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Erich von Stroheimâs FOOLISH WIVES (US/Silent)
Chicago Film Society and Music Box Theatre â Saturday, 11:30am
Released the same year as NOSFERATU, FOOLISH WIVES introduced audiences to a different kind of vampire, the phony Russian countâbut very real con manâSergius Karamzin, played to perfection by writer-director Erich von Stroheim. The film charts Karamzinâs efforts to seduce a rich, married American woman vacationing in Monte Carlo in hopes of cheating her out of her wealth. A phony count does have to spend a lot on appearances, after all, and Karamzin supports two other con artists as well, a pair of women who claim to be his cousins. (Itâs wholly possible the three are living in a mĂ©nage Ă trois; it would be in keeping with outrĂ© sexuality that runs through FOOLISH WIVES, and it may be confirmed in the much-longer directorâs cut thatâs lost forever.) An even bigger cad than the horny lieutenant von Stroheim played in BLIND HUSBANDS (1919), Karamzin has already seduced his maid Maruschka before the story begins, having promised blithely to marry her with no intention of following through on his word, and he openly lusts after the developmentally disabled daughter of the counterfeiter with whom he does business. One achievement of von Stroheimâs film is that it allows us to understand how Karamzin can take advantage of so many people: heâs just that good at playing the part of the aristocrat, at conjuring up an aura of power to which many people instinctively succumb. FOOLISH WIVES delivers this insight through some of the most exquisite acting to be found in silent cinema; the performances von Stroheim elicits from the cast (to say nothing of his own) are at once cerebral and physical, channeling complicated psychological states into highly legible movements. The mise-en-scĂšne is no less remarkable: not only did von Stroheim get Universal Pictures to reconstruct entire sections of Monte Carlo on the studio backlot; he made them spend a small fortune on fashions and accoutrements to depict elite society accurately. As von Stroheim was inclined to cram his shots with telling detail, he couldnât be called a realist exactlyâhis films are so crowded and opulent as to suggest a sort-of gilded realism, forebears to what Luchino Visconti would achieve with such films as SENSO (1954), THE LEOPARD (1963), and LUDWIG (1973). On multiple occasions Jonathan Rosenbaum has likened von Stroheim to Elaine May as a comic writer; Iâd add that FOOLISH WIVESâ grotesquely funny portrait of sexual perversity among Old World elites anticipates multiple Vladimir Nabokov novels. And speaking of literature, who doesnât get a kick out of von Stroheimâs deliberately purplish intertitles (surely an influence on Guy Maddin)? Hereâs one worth quoting in its entirety: âAgain morning â sun-draped terrace â Sapphire sea â all the world on a holiday â Rifle Fire â Brooding doves â Brutality of man â and still the sun â â With live accompaniment by Dennis Scott. Please note that the Music Box will be screening the new restoration of FOOLISH WIVES undertaken by the San Francisco Silent Film Festival and the Museum of Modern Art, which returns color tints and hand-colored sequences to the film. (1922, 146 min, 35mm) [Ben Sachs]
Pier Paolo Pasolini's MAMMA ROMA (Italy)
Gene Siskel Film Center â Wednesday, 7:30pm
The most impressive sequences in Pier Paolo Pasolini's MAMMA ROMA (the filmmaker-poet-journalist-philosopher's second feature) are a couple of theatrical set pieces in which the title characterâa veteran prostitute trying and failing to get out of the Lifeâwalks the city streets, picks up strangers, and tells them parts of her life story. Presented in extended tracking shots, these passages are grandly nonrealistic, with Pasolini transforming the gritty locations into a mobile proscenium. (They're also a likely influence on the dolly-shot interludes in Rainer Werner Fassbinder's second feature, KATZELMACHER.) Anna Magnani's acting is as breathtaking as it ever wasâMamma Roma is at once larger than life and recognizably salt-of-the-earth, grandiose and vulnerable. Her performance aids enormously in Pasoliniâs project of rendering the character on the level of myth (This is the level, of course, on which all of Pasoliniâs best work operates; obsessed with the past and disgusted by the present, Pasolini aspired to older forms as a refuge from postwar reality.) âMamma Romaâs attempt to give her son a better life has, thanks to Magnani grandiloquent acting, the flavor of tragic opera,â wrote Gary Indiana for the Criterion Collectionâs DVD release. He continued: âIt isnât that Mamma is morally flawedâthough Pasolini viewed her attempt to find a place in a rapidly changing society as an expression of moral decay, because of this new societyâs consumerism and spiritual vacancyâshe is socially doomed, and the forces that have made her life a bitter struggle for longer moments of joy than the few she gets to experience (teaching Ettore to tango, clinging to him as the motorcycle sheâs bought him roars along the roadway) are the same that literally doom her son.â Screening as part of the Pier Paolo Pasolini series. Preceded by a wine and light bites reception for all ticket holders at 6:30pm, hosted by the Italian Cultural Institute of Chicago. (1962, 110 min, 35mm) [Ben Sachs]
RenĂ© Cardonaâs THE BATWOMAN and THE PANTHER WOMEN (Mexico)
Music Box Theatre â Thursday, 7:30pm
Delectable slabs of sweating cheese, these two Mexican wrestling thrillers feature strong women characters, in this case hurling each other around the ring. THE BATWOMAN (1968, 81 min, New 4K DCP Digital Restoration), shot in color and based on the DC Comics character, stars the sleek Maura Monti as an Acapulco millionaire who, when sheâs not wrestling, fights crime dressed in the familiar cape, cowl, gloves, and boots of the 1966 Batman TV series but, instead of a leotard, a blue satin bikini. Hoping to solve a series of murders, the Batwoman steals onto a mysterious yacht whose mad doctor owner hopes to create an amphibious man. THE PANTHER WOMEN (1967, 88 min, New 4K DCP Digital Restoration) opens with a subterranean Black Mass whose high priestess proclaims a vendetta against the Pietrasanta family; centuries earlier their distant ancestor slew the leprous warlock Eloim, whom the priestess now summons back to life. She and her acolytes can turn themselves into panthers, but they meet their match in Loreta Venus (a Piesantra) and Golden Rubi, a popular wrestling duo. RenĂ© Cardona directed both movies, never taking a moment to breathe, and the monsters are outstanding: the amphibious beast in THE BATWOMAN looks like a lobster-red Creature From the Black Lagoon, and in THE PANTHER WOMEN, Eloimâs face is eaten away from the upper jaw to the crown of his head, which gives him the appearance of a skeletal Rudy Giuliani. I wake up screaming. Sponsored by the National Museum of Mexican Art and hosted by Chicago Film programmer Raul Benitez and Viviana Garcia-Besne of the Permanencia Voluntaria Archivo CinematogrĂĄfico whose family produced these films and that she restored from the original negatives. [J.R. Jones]
Emma Thatcherâs PROVO (US)
Gene Siskel Film Center â Tuesday, 8pm
In its unabashed punk-girl energy and sensitivity to bohemian types, PROVO may remind you a bit of Sarah Jacobsonâs legendary underground feature MARY JANEâS NOT A VIRGIN ANYMORE (1996). The heroineâplayed by Chicago-based writer-director-editor Emma Thatcherâsometimes suggests what might have happened to the teenage protagonist of Jacobsonâs film if she kept hanging with the cool kids but spent her 20s otherwise making bad life choices. When the movie begins, Liz seems to be living from high to another; sheâs a regular in the north side party scene because of the easy access to alcohol and drugs, and she sees her dealer so often he thinks sheâs his friend. Thatcher doesnât hold off on revealing that Liz lives recklessly to cope with memories of childhood abuse, thereby avoiding the easy ambiguity that plagues too many contemporary dramas about self-destructive characters. At the same time, PROVO isnât a cautionary tale. Thatcher presents Lizâs bohemian lifestyle with knowing affectionâwatching the movie feels at times like going to a party with the characters. In a turn out of Bob Rafelsonâs FIVE EASY PIECES (1970), Liz learns from an estranged half-sister that their devout Mormon father is dying of a terminal illness back in Utah, and so she hits the road with her not-quite-boyfriend Geoffrey to confront her family. Much of the ensuing story concerns the growing intimacy between Geoffrey, who desires a more serious relationship, and Liz, who doesnât (not surprisingly, sheâs afraid of commitment); while some of the emotional developments may be predictable, Thatcher delivers them with commendable restraint. She tends to organize scenes around character insights rather than narrative complications, and this adds to the general feeling of hanging out. Yet the more Thatcherâs characters hang out, the more emotionally vulnerable they allow themselves to be; by the end, you may feel like giving the movie a hug. Screening as part of the Midwest Film Festival's First Tuesdays showcase. A networking reception begins at 7:00pm, and the screening begins at 8:00pm, immediately followed by a Q&A with members of the production team and an after-party located at Emerald Loop Bar & Grill. (2022, 85 min, DCP Digital) [Ben Sachs]
The Creepshow: A Stephen King Film Festival at the Music Box Theatre
Presented by the Losersâ Club, a weekly podcast connected to Bloody Disgusting that looks at Stephen Kingâs vast oeuvre. Other films screening in the festival are Mary Lambertâs PET SEMATARY II (1992, 100 min, Digital Projection) on Friday at 8pm in the Music Box Garden; Mike Flanaganâs DOCTOR SLEEP (2019, 152 min, DCP Digital) on Friday at 10pm; Michael Gornickâs CREEPSHOW 2 (1987, 92 min, Digital Projection) on Saturday at 10pm in the Music Box Garden; and Mikael HĂ„fströmâs 1408 (2007, 104 min, 35mm) on Saturday at 10pm. The Losers' Club Presents The Stephen King Univers, the podcastâs first live stage show, will take place on Sunday at 5pm. More info on the festival here.
Stanley Kubrick's THE SHINING (US)
Friday, 7pm
Though it had been made famous already by ROCKY, it wasn't until THE SHINING that the Steadicam yielded an aesthetic breakthrough in movies. Garrett Brown's innovationâa gyroscope mounted to the bottom of a camera, which allowed cinematographers to create hand-held tracking shots that didn't record their own movementâbecame in Kubrick's hands a supernatural presence. The film's justly celebrated Steadicam shots evoke a cruel, judgmental eye that does not belong to any human being, a perspective that's harrowing in its implications. (GOODFELLAS, SATANTANGO, and Gus Van Sant's ELEPHANT, to name just three examples, are inconceivable without the film's influence.) In this regard, the horror of THE SHINING makes manifest one subtext running through all of Kubrick's work: that humanity, for all its technical sophistication, will never fully understand its own consciousness. Why else would Kubrick devote nearly 150 takes to the same scene, as he did several times in the film's epic shooting schedule? With the only exceptions being other movies directed by Stanley Kubrick, no one moves or speaks in a film the way they do in THE SHINING. Everything has been rehearsed past the point of technical perfection; the behavior on screen seems the end-point of human evolution. What keeps it all going? (To invoke another great horror film of the era: the devil, probably.) The demons of the Overlook Hotel may very well be a manifestation of the evil within Jack Torrance, a recovering alcoholic who once nearly beat his four-year-old son to death. They could be, like those Steadicam shots, an alien consciousness here to judge the vulnerabilities of mankind. Kubrick never proffers an explanation, which is why THE SHINING is one of the few horror films that actually remains scary on repeated viewings. Nearly every effect here prompts some indelible dread: the unnatural symmetry of Kubrick's compositions; Shelly Duvall's tragic performance (which suggests that horrible victimization is always just around the corner); and the atonal symphonic music by Bartok, Lygeti, and Penderecki that make up the soundtrack. (1980, 142 min, 35mm) [Ben Sachs]
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George A. Romero's CREEPSHOW (US)
Saturday, 7pm
Between the masterful DAWN OF THE DEAD and the just slightly overrated DAY OF THE DEAD, George Romero made two of the most unlikely films of his career: 1981's KNIGHTRIDERS and 1982's CREEPSHOW. While the former is a rather pedestrian sex comedy, the latter is easily the greatest horror anthology film ever made. A send up/homage to the popular horror comics published in the 1950's by E.C., CREEPSHOW's "wrap-around-story" involves a young boy's father confiscating his "Creepshow Magazine" after declaring it "filth" only to have it returned by the titular "Creep" (a more than obvious take on E.C.'s famous Crypt Keeper), who shares with our young hero (and us) five tales of supernatural horror. What immediately sets CREEPSHOW apart from other horror films of the era, and even its cinematic predecessors such as VAULT OF HORROR and TALES FROM THE CRYPT (both directly based on E.C. stories), is a combination of stylization and brilliant comic timing, thanks in great part to the screenplay authored by Stephen King, who clearly has as much nostalgic affection for horror comics as Romero does. King, who also appears in one of the stories, providing a rather fascinating and quite compelling performance, is able to bring out the clear humor in genre contrivances which previous anthologies unwisely played completely straight faced. CREEPSHOW is truly a kid's film in the most literal sense: despite subplots involving alcoholism, infidelity, and frequent sexual innuendos, Romero maintains a sense of mysterious optimism and constant excitement which is wholly in keeping with the structure of the pre-teen to teen oriented comics he's emulating, completely ignoring the overt savagery and hate which found its way into so many horror films of the era. The film literally moves from panel to panel, thanks to creative opticals, and scenes are often bathed in red or blue light, or shot from canted angles, to maintain a feeling of cartoon-like wonderment. As horrifying as any given story might become, each tale ends with a silly punchline, to serve as a reminder that everything is in good fun. (1982, 120 min, 35mm) [Joe Rubin]
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John Carpenterâs CHRISTINE (US)
Saturday, Midnight
CHRISTINE is John Carpenterâs only Stephen King adaptation, which may be surprising, but the director took on this high-profile adaptation as more of a necessary career move than anything else; his previous film, THE THING (1982), was critically panned and a box office disappointment. The result is a warped and entertaining take on late-century obsession with '50s American culture. Unpopular teen Arnie (Keith Gordon) buys a red and white 1958 Plymouth Fury, named Christine, but the seller (Roberts Blossom) leaves out some sordid details about the vehicleânamely that Christine is possessed with an evil mind. As Arnie starts restoring the car, he becomes more than a little obsessed. He begins to change, taking on the personality of a hardened '50s greaser, and those who mess with either him or the car come to bloody ends. Arnie's best friend (John Stockwell) and new girlfriend (Alexandra Paul) attempt to help, but they must get through Christine first. The film includes standout supporting performances from character actors like Blossom, Robert Prosky, and, most noteworthy, Harry Dean Stanton; as Arnie, Gordon gives an anxious performance, appropriately uncomfortable as he transforms from nerd to aggressive car-obsessive. Itâs impressive how Carpenterâs camera slowly pans over Christine, giving, with the help of lighting, the often-unmoving car an eerie life of her own. It remains one of my favorite Carpenter rewatches, and it doesnât hurt that it boasts one of his greatest scoresâjuxtaposed against the '50s tunes that Christine plays, the moody main theme is the very best of '80s synth soundtracks. (1983, 110 min, 35 mm) [Megan Fariello]
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Rob Reinerâs STAND BY ME (US)
Sunday, 2:30pm
One of Rob Reiner's first big hits after the cult classic THIS IS SPINAL TAP (1984), STAND BY ME is a film where less is more, though it contains some over-the-top sequences. Take the fantastical story about an overweight child out for revenge or the close call with a train that occurs when the four pre-adolescent heroes, on their quest to find a dead body in the middle of the woods, get stuck crossing a very long bridge. While these moments are great, the pulse of this film lies in the interactions between the boys. Through their journey they grapple with their own troubles, like abusive, neglectful, or absent parents. Gordie, who narrates the film as an adult, struggles to come to terms with the death of his "perfect" big brother, which inspires his obsession to find the dead body. A young River Phoenix delivers a heart-wrenching performance as Chris, the troubled, yet cool and compassionate boy who serves as the movie's other main focus. STAND BY ME deals with the myths that make up our lives, whether they arise out of misunderstanding, malice, or self-effacement. Perhaps the best way to unravel these myths is with friendsâeven the Cobra boys need someone to smash mailboxes with. With its expressive cinematography, which makes the boys seem quite small in the face of a great, big world, STAND BY ME makes it easy to relate to their journey. (1986, 89 min, 35mm) [Drew Van Weelden]
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Rob Reinerâs MISERY (US)
Sunday, 12pm
A best-selling romance novelist skids off a mountain road during a blizzard and gets rescued by his self-professed No. 1 fan. A trained nurse, she tends to his severe injuries, only to become enraged when she learns he has killed off the character she loves so that he can write serious literature. Now her increasingly imperiled prisoner, he must fight through excruciating pain to escape her clutches. Stephen Kingâs Misery is the authorâs favorite bookâthe one closest to his own life and a peek inside the extreme fan worship he must have experienced through the years. When he finally allowed it to be made into a film, King entrusted the task to Rob Reiner, a director wholly unfamiliar with the mechanics of horror filmmaking. The brilliant script by William Goldman, who suggested stage actor Kathy Bates for the part of the deranged fan, and Reinerâs casting of hyperactive James Caan in a role that confined him to a bed made for a film that exceeded expectations. In his last film as a DP, Barry Sonnefeld found interesting lensing to make Bates a looming, threatening presence even when she is on her best behavior. The film finds humor in strange ways, as when, after meticulous planning, Caanâs attempt to drug Bates is foiled by her clumsiness. Kathy Bates won a Best Actress Oscar for MISERY, a rare achievement for a genre film, and this launched her Hollywood career. I think her portrayal, which spans an enormous range of pathologies, actually comes into sad focus in a dark scene when she acknowledges that her delusions are nothing but attempts to feel significant in some way. In this sense, the film turns the tables on the pity we feel for the terrorized object of idolatry to recognize the damage celebrities can do to their followers. (1990, 107 min, 35mm) [Marilyn Ferdinand]
The Story of Film: A New Generation â A Film Series at the Music Box Theatre
In conjunction with the upcoming release (September 9) of Mark Cousinsâs THE STORY OF FILM: A NEW GENERATION, which picks up where his last film, THE STORY OF FILM: AN ODYSSEY, left off, the Music Box Theatre is bringing some of the most innovative and exciting films of the last decade back to the big screen. More info on the series here.
Lucrecia Martel's ZAMA (Argentina)
Saturday, 4pm
âI know it seems like the inexplicable, but itâs just a boy in that box,â says a man to the filmâs namesake character, Diego de Zama, as he watches a wooden crate move by itself on the floor outside his room. This supernatural facade haunts the stagnate title character, and us the viewer, who is explicitly implicated in the filmâs first bit of opening dialogue. Zama (wonderfully portrayed by Daniel GimĂ©nez Cacho) conspicuously watches a group of indigenous women covering their naked bodies in mud; he is spotted by the women, who tease him by yelling, âVoyeur!" Lucrecia Martel places Zama in the lower-right corner of the frame, drawing a direct line between the accusatory womensâ pointed glance and the viewer. As he runs away, one of them catches this leg, to which he turns around and slaps her, twice. Zama, a functionary of the King of Spain, is awaiting a transfer out of the land he helped colonize, in hopes to return to his wife and newborn son in Buenos Aires. Meanwhile, he suffers one indignity after another, first by the innkeeperâs daughters who bathe and sleep with him in his temporary home, then by a blue-blooded seductress of nobility. Heâs constantly humiliated by his superiors (the surrounding slaves silently mock him at every turn), his vapid manhood dissolving slowly all around him. As he nervously awaits the transfer papers, he is thrown out of his temporary furnishings by a new governor recently arrived on the scene. Zama then drags his belongings to a possibly haunted inn on the edge of town, as he waits for the very same governor to sign off on a letter to the King, imploring his long-gestating transfer to his family. The knotty corridors of bureaucracy delay the letter further, so he takes it upon himself to hunt down the phantom-like bandit that has been pestering local authorities for years, in hopes of speeding up his transfer process. It is this journey which makes up the second half of the film, in which Zama and a few men plunge into the heart of the surrounding savannah in search of this elusive figure. Martel took up ZAMA after five years of toiling away on a sci-fi feature that resulted in nothing, most likely due to financier dead-ends. This led her to Antonio Di Benedettoâs 1957 novel, which she read while recovering from exhaustion and illness. It then took three years to turn ZAMA into her latest cinematic gem, which deceptively breaks with her âSalta Trilogyâ (her previous feature films, LA CIENAGA, THE HOLY GIRL, and THE HEADLESS WOMAN), in that the earlier films followed multiple women, while ZAMA follows just one man. Despite the reversal of gender roles, her latest wholly embodies, and even properly contextualizes, her three previous films. All four deal with the implications of a bourgeois, almost sleepwalking society whose actions and motives directly influence the indigenous populations they live amongst, resulting in simmering hotbeds of unacknowledged racism that refuse to be uprooted, no matter how hard some may try. Like the main character of THE HEADLESS WOMAN, Zama is at the will of forces higher and above, both within the upper-echelons of society they hail from, while also from inside the cognitive anxieties and doubts that swim laps around his mind. Martelâs characters listen to voices, real and imagined, as they try to create meaning and narrative to their trancelike states of existence. As always with Martel, off-screen sounds, layered in hallucinatory power, achieve a hypnotizing spell of insects buzzing, birds crying, and animals screaming, that meld into the filmâs visuals like distant figures blurring out of perception under a hot sun. Martel reportedly avoided the use of candles and torches to light the atmosphere, bucking the tradition of lighting schemes intended to induce one into a 17th-century world (a la BARRY LYNDON, with which ZAMA shares a kindred spirit). The result is one of unnerving possession and complete immersion into a nightmare brought on by Zama himself, who resists any attempt to go with the flow of his circumstances, thrashing against the powers of red-tape, lust, and sunstroke in his attempts to arrive at a sense of complacency with his current state of affairs. Itâs impossible to avoid succumbing to the filmâs atmosphere and somnambulistic gaze, especially when you realize suddenly you are in the presence of one of the absolute masterworks of the last ten years. (2017, 115 min, DCP Digital) [John Dickson]
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Aleksey German's HARD TO BE A GOD (Russia)
Sunday, 11am
The "silence of God" has been a popular theme of serious artists working in different mediums for centuries but Russian filmmaker Aleksey German, adapting a sci-fi novel by the Strugatskiy Brothers, apparently found a completely original way to explore this concept in his final film (he died in post-production and HARD TO BE A GOD was completed by his wife and son): many years in the future, a scientist from Earth named Don Rumata (Leonid Yarmolnik) is sent to observe life on the distant planet Arkanar, a place that happens to bear a strong resemblance to Europe during the Middle Ages (i.e., it's a pre-industrial society where everyone is living in filth and misery, intellectuals are persecuted and human cruelty and stupidity are generally on display everywhere). The Arkanarians regard Rumata as a "God" but the more enlightened man is, for obscure reasons, not allowed to help the members of this alien race transcend the venality and backwardness in which their lives are mired. Some of this narrative information is explained via a sparse voice-over but most of it has to be inferred from a barrage of ugly, non-narrative images that are so rich in putrid detail that they attain a kind of mesmerizing, hallucinatory beauty. Indeed it is practically impossible to capture German's painterly mise-en-scene using words; suffice it to say that the immersive HARD TO BE A GOD feels like some kind of scatological remix of ANDREI RUBLEV where the plentiful blood, piss, shit, and vomit of the characters commingles with the endless rain and fog of the locations they inhabit, which, when captured by the low-contrast black-and-white cinematography, creates images that resemble moving charcoal drawings in their thick, gray, tactile textures. While the use of an endlessly mobile camera and the sense of lives constantly bustling beyond the edges of the frame will be familiar to those who have seen German's previous film--the equally formidable but more absurdist KHRUSTALYOV, MY CAR!--the overall tone here is closer to something like SALO, OR THE 120 DAYS OF SODOM in its unbearable bleakness. It is unlikely that either Pasolini or German knew these movies would be their last but the extremism with which they approached form and content lends each film the feeling of a final testament in hindsight; when creating a work of art entails jumping into an abyss, sometimes no encore is imaginable. (2013, 170 min, DCP Digital) [Michael Glover Smith]
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Hirokazu Kore-eda's SHOPLIFTERS (Japan)
Sunday, 7pm
Coming home after a day spent shoplifting, a man and a boy see a young girl playing by herself outside an apartment and decide to take her home with them. Their household is presided over by an elderly woman, along with two younger women, one of whom has a relationship with the man. Their home is a ramshackle corrugated lean-to, perpetually in danger of being demolished by a local property flipper. They get by on various grifts and scams to supplement the meager salaries of the grownupsâ menial jobs and the old ladyâs pension. Each member of this makeshift family does their best to play the part they wish they had in their previous lives. I kept thinking of Dickensâ Oliver Twist while watching this movie. Thereâs a lot of Fagin in the man and of the Artful Dodger in the boy; the grubby neediness of their lives is out of Dickens as well. In his careful and unassuming way, Kore-eda has made a devastating indictment of capitalist society, as well as the sacrosanct place the nuclear family holds within its structures. He continues plumbing the depth and breadth of what connects one human being to another through this group of strangersâunwanted or rejected by their relations and by the larger worldâwho throw in their lots together to form a bond made by choice rather than blood. This one left me gutted. (2018, 121 min, DCP Digital) [Dmitry Samarov]
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Jonathan Glazerâs UNDER THE SKIN (UK)
Sunday, 9:30pm
A bomb at the box office upon its initial release, UNDER THE SKIN was Jonathan Glazerâs first feature in nearly a decade following 2004âs BIRTH and what a return it was. In what is arguably the finest performance she has ever given, a black-haired Scarlett Johansson plays an alien who appears in Scotland and dons the aforementioned actressesâ appearance as if it were a costume. For much of the film, she roams around Glasgow in a utility van to pick up unwitting men only to lead them back to her abyss-like lair from which they never return. Many of these sequences maintain a hyperrealism thanks in part to the fact that Glazer hid cameras in and around the van while Johansson speaks with these men (many of whom were not actors, but rather just people out walking around). These unscripted scenes are fascinating to behold because they further stress the notion that her character is an outsider trying to blend in with modern society while she goes out to "hunt." Mica Leviâs haunting score boosts the filmâs unnerving tone. The discordant sounds heighten the uncomfortable, sinister atmosphere Glazer cultivates and at times, seem otherworldly. One of the most interesting facets of this film is the way in which sexual politics and traditional gender roles are essentially reversed: here it is the men who should by wary of a strange woman attempting to pick them up. There is a strong sense of feminism underlying the filmâs dark veneer. Heady, parasitic, and eerie, UNDER THE SKIN brings to the forefront contemporary societal issues and tackles them in unique fashion. It is the kind of film that sticks with you long after leaving the theater and in this writerâs opinion, a modern masterpiece. (2013, 108 min, DCP Digital) [Kyle Cubr]
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Apichatpong Weerasethakul's CEMETERY OF SPLENDOR (Thailand)
Monday, 1:30pm
It's a fitting choice for a director whose films feel like reveries to set his latest in a clinic for soldiers who are unable to wake up. Likewise, the hallucinatory gradient glow of lamps placed beside the patients' beds to calm their dreams are analogous to the particular narrative and stylistic approach that makes Weerasethakul's work so unique and immediately recognizable. The protagonist, Jenjira (played by Jenjira Pongpas), is a volunteer at the hospital who "adopts" one of the soldiers as her own son. Outside the few hours he is awake, her main channel of communication is a medium whose skill allegedly once garnered a job offer from the FBI. The agents of the soldiers' malady are dead kings--disturbed by a government project to lay a fibre optic cable near their graveyard--enlisting their spirits to wage otherworldly wars. The loose narrative structure that propels the film forward is just as concerned with detailing Jen's life experiences as it with resolving the soldiers' situation, unspooling in leisurely sequences that can feel both casual and monumental. By the end, you realize how much personal and temporal ground you've covered without even noticing as it was happening. The elements of the story certainly encourage metaphorical readings, engaging Thai history up to the present day. For all the enigmas of Weerasethakul's cinema, in the context of the 2014 coup and continued military control of the country, the final five minutes of CEMETERY OF SPLENDOR feel remarkably explicit. What is political cinema? Let us hope that, as opposed to the myriad Sundance-anointed "issue films" coming soon to a theater near you, it's something like this. (2015, 122 min, DCP Digital) [Alex Kopecky]
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LĂĄszlĂł Nemes' SON OF SAUL (Hungary)
Monday, 4:30pm
From the opening, an out of focus long take that slowly adjusts its gaze on Saul AuslÀnder (Géza Röhrig) as he follows an incoming transport of Jewish people into a gas chamber at Auschwitz, it's easy to see that Låszló Nemes' Holocaust film will be deeply intimate. SON OF SAUL strives for authenticity in its historical source material with its unflinching portrayal of the atrocities committed during World War II. Saul works as a member of the Sonderkommando (a group of prisoners tasked with sorting through incoming prisoners goods, cleaning out gas chambers, and disposing of human remains). While at hand with his duties, he discovers the body of a boy he believes to be his son and sets out to find a rabbi so that he can give the boy a proper burial. Nemes' mise-en-scÚne only focuses on Saul, framing him almost entirely in close up shots while the peripheries are blurred due to the shallow focus employed. These tight frames and close angles show that the film is solely invested in Saul's personal hell. There is no reprieve from the despair. Truthfully, this technique ponders the question of how many other fascinating, individual stories are occurring just off frame. Röhrig's performance is exceptional in portraying a man who is so dead inside, with nothing but a few words and a thousand yard stare. Despite the myriad of abuses Saul is subjected to, he remains steadfast in his goal to bury the boy he believes to be his son; an apt metaphor for the nearly impossible task of remaining hopeful and willing to stay alive during a time when hope was nowhere to be found for so many. SON OF SAUL is a harrowing, cinematic tour de force on one of history's deplorable chapters. (2015, 107 min, 35mm) [Kyle Cubr]
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Ari Asterâs MIDSOMMAR - Directorâs Cut (US)
Monday, 7pm
Although âelevated horrorâ was always a horrible term, reflecting a snobbish disdain for most of the horror genre, Iâm not sure how else to sum up a group of horror movies made between 2014 and 2019, often (like MIDSOMMAR) by A24, that took the form in refreshing new directions after the ugly excesses of torture porn. By this point, the sub-genre has bottomed out, becoming full of dull knockoffs of the most talented directors in the movement. The last year has brought empty fare like MEN and THEY/THEM, which were overly didactic and too impressed with their own smarts and pseudo-progressive politics to engage with the horror filmâs most unsettling elements. Ari Aster's MIDSOMMAR represents the last moment when elevated horror seemed fresh and exciting. Beyond that, itâs emblematic of the period in American life just before COVID, wedded to dead-end individualism and capable of handling strong emotions only by numbing them with drugs. The film's invented cult, the Harga, have the virtue of taking death seriously enough to incorporate it into their religion instead of racing from it. The movie starts when a young woman murders her parents and then kills herself. Afterwards, the killer's sister, Dani (Florence Pugh), is terribly lonely, and her boyfriend Christian (Jack Raynor) plans to break up with her and leave the US to study a Swedish commune for his Master's thesis. When Dani learns about the trip, Christian invites her along. The tone of their stay in Sweden is set by a psychedelic mushroom trip where Dani, Christian, and their friends freak out at the skyâs brightness. Dani finds a solution to her grief when the Harga embraces her as their new queen and kill off the men in her group. Beneath the surface of MIDSOMMAR, but not explicitly mentioned, lies the co-option of neo-paganism and the Norse religion of Asatru by white supremacists. In fact, it locates horror in full sunlight. (Aster depicts America as much darker, visually, than Sweden.) Before âpastel Q-Anonâ influencers existed, MIDSOMMAR showed a fantasy parallel, a world whose apparently positive embrace of collectivism, prettiness, and, most importantly, whiteness (down to the color of costumes) conceals its danger. Even the fact that the Swedish scenes were actually shot in the fash-adjacent Hungary plays into this. But itâs open to multiple interpretations. Back in 2019, some critics read the final scene as a feminist victory over emotionally abusive men, and the whole film can be seen as an elaborate metaphor for the struggles of a toxic relationship. The scariest aspect of Asterâs first feature, HEREDITARY, was its vision of life where every detail, especially the most tragic, was supernaturally predetermined. MIDSOMMAR tops its manipulation of the spectator. While the characters are drugged by the Harga, Aster taunts the audience by giving away the entire plot in a tapestry and hiding subliminal imagery in the frame. Even the pacing and editing make death seem seductive and triumphant. Its subtext is certainly important, but it wouldnât mean much if the film didnât work as a sensory experience. The directorâs cut, 22 minutes longer than the version A24 originally released (they cut it down to procure an R rating), expands upon Christianâs toxicity with an ugly argument between him and Dani; it also fleshes out the supporting characters in greater detail. (2019, 172 min, DCP Digital) [Steve Erickson]
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Kelly Reichardt's CERTAIN WOMEN (US)
Tuesday, 7pm
Noted coastal elitist and great American filmmaker Kelly Reichardt, who teaches at hippie-dippie, clothing-optional Bard College, made this movie within the past few years that speaks to rural America with more genuine empathy and curiosity than a thousand scolding op-eds. CERTAIN WOMEN, adapted by Reichardt from a trio of stories by Maile Meloy, is not simply a film randomly plopped down in Montana to score a tax rebate. Its whole rhythm and grammar arise organically from the setting and its pokier pace of life. (Remember those "Montana Moment" tourism adverts that plastered the CTA trains a few years back?) The first story, which might loosely be described as a true crime legal thriller starring Laura Dern, checks all its thematic boxes but does not translate Reichardt's aesthetic to down 'n' dirty genre mechanics as effectively as NIGHT MOVES. The second remains under-developed, with Michelle Williams as a walking McSweeney's caricature, dedicated to building a cabin exclusively from locally-sourced railroad ties. But the third storyâan extended diner duet between Kristen Stewart and Lily Gladstoneâbelongs among Reichardt's best work. Somewhere along the way, the accumulation of daily rhythmsâcleaning a horse stable, driving down a darkened interstate, waiting in an empty classroom, crossing a parking lotâbuilds to something much more powerful than the sum of its parts. It becomes an argument for a way of life, an act of inoculation and reclamation. A lesser work would be content with settling; this one levitates until it grazes solace. (2016, 107 min, DCP Digital) [K.A. Westphal]
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Barry Jenkins' MOONLIGHT (US)
Wednesday, 7pm
The leitmotif of Barry Jenkins' lyrical, sensual drama MOONLIGHT is black masculinity as an imitated pose. Three chapters trace the identity formation of a shy, gay male at ages 9, 16, and 26. Growing up bullied amidst Miami's deadly drug economy, the boy endures abuse and neglect from his addicted mother. Male tenderness is a casualty of the burden of the front, though a few men drop the hard mask to allow for vulnerability and loveâa neighborhood drug dealer with heart, a childhood friend whose cool, exaggeratedly sexist pose is just that. This is the story of a self being buried beneath layers of hurt. It could have been schematic, were the acting and writing not so natural and alive. Based on Tarell Alvin McCraney's play In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue, the movie's color palette is as evocative of the beauty of bodies and nature as that title. (2016, 110 min, DCP Digital) [Scott Pfeiffer]
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George Miller's MAD MAX: FURY ROAD (Australia)
Tuesday and Wednesday, 9:30pm
There's no shortage of films set in a distant future gone horribly awry, but you'd be hard-pressed to find a dystopia as colorful and horrific as the gory Australia George Miller present in MAD MAX: FURY ROAD. The third sequel to MAD MAX (1979) and an effective reboot of its franchise, FURY ROAD felt inescapable upon its release in 2015; it was on the radar of anyone who even mildly identified with nerd culture. After grossing $375 million at the box office and winning plenty of accolades, it still holds up as a raw, relentless depiction of an oppressive, post-apocalyptic worldâand a blast from start to finish. Tom Hardy makes his debut here as Max Rockatansky, a role held in the late '70s and early '80s by Mel Gibson. While his brooding performance is captivating, Hardy's real function is to act as the eyes through which we meet Furiosa, portrayed by Charlize Theron. In a wasteland ruled by cult-leader Immortan Joe and his militia of "war boys," Furiosa, Max, and a truck full of Joe's escaped wives must fight for bodily autonomy, basic human rights, and, as Furiosa replies to Max's question of intent, redemption. For fans of the original trilogy, this offers a new world that's true to the aesthetics of its predecessors but unlimited by '80s special effects; for first-timers, it delivers a unique action-adventure universe free of Marvel-style tropes and overbearing cameos. FURY ROAD feels too huge to be contained by any single screen, but with something of this magnitude, finding the biggest one you possibly can is paramount. (2015, 120 min, 35mm) [Michael Bates]
đœïž ALSO RECOMMENDED
Alexander Kluge Short Films From 1960 to 1970 (West Germany/Documentary)
Goethe-Institut Chicago at Comfort Station â Wednesday, 8pm (Free Admission)
Alexander Kluge is one of the most influential German filmmakers of his generation, having spearheaded the New German Cinema in the 1960s and '70s. A protege of Theodor Adorno, Kluge also introduced a certain philosophical bent to the national cinema with works that directly challenged Germany's historical orientation; he considered this challenge imperative in light of what he saw as the cultural amnesia of the immediate postwar era. Kluge foregrounded his mission in the first work he signed, a short called BRUTALITY IN STONE (1961, 12 min, Digital Projection) that was co-directed by Peter Schamoni. The piece is a montage of architectural structures designed under the Third Reich, with compositions that highlight the dehumanizing impact of Nazi philosophy. Along with Alain Resnais' NIGHT AND FOG (1956), it is one of the first major films to confront the legacy of the Nazi era, and like the Resnais, it does so through an eerie consideration of spaces rather than people. BRUTALITY IN STONE opens this program of works from the first decade of Kluge's cinematic career. Also screening are TEACHERS IN TRANSFORMATION (1963, 11 min, Digital Projection), an essay film about the connections between education, politics, and mental health; POLICEMANâS LOT (1964, 13 min, Digital Projection), a profile of a cop who worked under the Kaiserreich, the Weimar Republic, the Third Reich, and the Federal Republic (and served "properly" under each government); and FIRE FIGHTER E.A. WINTERSTEIN (1968, 11 min, Digital Projection), one of his documentary portraits of "average" individuals. [Ben Sachs]
Marlon Riggs' TONGUES UNTIED (US/Documentary)
Gene Siskel Film Center â Sunday, 2pm
One of the landmark works of queer film activism, Marlon Riggsâ TONGUES UNTIED is a treatise on the enforced silence of gay black men and an emphatic corrective to it. Through a sequence of poetry and monologues delivered by Riggs and fellow gay rights activists, the film centers and amplifies the subjectivities of this doubly oppressed group, giving space for their voices to not only be heard in all their multiplicity, but to directly address and challenge the dominant white, heteronormative patriarchy that deprives them of this privilege in the real world. Riggs conducts this address through an arsenal of techniques, including oral histories spoken directly to camera, musical interludes, instructional videos, and aural collage that often takes on the form of incantation. The last of these is introduced at the start of the film, as a rhythmic chant of âbrother to brotherâ builds in volume and tempo over the soundtrack, becoming mantra. Riggs proceeds to weave voices over and through his images, catalyzing discourses around racism and homophobia and invoking cathartic personal stories of shame, abuse, anger, and self-hate. The voices are not all from positive figures; demonstrating the persecution he faced while growing up in Georgia, Riggs cuts to extreme close-ups of mouths spitting epithets, making a grotesque symphony out of words he would eventually internalize. In a similar, later scene, preachers shout sweaty, fire-and-brimstone rhetoric around the placid visage of poet and activist Essex Hemphill, whose silence, he and Riggs tell us, serves as both a shield from such pernicious intolerance and a cloak that locks them into invisibility and muteness. TONGUES UNTIED searingly relays how this muteness festers into rage. âAnger unvented becomes pain unspoken becomes rage released becomes violence cha cha cha,â another chant on the soundtrack goes, turning a maxim into a song. âIt is easier to be furious than to be yearning, easier to crucify myself than you,â Hemphill admits. From these nakedly first-person accounts and their attendant, often confrontational images, Riggs makes perceptible the stifling feelings that, in a horrible irony, are instilled by the very culture that refuses their outlet. But in TONGUES UNTIED, they are spoken. Anger becomes mobilized into art and activism. The silence of the AIDS crisis is breached. In the early 90s, the impact of the film was such that the announcement of its broadcast on American public television caused an outcry, most notably from Pat Buchanan, who chastised Bushâs government for allowing such âpornographic and blasphemous artâ to receive federal funding. Of course, nothing about the film is inflammatory. Its candor, its poetry, its sensuality, and its politics only solicit our empathy and action. Riggs passed from AIDS complications in 1994, but thirty years on from the release of this seminal film, his voice has never left us. (1989, 55 min, DCP Digital) [Jonathan Leithold-Patt]
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Screening with Arthur Dong's 1994 feature-length documentary COMING OUT UNDER FIRE (71 min, New 4K DCP Digital Restoration).
Donna Deitch's DESERT HEARTS (US)
Gene Siskel Film Center â Saturday, 2pm
What does it mean to say a film has heart? The phrase came to mind while I was mulling over the quiet firecracker that is Donna Deitchâs DESERT HEARTS. Referred to as a lesbian classic, the film is an adaptation of Jane Ruleâs 1964 novel Desert of the Heart, one of the first to seriously portray a romantic relationship between two women. Set in the late 1950s, it follows 35-year-old Columbia lit professor Vivian as she travels to Reno to procure a quickie divorce. There she meets Cay, ten years her junior and born of a different social sphere, though what she lacks in sophistication she makes up for in independence. Waiting for her decree, Vivian resides at a ranch owned by Cayâs would-be stepmother, Frances, who, while having a romantic streak of her own, condemns Cayâs so-called lifestyle. Despite Cayâs family (generally benign as they think their intolerance is) and Vivianâs initial reticence, romance flourishes in the heat of the desert sun. Vincent Canby is mostly correct when, in his review of the film for the New York Times, he points out that â[i]t's the sort of film in which everyone, including the English professor, talks as if she'd grown up inside âThe Life of Helen Trentââ (I listened to some of that program on YouTube, and heâs not wrong). Canny as his criticism may be, itâs that very earnestness that gives it its heart, raw feeling overshadowing its grandiloquent flaws. Superficial similarities to Todd Haynesâ CAROL, based on Patricia Highsmithâs novel The Price of Salt, are undeniableâone woman is older, the other younger; one is trĂšs sophistiquĂ©, the other an uncultivated creativeâbut DESERT HEARTS is softhearted where CAROL retains hints of Highsmithâs signature chilliness. The basal pulchritude of Robert Elswitâs cinematography, an early entry in his illustrious career, palliates the clunkiness of the script. Patricia Charbonneau and Helen Shaver deliver compelling performances as the romantic teacher and her student, respectively (though itâs the latter whoâs the professor at Columbia), and the soundtrack is charming as all get out. But itâs Deitchâs direction that elevates it above whimsicality, giving it that something, a je ne sais quoi, similarly embodied by her characters. (1986, 96 min, DCP Digital) [Kat Sachs]
Claire Denis' BOTH SIDES OF THE BLADE (France)
Facets Cinema â See Venue website for showtimes
BOTH SIDES OF THE BLADE is lots of things at once, many of them contradictory: it's a quintessential Claire Denis film that doesn't look much like her previous work, a romantic melodrama that unfolds like a thriller, and a singularly upsetting experience that stands as one of the finest movies of 2022. It's also a potent examination of the theme of "the past coming back," which makes it a kissing cousin of such otherwise disparate films as Jacques Tourneur's OUT OF THE PAST (1947) and David Cronenberg's A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE (2005). In all three movies, the protagonists' lives are turned upside down by the unexpected re-appearance of someone they used to know, whose return forces them not just to deal with unresolved issues but to regress into the people they used to be, whether they like it or not. In Denis's film, Sara (Juliette Binoche) is a radio host in a seemingly idyllic nine-year relationship with her live-in boyfriend, Jean (Vincent Lindon), an unemployed ex-rugby player and ex-con. A wordless six-minute introductory scene shows the lovers frolicking at the beach before returning home and making love, a bravura sequence that recalls the wordless montage that begins Eric Rohmer's A TALE OF WINTER (1992). This picturesque depiction of blissful couplehood, however, is undercut by the ominous rumble of low strings on the soundtrack, which give way to the haunting sound of minor chords being plucked on an acoustic guitar (the superb score is, of course, by the Tindersticks). Shortly afterwards, Sara spies her ex-loverâand Jean's old friendâFrancois (Gregoire Colin), in the street for the first time in years, and the very sight of him causes her to convulse with emotion. As Sara and Francois resume their affair, Denis and co-screenwriter Christine Angot (on whose novel the film is based) gradually, masterfully dole out information that fleshes out the backstories of the three main characters while some narrative details remain tantalizingly vague (e.g. the reason Jean went to prison is never explained). For long stretches, the cinematic language of BOTH SIDES OF THE BLADE feels more conventional than in Denis's other films, probably so she can put the focus squarely on the anguished emotionsâespecially in two extended verbal arguments between Sara and Jean, the Cassavettesian emotional rawness of which gives two of the world's greatest actors some of their most indelible onscreen moments. This makes all the more effective the few "poetic" touches more typical of Denis that are shrewdly sprinkled throughout the movie: the first reunion scene between Sara and Francois, for instance, is full of dreamy close-ups and sensual camera moves reminiscent of FRIDAY NIGHT (2002), although here they are fittingly played in a more sinister register. The earlier film celebrates a guilt-free one-night stand between two strangers who come together by chance; the newer one shows how desire, when intertwined with guilt and lies, can tear apart two people who ostensibly know each other well. BOTH SIDES OF THE BLADE is a searing portrait of middle-aged intimacy made by a woman old and wise enough to know that love can sometimes be a motherfucker. (2022, 116 min, DCP Digital) [Michael Glover Smith]
Phil Tippett's MAD GOD (US/Animation)
Facets Cinema â Friday, 7pm
There are passion projects and then thereâs MAD GOD. Shot by Phil Tippett over a 33-year period, the film takes place in an enormously detailed apocalyptic dystopia that reflects his background as a special effects artist. Tippett cites Hieronymous Boschâs paintings as his major influence, and this comes through in images like a diorama of bloodied bodies seen through a building. But cinematically, his vision suggests Alexei Germanâs HARD TO BE A GOD combined with the avant-garde animation of Jan Svankmajer and the Brothers Quay. Sans dialogue, MAD GOD stays just shy of becoming a narrative film, although the closing credits introduce us to characters like âLast Human,â âThe Surgeonâ and âThe Assassin.â Itâs possible to piece together fragments of a story, as the filmâs key scene depicts a brutally bloody C-section that destroys the motherâs body and sprays the surroundings with gelatinous gore but retrieves an insectile baby. The world of MAD GOD is populated by humans alongside other creatures both real and imagined. The credits include ânewt wrangler,â while jellyfish float past poisonous chartreuse mushrooms. But MAD GOD devotes most of its energy to building a brutal, oft-ugly world one step away from utter collapse. Its cities are made of buildings that are toppling over and turning into flakes of grey dust; the powerful donât hesitate to crush humanoid figures under their wheels; and a pustule-faced creature watches film of a mushroom cloud exploding. Tippett, now 70, was the subject of a 2019 documentary and has benefited from a lengthy career specializing in stop-motion animation, working on the original STAR WARS trilogy, JURASSIC PARK and STARSHIP TROOPERS. However, MAD GOD has little to do with such mainstream films, even Verhoevenâs. It feels like a strange, impeccably crafted piece of outsider art inspired by disgust with war and environmental destruction, carrying the weight of obsession but made with enough resources to bring its homemade world to life. Even as a brief feature, itâs too grim and unpleasant to be reduced to eye candy. Its imagery transcends the literal tendency of film violence, describing a hellish devaluation of life that alludes to the Holocaust and other historical horrors without directly depicting them. (2021, 83 min, DCP Digital) [Steve Erickson]
John Patton Fordâs EMILY THE CRIMINAL (US)
AMC River East 21, Music Box Theatre, et al. â See Venue websites for showtimes
Emily (Aubrey Plaza) is a transplant to Los Angeles, an art school graduate carrying $70,000 in tuition debt, a hothead with a DUI and a criminal assault conviction on her record, and virtually no prospects for landing a decent job in her chosen field. Welcome to American capitalism in the 21st century and the devaluation of the arts, higher education, and people who work for a living. In his feature film debut as director and screenwriter, John Patton Ford has taken the contemporary social landscape in the United States and used its inequities to turn out a boots-on-the-ground crime thriller that does an admirable job of keeping the audience on the edge of their seats. We understand Emilyâs righteous indignation at being sandbagged by job interviewers, her contracting employer at a food catering company who denies her the rights of a full-time employee, and a friend who has âmade itâ and dangles prospects of a job in front of her without being able to deliver. No wonder she gets involved in credit card fraudâitâs a better living than the straight world will ever offer her. Plaza is incredibly good as she climbs carefully, then recklessly down the stairs to the underworld. But then who wouldnât follow the handsome, charismatic leader of this criminal enterprise, Youcef (Theo Rossi), who praises her and mentors her for the advantages her young, pretty, white face can offer. Emily may have thought she was an artist when she started out, but thereâs no question that her real lifeâs work is as a criminal. If you start rooting for her because you can relate to her story, remember that little fact. (2022, 93 min, DCP Digital) [Marilyn Ferdinand]
đïž PHYSICAL SCREENINGS/EVENTS â ALSO SCREENING
â« Chicago Park District
The Chicago Onscreen Local Film Showcase is taking place at various parks around the city. This series of events âfeatures locally-made and Chicago-focused short and feature-length films,â per the event descriptions. More info (including dates and showtimes) here.
â« Cinema/Chicago
Wan-Jo Wangâs 2020 Taiwanese film CHEN UEN (130 min, Digital Projection) screens on Wednesday, 6:30pm, at the Chicago Cultural Center (78 E. Washington St.). Preceded by an in-person discussion with Professor Wenhwa Tsâao from Columbia College Chicago. Free admission with online registration. More info here.
â« Corbett vs. Dempsey (2156 W. Fulton St.)
Lewis Klahrâs 2008 film FALSE AGING (15 min, Digital Projection) is on display in the Vault at the Corbett vs. Dempsey Gallery (2156 W. Fulton St.) through October 8. More info here.
â« Gene Siskel Film Center
François Ozonâs 2022 Fassbinder homage PETER VON KANT (85 min, DCP Digital) opens this week, and George Millerâs 2022 film THREE THOUSAND YEARS OF LONGING (108 min, DCP Digital) continues. See Venue website for showtimes.
Richard Linklaterâs 2006 film A SCANNER DARKLY (100 min, 35mm) screens on Monday at 6pm as part of 50/50, the Siskelâs year-long series including a film from each year the theater has been open. More info on all screenings here.
â« Music Box Theatre
The Music Box Garden Movies continue. See Venue website for films and showtimes.
Owen Klineâs 2022 film FUNNY PAGES (86 min, DCP Digital) and Dean Fleischer-Campâs 2022 animated feature MARCEL THE SHELL WITH SHOES ON (89 min, DCP Digital) continue this week. See Venue website for showtimes.
Nicholas Celozziâs 2022 locally made coming-of-age film THE CLASS (114 min, DCP Digital) screens on Thursday at 7pm. More info on all screenings here.
CINE-LIST: September 2 - September 8, 2022
MANAGING EDITORS // Ben and Kat Sachs
CONTRIBUTORS // Michael Bates, Kyle Cubr, John Dickson, Steve Erickson, Megan Fariello, Marilyn Ferdinand, J.R. Jones, Alex Kopecky, Jonnathan Leithold-Patt, Scott Pfeiffer, Joe Rubin, Dmitry Samarov, Michael Glover Smith, K.A. Westphal, Drew Van Weelden