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🇮🇷 Annual Festival of Films from Iran at
the Gene Siskel Film Center

This year’s edition of the Annual Festival of Films from Iran showcases Iranian cinema both new and old, with one certified classic (BRICK AND MIRROR), one rediscovered masterpiece (THE RUNNER), and a range of newer titles. Below are write-ups of six of the eight programs playing in the series this week. Also playing are Mitra Farahani’s documentary SEE YOU FRIDAY, ROBINSON (2022, 96 min, DCP Digital), which concerns the correspondence between Jean-Luc Godard and Iranian filmmaker Ebrahim Golestan, on Friday at 6pm and Sunday at 1pm, and  Radical Artistry (1961-1965, Total approx. 65 min, DCP Digital), a program of short films by Golestan, on Saturday at 8:30pm. Further information about the series can be found here.

Abed Abest's KILLING THE EUNUCH KHAN (Iran)
Friday, 9pm and Wednesday, 8:30pm
KILLING THE EUNUCH KHAN is the work of a great visual artist. Director Abed Abest liberally splashes crimson across the frame with blood both real and metaphorical, letting the momentum of his visuals drive the loose narrative of the film. The skeletal plot involves a father (Ebraim Azizi) attempting to bury his daughter, the victim of an implied bombing. Separately, characters who have different roles in spying or enforcing on others (or carrying out bombings) are shown at different stages of interaction with the central hand-off that led to the death of the girl. If this sounds vague and confusing, that’s because it is; this is not a film for the literal-minded, more of a steadily nightmarish mood piece doubling as a seething (if very, very loosely plotted) piece of war drama. Taking place ostensibly during the Iran/Iraq war, the film takes place in a depopulated city, circling around a small mansion that serves as the source of a steady stream of blood that floods the building and pools outside. What the film lacks in narrative clarity it makes up for in visual panache. Blood as a motif extends to lighting tricks, the nighttime photography dousing various agents of war in red spotlights as they mix and deceive. The pool of blood itself eventually engulfs the camera, our omniscient eye diving through it over and over, emerging to find new horrors near the house each time. Abest’s eye for striking still compositions is equaled by his queasy tracking shots, sometimes with actor-mounted cameras. It’s this diversity of approach that breaks up KHAN’s sickly beauty into something that still compels the viewer on a narrative level, re-approaching scenes from different angles to show the corrosive effects of war for everyone, no matter which side one finds themselves on. Viewers should make it a point to see these searing images on the biggest screen they can. (2021, 110 min, DCP Digital) [Maxwell Courtright]
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Amir Naderi's THE RUNNER (Iran)
Saturday, 1pm and Monday, 8:15pm
Amir Naderi’s tenth film, THE RUNNER, is the first to reach international acclaim after the Iranian Revolution. The filmmaking has as much energy and excitement as the subjects, destitute young boys determined to survive poverty and have a good time doing so. Given the limitations of storytelling under the new regime, Iran’s premier filmmakers (e.g., Kiarostami, Beyzai and Naderi) found artistic liberation amidst the constraints, creating art that is deeply personal and universally recognizable through childhood stories. Naderi here takes inspiration from European auteurs, whether borrowing shots from Godard or themes from De Sica; he lights the way by setting an example for future generations of filmmakers in the region. Cinematographer Firooz Malekzadeh masterfully fills each frame, whether in basic shot composition or extreme visual language and sequences; the fire and ice sequence, for instance, grips the viewer and sears into the mind. THE RUNNER has been described as hyperrealist, placing the spectator in the world of the characters through all means possible. Naderi achieves this through its long tracking shots across the background, European New Wave-style editing, or simply allowing the location’s “room tone” to permeate the experience. The explosive stamina of lead Majid Niroumand is remarkable for any actor, regardless of age. Naderi discovered him after he saw a newspaper photo of him winning a race and cast him as an orphaned street urchin resigned to hustle for survival on the coast of Abadan. For the immediate circumstances of our protagonist, one would expect this to be a grim, wallowing tragedy. Instead, the character (based on the filmmaker) and the art itself bounce with excitement and giddiness despite the direst of situations. (1984, 94 mins, DCP Digital) [Ray Ebarb]
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Mani Haghighi’s SUBTRACTION (Iran)
Saturday, 3:30pm and Monday, 6:15pm
Farzaneh (Taraneh Alidoosti), a driving instructor stuck in Tehran traffic with a student, sees her husband, Jalal (Navid Mohammadzadeh), board a bus. Knowing that he was supposed to be in another city picking up a shipment for his father (Ali Bagheri), she abandons her student mid-lesson and hops on the bus. She follows him to an apartment block and watches from the street as he ends up talking to a woman at their third-floor apartment window. After much discussion with her husband, his father, and a psychiatrist who has been treating her mental illness, Farzenah learns that she has stumbled upon their doppelgängers, Bita and Mohsen. So begins, in this lengthy preamble, SUBTRACTION, a very unsettling genre thriller that may have more to say about Iranian society than government censors realized. We learn quickly that these marriages are unbalanced. Jalal, a gentle and devoted husband, suffers as his pregnant wife must deal with her mental infirmity (depression and possibly schizophrenia) without the help of medication. Mohsen is an angry, violent man who barely shows affection to his kind and buoyant wife. When the couples meet, it’s inevitable that Jalal and Bita would start to lean on and develop feelings for one another. As Jalal becomes more involved in helping Bita solve a grave problem, the screws tighten with heightened suspense. Like most genre films, the daily lives and actions of the characters are mostly nonexistent, but it is hard to avoid the male-dominated, macho environment that permeates today’s Iran. Soccer-mad men crowd into Mohsen’s home to watch the World Cup on TV as Bita plays servant to them. A visit to the stadium to watch the game in person is a male-only event, something the Islamic regime falsely asserts is religiously dictated. It even seems possible that Farzaneh’s occupation may be a source of her malaise if one believes, as some Islamic regimes do, that women should not drive at all. Taraneh Alidoosti, who was so enigmatic in Asghar Farhadi’s ABOUT ELLY (2009), was the perfect choice to play these distinctively individual roles. This is the first film I’ve seen featuring Navid Mohammadzadeh, and I was impressed with how subtly he was able to shift from Jalal to Mohsen when the script, cowritten by the director, called for it. SUBTRACTION makes it clear that these two couples actually exist in the world of the film, and therein lies the political statement about the forces of violence and oppression at war in Iran with those of peace and reconciliation. It rains incessantly during the film, leading several minor characters to comment on the melting of the North Pole. With this backdrop of a changing climate, Haghighi leaves it to Bita and Mohsen’s 7-year-old son to signal a possible change to the country’s future. (2022, 107 min, DCP Digital) [Marilyn Ferdinand]
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Arian Vazirdaftari’s WITHOUT HER (Iran)
Saturday and Tuesday, 6pm
It’s common for artists in oppressive societies to communicate through allegory so as not to speak too directly on the dominant social order; one never knows who’s watching and likely to get offended. As Iran continues to suffer from—but also stand up to—government oppression, the national cinema continues to produce films like WITHOUT HER, which comments obliquely on the indignities of life in present-day Iran. Roya (Tannaz Tabatabaei) is a middle-class woman in Tehran who’s preparing to immigrate with her husband to Denmark for unspecified reasons. On her way home one night, she passes a young woman wandering dazed in the street; when the stranger proves unable to speak or even identify herself, Roya does the honorable thing and helps out, giving her a place to stay as she tries to recover her memory. The stranger quickly acclimates to Roya’s home, but as she does, Roya becomes less certain in her own identity, to the point where others begin to think she’s the stranger and the stranger is her. The heroine’s experience of having her life upended and losing connection to who she thinks she is suggests a more poetic version of the nightmare so many Iranian women face on a daily basis. Arian Vazirdaftari, making his feature debut as writer-director, maintains an air of naturalism that offsets the dreamlike logic of the story. It feels especially unnerving when the people around Roya insist she isn’t herself because the presentation seems to say that this is simply the way things go. Vazirdaftari also gets in some digs at Iranian patriarchal culture in his characterization of Roya’s husband, whose domineering behavior represents a problem in her life well before things turn upside down. (2022, 111 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]
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Houman Seyedi’s WORLD WAR III (Iran) 
Sunday, 3:15pm and Thursday, 8:30pm 
WORLD WAR III shifts gears several times. It begins as a grim comedy about the making of an Iranian film about the Holocaust, turns into a drama about a man trying to protect a sex worker, and ends as something much darker and harder to classify. It wrings several familiar strains of Iranian cinema—neo-neo-realism about poor people, movies that fictionalize their own production and consumption—into something that doesn’t entirely work but feels fresh. Having survived an earthquake that killed his wife and child, Shakib (Mohsen Tanabandeh) is desperate for work. In a muddy field outside Tehran, he finds it re-constructing the concentration camps as a movie set. He and his co-workers, poor men so frail their ribs are visible, are presented into service as extras portraying the camp’s victims. When the actor playing Hitler suffers a heart attack during the shoot, Shakib is called to take over his role. But his mind lies elsewhere: now that he has access to a mansion constructed as a set, he offers to let Ladan (Mehsa Hejazi), a deaf woman running from her pimp, hide out there. However, his quest to save her backfires. Seyedi’s style mixes a degree of naturalism with a stylized use of the concentration camp set, as well as snow and pouring rain. At first, the more absurd elements of the film shoot yield a grim humor, but WORLD WAR III is deadly serious about depicting filmmaking as an exercise in exploitation. (In this, it mirrors Jafar Panahi’s recent, self-indicting NO BEARS.) As Shakib is driven to greater despair by his anger, Tanabandeh’s performance is appropriately intense. WORLD WAR III builds towards a pained conclusion. Heyedi uses Holocaust imagery as a metaphor for present-day abuses of power by the wealthy in a manner that North American or European directors might balk at, structured so that the horrors of the camps are reenacted as fiction but eventually lived out once more.  (Ladan’s story is laden with references to Anne Frank.) But for a film that attacks the transformation of genocide into spectacle, it sees itself as a part of the problem, culminating in a confession of the inadequacy of images to do justice to violence. (2022, 117 min, DCP Digital) [Steve Erickson]
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Ebrahim Golestan's BRICK AND MIRROR (Iran)
Sunday, 5:45pm
There are so, so many ways to approach this breathtaking movie, rich with meaning and ripe for multivalent levels of reading. Like many of the Italian Neorealist or French New Wave films that clearly influenced BRICK AND MIRROR, it is visually stunning and poetically scripted, as rhythmically edited as any Resnais and as meticulously shot and lit as any Antonioni. But there is something altogether unique about BRICK AND MIRROR that speaks to a tragically truncated new wave of cinema unique to Iran. The country grappled with rapid westernization, women's liberation, and modernity in the 1960's. Tehran's urban art scene was the locus of much of the tension that arose, both around those movements, and against the Shah's regime. Poetry and cinema were two of the most popular forms of artistic expression at the time, and BRICK AND MIRROR is, in many ways, a visual poem, sometimes with characters seeming to directly address the camera as they issue poetic soliloquies. This should come as no surprise to those who research the film, because Golestan, who only made two feature films and four documentary short films, spent a formative decade of his life in a passionate love affair with Forough Farrokhzad, a beloved poet who died tragically young in a car accident at age 32. Together, they made what many consider the best film of Iran's truncated new wave, THE HOUSE IS BLACK (1963), a spellbinding documentary about a leper colony. Much like THE HOUSE IS BLACK or Resnais' NIGHT AND FOG (1956), BRICK AND MIRROR uses documentary elements in new and innovative ways that blur boundaries between narrative and essay and cut through to the viewer in captivating ways. BRICK AND MIRROR tells a simple narrative on its surface: a taxi driver named Hashem gives a ride to a woman who leaves a baby behind when she exits his car, unbeknownst to him until he hears the baby crying, and the woman has vanished. His ensuing anxiety and growing moral panic through the course of the night and the next morning could easily play out like a social realist drama, but instead, Golestan stretches the boundaries of narrative and detail to give us much more. Hashem spends a good deal of time in this movie holding the infant while various intellectuals and bourgeois institutional figures lecture him on what he should and should not do, betraying their hypocrisy and serving as vehicles for Golestan to critique the dominant regime and society at the time. At the same time, other characters (mostly women) are given space and time and framing to give passionate soliloquies that portray their suffering. Hashem's girlfriend, Taji, becomes the defining moral compass of the film, and can easily be read as a stand-in for Farrokhzad; her compassionate clarity and existential loneliness a sharp contrast to Hashem's cowardice and moral failing as night turns into morning. This gorgeous film, shot in black-and-white Cinemascope, reaches an emotional climax with Taji in an orphanage in one of the most haunting tracking shots in the history of cinema. BRICK AND MIRROR has recently been lovingly restored by Cineteca Bologna (in part thanks to a 35mm print in the University of Chicago archive), which is a relief, because so many films of the Iranian New Wave were lost to the fundamentalist revolution of 1979. Viewers will easily track how this film influenced so many Iranian directors to follow, from Bahram Beyzai to Jafar Panahi to Abbas Kiarostami. (1965, 125 min, DCP Digital) [Alex Ensign]

📽️ CRUCIAL VIEWING

Nightingale Projects: HORSEGIRL (US/Experimental)

Gene Siskel Film Center – Monday, 6pm

A horse is not a metaphor—unless it is. This first program in the monthly Nightingale Projects series (which marks the much-anticipated return of the Nightingale Cinema, albeit in a different form than it existed previously) explores the presence of horses in experimental cinema. The horse may be the animal of moving images, starting with Eadweard Muybridge’s fascination with their gallop and proceeding their ubiquity in Westerns (Jordan Peele’s NOPE acknowledges both of these phenomena), and that’s no less the case with film and video art that does not adhere to conventional strictures. Similarly, the program’s titular animus, the horse girl, has been canonized in the culture as someone wholly engrossed in their passion, uncaring of others’ derision. Malcolm Le Grice’s BERLIN HORSE (1970, 6.5 min, Digital Projection) echos Muybridge’s experimentations with motion in how, per the filmmaker, it “attempts to deal with some of the paradoxes of the relationships of the ‘real’ time which exists when the film was being shot, with the ‘real’ time which exists when the film is being screened, and how this can be modulated by technical manipulation of the images and sequences.” It does so using footage of a horse shot by Le Grice himself and similar footage from a vintage newsreel; the result, set against a wobbly soundtrack by Brian Eno, is a subtle study of its own existence in time and space. Vanessa Renwick repurposes her own work in LITTLE WHITE HORSE (2010, 5 min, Digital Projection), a variation of her 2007 film RED STALLION’S REVENGE. Both utilize footage from a 1943 Western underscored by the emotional resonance of their respective soundtracks. For LITTLE WHITE HORSE, Renwick recut and reedited footage from the previous film and set it against the band Quasi’s eponymous song. (Made at the request of a band member, it also functions as a music video.) The song’s gusto befits the new configuration, which focuses on a showdown between a bear and a horse in the wild. Sofia Theodore-Pierce’s EXTERIOR TURBULENCE (2023, 11 min, DCP Digital) is technically a work in progress, but it still makes a strong, if sometimes perplexing, impression. The dreams of a horse girl are evoked in this freewheeling soliloquy through a melange of text, images, and voices, each a piece of an altogether mysterious puzzle. Frédéric Moffet’s HORSEY (2018, 9 min, Digital Projection) uses footage from three Hollywood films with male protagonists who somehow interact with horses, the animals’ disposition becoming a metaphor for their own internal strife. “Horses are lucky,” reads the film's description on Moffet’s website, “they’re stuck with the war same as us, but nobody expects them to be in favor of it, to pretend to believe in it.” A favorite among his own works, Bruce Baillie’s VALENTIN DE LAS SIERRAS (1967, 10 min, Digital Projection) captures the texture of faces and environments in Santa Cruz de la Soledad using a telephoto lens with an extension tube on the back. The horse is not spared its close-up, just one among the many moving beings that populate the Mexican town. Barbara Hammer explores her experience with stage 3 ovarian cancer in A HORSE IS NOT A METAPHOR (2008, 30 min, Digital Projection). For her the horse is a vehicle—literally and figuratively—with which to explore one’s own freedom. Footage of Hammer sick in bed, receiving treatment for her cancer, sits starkly against later footage of her in remission, riding horses and otherwise exuding a sense of liveliness. It’s an incredibly intimate document that doesn’t compare the artist to a horse but instead shows them as being similarly vibrant creatures. It might be said that Barbara Hammer is the ultimate horse girl. Followed by a conversation with artists Frédéric Moffet and Sofia Theodore-Pierce, and curator Emily Eddy. [Kat Sachs]

Michelangelo Antonioni's ZABRISKIE POINT (US)

Chicago Film Society at Music Box Theatre – Monday, 7pm

Michelangelo Antonioni's most divisive work, his only one in widescreen and a response to the US counterculture of the late 60s, ZABRISKIE POINT is something far different—and more elusive—than its detractors have made it out to be. Like a number of European artists ranging from Franz Kafka in Amerika to Bruno Dumont in TWENTYNINE PALMS (2003), Antonioni regards the United States as something like a poetic construct. Its spirit of debate and varied topography (particularly the Arizona mountain range of the title) elicit genuine awe, while Antonioni reserves his characteristic dread for police and consumer culture. But even this last subject becomes a source of arresting compositions. Early on, there's an eerie montage of billboard ads that's equal parts Pop Art and experimental cinema; it sets the stage for the final sequence, a series of slow-motion explosions that leaves audiences dead silent. As in L'ECLISSE (1962), Antonioni is contemplating a world taken over by consumer goods, though there are moments of refuge here—namely, the dialogue of student radicals (directed with cinema verité excitement) and blissful communal lovemaking. Preceded by Les Blank's 1968 short GOD RESPECTS US WHEN WE WORK BUT LOVES US WHEN WE DANCE (20 min, 16mm). (1970, 113 min, 35mm) [Ben Sachs]

Roger Corman’s X: THE MAN WITH THE X-RAY EYES (US)

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

With its lurid colors and simple, blocky compositions, X: THE MAN WITH THE X-RAY EYES looks like a pulpy ‘50s comic book brought to life. Yet there are serious ideas beneath the surface of this sci-fi classic, one of five movies that Roger Corman directed in 1963. The set-up is tried-and-true mad scientist stuff, with Ray Milland as a monomaniacal doctor developing a serum that gives people X-ray vision. When he tests the formula on himself, he goes crazy with power and, in his recklessness, sets off a series of accidents that ends with the death of his colleague. At this point, Corman’s film goes in an unexpected direction, much like those unclassifiable early talkies that cover four or five genres in the span of 70 minutes. X: THE MAN WITH THE X-RAY EYES runs a little longer than that, but it still manages to enter into the realm of allegory when Milland, hiding under a phony identity to evade law enforcement, sets up shop as a healer and uses his super-sight to treat the poor. Managed by a cynical carnival barker played by the great Don Rickles, Milland does good while his partner takes most of the profits; Rickles explains that he’ll expose Milland to the cops if he refuses the deal. In raising the question of whether good can coexist with exploitation, the film becomes a nifty little moral provocation (as well as a possible act of self-interrogation on Corman’s part), only to evolve into another movie once again before it ends. X is a prime example of how resourceful storytelling can make up for a low budget and limited shooting schedule, though Corman did use his money where it counted: the “Spectarama” process, which is what Corman named the effects that visualize what Milland sees with his X-ray sight, yields some legitimately psychedelic moments. Screening as part of the Science on Screen: Inner and Outer Space series. (1963, 79 min, 35mm) [Ben Sachs]

Billy Wilder's SOME LIKE IT HOT (US)

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

Nobody's perfect. But it still might come as a surprise to some that this famous final line from SOME LIKE IT HOT was originally intended as a placeholder while co-writers Billy Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond thought of something better before shooting the film's last scene. "Neither of us could come up with anything...so we shot that line, still not entirely satisfied," Wilder told The Paris Review in 1996. "But we just hadn't trusted it when we wrote it; we just didn't see it. The line had come too easily, just popped out." Equally prolific as both a screenwriter and director, it's certainly no surprise that Wilder could be as effortless with his words as he was with his direction. SOME LIKE IT HOT is the embodiment of screwball-comedy excellence, with a plot that works just fine and a cast against whose comedic timing you could set a watch. Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon play struggling musicians who accidentally take part in the infamous Saint Valentine's Day massacre and escape mob retaliation by acquiring jobs as players with Sweet Sue and her Society Syncopators. This entails a bit more than just musical know-how, as Curtis and Lemmon don makeup and high heels, inventing themselves as Josephine and Daphne in order to fit in with the all-female troupe. Aboard a train to Florida, they meet Sugar Kane (Marilyn Monroe), a down-on-her-luck, aptly-named beauty who walks like "Jell-O on springs" and is preoccupied with both ends of the lollipop. Monroe is often symbolized by the upskirt scene from Wilder's THE SEVEN YEAR ITCH, but her performance as the sexy-goofy cynic certainly feels truer to life. Curtis and Lemmon marvel at the seeming easiness of female sexuality, and Monroe is surely the best representative of its actual complexity. Gender is certainly fluid in Wilder's farce, with norms and mores being challenged throughout. The film begins amidst pure machismo, and ends with the above declaration of acceptance that could just as easily apply to Wilder as to the characters themselves. The laughs come easy and complex issues of gender and sexuality pop out between mob chases and musical numbers. Screening as part of the Nobody’s Perfect: Billy Wilder Matinee series. (1959, 120 min, 35mm) [Kat Sachs]

Shamanic Cinema: Trance as Resistance with Colectivo Los Ingrávidos (Mexico/Experimental)
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Colectivo Los Ingrávidos (Mexico/Experimental)

Block Cinema (at Northwestern University) – Wednesday, 7pm [Free Admission] // Conversations at the Edge at the Gene Siskel Film Center – Thursday, 6pm

Colectivo Los Ingrávidos is a moving image project formed in Mexico in 2012 whose stated purpose is to dismantle the dominant commercial visual grammar. Toward that goal, the collective creates vivid and sparking films and videos of protests and labor, and earth and sky in explosions of sounds and images that work toward decolonizing the ways of seeing the world. Often in experimental film, heavy-handed soundtracks can often overwhelm the force of the visuals; but the work of Colectivo Los Ingrávidos integrates bold sonic choices with image in a pure and purposeful unification that can be, at times, sublime. Members of the collective are making their first in-person appearances in Chicago for this pair of screenings at Block Cinema and the Gene Siskel Film Center. The Block screening features an assortment of their visual styles, themes, and formats. The works vary from digitally animated arrangements of medical imagery, to pulsing ritualistic superimpositions, to delightful camera-dances with the sun and moon. The Siskel screening features longer work on more focused themes, including two works on political action and outrage, and one of their longer films featuring a jazzy soundtrack over lush layers of natural and poetic imagery of trees, flowers, totems, and dance. Colectivo Los Ingrávidos make some of the most striking, relevant, and rigorous work in the experimental film world today. [Josh B. Mabe]

📽️ ALSO RECOMMENDED

Jim Jarmusch's DEAD MAN (US)

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

Before making DEAD MAN in 1995, Jim Jarmusch had already proven himself as an arbiter of all that is simple, slow, and even sluggish—to realize this, one can just stream any of the five films that preceded DEAD MAN and fast forward to a random scene. Chances are it will be void of dialogue for several moments, or possibly longer, with only background noise or a haunting score to pierce the otherwise obstinate stillness. In many typical Westerns, and even also in Jarmusch's revisionist Western, the protagonist is on a journey that, without modern transport, will take a long time. Rather than speed up this process through narrative machination, Jarmusch instead reflects on William Blake's arduous journey, from his arrival in the town of Machine to his exit in the water. Blake, a character intentionally named after the poet and played brilliantly by Johnny Depp, goes to Machine for a job and is promptly threatened by the gun-toting business owner; any pretense of civility goes out the door with him and soon thereafter he meets and sleeps with a reformed prostitute whose charming paper flowers are as close to natural beauty as one might hope to see in the industrialized town. Any hint of romanticism then dies with the prostitute after she is shot by a jilted lover, and Blake, with the same bullet in his chest, emerges from Machine into the wilderness. Aided by Nobody, an American Indian who initially attempts to remove the bullet, and pursued by bounty hunters, Blake starts on his trek toward the unknown. Nobody sticks with him because he believes Blake to be the poet reincarnated and in search of his proper home in the spirit-world, an aspect that legitimizes Jarmusch's literary allusions. The film itself is cinematic poetry, reflecting seemingly incomprehensible ideas of the natural world. It reads as a poem and even moves like one, with the quiescent interludes providing breaks between stanzas of rhythmic action. Screening as part of Doc’s Sunday series, “Facing Life, Meeting Death.” (1995, 121 min, DCP Digital) [Kat Sachs]

Anatole Litvak's SORRY, WRONG NUMBER (US)

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

Based on a play Orson Welles once hailed as “the greatest single radio script ever written” and adapted for the screen by the same author, Lucille Fletcher, SORRY, WRONG NUMBER is a suspenseful tale of love, murder, and betrayal told from the perspective of a bedridden woman who finds out her husband isn’t quite who she thinks he is. While Leona is confined to her bedroom throughout, she still acts as the driving force behind the plot, first accidentally answering a suspicious phone call about a woman’s murder, then making a series of further calls to unravel her husband's involvement in the crime. As Leona's calls trigger flashbacks, the audience is given pieces of the story little by little, as if they're tasked with piecing the crime together alongside her. This structure pulls the audience into the mystery and adds to the anxiety conveyed by Barbara Stanwyck’s Oscar-nominated performance as Leona. Stanwyck, a former Broadway star who became the highest-earning actress in her time, is electric in this film, running in exasperation between rooms in her character’s home as if this small central setting were the theater itself. Her acting is the perfect vehicle for delivering this story, with a heavy dose of suspense in her shock, fear, and other uncontainable emotions. A classic in film noir, this just never stops moving, making for an edge-of-your-seat experience. Screening as part of Doc’s Monday series, “Baby Face: The Films of Barbara Stanwyck.” (1948, 89 min, 35mm) [Michael Bates]

Mia Hansen-Løve’s ONE FINE MORNING (France)

Gene Siskel Film Center – See Venue website for showtimes

One of the glories of Mia Hansen-Løve’s filmography is the way the writer-director manipulates time like a sculptor works with clay. GOODBYE FIRST LOVE (2011) and EDEN (2014) traverse relatively long timeframes but proceed like stones skipping across water; conversely, THINGS TO COME (2016) and now ONE FINE MORNING take place over relatively compressed timeframes yet manage to suggest the weight of entire lives. ONE FINE MORNING is particularly dense in how it packs years into single gestures or lines of dialogue. Sandra (Léa Seydoux, in her 64th great performance of the early 2020s) is a widow in her late 30s who lives alone with her eight-year-old daughter. Hansen-Løve rarely divulges details about the character’s marriage, but her husband’s death still clearly affects her; she hasn’t pursued a relationship since his passing, and she also seems to carry an air of sadness about her. Compounding Sandra’s unhappiness is the fact that her father, once a prominent professor of literature, is slowly succumbing to dementia; she needs to take the lead in securing care for him, which is creating a new emotional toll. Hansen-Løve so excels at delineating Sandra’s routines (visiting her father, translating academic events, tending to her daughter) that the introduction of spontaneity into her life, via an unexpected love affair with an old friend of her husband’s, feels genuinely disruptive, if not liberating. It would be best not to describe the plot after the affair starts, as it will probably read like cheap melodrama, but then Hansen-Løve has never been about presenting realistic stories so much as presenting vivid, relatable emotions. A lot of the emotions of ONE FINE MORNING are bound up in the heroine’s experience of entering middle age and finding it difficult to make time for her own interests amidst all her responsibilities. Hansen-Løve doesn’t overstate Sandra’s personal problems, which some viewers may reject as insufferably bourgeois, yet the director takes them seriously, considering not only their impact on Sandra, but also how they reflect tensions within society at large. (2022, 112 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]

Galentine’s Dynamic Duos

FACETS Cinema – Showtimes listed below

Andrew Fleming’s DICK (US)
Friday, 7pm
In its basic description, Andrew Fleming’s DICK appears to be a straightforward ALL THE PRESIDENT’S MEN spoof. Two teenage girls living in Washington, DC–Arlene (Michelle Williams) and Betsy (Kirsten Dunst)–witness the Watergate burglary; not seeing these ditzy teens as a huge threat, President Richard “Dick” Nixon (Dan Hedaya) “hires” them as his personal dog walkers to keep tabs on them. The film supposes that Arlene and Betsy are in fact Deep Throat, passing information to Woodward and Bernstein (Will Ferrell and Bruce McCulloch) as their relationship with Dick begins to sour. More than a simple parody, DICK is a smart take on the alternative history film and a hilarious buddy comedy, focusing on the endearing friendship of Arlene and Betsy and their experiences as teenagers in 1972. They’re supportive of each other no matter what; this is especially as the object of Arlene’s teen hood crush switches from pop star Bobby Sherman to Dick himself, with Betsy there for her as they realize the extent of the president’s corruption–she wisely pleads, “You can’t let Dick run your life!” The political backdrop is never ignored, but the film places focus on the teen leads, juxtaposing their everyday plights with the larger historical context. At one point Arlene frustratedly comments that, on top of being shadowed by Dick, the two also have a very important school report on turquoise jewelry due! While Arlene and Betsy’s cluelessness as they tumble into American history is hysterical, the film never belittles them or their concerns. It supposes that every adult is completely incompetent–including this bumbling Woodward and Bernstein–leaving Arlene and Betsy as the only ones capable of taking Dick down. Dunst and Williams have excellent chemistry, and the supporting cast includes standouts like Teri Garr, Dave Foley, and a cameo from Ryan Reynolds. It’s also worth noting the incredible costuming, particularly the colorful wardrobe of Arlene and Betsy who wear the most delightfully '70s outfits. Like with everything else, DICK lets the two of them obsess over clothing without judgment, even making their final get-ups stylistically symbolic as they succeed in their efforts to kick Dick out of office. (1999, 94 min, Digital Projection) [Megan Fariello]
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Lilly & Lana Wachowski's BOUND (US)
Saturday, 7pm
At the Music Box several years ago following a screening of BOUND, Lana Wachowski shared that part of the inspiration for making the film was a traumatic viewing of SILENCE OF THE LAMBS. Lana had not transitioned yet, but she had struggled with her gender identity since childhood; she was physically shaken by yet another disturbing depiction of trans identity and queerness as psychopathic pathology. The Wachowskis were determined to create something different: an engrossing, entertaining genre film that didn't criminalize or pathologize queerness. The result, BOUND, is an incredibly entertaining debut from the directing duo who would go on to make THE MATRIX trilogy, CLOUD ATLAS, and the very queer sci fi series SENSE8. BOUND stays true to its genre as a film noir set in Chicago (the Wachowskis' home town) with sumptuous cinematography by Bill Pope, who went on to collaborate with them on the first three MATRIX installments. BOUND tells a tightly wound (pun intended!) heist story centered around Corky (Gina Gershon), an ex-con and expert thief, who meets Violet (Jennifer Tilly), a high femme mob moll looking to get out of the family business. Sparks fly when Corky and Violet meet in the elevator of an art deco high rise and Violet pursues Corky aggressively with big Barbra Stanwyck energy. The first third of BOUND features a series of erotically charged moments that thrilled the queer community at the time with their authenticity, in large part because the Wachowskis hired Susie Bright, a queer writer, activist, and self-proclaimed "sexpert," to consult on the film. (Bright also has a brief cameo at "The Watering Hole," a classic lesbian dive bar filled with Bright's friends from the San Francisco dyke scene.) Things get complicated after Corky and Violet decide to pilfer $2 million from Violet's lover, Caesar (Joe Pantoliano). In a Bogart-esque performance that descends into wild paranoia, Caesar derails Corky and Violet's careful plan to pit him against his mortal enemy, Johnnie Marzzone (Christopher Meloni). BOUND is a delight to watch on many levels: for the lesbian love story, the oh-so-'90s interior design of the claustrophobic film set, the suspenseful heist plot, and the creative visual and sound design that build a lush, atmospheric viewing experience. (1996, 105 min, Digital Projection) [Alex Ensign]
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John Fawcett’s GINGER SNAPS (Canada)
Saturday, 9pm
The werewolf has long been thematically connected to puberty and coming-of-age stories. This is most felt in the fairy tale of Little Red Riding Hood, but modern cinema has made use of the allegory, as seen in such tonally diverse films as TEEN WOLF and THE COMPANY OF WOLVES. John Fawcett’s horror film GINGER SNAPS sits between those two films; it’s at once a teen comedy about what happens when your sister becomes a werewolf and a dark and moving examination of puberty, sexuality, and female bonds. Antisocial sisters Ginger and Brigette Fitzgerald (Katharine Isabelle and Emily Perkins) are incredibly close; they act out their own violent deaths much to the dismay of their parents. They obsess over death, vowing to escape their dull suburban existence or commit suicide together at 16. Their macabre bond is shaken, however, after Ginger gets her first period and is attacked by a werewolf. Ginger begins to change–into both a hideous creature and a self-possessed teenager interested in sex and boys. Simultaneously, Brigette gets increasingly concerned, worried both about the monster her sister is becoming and the ways in which Ginger is rejecting their withdrawn lifestyle. While part horror-comedy, GINGER SNAPS doesn’t stray from the violent, real-world consequences of Ginger’s transformation, complete with disturbing practical special effects. Isabelle and Perkins’ off-kilter yet sincere performances drive the film, keeping the core relationship at the heart of this wild teen tale. In its dreary suburban setting, GINGER SNAPS aptly balances a grounded reality with fantastical horror elements. It’s a cult horror film that endures because of its dark humor and serious feminist themes, intelligently observing how simultaneously funny, horrifying, and empowering it is to grow up. (2000, 108 min, DCP Digital) [Megan Fariello]
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Claudia Weill's GIRLFRIENDS (US)
Sunday, 3pm
“Filming two people sitting in a room talking is the ultimate in cinema,” said filmmaker Dan Sallitt, a good friend and one of the people whose thoughts about film I value most, in a 2012 interview with MUBI’s Notebook. “There are no excuses, no crutches, no distractions to make you look like a better filmmaker than you are.” This remark has stayed with me ever since I read it, and I’ve referenced it several times, both when writing about Dan’s film THE UNSPEAKABLE ACT and Anthony Mann’s MEN IN WAR, and I’m now thinking about it when considering Claudia Weill’s woefully underseen GIRLFRIENDS. While it’s true that the eponymous girlfriends do more than just talk—they work, have sex, marry, make art, and play party games in equal measure—it’s what they say, and don’t say, that makes this low-budget, barefaced film rich in context. Susan (Melanie Mayron) and Anne (Anita Skinner) are twenty-something women who live together as roommates in New York City, the former a photographer and the latter an aspiring writer. Their relationship shifts when Anne marries her boyfriend, Martin (played by a young Bob Balaban), and eventually has a baby, choosing domestic bliss—or at least the illusion of it—over creative success. Susan mourns this relationship while likewise attempting to make strides in her own rutted career, taking two steps back for every one forward. She has a few romantic entanglements, first with a young professor (Christopher Guest in a captivating performance), then later with the rabbi (Eli Wallach, reportedly eager to again play the romantic lead) for whom she works as a wedding and bar mitzvah photographer, then again with the first guy, though her desire for independence remains a priority. In an interview with The L Magazine, Weill explained her decision behind making a film about this particular dynamic (she also revealed that the project originally began as a documentary about growing up Jewish in America): “That situation had happened to me many times by then. My sister got married, my best friend, everybody got married, and I was nowhere in the ballpark. Like completely, are you kidding? How do people get married? I totally did not get this. First of all, how do you meet somebody that you like, and second of all, how could you possibly know you want to be with him for the rest of your life? It was so remote a possibility. Also because I was so involved with my work… I was always that ‘other girl.’ So I just started working on a film about it.” Critic and professor Lucy Fischer asserts that GIRLFRIENDS is a response of sorts, one that “addresses stereotypes of female friendship that have circulated for centuries in our culture,” though Weill herself admits to having the same problem as her protagonist. The film isn’t even up to snuff with the Bechdel test, that modern criterion by which some critics and viewers alike have come to appraise cinema. Susan and Anne are more often than not talking about men, either directly or in the abstract; Anne reveals she’s getting married after Susan tells her that three of her photos have been accepted by a publication, the scene perfectly epitomizing both the literal direction of the characters’ relationship and the figurative struggle between choosing either a career or a family. In confronting this stereotypical rapport head on, Weill revolutionizes the way we perceive female relationships, which like many relationships, are often rooted in banal, clichéd dynamics that are nevertheless ripe for examination. In another scene, Susan explains to a hitchhiker she picked up, and who starts staying with her, that she had previously been living with a woman with whom she was going to share her large apartment; later, when the hitchhiker makes advances towards her, she explains that the woman she had lived with was her roommate, not her lover. That she must explain as such conveys the importance of their relationship, however tenuous it may be. Shot on 16mm, which certainly befits its tone, the film straddles the line at which charmingly amateurish and technically accomplished meet. Weill worked with a largely female crew—her friend Vicki Polon wrote the screenplay from a story they devised together, and Suzanne Pettit, for whom GIRLFRIENDS was her first and most illustrious gig, edited the film. Their combined efforts result in a work with an uncanny sense of the passage of time, one that closely mimics reality’s own deceiving swiftness. Mayron’s performance is similarly astounding; Molly Haskell perhaps said it best when she declared that Mayron “offers evidence that some mysterious quality we call sex appeal is harder to define than it ever was.” Often cited as a de facto influence on such millennial manifestos as Lena Dunham’s TINY FURNITURE (Weill would eventually direct an episode of Dunham’s HBO show Girls in 2013, though her feature film career sadly plateaued following her 1980 film IT’S MY TURN) and Noah Baumbach’s FRANCES HA, GIRLFRIENDS is a singular work that proves that female relationships are inherently cinematic: All talk, very little action—surprisingly difficult to execute, and thus all the more rewarding when done well. (1978, 88 min, DCP Digital) [Kat Sachs]
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Whit Stillman’s 1988 film THE LAST DAYS OF DISCO (113 min, Digital Projection) screens Sunday, 5pm, as part of a double feature with GIRLFRIENDS. More info here.

Sidney Lumet's FAIL-SAFE (US)

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

Released the same year, based on a strikingly similar premise, and realized in an equally stark, monochromatic palette, Sidney Lumet's 1964 Cold War nuclear mishap thriller FAIL-SAFE has for too long lived in the shadow of Stanley Kubrick's DR STRANGELOVE. At times Lumet can be stagey, hyper-literal, and self-serious to a fault, but his uncluttered vision and uncompromising critical stance have informed some of the most soul-rattling moral dramas of the past six decades (and FAIL-SAFE is arguably the pinnacle). Kubrickian parody was one inspired response to the absurdity of dual civilizations on the brink of mutual destruction, but Lumet and screenwriter Walter Bernstein's insights into the ideological horrors of the nuclear age run deeper. Walter Matthau puts on the show of a lifetime as a fascinatingly brusque embodiment of right-wing intellectualism, and Henry Fonda takes patriotic hyper-sincerity to surrealistic new heights (imagine the Young Mr. Lincoln multiplied by the activist juror in 12 ANGRY MEN) as an incorruptible Chief Executive ready to make the ultimate sacrifice for the good of the species. So dark a movie would seem an odd choice for a weekend matinee, but FAIL-SAFE is utterly devastating and oddly life-affirming in equal measure. It's a largely overlooked but critical piece of American mythology. Screening as part of Doc’s Thursday I series, “Splicing of the Atom: Nuclear Taboo in Cinema.” (1964, 111 min, DCP Digital) [Darnell Witt]

Egon Günther’s LOTTE IN WEIMAR (East Germany)

Goethe-Institut Chicago (150 N. Michigan Ave., Suite 200) – Wednesday, 7pm [Free Admission]

Germany’s great man of letters, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, was an inspiration to generations of German writers and artists. One of his greatest admirers was 1929 Nobel laureate Thomas Mann, who approached human relations with an ironic, but democratic regard for all points of view. Mann’s tribute to Goethe, the 1939 novel Lotte in Weimar: The Beloved Returns, depicts an imaginary reunion between Goethe and his model for the romantic ingenue in The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774), the writer’s wildly popular epistolary novel based on his unrequited romance with Charlotte (“Lotte”) Buff when he was 24. The satirical aspects of Mann’s novel are on full display in Egon Günther’s delightful LOTTE IN WEIMAR. The story revolves around Charlotte, now 44-year-old, whose trip to Weimar, ostensibly to visit her sister but really to see Goethe, is largely spent in her room at the Hotel Elephant talking about the writer with several visitors who come to her for advice. The magnificent Lilli Palmer plays “Werther’s Lotte,” as she is called by the horde of villagers who mob the Elephant hoping to catch sight of her. Lotte lives on that double-edged sword of celebrity: enjoying the adoration and special treatment she receives while fending off the constant intrusions and demands of those seeking favors. Palmer bristles with a combination of vanity and raw nerves as she deals with an overly solicitous hotel waiter named Mager (Rolf Ludwig) who cashes in on his famous guest by selling access to her. Among her visitors is a buxom British artist, Miss Cuzzle (Ute Huebner), who amasses portraits and signatures of famous people; Dr. Reimer (Hans-Joachim Hegewald), a frustrated academic resentful of Goethe; and Adele Schopenhauer (Jutta Hoffmann), a member of a society of “muses” who is trying to save her friend from marrying Goethe’s wastrel son, August (Hilmar Baumann). Günther uses visual gags in his characterizations. For example, as Dr. Reimer spits his bitterness about Goethe’s refusal to use his influence to help Reimer secure a plum university post, we watch a large bubble eye goldfish circle endlessly in a jar behind him. As Lotte’s sister and her guests sit helplessly at the dinner table waiting for her to arrive, a large parrot in the background can do little but stand on its perch in the tight cage in which it is enclosed. When, at last, Lotte arrives at Goethe’s home for a dinner party thrown in her honor, she does the equivalent of a spit-take at the enormous neoclassical sculpture of a head at the entrance to the drawing room. Throughout the film, Lotte dreams of her long-ago dalliance with Goethe, with youthful movement, color, and absurdly poetic gestures. This story intertwines with the stories her visitors tell in a kind of disjointed tapestry of high romanticism that Goethe anticipated as a vanguard artist of the 18th century Sturm und Drang movement. At the same time, Günther takes a stab at translating descriptive language into image as his camera wanders away from the actors’ faces to close in on small details in a scene, such as a hand or a wine glass. When Lotte finally is able to talk alone with Goethe (Martin Hellberg), he acknowledges he has treated her badly, but largely dismisses her sacrifices by painting himself as the real martyr. It’s a devastating moment for her, but LOTTE IN WEIMAR’s humor and compassion toward the fragile Lotte leave a warm glow that lasts well past the final fade. (1975, 125 min, Digital Projection) [Marilyn Ferdinand]

Bong Joon-ho's THE HOST (South Korea)

Gene Siskel Film Center – Tuesday, 6pm

Prior to its release, THE HOST was one of the most anticipated films in South Korea of all time and it is easy to see why. After an American scientist orders his Korean assistant to dump hundreds of bottles of formaldehyde down the drain, the chemicals find their way to the Han River. Jumping ahead six years, a creature has mutated while living in the river and has grown into a 30-foot fish-monster, with legs and a tail that allow it to walk on land. When the monster finally reveals itself, a family’s life is torn asunder when its youngest daughter is taken away by the creature. Song Kang-ho’s performance as the daughter’s father, Park Gang-du, is full of nuance and hilarity, and his character’s arc is wonderfully realized, as he transforms from a dim-witted underachiever to a determined patriarch looking out for his family. THE HOST blends dark-humor and a compelling family drama with the trappings of American monster movies of the 1970s and 80s to form a well-rounded and heartfelt film. On a deeper level, the film provides plenty of social commentary on the United States’ presence in South Korea and plenty of political commentary to boot. Government agencies, both American and Korean, are depicted as uncaring, inept, and (sometimes) nefarious. A substance deployed to defeat the monster called “Agent Yellow” clearly alludes to the U.S.’s days in Vietnam. Other sequences in the film certainly allude to the United States' presence in Iraq and the War on Terror happening at that time. Screening as part of professor Daniel R. Quiles’ Gore Capitalism lecture series. (2006, 119 min, DCP Digital) [Kyle Cubr]

Jean Renoir's THE RIVER (International)

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

Often overshadowed by Powell and Pressburger's BLACK NARCISSUS, that other lush Technicolor adaptation of a Rumer Godden novel, THE RIVER was actually the film that earned the author's blessing, thanks in part to Jean Renoir and company taking production on location to India, far far away from the (admittedly capable) confines of Pinewood Studios. No surprise then, that while displaced Brits abroad offer our waypoint into both films, Renoir's masterpiece is the more inquisitive. THE RIVER is languid like a summer dream, yet obsessive in the details; from the operations of the jute mills captured documentary style, to the exploration of Hindu tradition offered by precocious young protagonist, Harriet. It is in many ways a film about people trying to interact with a world they can scarcely comprehend, a theme defined as much by the increasingly futile British hold on the subcontinent as it is by the achingly romantic aspirations of a group of children still staring across the threshold to adulthood. In the course of one endless season, Harriet and her family's lives are turned upside down, first by the arrival of dreamy amputee Captain John, then later by unspeakable personal tragedy, events which give resonance to Renoir's poetic gaze, and land THE RIVER among the ranks of the great coming-of-age movies. Boasting an evocative palate on par with any Technicolor film before it—including the aforementioned Archers' classic—the film offers a spellbinding look at mid-century India, and an equally compelling glimpse of artistically evolving, mid-career Renoir. Resplendent, intoxicating, and wholeheartedly recommended. Screening as part of Doc’s Wednesday series, “Jean Renoir: The Grand Reality.” (1951, 99 min, Digital Projection) [Tristan Johnson]

Jennie Livingston's PARIS IS BURNING (US/Documentary)

Music Box Theatre – Thursday, 9:45pm

Three decades have passed since the release of PARIS IS BURNING and Jennie Livingston’s poignant documentary is still deeply relevant. Following drag queens and performers in the New York City ballroom scene, Livingston gives her subjects the space to do the bulk of the talking, walking, and posing. It’s both intimate and unobtrusive—managing to strike an exceptionally difficult balance for a debut documentary feature. PARIS IS BURNING captures the enthusiasm and character of “house” balls: from the many kinds of performance competitions, to the costumes, and the energy that exudes from everyone in front of the lens. But PARIS IS BURNING does not paint an overly gaudy portrait, either. There is glitz and glamour, sure, but there is also immense pain—often from the loss of loved ones to the AIDS crisis and transphobic, homophobic violence. While PARIS IS BURNING has been critiqued over the years, it is still a fundamental text in the queer cinematic canon; both as an authentic documentation of queer life and as an introduction to vital fragments of queer history and culture that should not be forgotten. Presented by Ramona Slick and Rated Q - A Celebration of Queer, Camp, & Cult Cinema. Enjoy pre-show drinks and a DJ set in the Music Box Lounge at 9pm. (1991, 71 min, DCP Digital) [Cody Corrall]

Brandon Cronenberg's INFINITY POOL (Canada)

Music Box Theatre – See Venue website for showtimes

Due to the multifaceted nature of the director and his undeniable influence on horror cinema, there’s maybe no term more overused and misunderstood in criticism as "Cronenbergian." Further complicating this is the fact that the Don of body horror’s son, Brandon, is slowly carving out his own adjacent but equally expansive lane. Following the premiere of the uncut version at Sundance, the younger Cronenberg's newest film INFINITY POOL is now in Chicago in an edited but (presumably) no less intense form. It opens on James (Alexander Skarsgård) and Em (Cleopatra Coleman) who are away at a resort on the fictional remote island of Latoka, ostensibly so James can find inspiration for his next book. Shy and feeling emasculated due to his writer’s block, he’s ripe for manipulation when he meets Gabi (Mia Goth), a fan of the one book he’s written so far. Gabi’s an actress who specializes in commercial acting where she plays the type of people who fail miserably at everyday tasks, eventually being saved by the company’s product. There’s an undeniable chemistry between them, something confirmed when Gabi jacks off James in secret while at a beach outside the resort. But when James accidentally kills a local with Gabi’s husband’s car driving back, he’s let in on a unique tradition on the island: for a price, you can have a clone made to serve your sentence (death by execution, always) for you. From here, James descends into Gabi’s community of swingers stuck outside of time, living life with no consequences as they revel in seeing versions of themselves be repeatedly murdered. Fans of Cronenberg’s last film POSSESSOR (2020) will find a lot to love here, as the director continues his interests in the deadening effects of violence and contemporary consumption. He’s in class-critique mode here, where half the horror lies in just how quickly morality goes out the window when you have a lot of money. James is a pathetic man; he’s not especially interesting for a writer, and we discover later that his only book to date was eviscerated by critics. His access to this class comes only via his wife, and to her via her wealthy father (in what may be a wink at Brandon’s own nepo-baby status). Like so many dangerous men, James doesn’t have an identity of his own, his entitlement cut with the nagging awareness of how small he really is. It’s with this dynamic that Goth especially shines as a horror villain whose scariest quality is her controlled submission to James, dragging him down in the muck with her but convincing him it’s his idea. Her words to James echo the self-help jargon of pick-up artists and men’s rights activists, insisting that primal violence is the order of life and that James’ value as a man relies on his capacity for rage. In a bit of a surprise, these dialogues are the strongest part of the film and show that Cronenberg is making a habit of this more character-based work, allowing gross and all-too-recognizable psychological detail to drive the horror. Similar to Christopher Abbot’s layered acting in POSSESSOR, Skarsgård gives a range-y performance that’s alternately ferocious and sniveling, grounding the film’s critique of masculinity as often both. Throw a rock and you’ll probably hit someone commenting on this film’s over-the-top violence. But this may mislead viewers, just as discussions of Cronenberg Sr.’s films tend to wrongly suggest that they all have the same gross-out consistency as, say, THE FLY. While his debt to his father is clear, young Cronenberg is a bit more conventional with his viscera, mostly preferring shooting- and stabbing-based gore to the bizarre prosthetics associated with his father. Still, the visceral effect lingers after the film’s close, due more to the upsetting context of the violence than the actual onscreen imagery. The film’s ick factor (and much of its humor) derives from the fact that this is all, ultimately, fine. The rich will always self-victimize, and personal growth is a non-starter when you can just pay your way out of trouble. The film is certainly a Bad Time, but one that adopts a controlled mean-spiritedness in its pitch-black satire that can feel righteous as much as upsetting. We could all certainly stand to see more rich people die violently at the movies. (2023, 117 min, DCP Digital) [Maxwell Courtright]

🎞️ PHYSICAL SCREENINGS/EVENTS –
ALSO SCREENING

⚫ Doc Films (at the University of Chicago)
Tamara Jenkins’ 2007 film THE SAVAGES (113 min, 35mm) screens Friday, 7pm, as part of the Philip Seymour Hoffman: A Retrospective series. 

Ryan Coogler’s 2022 film BLACK PANTHER: WAKANDA FOREVER (161 min, DCP Digital) screens Saturday, 7pm, as part of the Docshees of Idasherin: New Releases.

Julie Ha and Eugene Yi’s 2022 documentary FREE CHOL SOO LEE (83 min, DCP Digital), Arthur Dong’s 1989 documentary FORBIDDEN CITY, U.S.A. (56 min, DCP Digital), and Nguiyen Tan Hoang’s 2019 short film I REMEMBER DANCING (5 min, Digital Projection) screen Tuesday, 7pm, as part of the Asian American Media series. 

Danny Boyle’s 2002 horror film 28 DAYS LATER (113 min, 35mm) screens Thursday, 9:30pm, as part of the Thursday II series, Blow Up My Video: Movies Shot on Video, Shown on Film. More info on all screenings here. 

⚫ Film Studies Center (at the Logan Center for the Arts)
“Family Stories,” the seventh in the ten-week series that’s part of the Sojourner Truth Festival of the Arts 2023, screens Thursday at 7:30pm. Includes films by Camille Billops and James Hatch, Omah Diegu, Jacqueline Frazier, and Carolyn Johnson and Larry Bullard. Free admission. More info here. 

⚫ Gene Siskel Film Center
Albert Serra’s 2022 film PACIFICTION (165 min, DCP Digital) screens Wednesday at 5:15pm. This is a sneak preview screening before a wider opening on Friday. More info here.

⚫ Music Box Theatre
Éric Gravel’s 2021 French film FULL TIME (88 min, DCP Digital) opens this week and Lukas Dhont’s 2022 film CLOSE (105 min, DCP Digital) continues. See Venue website for showtimes. 

Music Box of Horrors presents Gorman Bechard’s 1986 horror film PSYCHOS IN LOVE (88 min, DCP Digital) on Friday at midnight and Jörg Buttgereit’s 1991 horror film NEKROMANTIC 2 (104 min, DCP Digital) on Saturday at midnight.

Rob Reiner’s 1987 romantic comedy THE PRINCESS BRIDE (98  min, DCP Digital) screens on Tuesday, 7 and 9:30pm, as part of the Princess Bride Valentine's Show. More info on all screenings and events here. 

⚫ Sweet Void Cinema
Find information on this Humboldt Park microcinema, including its screening and workshop schedule, here. 

🎞️ LOCAL ONLINE SCREENINGS –
ALSO SCREENING/STREAMING

⚫ Video Data Bank
TJ Cuthand's NDN Survival Trilogy, comprised of EXTRACTIONS (2019, 15 min), LESS LETHAL FETISHES (2019, 9 min) and RECLAMATION (2018, 13 min), is available to stream for free on VDB TV. More info here.

CINE-LIST: February 10 - February 16, 2023

MANAGING EDITORS // Ben and Kat Sachs

CONTRIBUTORS // Michael Bates, Cody Corrall, Maxwell Courtright, Kyle Cubr, Ray Ebarb, Alex Ensign, Steve Erickson, Megan Fariello, Marilyn Ferdinand, Tristan Johnson, Josh B Mabe, Darnell Witt