We will highlight physical screenings at the top of the list for theaters and venues that have reopened, 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 the venues’ websites for information on safety protocols and other procedures put in place. More and more venues are now requiring proof of vaccination or a negative PCR test. We recommend verifying those protocols before every trip to the theater. And, of course, always wear a mask.
📽️ Chicago South Side Film Fest
The fifth annual Chicago South Side Film Fest goes through Sunday. Below is a review of a film screening as part of the festival this weekend. More info here.
John Singleton’s BOYZ N THE HOOD (US)
Cinema Chatham (210 W. 87th St.) – Sunday, Noon
Orson Welles was just 25 years old when he made CITIZEN KANE, but John Singleton has him beat by two years, having been only 23 when he wrote and directed BOYZ N THE HOOD, a staggering feat that’s intensely personal and distinctly relatable—both not just for him but also many of his viewers, who very rarely, if at all, saw their truth projected 24 times a second on the big screen. Set largely in South Central Los Angeles, the film has two parts: the first, in 1984 (the first iteration of the script was titled “Summer of 84”), depicts the protagonists as young boys, and the second, in 1991, with said boys all grown up and on their respective paths. Cuba Gooding, Jr. stars as the adult Tre Styles, who was sent by his mother (Reva, played by the one-and-only Angela Bassett) to live in South Central with his father, Furious (Laurence Fishburne, dispensing wisdom like Morpheus but ever so sensitively), where he falls in with a group of local pre-teens, among them “good kid” Ricky (played as an adult by Morris Chestnut) and his brother Doughboy (played as an adult by Ice Cube, in a remarkably devastating performance). The film switches to 1991 after a series of scenes in which Tre spends time with his father and Doughboy is arrested for stealing, a dichotomy that permeates the rest of the film, as is evidenced by the 1991 portion opening with Doughboy’s return home from jail for yet another offense. The rest of the film follows the boys—now young men—over an ambiguous period of time leading up to their college acceptance, with Tre and Ricky headed for university (the latter due to his capabilities on the football field) and Doughboy not. As in real life, the events leading up to the tragic ending don’t seem especially significant: Tre hounds his girlfriend, Brandi (Nia Long), for sex, and Ricky, already with a kid of his own and having been scouted by the University of Southern California, attempts to get higher than a 700 on the SAT so that he can play college ball. Things come to a head when Ricky gets into a skirmish with some local gang members, who later seek revenge. Unlike CITIZEN KANE, it’s not a whole lifetime that Singleton depicts, but rather the events that define a lifetime, a phenomenon of perspective that seems to affect people like those in BOYZ N THE HOOD more than it does rich, white men like Charles Foster Kane. Singleton began working on the film while at USC; it's based on his life and those of people he knew. It was also inspired by François Truffaut's THE 400 BLOWS—Singleton and Truffaut share surprising similarities in their handling of troubled youth. For his extraordinary effort, Singleton was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Director, becoming not only the youngest person ever nominated, but also the first African American, almost twenty years before Lee Daniels for PRECIOUS. Singleton passed away in April 2019 at the age of 51—gone before his time, but having left a body of work that will persist even after his death. The screening will be followed by a panel discussion on representations of Black men in film with Chicago-based filmmakers Derek Dow and Lonnie Edwards. (1991, 112 min, Digital Projection) [Kathleen Sachs]
📽️ CRUCIAL VIEWING
Radu Jude's BAD LUCK BANGING OR LOONY PORN (Romania)
Gene Siskel Film Center – See Venue website for showtimes
BAD LUCK BANGING OR LOONY PORN, which won the Golden Bear at the 2021 Berlin Film Festival, is hardly the first non-pornographic feature to contain hardcore sex; however, the non-simulated sex scene that opens the film still feels significant, even groundbreaking. Presented in the aspect ratio of a smartphone screen—which distinguishes it visually from the widescreen images that follow—the sequence acknowledges the ubiquity of images of hardcore sex in 21st-century life even as it defamiliarizes them by putting them in the context of arthouse cinema. Radu Jude isn’t trying to shock his audience here; if anything, his recognition of how banal hardcore sex has become yields some surprisingly genial humor. (The offscreen argument between two unidentified relatives that almost derails a husband and wife’s sex tape may well be an intentional parody of Romanian New Wave filmmaking.) The laughs that Jude engenders are cathartic in the tradition of Lenny Bruce—this is comedy that forces into the open uncomfortable secrets that lie just beneath the veneer of polite society. By opening the movie this way, Jude prepares his audience to laugh at anything, but especially at hypocritical moralizers who attempt to heap shame on things we all accept in private. BAD LUCK BANGING unfolds in three sections, and the great Romanian filmmaker saves his most lacerating humor for the third, in which a group of self-righteous “concerned citizens” stage a modern-day witch trial for the high school teacher whose personal sex tape (which opened the film) got leaked onto the internet by a malicious computer repairman. The third section also marks a thematic continuation of the first, which follows our unfortunate heroine over a wearying afternoon when she’s rudely accosted by seemingly everyone she encounters while running errands around Bucharest. Both sections suggest what the world might be like if the worst aspects of online culture exploded onto “real life.” Most of the people we see come off as judgmental and combative, and to make matters worse, every physical environment is congested with large, insulting advertisements. In the first section of the film, Jude often pans away from his human subjects to consider groups of billboards displaying garish corporate logos. The director has said these tableau shots were inspired by the final image of Jean-Luc Godard’s early masterpiece TWO OR THREE THINGS I KNOW ABOUT HER, but they’re critically different from their point of reference. In 1967, Godard had to assemble his widescreen-filling logo collage himself; in 2020 (when BAD LUCK BANGING was shot), this kind of thing is an accepted part of any urban landscape. In this soul-sucking, hypercapitalist context, the sex tape that opens the movie seems far less obscene than it may have otherwise; it even seems a little endearing, representing a moment of intimate pleasure in a world where everything exists either to be sold or antagonized by angry mobs. Like Godard (or Oshima or Pasolini) in the ‘60s, Jude is not just a filmmaker, but a public intellectual who introduces new cinematic forms in order to examine the zeitgeist he inhabits, and the novel structure of BAD LUCK BANGING reflects the ways that the internet has altered how we think and communicate. Not for nothing does the movie start with a scene of amateur pornography: Yes, being online (which more or less means being in the world circa 2020) offers the near-constant distraction of hardcore sex; more importantly, it involves putting oneself at risk of having one's most intimate feelings and experiences held up for public scrutiny. The witch trial in the movie’s third part feels rather like the dramatization of any website’s comments section, with civil discourse quickly giving way to vapid sloganeering, ad hominem attacks, and political conspiracy theories. Jude sustains a strikingly rapid pace during this part, reflecting how one’s attention darts between multiple trains of thought while browsing the web; in doing so, he builds upon the tone of BAD LUCK BANGING’s essayistic second part, a brilliant and chilling send-up of online information searches that starts with facts about pornography, then proceeds to consider misogyny, the Romanian Orthodox Church, neofascist movements, and the connections between all three. Jude arrives at the same alarming conclusion that Adam Curtis reached in his masterful BBC documentary series ALL WATCHED OVER BY MACHINES OF LOVING GRACE (2011) and HYPERNORMALISATION (2016)—that the internet is accelerating the spread of a dangerous far-right ideology in addition to making us more impatient and mean. There's one significant difference between BAD LUCK BANGING and Curtis’ work—it's often hysterically funny. For all his importance as a thinker, Jude is also capable of some of the funniest moments in contemporary cinema. The breathless dialogue of the witch trial sequence evokes screwball comedy as much as it does Bertolt Brecht. Moreover, the shocking, transgressive sequence that concludes the film recalls Dušan Makavejev’s groundbreaking intellectual comedies about sex and politics, WR: MYSTERIES OF THE ORGANISM (1971) and SWEET MOVIE (1974). Even more cathartic than the one that opens the movie, this sequence offers a cheerful and unsubtle suggestion that everyone might begin to rectify the social ills wrought by the internet by simply shutting the fuck up for a while. (2021, 106 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]
Richard Eichberg’s PAVEMENT BUTTERFLY (Germany/Silent)
Chicago Film Society at the Music Box Theatre – Sunday, 11:30am
There are two things that make this screening particularly rare and beautiful. First, it’s being shown on an imported archival print and is not otherwise available to view on home video or online (at least not easily). Second, it stars Anna May Wong, Hollywood’s first Chinese-American movie star, a talented performer with that uncommon ability to imbue distinctiveness where it mightn’t have existed without her. Wong could also be referred to as “rare” because of her plight in being the first (and for many casual moviegoers, only known) Asian-American movie star of the silent and early sound eras. Ryan Murphy’s revisionist drama series Hollywood recently gave her the spotlight again, with the heartbreaking story of Wong not being considered for MGM’s adaptation of Pearl S. Buck’s The Good Earth introduced to a new generation of hyper-woke content junkies. Now all those who are interested in Wong’s legend and commensurate skillset can see her in a sparsely screened film from the first of her various sojourns in Europe, where she was afforded opportunities both on-screen and off- that weren’t available to her in the States, as Orientalist stereotyping and outright discrimination often barred her from decent (and even appropriate—as with THE GOOD EARTH, she was frequently passed up for parts of Asian characters in favor of non-Asian actors) roles. The second of several collaborations with German director Richard Eichberg, who signed Wong upon her arrival in Berlin, the 1929 silent PAVEMENT BUTTERLY (sometimes called THE CITY BUTTERFLY) centers on Wong’s character, Mah, a circus performer who’s framed for the murder of her partner by another member of the troupe. As a result, Mah flees to the streets along the French Riviera, where she meets a dashing artist (Austrian actor Fred Louis Lurch). I haven’t seen the film, but synopses I’ve read detail how the artist paints a portrait of Mah and sell its to a wealthy baron; from there, Mah is continuously undermined by the troupe member who murdered her partner, all the while entering into an entanglement with the baron and falling in love with the artist. The scenario seems like a ripe opportunity for Wong to flex her chops—indeed, many reviews from the time remark upon her specifically, the film and her performance by all accounts being generally well-received. Released the same year (but after) E.A. Dupont’s PICCADILLY, which co-starred Wong and was restored and re-released only in the early aughts, PAVEMENT BUTTERFLY sounds like an illumination of a key point in Wong’s storied, but unduly inhibited, career, from which not many other films still exist. (1929, 90 min, 35mm) [Kathleen Sachs]
Paul Verhoeven’s BENEDETTA (France/Netherlands)
Music Box Theatre – See Venue website for showtimes
Rolling off of a year choked by disposable offerings, from State Department-backed muck to the latest slabs of stale Oscar bait (promoted, as usual, by the sugary buzz of press-agent dribble), a movie like BENEDETTA stands out from the stinking heap, with elements that challenge the loftier positions of bad "art" as well as the lowliest, flea-bitten examples of cinematic exploitation. Paul Verhoeven, the Dutch-cum-Hollywood pop satirist of such beloved classics as ROBOCOP (1987), TOTAL RECALL (1990), SHOWGIRLS (1995), and his masterpiece, BASIC INSTINCT (1992), released his last movie in 2016, ELLE, which brought him back to audiences for the first time in close to a decade (setting aside his “user-generated” short TRICKED from 2012). Missing the sensitivity of the #MeToo movement by barely a year, where the film risked being severely misunderstood, the filmmaker and its stars still had to go on the defense to the press. ELLE's lead actress, Isabelle Huppert, had this to say about the bubble of controversy surrounding the film: “I had no doubt about the integrity of [my] role. Of course, if you just circle the story around the rape and a woman being attracted by the man who raped her, I mean, that really makes the whole purpose very, very narrow and limited. I think it's a lot more than this. She's a really interesting character because she's always against predictable definitions of what it means to be a woman, what it means to be a man. Obviously, the movie's about a woman. But it's also about men, you know, and the men are sort of fading figures, very weak, quite fragile. So, it's really also about the empowerment of a woman.” Verhoven’s latest, BENEDETTA, did fall prey to “journalists,” who pressed the director during a Q&A at Cannes on the sex and nudity he injected into a purportedly true story about a lesbian nun in 17th-century France. (Someone should have related the aforementioned Huppert quote to these wall-eyed members of the press who, either in mistaken goodwill or intentional bad faith, were more than likely poking the filmmaker at the behest of their publishers and editors, on the prowl for those sweet clicks.) Whatever the case may be, Verhoeven’s latest film is a thought-provoking one, with its most sought-after answers lying somewhere within the murky interiors of the characters, where the cause of the actions can contrast their effects. Verhoeven doesn't follow the sort of classical model that someone like Clint Eastwood still employs (in Eastwood's films, dialogue usually contradicts the onscreen action); rather, he takes a more sarcastic approach, in which harmony is usually undercut by an inescapable ugliness that threatens to scrape open the production's glossier surface. Entire events and sequences in BENEDETTA side-step stock ideas about the past—chief among them that period films should depict historical eras in lofty, grit-and-grime-drenched seriousness, as if the past is immune to mockery (Ridley Scott is a director who epitomizes this latter approach). Grittiness and griminess certainly play a part in BENEDETTA, but they're embedded in the narrative specifically, rather than caking the movie. Consider the very premise, which finds a young girl being sold by her parents into a convent for the steep price demanded by the Abbess, played by Charlotte Rampling. Admitted to the nunnery, nine-year old Benedetta goes to pray in front of a bust of the Virgin Mary until it falls on her; what follows could be a scene out of Buñuel’s L’AGE D’OR (1930), as the girl decides to put the statue’s wooden breast in her mouth. As she grows older, Benedetta (played as an adult by Virginie Efira) begins to experience visions of Jesus, and Verhoeven's renderings of Christ come closer to characters from FLESH + BLOOD (1985) or STARSHIP TROOPERS (1997) than traditional representations of the Lord and Savior. Soon, Benedetta’s body is stricken with strange stigmata; this convinces those around her that she's a vessel for God, though a couple of nuns have doubts. As she ascends to the role of Abbess, snatching power within the nunnery, she enters into a sexual relationship with another young woman in the convent, Bartolomea (hauntingly portrayed by Daphne Patakia), who had been purchased by Benedetta’s parents at the beginning of the film as a “gift” for their daughter. It seems intentional on Verhoeven's part to use the sexual relationship as a smokescreen for more serious issues; after all, he made the main characters of STARSHIP TROOPERS the film’s secret, but true, fascists. Didn't Verhoeven graphically advance this idea of visual distraction in BASIC INSTINCT, in which viewers risked stepping into the role of Wayne Knight's sweat-soaked assistant district attorney as he fails to properly analyze and interrogate Sharon Stone's Catherine Trammel? Not only is the provocation the purpose—Verhoeven’s rendering of his main character keeps alive a trajectory that begins with his 1977 banger, KEETJE TIPPEL (a film that, along with THE FOURTH MAN, BENEDETTA considerably resembles) and continues to his characterizations of Carice van Houten’s Rachel Stein in BLACK BOOK (2006) and Isabelle Huppert’s Michèle Leblanc in ELLE. These are characters whose motivations defy our stock expectations, or as Huppert put it, “the predictable definitions of what it means to be a woman.” Who could miss the parallels between Benedetta and Bartolomea, in their Tuscan convent, laughing on the toilet while one of them wildly farts, to Elizabeth Berkley and Gina Gershon discussing the delights of eating dog food under a false Venetian sky, in SHOWGIRLS? The salvation in this convent is far from holy, but if you do seek out BENEDETTA, you may be lucky enough to encounter the Catholic leagues protesting in front of your local arthouse theater. Rather than jeer at their well-worn moralizing, remember what this really means for you, me, and the rest of the world: movies are back, baby. (2021, 126 min, DCP Digital) [John Dickson]
Michael Lehmann’s HEATHERS (US)
Music Box Theatre – Thursday, 10pm
Scrunchies, particularly giant ones, have been making a comeback recently, and it’s impossible to detangle the iconography of the hair accessory from HEATHERS, whose opening moments fetishize the scrunchie in dreamy soft focus. In the world of the film, the scrunchie is imbued with meaning, representative of social status at Westerburg High School in Ohio. HEATHERS' iconic fashions of oversized blazers and layered skirts embolden the film's iconic status as the darkest of comedies, a cutting take on the Hughes-style teen movies of the '80s. Veronica Sawyer (Winona Ryder) has managed to become part of the most popular clique in school, the Heathers, titled for the group’s three members who share the same first name (they're played by Kim Walker, Lisanne Falk, and Shannen Doherty). Veronica misses her simpler life as a social pariah, disillusioned by the complicated rules of maintaining popularity and particularly by leader Heather Chandler’s cruelty to those lower in the social hierarchy. When a misanthropic new student, J.D. (Christian Slater), befriends Veronica, they connect through their disdain for the Heathers. Much to Veronica’s surprise, J.D.’s hatred goes much further—he intends on murdering the popular students and staging their deaths as suicides. Daniel Waters’ script is incredibly sharp, filled with obliterating one-liners that are delivered brilliantly by the cast. Everyone is fantastic, though Ryder stands out; Veronica’s diary entries narrate the film, and Ryder’s voiceover convincingly guides the audience through the film’s twists and turns. Noteworthy, too, is Waters’ creation of a fictional teenage slang, which sounds so authentic that it’s since seeped into pop culture as genuine phrases: “What’s your damage, Heather?,” “How very.” Despite being a box office failure upon its original release, HEATHERS has left a gigantic cultural footprint, from blatant references in current teen films and television to the giant scrunchies being sold at places like Target. Yet it retains its cult status because, despite its biting humor, it manages the tricky balance of taking the issues it addresses seriously, and characters (including those on the sidelines of the film) are genuinely affected by the consequences. With its commentary on teenage suicide, eating disorders, and gun violence, HEATHERS remains shockingly relevant. Presented by Ramona Slick and Rated Q - A Celebration of Queer, Camp, & Cult Cinema. Enjoy pre-show drinks and DJ set in the Music Box Lounge at 9pm. (1989, 100 min, 35mm) [Megan Fariello]
Michel Ocelot and Raymond Burlet’s KIRIKOU AND THE SORCERESS (France/Animated)
Doc Films (University of Chicago) – Saturday, 7pm
Joseph Campbell, the 20th century's peerless scholar of mythology, discovered in his long career the universality of many of the themes of world mythology and folklore. His monomyth of the hero’s journey can be found everywhere—from Maui in Hawaiian folklore, to Cú Chulainn in Irish mythology and Wonder Woman in American popular culture—and forms the heart of many of our most popular films. The story of Kirikou, the tiny protagonist of KIRIKOU AND THE SORCERESS and its sequel KIRIKOU AND THE WILD BEASTS (2005), offers an example of the hero’s journey from West Africa. In this gorgeously animated film, Kirikou emerges from his pregnant mother fully formed but as small as Tom Thumb. After cutting his own umbilical cord, he goes among the villagers, who tell him that his father and most of the men of the village never returned from their attempts to free the village from the evil sorceress who has dried up their spring and who demands all their gold. After saving one young man from being eaten by the sorceress and then rescuing some children from her clutches, Kirikou goes on a dangerous mission to the far side of her mountain stronghold to find out why she is so mean. The breathtaking illustrations are true to West African rural life—topless women, enormous termite mounds, indigenous animals accurately rendered, and grass-hut compounds where tubers are beaten in large, wooden mortars. Kirikou (voiced by Doudou Gueye Thiaw) is very appealing as he wanders naked through his adventures, making mistakes, crowing with pride, and showing genuine curiosity and compassion for the misery the sorceress endures. Children are very likely to identify with Kirikou and enjoy Ocelot and Burlet’s version of R2D2—the mechanical fetishes that do the sorceress’ bidding. The score by famed Senegalese musician Youssou N'Dour forms a perfect complement to the lively action on screen, and the script by Ocelot rejects vengeance and ignorance as Kirikou models intelligent inquiry and reconciliation. (1998, 71 min, 35mm) [Marilyn Ferdinand]
Alexandre Koberidze’s WHAT DO WE SEE WHEN WE LOOK AT THE SKY (Georgia)
Gene Siskel Film Center – See Venue website for showtimes
Pharmacist Lisa and footballer Giorgi bump into each other one ordinary day in the ancient city of Kutaisi, Georgia. The two are instantly smitten, and after another encounter that night, they arrange to meet the next day at a café. Unfortunately, a curse befalls the would-be lovers, and by morning, their faces have changed, making them unrecognizable to one another. This is the fairytale-like premise of WHAT DO WE SEE WHEN WE LOOK AT THE SKY?, but it soon becomes obvious that any conventions of narrative are but pretext for the film’s wandering explorations of Kutaisi, its inhabitants, and the language of cinema itself. Like the football bobbing down the Rioni River at the film’s midsection, Alexandre Koberidze’s sophomore feature floats along languidly, its indulgent runtime set to the rhythms of the quotidian. Koberidze lackadaisically drops in and out of his protagonists’ lives, in no hurry to resolve what would charitably be called their “storyline,” following ambling digressions whenever he sees fit. Often he abandons his fictional narrative entirely to observe the sights and sounds of the city, from the exuberant play of schoolchildren to sidewalks, trees, football-loving stray dogs, and the hands and feet of pedestrians, captured in abstracted closeups Bresson would adore. Meanwhile, World Cup fever is gripping the city, drawing everyone’s attention like some collective dream. The other collective dream here is the cinema, alluded to in a meta-textual subplot about a filmmaker and reinforced by Koberidze’s playful, self-aware manipulations of form, including oblique compositions, zooms and dissolves, and a direct address asking spectators to participate in the film’s illusion by closing their eyes at a specific moment. Much of his aesthetic also harkens back to the era of silent film, with narration (provided by Koberidze himself), a lush, twinkling score (by his brother), and intertitles largely replacing spoken dialogue. Taken with the film’s quasi-magical realist story, the effect is simultaneously meditative, estranging, and bewitching. At a few points, Koberidze’s narrator makes intimations about the violence and other ills plaguing the modern world, and wonders if we’re all focusing on the wrong things. WHAT DO WE SEE… suggests we could do a lot worse than look to cinema and its potential to refocus us. (2021, 150 min, DCP Digital) [Jonathan Leithold-Patt]
Jane Campion’s THE POWER OF THE DOG (US/UK/Australia/New Zealand/Canada)
Music Box Theatre – See Venue website for showtimes
It’s been 12 years since Jane Campion’s last feature film, BRIGHT STAR. That movie stays with me for containing one of the rawest scenes of a character crying in grief I’ve ever witnessed; I still get chills thinking about it. THE POWER OF THE DOG is darker, but no less emotional, unhurriedly revealing the devastating and murky inner lives of its characters with astonishing skill and empathy. The film is demarcated by roman numeral chapters, each building tension by slightly shifting audience expectations. It’s clear this growing anxiety is leading to a dark, violent end, but I was constantly reconsidering what that end might be and consistently taken aback by Campion’s twisting complexity of the characterization onscreen. The story takes place in 1920s Montana, following the Burbank brothers: quiet and clean-cut George (Jesse Plemons) and rough yet charismatic Phil (Benedict Cumberbatch). For years they've run a prosperous cattle ranch, but their situation is upended when George marries sweet Rose (Kirsten Dunst), a widow who brings along with her scholarly son Peter (Kodi Smit-McPhee). Phil is enraged by this change, and his immediate cruelty to Rose and Peter is distressing. It’s slowly revealed his unbridled rage is complicated by his past; most notably he had a deeply meaningful relationship early in his life with a cowboy mentor who’s long since passed. Though never onscreen, Bronco Henry’s presence looms as large as the Montana mountains. And, oh, those mountains. Ari Wegner’s cinematography is breathtaking and true to the Western genre, but it also feels alien. The landscape seems both impossibly picturesque and quietly full of terrors. Shots of wide-open spaces are juxtaposed with tight quarters, driving the characters fears and desires: the camera captures scenes through windows and doors (à la THE SEARCHERS), the brothers’ cold ranch house, and Phil’s secret sanctuary in the nearby woods. We witness the characters as they navigate not only the setting, but their own troubled existence within it. They dance around each other as they grapple with overwhelming loneliness fueled by constantly needing to assess the intentions of those around them. Cumberbatch is powerfully unsettling, but the film belongs to Dunst, who masterfully portrays Rose’s emotional shifts with crushing compassion. Smit-McPhee, too, is incredible as Peter, whose motives are skillfully inscrutable until the final, quietly shocking moments. (2021, 125 min, DCP Digital) [Megan Fariello]
📽️ ALSO RECOMMENDED
Blerta Basholli’s HIVE (Kosovo/Switzerland/Albania/Republic of Macedonia)
Gene Siskel Film Center – See Venue website for showtimes
One of the most difficult things for people to face is having a loved one vanish without a trace. Filmmakers are attracted to the inherently dramatic stories of the disappeared, particularly when political turmoil is the cause. For example, THE KILLING FIELDS (1984) rages over the mass murders of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, and Patricio Guzmán’s NOSTALGIA FOR THE LIGHT (2010) deals in part with the attempts of Chileans to find the remains of those disappeared by the vicious Pinochet regime. Now, from Kosovo, we have HIVE. First-time feature director Blerta Basholli has chosen to tell the true story of Fahrije Hoti, a mother of two living in Krusha e Madhe, where one of the largest massacres of the war in Kosovo (1998–99) took place. The film is set in Krusha in 2006. Fahrije (Yllka Gashi) and many of the other villagers whose husbands, fathers, sons, and brothers were taken are living in ramshackle homes after their own homes were burned to the ground. As Muslim women, they are not allowed to work outside the home or drive, and they rely on pooled income to make ends meet. When a supermarket in Mitrovica offers to sell their homemade avjar (a roasted red pepper spread), Fahrije defies convention—and suffers for it—by getting a driver’s license, starting a company, and trying to convince the village women to work with her. While watching HIVE, I was reminded of Aida Bejić’s marvelous SNOW (2008), a magic-realist tale of grieving widows of the Bosnian War. Despite the story similarities, the films are quite different, with HIVE planted squarely in the real world. It’s infuriating how the “rules” make it impossible for these Muslim women to survive without a man, and sadly predictable how the villagers seek to intimidate Fahrije and those who have joined her. Led by a grounded performance by Gashi and a great supporting performance by Çun Lajçi as Fahrije’s father-in-law, HIVE admirably highlights how Fahrije did what she had to do and inspired others to face their losses courageously and build a new future. (2021, 84 min, DCP Digital) [Marilyn Ferdinand]
Alex de la Iglesia’s THE DAY OF THE BEAST (Spain/Italy)
Music Box Theatre – Tuesday, 7pm
During high school a friend of mine stumbled on this Alex de la Iglesia Spanish heavy metal horror-comedy masterpiece. Why a single Blockbuster Video, in a town 45 minutes north of Chicago, had a lone copy of the film is a question still shrouded in complete mystery. But sometimes the universe is the perfect curator and gives you exactly what you need at the time you need it the most—and you end up with a movie that changes your life forever. THE DAY OF THE BEAST is religious horror exploitation at its finest. A priest, a metalhead, and a TV psychic team up to summon the devil so that they can kill the soon-to-be-born anti-Christ on Christmas Eve. Think Peter Jackson directing THE OMEN, but make it heavy metal. That alone should really sell you on the film, but if you’re still not convinced, I’ll get into a few more details. It unfolds like this: A Spanish priest has been studying the Bible closely, looking for clues and patterns in it that might foretell the location and time of the anti-Christ’s birth. Finally cracking the code, he realizes that the only way he can be sure to be there at the birth on Christmas is to commit as many sins as possible in order to get close to the Devil. It’s a preposterous plot, one that coming from very Catholic Spain takes irreverence a step over the line—and how wonderfully so! Director de la Iglesia uses the film’s protagonist to skewer the hypocrisy and image of the Church, and to play with the expectations of religion in the spiritual world and secular world. And, as nearly all of his films have at least a thin patina of politics, he also manages to get a running dig at post-Franco fascists. What makes THE DAY OF THE BEAST so great, besides the humor and the strange plot, are the characters, which are developed with a real sense of authenticity. While obviously heightened for maximum comedic impact, they seem like real people. The metalhead in particular avoids the easy clichés that usually devolve into parody and camp. There’s always a warm feeling when a movie nails a subculture right. This guy? He looks like a lot of dudes I’ve partied with over the years. THE DAY OF THE BEAST is a truly creative and unique genre film that is often overlooked, but those who do know about it generally tend to love it. Why it doesn’t have a bigger following, especially considering how rabid horror fans and metal fans (and especially that Venn diagram overlap) tend to be, is also a mystery. De la Iglesia always manages to make incredibly interesting and entertaining genre films that have a strong streak of social commentary just under the ridiculousness. He should have the same broader appeal as Sam Raimi or Peter Jackson (perhaps it’s subtitles that held him back?). Maybe this new 4K restoration from Severin (to be released on 4K Ultra HD and Blu-ray in March), will help expand the exposure for one of the truly great, and underrated, genre films of the 1990’s. For Satan’s sake, do yourself a favor and watch it now. All hail THE DAY THE OF THE BEAST! Presented by Music Box of Horrors; there will also be a Severin Films pop-up shop in the Music Box Lounge between 4pm – 10pm. (1995, 103 min, New 4K Restoration) [Raphael Jose Martinez]
Nia DaCosta’s CANDYMAN (US)
Doc Films at University of Chicago – Friday, 7pm and Sunday, 4pm
Released in 1992, Bernard Rose's CANDYMAN took viewers inside the dank, graffiti-covered, gang-controlled high-rises of Chicago’s Cabrini-Green housing project for an eerie horror yarn about a Black artist, mutilated and lynched during the Reconstruction era, who comes back to life whenever anyone is foolish enough to look into a mirror and recite his nickname five times. I knew a family who lived in one of those high-rises not long after the movie was released, and no supernatural being with a boathook for a right hand could surpass the horror of having to make a life in one of those grim, foul-smelling, furiously tagged cinderblock prisons. The dramas COOLEY HIGH (1975) and HARDBALL (2001) were also shot at Cabrini, but now that the high-rises have all come down, CANDYMAN stands as their gravestone in the popular culture. || The two sequels that followed moved the story to New Orleans and then Los Angeles, but for this 2021 revival, screenwriters Win Rosenfeld, Nia DaCosta (who also directed), and Jordan Peele (who also produced) have returned to the now-gentrified Cabrini-Green neighborhood, linking the tale of Candyman’s lynching to contemporary police killings of Black men and satirizing the racial politics of the fine art world. These paired agendas bracket the story of Anthony McCoy (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II), an up-and-coming Black painter who finds inspiration in the Candyman legend but whose new piece, “Say My Name,” unleashes a torrent of real-life violence. They also contribute to the film’s sense that, in today’s society, even the most privileged person of color can see their safety crumple in a flash, without even uttering an incantation to a mirror. || The original CANDYMAN starred Virginia Madsen as a graduate student in semiotics who ventures into Cabrini-Green in search of the title urban legend, and much of its story turns on cryptic messages left on the walls, in spray paint at best and human feces at worst. Yet McCoy, living in a swanky Bronzeville condo with his art curator girlfriend, is a generation removed from such misery and must navigate not gang bangers on the stairwells but the white gatekeepers of the art world. Courting an influential critic at a gallery opening, McCoy sells “Say My Name” with the usual art world palaver: “The idea is to almost calibrate tragedy into a focused lineage that culminates in the now.” The critic isn’t buying, and even gives McCoy a little lecture about bohemians softening up rough neighborhoods for developers. But she embraces McCoy’s work after two people are found slashed to death in front of “Say My Name.” || To the screenwriters’ credit, the new CANDYMAN gets in a few digs at upwardly mobile Black folks as well, but outside the confines of their living spaces, they still contend with the Chicago police, whose dark history is represented by a flashback to 1977 in which a young Cabrini resident, William Burke, sees a neighborhood character stomped to death by cops for an offense he didn’t commit. Four decades later, Burke (Colman Domingo) is still living in Cabrini in one of the surviving rowhouses, and his words to McCoy nicely sum up the power of the franchise itself: “Candyman is how we deal with the fact that those things happened. That they’re still happening.” || Many of the film’s expository sequences are visualized onscreen with shadow puppetry by the highly imaginative Chicago company Manual Cinema, but none of these segments surpasses DaCosta’s creepy title sequence, a steep-angled, upside-down montage of beloved Chicago skyscrapers disappearing into the mist, or the long tracking shot from behind, reminiscent of the tricycle sequences in THE SHINING, in which McCoy walks through a long, curving hallway of the Marina Towers to visit the critic. These are privileged structures, a world away from the grimy buildings that disappeared into Chicago history a decade ago, like something out of a horror movie. (2021, 91 min, DCP Digital) [J.R. Jones]
Stanley Kubrick's EYES WIDE SHUT (US/UK)
Facets Cinema – Friday, 7pm
It took more than a decade’s remove from its initial release to finally begin to understand Kubrick's final film, which is set in a facsimile of contemporary New York but heeding closely to the psychology and sexual mores of the 1924 novella on which it is based. This discrepancy sparked incurious outrage in 1999—particularly among writers in the New York Times, who actually seemed offended by the lack of realism—but it's come to resonate as one of the deepest mysteries of the director's monumental career. For Martin Scorsese, who placed the film in his top five for the entire decade, it's about New York as it appears in a dream. "And as with all dreams," he wrote, "you never know precisely when you've entered it. Everything seems real and lifelike, but different, a little exaggerated, a little off. Things appear to happen as if they were preordained, sometimes in a strange rhythm from which it's impossible to escape. Audiences really had no preparation for a dream movie that didn't announce itself as such, without the usual signals—hovering mists, people appearing and disappearing at will or floating off the ground. Like Rossellini's VOYAGE IN ITALY, another film severely misunderstood in its time, EYES WIDE SHUT takes a couple on a harrowing journey, at the end of which they're left clinging to each other. Both are films of terrifying self-exposure. They both ask the question: How much trust and faith can you really place in another human being? And they both end tentatively, yet hopefully. Honestly." Kubrick arrived at this combination of mystery and exposure through singular working methods unlikely to be repeated in a major film. Reportedly the longest shoot in movie history, Kubrick spent weeks on individual scenes, running actors through conversations until they were no longer conscious of performing. He had pursued this sort of marathon process before--most notably on THE SHINING and FULL METAL JACKET—but never on material so explicitly psychological. As a result, even superstars like Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman (giving their finest performances as a wealthy married couple) seem unfamiliar and strangely vulnerable. But EYES WIDE SHUT is only truly unsettling on contemplation: on the surface, it's one of Kubrick's funniest (with some of the most eccentric supporting performances in anything he made after THE KILLING) and most luminous, capturing the allure of Manhattan in winter with remarkably simple lighting arrangements. Screening as part of Facets’ Holiday Detour series. (1999, 159 min, Digital Projection) [Ben Sachs]
Harold Ramis' THE ICE HARVEST (US)
Facets Cinema – Saturday, 7pm
Harold Ramis' nightlong noir contemplates the messy aftermath of a theft. The wintry opening frames find mob-connected attorney Charlie Arglist (John Cusack) and pornography salesman Vic Cavanaugh (Billy Bob Thornton, reprising his BAD SANTA shtick of yuletide assholery) coolly swiping $2 million from a local kingpin’s bank account. With a storm bearing down on Wichita, Kansas, Charlie and Vic plan to wait out the night—which happens to be Christmas Eve—before absconding with the cash in the morning. Driving away from the scene of the crime, Vic urges Charlie to “act normal,” and the bulk of THE ICE HARVEST portrays the duo’s difficulty in doing just that. Charlie, dressed in a black suit and red tie, visits one of the strip clubs in his jurisdiction and immediately raises the suspicions of manager Renata Crest (Connie Nielsen) with his uncharacteristic order of a rum and pineapple juice. In these early scenes, Cusack spotlights Charlie’s giddy pride at a heist well done—watch the way he flirtatiously slides his forearms across the bar counter as he tries to cajole Renata into his getaway scheme. But the actor’s upbeat mood subsides as the complications pile up. In one passage, Charlie assists his plastered friend Pete (Oliver Platt) in returning home for a holiday dinner, an adventure that culminates in a savage episode of family bickering. (Platt gamely wields a giant turkey leg throughout Pete’s drunken dining-room tirade.) Ramis, shooting in his own Chicagoland milieu, revels in the intrusion of violence on this cheery suburbia: one character talks about taking the kids to Six Flags moments after beating someone to a pulp; Thornton’s Vic complains about car brands while stuffing a body in the back seat. But the movie—adapted from Scott Phillips' novel by the screenwriting team of Richard Russo and Robert Benton, who previously collaborated on NOBODY’S FOOL (1994) and TWILIGHT (1998)—lingers most not because of its comedy but its soulful sense of failure. Like Ramis' cyclical GROUNDHOG DAY (1993), THE ICE HARVEST abounds with unsettling repetitions: severed limbs, bouts of vomiting, ominous graffiti (“As Wichita falls … so falls Wichita Falls”). As Charlie scrambles to secure his payday, witnessing heaps of destruction in the process, his quest develops an air of grim finality—as if nothing exists on the other side. Screening as part of Facets’ Holiday Detour series. (2005, 92 min, Digital Projection) [Danny King]
CICFF38 Award Winning Shorts (International)
Facets Cinema – Saturday and Sunday, 1pm
This collection of favorites from the 38th Chicago International Children’s Film Festival is organized around the theme of embracing difference. If it weren’t for the relatively fast-paced subtitles in several of the shorts, this would be ideal viewing for younger kids; still, older children should appreciate the unifying messages of overcoming prejudice and learning to accept people unlike ourselves. The first short in the program, Eric Montchaud’s stop-motion French animation A STONE IN THE SHOE (2020, 11 min, Digital Projection), is in some ways the best. With its colorful design and imaginative use of found objects, the piece makes a lasting impression in just 11 minutes. The simple story of a shy frog making friends with a classmate feels like something out of a small child’s daydream, especially because the characters look like they were assembled out of small, common objects (pebbles, bits of clay) that adults generally overlook. Small children appear onscreen in American director Sally Rubin’s MAMA HAS A MUSTACHE (2021, 10 min, Digital Projection), but they take the form of animated cut-out photographs. This short may be the most explicit in the program in terms of promoting tolerance; on the soundtrack, Rubin talks with grade-schoolers about how it’s okay to be a transgender or non-binary human being. The last animated short in the program, the Canadian piece FREEBIRD (2021, 6 min, Digital Projection), doesn’t contain any dialogue, though its message—that people with Down syndrome can enjoy significant, fulfilling lives—comes through loud and clear. The live-action selections tend to be subtler in their approach, the subtlest being German documentarian Nele Dehnenkamp’s SEAHORSE (2020, 16 min, Digital Projection). This piece profiles Hanan, a preteen girl from the Middle East who teaches swimming lessons in her free time. Only in the final moments does Dehnenkamp reveal how important swimming is to the girl, who came to Europe with other refugees in a rubber boat, but it’s to the director’s credit that one can intuit this significance before the film spells it out. Also from Germany is Lydia Bruna’s THE WOLF PACK (2020, 15 min, Digital Projection), a charming narrative about a lonely preteen girl who meets her new best friends at a weekend camping retreat. Like MAMA HAS A MUSTACHE, this work also promotes trans acceptance (one of the heroine’s new friends is a transgender boy), but it does so almost in passing, as if to say that befriending trans people shouldn’t require a moment’s thought. In this regard, it may be the more progressive of the two shorts. The most affecting work in the program may be the Mongolian narrative STAIRS (2020, 12 min, Digital Projection), directed by Zoljargal Purevdash. Understated, yet movingly acted, it tells the story of a little girl who provides emotional support to her older brother, who uses a wheelchair, as he strives to realize his dream of becoming a hairdresser. The funniest short (which is also the last in the program) is Ethosheia Hylton’s narrative DOLAPO IS FINE (2020, 15 min, Digital Projection), about a Nigerian teenager at an elite British boarding school who learns to overcome her anxiety about how she’s perceived by white native Brits. Doyin Ajiboye gives a charismatic performance as the title character, grounding Hylton’s broad, satirical humor in recognizable feelings of insecurity. [Ben Sachs]
Rintu Thomas and Sushmit Ghosh’s WRITING WITH FIRE (India/Documentary)
Gene Siskel Film Center – See Venue website for showtimes
Despite having the distinction of being the world’s largest democracy, India clings to its ancient traditions and illiberal ways to a truly shocking degree. The caste system is officially outlawed, yet it continues to govern human interactions at every level—from marriage, to employment, to housing. One group, the self-described Dalits, was considered so low that they were excluded from the caste system—and it is often the outsiders who can best critique the society in which they live. WRITING WITH FIRE chronicles the lives and activities of some intrepid Dalit women in India’s powerful Uttar Pradesh region who publish Khabar Lahariya (Waves of News). As with newspapers all over the world, these journalists are pivoting to online publishing to survive and tell the stories of rape, political corruption, and worker exploitation that most of the major media outlets don’t go near. Led by Meera, the managing editor, and ace reporter Suneeta, the staff learn journalism basics and reporting for electronic publication, gain in confidence, and find the courage to speak truth to power in a country that regularly murders its journalists. Watching the positive impact of their reporting on the lives of ordinary people is nothing short of breathtaking, as is the growth of their audience into the millions and their operations expand into other regions of the country. WRITING WITH FIRE is one of the best movies of the year. (2021, 92 min, DCP Digital) [Marilyn Ferdinand]
Matías Piñeiro’s ISABELLA (Argentina/France)
Facets Cinema – Saturday and Sunday, 3pm
Director Matías Piñeiro has sought inspiration from William Shakespeare’s plays across a number of films he has written and directed, perhaps most famously A Midsummer Night’s Dream with his 2016 feature HERMIA & HELENA. His latest film, ISABELLA, uses Measure for Measure as the backdrop for examining the creative process and, specifically, the desire of his protagonist, Mariel (María Villar), to be an actor. The film opens on an explanation of purple as a borderline color between hot and cold, setting up a rather clever ritual that involves throwing 12 stones, which represent doubts, into a body of water. If the thrower hangs onto one stone, that means their doubt is important; if all the stones end up in the drink, then the action they had doubts about is what is called for. As it happens, this ritual is the basis for an experimental play Mariel has written and is prepping for production. She also has been induced to audition for the part of Isabella in a production of Measure for Measure, with her brother’s lover, fellow actor Luciana (Agustina Muñoz), offering to act as her coach. The film skips around in time with repetitive actions and few character introductions, so piecing together the dramatis personae and the story is a real challenge. The out-of-sequence presentation and lack of character information distances one from the “real-life” story, forcing an appraisal of the artifice of what they are doing instead of how we feel about what they are doing. I was not particularly moved by the film, but its experimental inventiveness is intriguing. Those drawn to such modes might find more in it. (2020, 80 min, DCP Digital) [Marilyn Ferdinand]
Pablo Larraín’s SPENCER (UK/Germany)
Landmark’s Century Centre Cinema – See Venue website for showtimes
After her husband gifts her a stunning piece of jewelry, which she knows he also gave to his mistress, Diana laments, “It’s not the pearls’ fault, is it?” SPENCER is in many ways a film about clothing, its personal and symbolic significance, how it’s used to stand out or to hide. A film about Princess Diana focusing on her wardrobe may seem frivolous, but fashion is tension. SPENCER takes her relationship to clothing seriously, and thus challenges the audience’s perception of her as a fashion icon. Director Pablo Larraín knows how to turn that tension into compelling storytelling about real life figures—his 2016 film JACKIE does the same. SPENCER shines a light on the costuming in such a way that it moves beyond the mise-en-scène; costume designer Jacqueline Durran does an amazing job transforming relatively tame early 90s fashions into disruptive, disobedient garments. Clothing is more than ornamental: for Diana it’s equal parts terror and rebellion. SPENCER follows Diana (a dizzyingly powerful Kristen Stewart) as she visits the Queen’s Sandringham Estate over Christmas during the final, unhappy days of her marriage. The film presents the estate as a haunted house, highlighted by Jonny Greenwood’s intense string score. Diana is spied upon by the staff and disturbed by the past, though generally ignored by the family. In some ways, it feels more closely aligned with female-led dramatic horrors like THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE or THE INNOCENTS than a traditional biopic, especially in regards to women’s mental states and actions constantly being questioned. But the film is also grounded in its portrayal of Diana as a woman desperate to get out of an unbearably tragic situation. This is due in no small part to Stewart’s compassionate performance. SPENCER opens with the words, “A fable from a true tragedy.” Stewart convincingly portrays Diana as a woman who’s endured these hardships for a long time—and will continue to—but with brief, shining moments of relief, defiance, and joy. So many of these revolve around the seemingly simple idea that she can make her own choices—like what she wears. (2021, 116 min, DCP Digital) [Megan Fariello]
Wes Anderson’s THE FRENCH DISPATCH (US)
Landmark’s Century Centre Cinema – See Venue website for showtimes
Wes Anderson's intricate compositional sensibility is on full display in THE FRENCH DISPATCH, his 10th feature film and the first to focus on the practice of journalism. Anderson lends his idiosyncratic style to a new fixation, meticulously crafting each moment as he explores another way of life. His style has lost luster for some audiences, yet this compendium of stories from a newspaper's single issue—told through three long vignettes and a travelogue—cements Anderson's storytelling as more than whimsy, his style more than schtick. His films are more than just dollhouse frames slammed together, despite protestations from detractors. His curiosity fills each scene here; one senses his love and admiration for journalism, a profession widely seen as on the brink of death. The writer-director brings together another giant cast, with Jeffrey Wright, Tilda Swinton, Benicio del Toro, and Léa Seydoux standing out; the latter two appear in the most effective of the vignettes, "The Concrete Masterpiece." Following an artist prisoner, his guard, and his muse, the mini-narrative finds meaning in the ethereality of art. It finds del Toro, Seydoux, and Adrien Brody in top form. Anderson wants to amaze, educate, intrigue, and sift through an abundance of information, characters, plots, and emotions—the film is sure to reward on third, fourth, and fifth viewings. It's a treat to spend time with an artist like Anderson, a filmmaker unperturbed by box office showings and corporate intellectual properties, even though he's working with a $25 million budget and a never-ending procession of movie stars. He still finds catharsis, political meaning, and myriad themes, creating something that deepens with time, analysis, and conversation. (2021, 103 min, DCP Digital) [Michael Frank]
🎞️ PHYSICAL SCREENINGS/EVENTS –
Also Screening
⚫ Chicago Filmmakers (1326 W. Hollywood Ave.)
“Spirit of Chicago 14: Music Video Showcase,” a program of eight music videos from local filmmakers, screens on Saturday at 7pm. More info here.
⚫ Gene Siskel Film Center
“Midwest Film Festival: Celebrating Womxn Voices,” which includes a networking reception and a screening of officially selected short films, takes place on Tuesday, with the reception starting at 7pm and the screening at 8pm.
As part of the three-part Modernism as Character series, co-organized by the Film Center and Docomoco Chicago, PJ Letofsky’s 2019 documentary NEUTRA: SURVIVAL THROUGH DESIGN (104 min, Digital Projection) screens on Wednesday at 6pm; a panel discussion with Letofsky, series partners and audience Q&A will follow the screening.
The Choose Hope Film Series, with a panel discussion and Q&A moderated by Mary Stonor Saunders, Executive Director of Strides of Peace, takes place on Thursday at 6pm. More info on all screenings and events here.
⚫ Music Box Theatre
A sneak preview of Paul Thomas Anderson’s 2021 film LICORICE PIZZA (133 min, 70mm) screens on Saturday at 7:15pm, though the screening is sold out; also, GORILLAZ: SONG MACHINE LIVE FROM KONG (157 min, DCP Digital) screens on Wednesday at 7:15pm. More info here.
⚫ Nightingale Cinema
“Kayla Anderson: Staying With the Body,” which includes six short video works by Chicago-based media artist Kayla Anderson, screens on Saturday at 7pm.
“Joelle Mercedes: Pensaba Que El Mundo Se Te Iba Derrumbar Encima,” described as an experiential program of short works by Nightingale-in-Residence Fall 2021 artist Joelle Mercedes, screens on Wednesday at 7pm. More info on both programs here.
⚫ South Side Home Movie Project
“Home Movies for the Holidays: A Pop-Up Installation,” which includes beloved holiday home movies from the South Side Home Movie Project Archive and is sound-tracked with new scores from DJ Tess and Rob McKay, is available to view from the sidewalk outside the Arts Incubator (301 E. Garfield Blvd.) through January 2. More info here.
⚫ South Side Projections
“Family Saturday: Winter Celebration,” with films about Kwanzaa, Christmas, and other winter holidays, alongside other winter-themed selections from around the world and across the decades per the event description, takes place on Saturday at 3pm, at the Logan Center for the Arts (915 E. 60th St.). More info here.
🎞️ LOCAL ONLINE SCREENINGS –
Held Over/Still Screening/Return Engagements (Selected)
Todd Chandler's BULLETPROOF (US/Documentary)
Available to rent through Facets Cinema here
BULLETPROOF doesn't reveal anything new about the problem of American school shootings and our reaction to them, but it adopts a cool distance that makes the exploitation and fear it shows all the more infuriating. In the vein of the late Harun Farocki's films, Todd Chandler approaches the institution of school systems through a deep chill. The camera almost never moves, and BULLETPROOF uses B-roll long shots of fields and playgrounds for punctuation. The film could have been more focused—while quite a short feature, it still feels padded. But it diagnoses a problem where the threat of violence is blown out of proportion—for instance, when his class is interrupted by a shooter drill, a math teacher tells his students that they're far more likely to get hit by a car walking to the cafeteria than face gun violence at school—in order to make money and exert tighter control over students. It avoids turning the subjects into characters or explaining where the film was shot, but the one person to whom it returns is a woman who grew up in a dangerous neighborhood and now manufactures bulletproof hoodies. Inspired by an incident in her neighborhood, she set out to keep her mother safe. But her business grew from sewing a few hoodies a week herself to running a factory with the help of an investment from gun manufacturers. She justifies her business by saying that she can now donate some hoodies to poor children. It's a microcosm of the large-scale problem shown in BULLETPROOF: putting a bandage over the problem of violence instead of searching for true root causes and solutions, especially if one can make money traumatizing children and profiting from a community's fears instead. (2020, 82 min) [Steve Erickson]
Radu Jude’s UPPERCASE PRINT (Romania)
Available to rent through the Gene Siskel Film Center here and through the Music Box Theatre here
UPPERCASE PRINT is an adaptation of a “documentary play” by Romanian theater director Gianina Cărbunariu, but it’s hardly filmed theater. Radu Jude, one of the most inventive filmmakers working today, doesn’t present a production of the play or even a filmic re-staging of it; rather, the movie represents a dialogue between Cărbunariu’s art and Jude’s—and, by extension, between theater and cinema. Much of the film transpires on a soundstage, where actors deliver passages from the production, which recounts an episode of Romanian history from the early 1980s. Jude intersperses these passages with archival footage of things that appeared on Romanian TV around this time, and the material alternately provides context for and ironic counterpoint to the stage show, resulting in a rich, tonally complex montage. The narrative centers on Mugur Călinescu, then a high school student in the city of Botoşani who took to the streets to express discontent about food shortages, the lack of free labor unions, and the totalitarian government’s suppression of civil liberties. Little did Călinescu know that as soon as he started writing his protest statements on public buildings, the state secret police opened a file on his activities and began an intricate manhunt to discover who he was. Much of Cărbunariu’s play derives from secret police files and official testimonies; in a Brechtian spirit (which also animated Jude’s 2018 film I DO NOT CARE IF WE GO DOWN IN HISTORY AS BARBARIANS), the material isn’t performed so much as recited, spotlighting the inherent dramatic power of political rhetoric. In this context, the TV footage takes on a rhetorical quality as well—programs that might seem innocuous otherwise (like scenes of adults singing to children) register as metaphors for the Ceaușescu regime’s efforts to distract or lull the restless population, while news reports of widespread unrest in Soviet Bloc countries seem to grow directly out of Călinescu’s protests. One reason why Jude is so valuable to contemporary cinema is that he uses filmmaking to confront dark aspects of his country’s history that many of his fellow Romanians would prefer to forget. More importantly, he recognizes that history repeats itself—his movies are ultimately warnings for the present. Late in UPPERCASE PRINT, Jude incorporates an archival news broadcast about the rise of neo-Nazi groups across western Europe. He just as easily could have included a contemporary report on the Proud Boys or any number of 21st-century blackshirt organizations. The threat of totalitarianism isn’t going away, which makes this film as necessary as it is stirring and intellectually provocative. (2020, 128 min) [Ben Sachs]
🎞️ LOCAL ONLINE SCREENINGS –
Also Screening/Streaming
⚫ Chicago Filmmakers
After the in-person event, “Spirit of Chicago 14: Music Video Showcase” will be available to rent starting Sunday through December 10. More info here.
⚫ Facets Cinema
Check hold-over titles here.
⚫ Media Burn Archive
The program that screened a few weekends ago at an event co-hosted by Media Burn, South Side Projections, and the Bronzeville Historical Society, “A Video Celebration of Black Chicago,” is available to view free on the Media Burn website. More info here.
⚫ Music Box Theatre
Check hold-over titles here.
⚫ VDB TV
To celebrate the launch of the Hans Breder archive at the Video Data Bank, five short videos by the artist and filmmaker are available to stream for free on VDB TV. More info here.
🎞️ ADDITIONAL ONLINE SCREENINGS
Stephen Karam’s THE HUMANS (US)
Available to stream on Showtime (subscription required)
Stephen Karam's one-act play The Humans premiered in Chicago at the American Theater Company in 2014, then went on to Broadway; in 2016 it nabbed Karam a finalist place for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and won the Tony Award for Best Play. This film adaptation, scripted by Karam, also sees him making his directorial debut, and it's one brimming with confidence and vision. The premise is quite simple: a young couple, Brigid and Richard, who have recently moved into a small, run-down apartment in New York City, host Brigid’s side of the family (which includes her mother, father, sister, and grandmother) for Thanksgiving. As in many family dramas, there are buried thoughts and feelings waiting to surface. The apartment itself is not the most visually appealing—there are cockroaches and other creepy crawlies lurking around, and the hallways are very tight—but that comes as no surprise to most of us familiar with city living. There's a lot in the film that many of us can relate to, and it’s a beautiful thing to witness, but you may feel a little down that many of these characters' traumas, anxieties, and guilts go unresolved. Like the walls, stained and worn down, the average reality for a working-class family is one where everyone is overworked, underpaid, and piling up resentments that go unmentioned and un-worked through. We may look to outside solutions (maybe my pastor or that new juice cleanse can help me through this mess...), but often these only serve as band-aids to the deep gashes in our spirits. What can we do? Well, frankly, who knows? Still, there's comfort to be found in a film that tells us every family has its own private existential crisis every Thanksgiving. Our time here may be short and painful, but in the end weathering it out with the ones you love makes it worthwhile. (2021, 108 min) [Drew Van Weelden]
CINE-LIST: December 3 - December 9, 2021
MANAGING EDITORS // Ben and Kat Sachs
CONTRIBUTORS // John Dickson, Steve Erickson, Megan Fariello, Marilyn Ferdinand, Michael Frank, J.R. Jones, Danny King, Jonathan Leithold-Patt, Raphael Jose Martinez, Drew Van Weelden