cameos (including Christopher Guest, John Candy, and a memorable Bill Murray as the sadistic dentist's masochistic patient), Greene shines brighter than anyone. Her performance of “Somewhere That’s Green” is equal parts devastating and hilarious; the song epitomizes the film's send-up of '80s obsession with mid-century American culture without minimizing the heartbreaking stories and sincere desires of its main characters. Ashman—who also wrote the script—would go on to pen some of the most iconic Disney songs along with composer Alan Menken; THE LITTLE MERMAID’s “Part of Your World,” is a clear descendant of “Somewhere That’s Green.” (1986, 94 min, 35mm) [Megan Fariello]
Ti West’s X (US)
Music Box Theatre – See Venue website for showtimes
With clear inspiration from the likes of Brian DePalma, Tobe Hooper, and John Carpenter, Ti West’s X is a love letter to late '70s horror. Like West’s outstanding HOUSE OF THE DEVIL (2009), X utilizes familiar horror tropes and visuals while making something fresh. Set in rural Texas in 1979, the film follows a group of actors and filmmakers as they set off to make a porno. Maxine (Mia Goth) is determined to become a star by any means necessary; her producer boyfriend (Martin Henderson) is keen to make it rich by taking advantage of the burgeoning home video market. With two seasoned stars (Scott Mescudi and a standout Brittany Snow), an eager aspiring auteur director (Owen Campbell) and his sound assistant/girlfriend (Jenna Ortega) joining, they settle down to shoot in a rented house on farmland property. The elderly landowner and his wife are unwelcoming, to say the least, and as night falls, the porn shoot turns bloody. With blatant eroticism, X turns the slasher on its head, challenging the established ways in which the genre deals with sexuality, especially in female characters, and it's complicated by its larger themes about aging and vitality. The film also maintains a sense of humor, always quite self-aware of how it distorts and restructures expectations. Perhaps most noteworthy is X’s overall aesthetic, as the film looks and sounds like it’s straight from the late 70s. West’s editing choices, directly inspired by the aforementioned horror icons, is particularly fantastic; with quick cross cutting, overhead and splitscreen shots, the film inventively reveals its themes while successfully building dread. X is both fun and introspective and proof that the slasher is a genre that can be consistently reconsidered and recalibrated. (2022, 105 min, 35mm) [Megan Fariello]
Rebecca Hall’s PASSING (US)
Facets Cinema – See Venue website for showtimes
“We’re all of us passing for something or other, aren’t we?” says Irene Redfield (Tessa Thompson). That may be true, but in PASSING, actor Rebecca Hall’s atmospheric directorial debut, an African American passing for white is in a dangerous and emotionally charged double-bind of freedom in the cage of a false identity. Irene passes when she needs to go into the white parts of town to shop, though she discreetly bows her head and half-hides her face with a brimmed hat. Her childhood friend Clare Bellew (Ruth Negga) passes full time as the wife of a wealthy and racist white man (Alexander Skarsgård). The two meet by chance in an elegant tea room, and from that moment on, both Irene and Clare’s illusory control over their lives starts to crumble. Hall adapted Nella Larsen’s 1922 novella, Passing, as part of her exploration of her own African American roots, where at least one of her ancestors passed for white. Some of her choices may seem a bit obvious—focusing on a crack in Irene’s ceiling that widens as the film progresses, casting a very dark woman (Ashley Ware Jenkins) to play Irene’s housekeeper, the careless accidents that dot the film. Even shooting in black and white may seem to put a point on the racial divide the film scrutinizes. However, I thought the black and white eliminated the distraction of the brilliant costumes and settings that most films set in the 1920s fall prey to while heightening the unreality of the social façades Clare and Irene maintain. In examining the assimilation of both women into a white, American value system—Clare through her ensconcement in white society and Irene through her upper-middle-class affectations and refusal to face the horrors of racism that have her discontented husband (André Holland) pushing to leave the United States for good—PASSING offers a deeper dive into the white supremacy that has colonized these two women’s lives. Clare is filled with the entitlement to do what she wants whenever she wants, waving off the danger of being seen in Harlem as though she actually were white. Irene, on the other side of the color line, holds on to what she has with a rigid desperation while envying the “extraordinarily beautiful” Clare. This combustible situation leads to a shattering climax, one Hall subtly foreshadows in the opening sequence. (2021, 98 min, DCP Digital) [Marilyn Ferdinand]
Norman Jewison’s MOONSTRUCK (US)
Music Box Theatre – Sunday, 11:30am
Norman Jewison’s MOONSTRUCK remains a great romantic comedy not just because it’s a meditation on falling in love, but because it examines falling out of it, too. The Brooklyn-set film presents different stages of relationships; the characters navigate new and old love, as well as jealousy, apathy, loss, and accepting happiness even if it’s not guaranteed to last forever. Feeling as if she’s cursed with bad luck after the death of her husband, Loretta (Cher, in her best performance) agrees out of practicality to marry her addled boyfriend Johnny (Danny Aiello). Right after he proposes marriage, Johnny leaves for Italy to be with his dying mother but asks Loretta to reach out while he's away to his estranged younger brother, Ronny (a wildly charismatic Nicolas Cage), and invite him to the wedding. Everything changes when Loretta and Ronny fall madly in love. The script, by John Patrick Stanley, is nearly flawless, with wall-to-wall memorable one-liners (“Snap out of it!”) and hilarious, emotional monologues delivered. In addition to inspiring excellent main performances, the script fully realizes every character. The subplot about Loretta’s parents’ flagging marriage (played extraordinarily by Vincent Gardenia and Olympia Dukakis) stands out, but smaller side stories—like the one about Ronny's bakery coworker Chrissy (Nada Despotovich), being hopelessly in love with him—are also poignant. MOONSTRUCK consistently shows that even the most minor characters have their own worthwhile stories about love and heartbreak. (1987, 102 min, 35mm) [Megan Fariello]
📽️ ALSO RECOMMENDED
2022 Oscar Nominated Animated Short Films
Gene Siskel Film Center and the Music Box Theatre – See Venue websites for showtimes
The five animated short films nominated for an Academy Award this year are a real grab bag of styles and themes. In Joanna Quinn’s AFFAIRS OF THE ART (UK/Canada, 2021, 16 min), narrator Beryl (voice of Menna Trussler) dissects her own obsession with art and her sister Bev’s (voice of the director) obsession with, well, dissection and all things death. The hand-drawn short is a jittery, raunchy, grotesque affair that eventually deconstructs the art scene. Cruelty to animals—even though animated—might make this a nonstarter for some viewers. BESTIA (Chile, 2021, 16 minutes) is an ominous stop-motion short that begins in an airplane. A woman, impassive with her porcelain, painted head, nonchalantly smokes a cigarette and looks out the window. A bullet hole at her temple is clearly visible. From there, director Hugo Covarrubias takes us through the daily routine of this woman, who lives alone with a dog she feeds at her table and plays fetch with. They both take a bus to a house, where she signs in, goes into the basement, and puts a cassette tape in a recorder. The nefarious deeds that go on in that house and the woman’s fracturing mind are effectively conjured by Covarrubias as he relates the story of Chile’s disappeared under Pinochet and the real woman, Ingrid Olderök, who participated in the crimes of his regime. In BOXBALLET (Russia, 2021, 15 min), director Anton Dyakov asks the question, “Can a prima ballerina find love and happiness with a punch-drunk boxer?” The lively, hand-drawn animation captures the beauty of balletic movement and the bloodlust of boxing fans in this unlikely romance. A timely, though possibly unintentional, swipe at the power of the state will soothe anyone currently boycotting Russia. Netflix presents ROBIN ROBIN (UK, 2021 32 min), a stop-motion short musical that is fit for the whole family. Riffing on common Disney themes, directors Dan Ojari and Mikey take up the story of a baby robin adopted by a family of mice. The usual hijinks ensue when the family tries to steal crumbs from a home and nearly gets caught. There is a magpie that collects things and a cat that threatens them all. Robin, voiced by Bronte Carmichael, eventually accepts that she is a bird, but she stays true to her mouse roots. With THE WINDSHIELD WIPER (USA/Spain, 2021, 14 min), directors Alberto Mielgo and Leo Sanchez created some dazzling visuals through the use of computer filters over live action as they offer various images of coupling in the 21st century. Some of the images are or border on cliché (a Japanese girl in a sailor suit contemplating suicide, a man and woman on the beach—she topless, he fully clothed—not looking at each other, two people looking for a hook-up on Tinder as they shop side by side). Others are interesting, especially a window washer kissing a man on the other side of the glass he is cleaning. None of it adds up to much, but it sure is colorful. [Marilyn Ferdinand]
2022 Oscar Nominated Live Action Short Films
Gene Siskel Film Center and the Music Box Theatre – See Venue websites for showtimes
The five shorts in this program tell stories with an underlying thread of dread. They begin one way and end another, often to highlight the harsh realities of our world. K.D. Dávila and Levin Menekse's PLEASE HOLD (2021, 19 min, DCP Digital), from the US, and Martin Strange-Hansen and Kim Magnusson's ON MY MIND (2021, 18 min), from Denmark, represent the lightest of the bunch, even though they depict imprisonment and sickness. Each with sub-20-minute runtimes, they present stronger single-note stories, employing unknown actors and seemingly tighter budgets. THE LONG GOODBYE (2021, 12 min) finds Riz Ahmed assuming writing, directing, and acting duties; he plays a young man preparing for a wedding with the rest of his immigrant family in Britain. The actor remains in top form, spearheading a short that’s timely, brutal, and arresting, ending with an original song/spoken-word poem that speaks at once to Ahmed's prowess and the far-right racism plaguing the Western world. Two films stand above the rest: THE DRESS (2021, 30 min), from Polish directors Tadeusz Łysiak and Maciej Ślesicki, and ALA KACHUU - TAKE AND RUN (2021, 38 min), a Kyrgyz/Swiss production from Maria Brendle and Nadine Lüchinger. THE DRESS watches a woman with dwarfism as she navigates the anticipation of her first sexual encounter. It’s a film built around routine and expectation, subverting the hopes and desires of both the protagonist and the audience. Łysiak an Ślesicki construct a house of cards, only to shatter it by the time the credits roll. TAKE AND RUN follows a Kyrgyz student as she’s kidnapped and forced into marriage. Though the film broadly contrasts pride and tradition with choice and freedom, the directors take mind not to oversimplify any customs, attempting to find a reason behind this overwhelming suffering. Both THE DRESS and TAKE AND RUN show the power of short-form storytelling, reminding us that a film doesn’t need to be 100 minutes to provoke a visceral reaction. [Michael Frank]
Lars von Trier's MELANCHOLIA (Denmark/Sweden/France/Germany)
Gene Siskel Film Center – Tuesday, 7pm
Recall for a moment, before the hype on MELANCHOLIA veered left around the 2011 Cannes film festival, how the cinematic community shared a collective laugh following Lars von Trier's early proclamation that his end-of-days opus would be his first film to feature an unhappy ending. Even with common wisdom against lending the man's ramblings much credence, nothing short of cataclysmic was expected. These expectations do wonders for MELANCHOLIA, which, liberated at the outset of the remotest chance of a final reprieve, forces viewers into the skin of von Trier surrogate Justine, a depressed bride facing both the figurative and literal end of the world. As Justine, Kirsten Dunst turns in a career-best performance, careening through emotional swings as only someone who has been there and back again can embody, and still Charlotte Gainsbourg very nearly eclipses her in the film's more insulated second half; her role as Justine's put upon yet supportive sister Claire is of paramount importance in this subtlety-free portrait of depression. Von Trier's ploy to christen himself the modern Tarkovsky is apparent enough in the titular looming planet and the recurring Brueghel references, but he goes for broke with the year's most visceral final shot, allowing this most personal project to bow out on an emotional high note. And at that end, "unhappy" proves an adequate qualifier, given the gloomy forecast for all mankind, yet it doesn't sum up the spectacular visions, the emotional crescendos, or the golden mean achieved by Dunst and Gainsbourg, all of which meet their natural zenith under the glow of MELANCHOLIA. Not something to watch so much as to behold. (2011, 136 min, 35mm) [Tristan Johnson]
Mel Stuart's WILLY WONKA & THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY (US)
Gene Siskel Film Center – Saturday and Sunday, 11am
Even though the lackluster Peter Ostrum (who played Charlie and thankfully retired from the acting business to become a veterinarian) covers the film in a slimy, sentimental goo, Mel Stuart's exceptional but uneven WILLY WONKA AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY still remains a visual and rather perverse delight. Get past the interminable "Cheer up Charlie" song and the flimsy ending, and you're left with some gorgeous color cinematography and the pleasure of watching half a dozen pre-pubescent miscreants get their comeuppances while Gene Wilder acts bewildered. Most of the musical numbers are quite good, too, and the classroom scenes with David Battley as an inept grade school teacher are worth the price of admission alone (1971, 100 min, 35mm) [Julian Antos]
Gregory Nava's EL NORTE (US/Mexico)
Gene Siskel Film Center – Monday, 6pm
Roger Ebert proclaimed Gregory Nava’s EL NORTE (1983) one the “Great Movies” in 2004, describing it as “the story of a Guatemalan brother and sister who fled persecution at home and journeyed north the length of Mexico with a dream of finding a new home in the United States. They were illegal aliens, but then as now, the California economy could not function without their invisible presence as cheap labor. EL NORTE tells their story with astonishing visual beauty, with unabashed melodrama, with anger leavened by hope. It is a Grapes of Wrath for our time.” Ebert likened the film to Steinbeck’s epic novel, in part, due to its epic structure. NORTE unfolds in three distinct acts—the first in Guatemala (where, at the time of the film’s making, the ruling military dictatorship was waging a dirty war against the nation’s Mayan Indian community), the second in Mexico (where the protagonists risk life and limb to reach the U.S. border), and the third in California. He continued: “The movie stars two unknowns, David Villalpando as Enrique, and Zaide Silvia Gutierrez, as his sister Rosa. They have the spontaneous, unrehearsed quality of some of the actors in neorealist films like THE BICYCLE THIEF, and an infectious optimism and naivete that makes us protective of them.” And yet, despite comparing EL NORTE to da Sica’s classic, Ebert distinguished that the film “chooses to paint its story not in the grim grays of neorealism, but with the palette of Mexico, filled with color and fantasy. An early scene involving clouds of butterflies combines local [Guatemalan] legend with magical realism, and abundant life comes into the film through the shirts, dresses, ponchos, and blankets of the characters, and through the joyous use of color in their homes and villages.” (1983, 141 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]
Kogonada's AFTER YANG (US)
Landmark Century Centre – See Venue website for showtimes
In Kogonada’s first film, COLUMBUS, the director often aimed his camera at the eccentric and exciting architecture of the city of Columbus, Indiana. When juxtaposed with his characters, this really established a sense of space that two or more people can share. In his follow-up film, AFTER YANG, he looks at an internal architecture of sorts to a similar, perhaps greater effect. It focuses on a family of three; Yang is their babysitter/big-brother robot. As the title suggests, he starts to malfunction and the family has to adjust to life without him. We eventually get to a point where the father can view snippets of 10 seconds of each day of Yang’s life, and this internal architecture was seemingly taken for granted. Instead of your typical, “What are robots and AI going to do to humanity” storyline, we get a more realistic “What are humans going to do to robots and AI.” This reading of the film is just one of many, as I am sure on a rewatch I could focus on themes of fatherhood, grief, identity, et cetera. There are a few scenes in this that make me very excited to see what Kogonada does next as he continues to experiment and evolve with his work. Plus, the film has a family TikTok dance battle as an opening credits sequence, and nailing that can be half the battle. With some killer performances by some familiar faces, a great soundtrack (a Mitski cover of the song Glide from Shunji Iwai’s ALL ABOUT LILY CHOU-CHOU), and beautiful visuals, this film is surely one to revisit plenty of times. (2021, 96 min, DCP Digital) [Drew Van Weelden]
Joachim Trier’s THE WORST PERSON IN THE WORLD (Norway)
Music Box Theatre – See Venue website for showtimes
After watching THE WORST PERSON IN THE WORLD, I was surprised to learn that it’s not an adaptation of a book, although director and co-writer Joachim Trier is a former novelist. The film perfectly captures the tone of a certain brand of literary novels about the messy lives of women in their 20s and early 30s. It also fits into the lineage of cinema using devices like voice-over and chapter headings, complete with a prologue and epilogue. Julie (Renate Reinsvke) is introduced to the audience as a medical student. The film speeds through her collegiate experience, taking us to the point where meets Askel (Anders Danielsen Lie), a comic book artist known for his character Bobcat, at 30. The two move in together, but she starts growing dissatisfied with this domesticity. One night at a party, she meets Eivind (Herbert Nordrum) at a wedding party and impulsively flirts with him without having sex. (The two watch each other going to the bathroom.) Catching up with him at a café several months later, the tension between them blossoms into a full-fledged romance. Trier may be best known for putting Lie, a part-time actor who has never given up his day job as a doctor, on the world stage. Lie’s role as a recovering heroin addict in Trier’s OSLO, AUGUST 31ST brought out a fragile masculinity, but THE WORST PERSON IN THE WORLD shows his range: without coming across a macho caricature or even a particularly flawed person, one can see hints of the dark impulses he brings up while arguing with a feminist on a talk show. Despite its title, THE WORST PERSON IN THE WORLD isn’t concerned with judging any of its characters, least of all Julie. While the film occasionally strains its efforts to feel up-to-the-minute—as in the section where Julie’s essay “oral sex in the age of #metoo” goes viral—its careful structure, embrace of physicality and tonal changes show tremendous backbone. I’m unsure Trier is aware of how small Julie’s world appears— critic Michael Sicinski has pointed out that she has no friends of any gender—but in general, he updates the rom-com for a time whose old fantasies have grown stale and whose new ones are still nascent. (2021, 127 min, DCP Digital) [Steve Erickson]
Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s DRIVE MY CAR (Japan)
Gene Siskel Film Center – See Venue website for showtimes
How do we deal with misfortunes that arrive when we least expect them? In DRIVE MY CAR, the characters channel their emotions (or lack thereof) into their art, their tools, and their environments. The film follows Yūsuke Kafuku, a theater director who is known for putting on multilingual productions, a concept you could spend hours discussing. For a large portion of the film, we find him traveling in his car, listening to a cassette recording of his wife reading lines for Anton Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya in preparation for a production he's going to put on. The film takes on these various layers (it's a cinematic lasagna, if you will), filled with references, different languages, and emotions that are both explosively expressed and shamefully hidden. This comes as no surprise, given that the film is an adaptation of a short story by Haruki Murakami, whose work is also filled with references and taboo eroticism. Hamaguchi delivers a nuanced film that should only get better with each viewing, as details and subtleties are weaved into things said or left unsaid. This makes sense—Kafuku’s multilingual production raises some interesting questions on the ways we can approach communication. Despite a language barrier, or an unwillingness to say something out loud, intentions and feelings can still seep through with a knowing glance or shy shift of the body. Often, the audience and maybe one or two characters might know the truth of the scenario, but Hamaguchi places us in an awkward position, knowing right next to the main cast. It’s hard to say what's the right way to deal with these scenarios, but delaying the inevitable impact of your feelings will only do you harm in the long run. (2021, 179 min, DCP Digital) [Drew Van Weelden]
🎞️ PHYSICAL SCREENINGS/EVENTS –
Also Screening
⚫ Asian Pop-Up Cinema
The extensive Asian Pop-Up Cinema starts their fourteenth season on Sunday. Their in-person and virtual offerings are too many to list here. (A good problem to have!) Visit here for more information.
⚫ Chicago Filmmakers
The Chicago International REEL Shorts Festival takes place on Friday and Saturday in person at the Chicago Filmmakers. More info here.
⚫ Gene Siskel Film Center
Jim Farrell’s 2019 documentary THE TORCH (107 min, DCP Digital), about Chicago music legend Buddy Guy, opens this week and plays through the end of March. See Venue website for showtimes.
The Oscar Nominated Documentary Shorts continue. More info on all screenings here.
🎞️ LOCAL ONLINE SCREENINGS –
Held Over/Still Screening/Return Engagements (Selected)
James Vaughan’s FRIENDS AND STRANGERS (Australia)
Available to rent through Facets Cinema here
For a while, FRIENDS AND STRANGERS resembles any number of independent comedies of the post-mumblecore era, as it charts an awkward sort-of date between two good-looking, economically comfortable twenty-somethings. Numerous hallmarks of solipsistic contemporary filmmaking are here: staggered, ordinary-sounding dialogue; a dramatic focus on hanging out; casual attempts to probe the social and sexual mores of young professionals. Yet there are clues from the start that writer-director James Vaughan is up to something different, namely his careful and off-beat visual compositions, which suggest self-contained dioramas rather than windows onto a larger world. Then there is the narrative interruption that occurs about 20 minutes into the film, when the central non-lovers encounter a recent widower and his preteen daughter, who are in the middle of touring Australia in a RV as a way of mourning the death in their family. For a few minutes, these strangers supplant the ostensible protagonists as the story’s main characters, giving rise to the suspicion that the rest of the movie will be about them. That’s not what happens, although Vaughan doesn’t develop the sort-of date premise either—in another unexpected interruption, the film jumps forward in time before the initial plot can be resolved and picks up with one of the protagonists, Ray, as he embarks on a new low-key misadventure. The freedom with which FRIENDS AND STRANGERS explores various narrative avenues is somewhat redolent of Richard Linklater’s SLACKER (1991), while the uninflected dialogue and vaguely sociological perspective recall the films of Jon Jost. Yet the overriding quirkiness is distinctly Australian; the unusual mise-en-scène even evokes early Jane Campion at times. (2021, 84 min) [Ben Sachs]
Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s WHEEL OF FORTUNE AND FANTASY (Japan)
Available to rent through Facets Cinema here
HAPPY HOUR, the intimate epic that established Ryûsuke Hamaguchi's international reputation, achieves a novelistic density through the uncommonly detailed way it plumbs the emotional lives of its quartet of lead characters. WHEEL OF FORTUNE AND FANTASY, the first of two 2021 releases by the director (followed by DRIVE MY CAR), resembles a short-story collection in how it depicts three narratively unrelated vignettes that are formally separated by their own chapter headings and credit sequences. Hamaguchi proves to be equally adept at the short-film format as he was with a 5-hour-plus run time: the mini romantic dramas that comprise WHEEL are gratifying to watch as self-contained episodes, but when one contemplates how they might be linked on a thematic level, the entire project attains a profound resonance (it wasn't until the morning after my first viewing that I realized the magnitude of Hamaguchi's deceptively modest approach). The first section, “Magic (Or Something Less Assuring),” begins with an extended Rohmerian dialogue between two female friends, one of whom regales the other about a "magical" date with a man she has fallen in love with, unaware that he is also her friend's ex-lover. It ends with a chance encounter between all three characters, punctuated by a brief but daring fantasy sequence. The title of the second section, "Door Wide Open," refers to a literature professor's policy of avoiding scandal by always keeping his office door open when meeting with students. One day he receives an unexpected visitor, a woman who is attempting to ensnare him in a trap. Or is she? The final section, "Once Again," is the best: two women who haven't seen each other in 20 years meet providentially on a train-station escalator before spending the day together and eventually realizing that neither is whom the other had thought. Hamaguchi himself has said that "coincidence and imagination" are the movie's main themes and, indeed, as the title indicates, each of the stories involves the intersection of the free will of the individual and the fickle nature of fate. But WHEEL is also about the inexorable pull of the past and how the characters' regrets over roads not taken have keenly shaped who they are. This latter aspect is the key to understanding how a film so charming on the surface can also contain such a melancholy undertow and how characters with only a small amount of screen time can seem so fascinatingly complex and believable. Hamaguchi shows the psychological underpinnings of everyday human behavior in a manner rarely seen in the movies. He knows how to pierce your heart. (2021, 121 min) [Michael Glover Smith]
🎞️ LOCAL ONLINE SCREENINGS –
Also Screening/Streaming
⚫ VDB TV
“Points of View – Video Artists Read the World” (1973 - 2020, 118 min), programmed by Abina Manning, is available to stream for free on VDB TV. The program includes short video works by Nancy Holt, Dana Levy, Kevin Jerome Everson, Basma Alsharif, eteam, Martine Syms, Paul and Marlene Kos, and Sky Hopinka. More info here.
CINE-LIST: March 18 - March 24, 2022
MANAGING EDITORS // Ben and Kat Sachs
CONTRIBUTORS // Julian Antos, Steve Erickson, Megan Fariello, Marilyn Ferdinand, Michael Frank, Tristan Johnson, Michael Glover Smith, Drew Van Weelden