We will highlight physical screenings at the top of the list for theaters and venues that are open, grouped in our standard Crucial Viewing and Also Recommended sections, as well as all other physical screenings, and list streaming/online screenings below.
Remember to check venue websites for information on safety protocols and other procedures put in place for Covid prevention. We recommend verifying those before every trip to the theater.
📽️ CRUCIAL VIEWING
Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s MEMORIA
Gene Siskel Film Center – See Venue website for showtimes
I generally don’t like to talk about presentation and distribution when reviewing films because it’s generally a secondary, or even tertiary, aspect of the film that merits no discussion. Yet I feel that here these things not only need to be addressed, but they're so crucial to MEMORIA that they need to be mentioned at the top. For those who don't know, this film was originally released as a kind-of roadshow museum piece. The plan was for MEMORIA to have a single print circulate through the US as a “never-ending” release; it would be available to see at only one city at a time. This idea was met with both intrigue and ridicule, though I would fully recommend that people see this in the theatre—after all, the entire distribution system is intended to create a viewing experience that's unique to each screening. At the same time, there's a cynical side to me that wonders whether the whole thing was a P.T. Barnum-esque grift to get eyes on the kind of slow cinema that 99% of moviegoers wouldn't usually care about. After only two January stops on its “never-ending release,” the distributor, Neon, pulled the plug on this high art concept and decided in April that MEMORIA would have a standard multi-city, multi-screen release. Was this a kowtow to public perception of elitism? A tacit admission of failure? Or simply the re-evaluation of the desire to get MEMORIA in front of as many eyes as possible? I can’t say and won’t speculate. All this being said, I’ll let people decide for themselves what they think of the plan and simply move on to the film itself as a story, not as artifact or performance. In MEMORIA, we have Weerasethakul’s methodically meditative take on slow cinema that's so much warmer than many other filmmakers in this style. Tilda Swinton, naturally, gives a spectacular performance. As a Scottish emigre living in Colombia, Swinton's Jessica finds herself slowly questioning her sanity; it seems that she is the only person who can hear a loud, booming sound. In an attempt to explain the sound, she calls on a sound engineer, Hernán, to artificially recreate it. The two manage to approximate it, but when Jessica goes to see Hernán afterward, no one at the sound lab seems to have heard of him. Between this and her straining relationship with her sister, Jessica leaves the city for the countryside where she meets a quiet fisherman that also happens to be named Hernán. From there, things get weird. For such a slowly paced film, Weerasethakul took a giant risk taken by making so much of it sound-based. With Jessica’s mystery boom being the engine of the story, much of MEMORIA revolves purely around sound, or the lack thereof. As in such movies as THE CONVERSATION (1974) and SOUND OF METAL (2019), sound plays a character itself. There are more than a few scenes where sound is practically the only thing that moves. The frame will be stock-still, actors looking almost artificially frozen, and the sound design carries the story. It’s a simple idea but executed brilliantly. With this in mind, I can see why the distributor wanted to have this be approached as a heightened theatrical experience. The wind, the sound of memories, birdsong—all these things begin to overwhelm you as the movie progresses. Eventually, all you really have left is sound and you have no choice but to give in fully to it. It really is a beautiful thing. MEMORIA commands submission to one’s ears in a way that film rarely does. People talk about the immersive quality of action films, as if the average person has ever found themselves anywhere near an actual explosion, as opposed to a film like that draws you in so totally with your senses, seducing the eyes and ears as opposed to pummeling them relentlessly. You’ll find yourself lured in without recognizing that it happened. To find yourself in a dark room, slowly getting lost in another world is what any good movie should do. And this film does it far better than most. Knowing the story of this film, and the weird hype it’s created, it’s so satisfying to see that MEMORIA lives up to all its accolades. (2021, 136 min, 35mm) [Raphael Jose Martinez]
William Nigh’s THE FIRE BRIGADE (US/Silent)
Chicago Film Society at Music Box Theatre – Saturday, 11:30am
Long before 9/11, Americans recognized firefighters as heroes. The opening title cards of William Nigh’s exciting and fascinating 1926 feature THE FIRE BRIGADE read: “GLORY! It springs not alone from camp and fortress, trumpets, guns and drums. Peace has its armies no less brave than War’s—fighting men, safeguards of the Nation—unflinching thousands marching ever forward—.” Nigh cuts to a real parade of firefighters marching in formation through New York’s streets (not the only time that he will use documentary footage to reveal the inner workings of the New York Fire Department). Eventually, he brings the story down to the personal level—specifically, to the O’Neil family. Grandpop O’Neil (Bert Woodruff) is training his youngest grandson, Terry (Charles Ray), in the old fire station where he still stands ready to roll with his horse-drawn fire engine wherever he is needed. Terry’s older brothers, Joe (Tom O’Brien) and Jim (Warner Richmond), are seasoned firefighters working in a modern station with motorized fire engines. Their sainted mother (Eugenie Besserer) is proud of her sons, but still mourns the loss of her husband in a fire and fears for them every time they go out on a call. It doesn’t take long before a huge fire breaks out, launching with it a complex and tragic story of corruption among city officials, a real estate investor (Holmes Herbert), and a crooked building contractor (Erwin Connelly) who put money before public safety. Thanks to uniformly wonderful performances by Nigh’s actors, the film conveys genuine wit and emotion, particularly between the affectionate O’Neil family members and the investor daughter (May McAvoy) and Terry, who strike up a romance at a contest of firefighting skills that is truly thrilling to watch. I was particularly intrigued by a scale model of the first building to burn, which Fire Chief Wallace (DeWitt Jennings) uses to demonstrate how the fire started and spread so quickly. The Library of Congress recently restored THE FIRE BRIGADE, paying special attention to the brief uses of two-strip Technicolor during a costume party and the Handschiegl spot color process that brought the conflagrations to intense life. Thanks are due to the restorers and their funders for returning this excellent film to exhibition quality. Preceded by Rudolph Ising and Friz Freleng’s FIERY FIREMEN (1928, 7 min, 16mm) (1926, 94 min, 35mm) [Marilyn Ferdinand]
Sam Peckinpah’s THE BALLAD OF CABLE HOGUE (US)
Chicago Film Society at Northeastern Illinois University (The Auditorium, Building E, 3701 W. Bryn Mawr Ave.) – Wednesday, 7:30pm
Sam Peckinpah’s immediate follow-up to THE WILD BUNCH (1969) takes a lighter view of the death of the Old West than its predecessor did, though it contains enough bloodshed, cynicism, and sexism to remain a characteristic work. Reportedly the director’s favorite of his own films, it’s a loping, wistful sometimes-comedy about a prospector who discovers a hidden water reserve in the desert after his two partners rob him and leave him for dead. The prospector, Cable Hogue, is an ornery loner who seems more bemused than anything by his reversal of fortune—even after making a sizable profit from his rights to the reserve, he sticks to his spot in the desert and opens a rest stop, in part because he seems to enjoy the solitude. Jason Robards, as Cable, delivers perhaps his greatest performance outside of a Eugene O’Neill production, playing up Cable’s vulnerability without letting it overshadow the character’s gruff demeanor and survivalist reflexes. Stella Stevens plays the prostitute Cable falls in love with, and she also shines, in spite of Peckinpah’s occasionally leering presentation of her. Rounding out the principal cast is David Warner as the lusty Reverend Joshua, who crosses paths with Cable and manages to earn his trust. (The reverend’s ribald antics, which suggest the imagination of an unironic Russ Meyer, provide the sort of brazen anti-religious satire you might expect from an all-around anti-authoritarian like Peckinpah.) THE BALLAD OF CABLE HOGUE doesn’t progress so much as drift from one episode to another, the dust-in-the-wind narrative structure anticipating Robert Altman’s McCABE AND MRS. MILLER (1971), another semi-comic western about raw capitalism and the fleetingness of luck. At the same time, there’s something tough and resolute about the film’s underlying pessimism, which is reflected throughout in the stark Southwestern landscapes and thrust to the foreground in the downbeat conclusion. Preceded by Chuck Jones’ 1943 animated short FIT ’N CATTY (7 min, 16mm). (1970, 121 min, 35mm) [Ben Sachs]
Paul Verheoven's SHOWGIRLS (US)
Music Box Theatre – Thursday, 9:45pm
Beautiful as money, Nomi Malone hitches a ride to Las Vegas in this film's opening moments, vividly asserting, switchblade at the ready, that she's going to be a dancer. Already she's a commodity, a body circulating through a network of temporary owners for a price, though this won't be fully clear until her past's revealed near the end of the narrative. Vegas proves exactly her equal, a hometown for people rejecting their origins, a city that Verhoeven shows to thrive precisely on the dissemination of dashed dreams and rude awakenings. Any sense of what a 'real' Vegas might look like, how an actual dancer's career trajectory might be completed, is jettisoned in favor of a variegated torrent of imagery drenched in kitsch, in expertly ham-handed appeals to emotional response, in intricate and deadening formal maneuvers. But SHOWGIRLS isn't interested in characters, in narrative, but in glamour, in work, and in the tremendous effort that sexual entertainment takes to produce. 'You like her? ... I'll buy her for you,' the film's substitute Svengali says of Nomi, watching her gyroscopic breasts and buttocks slide around a stripper pole. This is of the falsest of films, constructed out of a series of intersecting surfaces utterly evacuated of substance. Its performers blandly dissemble wide, desperately erotic smiles, force their bodies into simulations of arousal, sweat through humiliating routines of grunt-and-thrust choreography, paint and festoon themselves with lacquer-thick make-up and acres of rhinestones. Verhoeven has always been a master of the physical object, at understanding human relationships as systems of conflicting and merging material engagements, but there has elsewhere always been the underlying hope that reason could see its way clear to an unmediated, somehow genuine connection between real people, could abolish, could transcend the mere appearances of things and give us access to ourselves as whole. Robocop finding, recuperating his family. Doug Quaid claiming interplanetary heroism. Nick Curran catching the killer. SHOWGIRLS will have none of this. It is the ne plus ultra and culmination of Verhoeven's cinema, a film that allows us no escape, that finds beneath every skin and layer nothing other than yet more sequins, glitter, ejaculate, and grime. No film takes American mass culture more seriously, or skewers it more dispassionately. 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. (1995, 132 min, 35mm) [Kian Bergstrom]
Sarah Jacobson's MARY JANE'S NOT A VIRGIN ANYMORE (US)
Doc Films (at the University of Chicago) – Thursday, 9:30pm
I’m so in love with writer-director Sarah Jacobson’s DIY classic MARY JANE’S NOT A VIRGIN ANYMORE as to be unqualified to write about it—there’s no illusion of impartiality when I say the film is a masterpiece, one of the best I’ve seen in a good, long while, and, upon further consideration, perhaps one of my new favorites. I reference impartiality because this is, for me, a very personal film, one that chronicles the coming-of-age of a young, female cinephile whose stint at a local movie theater leaves a lasting impression. I, too, worked at a movie theater during that tenuous period between high school and college, when you’re free from the confines of childhood but facing the even more agonizing limitations of adulthood, torn between what you want to do and what everyone else expects you to do. Granted, I graduated in the mid-aughts, but in 1996 (the year the film was released—by Jacobson herself, who not only wrote, directed, shot, edited, and produced it, but also self-distributed and promoted it with her mom when she was only 23 years old, on the heels of her landmark 1993 short I WAS A TEENAGE SERIAL KILLER), I was already starting to admire girls like the film’s protagonist (played by the unforgettable Lisa Gerstein, who hasn’t done much since), a 17-year-old working at a Midwestern movie theater during her last several months of high school and into that ever-memorable summer before college, and her bad-ass coworkers, with their cool style and even cooler interests. (And their zines, oh, the zines. Be still, my sloppily Xeroxed heart.) The film opens with Mary Jane, called Jane, losing her virginity in a graveyard to the shockingly forgettable Steve, who brazenly ask-demands, “So did you come yet?” We then meet Jane’s coworkers, partying at the theater after hours, asking about her date. Here begins the ‘first-time’ motif, which involves each character detailing the first time they had sex. To wit, this is a film about sex, and more broadly, relationships. (I’m unsure whether or not it passes the Bechdel test—I wouldn’t be surprised if it doesn’t—but here that’s irrelevant.) Jacobson, herself a young woman when she made the film, is best equipped to make a work preoccupied with these subjects, however passé they may seem nowadays. But it’s these concerns, namely sex, romance, and friendship, that often dictate how us women see the world—no one is an island. Our interpersonal relationships, and what we demand from them, matter, regardless of how whole we are outside them, and that’s what Jacobson is saying. She explores variations on the theme, from heterosexual to same-sex relationships, to always important friendships, including platonic ones between the sexes, and even the unfortunate circumstance of one of the older girls having been raped (she bravely tells Jane that it didn’t count as having lost her virginity, even though she had never had sex before the assault). The film has an impressive script, with a lot of worthwhile conflict crammed into a relatively compact running time, but it’s the actual filmmaking that truly astounds. Shot on 16mm (and not Super-8mm, as is oft reported), Jacobson utilizes the DIY aesthetic masterfully, the barest and most decrepit of settings turned into striking, punk rock tableaux. She embellishes the narrative with playful interstitials that subtextually expand its thematic concerns; when Jane masturbates for the first time, Jacobson transitions the scene from its ‘reality,’ tattered pajamas and all, to a fantasied depiction of the act in which Jane is literally glowing. Women are not only the heroes of their own stories, but also the objects of their own desire, those responsible for the acquiring of it. Less significantly but still super fun, MARY JANE features cameos from legendary underground filmmaker George Kuchar, under whom Jacobson studied, and the Dead Kennedys’ Jello Biafra. Sadly, the rightfully self-proclaimed “Queen of Underground Cinema” passed away in 2004 at the age of 32; she died from endometrial cancer, proof that we only have our bodies a short time. If MARY JANE’S NOT A VIRGIN ANYMORE should leave us with anything, it’s that we should love ‘em—and our local cinemas!—while we got ‘em. Screening as part of Doc’s second Thursday series: Punks Behind the Camera. (1996, 98 min, 16mm) [Kat Sachs]
René Clément’s PURPLE NOON (France)
Music Box Theatre – Sunday, 11:30am
Loosely adapted from Patricia Highsmith’s novel The Talented Mr. Ripley, René Clément’s PURPLE NOON circles around conman Tom Ripley’s (Alain Delon) exploits to persuade his wealthy friend Phillipe Greenleaf (Maurice Ronet) to return to the United States and take over his father’s business with Tom believing that he’ll share in the money. While on a yachting trip with Phillipe’s girlfriend, Marge (Marie Laforêt), Tom is nearly left stranded by Phillipe when the dinghy he’s forced into that is being towed by the boat breaks free and goes unnoticed. After Tom is brought back aboard from his near exile, Marge gets into a fight with Phillipe (thanks to Tom’s meddling) and demands to be put ashore. Much of this sequence feels like a sort of precursor to Polanski’s KNIFE IN THE WATER. Now alone with each other and back at sea, Tom kills Phillipe when it’s revealed he had no intention of returning to the United States. Tom assumes Phillipe’s identity via his forgery skills and Phillipe’s typewriter so that he may finally live the lavish life he has just caught a taste for. Clément’s film has a bright color palette that juxtaposes the nefarious actions occurring on screen. The idyllic Italian settings of coastal towns and Rome make for picturesque hiding places as Tom tries to stay one step ahead of Phillipe’s family, friends and Marge, whom all believe Phillipe to still be alive, as well as the police, when a friend of Phillipe’s is murdered after nearly discovering Tom’s ruse. Delon’s debonair charm suits his character fantastically and would go on to be similarly utilized a few years’ time with Melville’s LE SAMOURAÏ. What’s most interesting about PURPLE NOON is Tom’s motivations for his actions. Is it just something he did for fun that went too far? Is it because he’s envious of his friend’s life and girlfriend? Or maybe is it because he’s inclined to be anyone and everyone but himself? Like an animal trapped in a corner, Tom will do anything to survive. His perseverance makes PURPLE NOON an enrapturing and satisfying viewing. Screening as part of the Music Box’s Anchors Aweigh Matinees! series. (1960, 118 min, 35mm) [Kyle Cubr]
📽️ ALSO RECOMMENDED
Wim Wenders' WINGS OF DESIRE (Germany)
Gene Siskel Film Center – Monday, 6pm
In 1971, Wim Wenders and other luminaries of New German Cinema (including Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Werner Herzog, and Alexander Kluge) founded the famous Filmverlag der Autoren to produce and distribute their own films, and Wenders and Austrian novelist and playwright Peter Handke completed their first feature film collaboration, THE GOALIE'S ANXIETY AT THE PENALTY KICK (1971). Nearly twenty years later, they co-wrote WINGS OF DESIRE, a beautiful film in the tradition of the German fairytale and dedicated to the angels and to master directors Yasujiro Ozu, François Truffaut, and Andrei Tarkovsky. Wenders tells the story of an angel, Damiel (Bruno Ganz), falling in love with trapeze artist Marion (Solveig Dommartin), who flies through the air at the Circus Alekan (named in honor of the film's cinematographer, Henri Alekan). Damiel fervently desires to abandon his spiritual existence to become a human being and experience the pleasures and pains of life, particularly that of love, which can be both. He and the other angels experience the world in black and white, but Wenders uses bursts of color to indicate the magnificent difference in the way humans see it. WINGS OF DESIRE is also an ode to Berlin, recalling the city films of the early twentieth century, such as Walter Ruttmann's BERLIN: SYMPHONY OF A GREAT CITY (1927) and Dziga Vertov's MAN WITH THE MOVIE CAMERA (1929). The original German title is DER HIMMEL UBER BERLIN, meaning ‘The Sky, or Heaven, over Berlin.’ Wenders begins shooting the city from an angel's point of view in the sky, and his camera later descends to the streets, looking at or out of cars, buses, and trains. He concerns himself with Berlin's history and the stories of its people, particularly since World War II. Recurring shots of the Berlin Wall covered in decorative graffiti figure prominently as does old war footage of air raids and of the victims they claimed lying amidst the rubble. Ultimately, WINGS OF DESIRE is a story about time—as longed for by angels, as lived by Berliners, and as experienced by us in watching the film unfold. Screening as part of 50/50, the Film Center’s year-long series including a film from each year the theater has been open. (1987, 128 min, 35mm) [Candace Wirt]
John Cameron Mitchell's SHORTBUS (US)
Gene Siskel Film Center – Friday and Saturday, 9pm
John Cameron Mitchell’s SHORTBUS (2006) belongs to the class of films that many have only encountered in articles or on lists of non-pornographic films featuring unsimulated sex. This alone (along with the fact that contemporaneous viewers had trouble seeing past the sex to the actual film) has made regular screenings a challenge, so it’s a blessing that the film has gotten a 4K restoration. Mitchell’s comparatively gentle second feature after his cult adaptation of his stage musical HEDWIG AND THE ANGRY INCH (2001), SHORTBUS is still a Gregg Araki-indebted jumble, wearing its punk ethos proudly. The film is an ensemble piece set mostly at the titular club, and it follows a depressed filmmaker; his boyfriend, who wants to open up their relationship; a relationship counselor who has never had an orgasm; a dominatrix; and numerous bit players who seem to be competing for the award of most stylish at the club. Beginning with the film’s title, Mitchell seems proud of the boundaries he smashes regarding good taste, yet he tries to situate the more outré elements in a casual, good-vibes-only environment where the filmic transgressions serve to lift up the characters, not antagonize the viewer. The film still feels ahead of present-day narrative films' treatment of sex, despite its very-2006 atmosphere (an Animal Collective-soundtracked orgy being a highlight). And for all of Mitchell's tell-not-show approach, SHORTBUS tells us very little about Shortbus. Aside from providing a convenient narrative function of being a place where the characters can meet and anything can happen, the club doesn’t really feel like anything. But that seems to be by design; community doesn’t just cohere around a stated purpose, sometimes it can just be around a vibe. Shortbus is all things to all of its patrons, an implicit acknowledgement that queer life is not reduceable to separate categories of queer art, queer sex, etc. It’s a melting pot that calls for fluid community spaces to foster it. The film’s tonal mix reflects this idea—Mitchell refuses for the film to be boxed in as a sex comedy or a queer tragedy. The notorious sex scenes aren't intended to shock or titillate, but to serve as matter-of-fact snapshots of a milieu where sex is necessarily part of the scene-setting. This presentation allows the film some of its more effective analogies, drawing parallels between carnal pleasure and the more personal or spiritual transcendence that everyone searches for somehow. (2006, 101 min, DCP Digital – New 4K Restoration) [Maxwell Courtright]
Paul Thomas Anderson's INHERENT VICE (US)
Doc Films (at the University of Chicago) – Thursday, 7pm
No bones about it: INHERENT VICE is one divisive movie. Going by the annotated ballots of anonymous Academy Awards voters published by The Hollywood Reporter, INHERENT VICE was the worst movie of the 2014, or maybe just the most arrogant: an object of grand-standing, head-scratching mediocrity, like some chuckling, elitist finger poking you in the cornea. Meanwhile, VICE's champions have largely described it as a laugh-a-minute ride, the best head picture since HEAD, prophesying an imminent critical rehabilitation along the casual light-up lines of THE BIG LEBOWSKI. Uh-huh. I admire the acid sunshine optimism of the VICE Squad, but the thing that makes this movie distinctive is its melancholy, earnest and earned. Set in the fictional enclave of Gordita Beach, INHERENT VICE excavates a historicized ennui that's disarmingly real, namely the morning-after realization that the '60s were only a mirage, or perhaps a conspiratorial diversion. Say it ain't so, Country Joe. As Joanna Newsom's Sortilège speculates in a voice-over midway through the film, "Was it possible that at every gathering, concert, peace rally, love-in, be-in, freak-in, here up north, back east, whereever, some dark crews had been busy all along reclaiming the music, the resistance to power, the sexual desire from epic to everyday?" That hippie shit could be tolerated up to a point--until Straight America asserted its natural will to power. But VICE isn't quite a nostalgic wail for freakdom's last stand--it's a memory-film of a finer, more obtuse pedigree. Like Terence Davies' DISTANT VOICES, STILL LIVES, it's essentially a speculative conjecture about the shape of the world just prior to its author's birth. (Writer-director Anderson was born in 1970, the unrecoverable, present-tense moment of VICE.) How did we get here?, this movie fruitlessly, savagely asks, knowing full well that the answer might kill us. We move through a druggy stupor, characters coming and going, plotlines maddeningly opaque, nearly every shot a dawdling close-up. It's a total conjuring, a seance with spirits not yet dead. Screening as part of Doc’s first Thursday series: Projecting Paranoia. (2014, 148 min, 35mm) [K.A. Westphal]
Jane Schoenbrun's WE'RE ALL GOING TO THE WORLD'S FAIR (US)
Music Box Theatre – See Venue website for showtimes
Here in 2022, it seems we’re finally shedding some well-worn tropes about how to depict the internet on film. At a stage when webcam horror has been played out for a number of years (and considering there are only so many ways to dramatize message notifications), how does a filmmaker hope to capture the omnipresent role of the internet in our lives without resorting to the usual cliches? Enter Jane Schoenbrun’s WE'RE ALL GOING TO THE WORLD'S FAIR. Schoenbrun has been a mainstay of independent film for the last 6 years, heading up projects like the experimental TV show The Eyeslicer and dreamy anthology COLLECTIVE: UNCONSCIOUS (2016) and also lending their talents as a producer to indie oddities like CHAINED FOR LIFE (2018) and TUX AND FANNY (2019). WORLD'S FAIR, their debut feature, continues Schoenbrun’s creative hot streak by flipping the script on internet horror, exploring the ups and downs of the digital world in all of its mess. Newcomer Anna Cobb anchors the film as Casey, a lonely teenager who spends most of her free time (and much of the film’s runtime) running a small YouTube channel. In the opening scene, Casey begins the "World’s Fair Challenge," where the participants repeat "I want to go to the world’s fair" on camera several times à la CANDYMAN, wipe a bit of their blood on their monitor, and wait for strange things to start happening to them. It’s clear that Casey is seeking a sense of community by participating in the post-capitalist hellscape of the internet, where self-expression is rewarded mostly by how well one fits themselves into established memes on established platforms. Casey’s view counts suggest she has been shouting into the void for a while now, which is taking its toll on her mental health and setting her up to be a living creepypasta. The film doesn't repeat the usual “Is this real or inside my head?” question; both possibilities are equally scary, since most of the depersonalization that Casey describes is consistent with severe depression. Whether or not the supernatural elements come to bear, someone still develops a double-consciousness about their problems, coping with the difficulties of life by turning them into objects of horror. The approach is a sort-of corrective for the preponderance of trauma-plot horror films—here is a character who exists in our world, where trauma can sell quite well if you know how to package it. Schoenbrun’s skills as a director are numerous, but maybe the most significant derives from their experience as a producer. Their penchant for editing anthologies comes to bear on the fake viral video collages that break up Casey’s increasingly disturbing video diaries, with material coming from a diverse list of collaborators that includes filmmakers Theo Anthony and Albert Birney as well as ASMR artist Slight Sounds. While the variety of approaches to the subject is refreshing on its own, Schoenbrun’s editing rhythms heighten the material, expertly re-creating the real-life discomfort of seeing a timeline where shitposts and footage of war crimes pop up back-to-back. Perhaps more important is Schoenbrun’s empathy towards Casey, a young and confused woman with a codependent relationship with the internet. Eschewing moralistic didacticism, Schoenbrun lets the conflicts play out ambiguously, particularly when an anonymous older man begins contacting Casey about her videos. On the one hand, any grown man reaching out to a teenager online should send up immediate red flags. On the other, he seems to be the only one actually concerned about Casey’s health. Will the internet be Casey’s savior or downfall? Schoenbrun asks, why not both? (2021, 86 min, DCP Digital) [Maxwell Courtright]
Céline Sciamma’s PETITE MAMAN (France)
Landmark Century Centre Cinema (2828 N. Clark) – Tuesday, 7:30pm
An old woman fills out a crossword puzzle with the help of an 8-year-old girl. After they fill in the last word, the girl, Nelly (Joséphine Sanz), says good-bye. She moves to the next room down the hall and says good-bye to the elderly woman in that room and then does the same in a third room. When she reaches the fourth room, a 30ish woman is packing up some belongings. The woman is Nelly’s mother, Marion (Nina Meurisse), who gives her assent when Nelly asks if she can keep a walking stick. This brief, skillfully rendered sequence tells us all we need to know about the circumstances that will dominate the remainder of the film—Marion’s mother has died, and she, Nelly, and Nelly’s father (Stéphane Varupenne) will go to Marion’s childhood home to pack up the old woman’s belongings. French director Céline Sciamma expands her examination of women’s lives by turning to their generational connections and, specifically, the formative moments of girlhood. Marion encounters artifacts from her childhood—books, drawings, old wallpaper. She tries to answer Nelly’s questions about her youth, but overcome by grief, she leaves the house. Left to her own devices, Nelly searches for remnants of a treehouse Marion built in the woods and encounters her mother at the age of 8 (Gabrielle Sanz). It is sheer genius for Sciamma, who also wrote the screenplay, to level the playing field by bringing mother and daughter together as peers to talk about the things that really matter to them—young Marion’s fear of an operation she is to undergo in three days’ time and Nelly’s worry that she is the cause of her mother’s melancholy (young Marion reassures her as only the honesty of a child can that “you didn’t invent my sadness.”) Nelly, who confesses to her older mother that she wishes she had given her grandmother a proper good-bye, gets a chance at a do-over, albeit with a younger version (Margot Abascal). Sciamma brings her camera down to a child’s eye level and favors close-ups that match the curiosity the girls have for each other. Perhaps Nelly is simply tapping into the ghosts of Marion’s past, but whether actual time travel is involved is somewhat beside the point. The simple, but never childish dialogue, the rapport and generosity of spirit between the girls, and the willingness to believe each other in a way that is so true of girlhood is the real miracle in this film. Sciamma has given us a story we all would like to believe in and imagine for ourselves in our own way. (2021, 83 min, DCP Digital) [Marilyn Ferdinand]
Julie Dash's DAUGHTERS OF THE DUST (US)
Film Studies Center (at the University of Chicago, Logan Center for the Arts, 915 E. 60th St.) – Monday, 7pm (Free)
The narrator of Julie Dash's DAUGHTERS OF THE DUST is more than just a character in the film, but a symbolic representation of the film's message. The unborn child who tells the story of the Peazant family in their last days before migrating north is as much a reflection of the past as she is of the future; all that has come before her is as inherent to the family as the very blood within their veins, and it's that history which will propel them along the trying and changing times. The Peazant family are inhabitants of the southern Sea Islands and members of its Gullah culture, having preserved the identity of their African heritage in the face of slavery and post-war oppression. Before the move, the matriarch of the Peazant family contemplates her native beliefs while the family's younger members overcome their personal struggles. Rape and prostitution have afflicted several female members of the family, and the scorn from both society and their own clan present the unique obstacle of African American women within an already disparaged race. Dash uses magical realism not only in the story, but also as a filmmaking device that is reflective of the characters' culture. It was the first feature-length film by an African-American woman to receive theatrical release, and its historical context and female-oriented storyline set it apart from both other films of the time and other films put out by fellow members of the L.A. Rebellion. Screening as part of the Open Classroom series; professor Daniel Morgan will introduce and then discuss the film after the screening. (1991, 112 min, DCP Digital) [Kat Sachs]
Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Verena Paravel's LEVIATHAN (US/UK/France/Documentary)
Block Cinema (at Northwestern University) – Friday, 7pm
Everything is thrown around and flipped on its head in this much praised new documentary from Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Verena Paravel of Harvard's Sensory Ethnography Lab, everything from fish to machinery to our moral compass. Like the Discovery Channel's long running reality series Deadliest Catch, LEVIATHAN follows a commercial fishing ship into perilous waters, but in staunch contrast to its "reality" counterpart, LEVIATHAN's hero is the ocean, its villain is the ship, and its damsels in distress are fish and other sea creatures. The humans in LEVIATHAN are incidental, the flying monkeys who do the witch/ship's cruel bidding in a hypnotic state of merciless efficiency. In tackling the adventure-occupation subject matter familiar to reality television viewers but from an opposite angle, LEVIATHAN positions itself as the anti-reality TV. In this documentary there are no interviews, no narration, and hardly any dialogue, and any message or purpose must be inferred from what is seen and heard. And what is seen and heard in LEVIATHAN can be quite disorienting and disturbing. Amidst a steady drone of gushing water, howling wind, and clanking machinery, we see sting rays dismembered with hooks and machetes, crabs groping weakly around the corpses of their cousins, giant heaps of living fish sliced from head to tail fin by faceless butchers with assembly line rhythms, blood and guts pouring from the ship's portholes like the elevator shaft in the Overlook Hotel. But more than the eerie sound, the swinging machinery, and the gore, it is the lack of a human perspective that accounts for the horror of LEVIATHAN. With it, we could have contextualized the experience--just like our own experiences with fishing, only on a larger scale. Without it, we are left with no justification for the holocaust before our eyes. Previous reviews have compared LEVIATHAN to work by David Lynch, Herman Melville, and Gaspar Noe. Each of these comparisons rings true in some way: Lynch for the industrial horror and Melville for obvious reasons, but it is the Noe comparison which runs deepest because of the inhuman neutrality of the camera in both LEVIATHAN and Noe's ENTER THE VOID (2009). Down among the bodies of dead and half dead fish, flapping furiously or paralyzed in a final gasp, we feel as if we are lost in some Tibetan sphere of hell, not unlike the one portrayed in Noe's film. Perhaps, in this case, it is the sphere reserved for consumers of commercially caught fish. Filmmakers will appear in person for a post-screening discussion. (2012, 87 min, DCP Digital) [Mojo Lorwin]
Pierre Pinaud’s THE ROSE MAKER (France)
Music Box Theatre – See Venue website for showtimes
The French have long taken pride in the artisanal products family-owned businesses have made for hundreds of years—wine, cheese, couture clothing, perfume. However, the economies of scale and mechanization that have arisen under late capitalism have eroded individual craftsmanship and squeezed out small producers. THE ROSE MAKER looks at this process in the rose cultivar business. Eve Vernet (a brilliant Catherine Frot) is barely making a go of her rose-making business and is in danger of being bought up by industrial rose maker Lamarzelle (Vincent Dedienne). With the help of her longtime assistant, Véra (Olivia Côte), and three low-cost workers from a rehabilitation shelter (Fatsah Bouyahmed, Marie Petiot, and Manel Foulgoc), Eve hopes to win an important rose-breeding competition and the cash and buyer demand that come with it by stealing a rare rose from Lamarzelle’s compound and creating a new hybrid. Director Pierre Pinaud suggests a comedy spy caper, complete with 007-style music written by Mathieu Lamboley, as the motley crew breaks into Lamarzelle’s rare rose house, but his main focus is on how Eve and her crew form a family of sorts dedicated to bringing beauty into the world despite the odds. This soulful film reminds us that there’s a whole lot more to life than just making money—or roses. (2022, 94 min, DCP Digital) [Marilyn Ferdinand]
John Carpenter’s THE THING (US)
Music Box Theatre – See Venue website for showtimes
John Carpenter has always been a minimalist when it comes to framing, using his preferred format of widescreen to create a pronounced sense of negative space and, with it, a pronounced sense of dread. Similarly, he tends to sculpt performances that are understated and direct, much as they are in the work of his favorite director, Howard Hawks. THE THING is a remake of Hawks’ foray into sci-fi horror, THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD (1951), and one can sense Carpenter’s reverence for the original in his Hawksian depiction of the professional community that makes up the principal characters. Yet where Hawks’ film was a portrait of heroism, showing how a group of scientists bands together to fight off a hostile extraterrestrial life form, Carpenter’s is a pessimistic work that shows a community coming apart in the midst of an alien invasion. (It’s widely suspected that the film was a commercial flop on first release because it came out only a few months after E.T. THE EXTRATERRESTRIAL, which presented a much rosier view of human-alien relations; Carpenter’s pessimism just wasn’t welcome at the time.) That breakdown is presented in exquisite, gory detail: Rob Bottin’s special make-up effects are some of the most lauded of their kind in movie history, depicting people and animals as they mutate into hideous half-alien creatures. This was Carpenter’s first major studio film, and he took full advantage of the resources available to him. In addition to the first-rate effects, THE THING features a brilliant mix of studio sets and location shooting (with British Columbia standing in for Antarctica) and an appropriately chilling Ennio Morricone score. (1982, 109 min, DCP Projection - New 4K Restoration) [Ben Sachs]
Mary Harron’s AMERICAN PSYCHO (US)
Gene Siskel Film Center – Tuesday, 7pm
Just like that fine chardonnay you’re not drinking, AMERICAN PSYCHO has only aged into a more perfect specimen since its release. An unfathomably black satire about the greed and narcissism of moneyed America in the 1980s, the film marks an elevation (by director Mary Harron and screenwriting partner Guinevere Turner) of Bret Easton Ellis’s eponymous novel into something that cuts even closer to the bone than the main character. While it’s always a cheap shot to compare a film to the book it was made from, I think it’s important to delineate the two here and draw attention to the fact that having violent psychopathy of AMERICAN PSYCHO’s protagonist Patrick Bateman framed through the perspective of two women, one a lesbian, makes the film hit much harder than its source material. This is how women view these kinds of men—a very large distinction than how men view other men. In the film, we follow yuppie banker Bateman as he navigates the world knowing he’s putting on the airs of humanity. A wholly unsympathetic and unrelatable character, Bateman exists only to fit into and dominate any social situation he enters—and, as we quickly see, this extends to Bateman's other career as a serial killer. There is a terrifying prescience in this film that only becomes more chilling as time goes by, insomuch that the “red pilled,” “alpha/sigma male” tropes that churn in the recessed cesspools of the internet have leaked out into the mainstream, leaving an aura of sociopathy in the shape of a business suit. What was once a darkly humorous horror film about a serial killer now seems like a fractured mirror in which one sees the reflection of Donald Trump. It’s astounding how much scarier AMERICAN PSYCHO is in the cultural context than it was in the economically freewheeling, pre-9/11 era when it was originally released. It’s now nearly impossible to not see the character of Patrick Bateman as some kind of simulacrum of our violently narcissistic former president. If you haven’t revisited AMERICAN PSYCHO since its initial release, I highly recommend that you do. If you’re a weirdo like me that likes to check in on the film every now and again, seeing it presented on the big screen, with Trump writ small projected large, will be every bit the white-knuckle terror ride that you want out of a horror film. Screening as part of the Film Center’s Science on Screen series. Followed by a discussion with Coltan Scrivner, researcher at The University of Chicago in the Department of Comparative Human Development, and a Fellow at the Institute for Mind and Biology. (2000, 101 mins, DCP Digital) [Raphael Jose Martinez]
Wong Kar-wai’s HAPPY TOGETHER (Hong Kong)
Doc Films (at the University of Chicago) – Friday, 7pm
Many of Wong Kar-wai’s films are preoccupied with the cultural anxieties surrounding the British handover of Hong Kong, from CHUNGKING EXPRESS’s expiration date-obsessed cop to the titular year of 2046, which marks the period before the city’s self-regulation ends. Released in 1997, the year of the handover, HAPPY TOGETHER filters these anxieties and longings—as well as the possibilities of what a new, globalized Hong Kong might mean—through the prism of a tumultuous gay romance. The partners are the assertive Ho Po-Wing (Leslie Cheung) and more mild-mannered Lai Yiu-Fai (Tony Leung), who have come to Buenos Aires looking to recharge their floundering relationship, and to see Iguazu Falls, their symbolically elusive destination. We understand this is not the first time they have tried an implausible romantic gambit: Fai instructs us via voiceover of Po-Wing’s constant refrain after each so-called breakup, “Let’s start over.” Start over, and over, they do. After a split in Argentina, and without money to fly back home, the two reluctantly get back together when Fai spots Po-Wing cruising at the tango club where the former has taken a job. Wong proves that, indeed, it takes two to tango, as the lovers push and pull in a torrid dance, quarreling over money and their cramped apartment at one moment, and then, in Wong’s impressionistic montage, tenderly swaying in one another’s arms in the next. The two might seem like polarities, echoing the antipode status of Buenos Aries and Hong Kong, but really they are sides of the same coin, lonely and displaced, even if their desires manifest differently. Wong conveys their underlying reversibility through sleight-of-hand doublings and substitutions, using mirrors and jump cuts to make the men assume each other’s places. It doesn’t take much parsing to read their relationship as a metaphor for Hong Kong’s uncertain future with China, while a third character introduced later, Chang (Chang Chen), represents a similarly unmoored Taiwan. But HAPPY TOGETHER can also just be enjoyed as a ravishing, emotionally plangent song from the heart, saturated with all of Wong’s dreamy stylistic flourishes and musical grace notes. Few shots in his filmography are so simply, shatteringly poignant as Tony Leung sobbing into a tape recorder, or the protracted aerial footage of Iguazu Falls pouring its contents with both the majesty and implacable flux of nature. Screening as part of Doc’s Friday series: In the Mood for Wong Kar-wai. (1997, 96 min, DCP Digital) [Jonathan Leithold-Patt]
Joel Coen’s THE TRAGEDY OF MACBETH (US)
Doc Films (at the University of Chicago) - Saturday, 7pm
With THE TRAGEDY OF MACBETH, Joel Coen approaches the play in the moody and dark way I always imagined it. The film has killer performances from Denzel Washington as Macbeth (proving he's still at the top of his game) and Frances McDormand as a sinister and plotting Lady Macbeth. And then there’s the interesting tightrope that Coen walks with his choices; the film feels like it has one foot in the realm of theater and the other in film. There is a certain minimalist refinement to everything--sometimes a giant, empty room in a castle has more to say than one that is extravagantly decorated--and a sense of dread looms over everything, so you can really feel the weight of the Weird Sisters’ prophecy hanging over Macbeth. While other takes on the material have had these elements, Coen’s vision is certainly different than, say, the crazed long takes in Bela Tarr’s version. When giant budgets and availability of screens to show these films are thrown into the mix, I realize this conversation becomes more nuanced, but Coen shows that with a genuine vision, a new take on old material can be great even if we've already seen it adapted before. Perhaps it's a fate cast on me by the Weird Sisters, but if I’m doomed to see Macbeth's tragedy repeated time and time again, I can’t say I really mind. (2021, 105 mins, DCP Digital) [Drew Van Weelden]
Ti West's X (US)
Music Box Theatre – See Venue website for showtimes
With clear inspiration from the likes of Brian DePalma, Tobe Hooper, and John Carpenter, Ti West’s X is a love letter to late '70s horror. Like West’s outstanding HOUSE OF THE DEVIL (2009), X utilizes familiar horror tropes and visuals while making something fresh. Set in rural Texas in 1979, the film follows a group of actors and filmmakers as they set off to make a porno. Maxine (Mia Goth) is determined to become a star by any means necessary; her producer boyfriend (Martin Henderson) is keen to make it rich by taking advantage of the burgeoning home video market. With two seasoned stars (Scott Mescudi and a standout Brittany Snow), an eager aspiring auteur director (Owen Campbell) and his sound assistant/girlfriend (Jenna Ortega) joining, they settle down to shoot in a rented house on farmland property. The elderly landowner and his wife are unwelcoming, to say the least, and as night falls, the porn shoot turns bloody. With blatant eroticism, X turns the slasher on its head, challenging the established ways in which the genre deals with sexuality, especially in female characters, and it's complicated by its larger themes about aging and vitality. The film also maintains a sense of humor, always quite self-aware of how it distorts and restructures expectations. Perhaps most noteworthy is X’s overall aesthetic, as the film looks and sounds like it’s straight from the late 70s. West’s editing choices, directly inspired by the aforementioned horror icons, is particularly fantastic; with quick cross cutting, overhead and splitscreen shots, the film inventively reveals its themes while successfully building dread. X is both fun and introspective and proof that the slasher is a genre that can be consistently reconsidered and recalibrated. (2022, 105 min, DCP Projection) [Megan Fariello]
🎞️ LOCAL ONLINE SCREENINGS –
Held Over/Still Screening/Return Engagements (Selected)
Hong Sang-soo’s VIRGIN STRIPPED BARE BY HER BACHELORS (South Korea)
Available to rent through Facets Cinema here
Hong Sang-soo’s films oscillate between different versions of reality. Often showing the same scenes with slight changes multiple times in his films, he distorts our perception of what’s playing out onscreen. Each character morphs into someone a little different, a new perception brought forward. His third feature, VIRGIN STRIPPED BARE BY HER BACHELORS (titled after the Marcel Duchamp artwork The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even), finds the director honing this skill. Following a love triangle between a TV news director, his assistant, and his wealthy friend, the film examines the exploits and advances, both wanted and unwanted, of these two men toward this young woman. Much colder than Hong’s later works, this film, cut into two nearly equal parts, examines fleeting, realistic relationships, placing them in contrast to the expectations of each party involved. It also serves as a showcase for Lee Eun-ju, who plays the titular virgin and whose film career was cut short by suicide in 2005. She’s fantastic as a woman gliding through these relationships, forced into moments and actions she’d rather avoid, mediating the foolish and abusive actions of her would-be romantic partners. The two men swirl around her, acting like grown children, confused why they aren’t getting what they want, and entranced by the idea of her virginity. As in many of Hong’s films, these men spend their days eating, drinking, and hoping to have sex, their sensual natures on full display. It contains an air of exploitation as well as a sense of disdain that Hong has for how these people treat each other; the director looks at these relationships with a keen, yet unsympathetic, eye. (2000, 126 min) [Michael Frank]
CINE-LIST: April 15 - April 21, 2022
MANAGING EDITORS // Ben and Kat Sachs
CONTRIBUTORS // Kian Bergstrom, Maxwell Courtright, Kyle Cubr, John Dickson, Steve Erickson, Megan Fariello, Marilyn Ferdinand, Michael Frank, Jonathan Leithold-Patt, Mojo Lorwin, Raphael Jose Martinez, Drew Van Weelden, K.A. Westphal, Candace Wirt